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Dear Friends,

HR 22, the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” (SAVE) Act purports to end “illegal” voting. First, the evidence of fraud in registration and voting per the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was double digits to 2016. That’s right, under 100 cases despite hundreds of millions of votes.

The claim now is “thousands” of non-citizens are registered, but not a single case has shown up. None. NO FRAUD has ever been proven. 2016-now. Despite this, the SAVE Act has new registration demands that are not only a great hardship to voters who are poor, rural, born at home, etc. but which will actively disenfranchise married women.

As written, all voters must be registered under the name on their birth certificate. Many women took their husband’s last name at marriage, and the bill makes no provision for bringing marriage licenses to show the change.  If your driver’s license or passport show a different name from your birth certificate, you may no longer vote. If you have no birth certificate, you have to get some kind of passport or other costly ID, and that has to have your name at birth.

Part of this is a religious agenda. The government has those within Congress who believe married women should not be allowed to vote, and this suits them perfectly.  (Never mind the unintended consequence of having registered married female voters who are feminists and kept their own birth names.)  The other group they wish to disenfranchise are transsexual people who have not gotten updated birth certificates which is most of them. 

There is nothing about this bill that makes a lick of sense since registration fraud does not exist, but there is much that will do grave harm to a huge part of the American population.  

Please write or call your House Representative and make clear how dangerous and useless this bill is.  They need to hear from us before Wednesday since we don’t know exactly when it will arrive for the vote.  These games are exhausting, but we need to stay on top of them.  Let your voice be heard!  

Please call your Representative.  You can find the numbers here: Find Your Representative | house.gov    If they won’t talk, please use the constituent form on their House.gov website to send a message. “Vote NO on HR 22 to truly SAVE OUR VOTE”!  Our vote is part of our voice over issues in America.  Please defend it now!

Thank you! 

Dear Friends:

It may not yet be apparent, but our 236-year system of government with division of powers, checks and balances, is actually working.  Judges at all three levels of our federal court — District, Appellate, Supreme Court — have been ruling without fear or favor to uphold the laws of the land.  

The Northern District of CA, the federal jurisdiction that runs north along the coast, issued a ruling that prohibited the deportation of suspected undocumented immigrants without due process. He was the judge who, you may have read, ordered the deportation planes returned but who was ignored. It led to his strengthening the ruling a couple of days later. 

That ruling was issued as a nationwide injunction as many such district rulings are.  The judge, James Boasberg, reminded the pro-deportation plaintiffs that appeals were the remedy for their disagreement.  (Note – despite the injunction, 17 more were deported to Venezuela this weekend.)  

Nationwide halts to law emanating from one district court are commonplace, but this administration proposed to impeach any judge who did that.  That was so egregious, Justice Roberts took the unusual step of reminding the White House that, as Judge Boasberg had noted, it is appeal not impeachment that is the way to address disagreements on outcomes.  

Rep. Darrell Issa from the San Diego area, instead created a new bill, also unprecedented, the “NORRA” bill: NoRogue Rulings Act” (H.R. 1526).  This would prohibit a district court’s rulings from having national impact.  Despite the wide use of nationally-applied injunctions by conservative as well as liberal justices, this bill would limit such district rulings to the district.  

Even when rulings have gone against principles that we in California Council of Churches IMPACT hold dear such as the bar to certain immigrant rights in earlier administrations, the fundamental issue is the universality of our law.  We agree with Judge Boasberg – the remedy is appeal, not selective enforcement of the law. What applies in principle in Northern California should apply everywhere equally unless overturned by higher courts.  To do otherwise would produce a patchwork quilt of rulings and enforcement. Uniformity, for good or ill, is critical to our unity as a nation.  The system of appeals has worked for 236 years.  It is not to be broken over whim and petulance.

Please call your Representatives immediately and opposed NORRA – HR 1526,  Speak up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the uniformity of its application. 

Please call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or, if it’s busy, find your Representative here: Find Your Representative | house.gov    We urge calling the Capitol number first, but again, if it’s busy, either use the online form to write or call a district office.  No matter what, please uphold our system of law and justice NOW! 

NO on HR 1526!

Dear Friends:

With all that’s going on, massive cuts proposed for both social supports and even our earned income for retirement, the House budget yesterday had infuriating projections for our nation.

Despite cutting TRILLIONS from all government programs, the addition of another massive tax cut for billionaires and corporations will actually ADD $2.2 TRILLION to our national debt.  The cuts to food, medical care, humanitarian aid, and everything else we’ve fought for over the years is just to ease that mischief, not solve a problem.

The loss of income to working families and the poor will have consequences.  Every human being serves two economic functions: they produce goods and services that generate wealth for companies and the nation.  The second function we all have is as consumers. We buy the things we and others make.  Without that function, the entire system collapses.  Silicon Valley sells information technology mostly to businesses. Businesses produce things that we buy.  The failure of us to buy ripples upward to not needing information technology or anything else.  Our role as consumers is critical to the whole mix.  

Using that power and leverage, we at California Council of Churches are working with thousands of groups to encourage a one-day economic boycott of everything except very local businesses.  No shopping means no income to the rich who are getting tax breaks on our backs and those of the poor.  

Yes, it’s a token. But as in “A Day without a Mexican”, sometimes the power of a demonstration has significance to other people’s understanding.   This is also consistent with our Lenten awareness of sacrifice.  It’s a small thing, but it may have huge impacts.

Please join with others and boycott everything – large food retailers, fast food, big box stores, Amazon, and the like. The is foreshadowing for them. If we lose income to finance their tax cuts? They will lose much more from our inability to be consumers. It won’t be just one day then. It will be all days.    

If you know homeless or very low income working people, they are exempt from this. They are living on the margins and, if they need a burger from McDs because they can access it, well, so be it.  We don’t need to ask them to sacrifice more. They already are.  Power matters. So does kindness.

We urge your participation. You can also Google corporate consumer lines to call to let them know you will not be shopping with them Friday and why.  “A Day without Our Dollars.”  We can do this!

Thank you!

Well, the rancid Senate budget is done and on its way to the House.  We could not stop it in the Senate, but we have a serious chance in the House.

Determined to cut $800-plus billion from federal spending, the budget slashes basic programs including Medicaid (in California it’s Medi-Cal) that is a major lifeline for many working families and for the poor.  It also has daggers set toward changing Social Security and Medicare that are NOT take supported and are not in the federal master budget.  Those are savings plans to which each of us contributes per paycheck. The money is deposited to OUR accounts in OUR names for OUR retirement.  

The rationale for cutting SSA is based on lies.  Greedy opponents of SSA claim, without foundation, that people well over 100 years old are collecting, so it’s obvious fraud.  Claims that people who are 200-360 are on the rolls.  First, that’s impossible.  We started paying SSA in 1937, 88 years ago. Very few who collected then were 100 plus, and certainly not 272 years old in 1937!  Hyperbolic lies do not make a case.  Are there names of people who now would be very, very old?  Yes. Historic records of everyone exist. But they obviously can’t collect.  That’s all they found.  Nobody much is abusing SSA because death notices are always sent by officials, not the family, to SSA. So let’s not worry about the miniscule times someone’s icky nephew managed to collect fraudulently.  

SSA is fiscally stable, and Medicare as well.  Yes, they need replenishment, but not for many years yet.  That’s a different story.  Some who opposed all social supports want access to our money to invest. No way!

Medicaid was revolutionized via the Affordable Care Act allowing adults without children to enroll.  It was literally life changing for the working people with no benefits and particularly for the homeless with no children.  People could get treated beyond “charity care” that was always too little to afford anything but rationing. Now people had access to care and medication that saved their lives. With the specter of avian flu hanging over us, we cannot afford as a society to let significant numbers be hurt by removing Medicaid or for us to be hurt by letting people be carriers of a contagious disease.  Medicaid is also what keeps our elders in nursing homes when their own resources have dried up.  Killing or cutting the program is a horrific way to find funds to allow further tax cuts for the rich.

How can we stop these cuts?  

The House margin of pro-cut votes to anti-cut votes is tiny. There are fewer than the 218 needed to pass anything. We need to take advantage of this moment to prevent the harm such cuts to basic programs would do.

Please call your House member every day regardless of party to emphasize how much we need Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare to keep our society functioning.  Call all Reps – never mind party – to express your support for Medicaid and also for Medicare and SSA.  

PLEASE CALL THE CAPITOL TODAY AND EARLY TUESDAY.  202-224-3121 and ask for your Representative.  Our voices are needed NOW!

Thank you!!

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness…Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’  Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,^[a] drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.       

—Matthew 10: 1, 6-7

Dear Friends:

The most recent news from Congress is that our upcoming budget needs $880 BILLION in cuts. To secure that amount – which, oddly enough, would cover the massive new tax cut to the most wealthy – the key program being targeted is Medicaid. In California the program is known as Medi-Cal.  

This, as you likely know, covers millions who otherwise cannot afford any health care at all.  What you may not realize is that in most states, the care of the indigent is required by law, but the states have to pay providers in hospitals “charity care” which is a huge drain on state resources.  It also produces substandard care since state reimbursements are very low, and patients are often “dumped” back onto the streets, homes if they have them, to recuperate on their own.

Since the advent of the Affordable Care Act implemented in 2013, millions who never had insurance now do. This includes the homeless since it also covered single adults for the first time.  As you can well imagine, living outside in tents in all weather has health impacts on this population, and their ability to get care to keep healthier and to live longer has markedly improved.

As we face a possible new pandemic of “avian flu”, removing medical care from lower income people would be disastrous for us all.  If it becomes transmissible between humans, it will be catastrophic to have uninsured populations who cannot receive flu shots and other protections.  They, in turn, would imperil us all.  Avian flu untreated is far more lethal than even COVID.  

It is imperative that we make our voices heard NOW to prevent the “least and the lost” from becoming sacrifices to pay off billionaire tax cuts.  Please start calling your Congressional representative whoever that may be, and make clear that taking medical coverage from the poor may be lethal to us all.  For those Representatives who might be open to a moral framing, please remind them that Jesus put healing the sick as the first thing for his disciples to do. If they claim to be Christian, how can they ignore that priority?

Please call the US Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121 to ask for your Representative.  If you are unsure who that is or want their direct number, please check Find Your Representative | house.gov   We understand that normal switchboard numbers are about 40 per hour.  These days it’s about 1600 per hour, so you may wish to call directly.  You CAN call the district office or offices, but the Capitol is more effective.  Leave a voice mail if the phone is unanswered.  Be sure to give your name and city, and it’s always useful to cite your congregation if you have one.  Every bit of “weight” we can bring to bear is useful.  Call daily if you can.  Please enlist others as well.

I will mention, though probably not needed, that politeness counts.  We have heard that folks from our side are angry and occasionally abusive.  This is not useful.  It tends to get one discounted as a “crank”.  I always say I am proud of our members for being good spokespeople who are rarely rowdy.  In this day and age, that alone makes one stand out.  So if you share this information, please remind new people we aren’t (yet) Jesus flipping the tables in the temple; we are being persuasive. 

Thank you!

• Psalm 71:9“Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent” 

Dear Friends:

As you no doubt have read, an unelected and actually unappointed person, Elon Musk, has taken access of our personal records at several different federal agencies not least of which is the US Treasury.  He has said that he and his totally unqualified and also unappointed “team” of young computer people ages 19-25, are reading our records in preparation for ending our services.

• Romans 16:18“For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites” 

These include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California).  They purport to be looking for fraud as if a cursory reading could remotely determine that among millions of recipients.  At particular risk are those on disability that they think is all fraud. Anyone who ever tried to get it knows how hard it is to be granted such status. The monthly payments for disability barely keep one’s head above water. 

SSA and Medicare are OUR savings plans in OUR accounts, in OUR names. Those on disability are also served by these programs even if they are children with disabilities or serious medical problems.  We all contribute to make that possible. It is part of “promote the General Welfare” of the Constitution.

No one should be cut off, especially without full case review.  These funds support our elders when their own resources are gone. It’s what we spend 40 years building up so we can be secure in our old age. Everyone has contributed something to the fund. It’s ours for our old age and for those whom we love.

Please call immediately to your Congressional Representative and make clear that this money must remain intact and for our benefit!  No interloper can be the judge of us and our uses of our own funds.  That’s theft!

Please call the Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to your Congressperson.  Please share this widely around the country.  Congress MUST hear from us now.  There is no time to waste.  Call as often as you feel necessary no matter who your Representative is.  They have to know our views.  Please add “weight” of opinion to saving our own resources!

Thank you!