#Elderly Voters

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. House of Representatives

Vote NO on the SAVE Act!

8,228 so far! Help us get to 10,000 signers!

I am writing to express my strong opposition to H.R. 22, the so-called “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” (SAVE) Act. While this bill is framed as a measure to combat voter fraud, it is, in reality, a voter suppression effort that creates unnecessary barriers to voting and disenfranchises millions of Americans.

The SAVE Act would require voters to present narrow forms of “documentary proof of citizenship,” such as a passport or birth certificate, to participate in federal elections. This would disproportionately harm:

- Up to 150 million Americans who do not have a passport.

- Approximately 69 million women citizens who do not have a birth certificate with their current legal name on it.

- Elderly Americans, who are the least likely to hold passports.

Additionally, in 7 states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport – Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.

The SAVE Act is a solution in search of a problem. Worse, it would erode the fundamental right to vote, silencing the voices of vulnerable communities under the guise of election security. Rather than advancing harmful legislation like the SAVE Act, Congress should focus on protecting and expanding voting rights by supporting measures such as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

One of the foundational values of our democracy is the idea that every person is entitled to a vote – a say in the direction of our nation. I urge you and your colleagues to work towards that founding ideal. Thanks.

▶ Created on February 6 by Jess Craven · 8,228 signers in the past 7 days

📱 Text SIGN PKFOYU to 50409 to sign!

🤯 Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[ivygorgon]

📨 An open letter to the U.S. House of Representatives

🚫 Vote NO on the SAVE Act!

✍️ 8,228 so far! Help us get to 10,000 signers!

This letter urges the House to reject H.R. 22, the "SAVE Act," arguing that it is a voter suppression bill disguised as election security. It highlights how requiring passports or birth certificates to vote would disproportionately disenfranchise millions, including women, elderly citizens, and those in states with low passport rates. Instead of restricting voting rights, the letter calls for strengthening democracy through the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

📱 Text SIGN PKFOYU to 50409 to sign!

🤯 Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

Took this from Instagram because this is urgent US folks.

You need to call and email your reps no matter if you live in a red or blue state. This cannot be allowed to pass.

It will prevent anyone who has ever changed their name from voting (including their last name)

[notbecauseofvictories]

just came off my shift as an election judge and I honestly think we should make people do this. I support abolishing the draft, and I even think that jury duty can get complicated, but everyone in the country should be forced to learn about election procedure, then have to sit around for 14 hours and practice being customer service for democracy. I think that would fix us.

[neopetsadoptorabandon]

[angelx1992]

[nero-neptune]

anyway, i know for a fact that i've got at least 1 trump supporter in my extended family, but he sucks and nobody likes him and (bonus) he's a non-voter bc he doesn't put in the effort to do Anything but scam old people out of their money. i'd say i'd lose nothing from "cutting him off", but we already keep thst loser at a distance and have done so for years. there's always that guy.

[liberalsarecool]

Cutting social security and medicare will have devastating consequences for seniors.

Deporting workers who provide care for the elderly will have devastating consequences.

All of this devastation will come from Republicans who disinformed their voters that school children routinely get gender transitioning operations without parental consent.

This level of Republican sadism for children, immigrants, and the elderly is like a blackhole consuming humanity.

[prodigalwitch]

Heads up, American women. They are trying to take our vote.

The bill H.R.22 has been introduced and it is currently being fast-tracked. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act will require you to register in person from now on and with proof of citizenship documentation. You will now be required to provide your Driver's License and your Passport or Birth Certificate. The gotcha here is that you cannot register to vote if the documentation doesn't match- so, for example, if your birth certificate has your maiden name but your driver's license shows a married name, you'll not be able to register to vote without jumping through additional hoops (as to be determined by each state).

This will add significant barriers to voting for women, especially married women, poor women, rural women, disabled women and WOC, as updating/acquiring this type of paperwork costs money and time and is more accessible in some areas than others. They are using anti-immigration sentiments as a smokescreen for this legislation. Make no mistake, the only people who will be affected by this are American citizens. Non-citizens can't vote anyway. This only affects people who were able to vote before.

The main barriers here that will primarily affect women, especially already marginalized women:

Name matching: women who are married/divorced or who have changed their name for any reason

In-person meeting: Poor people, elderly, disabled, rural, isolated/abused women

Requiring Driver's License: Poor people, elderly, disabled

In general, requiring poll workers/DMV staff to check extra documents on or before election day will have a significant impact on poor and marginalized communities that are understaffed/under-resourced to fulfill these requests.

TDLR; the gov is attempting to make it significantly more difficult to vote if you are not a rich, white male. Bill H.R.22 will add significant barriers to voting for women, especially marginalized women. Please contact your House Representative and tell them that this bill cannot pass.

[freepassbound]

"Democratic Party structure" - what the hell are you talking about? The guy's a representative! Every two years you have a chance to primary him if you can convince his constituents he actually couldn't do the job. In 2024 no one tried (he was unopposed), but in 18 months you can have another crack at it! (If you come from Central Connecticut, which I rather doubt)

"Party structure" doesn't keep these people in office - voters do.

(And oh, by the way, that guy is co-nominated by the Working Families Party, co-sponsored the bill calling for a 'public option' for health insurance, and has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood - he's probably one of the two dozen or so most progressive members of Congress)

The gerontocracy is real: 76 year old Democratic congressman John Larson suffers medical episode while speaking on the House floor, freezing for nearly a minute.

[black-fist-order]

THIS WAS ON A FRIEND’S PAGE: An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’

THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me."

That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, "That's cool!"

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.”

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.

What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

- Adam-Troy Castro

(To all who agree with its content, I ask that you PLEASE SHARE IT on your own post, and ENCOURAGE OTHERS to do the same.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

"When you're famous, they let you do it": eight words that encapsulate the terrifying rot at the heart of our lived experience, a world where impunity for the powerful trumps the pain of their victims.

"Populism," is shorthand for many things: rage, despair, distrust of institutions and a desire to destroy them. True populism seeks to channel those totally legitimate feelings into transformative change for a caring and fair society for all. So-called "right populism" exploits those feelings, using them to drive a wedge between different groups of victims, turning them against each other, so that elites can go on screwing the squabbling factions.

The far-right parties that are marching to victory through a series global elections are different in many ways, but they all share one trait: they appeal to mistrust of institutions, claiming that the government has been captured by elites who serve them at the expense of the governed. This has the benefit of being actually true, and while the fact that far-right parties are owned by these government-capturing elites might erode their credibility, the fact that so many "progressive" parties have stepped in to defend the institutional status quo leaves an open field for reactionary wreckers:

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-slogan-219908

Why would voters turn out to support a "Department of Government Efficiency," run by a bully whose career has been defined by abusing the people he is in charge of? Maybe they're turkeys voting for Christmas, but they also have personal, traumatic experience with government departments that protected the abusive corporations that preyed on them.

Today on Propublica, Peter Elkind tells the incredible story of Lincare, the nation's leading supplier of home oxygen, a repeat-offender fraudster and predator that has made billions in public money without any real consequences:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lincare-medicare-lawsuit-settlements-oxygen-equipment

Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

Why not? Lincare is far too big to fail. In America's bizarre, worst-in-class, world-beatingly expensive privatized health care system, even public health provision (like Medicare) is outsourced to the private sector. Lincare has monopolized oxygen, a famously very important molecule for human survival, and if it were disqualified from serving Medicare, large numbers of Americans would literally asphyxiate.

Lincare clearly knows this. Too big to fail is too big to jail, and too big to jail is too big to care. They are the poster children for impunity, repeat offenders, multiply convicted, and still offending, even today. Lincare has been convicted of fraud under the administrations of GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and they're still in business.

What a business it is! Elkind takes us to the asbestos-poisoned town of Libby, Montana, where more than 2,000 of the 2.857 population suffer from respiratory diseases from the open-pit mine that operated there from 1963-1990. The elderly, dying population of this town rely on Medicare and Medicare Advantage oxygen concentrators to draw breath, and that means they rely on Lincare.

That means they are prey to Lincare's signature scam: charging Medicare (and 20% co-paying patients) to rent an oxygen concentrator every month, until they have paid for it several times over. This is illegal: under federal rules, patients are deemed to have bought their oxygen concentrators after 36 months and contractors are no longer allowed to charge them. Lincare doesn't give a fuck: the bills keep coming, and Lincare patients who survive long enough have paid the company $16,000 for a $799 gadget.

When Brandon Haugen, a local Lincare customer service rep, noticed this and queried the company's home office in Clearwater, Florida (home to Scientology and the Flexidisc), he was given the brushoff. After multiple attempts to get company leadership to acknowledge that this was illegal, he quit his job, along with his colleague and childhood friend Ben Montgomery. Between them, Haugen and Montgomery had 14 children who depended on their Lincare paychecks. Despite this, they both quit and turned whistleblower, with no job lined up. Eventually, Lincare paid $29m to settle the claim, with $5.7m to the whistleblowers and their lawyers. For Lincare, this was part of the cost of doing business and the fraud rolls on.

Lincare doesn't just defraud Medicare, they also have a high-pressure commissioned sales force that has repeatedly been caught defrauding Lincare customers – overwhelming sick, poor, elderly people. Patients are pressured to accept auto-billing, then Lincare piles medically dubious gadgets onto their monthly bills, as well as useless, overpriced "patient monitoring" services. Customers with apnea machines are mis-sold ventilators by salesmen who falsely claim these are medically necessary.

Salespeople illegally auto-shipped parts and consumables for Lincare machines to patients, then billed them for it. To satisfy the legal requirement that they telephone patients before placing these orders, sales agents would call patients, put them on hold, then part the call until the patient hung up.

Salespeople are motivated by equal parts greed and terror. Make quota and you can get up to $8,000 per month in bonuses. Miss that punishing quota and you're out on your ass (which is why one salesperson ordered a medically unnecessary ventilator).

Lincare also habitually ignores requests to pick up medically unnecessary equipment, because so long as the equipment is on the patient's premises, they can continue to bill for it. As one Ohio manager wrote to their staff: "As we have already discussed, absolutely no pick-ups/inactivation’s are to be do[ne] until I give you the green light. Even if they are deceased." Execs send out company-wide emails celebrating regional managers who have abandoned pick-ups, like a Feb 2022 "Achievement Rankings" email that touted the fact that most regional centers had at least 150 overdue pickups.

Lincare represents a deep, structural rot in American society. They are too big to punish, and too powerful to regulate. A 2006 law meant to curb oxygen payments was gutted by industry lobbyists. Today, Congress is weighing legislation, the SOAR (Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform) Act, which will allow Lincare to bill the public for hundreds of millions more every year, raising rates and eliminating competitive billing. The bill is supported by patient advocates who are rightly interested in getting oxygen to patients who have been locked out of the system, but the cost of that inclusion is that Lincare will be even more firmly insulated from its corruption.

The Trump Administration will doubtless crack down on some of America's worst companies, and the furious voters who elected the only candidate who campaigned on the idea that America was rotten will cheer him on. But Trump has made it clear that he will select the targets of his administration based on whether they are loyal to him or stand in his way, without regard to whether they harm his supporters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Companies like Lincare, repeatedly caught paying illegal kickbacks, know how to play this game.

Image: p.Gordon (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_bomb_with_burning_fuse.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[larkandkatydid]

Talking today with administrators at a school in a tiny rural area that are trying to figure out how to protect and how to comfort their students and those students' terrified parents, who work long hours at the apple sauce factories and asparagus farms in the area. And I hope that price of groceries hits Argentinian hyper-inflation levels. I hope that next year a jar of apple sauce costs $500 and the mostly elderly voters of that tiny town lay caked in their own filth, covered in bedsores because nursing homes can't find staff. I hope someone somewhere is punished somehow for the kind of suffering coming down on people who work harder than I've ever worked at any job in my life.

[porterdavis]

Rolling Stone has feelings...

“Donald Trump- the twice impeached former president, Jan. 6 coup leader, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, and man who mismanaged the 2020 economic implosion and coronavirus disaster that killed more than 1 million people in this country, has convinced American voters to give him another term in the White House.

"After a campaign marked by nativism, open bigotry, and aspiring authoritarianism, Trump triumphed over Vice President Kamala Harris, despite being denounced by several of those who worked most closely with him in his first term as a ‘fascist’. The 45th president will become the 47th in late January.

"Trump’s win demonstrates that the most powerful people in the country are indeed above the law. An elderly, foul-mouthed, racist game-show host can try, in broad daylight, while the TV cameras are fixed on him, to execute a coup d’état in our nation’s capital, people can die from it, and in a few shorts years be rewarded with the full-throated support of his political party, and now the keys to the White House.

"No matter what policies Trump does or doesn’t manage to shove through when he takes office in January, there is no doubt that he and his new Justice Department are going to shut down the federal cases against him. He will get away with it all, and his enemies will have to choke on that for the rest of their careers and lives.

"And that will just be the beginning.”

[kedreeva]

There are good things left in the world

Today I took a short day trip with my parents to a farm town in Indiana.

Today in that town, I sat beside two elderly gentlemen who were discussing politics. They were fussing at each other about how they wished Harris had won, and how they wished voters wouldn't just vote straight ticket but would actually look at politicians and decide what's actually best for them instead of which candidate was "their" party. Which is not what I expected to hear from old rural folks, but it brought me a smile.

Today, I got to eat soft pretzels from TWO different soft pretzel joints, and they were both delicious.

Today, I got rainbow color-shifting glasses for drinking water.

Today I got an entire bag of cereal marshmallows - you know, the kind you would get in Lucky Charms or something - for less than a box of cereal.

I also got 2lbs of Fruity Whirls cereal for less than $3, and spent the next few minutes saying "Fruity Whirls" as many times as could fit into the conversation.

Today, my dad asked me to ask me mom to tell me about The Jays. She starts trying to tell me whatever this story is, but she can't. She is trying to get words out but she's immediately overcome, wheeze laughing, and my dad is trying to help her, but he's wheeze laughing, and through the tears of laughter and gasping breaths, I find out that the last time they were at this particular store, my mother found a bag of small candies (gummies? sugar candies? unclear) that she thought was alphabet candy, and she turned to my father and says to him "It's only J's??" in confusion. It was candy canes.

Today I found a bar of soap that smelled EXACTLY like fresh lilac blooms. My mom bought it for her best friend, who absolutely loves lilacs.

Today I saw a small, beautiful Cardinal pin, with the words "one day at time" scrawled across the top.

Today is Day 7, and we are taking it one day at a time. There are still good things in this world. This is your invitation to reblog this and add your own, or to check the notes (and/or my "good things" tag for similar posts/notes) if you need the reminder.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Also, I cannot stress enough that if someone is against voting or even on the fence about it, calling them a psyop or foreign agent is not going to make them want to vote! It's not going to get people on your side! It'll just piss off anti-voters more and make neutral people more wary of your "side" when they see how people are treated for disagreeing!

Being called a psyop and Russian spy for being pissed off about the American electoral system as someone who was unable to vote for a long time and saw the ways the Electoral College constantly fucks over the presidential election did NOT make me start voting. What DID make me start voting was getting help registering through the barriers I was facing and being able to register as an absentee voter, things not a single person yelling at me online was interested in helping me with.

If you want people to vote, stop throwing accusations at strangers online and start helping people who actually need and want help with voting. There's organizations that help elderly people and immigrants register to vote, educate people about their voting rights, educate people about local politics and politicians and the importance local elections, provide carpools to polling places, etc. Volunteering with things like that will make way, way more of a difference than yelling at people on tumblr.

[lastoneout]

Kay so first we have Trump's campaign team accidentally blind 50 people on stage with what had to have been UV sterilization lamps at an indoor, sold out event with NO firefighters or EMTs present(which also resulted in like 40 911 calls due to people suffering dangerous heat exhaustion standing outside in line for hours in 100F+ temps bcs why the FUCK ARE YOU HAVING PEOPLE LINE UP OUTSIDE IN TUCSON IN THE SUMMER), and now he's stranded an entire rally's worth of people(many of which were elderly and incapable of walking very far) in the middle of the fucking desert AT NIGHT with no bathrooms, food, water and only one bus to slowly take them the 5 miles to their cars????

Who the fuck is in charge of these events?? 'Cuz I gotta say injuring and potentially killing your most dedicated voter base is an interesting election strategy. Like I'm tempted to go all schadenfreude here but it's genuinely a miracle that there haven't been any deaths as a result of this so far, endangering lives to this degree may not be surprising but it's concerning enough that I can't even laugh. They may have rancid political stances but bro you cannot leave elderly disabled people in the middle of the desert AT NIGHT with no food or water or bathroom access. It's a good thing this shit happened in Cali 'cuz anywhere else and we legit would have had people collapsing from exposure to the cold.

What the actual fuck is going on.