Long Shadow #WEP #WEPFF #essay #prochoice #crime or #PunxsutawneyPhil Pics

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My birthday is on August 21!

Picture from a birthday party in 2016.

There are two topics for my Long Shadow post. The first involves abortion (trigger warning). The second is just a collection of happy pictures from a place where a shadow matters once a year.

Long Shadow

(564-word essay)

Crime rates rise and fall from many factors, some that take decades to reveal themselves. There are ways to impact the crime rate immediately, such as altering laws, improving crime prevention measures, and giving law enforcement better training and resources. It has been postulated that permitting abortion and expanding birth control have a long-term impact on crime rates.

The reason behind it is that children who are wanted by someone with the means to properly care for them are less likely to fall into a life of crime. (The study may have focused on "blue-collar crimes" instead of "white-collar crimes.") Most notably, the odds of becoming a prostitute, drug dealer, or burglar decrease.

The idea is that someone who is prepared for the responsibility of parenthood is more likely to provide a good education, proper nutrition, a stable home, and the mental and emotional love a child requires. An excellent book to read on this topic is Freakonomics.

Some people are willing to trade a higher rate if it means abortions and birth control are more difficult to access. A fair amount of those people also do not view rape, child molestation, pedophilia, or sexual slavery as crimes. There are even some who wish to make human trafficking legal, particularly in regard to the sale of female children. Rather than as fellow humans, females are often seen as objects to them.

This type of thought may explain why so many "pro-life" protesters in America march outside of free or low-cost obstetrician clinics, intimidating women who are seeking pregnancy care as well as those considering abortions. The same protesters are less likely to stand outside of upper-class locations with obstetrics residency training, which is where the medical procedure is generally learned. Training tends to include the procedure because not all pregnancies are viable, and sometimes can result in the imminent death of both the mother and baby. However, some people strongly believe that life begins when cells can mimic a beat, but a woman of childbearing years should die if her pregnancy goes poorly, even when medicine makes that death avoidable.

Death as a predestined outcome. This means that, perhaps, some unwanted babies need to be born to grow up to become killers, sexual-assaulters, robbers, gang leaders, drug dealers, etc. Perhaps Americans need a certain amount of crime so that there are "bad guys" and thus the possibility of "good guys"?

Legal arguments as to which medical procedures a qualified medical professional should have the option of offering to a patient could be based on how it impacts society as a whole. Do religious morals have the same impact for people who do not believe in them? Should the religions and cultures of others be imposed upon people who do not share them? Where do laws come from, and do any exist for non-religious reasons?

If a law allowing abortion and expanded birth control were firmly in place, no longer teetering on the edge, would it cast a long shadow of reducing crime? If so, is that worth having some people sacrifice their moral or religious beliefs that what someone else does impacts their own afterlife?  If science could remove a fetus in the first trimester and grow it to term, would that be better? Would that help or hurt the hundreds of thousands of children in the US who are waiting to be adopted?

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You want to talk about a LONG SHADOW?
Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I was in Punxsutawney a few years ago. (Not on Groundhog day. Sorry.) Here are a few pictures from the town where, for one day a year, a rodent's shadow is newsworthy.

"According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, he has predicted six more weeks of winter-like weather." ⛄❄

Tourist Phil

Tourist stuff in town.

Me with Liberty Phil

Me with a hand-carved Phil statue

Dentist Phil

USPS and the 2020 Election

$84,150,000 - Over eighty-four million dollars if each registered voter used a stamp in the election.
$1,683,000,000 - Over one and a half billion dollars if each registered voter bought a book of stamps.
$2,721,489,408 - Nearly three billion dollars if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps.
$141,517,449,216 - One hundred forty-one billion dollars if every adult bought 52 books of stamps (1 book a week for a year).
$160,567,875,072 - The one hundred sixty billion debt is solved if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps a week for 59 weeks.

In 2018, there were 153 million people registered to vote in the United States.
247,408,128 adults live in the US (estimation).
$160 billion debt of the USPS.
First-Class Mail Forever® stamps cost $0.55, $11 for a book of 20.

*IMPORTANT NOTE*
The USPS sells a lot more than stamps.
This is the scenario of how the USPS could be saved with ONLY stamp buying by people.
Businesses are not included.
Shipping packages with Amazon is not included.
This is how the American people could save the USPS in 14 months JUST by buying stamps.

100,000 Military members and Veterans work for the USPS
600,000 jobs exist because of the USPS

24,000 veterans are employed by UPS
28,200 veterans and military spouses estimated FedEx
The competition employs a quarter of the number of veterans that the USPS does.

The people of the United States do not HAVE to beg our elected officials to use our tax dollars to save the USPS. We could do it ourselves, if we wanted to, if we sacrificed eleven dollars a week to buy stamps.
(Not that everyone has $11 right now. But the reality is that stamps are not the most profitable product, and businesses like Amazon spend more with the USPS than people do. That isn't the point of the scenario.)
The point is that the American people are being told they are incapable of solving this mess. Get a calculator and check my math. Get a pencil and paper and check my math by hand. Put the numbers in your mind and check my math with your own mental powers. The proof is that American adults could, in fact, save the USPS if they all decided they wanted to do so. This is just one way.

$11/wk * 247,408,128 adults= $2,721,489,408
$2,721,489,408 * 59 weeks= $160,567,875,072
$160 billion debt solved.

Here's the next big issue:

If the USPS is saved, by this or another such plan, then voting by mail is back on the table. If you feel the USPS is safe enough to send government checks, taxes, and pretty much every form they ever created; but not safe enough for voting ballots (except for the ballots cast by elected officials who aren't in their home area on election day and thus do use mail-in ballots, despite being opposed to their existence), okay, double the stamp buying. Two books of stamps a week! Or a book a week for 118 weeks. There, an extra 160 billion dollars to enhance security. That ought to do it. Amazon made $34.6 billion during the pandemic. If they paid 5% tax on that profit, that's 1.73 billion to use to enhance security. There are WAYS it could be done is my point, there are ways to fund it, it's POSSIBLE.

On to the real reason for wanting the USPS to tank, and especially for the 2020 election to not be by mail:

Because it would make it easier for People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people to vote.

So really, let us start asking the REAL question:

Would you rather-
A) Save six-hundred thousand jobs, one-hundred thousand of which belong to veterans, BUT it means voting will be easier for POC, disabled, elderly, multiple-job holders, and poor people to vote?
~OR~
B) Unemployment goes up by another six-hundred thousand, one-hundred thousand of which are people with a military service record, BUT you get to suppress voting! You'll spend a heck of a lot more to ever send a letter or card again, BUT there will be considerably fewer people able to vote. You have to increase unemployment during a recession and screw over veterans, BUT you can spread HATE and remind certain people that you'd do anything to silence their voice.

That's it. Just toss veterans into the groups of people hated by white terrorist groups (the klan, neo-nazis, skinheads, etc).

Do you LIKE and support vets MORE than you HATE POC and such? You have to stand up for a mail-in election. So sorry!

But if you hate POC and such MORE than you like and support veterans, congratulations, you can be opposed to mail-in ballots and favor increasing unemployment by 600k by ditching the USPS!

If you happen to value Veterans, and People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people -- then you get to be in favor of a mail-in election and saving the USPS. (And you're probably a Democrat or Independent, and being told by others that you should commit suicide because you're evil. Fun🙄, isn't it? I'm in this group.🥺)

And there you have the real reason for tanking the USPS and for being opposed to a mail-in election.

Weigh your hate and feel free to post on your own wall because I am not in charge of giving a damn about haters. My health won't let me do much more than write long rants here and in the many letters I send to my elected officials. GOOD THING I BOUGHT MORE STAMPS.


** Copied from my Facebook post, just in case that mysteriously disappears.**