Imagine you were responsible for the well-being of 13 million people (13,000,000) and people that drive and fly through.
Imagine:
There was a disease that had infected 500,000 and killed 12,500 by mid-December in Pennsylvania alone.
You were able to make decisions that still kept the death rate at half that of neighboring hotspot states.
You had to make decisions based on changing data, much from a source that was subjected to political sabotage, withheld information.
An election based disinformation campaign designed to make those acting responsibly look like enemies of free trade.
A senate whose majority reached out with ⅔ of the rescue effort going to big business and not to smaller businesses and households.
A president who left the states holding the bag with very little funding for small business only an offer of loans to stay afloat.
A state legislature that votes to reduce disaster power as opposed to working on relief.
And then understand this is not imaginary.
Wrap this all up in the politics of Pennsylvania - a state house that is predominantly politically opposed to recommendations of experts, looking for ways to make the other party look bad and keep wealthy supporters happy.
A situation where our best course of action, until widespread vaccination is available, is to reduce face to face contact while still trying to juggle keeping the economy running (due to a failure on the part of the federal government to fund reasonable aid, to allow all but essential businesses to shut, without going out of business - and a refusal on the part of conservative politicians to do what is necessary to save lives and keep family afloat.
I’m not asking you to change political affiliation or like Governor Wolf. I do ask you to recognize that saddled with the impossible task, he has managed to keep the death rate much lower than many states with similar population profiles. He has managed to do this and still tried to make decisions based on the science and recommendations of professionals.
Wolf has been engaged in pushing for relief, has called for the senate to pass a version of the Restaurants act that already passed the house of representatives,- part of a 2.2 trillion rescue designed to help keep restaurant and bar businesses - specifically those with 20 or less locations, afloat while we save lives. To spend our tax money on the people that paid into it, while we make our way through this.
You can dislike the man and the decisions that have been made and still recognize the life saving he’s enabled and the efforts he is taking to help all of us make it through. You can recognize the political rhetoric about freedom really being about not stopping the flow of money to the rich, letting people die rather than shutting down. You can respect that he has not bowed to the tremendous political pressure that if submitted to, would have doubled the death rate here. You can respect that he has advocated on your behalf regardless of your political affiliation and understand how much worse off we would be without someone who was actively engaged and working as he is.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment