Thieves in the Temple.

Action: fighting unconstitutional war-making and bad GMO labeling standards.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject S.J.Res. 59, an Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) which would greatly expand our President's unconstitutional war-making power, then Win Without War still helps you do that. It doesn't matter which gang of war-mongering weaklings now control our foreign policy, and it doesn't matter what the President's name is -- all of our Presidents since 9.11 have abused the original 2001 AUMF, and by giving present and future Presidents the authority to declare certain forces as being "associated" with the Taliban/al-Qaeda/ISIS and wage war upon them, S.J.Res. 59 would further damage Congress's Constitutional right to declare war. And don't believe the hype that S.J.Res. 59 would provide for "adequate Congressional review," not if you've attended how Congressfolk actually vote when confronted with the "threat" of being called "weak on terror" by rage-addicted fools.

Meanwhile, in a related note, Saudi Arabia has begun its attack on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah -- an attack that threatens to exacerbate Yemen's near-famine conditions, since some 80% of Yemen's food imports go through Hodeidah, and an attack that we are enabling, with intelligence on air strike targeting. If you think you missed the part where Congress declared war on Yemen, well, you didn't: we have assisted Saudi attacks on Yemen, in violation of our Constitution and our laws, since the beginning of the Obama Administration. And for what? To extend Saudi power in the region? To destroy of some of the best ISIS-fighters out there in the Houthi rebels the Saudis are trying to crush? These are questions worth asking! Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with Change.org to help you tell your Congressfolk to invoke the War Powers Act against our enabling of the Saudi attacks on Yemen.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the USDA to dramatically improve its proposed GMO labeling standard, then Just Label It helps you do that. They actually to put a sunflower with a smiley face to signify that a food has genetically-modified ingredients! And they'd use the term "BE" (for "bio-engineered), a term nobody knows, rather than the term "GMO," a term everyone knows. And they're also allowing labels to point you to a we address or use a QR code instead of just writing "this food has GMOs in it." Gosh, it's like they have something to hide! And there is nothing conservative about the USDA proposal. A real conservative would call all that smiley-face QR code crap "bureaucratic red tape." A real conservative would say we should clearly label GMOs so consumers can make their own decisions. And a real conservative would wonder if GMOs will cause more problems than they solve.

Around the table: concerning automation, corruption, wage theft, tax cuts for the rich, more tax cuts for the rich, and rogue ICE agents.

With all the anti-worker hysteria of ZOMG TEH AUTOMATIONZ WILL KILLZ ALL TEH JOBZ!!!!!, Neil Irwin at the New York Times highlights a number of very reasonable solutions we could implement to prevent such a job-ocalypse. These do not include a universal basic income, which right-wingers will use to destroy Medicare and Social Security -- they include work-sharing programs, codifying "maximum employment" policies in law, and shortening monopoly protections for trademarks and patents. But they should also include bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, which really is the thing that will prevent executives from throwing living-breathing workers under the bus for their not-very-well-working machines.

Ho hum, Florida Gov. Rick Scott's decision to issue "emergency contracts" for hurricane cleanup will cost Florida taxpayers at least $28 million more than if he'd relied on existing contracts for hurricane cleanup. I am, of course, reminded of Florida Republican U.S. House Rep. Carlos Curbelo instructing us last August that doing hurricane cleanup the right way saves more money than doing it the quick way, but Gov. Scott spent valuable time and money doing the whole rebidding process over again. Why, that's something you'd do if you were trying to help out your cronies, not protect taxpayers from "special interests"! The POGO general counsel's statement that Mr. Scott's decision did not reflect "good business sense" should be a Democrat campaign ad, but then again, these are Democrats we're talking about.

Sam Pizzigati wonders why big corporations, which can afford not to commit wage theft, still do so. Decline in unions yes, attacks on regulation certainly, but also the simple fact that "(t)he outrageously generous rewards that have become so commonplace in Corporate America give the executives who run our top corporations an ongoing — and almost irresistible — incentive to behave outrageously." Best way to fight the problem at its source? "(E)nd" "eye-popping CEO pay packages." At the risk of beating a dead horse, bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income would be the best way to do that -- certainly better than the so-convoluted-they-must-be-designed-to-fail ways center-right Democrats have come up with over the years.

Remember when tax "reform" supporters in the White House claimed that their tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-for-corporations would put an extra $4,000 in every family's bank account? Well, it's fair to ask where that "$4,000 Raise" went, as Leo Gerard does. Wages actually went down 0.1% for non-supervisory workers from May of last year to May of this year once you factor in inflation -- and I think you would only "forget" to factor in inflation when you're trying to lie about economic policy! -- while less than five percent of American workers got raises or bonuses. Most of that tax-cut largesse, as you probably recall, goes toward executive stock buybacks and higher dividends for shareholders. I may have mentioned this before, but you could run a lot of good ads along the "Where's My Tax Cut?" meme -- you could even send out bloodhounds to find it, like Mitch McConnell did in those ads for his first Senate campaign back in the day. But again, Democrats would have to run these ads, and they wouldn't be civil.

Greg LeRoy at CityLab informs us that workers at Amazon's second headquarters, wherever they build it, will very likely be paying their state taxes directly to their employer, since whichever states "wins" the bid to host HQ2 will be giving massive corporate welfare handouts to Amazon. Where is the state that will stand its ground and say no, you clowns already get to deduct your expenses, so further "deductions" would be immoral, since it would cheat present and future generations of the services they pay for with their taxes? I don't know, since 18 of 50 states are in the running, and maybe the other 32 would like to be, but can't be, for various reasons, possibly including that Amazon would consider a lot of those states "flyover country."

Finally, ICE agents detain 62-year-old man who has permanent resident status and has been in America for literally almost half a century -- over an 18-year-old domestic violence complaint for which the man had already completed probation and anger management. Even if you want to spend valuable time and money combing through all these records for the "bad" immigrants -- hell, even if you want to assert that domestic violence should carry a worse sentence than that! -- you have to respect our nation's traditions and laws enough to leave people alone who have already paid their debt to society as mandated by the court that convicted them. Then again, for a lot of Americans, generally the ones who complain about "law and order" the most, there really is no law and order; there is only whatever satisfies their prejudice and their rage.

Action: internet freedom, email privacy, and robocallers.

Roots Action helps you tell your state government to contract only with internet service providing corporations that respect net neutrality. Net neutrality, as you know, is the principle that demands that ISPs treat all network traffic the same, and that's the same principle that allows you, and not some corporation, to determine where you want to go on the internet. It's also the same principle that the FCC repealed late last year, because for them, corporate "freedom" to bilk us and herd us into junk news ghettoes is more important than our actual freedom to associate freely on the internet. But the state of Montana has already declared it won't contract with corporations that don't respect net neutrality; if enough states follow suit, those corporations are more likely to throw up their hands and keep things more or less the way they are. The FCC will hate it, but they're walnuts in the batter of eternity, and we're not.

Meanwhile, here's a welcome development: the Email Privacy Act, once unanimously passed by the House only to fall to some truly disgusting Senatorial machinations, is now a part of the House's version of the defense authorization bill. Now, the Senate will pass its own version, which might or might not include it, or the two bodies might conference it out -- but that's where we come in, by using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to tell our Senators to include the Email Privacy Act as part of the defense authorization bill. Unlike the poison pills they usually try to attach to defense authorization bills, the Email Privacy Act actually relates to national security, since it would require our government to get a warrant whenever it wants to look at personal emails left on a corporate server. So give your Senators a call; they won't see it coming.

Finally, if you have a cellphone, you're almost certainly getting phone calls from numbers that look like real people but are actually robocallers trying to separate you from your money; I can't tell you how many of these phone numbers I've put through a reverse lookup at Whitepages.com only to find they're "suspected spam" and/or "flagged as scam or fraud." Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to enact the most vigorous possible regulations restricting the power of robocallers to disrupt our lives. Yeah, the FCC is in charge of that, and they don't give one rat's hind quarter about you or I; they only care about their corporate cronies. But said corporate cronies have no particular interest in protecting robocallers, since they're a) extremely unpopular and b) generally small-time crooks at best. And if robocallers induce folks to use their cellphones less frequently, corporations will care about that. So let's get cracking.

Around the table: news about nukes, monopolies, and right-wing snowflakes.

I've been quite patient, but since our President is doing the dance-with-no-pants about it, I'll say it: this nuclear "deal" between our President and North Korea is a nothingburger on a dung bun. I'd ask how any sane person pulls out of an Iran deal that actually keeps Iran from making nukes and then signsa "deal" with North Korea that only gets "assurances" that North Korea will denuclearize, but I know that question answers itself. Could this be the moment when we finally -- finally! -- see significant numbers of mainstream Republicans breaking off from our President? I mean, they're all proud of what defense hawks they are, and while the President's votaries love him, he can't get re-elected without the support of those other Republicans. If they keep mum through this, I shudder to think what will shake them out of their stupor.

John C. O'Day at FAIR notices that the "liberal" media seems happy to report on our President's authoritarian tendencies, but then goes blind about them when they have to confront the fact that we wage war all over the planet and have enough nukes to destroy the world 200 times over. (Dig especially the narrative twist at the end of the third paragraph.) Now, maybe the "liberal" media think that's "balance." You know what I think -- that symmetry isn't balance, and balance isn't fairness. Fairness doesn't obsess over whether all the negative columns are the same size; fairness gives everyone their due, as they've earned it. Yes, I am a little impatient about these matters.

The incomparable David Dayen explains why "The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Ruling Is Bad for the Country." Long story short: modern thinking about antitrusts (first developed during the Reagan era, of course) posits that judges should only evaluate big corporate mergers on the literal dollar-and-cents cost to consumers, "when common sense clearly demonstrates the dangers of concentration." You know, the more power concentrated in the fewer hands, the worse off we all are? You knew it before I said it, but contemporary judges, who study for years to get where they are, pretend they don't know it. It's a damn shame. (Dear trolls: don't spout off about "precedent," since there's plenty of actual precedent -- not to mention the plain text of antitrust law! -- to do antitrust protections the right way, too.)

Virginia Republicans send 2017 almost-gubernatorial nominee/Confederate flag-hugger Corey Stewart up against Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine in this year's U.S. Senate race. Mr. Stewart has promised a "vicious" campaign against Mr. Kaine; maybe he'll outdo Ed Gillespie in that regard. But do you suppose Mr. Stewart will have the smarts to challenge Sen. Kaine on his support for giving the President even more war-making power? After all, wrapping yourself in the Confederate flag will only take you so far, even in Virginia. (Mr. Kaine, for his part, would do better to put "taking health care away from folks" first in any list tabulating Mr. Stewart's bad ideas.)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) -- the man who gives empty suits a bad name -- not only calls criticism of Twitter's CEO for ordering from Chick-Fil-A during Pride Month "bullying" but is even fundraising off it. Ugh, one more time: criticism is not bullying. Gosh, does Mr. Rubio ever hear criticism from any of his friends? Or are they all tired of how he acts when he does? If he really thinks folks are being "bullied" every time someone disagrees with their regressive views on homosexuality, then he's a damn snowflake. Snowflakes deserve representation, of course, but (like the rest of us) they deserve much better than to be represented by other snowflakes in Congress.

Finally, Democrats score yet another special election victory in Wisconsin -- in the Senate 1st District election that Wisconsin's snowflake Governor, Scott Walker, tried his damnedest not to hold! Republicans have held this Senate seat for 40 years, by the way -- and it's up again in five months, and a lot can happen in five months, so who knows, they might take it back. But probably not if now-Sen. Frostman foregrounds health care, tax cuts for the rich, and clean water as his main issues, as he does on his campaign website.

Action: black lung disease, wastewater, and EPA funding.

First things first. The Black Lung Disability Trust Fund -- which, as you can tell by the name, helps coal miners with their extensive health issues -- has never been funded properly, such that the GAO now informs us that it's billions of dollars in debt. Even better, the tax on coal corporations which funds the trust will go down by more than half later on this year! Right-wingers will demand that we fund the trust some other way than making that those "poor" coal CEOs pony up more money, but that's a real Pandora's box right there -- after all, why not fund the trust by, oh, I don't know, repealing corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the rich? Because SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM, that's why. So get a head start on solving this problem for-real for-real by allowing Change.org help you to tell your Congressfolk to support coal miners over coal executives by properly funding the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.

Meanwhile, did you know that the state of Pennsylvania has been spraying gas and oil drilling wastewater on our roads to, get this, keep the dust down? Where carcinogenic and radioactive elements can easily drift into the air or work their way to our water tables? I will smack the next pimp who responds that well, dust is a problem on Pennsylvania roads, as if the mere existence of a problem automatically validates any conceivable solution. A more crafty pimp would say that this "solution" allows gas and oil corporations to "dispose" of their waste without resorting to, say, open-air pits, but, again, the mere existence of a bad solution doesn't automatically validate any other conceivable bad solution. I don't like radioactive and cancer-causing crap when it's on my California strawberries; why would I like it on my roads? Penn Environment helps you tell the state DEP to stop spraying down our roads with wastewater.

Finally, Congress is still trying to gut EPA clean air and clean water programs. How many times must I tell these pimps! Clean air and clean water programs are not BIG GUMMINT GONE AMOK!!!!, nor do they "hurt small businesses" (which certainly don't pollute at the rate fossil fuel corporations pollute!) -- these programs protect the American people, because without clean air and clean water, you can't have healthy Americans. And when you have healthy Americans (will right-wingers follow this line of reasoning?), you have lower health care costs. See? Clean air and clean water programs actually save money -- they just don't deposit those savings directly into fossil fuel CEO bank accounts, so Congress doesn't care about them. So we make them care. The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to put Americans before big donors by fully funding clean air and clean water programs.

Action: unconstitutional war-making, drug policy, and GMO labeling.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is still mulling S.J.Res. 59, the authorization to use military force that would replace the 2001 AUMF (good), but actually expand the President's unconstitutional authority to wage war wherever he likes (so bad it's not worth the good). And this bill has a bipartisan sheen, with three Democratic co-sponsors out of six total. So why is the Senate taking so long to consider it? Because they know it's a pile of dung -- and, more to the point, they know we know it's a pile of dung. I suppose they'll wait until right before the election to jam it through, and squeal about TEH NASHUNUL SECURITEEZ!!!!! when we oppose them, though they're taking so long with it we could easily retort that it must not really be that important. Now would be a good time to call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to reject S.J.Res. 59.

Meanwhile, H.R. 6043/S. 3032, the STATES Act, would allow states that have legalized marijuana to enforce their own marijuana laws without interference from our federal government. Oddly, our President has endorsed this bill, setting up yet another quarrel with his Attorney General, Mr. Sessions, who acts like pot is the root of all evil. Less oddly, though, the STATES Act has almost as many Republican sponsors (in both House and Senate versions) as Democratic sponsors. Why, it almost looks like actual bipartisanship, in that both parties seem to like it and the American people seem to like it! Why do I suspect we're being set up for a massive disappointment -- say, when the House version passes, but the Senate weighs it down with poison pill amendments? None of that will matter if we speak up loudly enough, so the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support sane drug policy by passing the STATES Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the USDA to enact a real genetically-modified food-labeling standard, and not the BS one they're trying to enact, then MoveOn still helps you do that. Some things haven't changed with the change in Administrations, and one of them is the USDA's determination to pretend they're enacting a "clear" GMO labeling standard when they're obviously trying their damnedest not to. You don't exempt sugars and oils from your standard, since just about everything has one or other in it. You don't exempt gene-editing from your standard as if "gene editing" somehow isn't "genetic modification." And you certainly don't let corporations put hifalutin scanning codes or website addresses on their labels in lieu of a simple statement like this product has GMOs in it. The USDA also literally put a happy face on some of their sample GMO logos! You have to ask: what are they so afraid of?

Around the table: on "Establishment" Democrats, asylum seekers, internet freedom, and voting rights.

Here's a great article by Richard Eskow at the OurFuture blog, reminding us that "Establishment Wins are Bad for Democrats -- and the Country." I mean, if the Democratic establishment was so great, Hillary Clinton would be President right now and Democrats would control the Senate. Say what you want about Republicans (I do!), but they sure know how to get new blood every few years or so, while Democrats constantly wage war on all their new blood. (Mr. Eskow also reminds us that Tha Bush Mobb paved the way for our current President, and yes people sure do look at those years with rose-colored glasses anymore. I remember those years; they sucked. And the subsequent eight years of a Democrat establishment sucked only a little less -- and also paved the way for our current predicament.)

Our Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4 decision, upholds the state of Ohio's ongoing effort to purge voters from the registration rolls for missing one election. It's bad when the dissent accuses the majority of having simply misread the law. Justice Alito essentially argues that the right to vote -- specifically, the right not to be deregistered simply because you haven't voted, a right actually codified in federal law -- is less important than the "right" of states to "clean up" their voting rolls. Call me old-fashioned, but I think state administrations should serve people, not the other way around.

Attorney General Sessions orders immigration judges to curtail asylum grants to gang violence and domestic violence victims. If the countries from which they came could actually protect these good people from such violence, I'd agree with Mr. Sessions's decision, but since they can't, it just looks cruel. And Mr. Sessions has no business saying America can't let everyone in, when America finds it fairly easy to let in cheap labor for our President's resorts and our President's winery. Seriously, once we end corporate "free" trade deals, enact a $15/hour minimum wage, and repeal the exclusion of farm workers from the National Labor Relations Act's protections, our government will be in a far better position to be as compassionate as its people are.

The ACLU instructs us as to "How Net Neutrality Will End." Long story short: as I said yesterday, freedoms die better a bit at a time. Long story somewhat longer: "Once June 11 comes and goes, we should expect the ISPs will do little to nothing in response. Then, after some time has passed, they will point to their inaction as proof we were wrong to distrust them and their promises not to violate net neutrality in the absence of a federal mandate. And guess what will happen next? Drip. Drip. Drip. And before we know it, a flood will have washed away the free and open internet we all rely on." Pay special attention to the second sentence in that quoted passage, since that'll also be the Republicans' answer if Democrats actually run pro-net neutrality ads this year. Remember, also, that most big telecom corporations are monopolies in the media markets in which they operate, so when one of them starts censoring websites, you and I can't just "go buy from someone else."

Republican candidate for the New Jersey's 2nd U.S. House district says "(t)he whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American." There's really no putting lipstick on that pig (the "whole" idea? Really?), especially in a country where most folks think the whole idea of who-you-know elitism is un-American. Now, maybe this fellow thinks facing a right-wing Democrat in the general election lets him be as obnoxious as he wants to be (I wonder where he got that idea!), but in New Jersey, which the President lost by 14 points and where a seven-term incumbent Republican got turned out of New Jersey's 5th for being too stridently anti-gay, he could mark himself as someone too obnoxious to hold public office.

Finally, a U.S. District judge in Indiana has issued an injunction against an Indiana state law that would automatically deregister voters who appear on the notorious "Interstate Crosscheck" database. That'll probably hold until after the midterms -- but eventually the Supreme Court will gets its hands on it, and given how they ruled in the Ohio case (second paragraph above), they'll probably reinstate it. Where is the plaintiff who will assert that deregistering a voter based on appearance in a ridiculous database constitutes punishing someone without proving they committed a crime? I mean, that's the law-and-order argument, and I'd like to see Neil Gorsuch squirm in his seat after being confronted with it.

Action: fighting for internet freedom, law and order, and clean water.

Net neutrality officially ended yesterday. You may not have noticed, possibly because the big telecoms are awaiting the results of a litany of lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality repeal, or possibly because they're waiting to see if the House follows the Senate's lead and passes the "resolution of disapproval" that would reverse the FCC's repeal -- but most likely because Jesus Mary and Joseph even the big telecoms aren't that stupid! If Comcast or Verizon were to suddenly, say, put data caps on everyone's broadband today, or start censoring websites today, their customers would clog their phone lines for days! No, the big telecoms know, just like all corporations know: deprive people of their freedoms a little at a time, and they tend not to notice -- or revolt. Let's stop this catastrophe by telling our House Reps to sign on to the discharge petition that would force a vote on the aforementioned "resolution of disapproval," as Consumer Reports helps us do.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the UAE plan to attack the Hodeidah port in Yemen, through which 80% of the nation's food exports pass through, which would make the already-near-famine conditions in Yemen considerably worse. I know someone is responding to that news with a shrug and a well, that's war, you hit your enemies where it hurts them the most. The problem with that philosophy -- besides, you know, the cruel way it makes a game of life and death -- is that Yemen is not our enemy, and our government continues to arm Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, in violation of both our Constitution's War Powers clause and the 1973 War Powers Act. Hence Just Foreign Policy helps you tell your Congressfolk to use our leverage as the most powerful nation on Earth to stop this planned attack on Yemen. Why, even the Washington Post opposes this attack -- and they usually cheer on our war-making! That should be a sign.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5609, the WATER Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. What would the WATER Act do? The WATER Act would allocate $35 billion annually to improving clean water and wastewater infrastructure. You remember our President running on infrastructure, right? And you remember how the state government of Michigan poisoned Flint's drinking water? And you've been hearing about how thousands of American neighborhoods have twice the lead poisoning levels as Flint did? It's hard to imagine your Congressfolk opposing making good Americans' drinking water cleaner, isn't it? I kid, of course -- it's not hard to imagine our Congressfolk being the cruel and heartless people they too often actually are. That's why we communicate our will to them -- and it's also why we shame them when they ignore our will. (We could turn them out of office a lot more easily, too, if Democrats would actually stand for things.)

Action: fairer sentencing, governmental corruption, and equal rights for gays.

First things first: the Pennsylvania state legislature will vote this week on whether to implement a "risk assessment" tool for sentencing guidelines. Philip K. Dick stories make good movies, not good laws, and if you saw "risk assessment" and thought "another way to put black people in prison for longer," you win a prize! I guess our state legislators want credit for recognizing that folks of color do, in fact, have it harder than white folks do in many ways, but you and I could think of a thousand better ways to fix that. And, strictly speaking, we can't predict whether an individual will commit more crimes once out of prison -- and it is individuals we'd be sending to jail, after all! -- and moreover we shouldn't, not if we really believe in rehabilitating prisoners, not if we really believe in giving folks a second chance after they've paid their debt to society. Hence Color of Change helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject "risk assessment" for sentencing.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to get rid of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, then Climate Truth still helps you do that. It is kind of a shame that if he does get fired, or resign under pressure -- and almost half of Congress has called for his head at this writing! -- he'll be remembered not as the man who tried to gut clean air and clean water laws and wasn't even particularly good at that, but as the man who pulled every lever of power he could in order to get perks for himself and his family. Our President, you may recall, declared his support for the beleaguered Mr. Pruitt months ago, possibly (as some have speculated) because he wanted Mr. Pruitt on hand in case he fired his Attorney General, Mr. Sessions. But now that yet another Fox News bloviator with the President's ear, Jeannie Pirro, appears to want Mr. Sessions's job, maybe that'll make Mr. Pruitt obsolete in our President's eyes. Even if it puts yet another Fox News shouting head in our government, it'd be good to get rid of Scott Pruitt.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2282/S. 1006, the Equality Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Equality Act would extend Civil Rights Act protections to gays, so that (to give a few examples) landlords couldn't kick them out for being gay, bosses couldn't fire them for being gay, and businesses couldn't deny them services because they're gay. Do you suppose this is a useless task because this Congress, which seems only to care about hurting the American people and delivering more taxpayer money to their corporate cronies, would never pass it? Please disabuse yourself of that notion if you have it, because fighting for justice is never useless -- if nothing else, we can get members of Congress on the record about whether they'd vote for the Equality Act or not, and if they say they'd vote against it, regardless of whatever nonsensical justification they might offer, we have many tools to embarrass them in public. Remember: civilized folks do shame those who deserve it.

Around the table: in which we examine gutting pre-existing condition bans, letting businesses turn away folks of color, and other stupid ideas.

Our Administration plans to argue that the Affordable Care Act is null and void now that its mandate no longer carries a financial penalty. Are there really that many people out there who still feel so angry that Barack Obama passed the Heritage Foundation's health care plan from the '90s? Because I bet more people would be angry if our Administration succeeds in getting rid of the pre-existing conditions ban, which is what striking down the Affordable Care Act would do. And not even five months before midterms!

Thanks to the vagaries of social media algorithms, yesterday I came across Neil Clark's 2014 requiem for Pete Seeger in The American Conservative called "Pete Seeger's Conservative Socialism," and Mr. Clark explains why healthy civilizations need conservatism better than I've done any of the 500 times I've tried to do it. I don't mean, of course, that healthy civilizations need what passes for contemporary "conservatism," with its corporatism, nativism, and politically-correct swordfighting -- I mean something more like "a vision of the ideal society" "rooted firmly in the past," a vision that fights selfishness instead of worshiping at its altar, and a vision that just so happens to reject "culture wars" and asks whether technological advances will wind up making our problems worse. We need real conservatism to root us so we can make real progress in delivering justice to those who deserve it; too bad the "conservatism" you see on TV is all people shouting at you.

South Dakota state legislator claims that businesses should be able to turn away folks of color if they like -- adding that "(p)eople shouldn’t be able to use their minority status to bully a business," which, like, wow, misunderstand the nature of power much? Always these clowns want businesses to have more rights than people! The legislator later apologized for his statement (after scrubbing it from his Facebook page, of course), but, ah, what apology is possible once you've said you're pro-discrimination? And didn't he get the memo from our President, that apologies for your obnoxious comments are no longer necessary?

Mitt Romney says our President will "solidly" win re-election in 2020. I'm inclined to agree that our President, despite his abominable term thus far, is in a very good position for re-election, but I utterly disagree with Mr. Romney's reasoning that Democrats likely nominating a "fringe" candidate (cough Bernie Sanders cough) is one of the reasons why. I would argue -- indeed, have argued -- that nominating yet another let's-all-get-along-but-inevitably-compromised moderate is the surest way to ensure our President's re-election. You don't beat a freak with a candidate like that.

Should we be that upset that the DNC has adopted a rule stating that all Democratic Presidential candidates must declare themselves to be Democrats? I mean, yes, it looks like it's aimed squarely at Bernie Sanders, and it gives the appearance of having learned exactly the wrong lesson from 2016, but Mr. Sanders actually has run in numerous Democratic primaries in Vermont and won them, only to decline the nominations and then run in general elections as an independent. So the rule change might more likely affect the attempt of some billionaire (cough Mark Cuban cough Tom Steyer cough) or some movie star (cough The Rock cough) to run in Democratic primaries.

Finally, gosh what a mess Scott Pruitt has gotten himself into because he can't keep his grubby hands off of anything. Surely Chris Christie (the first, and fired, head of the Administration transition team) would have found an EPA Administrator who'd gut clean air and clean water regulations without being so obviously corrupt. Alas, we have Scott Pruitt, who uses people, and uses them up. Our President must find him quite the kindred spirit.

Action: expanding Social Security yea, birth control "gag rules" nay, and corporate welfare for fossil fuel corporations nay.

You may have heard of the sure-looks-coordinated attacks on Social Security from various local Fox TV stations in late May, so now Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Social Security benefits, not cut them. If your right-wing uncle demands to know where they money for that is going to come from, remind him that income over $128,400 doesn't even get taxed into Social Security. And certainly push back against the Social-Security-running-out-of-money hysteria, because the Social Security Trustees report for 2018 tells us that Social Security will pay out full benefits up until 2034 (and then pay out almost 80% of benefits thereafter); if we taxed income over $128,400 into the system, we could make Social Security fully solvent even further into the future and expand benefits so our seniors can have more to live on. Why would we not do this? Because our leaders are worse than thieves? Should we really let that stop us?

Meanwhile, our Administration has proposed a regulation that would deny federal Title X funding to any family planning organizations that provide abortions, or refer folks to other abortion providers. This would, naturally, have the effect of denying any basic family planning help (including birth control and STD testing) to poor working families, since they're the ones who most depend on the agencies that get federal funding. And these agencies would very likely stop referring families to a procedure that's, you know, legal. All this, so our Administration can keep diddling the rage glands of right-wingers! I still hope that pro-lifers will one day see how the right has used them all these years; if right-wing politicians really cared about abortion, of course, they'd put a Constitutional amendment up for a vote, but I guess they think it's better "politics" to keep pro-lifers angry than to work to give them what they want. In any case, the Administration "gag rule" is bad public policy, so the ACLU helps you tell our Administration to scuttle its "gag rule" proposal.

Finally, our Administration has also proposed forcing utilities to buy from coal and nuclear power plants. Does that sound like the "free market at work" to you? They're hoping it sounds more like "securing the electric grid" to you, and they're also hoping that solar and wind power -- which are starting to compete, price-wise, with the more traditional energy sources -- will strike you as "insecure" power sources. They're not, of course -- the coal industry is full of its TEH SUN SETZ TEH WIND DIEZ!!!! billboards, but the sun always comes up in the morning, the wind always picks up again, and there is such a thing as battery storage. Meanwhile, giving bailouts to industries that are flailing -- not so coal miners won't lose their jobs, but so coal CEOs won't lose their 19th vacation homes -- doesn't exactly testify to a commitment to national economic security. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell our Energy Department to scuttle its plan to give welfare handouts to big coal and nuclear power corporations.

Around the table: what about America don't right-wingers get? And other questions.

Buried deep in this account of the sudden disappearance of a political cartoonist's work from the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is its new editorial director, one Keith Burris, claiming that our activism against this Administration constitutes "a mania, a fever, a hissy fit by the self-anointed guardians of all that is good and enlightened in America." Setting aside that, just as "Bush derangement syndrome" more aptly described the behavior of Bush Mobb supporters, the "mania," "fever," and "hissy fits" all come from the President and his votaries: does Mr. Burris not know that this is America? In America, we are, all of us, in fact, "self-appointed guardians" of civilization. That's how America is supposed to work. It's what separates us from aristocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships. And if you think I look down on you for no good reason, your task, as an American -- as a guardian of civilization! -- is most pointedly not to whine about it. Your task is to prove me wrong, and change my mind. If you can't, you may want to consider whether that's your failing, not mine.

Our President can't stop jerking off to our low unemployment numbers, but we should remember that the "official" unemployment rate doesn't count people who've stopped looking for work, or people who work part-time but would rather work full-time. Worse, the U6 rate that supposedly counts these people -- now at 7.6%, or about twice the official unemployment rate -- may not even be that accurate! Economist Robert Pollin suggests that when you consider that the percentage of adults in the workforce is considerably lower than it was 10 years ago, the real unemployment rate could be as high as 11%. That's before you get to the fact that we don't make the money we used to, for reasons including the decline of unions and the rise of outsourcing. (Mr. Pollin also says our government needs to invest in a "Green New Deal" that creates renewable energy jobs, and of course he's right about that.)

Perhaps sensing he's under fire for avoiding meeting with his Consumer Advisory Board as mandated by law, CFPB acting director Mick Mulvaney fires all 25 members of the Consumer Advisory Board, and tells them they can't reapply, almost certainly as a prelude to packing the Board with banksters. And dig the CFPB spokeshack suggesting that the fired Advisory Board members are upset because they might lose their "taxpayer funded junkets to Washington" where they're supposedly "wined and dined by the Bureau"! I hope most Americans understand that if you cared that much about perks, you'd never go into consumer protection advocacy.

U.S. District Judge rules that our Administration cannot, in fact, deny municipalities certain law enforcement funding because they won't go beyond the law in cooperating with the Administration's efforts to find undocumented immigrants. All the Administration would have to do is get the right warrants, but ball-swingers don't do that -- instead, they tell bald lies about immigrant "crime spikes" and violate the Constitution and the law, particularly the Administrative Procedure Act. Remember the Administrative Procedure Act, because it helps prevent the Executive branch from doing whatever the fuck it likes, and it may hang a few other Executive branch initiatives (like maybe the FCC's net neutrality repeal) before too long.

Finally, we learn that advertisers have been fleeing the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham programs at the Fox News Channel. Apparently their pro-Administration stance doesn't endear them to advertisers anymore, and I'm sure Mr. Hannity's brain-dead conspiracy theories and Ms. Ingraham's attacks on school shooting survivors don't help. In the absence of a la carte cable packaging, which would allow us to simply not pay for channels that disgust us, shaming advertisers into abandoning shows is about our best tool for bringing morality and sanity back to America.

Action: the "war on terror," living wages, and immigration policy.

Amnesty International helps you demand that our government account for its actions in Raqqa. As you may know, ISIS left Raqqa, its self-styled "capitol," late last year, but (as you may also recall) 250 ISIS fighters got to leave Raqqa with their families and all the weapons they could carry in a literally three-mile-long convoy. The good citizens of Raqqa should have been so lucky! We bombed the crap out of Raqqa, reducing it to rubble and killing entire families of civilians despite yammering on about "precision" bombing. What do you suppose we were aiming at, precisely? Perhaps we were aiming at "perpetuating the 'war on terror' forever so that voters will feel no choice but to cling to bad leaders." Of course, crippling a city's ability to function while getting no assurance that a well-armed ISIS won't be back sure doesn't sound like the result of good leadership. But perhaps good leadership can begin again -- with accountability.

Meanwhile, Good Jobs Nation (along with other good government groups) helps you tell the Disney corporation to start paying its workers a living wage. Disney rakes in the dough, and its CEO made $36 million last year, but Disney's workers are like the rest of us, trying to figure out which bills they can get away with not paying this month because they don't make enough money. Oh, and an astounding two-thirds of Orange County (CA) Disneyland workers report not being able to put enough food on the table, with 10 percent of them reporting recent homelessness. Disneyland wages have gone down over the years, in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, and no, these ain't all young kids getting their first job -- a little over two out of five workers are over 30, with a little less than one in five are over 54. Don't they all deserve a job that pays enough for them to make ends meet? They are human beings, after all.

Finally, Roots Action (along with other good government groups) helps you tell Attorney General Sessions to stop splitting up children from their parents during border crossings. We told Congress to rein in this activity the other day, but really it's Mr. Sessions's job to do it, since he insists on a "zero tolerance" policy toward border crossings -- never mind whether some of these folks might have a legitimate case for asylum! -- which results in the forced separation of children and parents. The bad news? The President's most devoted followers really do believe this is the best (i.e., "toughest") way to go about things, and they may even think so because these immigrants are generally brown and black. The good news? These people didn't just emerge -- they're the same people the right-wing noise machine has been marching around from one manufactured outrage to another for decades now. And they don't get all the say around here!

Action: the Equality Act yea, state-sanctioned racism nay, and investigating Betsy DeVos yea.

In light of the Supreme Court's Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado decision -- which reversed a lower court decision concerning a cake shop that wouldn't bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, but affirmed that our Constitution doesn't bestow a "right to discriminate" to businesses that serve the public -- the ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2282/S. 1006, the Equality Act. What would the Equality Act do? It would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that its protections explicitly include gay and transgender folks, which would go a long way toward fighting the "religious" "conscience" objections, since no one (at least for now!) asserts a right to discriminate against people of color based on, for example, the Hamitic myth. But too many good Americans claim a "right" to discriminate simply by saying "Jesus told me." Replace the word "Jesus" with, say, the word "Moloch," and you'd see how absurd that is.

Meanwhile, Free Press helps you tell the FBI to drop the "Black Identity Extremist" label it's been using to spy on black activists. You and I may see peaceful black protestors in the streets, but the FBI sees "violent extremists," and it's no use arguing that they're just preparing for the worst, not when this kind of "preparing for the worst" causes violence. And not with this President in office, the one sieg-heiled by various Nazi wannabes before he was inaugurated, the one who didn't know hate crimes were on the rise after his inauguration though he already knew who was criticizing him on Twitter, the one who thinks black NFL players should maybe be deported for not standing at attention while the national anthem is playing. I mean, seriously, where's the "white identity extremist" label describing a far, far larger share of domestic terrorism? Nowhere to be found -- unless the FBI is contemplating a "fine people" label that means the same thing.

Finally, MoveOn helps you tell the Department of Education's Inspector General to investigate some of the strange doings of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. You remember Ms. DeVos, don't you? The one who couldn't get confirmed by the Senate without Vice President Pence's tie-breaking vote? Her tenure hasn't exactly taken off from there -- you could point to protestors following her everywhere or her failure to visit impoverished public schools or her apparent cluelessness in a recent 60 Minutes interview, but the Inspector General won't investigate that stuff, because it's just embarrassing. Now, her order to scuttle thousands of civil rights cases because they had a backlog? Her getting rid of the unit that looks into for-profit college fraud? Her delay of loan forgiveness for students defrauded by said for-profit colleges? The Inspector General sure as hell could look into all of that, because it might represent law-breaking.

Around our table: how print media dies, and other lessons.

Sarah Posner at The Nation discusses why the Supreme Court's recent Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling "Is Not as Harmless as You Think." Long story short: while the Court affirmed that the decision doesn't confer a right to discrimination on the basis of "religious" "conscience," the Court sure did turn over every rock in Colorado trying to find some evidence of "animus" against religion, and everyone who's ever heard a public official say religious bigots are knuckle-draggers now has a reason to try again. (Justice Kennedy's obsession with "animus" hasn't come out of the blue, though -- his finding of an "animus" against gays in Colorado's notorious Amendment 2 led him to strike it down.)

Why is the Denver Post laying off journalists left and right, you may be wondering? Well, in a CounterSpin interview, we learn that the banksters who bought the Post demand double-digit profits and think the best way to accomplish that is to hemorrhage jobs. And make the writers fill a three-byline quota daily (as if stories don't depend on work or something!), which results in even more rewritten PR releases. It's hard for those of us who work for a living to comprehend, but the biggest money-makers in America don't have better ideas or even better processes anymore; they just know how to suck the marrow out of an almost-dead body. And then they call themselves "job creators" and look down on you and I for "not working as hard as they do"! It's fucking un-American, frankly.

Ho hum, a lot of people who wrote that steaming piece of a tax "reform" bill are now going to work as lobbyists for the big corporations who benefit the most from that legislation. If you respond that this is as-it-should-be-because-it's-always-been-this-way, you'll want to consider more closely whether these folks might have written legislation the way they did because they knew they could cash in on their "expertise" more easily. You might also think of some other things that used to be always-this-way (you know, like segregation) and maybe demand a little more of your values than you're doing now.

After our President disinvited the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles from a White House visit in yet another manic fit of whining self-pity, the Fox News (sic) Channel, in reporting on the matter, showed photographs of several Eagles players, including tight end Zach Ertz, supposedly kneeling during the anthem, when these players were actually praying before the game. After Mr. Ertz dressed them down publicly on Twitter, Fox News admitted the error and apologized for it, but defensive end Chris Long wasn't impressed, and he shouldn't be: FNC knows full well that their million-plus votaries have already seen the report and diddled their rage glands over it, so Mission Accomplished! (As an aside, our President sure seems to have summoned a thundercloud in Reggie Bush.)

Finally, some good news: a Maine Superior Court justice has ruled that Maine Gov. Paul LePage (E) must implement the Medicaid expansion voters approved last year. You know, it's easy to take pot-shots at Paul LePage for his apparently bottomless cruelty, so let's just recall that he grew up a very poor Franco-American, suffered at the hand of an abusive, alcoholic father, was literally homeless for about a year as a pre-teen, and even though he worked hard in high school still couldn't get into college until a Maine state legislator named Pete Snowe (yep, the late husband of the former U.S. Senator) convinced said college to give him his entrance exam in French and vouched for his ability to catch up with his English. Let all that sink in, and then be sad at how thoroughly he's forgotten where he came from.

Action: internet freedom, voting security, and immigration.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your House Rep to vote in favor of H.J.Res. 129, the "resolution of disapproval" that would invalidate the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal, then you can call your Reps using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone). Rep. Doyle (D-PA) has filed a discharge petition to force a vote on H.J.Res. 129, and if we assume that all 193 House Democrats will sign it (as of May 24, 124 had done so), we'll still need 25 Republicans to get on board, since a discharge petition needs 218 votes to force a vote. All that means is that we'll have to phone them until they do come on board -- and net neutrality has been an actual bipartisan cause in the past, so it shouldn't be so damn hard. But we have less than a week before the FCC's net neutrality repeal goes into full effect -- so, for the sake of our freedom to go where we want to go on the internet, instead of where some corporation would prefer us to go, we must act.

Meanwhile, we've known for a long time that our elections could be a lot more secure -- and now, even our Congressfolk seem to agree, what with the Senate Intelligence Committee calling for paper ballot elections. Hence Sign Here Now helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that will really secure American elections. Specifically, you would ask Congress to do four things: one, audit elections to ensure they're running right; two, require paper ballot elections (or, at the least, paper trails for electronic ballot elections); three, allow all Americans to vote by mail; and four, develop a plan to respond to foreign attacks on our elections. I don't care that much that Congress is more afraid of TEH RUSSIANZ!!!!! than the nefarious American forces trying to steal your vote; I care more that Congress does the right thing. And we should certainly demand that they do the right thing. You'd think they wouldn't need any prompting to do the right thing, but here we are.

Finally, our Administration has gotten into the nasty habit of separating immigrant children from their parents when they try to cross the border together -- because they're treating border crossings as criminal cases, not civil cases, and when you do that, you must, by law, separate parents and children. So, naturally, our President blames TEH DEMOCRATZ!!!!, because they don't march in jackboot lockstep with his agenda. Sad! The linked report from two sentences ago describes, in some detail, how child-parent separation in this instance is a result of many laws and policies, but Congress can fix this, no, not by just doing whatever the President wants, but by pursuing legislation that restrains him and his bottomless desire to stoke rage in his acolytes. Thus the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to force our President to pursue more humane immigration policy that doesn't force the separation of parents and children.

Action: Puerto Rico, Palestine, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

In light of the New England Journal of Medicine study suggesting that the actual death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria is at least twelve times higher than the official death count, Climate Hawks Vote helps you tell your Congressfolk to do more to ensure Puerto Rico's recovery from the Hurricane. Specifically, you'd ask Congress to offer Puerto Rico more aid and more debt forgiveness, help Puerto Rico rebuild so that it stays in public hands and uses more renewable energy, and investigate our Administration's incompetence in helping Puerto Rico rebuild. I rate the first two items as the most important -- banksters have saddled Puerto Rico with debt the way they saddled Greece with debt, and those same banksters would love nothing more than to privatize Puerto Rico's power grid. They call it an opportunity to steal more of the people's wealth, but I call it an opportunity to do things right, and we should make the best of it.

Meanwhile, with "liberal" media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict so weighted toward Israel, Roots Action helps you tell "liberal" media outlets to provide more coverage of Palestinian activists and victims, and more context for reports of violence in the region. Roots Action's petition also helps you demand that reporting on Israeli killing of Palestinians "use the active voice," which is to say, none of this "such-and-such number of people died in a clash" when the actual story is "Israeli forces killed x number of Palestinians." You know that "liberal" media types, who are so proud of knowing so much more about writing than you or I, will be insulted to be told to use active verbs. As you know, they have the same problem discussing police killings -- though not Palestinian killings of Israelis. The American people are nowhere near as one-sided about these issues as our elites in government and media are -- and our media need to recognize that.

Finally, Illinois recently became the 37th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. But wait, you may be asking, didn't the Equal Rights Amendment expire decades ago? Well, it's true that Congress did write the Equal Rights Amendment with an expiration, but it's also true that the Constitution plainly does not require an amendment to be passed within a certain period of time -- in fact, Congress first passed the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (concerning Congressional pay) in 1789, but the 38th state didn't ratify it until 1992, or 203 years later, if you're keeping score at home. So United4Equality helps you call your Congressfolk and tell them to support H.J.Res. 53/S.J.Res. 5, which would excise the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment, thus bringing it back to life. (Don't believe it if ERA opponents try to tell you that changing the amendment would, or should, require a revote -- Congress changes laws all the time, and doesn't require revotes on those laws when they do!)

Around the table: describing yet another measure of the cost of this Presidency.

Ho hum, our Administration plans to try, again, to force utilities to buy their power from otherwise-failing coal and nuclear power plants, under the guise of "national security." You'd think a truly strong nation wouldn't be so reliant on power sources that are losing more and more money (particularly nuclear power plants, which rarely if ever make money and too often require "loan guarantees," which we might better describe as "taxpayer bailouts"). And no, this isn't about protecting coal miner jobs; it's about gilding the plumbing in coal and nuclear CEOs' 19th vacation homes.

Gregory Shupak at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media, when covering the Israel-Palestine conflict, just about never considers a one-state solution within which Israelis and Palestinians would have equal rights. No use telling me that these folks "just can't get along," when you know as well as I do that all kinds of folks get along quite well until some selfish actor starts blaring in their ear. Also, too, one side having vastly superior firepower and foreign economic support does tend to make conflicts "historic."

Beth Schwartzapfel at The Marshall Project explains why those $2 or $5 co-pays prisoners need to see doctors are actually quite onerous. Long story short: because they hardly make any damn money to begin with! Long story somewhat longer: when you make literally five cents an hour, as those at the bottom of the wage scale do in Oklahoma, a $4 co-pay is more like a $580 co-pay. And if you're tempted to say well, co-pays discourage unnecessary doctor's visits, you may want to consider whether it actually discourages necessary doctor's visits, and thus increases inmate health care costs, which of course are borne by the taxpayer one way or the other. How about that -- the compassionate solution is also the fiscally-responsible solution.

I'd taken it for granted that the NFL could force its players to stand and "respect" the flag and the national anthem, however stupid they'd look for doing so, but Kathy Wilkes at In These Times argues that the NFL owners' recent actions might actually be illegal. Suing our President for attempting to "influence or threaten to influence a private employment decision" might be an uphill battle (even on the merits!), but the players have a much better case against the NFL if it imposed its ban without bargaining with the players at all, as sure seems to be the case.

Finally, in a truly shocking development, we learn that the cost to the taxpayer of sending our President to his Mar-a-Lago resort has so far exceeded the cost to the taxpayer of Robert Mueller's investigation of said President's possible lawbreaking in re his ties to Russia. Now guess which "cost" our President has been whining about on Twitter. You may also recall that the cost of sending our President to Mar-a-Lago also dwarfs at least one other "cost" our President has found onerous -- that of taking care of the health care needs of our transgender soldiers. The good news? His venality, though it knows no bounds, doesn't reflect on the American people -- it reflects on American elites, who have spent the last several decades screwing everything up. They deserve each other.

Around the table: including items about protests, banksters, and internet freedom.

Let's begin and end with good news today: D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin dismisses felony conspiracy charges with prejudice (meaning prosecutors can't bring the charges again) for ten J20 defendants. Our government can't seem to put any Inauguration Day protestors in jail, which tends to happen when you round up too many people, overcharge them, and keep evidence that might exonerate them away from the trial. But if you're tempted to think that we can't be an authoritarian nation now because this particular group of would-be authoritarians is incompetent, remember that incompetent people are still dangerous.

Speaking of dangerous incompetence, the Federal Reserve has proposed a revision of the so-called Volcker Rule, which aims to protect consumers by forcing banks to prevent their proprietary trading from destroying their customers' assets, that would of course let banksters self-regulate more. Remember: when they say a regulation is "too complicated to enforce," they really mean "doing the right thing is hard and we're lazy." If you recall how banksters whined about getting only five years to separate their basic banking and investing functions, you know I'm right.

If you find yourself feeling sympathetic with Papua New Guinea's apparent desire to ban Facebook within its borders, well, I wouldn't entirely blame you, but I would urge you to remember that Facebook is a tool, and if people misuse the tool, that might reflect more on those people than on the tool. You might also want to consider (and the article takes too long to get to this point, in my opinion) whether Papua New Guinea's real problem with Facebook is that too many good citizens are using Facebook to expose government corruption.

Dean Baker catches the New York Times suggesting that Italy leaving the EU would not square with "economic logic," although you might think "economic logic" would suggest that countries that can actually control their own currency can withstand economic downturns more easily. Well, if you're obsessed with TEH PRINTINGZ MONEYZ!!!!!, maybe you don't think that, or much of anything else. And n.b., again, the "liberal" media self-pity! They imagine that it's "impolitic" to say Italy should stay with the Euro, when more likely it's just stupid.

Ho hum, the White House appears to be ignoring requests for information from the Government Accountability Office (or GAO). This doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing that should be legal. So I guess now we'll have to pass laws making the Executive branch talk to Congress's investigative arm, since this Executive branch runs away from the chance to be accountable to the people's representatives in Congress. (Don't read the comments, by the way, because a troll has infected them.)

Finally, the California state Senate passes a net neutrality bill that the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls "a gold standard for states looking to protect net neutrality. The bill would restore the internet protections enshrined in the FCC's 2015 Open Internet order -- you know, the one Ajit Pai's FCC repealed -- but it would also prevent internet service providing corporations from exempting some corporate content from monthly data caps, a practice known as "zero-rating." The bill still has to get through the state House and then be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, who seems like the kind of guy who'd like it, but who is also quite the mercurial fellow.

Action: fighting unlawful detainment, gerrymandering, and Social Security fearmongering.

Toffiq al-Bihani has spent the last 16 years in the Guantánamo Bay detainment camp -- despite having been cleared to leave Guantánamo since 2010, with the Saudi Arabian government agreeing to take him back. Has he been charged with anything in all that time? Of course not. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think it's un-American to stick somebody in a cell for over 16 years without charging them with something. And those who would protest that he's not an American, so he has no rights really need to read the previous sentence and then drink a big glass of STFU. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell our government to release Mr. al-Bihani. You may notice that Amnesty addresses your email to Defense Secretary Mattis, which I guess is an admission that addressing the missive to our President would be a big waste of time. Still, might as well talk to the last remotely sane person in our President's war cabinet, as long as he's there.

Meanwhile, closer to home, SB 22, the famous anti-gerrymandering, redistricting reform bill, will get a Pennsylvania state Senate vote next week, and if it passes -- which seems likely, since it received a unanimous vote out of committee -- it will then move on to the state House; meanwhile, with the nefarious Daryl Metcalfe (E) gutting previous House-introduced anti-gerrymandering bills in the House State Government Committee he apparently rules with an iron fist, HB 722 has been reborn as HB 2402. Hence Fair Districts PA helps you tell PA House Speaker Mike Turzai to ensure that these redistricting reform bills get the hearing they deserve. Like, say, not in Mr. Metcalfe's committee, since Mr. Metcalfe actually came out and said that if Democrats like it, he's not going to do it. When one man acts like a dictator, the rest of us must stand up to him -- until he stands down.

Finally, you may have heard that more than five dozen Fox local TV affiliates ran news reports in late May suggesting that Social Security will start running out of money in just a few years and that benefit cuts are coming. Why, I'm old enough to remember when Social Security was going to run out of money in 2016! Seriously, acting like benefit cuts is TEH ONLY OPTIONZ!!!! is something folks say when they want to raid someone's pension, and news outlets really should avoid the appearance of wanting to raid someone's pension. And the Fox affiliates repeatedly misquoted the 2017 Social Security Board of Trustees report, which sure made the "crisis" seem a lot worse! Why, it's almost like that was the whole idea. So Social Security Works helps you tell these Fox affiliates to stop with the one-sided, factually incorrect reports about Social Security already.

Action: internet freedom, "free" trade, and GMO labeling.

As you know, S.J.Res. 52, the "resolution of disapproval" that would nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal, passed the Senate, but the House doesn't seem to have any desire to take it up (or its companion bill, H.J.Res. 129). We know how to fix that! Using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a cellphone), you can get your House Rep's phone number, and then you can call them and tell them to approve of S.J.Res. 52/H.J.Res. 129. You may also suggest that they author a "discharge petition" that would force House consideration of S.J.Res. 52/H.J.Res. 129 if more than half the House signs it. (At this writing, I've received no word of any "discharge petitions" on this matter.) Why support S.J.Res. 52/H.J.Res. 129? Because it would restore real internet freedom -- for people, that is, not for corporations, and that's worth fighting for.

Meanwhile, NAFTA renegotiation is apparently going well enough that the resulting pact might actually scuttle the notorious "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) mechanism that not only threatens to nullify our laws, but extract bailouts from the taxpayer for the "crime" of passing clean air or clean water or labor laws that "deprive" some foreign investor of obviously unearned money. But the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) is trying to flex its muscle, and has tried to scare up state legislator signatures for a pro-ISDS letter. Word on the street is they only got 12 of them, whereas Replace NAFTA's anti-ISDS (and therefore pro-freedom) letter has garnered almost four times that many signatories among our state legislators. Hence Replace NAFTA helps you tell your state legislators to help end the anti-freedom, anti-job, anti-law-and-order ISDS mechanism in NAFTA. Yes, all those "anti"s are entirely appropriate -- you don't want some corporation telling you what laws to pass, do you?

Finally, our USDA has proposed a national GMO labeling standard -- but it's not very good. Would it have been better had Hillary Clinton won the Presidency? I doubt it, because this GMO standard contains a lot of the same loopholes -- like substituting web addresses and QR codes for plain writing on a label -- the USDA mulled under President Obama. Plus this GMO labeling standard might well exclude sugars and oils, which would, like, just about defeat the purpose of a GMO label. Big food corporations have been fighting GMO labeling standards tooth and nail for years now, because they know people will be very, very angry once they find out how much of their food contains GMOs -- in other words, they want to win the battle without fighting fair. Force them to fight fair by letting the Sierra Club help you demand that our USDA enact a clear GMO labeling standard.

Around the table: from ballot initiatives to social media dramas.

From Michael Corcoran at TruthOut we learn why Republicans fear ballot initiatives. The good news? You can scare up more righteous anger at, say, a state "right-to-work" law than you can scare up righteous anger in support of it. The bad news? The rage people feel at liberal policy initiatives sure does seem to get more attention. We need to amend our Constitution so we can have national ballot initiatives, by the way. I'd tell the states to do it, too, since less than half of them do it now.

The New York Times publishes a lengthy report on how economic austerity policies in Great Britain are decimating that nation's once-formidable safety net. I'd say it's interesting that the Times writes about austerity like it's a bad thing, but then again, they're probably more comfortable writing about the austerity that's happening far away than the austerity that's happening here.

Surprise, surprise, corporate CEOs are actually starting to come out and say they're not using any of their tax "reform" windfalls to raise worker pay. OK, I suppose it is a little surprising that they'll say it out loud, just as in a few months they'll be saying, out loud, that yeah we're going to cut all these jobs now because we have big balls. Think some of these CEOs can be the stars of Democrat attack ads? I kid, of course -- these are the Democrats we're talking about.

Of course we should investigate whether there's any relationship between the President's daughter getting five trademarks in China mere days before the President decided to bail out the Chinese corporation ZTE, but fact of the matter is our President seems to do something every minute of every day that points to some corrupt act or other. And the lesson? Don't elect people with so many conflicts of interest!

Perhaps the most bizarre moment during Roseanne Barr's sudden crash-and-burn earlier this week was the spectacle of right-wingers taking to social media to insist that Bill Maher should be fired for the same thing! (Which was "comparing someone to an ape," though if you compare a black person to an ape, as Ms. Barr did -- and as Mr. Maher did not -- you're taking part in a long tradition of American racism.) What a surprise it must have been that liberals largely responded by saying, essentially, whatevs, yo. And the lesson? Fight for ideas and policies, not people. By the evidence, liberals seem to be taking this lesson to heart more than right-wingers are.

Finally, Louisiana-based televangelist starts soliciting donations for a brand new $54 million private jet, saying that, if Jesus were here on Earth today, "he wouldn't be riding a donkey" but would be "in an airplane flying all over the world." But would Jesus insist on his fourth private jet in 40 years because there are too many "demons" to pray away in coach? That sure doesn't sound like the Jesus I've known since I was a little kid.

Action: war-making powers, immigrant child abuse, and animal abuse.

As you likely know, S.J.Res. 59 is one of them-there "authorizations to use military force," like the one Congress passed after 9.11 -- except that S.J.Res. 59 would give our President a virtual blank check to wage war whenever and wherever without the Congressional approval our Constitution requires. And that's a bad idea! Our Constitution gives our President the power to wage war, not declare war, and talk about "not hamstringing the President to respond to threats" is precisely the opposite of the point: the Constitution aims to hamstring our President from ordering young folks to die! Thus Amnesty International helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject S.J.Res. 59. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on S.J.Res. 59 two weeks ago, and still hasn't voted on the bill, but don't get complacent: they're just waiting until they think no one is watching to ram the damn thing through. So let's let them know we're watching them.

Meanwhile, the ACLU helps you tell our Customs and Border Protection officers to stop abusing children verbally, physically, and sexually. There are laws against that, you know! Even though these children are "only" undocumented immigrants! The ACLU uncovered some 30,000 pages of evidence of CBP abuse between 2009 and 2014 (at the risk of beating a dead horse, being "tough on illegal immigrants" got President Obama exactly zero love from the right!), abuse including food and water deprivation, threats of rape and death, and, of course, actual rape. No whining about how tough it is to be a CBP officer! If they can't stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen! And if you can't help but abuse children, America shouldn't enable you! (In fairness, I do suspect CBP officers aren't paid enough, trained enough, or have enough decision-making power, but we can help them in these areas without tolerating abuse. That's what civilized people do.)

Meanwhile, you may have heard some police officers in Illinois and elsewhere oppose pot legalization because, get this, they'll have to euthanize all their pot-sniffing dogs if pot becomes legal. That's a nice two-for-one there -- rhetorical hostage-taking and threatened animal cruelty! Seriously, in what sick, immoral, and decadent society does keep the pot illegal or all the police dogs get it! represent serious, reasonable argument? I mean, in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, even tortured lab animals can be safely adopted as pets, so we should be able to help pot-sniffing dogs become valued members of a family somewhere. First step, of course, is to keep the state of Illinois from killing police dogs, which Amanda Quinonez has started a petition on Change.org to help you do. As for folks who'd continue to hold a gun to a dog's head in order to stand in the way of progress, may God have mercy on your immortal souls.

Action: fighting banksters, cruel housing policies, and cruelty to animals.

Our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) wants to shield its database of over 1.4 million consumer complaints from public view. Because we're not trying to be a Yelp for the financial sector, says CFPB acting director Mick Mulvaney, but, ah, three things: one, the CFPB has used customer complaints to pursue major actions against wrongdoers, like Wells Fargo; two, academics use this database for research about the financial sector, and three, banksters who can't face public accountability over their misdeeds really don't deserve any customers anyway. Regarding Mr. Mulvaney's assertion that complaints go public before they're "fully-vetted": corporations get to respond to the complaint before it goes public. Regarding bankster whining that some complaints are too "general" to be useful: people know how to read. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell the CFPB to keep its customer complaint database both active and public.

Meanwhile, HUD Secretary Ben Carson has proposed tripling minimum rents for the poorest folks who get federal housing, and though the numbers might not seem oppressive -- from $50 to $150 monthly -- I assure you they are oppressive for folks who have families and make minimum wage and have other bills to pay. And if you're ready to respond that these people already get plenty of other federal assistance, keep in mind that our current Administration is trying to cut all of that, too. You don't pick on the poorest working families in America, particularly after giving the richest Americans another massive welfare handout in the form of tax "reform." Would it be piling on to remind you that Mr. Carson spent over $30,000 on new office furniture for HUD in violation of federal law and then blamed his wife for it? Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the HUD minimum rent hikes Mr. Carson has proposed.

Finally, our Department of the Interior would like to overturn its ban on cruel wildlife killing methods in Alaskan National Park preserves. If that sounds a little esoteric to you, consider some of the things you can't do in these preserves that our new Interior Department would allow you to do: kill wolf pups and bear cubs in their own dens, using donuts and bacon to lure bears out to be shot, and shining super-bright spotlights on bears and cubs hibernating in their dens in order to shoot them. Our Interior Department Secretary loves talking about the importance of hunting in our culture, but I'd be hard-pressed to imagine actual hunters finding any of the things I've described above to be sporting. Killing animals and their children while they're sleeping seems, in fact, rather the kind of thing wannabe genocidal maniacs contemplate. So MoveOn helps you tell our Interior Department to stop its pro-animal cruelty rule-making process.

Around the table: racism, authoritarianism, trade, housing, and our President's latest reason for deporting people.

Good news, everyone! "The Social Shaming of Racists is Working," says Laila Lalami at The Nation. That New York lawyer who got caught on video harassing and threatening non-English-speaking workers at a deli? That jerk who called the police on a black student for napping in their dorm's common room? The Starbucks manager who called the police on two black men for not ordering something? They have all suffered for their wrongdoings! And yet too many presumably intelligent folks are whining about these completely-deserved sufferings as an ominous sign of "conformity of thought," when, hey, if you threaten someone with deportation, or call the police on someone who's doing nothing wrong, you deserve to be shamed. Hey, it's what civilized people do.

My heart swelled when I saw this headline: "Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists." But David Adler's study says folks who identify themselves as centrists like civil rights less and strongmen more than folks who identify themselves as left or right. If you've ever listened to a centrist drone on and on about how bad both sides are, you won't be surprised to learn that they're the most likely to prefer strongmen -- and this is pretty good news for our President, and pretty bad news for folks who are counting on "reasonable" Americans to reject him and his policies. (Luckily, you and I don't "count on" other people to do the right thing; we do the right thing ourselves, and set a good example for others.)

If your right-wing uncle is telling you that our President's "deal" letting the Chinese corporation ZTE off the hook for its violation of sanctions against Iran and North Korea is evidence of a "master negotiator," then ask him why the President counts "forcing ZTE to buy American parts" as a "concession," when ZTE has long relied on buying American parts is ongoing, and keeping them from buying American parts is what hurt them the most. Also, too, law and order means nothing to our President when the lawbreaker is a big corporation.

Eleanor J. Bader at TruthOut describes how "US Lets Public Housing Developments Crumble as a Prelude to Privatization." The headline pretty much says it all -- our government lets public housing get worse and worse, as an obvious prelude to getting corporate cronies (are you reading, Sean Hannity?) to tear them down, and build up new buildings to attract richer (and whiter!) customers. Still, read the whole thing, and recall that public housing was always segregated, and note that Europe (or, as Don Rumsfeld used to say, "Old Europe") does public housing a lot better -- and cheaper.

Finally, ain't nothing the NFL can do to its players that our President can't make worse, and so it goes with his suggestion that NFL players who won't stand for the anthem should maybe be deported. No, there's really no other way to read that! The NFL absolutely can issue this mandate to their players, not just because their contract allows it but because the First Amendment protects players from their government, not their employers. But only a sick, immoral, and decadent society whines this much about flags and anthems. And, sadly, this sickness, immorality, and decadence manifests itself perfectly in our President.

Action: clean water, social media, and political advertising on the internet.

The EPA's been getting a lot of bad press for shutting reporters out of a two-day water contamination summit. Imagine that -- shut the press out of a story and you get bad press! Of course, the EPA also got bad press when reporters discovered earlier this month that the EPA tried to block the release of an HHS study on water contamination, so Food and Water Watch helps you demand that our government release the HHS water contamination study. With all the water contamination stories in the news over the past few years since the state government of Michigan polluted Flint's water supply in order to save money, I bet that study is, in fact, the "public relations nightmare" our government professes to fear. But people who do bad things, or enable people who do bad things, do not deserve protection from bad PR. Too many politicians act like "protection from criticism" is a Constitutional right. It's actually kinda the opposite.

Meanwhile, here's a wonderful idea: Sum of Us helps you tell the Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to break up the Facebook monopoly on social media. You don't have to believe Facebook is evil (for the record, I do not -- Facebook has done a lot of good in all of our lives) to call for FTC action on this matter: you need only recognize that a) the Cambridge Analytica fiasco thorougly demonstrates that Facebook is out of its depth with regards to protecting good Americans' private data, and b) anything that gets too big needs to be broken up for the common good. Would the internet really break without Facebook's absolute primacy in our lives? No, of course not -- and you don't need to have interacted with other folks on Orkut or Tribe or Nerve to know that, either, not if you've ever used, you know, email. And when one corporation gets too powerful, it can and will run roughshod over small businesses, and over people. So let's fight that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to require campaign finance disclosure on internet ads just as they already require campaign finance disclosure on TV and print media, then Demand Progress helps you do that. (If you've already done it, though, don't do it again; that just muddies the data.) You know there are people in this world -- mostly rich people, and some people who want to be rich, and some other people who, for reasons that completely boggle my mind, are quite poor but think rich people are the best people ever -- who will actually tell you that they should be able to keep their campaign financing a secret. Why? They'll say that's because it's free speech, but money is not speech, even if money facilitates the spread of that speech. Some will even say disclosure is bullying! Go ahead and call them snowflakes when they do.

Action: overtime pay, and "secret" science.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4505/S. 2177, the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Restoring Overtime Pay Act would hike the figure beneath which employers must pay time-and-a-half for overtime to around $48,000, up from $24,000, meaning more good Americans would make more money. You may recall that the Obama Administration tried to raise this standard, but a federal judge struck it down, ruling (correctly, I think) that it didn't properly take the executive/administrative job duties exception into account. But the Restoring Overtime Pay act would amend the National Labor Relations Act such that it essentially nullifies that exception for employees who make less than $48,000. Considering that I've always believed that "administrative" duties, for example, deserve overtime pay, I'll take it -- and so will a lot of American workers.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to scuttle its effort to discard so-called "secret" science in its rulemaking processes, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. The EPA would supposedly only use "publicly-available" scientific data to make decisions about how to protect our clean air and clean water. To a lot of good Americans, that probably sounds like common sense. But it's actually nonsense: virtually all good science contains data that identifies good Americans, which means it contains private data (or, in the EPA's parlance, "secret" science), and the EPA has made plenty of good decisions about clean air and clean water without having to reveal the names of people who got asthma or cancer from dirty air and dirty water. Calling all that "secret" science is almost clever -- I say "almost" because I insist cleverness have some utility. And not be evil. So let's kill this pro-pollution effort.

Around the table: starring hubris, shame, corruption, greed, and gerrymandering.

Dave Lindorff explains, at some length, exactly why our current Administration is headed for disaster with North Korea and Iran. You should read the whole thing, because it covers just about everything, but long story short: our Administration will fail because they think they can bully their way to get whatever they want from these two nations. Long story somewhat longer: they've also subscribed, rather uncritically, to an American tradition of "negotiation" that demands that the other side give them everything they want before "negotiations" even begin. Of course, if you've ever heard, from anyone, that actual negotiations have to be win-win, this way of "negotiating" will seem strange to you.

It took me a minute to sort out exactly why I can't stand the "liberal" media's absurd habit of blaming right-wing excesses, particularly those coming from our President and his votaries, on "liberal smugness," but here goes: blaming the President on his opponents's "smugness" is a way of trying to silence criticism of the President, calling the President's opponents "smug" is a way of trying to keep us from shaming the President and his votaries when they deserve it, and why do we blame liberals for what right-wingers do in the first place? And why do we never right-wingers called "smug" when they shame people? I suppose pointing to the "smugness" of liberal critics is also a way of saying you can't win the argument on the merits.

National Democratic politicians suddenly release a plan to deal with governmental corruption, the "Better Deal for Our Democracy" -- and it's not at all bad. I mean, it has plenty of good proposals, but they also divide neatly into three categories (voting rights, ethics, campaign finance) that have broad support across the ideological spectrum. Question is: will they run on it? I mean, these are Democrats we're talking about, obsessed with polishing their civility trophies and appearing "bipartisan." They could fumble away this opportunity like they've fumbled away so many others. So we gotta stay on them.

Ho hum, Harley-Davidson makes big bucks from the Republican tax "reform" bill, then closes a heavily-unionized plant in Kansas City, displacing 800 workers, and announces a close-to-$700 million stock buyback. It gets worse: their York, PA plant will add 450 workers, many of whom will be temps and other contract workers, for a net loss of 350 well-paid, highly-skilled, permanent workers. It gets even worse! Harley will also open up a plant in Bangkok, Thailand, later this year -- not to outsource jobs, they assure us, but to avoid paying taxes in the United States. No, they said it out loud! Maybe whomever runs against noted Harley-rider Scott Walker in Wisconsin can tie all of this nastiness to him?

Finally, a Pennsylvania state Senate committee unanimously passes the famous anti-gerrymandering bill, SB 22, with the full Senate about to take it up presently. But the Senate State Government Committee did amend the bill, and not for the better: if the Commission can't approve a new redistricting map, for example, the legislature, not the state Supreme Court, gets next crack at it (though the hurdle for approving that map is still high at both points -- 7 of 11 Commissioners, then two-thirds of the legislature). But it's still worth your support -- at least until Daryl Metcalfe gets a hold of it and makes a grotesque mockery of it, like he did with those other two redistricting bills earlier this year.

Action: forced arbitration nay, arms sales to nations that abuse human rights nay, and treating prisoners like human beings yea.

As you likely know, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday (in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis) that corporations comply with current law and precedent when they force their workers into arbitration, thus denying them their day in court. But whatever we may think of the merits of the Court's ruling, the majority opinion pointedly did not preclude Congressional action on the matter, so the Economic Policy Institute helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban forced arbitration clauses (and class/collective action waivers) from employment contracts. A quarter-century ago, a mere eight percent of workers had forced arbitration clauses in their contracts; now well over half of all workers do, which means when those workers have grievances against their employers, their employers get to force them into an arbitration hearing that those workers frankly have very little chance of winning. And justice delayed is justice denied, so let's get to stepping.

Meanwhile, our Administration wants to sell $1 billion in weapons to Bahrain -- after reversing restrictions on such sales to Bahrain imposed by President Obama -- at a time when Bahrain is detaining and torturing civilians, banning travel for citizens who criticize the government, stripping their critics of their citizenship, and amending its constitution to expand military "national security" powers in peacetime. But Congress, at least, gets 30 days to reject the weapons sale, and though it's true that arming bad actors sure does seem a bipartisan obsession, that doesn't change our duty. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support human rights across the globe by rejecting the proposed arms sale to Bahrain. It's one thing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, but it's another thing entirely to enable the abusers by selling them weapons. Maybe we'd be less hated around the world if we stopped doing that.

Finally, the Miami Correctional Facility of Bunker Hill, Indiana, eliminated in-person visits at the start of May, giving their prisoners just one week's notice before terminating just about their only contact with their families and loved ones. Because of drug trafficking, of course, even though it sure does seem like we could stop that with (at the very least) a few more honest eyeballs around the place -- or by punishing the prison guards who bring most of the drugs in! Really, if you can't keep drugs out of a prison, you have no business managing prisons. I'll brook no backtalk about how difficult that is, because anything worth doing is difficult. The reason we defend in-person visits, of course, is that prisoners who get these visits go back to jail far less often, so Roots Action helps you tell the Miami Correctional Facility to promote the rehabilitation of its prisoners by rescinding its ban on in-person visits.

Around the table: in which John Roberts dashes my hopes for a fair ruling on forced arbitration, and other disappointments.

The Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4, rules that corporations can force their employees into binding arbitration agreements that deny them the ability to band together in class action lawsuits. So much for my hope that Chief Justice Roberts might see forced arbitration, as a necessary condition of employment, as a violation of a worker's right to forge a good contract with an employer! We could very easily argue, by the way, that the authors of the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 (which Justice Gorsuch uses like a crutch in his majority opinion) only intended for corporations to use arbitration in disputes with other corporations, but of course right-wingers only beat the "original intent" drum when it agrees with what they already want to do.

Leave it to Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News to notice that our Administration has changed its tune on Qatar -- just last year a "funder of terrorism at a very high level" -- at right around the same time a Qatari-funded firm is about to bail out one of the President's son-in-law's properties. Of course, our Administration turned on Qatar very quickly last year, not too long after Qataris did not put money into the 666 5th Avenue building in question, so Mr. Bunch's comparison to 1984 ("(w)e had always been at war with Qatar") is quite apt. Calling this Administration the most corrupt since President Harding's would also be quite apt.

Dean Baker, writing at TruthOut, reminds us that those who fear Big Gummint intervention in drug pricing are either unaware or hoping you're unaware that Big Gummint has already intervened to create high drug prices. Mr. Baker's more obsessed about the market-distorting effects of long-term patents than I am, but it's also true that our government has funded a lot of drug research and then let big pharma corporations -- rather than the good Americans who paid for all that research -- grab all the benefits. It wouldn't be untoward of you to call that "corporate welfare." (Nor would it be untoward of you, incidentally, to call the President's plan to "make foreigners pay more for drugs" "corporate welfare.")

Kansas Governor signs so-called Adoption Protection Act, which allows adoption agencies to refuse to let gay couples adopt children. You'd think politicians would be more concerned about protecting kids from bad parents, but, alas. Kansas's law differs from other state laws in that it actually allows adoption agencies that get taxpayer funding to discriminate against gay couples -- which, sadly, may eventually give our Supreme Court exactly the reason it needs to appear all Solomonic about the matter (i.e., they might strike down taxpayer-funded agencies' "right" to discriminate on the grounds of "religious" "conscience," but not that of private agencies).

Surprise, surprise, former Blackwater CEO/irredeemable asshole Erik Prince may have arranged a meeting between the Administration's campaign and the UAE in 2016, meaning he may have lied to Congress back in November when he said he had "no...formal communications or contact with the campaign" other than "papers" on foreign policy he sent to Steve Bannon. We also learn that an "unplanned" meeting between Mr. Prince and a Russian bankster might, in retrospect, have been a "planned" meeting. As of this writing, Mr. Prince hasn't threatened any reporters over this matter.

Finally, scientists are more hopeful that they will eventually discover a ninth planet (remember, Pluto got demoted last decade) in our solar system. Admittedly, they haven't observed the planet directly, and there may be other explanations for the clustering of trans-Neptunian objects just beyond the eighth planet, and, well, I hate to be an alarmist, but this could be yet another explanation for the phenomena scientists are observing out that way.

Action: campaign finance disclosure, better wages for working families, and rehabilitating prisoners.

Both Public Citizen and Common Cause help you tell the Federal Election Commission (or FEC) to mandate strong disclosure rules on internet campaign ads. (Only sign one or the other, though, otherwise it'll be like sending two comments on the same thing to the FEC.) Disclosure of campaign donors is far more common in TV and print ads, but, generally, our government doesn't get around to overseeing new things until it's far too late, i.e., after Russia allegedly spent a crapload of money influencing votes on Facebook. You know my opinion on that particular development: if Democrats would stand for something other than Not Being Republicans, it'd be a whole lot harder for a foreign country (or big donors) to swing an election their way. But we should demand the same transparency from internet ads that we demand from ads on the more traditional media. And if you're a big donor trying to influence an election, maybe you should have the guts to show yourself.

Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has proposed a corporate "freeloader tax" for corporations that don't pay their workers enough to keep them off of government aid programs like food stamps. The Republicans' most recent Farm Bill did impose new work requirements on food stamp recipients, but most food stamp recipients are already working, thus prompting the question (as put by the article at the link above): "Is the problem that people aren’t working enough? Or is it that they don’t receive a high enough wage or generous enough benefits from their employer?" Sen. Brown would impose a 0.25% tax (that's not 25 percent, "liberal" media dogs!) on corporations with 25 percent of their workers under the federal poverty line, a 0.50% tax for corporations with 50 percent, and a 1% tax for corporations with 75%. I'd go 1%, 2%, and 3% myself, but still, call your Reps and Senators about this plan. They won't see it coming.

Finally, H.R. 5682/S. 2795, the FIRST STEP Act, would make it easier for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves once in prison, by mandating the Bureau of Prisons to incarcerate them within 500 driving miles of their home, making various improvements to the federal compassionate release process, expanding home confinement sentencing for low-risk criminals, and increasing "good time credits" prisoners earn with good works. And the FIRST STEP Act would also provide additional funding for the drug treatment, counseling, job training, and education programs that prisoners need to get a leg up once they get out. If all this sounds like coddling to you, kindly reacquaint yourself with the purpose of imprisonment, which is not merely to punish but to rehabilitate. Hence Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Congressfolk to support actual prisoner rehabilitation by passing the FIRST STEP Act.

Action: internet freedom, bank regulation, and cable fees.

As you know, the Senate passed S.J.Res. 52, which aims to nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal, by a 52-47 margin, but in the House -- whose leadership has not scheduled a vote either on S.J.Res. 52 or its House companion bill, H.J.Res. 129 -- the task of even getting a vote will be harder: we would have to get more than half of the sitting House members to sign a discharge petition on the resolution, which would then force a vote on the resolution itself. The House has 193 Democrats, whom we presume would favor S.J.Res. 52/H.J.Res. 129, but you need 218 signatures on a "discharge petition" to force a vote, so we have our work cut out for us. Both the Electronic Freedom Foundation and Progress America help you tell your House Reps to support internet freedom by rolling back the FCC's anti-net neutrality rules. Only then will we be able to protect ourselves from corporations blocking and throttling websites and telling us where we can and can't go on the internet.

Meanwhile, the House does plan to act on S. 2155, the so-called Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which passed the Senate passed back in March -- because why would Congress ever vote on things that actually help good Americans? S. 2155's progenitors have sold the bill as a "pro-community bank" bill, arguing that loosening regulations on smaller banks will help them compete with big banks, but these smaller banks are already gobbling each other up at a more precipitous clip at least partly in anticipation of this bill's passage, and banks tend not to serve rural areas once they get bigger. Ultimately, you don't "strengthen" community banks by giving them the power to assimilate each other like some aspiring Borg; you strengthen community banks by restraining the big banksters. Hence Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your House Reps to protect community banks for-real for-real by rejecting S. 2155.

Finally, Consumer Reports helps you tell your cable providing corporation to cut it out with all the absurd-sounding fees and just give you one up-front price. If that sounds a bit Quixotic, then consider how miserably unpopular your cable corporation actually is, and thus also consider how little your miserably unpopular cable corporation can afford any more bad PR, particularly about something that everyone hates. Seriously, a lot of good Americans find issues like media consolidation and net neutrality a bit esoteric on the face of it, and I don't blame them, but good Americans generally don't need to have the BS quotient of "broadcast TV fees" or "regional sports fees" explained to them. And yet the latest Consumer Reports email missive does explain the problem in an amusing way, by asking you to contemplate buying a box of cereal at the supermarket and suddenly getting slammed with "cardboard box fees" or "grain refinery surcharges." Hey, I share because I care.

Around the table: with important reminders about "far-left" policies, privatizing prisons, and political bad actors.

And here's the best headline I read all week: "The Surprising Popularity of 'Far-Left' Policies." The only way it could have been better is if they'd put ironic quotation marks around "surprising," because only Our Glorious Elites and their "liberal" media enablers would consider "protecting more public lands," "limit(ing) corporate tax loopholes," and "raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy" to be "far-left" positions, when in fact these policy proposals generally get majority support (and therefore bipartisan support) from Americans! But, as I've been saying for a long time, they love calling popular, good proposals "extreme," when their own solutions to everything -- make war on other countries so you can swing your balls around, cut spending that actually helps people, cut benefits for programs you've paid into all your life! -- are actually quite extreme.

The city of Tucson, AZ adopts resolution banning the privatization of its prison system. The even better news? Tucson isn't even the first locality to outlaw private corporations running their detention centers and jails, and a lot of the other localities that have done so are, like Tucson, in very red areas of the country. Of course, if you thought about it for a minute, you'd see that private prisons have no "market" incentive to improve prisoners' lives, because the more miserable they are, the less they'll be able to make it on the outside, and thus the more likely they'll become "repeat customers."

"Nearly Half of You Reading This Have Bullshit Jobs," announces the headline of this Daily Beast interview with the author of (you guessed it) the book Bullshit Jobs. The term "bullshit jobs" describes jobs that are a) quite well-paid and b) quite useless, the kind of job that exists to make other people look good, or at least not incompetent. They can range from the receptionist who takes one phone call daily but has to exist to make the boss look important to the "people who provide unnecessary supervision" to corporate-lawyer "goons." And they don't exist in spite of our "free" market ideology, but because of it, and its mania for quantifying everything. (Read the whole article; it contains, among so many other things, the best argument for a universal basic income I've yet heard.)

California Republican U.S. House candidate actually films herself harassing a transgender woman trying to use the bathroom at a Denny's. I won't name name this U.S. House candidate, since we shouldn't give jerks too much sunlight. But I will highlight her stupid argument, that a transgender woman was "invading my privacy" (italics in original) merely by a) being born male and b) wanting to use the women's room. Setting aside that following someone into a bathroom and then harassing them is an actual invasion of privacy, I could more easily argue that this House candidate is invading my privacy merely by being such an asshole that I noticed it. The good news? She'll be lucky to lose by only 50 points in this district, and thus she's the proverbial walnut in the batter of eternity.

Finally, upon hearing the so-far-unsubstantiated rumor that the Administration might fire Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, my first thought was: who on Earth do they think they're going to find to do that job better than she does it? By "that job," of course, I don't mean "informing the American people about what the Administration's doing," but the job of putting entire cartons of lipstick on the pigs this Administration keeps trotting out. Seriously, even Tha Bush Mobb's notorious last Press Secretary, Dana Perino, couldn't match the sheer will-to-lie of Sarah Sanders. Then again, I'd hate to report, in a few months, that I'd spoken too soon.

Action: violence against protestors, internet privacy, and forced arbitration.

The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights helps you tell your Congressfolk to demand accountability for the Israeli slaughter of over 50 protestors in Gaza earlier this week. No use telling me that these protestors were "no angels," because civilized people don't shoot protestors or treat protestors as soldiers, period. And calling for "accountability" shouldn't send shivers through anyone's spine -- if these protestors truly provoked Israel, then Israel has nothing to worry about! But the government of Israel has, for too long, acted as if accountability is for other people, and our government has, for too long, enabled them. Folks who counter that we must "support Israel" at all costs clearly do not understand the true definition of "support" -- if you truly support Israel, you also stand up to Israel when it does wrong, just as you would to any of your family and friends. (And folks who counter with a sentence beginning with "well, what about" should be adults and learn how to concede points.)

Meanwhile, our Congress repealed FCC internet privacy protections last year with a "resolution of disapproval" -- and then Facebook got in a heapload of trouble for exposing its users' personal data to corporations such as Cambridge Analytica. Nobody could have predicted! So along comes S. 2639, the Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-Provider Network Transgressions Act (or CONSENT Act), which would require "edge-provider" corporations like Google and Facebook to get permission from customers to use, sell, or share their personal info. The FCC privacy rules covered internet service providing corporations rather than "edge providers," true, but it should be a no-brainer, at least, to do something about something that was just in the news. Which means what, class? That if Congress doesn't pass it, they have fewer than zero brains. Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect Americans' online privacy by passing S. 2639.

Finally, contractors have sued Amazon for sexual harassment, but guess what? Same as Gretchen Carlson did at Fox News, these contractors have forced arbitration clauses in their contracts. Ms. Carlson was savvy enough to tape her boss's harassment, but she would have had no recourse in court, because Fox also put a forced arbitration clause in her contract, which would have greatly impeded her chance of getting justice. (Ms. Carlson has since become a fierce opponent of forced arbitration; no use complaining that's only because it happened to her, like we're only supposed to learn from thought experiment and never from experience.) Hence Public Citizen helps you tell Amazon's Board of Directors to dump forced arbitration clauses from its employment contracts. You can remind Amazon that it prides itself on being a "progressive" workplace, so it shouldn't keep its workers from getting the justice they deserve in a court of law.

Around the table: concerning internet freedom, executive pay, health care, clean water, and the folly of trying to get the President's votaries to "respect" you.

Senate passes "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal by a 52-47 margin. I expected 50-49, didn't expect Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) to vote "yea," and I guess I owe Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) an apology for hemming and hawing for two months over whether to be the 51st vote -- or maybe I don't, since 50-49 (sans Sen. McCain, still being treated for brain cancer in Arizona) was pretty much the foregone conclusion. Another foregone conclusion: the House reportedly won't take up the bill. We'll just have to get in their grills until that conclusion is no longer foregone. (And I know, 52 is still 15 short of the total we'll need to override our President's eventual reflexive veto, but one thing at a time.)

U.S. House Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has released the first report of CEO-worker pay disparity data mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and it's not pretty. The vast majority of the corporations the study tabulated have a 100-to-1 disparity between those corporations' CEOs and their average workers (not "lowest-paid," since then the disparity would be closer to the 300-to-1 figure that's become commonplace by now), but a handful of corporations have truly absurd ratios, like Six Flags, with a ratio of 1,920-to-1. Remember that most Americans think the ratio of executive pay to unskilled factory worker pay should be seven-to-one, which means we'd almost certainly prefer the executive-to-average-worker ratio to be even narrower than that.

From Politico we learn that Democratic Congressional candidates are running on "GOP Health Care 'Sabotage,'". For once, this actually is good news for Democrats -- unless they shoot their wad on this topic now and decide everyone's tired of hearing about it in October, and you know no one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat. Particularly one with a lot of consultant "help." (It might also help if Democrats would remind everyone that double-digit premium hikes have been a constant feature of our privatized health care system for decades, lest Republicans blame the hikes that have happened on their watch on Obamacare, which has -- though this is nothing to put on your tombstone -- slowed the acceleration of premium growth.)

In a peripherally-related note, Paul Waldman at The Washington Post explains why Democrats can never hope to win the "respect" of our President's votaries. I'd have said "because they're bat-guano insane" and left it at that, though Mr. Waldman is more generous -- both to those votaries (who do have legitimate grievances, though not the ones they're constantly airing) and to Democratic politicians, who do natter on about "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" and "adapting to changing times" more than Mr. Waldman grants. His answer is not to "play the game" of pandering to right-wing voters, which is good advice, but the better advice is to do things that actually make their lives better. A rage-filled voter can go either way -- toward blaming the wrong people, or blaming the right people. Do things that make their lives better, and they'll blame Black Lives Matter and obscure liberal college professors a lot less.

Finally, Amanda Marcotte at Salon reminds us that water contamination is also rampant in rural America, where agriculture's dependence on phosphorus results -- almost every other day in America! -- in a toxic algal bloom leaving carcinogens in our drinking water. She also reminds us (and I needed this reminder this week!) that Big Gummint programs offering money to big farming corporations to clean up their runoff isn't as good a tactic as simply mandating that they clean up their runoff. No need to object that mom-and-pop farmers get hurt, because there ain't that many of those left anymore, thanks to nearly 40 years of farm policy that puts corporations above people. And corporate profits above clean water.

Action: farm policy, GMO labeling, and the Iran nuclear deal.

The House plans to vote on the nefarious H.R. 2, the "farm bill" that'll set farm policy in the United States for the next five years, and Moms Rising helps you tell your House Rep to reject the House Farm Bill. Don't worry about people suddenly having nothing to eat if the Farm Bill doesn't pass, not just because that won't happen (Congress will just extend the old Farm Bill for a while if they can't pass a new one, as they've done the last two times), but because Americans don't let themselves be taken hostage, do we? The current Farm Bill is a cornucopia of evil, not just in cutting food stamps and imposing work requirements on them (for people who very likely either already work or are children or seniors, no less!), but in giving more subsidies to big farms, less assistance to farms trying to get off chemicals and monoculture, and more loopholes to corporations trying to put out pesticides, and more welfare handouts to factory farms. This bill deserves a humiliating death, so let's give it one.

Meanwhile, the USDA is considering labeling requirements for foods made with genetically-modified organisms (or GMOs), and surprise, their draft rule sucks! The USDA's standard would basically exclude sugars and oils (allowing more than two-thirds of GMO foods to go unlabeled!), would require labelers to use the nearly-unknown initials "BE" (for "bioengineered") instead of the far more well-known initials "GE" or "GMO," and would allow corporations to use various electronic means of labeling their food, without just, you know, writing some variation of this food has GMOs in it on the food label you're actually holding. But the USDA still has to take public comments on the proposed rule -- which they'll do for 60 days, in the hopes that well-organized food corporations will swamp us out. Let's destroy that hope by letting Just Label It help you leave a public comment opposing the USDA's inadequate GMO labeling proposal.

Finally, our President may have removed the United States from the Iran nuclear deal -- remember, when they tell you he's acting crazy like a fox, that George W. Bush's "crazy like a fox" act got us ISIS -- but the other six signatory nations can still keep the deal going, hence Roots Action helps you tell the other signatory nations to keep the Iran nuclear deal together. It is actually working, after all, and our President can't say it's not working without telling bald lies about it. Some will tell you you're "undermining America" by doing this, particularly by contacting Iran; others will even call you a "traitor." They can all go diddle their rage glands somewhere else. You never "undermine" your country by speaking out about what you think is right, and anyone can call anyone a "traitor," instead of taking the effort to persuade people they're right. And if this Administration's defenders resort to name-calling, they won't convince anyone of courage and character that they're right.

Around the table: a modest proposal for hedge fund managers who lose taxpayer money, and other items.

In re the slaughter of Palestinian activists by Israeli soldiers this past Monday, Jim Naureckas at FAIR reminds us that "Media Can Tell Readers Who's Killing Whom -- When They Want To. The good news, this time, is that some "liberal" media outlets seem to want to, including the Washington Post, but you've still got a lot of the same tortured headlines (the ones that seem to say protests kill people, not "people kill people") that you get for police shootings.

Radley Balko at the Washington Post tells us why the so-called Protect and Serve Act (H.R. 5698/S. 2794, in case you were wondering) "is a response to a problem that doesn't exist," i.e., the "war on cops." Calling crimes against police "hate crimes" ignores the simple fact that "they are about as far removed from a vulnerable group as one can imagine," since they, you know, "carry guns and other weapons," "have the power to detain, arrest, and kill," and "literally have the entire government at their backs." Seriously, if you think black folks "whine" about the fear of being executed by a police officer without even a charge, let alone a trial, you should reacquaint yourself with the definition of whining, because demanding to make police officers a "protected class" is pretty much it. (Hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but Mr. Balko also reminds us that crime against police officers actually isn't skyrocketing, even though we as citizens are a lot more skeptical about police officers than we were even five years ago.)

Ho hum, our EPA has (so far) squashed an HHS study of water contamination from toxic chemicals, with at least one White House aide saying, in an email, that they couldn't get the HHS agency to "realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be." That's almost like saying it out loud! Of course, when your President says all kinds of things out loud that civilized people wouldn't say out loud, I guess you can't expect the underlings to do better. And no, saying it's "important for the government to speak with a single voice on such a serious issue" to head off the release of a study that'll give you bad PR is intolerable bullshit.

Also ho hum, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has basically dissolved the team in her department that investigated for-profit college abuses. And then hired some of the officials at for-profit colleges being investigated! How many times must I tell these pimps! For-profit colleges take taxpayer money! Punishing them when they're corrupt is a no-brainer! Thus more evidence that the only value of contemporary "conservatism" is executive profit, and also more evidence that when our President promised to "drain the swamp," he meant "get rid of all the liberals," which is, I'm pretty sure, exactly how his votaries understand it.

And even more ho hum, CIA Deputy Chief Gina Haspel, up for the big job there despite her well-documented past support and enabling of torture by CIA agents, now says torture was actually a bad idea -- thus giving Senators cover to vote for her, and (more importantly) allowing her to get away with the torture she's already supervised. You'll recall that Scott Pruitt also saved his nomination when he intoned that people cause climate change, a belief he sure hasn't acted on as EPA Administrator. When people talk about the moral breakdown of society, they should be locating it in occurences like these, not in gay marriage or birth control or "everyone making the cheerleading squad" or whatever diddles folks' rage glands these days.

Finally, Dean Baker suggests that, instead of harrumphing about whether Medicaid recipients "work enough," we should "focus() on whether the people at the top are working for their money." Meaning, of course, that if a rich hedge fund actually underperforms index funds while taking craploads of taxpayer money, maybe they should "work to pay off the fees the state paid them." They'd balk, of course, not just at making very little money and thus spending craploads of hours working them off, and they'd say things, out loud, like "we can't work under this kind of pressure." Hey, I have to do a good job everyday; why not a rich hedge fund manager?

Action: defending net neutrality, fuel efficiency, and good science.

Word on the street is that the Senate will vote today on S.J.Res. 52, the "resolution of disapproval" that would nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal, and so you may use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to vote "yes" on S.J.Res. 52. The FCC, in repealing net neutrality, has allowed big internet service corporations to censor or slow down websites you want to visit, just because they can (or just because big corporations paid the necessary tribute to have their websites loaded more quickly), thus restoring the "freedom" of corporations to curtail your freedom to go where you want to go on the internet. The FCC's anti-internet freedom rules may die an ugly death in court -- which they may, since the FCC openly said they ignored most of the comments submitted to them on the matter-- but I'd be OK if Congress acted, too.

Meanwhile, the EPA and the DOT are now acting counter to the people's will and to common sense by rolling back fuel efficiency standards. You'd think making cars that get more miles to the gallon would be a no-brainer for our government, but they tell you that higher fuel efficiency standards mean more expensive cars, and what a shame it would be if you had to spend a little more now to save a lot more on gas later! Such good guys, looking out for us like that! If you buy that malarkey, of course, you should ask an auto corporation CEO if his high compensation package drives up car prices. Then they'll tell you that rising prices are really a very complex matter, with no one factor yadda yadda yadda. (Or they'll tell you I earned it, which is also not the same as you're incorrect and here's irrefutable evidence to prove it. If they can't say that, they lose! It's that simple!) So Consumer Reports helps you tell the EPA to cut it out with its efforts to destroy fuel efficiency standards already.

Finally, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell the EPA to reject its plan to limit the scientific study the EPA can use to make decisions about our clean air and clean water. Mr. Pruitt's plan -- to limit EPA decision-making only to studies that can be publicly released -- might sound all common-sensical and such, but it actually isn't, because a lot of studies can't be publicly released because they contain personally-identifiable data, which would violate the privacy of those folks who contributed their experiences with carcinogens and toxins to those studies. But the EPA's proposal would, oddly, provide a lot of loopholes for big corporate "science" research. The result? Big fossil fuel corporations could push their own "science," "proving" that their pollution doesn't actually cause anyone to get sick, while the EPA could say nothing. So conservatives who complain about regulations making everything worse have no standing to ignore this EPA regulating that actually will make everything worse.

Action: farm policy, and nuclear waste storage.

Here's something else you might not know about H.R. 2, Congress's new, nefarious Farm Bill: Title IX would take consultative jurisdiction over pesticide harm to endangered species from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, so that the EPA has sole jurisdiction over the matter. Defenders of this move may argue that it "reduces bureaucracy" or "right-sizes regulation," but you already see the flaw in that reasoning: we would really leave pesticide oversight solely to this EPA? The whole reason we have several different actors look at the same thing is to prevent one bad actor from doing great harm; yes, it makes the process slower, but wouldn't a conservative argue for doing the right thing more slowly versus embracing a streamlined process above all? Hence Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the "Poisoned Pollinators Provision" of the Farm Bill.

Meanwhile, the House recently passed H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which would establish a massive nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain -- which the good citizens of Nevada have been fighting literally for decades now. Some proponents cite the danger of storing nuclear waste in over 100 areas of the country in order to justify concentrating it all in one location. Problem with that is trucks would have to transport all that waste all across America, and trucks have been known to crash on occasion, and that threatens the millions of good Americans who live near interstate highways with contaminated water and serious health care issues. Would we have these problems if we put the necessary effort into solar and wind power? No, we would not. Food and Water Action helps you to reject the House's plan to build a massive nuclear waste storage area at Yucca Mountain.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 818.

If you've noticed that you hear an awful lot of criticism of alleged "radical leftists" in the mainstream media but you don't actually hear these "radicals" themselves, well, you're not alone: Nathan J. Robinson at Current Affairs wonders why we can name virtually every talking head who slams "political correctness" and "social justice warriors" but hardly anyone who's politically correct or a social justice warrior themselves. You can answer this question in at least two ways: 1) because these talking heads who style themselves as "dissidents" are actually card-carrying members of Our Glorious Elites, and how do you get people to go along with ridiculous ideas if you can't deflect to some "common enemy"? And 2) waaaaaaaaah! (I remain convinced, by the way, that the real reason so many right-wingers use the "SJW" shorthand is that it shares two letters with "Jew.")

We learn from George Joseph and Liam Quigley at The Intercept that plainclothes police officers in New York City commit a rather disproportionate number of police shootings there: they comprise around 6% of the force, yet commit over 30% of the shootings. Why? Some observers suggest that plainclothes cops can get mistaken for robbers, but many others suggest that the lack of a "blue suit" gives them the "freedom" to "act like gangsters" -- and it is more difficult to get a badge number if it's not displayed, or a unit number from an unmarked car. Just so happens they don't wear body cameras, either.

Michigan state legislators push a Medicaid work-requirement plan that just so happens to target majority-black cities while leaving majority-white rural areas alone. I'm happy to oppose Medicaid work requirements for blacks and whites myself, and not just because most folks on Medicaid are already working like we should be proud of that as a civilization -- no, really, we should be proud of a civilization where everyone can get good-paying work and only need programs like Medicaid when times get tough, as times do for virtually everyone except the crowd who constantly hector us to work harder. (Also, dig the Chamber of Commerce lobbyist's "(w)e were just trying to be helpful" act. She must think we're all suckers.)

Ho hum, the New York Times reports on how "national Democrats have been embracing recruits near the political center" in red states. What's the definition of insanity again? And what authority do the same folks who lost 2016 all over the map now have to say "but here's how you win in Kansas"? After all, a liberal Sanders acolyte came within six points of defeating Rep. Ron Estes in Kansas's 4th early in 2017, in a district Mike Pompeo used to win by 30 points. The Times might even get this, at some level, because they simultaneously describe Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) as one of those "moderates" and as someone with a "populist economic message." (I will concede that Clarke Tucker, the star of this article, has a good shot in Arkansas's 2nd since if he makes health care his issue, as it looks like he'll do.)

Finally, our President wants to help out a Chinese corporation punished by his own Commerce Department. A corporation punished for violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea, no less! What will the President's votaries say when they learn he's suddenly so obsessed about Chinese jobs? Wait, let me guess: leave him alone give him a chance he knows what he's doing he got a great deal but her emails but Benghazi he shoots from the hip both sides do it fake news shutup traitor.

Action: internet freedom, and drug pricing.

The Senate will vote this week on S.J.Res. 52, the "resolution of disapproval" that would begin to unravel the FCC's net neutrality repeal; this is worth a phone call, today and every day, until the vote takes place. The FCC has lately announced that net neutrality will officially be no more as of June 11; one hopes that the big internet service providers aren't stupid enough to start charging for faster website loading and censoring and slowing down websites that very day, but they'll be able to do so, even if a lawsuit eventually overturns the FCC's action. Given the news that AT&T paid the President's lawyer, Michael Cohen, $600,000 for "consultation" on communications issues, do you suppose Mr. Cohen might have influenced the President as he chose his next FCC Chair, the notoriously anti-internet freedom Ajit Pai? Hey, it's a question worth asking!

Meanwhile, our President outlined yet another series of half-measures and non-measures about prescription drug prices that he of course called "the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people," but Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact policies that would really reduce drug prices, like allowing reimportation of drugs from Canada and allowing Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices. The CBO famously found over a decade ago that letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices wouldn't lower prices very much, but that finding testifies more to how much corporate welfare big pharma corporations get -- when you hear, for example, that big pharma would respond to a more-empowered Medicare by raising a drug's launch prices, you might well ask why we should allow them to do that, particularly when our government funds so much of their research.

Around the table: containing two of the President's best stratagems for winning the midterms.

With both parties of Congress anxious to give our President even more unconstitutional war-making powers, it's left to Pat Buchanan to remind us not only that Israel struck Iranian forces in Syria first last week, but that the neocons who supposedly hated our President so much now control his foreign policy. Mr. Buchanan rightly reminds us that the notion that "Iran is on 'a quest for nuclear weapons'" is a "Bush-like assertion," and that "the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for" is "being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives," but I bet these "America Firsters" were never that committed to ending foreign wars, especially now that their Personal Lord and Savior seems to favor one. Who wants to bet that this Administration will start banging the drums for war right around a month before the midterms?

Administration spokeshack says opposing torture-approving Gina Haspel for CIA chief would be somehow anti-feminist, and our "liberal" media seems to agree. I presume that a real feminist would know that women are, being human, as capable of evil as men are, and a real feminist certainly wouldn't let someone else's bean-counting get in the way of the truth. And, seriously, the CIA doesn't employ a single woman who can lead and who opposes torture? That seems unlikely, not just because the CIA is now almost half female, but because the world is a big place, much bigger than torture apologists tend to imagine.

Our President rolls back transgender protections for prisoners, meaning transgender prisoners will have to use the bathroom of their birth gender and get the crap kicked out of them by other prisoners as a result. Also, too, federal prisons will have to use "biological sex at birth" to determine housing assignments, which will also result in a lot of beaten-up transgender prisoners. I guess our President really doesn't care who gets hurt, as long as religious bigots get to diddle their rage glands.

There's so much to say about Vice President Pence's statement that "in the interests of the country, I think it's time to" end the Mueller investigation into his Administration, but I'll just say this: Mr. Pence should not act like the Administration "fully cooperat(ing)" with the Mueller investigation is some great gift to the American people -- "full cooperation" with a criminal investigation is, frankly, the minimum we, as Americans, have a right to expect from our government. (Is this what moved George Will to declare that Mr. Pence is even worse than our President? I don't know, but that statement certainly merits further evaluation.)

New NRA President Oliver North claims his organization is a poor, poor victim of "civil terrorism" by the multitudinous political activists who now oppose it. And, he adds, the NRA faces even worse opposition than even the civil rights movement did back in the day, though I suspect marchers who got the crap kicked out of them by police will beg to differ. All together now: waaaaaaaah! Remember: folks who present themselves as tough guys are more likely the real snowflakes.

Finally, we learn that our President would like the upcoming midterms to be "a referendum on his Presidency" and that he's far more likely to talk about himself at rallies than the candidates he's nominally supporting. Of course our President loves talking about himself, but this instinct may also be the Republicans' best path to victory in 2018 -- talking only about him erases the hopes and dreams of good Americans from the conversation, after all, and surely we remember how he rope-a-doped the Clinton campaign into talking only about him as Election Day approached in 2016, until TV became an onslaught of two-sided negative advertising that kept a lot of Americans home. If Democrats make this midterm all about our President's bad behavior, rather than what good Americans deserve from their government, then they deserve defeat.

Action: *a la carte* cable packaging, and postal banking.

So it's 2018 and we still can't buy our cable TV channels a la carte! I know, it sure does seem like social media and streaming video are winning the battle, but cable TV channels still make money from you merely by being part of a cable package you have to buy! And if you don't like, say, cable news channels, you can make your cable corporation block them, but you'll still pay for them, and as long as you're still paying them, they won't change their evil ways. So here's an idea: using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're viewing it on a smartphone), call your Reps and Senators and demand a la carte bill that'll force cable corporations to refund the cost of cable channels you won't watch and don't want in your house. A lot of cable channels cost less than a buck a month, but if hundreds of thousands of Americans got their money back, they'd get scared, and with added pressure we could get them to change their behavior.

Meanwhile, S. 2755, the Postal Banking Act, would allow the United States Postal Service (or USPS) to offer basic financial services, including savings and checking accounts, small loans, and debit cards. The USPS used to offer these services until around 50 years ago, so why start it up again? Because the Post Office could fill a niche for working families in rural and urban areas the big banksters don't serve, a niche that currently gets filled far too often by payday lenders trapping those families in a cycle of debt. Restarting postal banking would also help the USPS survive financial troubles that Congress created in 2006, by mandating that the USPS fund over 80 years' worth of pension obligations in advance, a hurdle our laws impose on no other entity. So, basically, it's a win for working families and a win for the Post Office, which kinda makes that two wins for working families. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to help working families in underserved rural and urban areas by supporting the Postal Banking Act.

Around the table: rageheads gonna rage, part 374.

Jim Naureckas at FAIR catches a New York Times columnist alleging that certain opinions about free speech and identity politics are somehow "taboo," when in fact the Times ventilates these opinions all the time. This stratagem is as old as time itself: pretend your critics are way, way more powerful than you are, even though you have all the megaphones. And if the only defense you can muster for your arguments is that you have "free speech," then you're admitting you can't win the arguments on the merits! Our Glorious Elites: if they don't have everything, they act like they have nothing. I'd say they should try actually having nothing for a minute, but that'd probably send them into an even deeper spiral of self-pity.

David Cooper at the Economic Policy Institute studies the trajectories of the Wisconsin and Minnesota economies since 2010, and finds the Minnesota economy performing better for working families in just about every way. More jobs, more growth, higher wages, less poverty -- think Gov. Walker's 2018 Democratic opponent, whomever that may be, could maybe use all that information in a campaign ad? The inclusion of the word "Democratic" in the previous sentence should suggest the likelihood of that event.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will shut down its student loan office. Which is the natural outcome of returning some $750 million to bilked students and helping put the notorious Corinthian College out of business -- if you're objectively pro-financial predator, that is. CFPB head Mick Mulvaney says he wants to scale the bureau back so that it does "only what is required by law," but how much do you want to bet his efforts to do so have already violated existing law? I mean, it does seem like that's the Administration way: do whatever you want, even if it's illegal, and dare America to stop you.

It begins: a group of "deplorables" set up a billboard warning "liberals" to "get your guns if you try to impeach" our President. Absent undeniable evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors I'm inclined to let the man twist until 2020, but threats of violence are, as you know, not First Amendment-protected speech. And we've still got almost six months until Election Day; you think the threats will ratchet up a bit? Of course they will -- what else can a ragehead do but diddle his rage gland and let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash?

Finally, our intrepid Attorney General says the "ACLU effect" -- i.e., what happens when the ACLU speaks out about law-and-order matters -- caused a spike in Chicago homicides in 2015 and 2016. The trouble with that theory, of course, isn't just that Chicago ended its "stop-and-frisk" practices in 2015 without an actual ACLU lawsuit, but that the murder rate went down in 2017 without Chicago going back to stop-and-frisk! Seriously, though, what a scaredy-cat Jeff Sessions is. If you're that afraid of dissent, perhaps you need to go live in an actual police state.

Action: livestock shipping, overtime pay, and the "balanced budget amendment."

The world has seen video of the squalid conditions of ships that transport livestock; these "death ships" are, as you might imagine, overcrowded with inadequate access to food and water, and they're so hot that animals literally cook to death inside -- and then get thrown overboard! All because crowding more animals into less space means more money for corporate executives -- I say that to inoculate you against the hostage-taking argument they're bound to make that making us transport livestock more humanely means higher prices for you. Gosh, they never raise prices when they give themselves more money! Anyway, New Zealand has already banned shipping of livestock for slaughter, and when the World Organisation for Animal Health meets in just a few short weeks, more countries may follow suit. Would it kill people to eat what grows nearby, after all? Avaaz helps you tell the nations of the world to stop the live export trade.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4505/S. 2177, the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. The Obama Administration tried to raise the pay threshold below which corporations had to pay their workers overtime, so that more working families could get overtime pay, and also so that corporations would get tired of paying out all that money and just hire more workers. But a federal judge found that their overtime pay rule violated the National Labor Relations Act by failing to exempt white-collar workers, as the NLRA mandates; thus the Restoring Overtime Pay Act would amend the NLRA by creating an exemption-within-the-exemption for white-collar workers who make less than $48,000 annually, thus getting them overtime. I think it's a fairly clever way to deliver better opportunities for workers -- but only if we support it.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject a "balanced budget amendment" that would force cuts in Medicare and Social Security and make raising taxes on the rich almost impossible, then CREDO still helps you do that. Politicians squeal about TEH DEFICITZ!!!!! every time our government works on behalf of the American people, and those same politicians never complain about deficits when they're cutting taxes for the rich or funneling corporate welfare to their cronies. But anyone who's ever bought a car, bought a house, or taken on a student loan knows that sometimes you have to spend more than you've got right now so that you can get ahead later. And hello! Nobody thinks this country's going belly-up anytime soon, so we're not exactly going to run out of lenders anytime soon. Our current President does often seem to be doing his damnedest to make America go belly-up, but this ain't his country -- it's ours.

Action: freedom of the press, payday lenders, and safe schools.

Amnesty International helps you demand that the Burmese government release journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The government has charged them with violating Burma's Official Secrets law, after they met two police officers in a restaurant who handed them rolled-up papers. Sound like a set-up to you? And certainly such a set-up would have absolutely nothing to do with their ongoing investigation of the murder of ten Rohingya Muslims in western Burma! The government detained the two reporters for over three months before their first court hearing, and oh, the police said they presented a warrant to Wa Lone's family in order to search his house the day after the arrest, but the family says they didn't. Whom to believe? The family who has every reason to fall in line behind the government's official story, or the government that has every reason to lie? Their Rohingya massacre sure hasn't gotten them the best PR, after all.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, under former Director Richard Corddray, put together some regulations that do more to prevent payday lenders from trapping people in a downward spiral of debt. So naturally Congress is grateful that the CFPB actually did something to protect consumers, something Congress itself hasn't seen fit to do over the years. I kid, of course -- whether they find intolerable the mere existence of a single regulation that might actually help people or whether they're as mad as their President to undo anything that might have the name Obama on it, Congress has introduced H.J.Res. 122/S.J.Res. 56, another "resolution of disapproval" that would nullify the CFPB's payday loan rules. Why on Earth would you want to be pro-financial predator? Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to support consumer protections by rejecting H.J.Res. 122/S.J.Res. 56.

Finally, on the heels of several local reports detailing the various health care risks Philadelphia children still face in their schools -- like asthma and lead poisoning -- Penn Environment helps you tell Philadelphia's Mayor and City Council to get rid of health care hazards in schools. You can still find lead in paint in Philadelphia public schools, and in some rooms lead dust levels were 150 times higher than federal standards allow. You can also find lead in outdated water fountains, asbestos in ceiling tiles, and mold and rat poop in classrooms, and these are not things we should tolerate in the Birthplace of Freedom, because they help cripple our future. Ultimately, as I've long said, Philadelphia property taxes are going to have to go up if we want to make our schools safe again. In the meantime, cleaning up the toxins and hiring more custodial workers sure won't hurt.

Around the table: in which another fight between right-wingers gets exposed as drama.

Our President pulls the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, incorrectly calling the deal "one-sided" and presuming that he'll get a "better deal" out of Iran than one that already verifies the absence of nuclear weapons development. Incomprehensibly he also seems to think this strengthens his hand with North Korea. The other five nations party to the deal have said they'll continue it (and Iran remains a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons), so it's just possible this is another meaningless ball-swinging exercise from our President. But the smarter bet would be to prepare for a PR offensive ending sometime in October with war against, ahem, regime change in Iran. This, after we all remember how regime change went in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says the stock buybacks which are the main result of Republican tax "reform" are actually good for the economy, because they "return capital to shareholders," who then "recycle() that capital through the economy." Of course, we already know that corporations were already sitting on a ton of capital they weren't "recycl(ing) through the economy," and we also know that giving a shareholder a ton of money in no way guarantees they'll actually spend it, either on jobs or cheeseburgers. Is there a lie too evil for the Foreclosure King to tell?

In a related note, Dean Baker at TruthOut gives us some hope in These Interesting Times: with stock dividend yields falling, and with so much CEO pay tied to stock options, CEOs may -- just may -- be screwing themselves out of the absurdly high salaries to which they've become accustomed! And "the sight of top management getting rich while providing mediocre returns (for shareholders) may provide sufficient motivation for shareholders to organize." Ah, but I can just see Congress passing another stupid bailout if CEOs lose too much money. We should be out in the streets if that happens.

Don Blankenship's little "Cocaine Mitch" ad (in which he infamously talks about "China people") may have aided his effort to win the Republican Senate nomination in West Virginia, but Alec MacGillis at ProPublica reminds us that when one of Mr. Blankenship's corporations spewed out a larger-than-the-Exxon-Valdez coal slurry spill that polluted the water of over 25,000 good Kentuckians back in 2000, none other than Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell was there to help him avoid taking any significant responsibility for it. Which should remind you that a lot of these "outsider" candidates are really insiders, and a lot of their "fights" are just drama. And they're not even good drama.

Finally, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman quickly resigns his position after several women accuse him of sexual assault. They call it physical abuse, he calls it "role-playing," but with his resignation a mere three hours after the New Yorker's initial report of the accusations, I guess we know which one it was. What a damn waste -- Mr. Schneiderman's resignation won't make financial predation popular or anything, but folks who do good works in the public sphere need to stop making other people's lives hell in the private sphere. I really don't care how hard that is. Anything worth doing is hard.

Action: internet freedom, farm policy, veterans' health care, and automatic voter registration.

Word on the street is that tomorrow Democrats will force a vote on S.J.Res. 52, the "resolution of disapproval" that would roll back the FCC's net neutrality repeal, so today's as good a day as any to call your Senators and tell them to vote in favor of the resolution, and thus support real internet freedom for all Americans. The FCC had the stones to call their net neutrality repeal "Restoring Internet Freedom," but their repeal only "restores" internet "freedom" for big corporations -- as in freedom to prevent you from visiting websites, freedom to slow down the loading of websites, and freedom to demand tribute from websites in order to prevent either of these things from happening. What about your freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, rather than let some corporation tell you where to go? Clearly, that actual freedom is not as important to the FCC as those other corporate "freedoms." But with S.J.Res. 52, we can begin to take our freedom back.

Meanwhile, Congress is mulling another farm bill, since that needs to be reauthorized every six years, and in H.R. 2 they've concocted a real stinker of a farm bill: one that stretches the definition of "family farm" so that huge farms can take even more farm subsidies they don't need, one that rolls back incentives that help farmers get off chemicals and one-crop farming, one that exempts pesticides from clean water and endangered species protections, and one that tramples on state-level efforts to control factory farms. Oh, and it also imposes new work requirements on food stamps, as if too many working families aren't already on food stamps because their employers don't pay enough. In short, this is another pro-corporation, anti-people bill from Congress, and it deserves a humiliating death. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to support small farmers and healthy food choice by rejecting H.R. 2.

In other news, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5671, the Burn Pits Accountability Act. So what are burn pits? Burn pits are what we used to dispose of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan, waste that could include human and medical waste, chemicals, paint, plastic, rubber, and even munitions. If that doesn't sound like an utterly toxic stew, I don't know what does! For all that, scientists haven't yet established a firm link between burn pits and Iraq/Afghanistan veteran illnessess, but the Veterans Administration maintains a Burn Pit Registry which can make establishing that link far easier, and H.R. 5671 would mandate that our Department of Defense ask soldiers whether they've been exposed to burn pits -- which they can do during health exams and separation interviews -- and then automatically register any veteran who answers in the affirmative. Thus the research -- and the healing -- can get a kick-start.

Finally, voter registration is now automatic in 13 states -- meaning citizens in these states become registered voters whenever they use state services like the Division of Motor Vehicles -- and Roots Action helps you tell your state legislators to enact an automatic voter registration law. You know what some right-wingers say when confronted with the common sense notion that we ought to make it easier for people to vote? They say voting should be hard! No: the work of citizenship should be hard, but it does not logically follow from that statement that each and every task associated with citizenship should be hard. You shouldn't have to spend endless time on hold when you call your Reps and Senators, you shouldn't be completely deprived of townhall meetings because your Rep is a criticism-hating snowflake, and you shouldn't have to fill out piles of paperwork in order to register to vote just because some politicians want fewer people to vote.

Action: tackling foreign policy, intelligence, and immigration.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject S.J.Res. 59, the military force authorization that would actually expand the President's war-making powers, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. Giving the President even more unconstitutional power is a bad idea, particularly when this particular President has loaded up his cabinet with folks who want to make war on Iran. But S.J.Res. 59 gives the President the power to add particular groups to his bad-guy list and then go ahead and bomb them, even if it results in what Ron Paul used to call "blowback," and it give Congress a power to veto these bad-guy list additions within 30 days that they'll never use, because they're Congress. Oh, and S.J.Res. 59 also expands the President's power to unconstitutionally detain people, and people might include you or I or those we love, particularly if any of us protest the next war and the one after that. So let's get to it, good peoples.

Meanwhile, Mike Pompeo's unfortunate ascension to State has left an opening for CIA Director, one the President wants to fill with CIA lifer Gina Haspel, who has (like Mr. Pompeo!) shown a lust for torturing suspects that should offend our citizenry, our heritage, and our civilization. We can't say for sure that Ms. Haspel tortured suspects herself (or, more likely, ordered other folks to do so), but we can say for sure that she oversaw torture in Thailand and that she oversaw the destruction of videotapes of CIA torture, and why gamble that she "wasn't that involved" when you can find someone better? Some folks will say she was just doing her job -- or they'll cynically invoke the CIA's long history of torture, as if that's a reason not to fight evil now! -- but we get only one life, and we really ought to make it a life the Lord would be proud of. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Senators to block Ms. Haspel's ascension to the top of the CIA.

In other news, Just Foreign Policy helps you tell your U.S. House Reps to hold a vote on our involvement in the Saudi war against Yemen. Our involvement in the Saudi war against Yemen, of course, also includes our involvement in creating near-famine conditions, our involvement in the worst cholera epidemic in history, and our involvement in the collapse of Yemeni water, food, and health care infrastructure -- not to mention our involvement in the continuing destruction of Houthi rebels who have actually proven to be pretty good al-Qaeda fighters, which means we're essentially on the same side as al-Qaeda with regards to Yemen, and regardless of how thoroughly ISIS has surpassed al-Qaeda in evil, this is not the side you want to be on. The Senate has voted on our unconstitutional involvement refueling Saudi planes and furnishing weapons and helping them with targeting, but the House hasn't; it's well past time for our House Reps to do so.

Finally, H.R. 3923, the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, would (as the title suggests!) strengthen standards for detaining aliens at detention centers, including ending mandatory detention and barring use of private prisons for detention. I can already hear the President's votaries demanding to know why we should be so nice to immigrants when we have other problems, but that is of course a false choice, one that implies that our government can only ever do one thing at a time (and, er, one that also implies that our government should be spending all of its efforts catering to other people's prejudices). A great nation can treat immigrants humanely and (to name just one thing we also spend a lot of time talking about at this blog) revive moribund Appalachian economies, too -- among other good works we could enumerate. In the meantime, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act.

Around the table: with next moves on net neutrality and the real "bad news" from a New Hampshire poll.

Mike Ludwig at TruthOut explains "How Net Neutrality Can Survive the Trump Administration." Senate Democrats will force a vote this week on their "resolution of disapproval" that would begin the process of reversing the FCC's repeal, plus the OMB is still reviewing parts of the repeal, and several lawsuits are coming, all of which may give us a bit of breathing room until the midterms, when we might get a more net neutrality-positive Congress. If we stay on them, that is.

Ho hum, Utah prosecutor charges six animal rights activists with felony theft stemming from their exposure of rampant animal abuse at a Utah factory farm. Specifically, the activists took three turkeys who were so abused they were going to die anyway, as about a quarter or turkeys "raised" at factory farms do. Faced with the loss of their ag-gag law, "theft" of dying birds is what they come up with! I hope this prosecutorial effort dies the same death the ag-gag law did in federal court.

Also ho hum, the Tax Policy Center informs us that the Republican tax "reform" has not, in fact, "supercharged" our economy. We see no dramatic increases in GDP growth and job creation since the end of December, for example. And if the economy does wind up cratering, Republican apologists will just say it would have been a lot worse without the tax "reform" bill. Or perhaps they'll bust out that "nobody could have predicted" line, although TPC does suggest that the increase in Treasury bond yields could be a harbinger of increased inflation.

Even more ho hum, our Administration is suddenly unable to produce any evidence it considered any of the public input it solicited over reorganizing federal agencies -- or, indeed, any evidence that it received public input, though OMB claimed to have received 100,000 submissions. They keep moving the deadline back for releasing their plan to reorganize federal agencies, too. Well, that's our "law and order" Administration for us.

Our President apparently hired an Israeli intelligence firm to dig up dirt on the Obama Administration officials who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal. And why are they looking for information that doesn't actually have anything to do with Iranian behavior under the nuclear deal? Because they already know they're not going to find that kind of info (just as Mr. Netanyahu's drama from the other night didn't find that info), and when you can't win the argument on the merits, you resort to personal attacks.

Finally, a poll of New Hampshire Democrats puts Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in third place out of eight possible 2020 Presidential contenders, but that news isn't nearly as "bad" "for Bernie" as the headline says. Elizabeth Warren, who's less likely to run in 2020 than Mr. Sanders, is in first with 26%; if the poll hadn't asked about her, where do you think those votes would have gone? I'll tell you where most of them wouldn't have gone: to second-place finisher and two-term Vice President Joe Biden, also less likely to run in 2020. If anything, this poll is bad news for Deval Patrick (who just served two terms as Governor right next door in Massachusetts) and Terry McAuliffe (whose extensive ties within the Democratic establishment haven't resulted in a groundswell of voter support what a shock).