The Trouble With Mitch

Mitch McConnell understands target fixation better than we do.

I see that a very important piece of legislation is riding on the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. Presently, he’s working hard to sideline a $2000 stimulus check (a raise from $600) to every American suffering from the recession resulting from our very poor response to the pandemic. Millions of people are out of work, can’t pay their bills, can’t pay their rent or their mortgages and there isn’t much that can be done until we can get past this virus.

The latest bill passed by the house to up the stimulus to $2000 per person ($600 per dependent kid), has been passed by the House and awaits action in the Senate. What does Mitch McConnell do? He attaches two other bills to it, one to repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and another to authorize investigations into alleged election fraud in the 2020 election.

Those two items together, are what some people are calling, a poison pill. It’s obvious to many that McConnell would like to keep the stimulus checks small, knowing that in terms of politics, the primary beneficiary will be Democrats and Joe Biden going into the next year. He knows that both of these other legislative priorities are not appealing to the majority in both houses and he’s trying to limit any sort of assistance that Joe Biden might need to recover from the pandemic.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is not a subsidy to social media…