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Protect My Care
  • Home
  • Contact Gov. Bill Lee
    • Email Gov. Lee
    • Call Gov. Lee
    • Tweet Gov. Lee
  • Get Involved
  • Donate
  • View Stories
    • Stories Blog
    • Videos on Youtube
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
  • Because of the perspectives you selected, below are some optional questions to consider addressing to strengthen your letter to editor.

    • What is your business?
    • When and why did you start it?
    • How many employees do you have?
    • What lessons from being a small business owner shape why you care about this issue?
    • How is your business, or you as a business owner, or you as a member of the community impacted by the issue you are writing about?
    • How does your perspective of a business owner shape your feelings about this issue?
    • Can you give a specific example about why this issue is important to you?
  • What branch of the military did you or your family member serve?
    How long? What was your rank/position and what is the right way to refer to you now? Retired? Veteran?
    Why did you decide to join the military? What influenced your decision?
  • What grade do you teach?
    What do you teach?
    What got you into teaching? What influenced your decision to start teaching? Why do you stay?
  • Where are you a student?
    What are you studying?
    When do you hope to graduate?
    Do you have student loans?
    What made you decide on your major? or if you aren't in college yet, what do you hope to be your major?
  • What drives your faith?
    How long have you been a person of faith and what keeps you a person of faith?
    How does your faith influence the issue you are writing about?
  • What church do you lead?
    Why did you go into ministry?
    What calls you to speak up on this issue, and why now?
  • What type of law enforcement or part of 1st responder are you?
    How long have you been doing it?
    What influenced your decision to become a 1st responder or local law enforcement?
    How does your job as a first responder or local enforcement person influence your position on this issue?
  • What is your role in the medical profession?
    How long have you been a medical professional?
    What influenced your decision to become a medical professional?
    How does your job as a medical professional influenced the issue you're writing about?
    Can you give a specific example?
  • How old were you when you first started hunting/fishing?
    What got you into it? What was it like when you first started?
    How does your perspective of a sportsmen influence the issue you're writing about?
    Can you give a specific example?
  • How long have you had a relationship with the issue you are writing about?
    As a senior, how has this issue influenced you the most?
    How does your perspective of a senior influence the issue you're writing about?
    Can you give a specific example?
  • As a woman, how have you been influenced by this issue?
    Can you give a specific example?
  • When did you know you wanted to come to America? What led you to that decision?
    Can you give a specific example?
  • TIPS FOR GREAT LETTERS TO EDITOR

    • Make it personal, like sharing how you or someone you know has been impacted.
    • Talk about the values behind your motivations to support .
    • Address the elected official directly with the action you want them to take.
  • Message Points

  • Talk about why protecting the ACA is important to you.

  • Solutions to the state's health care crisis have been promised for years and all we have been left with is closed hospitals and hundreds of thousands without care. Medicaid expansion is working in other states. In this global pandemic, the most vulnerable hospitals and citizens are at the greatest risk and expanding medicad can both save lives, help keep hospitals open and it's working for other states. Gov. Lee what will it take for you to expand Medicaid, accept the federal dollars our state has been throwing away so that hospitals stop closing and hundreds of thousands in our Tennessee can finally get health coverage?
    • One of God’s greatest gifts is the opportunity to learn. Education changes the way we see the world and the opportunities for God’s children to make it better.
    • Public Education provides children the ability to thrive through growth in knowledge.
    • Public Education is a central part of God’s plan for human flourishing. When this sacred rust and provision of God’s common good comes under attack by the forces of privatization and greed, we respond with prayer, service, and advocacy. We work for a day when all pastors, faith leaders, and all people of faith will support free and fairly funded public schools for all God’s children.
    • Proverbs 16:16 says that having wisdom and understanding is better than having silver or gold.
    • <name>, how will you stand up for our Christian values and actually support public education?
    • politicians like _____ seeking to turn their backs on refugees and immigrants should STOP using our faith as an excuse for avoiding your responsibility to serve.
    • These statements are not only unAmerican they are profoundly unChristian.  Each year we celebrate the birth of a baby whose parents fled with him to Egypt to escape persecution and death. In other words, Mary, Joseph and Jesus were refugees. And Egypt took them in.
    • Hospitality and welcome to the stranger and to those in need is a foundational principle of Christianity, Judaism and core American values.
    • God tells the people of Israel in the Book of Leviticus.  "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" The Book of Hebrews says: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,"
    • And if those aren't clear enough, there are these words from Jesus:
      • "For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
      • “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’
      • “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’"
    • Politicians like _____ should stop putting hate before help of the immigrants and refugees, families and children seeking shelter. That’s the real Christian thing to do. Can I count on you ___ to change your position?
  • Talk about why it is important to you that elected official [NAME] listen to health experts, treat others with dignity and follow the science when making policy?

  • Less than a year ago, agencies worked together to complete a thorough evaluation, which consisted of thousands of man-hours of research and analysis, evidence gathering for more than a year, an extensive comment period in which all stakeholders, including the auto industry, were deeply involved and to which the EPA responded. Based on this
    extensive scientific record and stakeholder involvement, EPA made the decision to keep the standards – as they are – out to 2025.

    A rollback of the clean cars standards would take America backwards, endangering public health, forcing Americans to spend thousands of dollars more on gas (instead of on their families) and putting jobs at risk.

    • By 2025, vehicle efficiency and clean car standards are expected to (all numbers are total benefits from
      2012-2025):
    • Nearly double vehicle efficiency;
    • Save 6 billion metric tons of dangerous tail-pipe pollution;
    • Save America 12 billion barrels of oil;
    • Save individual consumers $1,460 to $1,620 in fuel costs by the time the standards are fully
      implemented; and
    • Save Americans $67 billion to $122 billion over the lifetime of vehicles when the standards are
      fully implemented.

    Reversing vehicle efficiency and clean car standards will cost lives Americans deserve clean air and clean water. Rolling back vehicle efficiency and clean car standards will only increase pollution and trigger negative public health impacts like asthma attacks and heart attacks due to impacts from climate change.

    • Weakening standards to cut tailpipe carbon pollution will further contribute to climate change, which can worsen asthma symptoms for the 24 million Americans – including 6.3 million children – who suffer from asthma.

    Rolling back clean cars standards would cost families real money 
    Rolling back vehicle efficiency and clean car standards is a hidden tax on families – literally making everything they do more expensive.

    • The vast majority of Americans support making cars and trucks run on less gas because it saves
      them money. This matters the most to low and middle-income Americans who are hurting the
      most – because gas is a growing share of their household expenses.
    • Lower-to- middle income households ($30,000 or less) report spending up to 10 percent of their
      income on gasoline. The average household spends about $1,500 a year on gasoline. When the
      price of gas spikes, that figure multiplies. In 2025, consumers would save between $3,200 and
      $5,700 over the life of a new car.
    • Existing clean cars standards ensure that Americans who need bigger vehicles for family or work
      have fuel-efficient choices. New truck buyers will save, on average, about $4,800 to $8,200 over
      the lifetime of a new 2025 truck. If corporate lobbyists succeed in rolling back these standards,
      those choices will disappear, and the Americans who need the savings the most will be hurt.
  • Affordable housing is most often defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as housing in which the resident is required to “pay more than thirty percent of their income for housing.” As gentrification continues to grow and result in the displacement of low-income people and people of color, the need for affordable housing continues to rise.

    Someone must care for the marginalized and work to amplify the voices of homeless and low-income residents who benefit from affordable housing policies.

    https://www.ncchurches.org/lectionary/affordable-housing-proper-8/

  • The Ask: [Name of elected official], what will it take for you to heed God's word and raise the minimum wage?

    God’s concern for the poor is at the heart of the Christian ethic of economic justice. Our biblical heritage teaches us that caring for the poor, the least among us, the stranger, and the ones on the margins is central to our understanding of God’s mercy and our willingness to love our neighbor.

    God envisions a world where all God’s people live lives of wholeness and have the opportunity to be the people they were created to be. We are called to ensure that God’s abundance, given to us all, is equitably shared so everyone may thrive in the fullness of life. Within an economic system of wage labor, this means that everyone must be paid a living wage and be treated with dignity on the job.

    The Minimum Wage is Too Low
    Most workers in the U.S. are protected by regulations requiring their hourly wages to exceed the minimum set by law. Congress sets the federal minimum wage which was last increased to $7.25 an hour in 2009. Some 30 states, 24 cities and counties, and the District of Colombia, state and local officials have raised their minimum wages above the federal (or state) level. Check out your state.

    Minimum wage laws are critically important. Most people need to work in order to support themselves and their families, and there are usually (essentially always) too few jobs. This reality creates the core conflict in the workplace: an employer has much more power than a worker. So even if a worker doesn’t want to take a job because it pays too little, he or she will be forced to accept it anyway, no matter how low the wage, if nothing else is available. To prevent destitution and put a limit on how low the wage could go, Congress passed the first minimum wage law in 1938. Since then, Congress has periodically increased the minimum but not since 2009.

    Today, a full-time worker being paid the federal minimum wage would earn just over $15,000 a year, far too little money to support one person, let alone a family. A single parent with one child who works full time earning the minimum wage would live below the federal poverty line.

    The hourly wage required to rent a modest, two-bedroom apartment in the U.S. is $19.35 per hour, more than two and a half times the federal minimum wage of $7.25. In every state, a person working full-time at minimum wage would not be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent. 

    The low value of the minimum wage contributes to the growing economic divide between the sliver of very rich at the top of the economic ladder and everyone else, especially the folks on the lower rungs. The minimum wage peaked in inflation-adjusted value in 1968, when it was equal to $11.00 in today’s dollars. Since then, many factors justify a minimum wage that is higher than in 1968 -- the amount a typical worker produces in an hour has risen, living standards have risen, low-wage workers’ education and skills have improved – but, instead, the minimum wage today is worth less than 48 years ago.

    Tipped Minimum Wage
    There is a separate federal minimum wage for anyone classified as a tipped worker – someone who earns at least $30 in tips a month. The tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour! It has not been increased since 1991. If the tipped minimum wage plus tips do not add up to at least $7.25 an hour, the employer must make up the difference in cash. But this is difficult to monitor for employers who want to comply and largely unenforceable among employers who chose to ignore the law. The separate tipped minimum wage must be eliminated as a number of states have done already.

    Raise the Minimum Wage

    Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, ‘I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms’, and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord.

    -- Jeremiah 22:13-16

    There are multiple proposals for raising the minimum wage: to $12 an hour, $15 an hour, or $20 an hour. Research shows that moderate increases in the minimum wage do not cause job loss.

    The most modest proposal -- raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 – would lift wages for 35.1 million workers—more than one in four. People of color would especially benefit; over one-third of African American and Hispanic workers would receive a raise. An increase of the minimum wage even higher, to $15 or $20 an hour, would impact millions more workers.

    If the federal minimum rose to $12 an hour, the average affected worker would earn roughly $2,300 more each year than she does today. The lowest paid workers would see the largest raises. The average age of a worker who would be affected by an increase to $12 is 36 years old. About two-thirds of affected workers are 25 years old or older. The majority of affected workers (56%) are women.

    Living Wages for All
    The problem of low wages goes far beyond the problems with the minimum wage. In the U.S. today, over one-quarter of all jobs (28%) pay poverty wages, so low that a full-time worker cannot keep a four-person family above poverty. Moreover, many of these low wage jobs are part-time, have irregular hours (making child care arrangements or attending school difficult), and no pension. Some 43 million workers -- nearly four in 10 private sector workers and more than 80 percent of low-wage workers -- do not have paid sick days to care for their own health. Millions more do not have sick days to care for a sick child or family member. More.

    Low-wage jobs can be found in every industry or occupation and the number of these jobs is growing rapidly. If nothing is done, the number of low-wage jobs will increase in the future. Much of this work cannot be moved overseas. The jobs performed by low-wage workers -- cleaning, caring for children and elders, selling items to customers -- need to be done in our local communities.

    Many workers in low-wage jobs are seeking higher wages; they want and need support.  If people of faith stand with low-wage workers, then poverty-wage jobs can be changed into living-wage jobs. Find efforts happening in your area. 

    To make God’s vision a reality, God calls the Church to action, to “loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke” (Isaiah 58:6). We are called to answer God’s call to be co-creators with God of a world “where justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). God's reign does not stop at the door to the workplace. The Church, the body of Christ, is called to seek out and accompany people wherever they are and stand with them in the struggle for justice.

  • In the depths of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt and Congress established Social Security, a program that has lifted millions of people out of poverty. Three years prior to its adoption, the Federal Council of Churches called for passage of social security legislation.

    The Federal Council of Churches later became the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC). The NCC comprises 37 Christian denominations, including African-American churches, Orthodox churches, mainline Protestant churches, and peace churches. All told, there are more than 100,000 local congregations comprising some 35 million people in the NCC.

    These churches supported the creation of Medicaid and Medicare and anti-poverty programs.  To this day, the NCC works to safeguard programs that help the poor and needy. This ministry begins at the local church level and is complemented by public policy advocacy at the national level.

    This year, we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act. Certainly, members of my own family have been helped through Social Security. And, one of my college roommates was able to attend school because of the Social Security survivor benefits he received after his parents died in a tragic auto accident. Many of us have similar stories to tell.

    Not everyone has the good fortune to retire with adequate savings. Social Security serves to care for those among us who need help.

    The National Council of Churches believes government bears a responsibility for all of the citizens under its care. All faith traditions follow a similar directive to honor father and mother and to care for widows and orphans. Social Security is a modern-day manifestation of our commitment to care for the last, the least, and the lost.

    The National Council of Churches joined the recent Faith Week of Action to commemorate the anniversary. We shared among our churches a toolkit that can assist congregations not only in honoring the success of Social Security but in raising awareness of the programs available through it.

    Although I have contributed for many years to my retirement account, and I am grateful that the NCC does so, as well, I know I will depend on Social Security payments to keep me out of poverty in my retirement years.

    Many people are unaware they are eligible for disability or survivor benefits, or they have no idea how much Social Security retirement income may be due to them in the future. Local churches often hold health fairs, job fairs, blood drives, food pounding Sundays, etc. I encourage congregations to make use of these types of events and invite representatives of the Social Security Administration to lead workshops at local churches.

    There are some who view the passage of Social Security as a political act that has nothing to do with those in the faith community. I humbly disagree. Caring for those in need is a fundamental principle of all people of faith. This support need not take place solely through tithes and offerings to the church. We have a responsibility to care for the monies we contribute to the larger tax pool to ensure those in need are cared for.

  • Ask:

  • Make your letter to editor your own -- but here are some key points to try and weave in if you like!

    • People should be able to vote safely, and not be forced to choose between their life and the lives of people they love, and our responsibility to participate in our democracy and vote.

    • Gov. Lee and our state legislature should expand the absentee voting we already have available for some, to all registered voters. We should be able to vote absentee in a global pandemic.
    • Tennessee is one of the only states that will require most voters to appear in person to cast their ballots. Voters in our state deserve the same choices those in nearly every other state already have, especially during the pandemic. 

    • The federal government gives states money to protect their elections. Tennessee has up to $55 million in federal funding to spend on making sure voters are safe from the pandemic, and expanding absentee voting in November would cost far less than that. 

    • Polls show that voters from across the political spectrum support temporarily expanding absentee voting. Over half of us live in a household with someone at increased risk for complications or death from Covid-19, and most of us worry that we or a family member will get it. 

    • Gov. Lee and our state legislators must act now. All registered voters should have the option to vote absentee during the pandemic. 

    • Gov. Lee: can I count on you to protect my health, and my family's health, in this global pandemic and support expanding the absentee voting system we already have so that I and others can vote SAFELY this year?
  • We cannot solve the economic crisis without first addressing the health crisis that created it.

    Physical separation policies like the stay-at-home order are slowing the spread of Covid-19 and are mitigating the strain on hospitals, health care workers, medical supplies health workers need to keep people safe. These measures are helping protect lives and the economy from a far worse outcome. What do you think will happen to our economy when employers become responsible for employees or customers getting sick, or worse, dying because health protections were rolled-back too soon, against the advice of health experts?

    Covid-19 is five times more infectious than the flu. It is proven to travel asymptomatically in many people, showing no symptoms, for weeks. The death rate is nearly 10 times that of the normal flu and unlike the flu, there is currently no treatment, no vaccine, and no defense - except physical separation of people.

    Before reopening our economy the health experts have said you must first use the power, resources, and scale of the government you are responsible for leading to ensure we have:

    • rapid contact tracing and isolation of cases that break chains of transmission when they are discovered.
    • regular, routine, and rapid testing (because a test today only shows whether you are infected today, and that does nothing to determine whether you get infected tomorrow at work). Only regular, routine testing will solve this problem.
    • protection for first responders and health care workers from infection (because as they become infected, and quarantined, there are fewer health care workers to save lives in our communities).

    We should not roll back health protections until we have first addressed the health crisis.

    Governor Lee, will you commit to only rolling back health protections once you've first addressed the health crisis so that we can reopen our economy, safely?

     
     
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    {MyLetterToEditor:176}

    {First Name:145} {Last Name:146}
    {Address:71}
    {City:174}, {State:162} {Zip:66}
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