Thieves in the Temple.

Action: net neutrality, drone strike transparency, and junk food ads in schools.

Word on the street is that the FCC will deal the death-blow to net neutrality today, by announcing a plan that would allow broadband services to create a "fast lane" where big corporations can pay to have their websites load more quickly. The FCC's plan would prevent corporations from slowing down loading times, or censoring sites entirely, and the plan would also reserve the option of "reclassifying broadband as a public utility," under which conditions the FCC could, legally, enforce strong net neutrality regulations. What's more interesting is that the FCC plans to evaluate every contract for preferential treatment to see whether it's "commercially reasonable." That could mean it could take for-freaking-ever for, say, the FCC to approve Google getting goodies from Comcast -- or it could mean the big corporations overwhelm the FCC with so many contracts the FCC rubber-stamps them all. But this, too, is no time to count on Barack Obama to win a game of 13-dimensional chess -- after all, 13-dimensional chess does sound like a hard game to play, let alone win, does it not? So Free Press helps you tell the FCC, one more time, not to kill off net neutrality. After all, we should control our internet experience, not the big corporations.

Meanwhile, we learned last week that a U.S. Air Force squadron in Nevada, not the CIA, has been flying drone strikes in Pakistan. Last year the Obama Administration claimed it wanted to transfer authority for drone strikes from the CIA to the military, but apparently the military has been working with the CIA for some time. And who's been in charge? Certainly not us! As one drone strike operator testified, "(a) CIA label is just an excuse to not have to give up any information. That is all it has ever been." In that spirit, let us recall that H.R. 4372, an Adam Schiff/Walter Jones production, would mandate that the Executive branch disclose whom our drone strikes are killing; they would also disclose how many civilians our drone strikes are killing, a matter of some contention -- our government, of course, says very few, while more independent sources, ah, contest that assessment. Still, better to make our government peel back the veil of secrecy. You can call your House Rep at 202.225.3121, or use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page -- your Reps are on vacation recess right now, so call their local offices -- and, if you like, you may report the results of your call to Just Foreign Policy here.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell USDA Secretary Vilsack to get junk food advertising out of public schools. We've participated in many actions (via Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood) to get advertising out of public schools at the state level, but we can also target junk food ads at the federal level. And this is one area Mr. Vilsack might actually consider himself accountable to the American people -- certainly he hasn't done anything for the public that might affect big ag's corporate profits, but the USDA's standards for the foods in snack machines and a la carte lunch lines at public schools have certainly improved on his watch. Maybe he thinks that's all the work he has to do -- that ads for junk food don't mean anything if he's gotten so much of the junk food out of the schools -- but he'd be wrong about that. If you know how susceptible adults are to good advertising, then you know kids are a lot more susceptible, and if they're out after school eating chips and cupcakes, the USDA's efforts to get public school kids to be healthier might be for naught. Personal to the trolls who contemplate spewing MICHELLEZ OBAMAZ WANTZ TO TELL YOU WHATZ TO EAT: you tell your kids what to eat, right? Well, do you want your government making that task harder, or easier? (And if you reply "I want big gummint to stay out of it," you've just voted for "harder.")

Around the table: solar panel users are FREE RIDERZ!!!!! and other absurdities.

Right Wing Watch notes that Tea Party clowns have begun to promote a massive demonstration ominously called Operation American Spring, scheduled for May 16 at the Mall in D.C. But Operation American Spring's organizers have openly called for a military coup against our center-right President, which no liberal did in the aftermath of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election, or of any of the subsequent humiliations Mr. Bush visited upon our great land. I say if these clowns want the Democrats to win back the House and expand their Senate majority, then they ought to go ahead and throw their little pity party. (Yes, even if they're all armed, it's still a pity party.)

The Los Angeles Times notices the right-wing war on solar power users. "If you are using the grid and benefiting from the grid, you should pay for it," says one right-wing spokeshack. You mean like solar power users already do when they have to draw energy from the grid? And don't other users benefit from the power solar users put into the grid, which utilities can presumably resell? Why does any "liberal" media outlet even quote such offensively stupid crap? And how, ultimately, is it somehow evil for people, and not corporations, to create electricity?

Robert Reich describes a California bill, SB 1372, which would hike state taxes on corporations that have a high CEO-to-worker-pay ratio (and cut taxes for corporations with a low CEO-to-worker-pay ratio, bet the "liberal" media doesn't report that part). I think the bill's a bit roundabout for my taste -- why not just hike taxes on millionaire income? But the Chamber of Commerce naturally calls it a "job-killer" (are those the only two words of English their spokeshacks know?), though we might more accurately describe the Chamber of Commerce a "job-killer" when it sinks tens of millions of dollars into political ads instead of, you know, hiring people to make stuff, like our grandparents did.

Right-wing "Christian" Ralph Reed can't say for sure whether a kid is better off in an orphanage or being adopted by a same-sex couple. "I think the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples," he said. He had just said the "social science" was in to say one-man-one-woman families were better, but never mind -- "the social science is just simply not in yet" is pretty weak tea, and only reminds us that he's the guy who invented compassionate bigotry. He even makes Cokie Roberts look good. Indeed, you have to wonder if that was the idea.

Finally, both of South Carolina's U.S. Senators and the local U.S. House Rep. skipped the unveiling of a statue of an anti-segregationist U.S. District Judge in Charleston. They all claimed scheduling conflicts -- the U.S. House Rep in question, Mark Sanford, said he was in Virginia, leading one to ask if Virginia is the new "Appalachian trail." I suppose they could also all claim they have re-election battles to fight this year, but then you'd have to ask why they would all think honoring an anti-segregation judge would cost them votes.

Action: forced sterilization in prisons, and pollution from Pennsylvania coal plants.

California apparently sterilized over 130 female prisoners between 2006 and 2010 under, ah, legally questionable conditions -- usually by citing dubious or nonexistent medical emergencies. Oh, and by pressuring the prisoners. It gets better: one Dr. James Heinrich performed the vast majority of these sterilizations, and claimed, naturally, that he saved the state money because he prevented the conception of children who were all just going to end up on welfare anyway. Did I wake up this morning in the Pinochet dictatorship? No, I do not believe I did. California law mandates that prisoners can only be sterilized if a) they consent to it and b) the state approves. Hence SB 1135, the Prison Sterilization Prohibition Bill, gets a hearing in the California state Senate Public Safety Committee next week; the bill would outlaw sterilizing prisoners except under considerably more limited circumstances. Color of Change helps you tell the state Senate to support SB 1135.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett and DEP Secretary Abruzzo to set "meaningful limits" on smog pollution from coal plants. The state DEP is taking comments on a smog-control plan, since around two-thirds of good Pennsylvanians still live in Southeastern and Southwestern counties with too much smog, but the state plan would actually let coal plants pollute more, partly by setting limits on large plants too high and partly by letting coal corporations average their emissions across multiple plants (so that coal corporations can get unearned "extra credit" from operating cleaner plants in relatively unpopulated areas). Why won't the Corbett Administration do more to rein in coal pollution? They'll surely say it would "kill jobs," as if coal corporations wouldn't need to hire people to help them refit their plants, but their real reason, I'm sure, is that bad smog regulations would please the big donors in the coal industry whose help the hugely unpopular Tom Corbett would surely need to get re-elected.

Around the table: the Laffer Curve, the "indecency" of atheism, workdays of the super-rich, KKK "rebranding," and the President's "manhood."

"Beyond the Laffer Curve -- the Case for Confiscatory Taxation," headlines this article by Matthew Yglesias. Mr. Yglesias still doesn't make moral cases for policy prescriptions, but at least here he abandons the notion that raising revenue is all we should discuss -- that perhaps "breaking the doom loop of oligarchy" is more important, even an end in itself. And to the prospect that CEOs might all at once retire once we limit their pay, folks who can remember as far back as six years ago will likely respond in only one way: we can only hope!

New Jersey woman sues state Motor Vehicle Commission for rejecting her application for an "8THEIST" license plate. According to her suit, the state said it rejected her vanity plate because it would "carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency." Ah, no: a vanity plate connoting an adult's sexual preference for children would be "offensive to good taste and decency." But some of the people most concerned about "good taste and decency" happen to be atheists. And atheism only "offends" people who want God's kingdom right here, right now, because they're not really secure in their own faith.

Paul Buchheit explodes the myth that the super-rich just work harder than the rest of us by listing no less than 13 ways the super-rich really make their money. I know the list only goes from one through seven, but a couple of them are really packed. Long story short: the super-rich are often born on third base and then they cheat to get to home plate. I mean, when banksters literally hoard food to keep it off the market so it jacks up prices and then "bet" on prices going up, they're not just inverting the American Dream; they're creating a "free" market dependent on failure, not success.

CNN hack asks, after the murder arrest of ex-KKK member Frazier Glenn Cross or Glenn Miller or whatever he calls himself these days, whether the KKK can "rebrand." Well, after nearly 150 years of murdering blacks just because they're black, the KKK might actually be just a few backyard barbecues and Little League uniform donations away from "rebranding," as long as they have the "liberal" media around to enable them. Again, this is why we need a la carte cable packaging.

Finally, David Brooks suggests on TV that people think President Obama has "a manhood problem in the Middle East." Of course David Brooks doesn't really agree that Mr. Obama has a "manhood" problem, but he's putting it out there anyway, because enough other Serious People believe it, I guess, and when do they ever get a voice on Sunday morning news programs? One would think after eight years of Mr. Bush doing the helicopter dance in front of the world, people might get a little tired of that sort of "manhood." But our "liberal" media can't be troubled to connect the dots. I wonder why.

Action: banning electric shock "therapy" for special-needs kids, and promoting community broadband in rural America.

Remember back in May of 2012, when we discussed how the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts, a school for special needs students, punished Andre McCollins, an autistic student, for not taking off his jacket? And do you remember how they punished him with hours of electric shocks, leaving him permanently brain-damaged, not to mention burned? Well, the FDA is now mulling whether to ban using electric shock devices in this manner, and former JRC worker Gregory Miller has started a petition on change.org to help you tell the FDA to ban such torture devices used on special needs kids. "Torture devices" is not hyperbole -- when schools' mania for discipline becomes such that they give kids electric shocks for (in Mr. Miller's words) "closing their eyes or tearing a paper cup," they're engaging in torture simple and plain, and maybe we ought to keep their toys from them when they do that. Obviously, no one opposes actual discipline, but abusing children like this is not discipline, nor is it "tough love," nor is it the fruit of "zero tolerance" policies. It's just evil.

Meanwhile, AT&T has been pushing state legislators to make community broadband networks illegal -- even in rural areas in which AT&T has no intention of building out. And toward this end they've apparently enlisted the aid of the dastardly ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, since ALEC has so much experience writing "model legislation" which somehow closely resembles state legislation designed to serve big corporate paymasters at the expense of good citizens just trying to make a better life for themselves. Again, I do not exaggerate: the ALEC agenda is anti-freedom, because when the law serves only big corporations, the rest of us have no freedom. And the push against local, government-owned broadband is a push against the people's broadband, because the people own their government. Thankfully, the people who actually own AT&T, their shareholders, are about as fed up with AT&T spending their money to keep rural areas broadband-free as the rest of us, so Sum of Us helps you tell AT&T to tell their shareholders about their war against rural broadband.

Around the table: BP bribes, tax cut claims, Wall Street defenders, GMO labeling bills, and 3D-printed houses.

BP is back in our government's good graces after the 2010 Spillageddon, and Greg Palast explains why. One key finding: the State Department covered up BP's previous cement-cap blowout, a mere 17 months earlier, in the Caspian Sea. Another key finding: BP has been "driving" Azerbaijan's economy for over 20 years, largely with bribery. And with more judicial activism from the Roberts Court, America could be headed down this same desultory path.

Rand Paul claimed the other day that big Reagan tax cuts drove the creation of 20 million jobs, but Factcheck finds that claim wanting. Chiefly, Factcheck notes that the Clinton administration raised taxes on the rich and created almost 23 million jobs (versus nearly 19 million created during the entirety of the Reagan/Bush era, which included six years of a 50 percent marginal tax rate and the 1991 tax hikes on the wealthy), while also noting that revenues, ah, didn't go up as a result of the 1981 tax cuts. But Factcheck fails to note that the revenue increases of 1984 and 1985 happened after President Reagan signed tax increases into law.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has a primary challenger, a former Bush Mobber named Taylor Griffin. And, just as Richard Lugar's defeat in the 2012 Indiana Senate primary at the hands of Richard Mourdock had more to do with Mr. Lugar's support of bank fee caps than anything else, Mr. Jones's real sin isn't voting against the Ryan budget or criticizing the Iraq war or even co-sponsoring the DISCLOSE Act, but demanding more regulation of the financial sector banksters who have their tentacles so firmly in Mr. Griffin's person. If Mr. Jones loses his primary, can Democrats capitalize? Just kidding; these are Democrats we're talking about -- though if Mr. Jones goes the independent route and wins, maybe Democrats will take him back. (Mr. Jones was a Democrat until early in 1994.)

Vermont Senate passes GMO-labeling bill, the first bill that includes no triggers depending on other states passing similar bills. Now the bill goes to the Vermont House, which passed a similar bill last year. Could this bill die because the two houses "just can't agree on the version they can both live with"? Sure, it could. I'm not saying it will, but we have to prepare ourselves for the worst. Still, this represents progress, and the inevitable big ag lawsuits that will lose if they get to a judge with any brains will also represent progress.

Finally, a Chinese corporation builds houses out of concrete using a very, very large 3D printer. The houses are a bit samey, not to mention small, and they're not made whole but in parts that people then assemble (sort of like prefab housing). But the houses are also rather cheap (about $5,000 per unit), and I imagine that some public policy maker, somewhere, might be able to ameliorate homelessness with them -- no, even in America, where the most progressive thinking about ameliorating homelessness currently comes from Utah.

Action: the Endangered Species Act faces endangerment, and Domino's CEO wants silly money.

S. 1731, the so-called Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act, is so bad that Scientific American editorialized against it in their April issue. S. 1731 would make it a lot harder to get help for endangered species by requiring that a state governor sign off on any new listing, by preventing citizens from petitioning to get species listed (some "self-determination"!), and by mandating that the "best scientific and commercial data" must include "any scientific evidence made available by any state agency," never mind how good said evidence is. And here you thought right-wingers were all about streamlining bureaucracy! SciAm also reminds us why folks shouldn't assume that the Endangered Species Act doesn't revive endangered species quickly enough -- an endangered species generally takes decades to rebound, and yet S. 1731 would automatically de-list an endangered species after a mere five years! I think S. 1731 merits a phone call to your Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, Domino's Pizza plans to hike its CEO's pay to $9 million annually. If that doesn't sound like a lot of money, consider that $9 million is approximately 480 times what Domino's lowest-paid worker makes in a year. (The national average ratio of CEO-to-lowest-paid-worker pay? Around 300:1 -- so Domino's wouldn't even clear that low bar.) The good news? Domino's shareholders are apparently contemplating a revolt over the matter. The bad news? The mutual funds that also invest in Domino's are contemplating strangling any such revolt in its crib. This is why I don't like mutual funds -- because you, the investor, have less control over your money. Still, mutual funds are susceptible to bad PR, and they're certainly susceptible to the will of the good folks who invest with them, so Sum of Us helps you tell Vanguard, Fidelity, and iShares to help stop absurd CEO pay packages. Remember that shareholder resolutions don't need to win to succeed -- they need only be large enough to put a scare in the corporation's executives.

Around the table: because they're evil, that's why!

The Oklahoma legislature had a really great week after its state House passed a bill levying a fee on those lazy good-for-nothing "free riders" who spend tens of thousands of dollars putting solar panels on their homes and thus deprive utility corporation CEOs of their God-given right to gild the plumbing on their seventh vacation home, and Gov. Fallin signed a bill forbidding OK municipalities from raising the minimum wage or mandating paid sick leave. And right-wingers have the nerve to celebrate these as small government moves! The state just attacked good citizens providing their own power hamstrung municipalities' ability to make their own laws. For right-wingers, "conservatism" is whatever you want it to be, I guess. But it sure looks like "whatever hurts people and makes our corporate paymasters happy."

Scientists find a few Appalachian gas wells bleed methane into the atmosphere before gas drillers have even begun fracking, with some of these pumping over 100 times as much methane into the air as an actively-fracked well does. The article seems hopeful that this means only a few wells commit most of the methane pollution caused by gas drilling, which also means we can find out why this is happening and stop it. But that would, of course, require spending money on safety, which gas drilling corporations are loathe to do unless someone (like, you know, municipal, state, or federal governments) were to make them. And it still doesn't solve fracking's little setting-our-drinking-water-on-fire problem.

Victory! The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that a corporation can't file a lawsuit anonymously just to protect its reputation. Some corporation filed a lawsuit against the Consumer Product Safety Commission a few years back, claiming that a complaint filed at the CPSC's SaferProducts.gov database was inaccurate -- but didn't want its identity known, claiming that public knowledge of their identity would damage their reputation. Trouble is, you don't have a First Amendment right to a good reputation, even one you've earned -- and if you want to clear your name, why would you hide your name?

Surprise, surprise, SuperPACs spent more than half of the over $140 million they raised last year, with over two-thirds of SuperPACs and hybrid PACs spending more money in 2013 than they took in. On all those earth-shaking 2013 elections, right? No -- on expensive restaurant meals, expensive consultant payments, and expensive "payments to firms employing (SuperPAC and hybrid PAC) leaders." PAC hacks no doubt call all that the cost of networking, but good citizens, left and right, who just want to make a difference would see that differently -- or, more precisely, accurately.

Finally, the Washington Post's Chris Cilizza has no business looking down on John Boehner's primary challenger because of the ad he made. I'd never support J.D. Winteregg for any office, and I'd also have buried half of that ad in the deep grave, but what's left would be pretty damn good -- I laughed out loud at "if you have a Boehner lasting more than 23 years, seek immediate medical attention," and I like the two mugs coming together to spell out "Winteregg." Even with his pittance of a campaign fund, this guy could take down the Speaker of the House in his primary -- and if the "liberal" media is so dismissive of his chances while simultaneously giving him free publicity, I'd call that a good omen.

Action: corporate tax evasion, and organic food.

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

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

Around the table: more people behaving badly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: unemployment insurance, and drone strike transparency.

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

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

Around the table: includes messages that bear repeating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: private prisons, and patent trolls.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: unemployment benefits, and paycheck fairness.

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

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