state laws != federal laws. I am pro-choice but I think allowing states to make decisions for their own is good and the system is working as intended. I want states to have more freedom to legislate what their constituents want than a giant federal government making decisions for the whole nation.
The taxes proposed in the infrastructure bill are egregious. For the first time in my entire life I will make a decent amount of money this year and will bump right into top bracket. Giving the government over 50% is insane.
I never said covid wasn't a big deal, or that is wasn't a problem. Again, I said I took it seriously. But to have any sort of lockdowns/mandates at this point are not cool. Or make me choose between a job or some unnecessary medical treatment. the goal posts on vaccine metrics or herd immunity are constantly moved. No one talks about natural immunity. Biden has used excessively divisive language emboldening people who are pro vaccine to accost those who haven't received the vaccine.
Vaccine mandates are a pretty normal requirement at a lot of places. I worked in healthcare - flu shots were mandatory with very rare exceptions. When I was a kid I had to have MMR, polio, whooping cough, etc, vaccines to be able to enroll in school. This sudden “but muh freedom” crap doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny when the same party saying vaccines should be optional because it is a personal medical choice is the same group saying other medical procedures (that are potentially necessary) should be banned (abortion, in case that wasn’t clear) - even though they are also personal medical choices and nobody is trying to even mandate them.
You know what goalpost doesn't move? Not having ICUs at full capacity with people who could have just taken two shots 6 months ago.
Increased taxes for who? Taxes were massively cut for wealthy people a couple years ago and the only proposal to raise them that got any traction recently didn’t even raise them back to the previous level - still a net cut.
Also, Covid is a big deal for the families of the 600k dead from it directly and the unknown number indirectly due to inability to access medical services. Just because it didn’t affect you personally doesn’t mean it’s not a real problem.
I took it seriously as well, realized it probably wouldn’t kill me, but still followed precautions so as to avoid hurting others who would most likely have died or gotten seriously ill. I feel like that’s a pretty minimum requirement for a functioning society - compassion for others, who are not in your exact situation.