Thieves in the Temple.

Action: corporate tax evasion, and organic food.

As you know, Tuesday was tax day, and in that spirit corporations have been lobbying Congress to renew two corporate tax loopholes -- the "active financing exception" and the "CFC look-through rule" -- that expired on January 1. Citizens for Tax Justice explains how they work here. Long story short: they make it easier for corporations to move money overseas, so we can't tax them -- to the tune of around $8 billion annually. The backers of these loopholes claim that our corporations need them to compete with nations that don't tax their corporations as hard, but that's bunkum for at least two reasons: one, our corporate tax code is already so riddled with holes that other countries aren't much competition, and two, squealing about competition in this manner essentially allows the nation that taxes everyone the lightest to hold the rest of the world hostage. Taxes pay for things, after all -- and if corporations won't pay for roads and bridges and schools and unemployment insurance, then small businesses and actual people will have to pay more. PennPIRG helps you tell Congress not to bring back the corporate loopholes that make it easier for corporations to shift income overseas.

Meanwhile, the USDA does not allow genetically-modified ingredients or irradiated ingredients in organic food -- but it does allow ingredients altered by mutagenesis in food earning the USDA organic label. No use arguing that all evolutionary change occurs through mutagenesis -- if you make food by shooting X-rays at a plant and seeing what mutations occur, as with mutagenesis, then your food is not organic. And no use arguing that we can't feed the world without finding new foods with mutagenesis. We don't have problems feeding the world because we can't create thirty-foot carrots, but because our society doesn't grow food to be eaten -- it grows food to be sold. And that thirty-foot carrot still wouldn't be organic. And don't folks who choose to eat organic food have the right to know their food actually is organic? The Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the USDA to reject mutagenesis as an acceptable practice in growing organic food. I'd lay money that few (if any) small organic farmers are experimenting with their products like this -- but that's all the more reason to close a loophole that helps big ag corporations put small farmers out of business.

Around the table: more people behaving badly.

Dean Baker reminds us that the "carried interest tax deduction," enjoyed by Wall Street hedge fund managers, "has no economic rationale" and doesn't even "serve() some socially useful purpose." If you know that hedge funds serve only the super-rich -- and evade a lot of regulation because they're generally not available to the public, which generally isn't super-rich -- you're probably not surprised. Key argument: hedge fund managers argue that "it is good for the managers to have their interests allied with the investors in their fund" -- "but it has nothing to do with why the taxpayers should subsidize their income."

In the aftermath of the April 13 shooting deaths of three people at a pair of Kansas City-area Jewish community centers, FAIR notes the reluctance of the "liberal" media to label the accused shooter a terrorist and wonders, "Can White People Be Terrorists?" Don't fall into the trap of thinking the media is being circumspect because Mr. Miller is still a suspect -- recall how quickly the "liberal" media rushed into speculating that Muslims perpetrated the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, rather than the white man who left Buffalo because it was too liberal for him. And whether Glenn Miller is guilty of this crime or not, he is a terrorist, simple and plain. Golly, I wonder which right-wing pundits will take statements like those personally.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a master of throwing up his hands at things he finds too hard, advocates ending all campaign donation limits. Because they don't work, you see, never mind that at least three bad Supreme Court rulings have made that task much harder than it needs to be. Don't fall into the trap of saying well, at least he advocates transparency of donations -- when it's time to act on that statement, he'll have a half-dozen excuses why he can't, just like they all do.

Finally, Phyllis Schafly, that devoted friend of womanhood, claims that if women make the same money as men for the same work, they'll have a lot more trouble finding husbands. But to the degree that "women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner" and "men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner," why would these be laws of physics (as Ms. Schafly treats them), and not phenomena created by several thousand years of social, political, and economic conditioning?

Action: GMO labeling, absurd drug sentencing, and product safety.

Rep. Pompeo (R-KS) has introduced H.R. 4432, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act. Which it's not: H.R. 4432 would prohibit states, counties, or municipalities from enacting mandatory labeling laws -- now there is some small-government, states' rights conservatism for you! -- and would allow big food corporations to slap "natural" labels on their GMO food products, since the definition of the word "natural" is a matter of such intense debate. The bill would "permit" corporations to label their Frankenfoods voluntarily, but as we know, standards for voluntary labeling of GMO foods already exist, and no food producers are using them. And, as Steve Benen instructs us, Mr. Pompeo has also tried to scuttle a household product safety database and an EPA greenhouse-gas polluter database, all apparently at the behest of Koch Industries, which just so happens to be headquartered in his district. There's serving your constituents, and then there's serving your constituents up to your big donors. The Organic Consumers Association helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 4432.

Meanwhile, Robert Shipp is serving a life sentence for selling cocaine. No one argues that Mr. Shipp shouldn't pay for his crime (which should go without saying, but seriously, some people can't read), but even the judge forced by law to hand down the sentence objected, after noting that Mr. Shipp's suppliers got comparatively light sentences. Mr. Shipp was, according to his sister, an honors student walking the straight-and-narrow until his brother's murder, which sent Mr. Shipp into a tailspin as it might do you or I; his brother's murderer, incredibly, got a mere 20 year sentence, then got out in 10. Drug addiction keeps you from exercising your rights and reaching your potential as an American, so I don't support legalization generally (though marijuana shouldn't be a Schedule I drug), but certainly we should punish murderers more than we punish nonviolent drug offenders. So change.org helps you petition President Obama and Attorney General Holder for clemency. Mr. Obama has shown some capacity for mercy in this regard, and, lately, so has society.

Finally, H.R. 4361, the Sunshine in Litigation Act, would make it a lot harder for corporations to hide damaging information in legal cases if that information is in the public interest. This bill comes attached to a news hook, as we're only just now finding out (thanks to confidentiality agreements in settlements) that General Motors's bad ignition switches may have killed as many as 13 good folks since 2005; if you've contemplated buying a GM car since then, you might have wanted to know that -- and if you've lost a family member to a bad GM ignition switch, you might have wanted to exact justice. H.R. 4361 would restrict confidentiality agreements in court cases if said agreements obscure "facts relevant to the protection of public health or safety." And before right-wingers squeal about TEH END UV TEH PRIVACYZ!!!!, note that judges can still enforce orders that preserve privacy if public safety isn't at risk, or even if a judge can justify letting "a specific and substantial interest in maintaining...confidentiality" prevail. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4361.

Around the table: the folly of "bold thinkers" (plus actual bold thinkers living in tiny houses).

Miami/Dade County voters won't be able to use the restrooms while in line to vote this year, though Miami voters have been known to have to wait six hours to vote. Apparently the County decided -- in response to a question about whether disabled voters would have access to restrooms -- that "the fair thing to do" would be to deny restrooms to everybody. Bold thinkers! But I bet once everyone in America hears about this, and the lawyers start reading the Americans with Disabilities Act to them, they'll back down.

Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips -- who not that long ago seemed nostalgic for the days when only property owners could vote! -- claims that a million Democrats voted twice in 2012. He bases that number on "extrapolation" from North Carolina's claim that over 35,000 North Carolinian voters (not Democrats, even, but voters) have names and birthdays that just so happen to match names and birthdays of voters in other states -- but that happens because there are a lot of common first and last names and only 366 different birthdays, because it can take a few years to flush out old election records when folks move from one state to another, and because of easily imaginable clerical mistakes. Judson Phillips is a clown, so let's never speak of him again.

Ho hum, Republicans claim that the Affordable Care Act has driven up health insurance premiums 90% in New Hampshire, but actually that's only for individual buyers, who always get the shaft from insurers, and also that figure comes from exactly one broker. Even worse, that 90% figure is actually only up a few percentage points from the previous year's increase! The state Department of Insurance, by the way, sees an 8 percent decrease coming when you figure in the ACA's subsidies. I guess it's back to individual horror stories of people who refuse to use the ACA to get better health care for themselves because Socialism.

The Shareable blog talks with four "tiny housers" about living small, renewable power, and reducing your ecological footprint. A "tiny house" might have 140 square feet, which is much easier to take off the grid, but getting clean water remains an issue, and zoning regulations also remain an issue. Many tiny housers take to rural areas in states that welcome them (one owner lists six heartland states, five of which went for Mr. Romney in the 2012 Presidential election -- though how long they'll stay friendly once the Koch brothers hear about all this is anyone's guess).

Ars Technica finds that Comcast, still trying to convince everyone that their merger with Time-Warner is a good idea, has given money via its PAC to every single Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee currently holding hearings on their merger. Sen. Franken (D-MN), an outspoken merger opponent, has received zero dollars from the PAC since entering the Senate, but received $5,000 from the PAC during his recount battle in early 2009. Note well that the Democrats on the committee seem to be getting a lot more money from Comcast than the Republicans -- which may mean Democrats love mammon an awful lot more than we'd like, or that Democrats need more softening up than Republicans do.

Finally, Jenny McCarthy takes to the Chicago Sun Times editorial page to declare that she is not nor ever has been "anti-vaccine." The charge against her, of course, is rather different: as a University of Google student trying to figure out how her son became autistic (which he almost certainly wasn't, though she now says he's "cured"), she heavily promoted now-completely discredited "research" suggesting that vaccines cause autism, which made parents all over America refuse vaccines for their children, which enabled diseases like whooping cough to make a comeback. Frankly, the damage she's done to America may be incalculable, but like the rest of America's venal and foolish elites she doubles down, completely omitting the words "Andrew Wakefield" and asking "what happened to critical thinking?" twice in three paragraphs.

Action: patent trolls, GMO labeling, and getting better behavior from BP.

The House passed the Innovation Act back in December, but the Senate plans to bring its own patent-reform bill to the floor -- S. 1720, the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act. It has a wordier title than the House bill, and it's also not as good as than House bill -- as the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports, the Senate bill would do a few things the Innovation Act does, but wouldn't reform the patent-issuing process, wouldn't force patent trolls to pay your attorney fees when they lose a frivolous lawsuit against you, wouldn't make patent trolls specify exactly what part of their vague patent they claim you've violated, and wouldn't prevent patent trolls from bankrupting you by forcing you to present reams of unnecessary and irrelevant documents. Thankfully, the EFF also helps you tell the Senate to pass a better patent transparency bill, so that our laws do not permit no-work-doing leeches to destroy real innovators. Hopefully our champions of tort "reform" will embrace legislation that would actually stop frivolous lawsuits.

Meanwhile, Creswell, OR activist James Dubick joins with CREDO to help you tell Safeway's CEO to label food products that contain genetically-modified organisms. Why? Because Safeway is the second-biggest supermarket chain in America, and could induce other supermarkets to do the right thing. If your friends complain to you that telling Safeway's CEO to label GMO foods is somehow fear-mongering, remind them that if GMO foods are safe, then GMO manufacturers have nothing to fear from their labeling. They're constantly telling us they're safe, right? While scientists do not all necessarily agree that GMO foods cause health problems, GMO foods spur big ag to use more dangerous pesticides and herbicides, which makes GMO foods de facto more dangerous. And, er, doesn't Newt Gingrich say that when 70 percent of Americans want something, they should get it? Polls consistently show over 90 percent of Americans want GMO food-labeling. So what's the problem?

Finally, the EPA has lately lifted British Petroleum's suspension from receiving federal contracts, but you might wonder whether BP has really done anything to deserve such lenient treatment from our government. You do not need to contemplate the 2010 Spillageddon in the Gulf any further to wonder -- you need only consider that BP's Whiting, IN refinery spilled over 1,600 gallons of crude into Lake Michigan late last month, or that the same refinery has been polluting Chicago's South Side neighborhood for years, or that BP violated Oregon state law by slapping fees on customers who paid for gas with their debit cards without telling them. Does that sound like a good corporate citizen to you? Public Citizen helps you tell the EPA to keep BP from feeding at the federal trough until it conducts itself better. Don't believe the hype that keeping BP from getting federal contracts kills jobs. Is there really no other oil corporation deserving of federal contracts?

Around the table: special "right-wingers still suck!" edition.

House approves Paul Ryan's latest budget by a vote of 219-205. 12 Republicans defected, and though they included West Virginia's David McKinley, North Carolina's Walter Jones, and New Jersey's Frank LoBiondo, most of the Republican defectors thought the Ryan budget wasn't severe enough. In a few years, they'll be calling Paul Ryan a moderate! All 219 "yea" votes should lose their jobs in November, but I doubt Democrats would run ads about the Ryan budget even in competitive districts. Like Paul Ryan's.

Hank Aaron, arguably the most popular home run king in baseball history, compares Republicans to the KKK over their treatment of President Obama. I've long said Republicans treat Mr. Obama so badly because he's a Democrat, not because he's black -- but I've also long argued that I can understand why people would think they're doing it to him because he's black, because of the sheer disrespect they show the man. I fear that, at some point, this may all become a wave/particle thing.

An "environmental research organization" faults the "fear-based appeals" of folks trying to avert climate change, blaming said appeals for "denial, fatalism, and polarization." See that? Once again, when folks try to keep us on the road to disaster, it's not their fault -- it's our fault, for trying to change things for the better! Spoiler alert: they also misread someone else's research to support this point.

Heritage Foundation President/former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint tells a right-wing radio host that "no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves." Because nothing says "small government" like a pair of Constitutional amendments. He also says "the conscience of the American people" freed the slaves, as if our government couldn't possibly be a vehicle for that conscience -- indeed, those aforementioned Constitutional amendments kinda support that notion. And as for the radio host's straw-man "liberal" "saying" "that Founding Fathers thing worked out really well, look at that Civil War we had eighty years later" -- right-wingers might do well to listen to a few liberals, if only so they'll know what we really sound like. It might even result in fewer on-air circle jerks.

Finally, Mike Huckabee is "beginning to think there's more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States." He cites TSA pat-downs as a reason -- in North Korea, I can almost hear Yakov Smirnoff saying, they pat you down in the cab to the airport! -- and then he compounds his error by suggesting that maybe you should get TSA-style pat-downs before you vote! I liked Mike Huckabee when he ran for President -- what other Republican or Democrat said their party didn't deserve to win a Presidential election if it wouldn't get serious about corporate crime? -- but he's absolutely gone off the rails since President Obama won. What a damn shame.

Action: unemployment insurance, and drone strike transparency.

The Senate finally passed an unemployment extension; now it goes to the House, where the worst House Speaker in history, John Boehner, now says he'll only allow a vote on it if some unspecified "job growth" measures get attached. What happened to Mr. Boehner's severe concern for the states who'd have such a hard time paying out five months of unemployment insurance? I guess he finally figured out that professing such "concern," particularly when states were expressing the precise opposite of that concern, made him look like the world's biggest idiot, and like all idiots he will now say nothing about it and hope you forget. But why should we forget? The Coalition on Human Needs, the National Women's Law Center, and USAction all help you tell Mr. Boehner to allow a vote on the Senate's unemployment insurance bill already. Feel free to add that you want the House to pass the bill without conditions or "job growth" initiatives. It's not that a bill couldn't include some job growth initiatives, but the ones the Republicans will insist upon won't grow anything but their corporate paymasters' bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration claims its overseas drone strikes are "narrowly targeted" at "top-level terrorist leaders planning to attack the United States," and that these strikes haven't killed very many civilians. But that's bunkum -- independent reporting tells us these drone strikes tend to kill "low-level militants" who aren't actually anywhere close to "planning to attack the United States," and that the strikes have killed more civilians than "top-level terrorist leaders." Hence Reps. Schiff (D-CA) and Jones (R-NC) have brought us H.R. 4372, the Targeted Lethal Force Transparency Act, which would require the Executive branch to report annually on how many combatants and civilians U.S. drone strikes kill. The first annual report would also include the last six years of drone strikes, and would describe exactly how the Executive branch defines "combatants" and "civilians." I mean, we know what these words mean, so any "innovation" the Executive branch attempts in defining these words will make them look idiotic. So both MoveOn and Peace Action West help you tell our government to support transparency for drone killings.

Around the table: includes messages that bear repeating.

Michigan Secretary of State/U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land (R) unleashed this slab of folky flatugasma about the gender pay gap in 2010: "Well we all like to be paid more and that's great but the reality is that women have a different lifestyle. They have kids, they have to take them to get dentist appointments, doctors' appointments, all those kinds of things, and they're more interested in flexibility in a job than pay." None of which even addresses why women should be paid less than men to do those jobs! Also, too, men have kids.

Citizens for Tax Justice looks at Rep. Dave Camp's tax reform bill, and finds it wanting. You know the drill -- rich folks and corporations pay less, working families pay more, which Mr. Camp claims that won't be the case, but just like the rest of them, won't explain how. There's a reason he can't explain: a lot of Mr. Camp's revenue-raisers are either gimmicks (like the one-time tax on offshore profits, which still won't get repatriated and taxed properly) or get phased out after ten years. I guess he's not too worried about any of that, since he'll be out of Congress by then.

President Obama delays scheduled payment reductions from Medicare to private competitors like Medicare Advantage for the second year in a row. So when Republicans run their eight bajillion ZOMG OBAMACARE CUTZ TEH MEDICAREZ BY $500 BILLYUNZ!!!! ads again, Democrats will be ready with..."well, we stopped Obamacare from doing that for another year or so"? Again with the 13-dimensional chess! Democrats need to take this head-on, by reminding Americans that Medicare has no obligation to give handouts to its competitors, and the fewer handouts Medicare gives to private insurers, the better Medicare works.

If you turn on the evening news and start hearing about this "coalition" called Reforming America's Taxes Equitably, the Center for Effective Government tells you who they are. Long story short: they're a coalition of big corporations trying to get Congress to cut corporate taxes. Strangely, though, eight of the corporations in this coalition received over $100 billion in federal contracts in 2013, and if they succeed in cutting corporate taxes, they won't be able to suck at the big gummint teat as much, right? Just kidding; Congress will just cut food stamps again if it comes to that.

Mother Jones finds video from 2009 of Rand Paul suggesting that Dick Cheney started the Iraq war to enrich his cronies at Halliburton. If you're saying what took him so long to figure out what I figured out in October of 2002?, recall that the video dates from 2009. And if you're wondering why this anti-war streak, one that honors his family and his country, hasn't resulted in very much action from now-Senator Rand Paul, recall that this video dates from 2009.

Finally, because it bears repeating, the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that the poor spend considerably more of their money on necessities than much wealthier folks do. The lowest 20 percent of income earners spend about 60% of their income on essentials like rent or mortgage, health care, utilities, and home-cooked food; the highest 20% spend, on average, 45% of their money on similar items. All that seems fairly commonsensical, but if your right-wing uncle cries WHAT ABOUT TEH OTHUR 40%!!!!!!!, remind him that nobody, including him, has ever been so disciplined that they don't spend on leisure -- though poor folks also do that less than rich folks do.

Action: private prisons, and patent trolls.

Presente helps you tell the Gates Foundation to withdraw financial support from the GEO Group, a private prison corporation. You need not have a strong opinion of the Gates Foundation's (or, for that matter, the GEO Group's) good-evil orientation to support this effort, nor need you have an opinion on how badly prisons generally treat non-whites and immigrants. I support it for one simple reason: keeping folks in prison is our government's job, not a job our government should outsource to private corporations. When it's our government's job, that means it's our job, and even if our government monitors how well private corporations house and care for our prisoners -- which is no safe bet! -- that still puts a wedge between us and our government. It also makes prison corporations richer without rehabilitating prisoners or making communities safer. And to those who wail WHERE WILLZ TEH MONEYZ COME FROM TO RUNZ TEH PRIZUNZ!!!!: stop letting our governments give away our tax money to big corporations for "job creation," since corporations generally give that money to their CEOs and shareholders instead. One can find a lot of money there.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Senate to pass the Innovation Act, which would keep "patent trolls" from suing actual innovators into the poorhouse, then the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you do that -- using their Fix Patents call tool. What do patent trolls do? Patent trolls go around patenting the littlest and most common things they can find, so that when other folks make actually-useful things out of them, the patent trolls can sue them. Nice work if you can get it! Seriously, we've become a society that doesn't reward hard work anymore, and so it goes with patent trolls, who bank on you not wanting to go through the pain and hardship (and, ah, risk of bankruptcy) of a lawsuit so they can extort a settlement to go away. The Innovation Act would shift the financial burden of these frivolous lawsuits to the bad actors filing them, and would also make these bad actors cite exactly which parts of their patents they think are being violated. The whole patent-granting process in America still needs a considerable amount of reform, but the Innovation Act would do a lot of good.

Around the table: from payday lender desperation to renewable energy hope.

Believe it or not, payday loan supporters do have their own talking points, and the Consumerist demolishes them here. Even in places where banks fear to tread, you're better off going to a credit union or a state loan program than getting a payday loan with its high interest and onerous fees. Also, payday loans don't "create jobs," they create debt. And would you believe some folks justify payday loans by saying they're preferable to rioting, even though people generally don't riot in the states that ban payday loans? I mean, you can justify any dumb idea by comparing it to imaginary violence.

Citizens for Tax Justice shares "five key tax facts about the health care law." It's admirably short, but I'll try to improve on that: the law provides lots of subsidies, both to individuals and small businesses; almost all of the bill's tax increases affect income over $200,000; only 1 in 50 Americans will have to pay the mandate penalty; and the corporations whining the most about the medical device excise tax may not be paying enough taxes to begin with. None of that will convince your crazy right-wing uncle, but this message ain't for him; it's for the sane people who might accidentally pay attention to him.

Newt Gingrich thinks the solution to "an election process that radically favors billionaires and is discriminating against the middle class" is to let "candidates...receive the same amount of money as super PACs." If he somehow untangled that Moebius strip of an argument, the Washington Post didn't report it, but the Post did write an overly flattering headline -- "Newt Gingrich says wealthy donors like Sheldon Adelson have too much influence" -- when a more accurate one would have been "Newt Gingrich proposes solution to billionaire election influence that would make problem much worse."

PPP poll finds Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett losing his 2014 re-election bid to a generic Democrat by a whopping 56-34 margin. But I think the poll's sample of Democrats is a bit huge (49%? Come on, even I'm a registered independent!). Also, Mr. Corbett won't run against a generic Democrat, but a real one, and none of the ones running are all that impressive -- the likely nominee, Tom Wolf, especially strikes me as another let's-all-get-along-after-all-I'm-a-businessman type, and I'm tired of those.

Finally, Occupy.com reports on the Danish island of Samsø, which creates 100% of its electricity from solar and wind power and 70% of its heat from renewable resources. And it all started with a state-sponsored competition! We just better hope the Koch brothers don't get to pick our next President, or else we might "find" "terrorists" there, and "have" to invade.

Action: organic standards, renewable energy, and carbon emissions.

Six months ago, without seeking public comment (I wonder why!), the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) changed its rules for determining what synthetic products to allow in organic foods. The NOSB used to automatically sunset synthetic products after five years, and mandate a two-thirds vote of the NOSB to reinstate them, but now they've turned that on its head: once it allows a synthetic product in organic food, it allows it indefinitely unless a two-thirds majority votes it out. That'll let corporations get lazy about making their organic processes more organic (which sunsets nominally give them time to do), and will likely make the list of synthetic products allowed in organic food longer and longer until the word "organic" doesn't mean a damn thing anymore. Hence the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to reverse the NOSB rule changes. I bet Mr. Vilsack, being an utter corporatist, doesn't care what we think. But he'll jump if he thinks he has to. And a lot of Americans, across the political spectrum, love organic food.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach (D-17) has introduced SB 1171, which would mandate that Pennsylvania utilities increase the amount of electricity they produce from renewable resources (particularly solar) to 15% by 2023. That doesn't seem like a whole lot to ask, does it? Especially in a state where wind power is actually doing reasonably well? Wait, let me think of some objections to SB 1171: coal is "more reliable" than solar or wind, people who use renewable energy are "free riders," renewable energy "kills jobs," all government mandates "kill jobs," climate change is a "hoax" perpetrated by environmentalists, coal and oil CEOs know better than everyone else. Nope, no reasonable objections in that list! Pennsylvania actually enacted a renewable energy standard fairly early, back in 2005, but other states have since surpassed Pennsylvania's efforts, and now we're looking at a bill that would only mandate that Pennsylvania produce 4.5% of its electricity from renewable energy sources this year. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your PA state Senator to vote for more renewable energy.

Finally, the EPA is still accepting public comments on its new rule aiming to reduce carbon emissions from new power plants, and Public Citizen helps you leave said comment. President Obama might actually have played this particular 13-dimensional chess game pretty well -- the House passed an awful climate change bill in 2009, one that actually gave away most of the carbon credits that were supposed to raise revenue; the Senate didn't take up the House bill, and then couldn't get a bill of its own together in 2010, at least partly because the Republican point man was, somehow, Lindsey Graham, who took his ball and went home early. But all that left a more desirable option -- EPA regulation of carbon emissions -- on the table, an option already sanctified by a Supreme Court majority that included Antonin Scalia; several Republican-led attempts to rescind the EPA's authority went nowhere, thanks largely to Democratic majorities in the Senate. So having the EPA mandate lower carbon emissions is where we want to be. And if you want the EPA to regulate existing power plants as well, you can add that to your comment.

Action: unemployment benefits, and paycheck fairness.

The Senate still hasn't finished up work on an unemployment insurance extension, and no doubt House Speaker John Boehner still thinks you'll believe that it's just too hard for states to make unemployment benefits retroactive to that point in late December when Congress simply refused to do anything about it -- this after Mr. Boehner whined that the bill wasn't "paid for," and paid for the way he wanted it paid for, by causing pain and suffering to someone else who didn't deserve pain and suffering. What, I should be nice to people like John Boehner? John Boehner complains about "paying for" benefits for good Americans who were thrown out of work by corporate greed in the first place, while his corporate paymasters hoard their trillions in unearned profits, refusing to use any of it to create jobs for these same Americans. When will our government stop giving its owners, the American people, the back of its hand? When we demand they stop, and not before. The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell Congress to extend unemployment benefits already.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that the Senate will vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act as early as tomorrow, so Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill's opponents seem to have a tough time convincing people they're right -- Sen. Rubio (R-FL) tried to convince us last year that the bill would merely "enrich trial lawyers," which matters only to the degree that "enriching trial lawyers" doesn't actually do some good, versus, say, enriching corporate CEOs, which seems to do no good. But the only question you need ask of your Senators is this: do you believe employers should be allowed to retaliate against employees who discuss their pay with each other? (The Paycheck Fairness Act would stop employers from doing that.) If your Senator says "yes," you need only ask: what harm does that do? And if the answer is "when everyone knows what everyone makes, it hurts morale," ask which is worse: the "damage done to morale" by folks talking about their pay, or the damage done to folks whose employers are discriminating against them with lower pay. I don't think that's a tough choice.

Around the table: thieves! Thieves and liars!

You know how corporations should be hiring people to make stuff instead of sitting on trillions of dollars in profits? Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) writes a more fully-developed version of that argument here. He reminds us, also, that the Government Accountability Office found that corporations were paying an effective tax rate of 12.6% -- "low enough to make Mitt Romney jealous"! -- versus the nominal 35% rate that right-wingers constantly talk about lowering so we can "compete" with other corporations in other countries. Now you know what to say when right-wingers screech WHAT ABOUT TEH JOB CREATURZ!!!!!

Dean Baker reminds us that Heritage Foundation President (and former U.S. Senator) Jim DeMint makes $1 million annually -- but also reminds us that Heritage is a tax-exempt organization, meaning that we-the-people subsidize Mr. DeMint's salary. He now makes about six times what he made as a U.S. Senator, by the way. Mr. Baker deftly demolishes right-wing strawmen -- of course "they have the right to pay their president whatever they feel like," but why should taxpayers subsidize it? And all you need to do to refute complaints "that they can’t get good help for such low pay" is look at your paycheck and think about how hard you work for it.

Confused by the many NSA data-vacuuming reform proposals (which is probably the idea, anyway)? ProPublica helps you sort them out. All claim to end the NSA's bulk data-collecting, but the Obama and Rogers/Ruppersberger proposals would still allow our government to access corporate data-collecting rather easily (though the Obama proposal, unlike Rogers/Ruppersberger, would require a court order) and none of them would touch, say, the FISA Amendments Act, which "incidentally" sweeps up the communications of American citizens without a warrant. The Leahy/Sensenbrenner bill would do the most good; we've urged our Congressfolk to support it here before -- and John Boehner, of course, prefers the worst of the three bills.

Mitch McConnell's primary challenger in the 2014 Kentucky U.S. Senate race, Matt Bevin, gets caught attending a cockfighting rally. Because TEH SOUTH!!!!! Mr. Bevin quickly denied, via spokeshack, that it was a cockfighting rally, claiming that it was actually a "states' rights" rally. Oh, well, that clears everything up -- it's not like the phrase "states' rights" has ever been code for "oppressing blacks" or anything. Also, did you know something called the American Gamefowl Defense Network exists? Imagine that, "defense" of a chicken's "right" to be forced to fight another chicken to the death! Like they have trading cards or something! Let's never speak of this organization again.

Comcast lobbyist/asshole says he's heard no "rational, knowledgable voices" opposing the Comcast/Time-Warner merger. Well, if you only talk to other stupid, venal elites (the kind who, for example, posit Hulu as a "competitor" to Comcast when Comcast owns Hulu), I guess you don't hear the voices of reason and knowledge very often. Also, n.b. that he suggests that the real "competition" is between broadband cable and wireless. There's no competition there -- wireless cuts out and takes forever to load all the damn time. I don't use wireless for important work.

Finally, Bill O'Reilly says he wants to "beat up" New York's mayor for wanting to raise taxes on the rich. He said this at a fundraiser for a K-12 Catholic school in New York City. I'm old enough to remember when issuing threats, even "tongue-in-cheek" ones, at a Catholic school fundraiser was a career-ending move; of course, back then, our government taxed millionaire income at 70%. Hmm, high taxes on the rich, better behavior from media stars -- coincidence? And don't miss the part where Bill O'Reilly's "proof" of "liberal bias" in the media is non-coverage of his latest book, proving only that he still thinks everything is all about him.

Around the table: the struggle to detect signs of intelligent life in corporations and government.

Ho hum, Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the latest Ryan Budget gives millionaires an average tax cut of over $200,000. Which they'll then turn around and use to create jobs, right? Sure -- just like they do whenever they get a massive tax cut. Which means "never," since the rich are very much like you and me in that they hoard a windfall when they get it.

Richard Kirsch describes some of the challenges unions face in organizing retail and fast-food workers today. Key finding: large corporations are extremely powerful, even "more powerful than governments," but they distribute their workers over hundreds of sites and unions can really only organize one at a time, giving said unions very little power to change what a corporation does. That's if it succeeds, of course -- workers in retail and fast food turn over a lot, which makes getting half the workers to sign cards that much harder.

Tennessee pols see the gnarled, ringed hands of the Koch brothers behind a bill restricting municipalities from creating mass transit programs using dedicated lanes -- you know, like the one Nashville just so happens to be trying to build right now to shorten commuting times. The good news? Sunshine on this bill might kill it, as it killed Tea Party efforts to kill solar power efforts in Georgia (though at least one other Tea Party group fought on the side of the angels during that battle).

Speaking of the Koch brothers, their front group Americans for Prosperity is dropping over a half-mil on an ad nominally aimed at incumbent Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor (D), featuring a speaker who seems to have no idea if he has health insurance or not. See, what you do here is you all get together and laugh at this clown, who seems to think his ignorance is someone else's fault, and whose wife, perhaps not coincidentally, narrated another AFP anti-Affordable Care Act spot broadcast in Arkansas that reporters found to be, well, not necessarily in line with the facts.

Hobby Lobby -- the corporation trying to assert before the Supreme Court that it has the "religious freedom" to deny its workers contraception coverage -- has pumped over $70 million of its employee retirement plan into mutual funds investing in corporations making abortion drugs and contraception pills and devices. Hobby Lobby's Glorious Leaders no doubt stand ready to tell us that they have no control over what the mutual fund does with its money, which I knew was bunkum even before I heard of the Ave Maria Fund. I guess actual people have an easier time living their values than fictional ones.

Finally, scientists have found an ocean under the icy surface of one of Saturn's moons, making that moon a candidate to support life. That life may not be very lively, since Enceladus is, like many of Saturn's moons, quite small and quite cold, and the ocean underneath its icy surface is about the size of Lake Superior. Still, it's a start.

Action: campaign finance, and prescription drug privacy.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of big money in McCutcheon v. FEC yesterday, as you know, but we're ready to fight back: Public Citizen, the People for the American Way and Free Speech for People all help you support constitutional amendments that would ensure that when we talk about free speech rights, we're not only talking about rights people have, but we're also talking about speech. Money isn't speech, after all -- it's, you know, money, and two-plus centuries of precedent have established that we can regulate money more aggressively than we can regulate speech, just as it should be. Yet Chief Justice Roberts explicitly wrote that "the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner 'influence over or access to' elected officials or political parties" is not a government "interest" in writing campaign finance laws. Trouble with that is, when one individual gains such "access," he closes off our avenues for access. And rights are for everyone, not just for the people with the most money.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature is mulling SB 1180, a bill that would provide for "prescription drug monitoring." SB 1180 has attracted some bipartisan support in the state Senate, because prescription drugs can be abused quite easily. And we should work to ameliorate that problem, but SB 1180 is, if you will, the wrong prescription: the bill would mandate a state-run database of prescription records, and prosecutors could access it without a warrant. Problem is prosecutors only would need to establish "reasonable suspicion," which we use when we're looking through records where we don't expect to have a whole lot of privacy to begin with, like school records and prison records. Your prescription drug records ain't like that, though -- you don't expect that to be common knowledge, and you shouldn't expect it to be common knowledge. The ACLU helps you tell your PA state Senator to oppose SB 1180 and keep your prescription drug information private, as it should be.

Around the table: from the money-equals-speech league to the anti-fossil league.

Supreme Court strikes down overall limit on campaign contributions to candidates over a two-year period, though it leaves in place (for now!) limits on individual contributions to candidates. The Court's casual equation of money and speech is beyond annoying -- I'm so old-fashioned I believe speech is speech and money is property -- but this ruling ought to be easy for Democrats to run on: all they need do is cast their opponent as the lapdog of millionaires and corporations -- you wouldn't even have to avoid seeking out campaign donations from those same millionaires and corporations yourself if you hit first and hard. Then again, when do Democrats ever hit first and hard, or find the easy stuff easy?

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) offers his own plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something vibrant and new. Nah, just kidding: he'd repeal it and replace it with tort "reform" which saves money for rich HMO-owners and no one else, with spending caps for Medicaid and Medicare which cut benefits, with the "restoration" of Medicare "cuts" which were actually cuts in Medicare subsidization of private health insurers, and a Rube Goldbergian "high-risk pool" scheme which wouldn't cover very many folks with pre-existing conditions and would cost a lot more money than he says it would. The worst part? Mr. Jindal wants credit for not just saying "no" to everything like a diaper-loaded brat! You can't just have ideas, sir -- you have to have ideas that aren't utter-crap-with-crap-sauce.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says Republicans need to get "beyond deportation" and "make clear it is open to a more welcoming approach to immigration." The same Rand Paul who co-sponsored the "Anchor Babies" bill in the Senate in early 2011? The bill that would have amended our Constitution so that folks born in America to undocumented immigrants on American soil could be stripped of their right to American citizenship? Always watch what they do, not what they say -- especially Rand Paul, who's so far made a career out of selling out to his corporate paymasters and mouthing off about matters like drones and free speech and defense spending without doing thing one about them.

Sen. McConnell (E-KY) calls the Affordable Care Act a "catastrophe." It's one thing to mouth right-wing pablum, I suppose, but is he really ignorant of the fact that his home state of Kentucky is one of the few places where the ACA did really well from the beginning -- thanks largely to a state-run exchange that rolled out much better than the national exchange did? Such apparent ignorance must count for something in his upcoming re-election race -- if Ms. Grimes can take advantage of it, of course, since Democrats seem to have a lot of trouble catching what's thrown in their lap.

Finally, a South Carolina girl wants to make the Columbian mammoth the "state fossil," but some knuckledraggers in the State legislature have a tantrum about it, demanding an amendment declaring that the mammoth was created "on the sixth day." I do not know what penalty they've proposed for declaring that our scientific understanding of fossilization proves the beauty of God's creative process. Seriously, we need to understand that legislatives who need amendments like these are very likely deeply insecure about their faith -- no one who really believes the Bible tells them all they need know about the world would worry quite so much about whether the law marches in jackboot lockstep with it.

Action: drones and due process, wind power tax credits, and GMO labeling.

So far, President Obama has killed four Americans with drones; apparently he's considering killing a fifth, claiming that the target has aided in terrorist attacks on American troops in Afghanistan. Because that's tough, I suppose, never mind that America's rage-filled right-wingers don't respect Mr. Obama when he gets "tough." You know what's tough? Capturing a man who's helping attack our troops, putting him on trial, convicting him of his crimes, and parading his shame around America so we can all be reminded that this is how not to be. Killing people with machines from far away like the world is your first-person shooter game? Not tough. Never mind that our Constitution makes it pretty hard to send people to jail, just as the Founders intended and just as it ought to be -- our elites, helpless before mammon and enabled by a "liberal" media that treats life and death like a reality show, no longer have what it takes to be tough. Luckily, we do -- we have to be tough in all the ways that count every day. Roots Action helps you tell Mr. Obama that he doesn't have the right to violate Americans' right to due process just-because.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Congress to restore the Production Tax Credit for wind power. Should you be suspicious of tax credits for businesses? Of course you should -- a lot of them are just corporate welfare handouts. But has the Production Tax Credit helped America? You bet it has -- over one-third of all new power capacity over the last five years has come from wind power plants, and Iowa (whose senior Senator, Republican Charles Grassley, first dreamed up the credit) now creates almost one-fifth of its electricity from wind. Naturally, the fossil fuel industry hates the Production Tax Credit, and has actually convinced Congress to let it lapse. What are fossil fuel corporations afraid of? Who has put a gun to their heads and said you must continue producing energy by churning up the land and belching filth into our air and water from now until the end of time? Perhaps we should end the billions of dollars in annual subsidies (which don't lapse!) the fossil fuel industry gets instead. After all, as we've suggested, some handouts just make corporations and the people who run them indolent.

Finally, the FDA remains quite wishy-washy over labeling of genetically-modified foods: despite two decades of studies linking GMOs (and, not incidentally, the herbicides and pesticides that accompany them) to maladies ranging from allergies to cancer, the FDA says it has "not found evidence of safety risks." Could that be, in part, because GMO foods aren't labeled, making them harder to track? And if the foods are safe, then why are they fighting labeling tooth and nail, in a land where over 9 out of 10 Americans want them labeled? The FDA apparently plans to issue "voluntary" labeling guidelines, but voluntary guidelines already exist, courtesy the International Federation of Produce Standards, which created the four-digit PLU code accompanying your produce. According to the IFPS system, a "9" would precede the four-digit number for organic foods and an "8" would precede GMO foods; you've seen the 9, I'll bet, but you haven't seen the 8, because food producers won't use it. So the science is pretty clear: "voluntary" guidelines don't make food producers label their Frankenfood. Take that to the FDA when you tell them to get serious about GMO food-labeling.

Around the table: the horrible truth about Our Glorious Leaders, part 333.

Good news, everyone: the FCC votes to ban TV stations from owning other TV stations in the same market by "recruit(ing) or creat(ing) a separate corporate entity to own the station" in order to evade media consolidation rules. TV owners (some of whom, like Sinclair and Gannett, are actually very big) complain they need loopholes like these to "compete with pay TV giants," which -- since they do not actually address any of our complaints about the slashed newsroom staffs and cookie-cutter news reports -- translates roughly as "we deserve more money for not doing any useful work."

The Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) puts out a report enticingly entitled "The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base," which shows us how we could get corporations (which just enjoyed another year of record profits in the middle of Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon) to pay more of their share. Hopefully you'll recognize the good ideas -- a financial transaction or "Robin Hood" tax, taxing investment income the same as almost every other kind of income, ending deferral of offshore profits. Also, hopefully, you'll be able to answer the inevitable BUT HOW WILLZ THA CORPORASHUNZ CREATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!! line with "well, look at what a terrible job they've been doing at that for the last dozen years when we haven't been treating them like the wayward brats they are."

Ho hum, another year, another Paul Ryan budget proposal that makes massive cuts to programs people need, gives millionaires yet more tax cuts they won't use to spur the economy, thinks repealing the Affordable Care Act will save money, and assumes that all the deficit-cutting will spur economic growth, when we all know by now that you have to spend money to make money. I'll admit the Washington Post, in its article, doesn't fawn over him like it used to, but where is the investigative reporting from our "liberal" media that will expose this new budget for the fecal blast it is?

The incomparable Alex Pareene writes about "The great Tea Party swindle: How to make lots of money off the naive." Long story short: "They just raise money and spend it on themselves and their friends." Long story somewhat longer: "they are all spending quite a bit on overhead and 'office expenses' and travel and not that much on actual candidates." Ever hear right-wingers complain that liberal policy initiatives are little more than handouts for liberal cronies? Nice to see the Tea Party is so much different than all of that.

Finally, Duncan Black, who's written a lot about the Iraq war, reminds us why we opposed it, and why we still oppose it. To wit: "Those of us who were against it were against it, in part, because it didn't make any fucking sense at all...The stated reasons were bullshit, the implicit reasons were gibberish." The historians will do little better.

Action: military tyranny, and chemical regulations.

First things first: Egypt's military government plans to execute 528 people, so Avaaz helps you tell Egypt's Grand Mufti Halam to condemn the planned execution. The 528 folks in question supported former President Morsi, but you don't need to know that to oppose their murder. The 528 folks in question took part in a riot that killed one police officer shortly after police broke up two peaceful demonstrations in Cairo and left over 1,000 folks dead, but you don't need to know that to oppose their murder. Independent observers found the trial of the 528 to be rife with violations of due process, but you don't even need to know that to oppose their murder. Even in These Strange Times, we should recognize executing 528 people at once as an act of barbarism, which would be no less barbaric even if undertaken by a more sympathetic leadership. And we should not worry that Grand Mufti Allam will be unduly empowered -- or that the influence of religion in government would unduly increase -- because of any action he might undertake on the behalf of the Minya 528. No one said democracy in Egypt would be easy, but doing the right thing is still doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, the Community for Effective Government helps you tell our government to do more to secure and protect chemical facilities in America. (Deadline for comments on this matter, unfortunately, is today.) You recall the explosion in the West Fertilizers chemical plant in Texas last year, one which resulted in over a dozen deaths, over 200 injuries, and the destruction of a school and a nursing home? You recall that this same chemical plant failed to disclose to the Department of Homeland Security that it held over 1,300 times the amount of ammonium nitrate the law required them to disclose? Well, apparently our government can make chemical corporations use safer chemicals and store chemicals more safely (under authority already granted by Congress in 1991, AMURKIAN CAESAR!!!! fans), and our government can also force chemical corporations to disclose more information to the public and to first responders (many of whom did not know the West, TX facility even had ammonium nitrate). Folks who complain that these regulations will "kill jobs" might well want to appear more concerned with chemical plant explosions that kill people.

Around the table: clowns and jugglers.

Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times does a clever thing: "conceding" that big gummint assistance "saps initiative and is unaffordable," he then goes on to list five examples of corporate welfare, including "welfare subsidies" for planes, yachts, banks, and hedge funds. The worst I can say about it? Paragraph 12 equivocates a bit too much for my taste -- people do try to fix the damage caused by "well-meaning programs," after all.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), ever the clever politician, partially vetoes law imposing restrictions on early/weekend voting, while signing other odious bills restricting asbestos lawsuits and allowing lobbyists more time to donate to candidates. Interesting how the article begins "(a)cting out of the public eye on controversial measures" -- the "liberal" media would undoubtedly prefer it that way, but at least the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel apparently doesn't. The phrase "the legislation as rewritten by Walker" was surely no accident, either.

Pro-GMO non-profit comes up with a putatively fun pro-GMO "mascot" called Frank N. Foode. No, this is not a '70s-era Saturday Night Live skit -- this non-profit created Frank N. Foode (who bears some resemblance to Beaker, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's assistant on The Muppet Show) as a way to "make light," apparently, of all our serious concerns about genetically-modified foods, concerns big corporations take seriously enough to fight GMO-labeling laws to the death. Never trust anyone who has to tell you they're telling a joke -- chances are if you're not already laughing, it's not funny.

Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that over half of Americans -- including over half of political independents -- have had it up to here with all the Obamacare talk already and wish our government would tackle something else already. Somewhere in the "liberal" mediaverse this poll is still excellent news for Republicans!

Finally, Oklahoma state legislator compares accurate reporting of her hateful views on homosexuality with stoning -- and not just of her, but also of God. Further, she declares that her critics "try to ridicule you and make you feel like an idiot so that you’ll be intimidated and not speak out anymore." I doubt she can prove "intimidation," which word does refer to an actual crime, and the rest sounds like how a civil society is supposed to work. And anyone who titles her book The Stoning of (Insert Name Here) deserves but one punishment: never to be spoken of again.