Thieves in the Temple.

Action: government spying, and racism.

You've likely heard that the Department of Justice is trying to get Dreamhost to provide the IP addresses (among other things!) of over a million folks who visited an anti-Trump site before his inauguration -- ostensibly to investigate the 200 or so folks who face felony rioting charges related to inauguration protests, but we all know why they really want the info. Hence both Demand Progress and Defending Rights and Dissent help you tell the Justice Department to abandon its attempt to spy on over a million American citizens. As I said earlier this week, it's more than a bit stunning that DOJ was able to get warrants from the D.C. Superior Court for this info, because it sure looks like a fishing expedition. It also looks like a President so insecure in his faith that he could execute the duties of his office that he tried to intimidate as many good Americans as he could. Most people would try to do a job so well that they'd have fewer opponents, but then Donald Trump ain't most people.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press has instructed its writers to avoid using the term "alt-right" to describe the Nazi wannabes who perpetrated violence in Charlottesville last week, but the rest of the "liberal" media still uses the term that Nazi wannabes concocted because they knew the words "Nazi" or "white supremacist" would give away their evil far more easily, so Moms Rising helps you tell mainstream media outlets to stop describing racists as either "alt-right" or "white nationalists." "White nationalists," of course, effaces their racism a bit, and implies that the nation they want to turn white is some nation other than our nation, whereas "alt-right" implies that these Nazi wannabes are somehow different from the ones that have plagued us forever. Well, they are different, in a way -- they whine incessantly about being criticized and being singled out and (in Richard Spencer's words, not mine!) needing a "safe space." It's hard out there for a pimp.

Action: voting rights, and free speech.

H.R. 2978/S. 1419, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, still awaits Congressional consideration; it would (among other things!) fix the problem the Supreme Court found with the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, in which the Justices struck down the Act's preclearance formula (which determines which states and localities need to get preclearance from the Department of Justice anytime they change their voting laws). Used to be a group of almost entirely Southern states and localities had to get preclearance, but the Voting Rights Advancement Act would create a new formula that would require any state or locality, regardless of geography, to get preclearance if they've demonstrated a lengthy pattern of voting rights abuses -- thus satisfying, I would think, the Justices' very, very narrowly-constructed declaration in Shelby that the Voting Rights Act was unfair to the South as it is now. So you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) and call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell North Carolina state legislators to reject a bill that would immunize drivers who hit protestors with their cars. You may recall that in the wake of massive anti-Trump protests that blocked off traffic, state legislators rushed to introduce many odious anti-free speech bills, including bills that would let drivers off the hook when they hit protestors. Well, recent events sure have put that particular effort in a new light, haven't they? Five of the six states that considered these bills didn't pass them, but of course North Carolina's reactionary state House has already passed the bill and now its reactionary state Senate will consider it. Don't brook any silliness from right-wingers about how nobody could have predicted a Nazi wannabe would run down protestors! Actually, anyone could have predicted it, and even before Charlottesville, it was an odious bill no civilized person should have ever supported.

Around the table: mostly about Charlottesville, but also about health care and spying on protestors.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions calls Charlottesville attack an incident of domestic terrorism and vows to pursue "the most serious charges that can be brought." That leaves him wiggle room, of course -- by which I don't necessarily mean farming the case out to the state of Virginia, because that might work out worse for the suspect -- but I won't lie to you and say it's utterly meaningless that he said it, since he is Attorney General, after all, and he has a pulpit.

But just as one hand giveth: Department of Justice has been trying to get IP addresses for over 1 million Americans who may have visited an anti-Trump website. I'm stunned, frankly, that the DOJ could get such a broad warrant, apparently in connection with the 200 folks still being held on felony riot charges in connection fo Inauguration Day protests. If judges are showing that much deference to the Executive branch (particularly this Executive branch), that's not a good sign.

Ho hum, CBO estimates that if President Trump cuts off Affordable Care Act subsidies, premiums will go up 20 percent by next year for those who use subsidies to get health insurance, and 25 percent by 2020. Note to the President: it's not "letting Obamacare fail" if you actively work to make it fail, any more than it's an "accident" if you set fire to your own house.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that the ACLU shouldn't get slammed for representing people we don't agree with. Not just because rights are even for Nazi wannabes, and not just because news items saying ZOMG TEH ACLU DEFENDEDZ TEH NAMBLAZ!!!! tend not to tell the whole story, but because, as the ACLU itself puts it, "once you chip away at one person’s rights, everyone else’s are at risk...Free speech doesn’t belong only to those we agree with, and the First Amendment doesn’t only protect speech that is tasteful and inoffensive. In fact, it is in the hard cases that our commitment to the First Amendment is most tested and most important." Another way of putting it: if your values only tell you what you want to hear and never inconvenience you, they're bad values.

Finally, President Trump finally leveled specific condemnations at Nazi wannabes a mere 48 hours after the Charlottesville attacks, though not without also bragging about the economy and pretending he'd already condemned them. I'm sure his votaries aren't offended -- after all, they heard him the first time, and are pretty sure he was "made" to say what he said the second time. How long before they finally get tired of a President who struts around like that but can so easily be "made" to do things against his will? Probably about the same time they get tired of feeling sorry for themselves, so that could be a while. In the meantime, how about Democrats run some actual populists for office, so Trump votaries can have a real model of better behavior?

Action: "free" trade, and endangered species.

With NAFTA renegotiation formally beginning tomorrow, Jobs with Justice helps you write a letter-to-the-editor expressing your desire that NAFTA work for all people, not just rich folks and corporations. As you know, President Trump withdrew from the notorious Trans-Pacific "Partnership" earlier this year, but his recent maneuvers on NAFTA renegotiation don't inspire confidence -- he not only pointedly refused to demand the end of the "investor-state tribunal" in NAFTA that's the main reason we oppose "free" trade deals to begin with, but he's appointed numerous cabinet members who have professed their undying love for outsourcing our jobs and nullifying our laws with "free" trade deals. Why, Commerce Secretary Ross actually said, out loud, that he'd like NAFTA to be more like the TPP! So get out of the mindset, if you're in it, that At Least Trump Has Our Back on Trade -- he's already sold us out on letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, after all. After one meeting with big pharma CEOs, no less.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject H.R. 2134/S. 935, the so-called Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. This clumsily-named bill would give our government a mere five years to get endangered species back to health, when, frankly, nursing a species back to health is something you'd rather do right than do quickly. Ask the bald eagle, which took 40 years to get off the endangered species list. But wait, there's more! The bill would mandate a full vote of Congress to approve any species put on the endangered list, would let state Governors nullify protections for those species found only within their state borders, and would prevent the courts from reviewing these Governors' decisions -- because developing land and drilling for fossil fuels on their big donors' behalf is more important than, you know, the lessons we teach future generations about what lasts and what fades away.

Around the table: time for another exciting round of "when's that terrorist attack coming?"

DHS spokeshack says President Trump didn't condemn Nazi wannabes on Sunday because he didn't want to "dignify" them. You know, the way foreign terrorists and his Twitter critics obviously need to be "dignified," since Mr. Trump never shuts his yap about them. Somewhere, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan still await his next "pivot," and the "liberal" media still awaits the moment they can say that "Donald Trump became President today" and a large number of Americans might actually believe it. (But see the last paragraph, below, for the most likely way that latter item would occur.)

Of course Fox and Friends thinks President Trump "nailed it" with his cowardly blanket condemnation that utterly failed to single out the fools who were actually responsible for Saturday's violence. You remember when Black Lives Matter activists ran over a bunch of white counter-protestors, or when police officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas and water cannons at Nazi wannabes? No, you don't. And "the reason those people were out there"? Clearly, they were out there because they wanted everyone to see them soil their diapers.

The Indianapolis Star finds that state and local Republican officials have done their damndest to extend early voting in Republican areas and cut it in Democratic ones. So when right-wingers say that early voting creates fraud and that Election Day should be the only day anyone votes, how will they justify these maneuvers in Indiana? I kid, of course -- fuck you I won is the only justification right-wingers have for doing anything.

Courtesy the Economic Policy Institute, we have yet more data that corporations don't pay the 35% corporate tax rate, and thus should stop their whining about how the tax rate doesn't make them appropriately "competitive" overseas, or how it prevents them from creating jobs. Citizens for Tax Justice puts the effective corporate tax rate (i.e., the portion of their profits corporations actually pay in taxes) at 19.4%, while the GAO puts the rate at 14%. A third estimate from 2014 puts it even lower. But please, right-wingers, go on about TEH HIGHEST OF TEH TAX RATEZ IN TEH WORLDZ!!!!!

President Trump runs a campaign ad simultaneously boasting about his "achievements" and attacking his critics. So the 46% President has now accomplished the feat of strutting around like he won 66% and whining like he won 26% in the space of thirty seconds. And psst: President Obama created over 2 million jobs in 2016. And the stock market measures speculation more than anything else. And Mr. Trump still ain't gotten a single bill passed that's helped Americans -- in fact, he's only gotten bills passed that have hurt us.

Finally, Trump Administration aides are predicting a "brutal" September for the Administration, given the many issues (the debt ceiling and a federal budget resolution chief among them) the Administration will have to navigate. Well, sounds like the time is right for a terrorist attack to take everyone's mind off those pesky issues and get them to love and worship Dear Leader! Hey, it got George W. Bush a second term, and his first term wasn't going so great either when it happened.

Action: tax "reform," and home-grown terror.

American investor Nick Hanauer has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell your Congressfolk to give rich folk and corporations "not one penny in tax cuts." I find it fascinating that this document finally exists -- in a nation where more than half of Americans have thought the rich should pay more for many years now, it really should have come into being a lot sooner! -- but it is still a defensive maneuver. If you want to play offense, call your Reps and Senators and demand a 91% tax bracket on millionaire income (which will not raise taxes on any income under $1 million, no matter what some right-winger tells you) and an end to corporate welfare tax breaks without reducing the corporate tax rate, so that small businesses and ordinary Americans like us don't have to shoulder a bigger share of our taxes than we can pay or deserve. You don't just move the line by holding the line; you move the line by seeing where the line could be -- and, in this case, where the line has been, since the 91% tax bracket was a feature of our tax code through the middle of the last century.

Meanwhile, a Change.org petition also helps you demand that our Department of Justice bring terrorism charges against James Alex Fields, who drove a car into a group of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday. In apparently deciding to use his automobile as a weapon, Mr. Fields killed one person (Heather Heyer, of Charlottesville) and injured 19 others, and though I have no interest in reading any manifesto he may have written or may yet write, I find it hard to imagine that he did not intend to terrorize other folks into being silent. And I'd feel the same even if we didn't already know that driving cars into large groups of people has become one of ISIS's favorite ways of spreading terror. (If we pointed that out to him, we would not be surprised, I'd hope, if he reacted with some admiration toward terrorists he might otherwise call "mud people.") Perhaps a terrorist charge for Mr. Fields is, ah, a big ask of this particular Administration, one that loves swinging its balls when discussing a foreign threat but gets all limp when the perp is a home-grown Nazi wannabe. But duty is duty.

Around the table: what "both sides do it" actually means, and other lessons.

Nazi wannabes initiate violence against anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, VA -- and President Trump condemns the behavior of "many sides." As Roy Edroso instructed us many years ago, when someone says some variation of "both sides do it," it's usually because their side just got caught doing it. I wish we could just ignore Nazi wannabes, but better we treat them like the whiny, diaper-loaded brats they are. Yes, even though they're armed -- if they're really going to shoot us because we hurt their fee-fees, they'll have to bring that to the Pearly Gates.

Democrats run ads in red states decrying "Washington bureaucrats" and "cuts to Medicare" -- without saying that the "bureaucrats" haven't actually met yet to cut anything, and the cuts almost certainly wouldn't be "deep" and wouldn't come for several years. Also, the Affordable Care Act itself would create this board of "bureaucrats," and only if Medicare costs started to rise too quickly -- meaning that Republicans could easily launch attack ads against Messrs. Donnelly and Tester, at least, for voting for the ACA and therefore for the board of "unelected Washington bureaucrats"! With so many factual descriptions of Republican evil available, you have to wonder why Democrats keep running ads that can be so easily neutralized and/or turned on them. I sure hope it's not because they're trying to lose, though you always have to consider that possibility.

A New York Times report finds EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt going to extraordinarily lengths to disguise his doings -- from making his underlings travel a labyrinthine path to get to see him to making phone calls from other folks' offices. Plus, you know, he has armed guards! You and I might take precautions to keep criminals and identity thieves from attacking us, but what does a servant of the American people like Scott Pruitt have to fear? Particularly when he's supposed to, you know, be accountable to the people? (And of course the EPA spokeshack accuses the Times of "collud(ing) with union officials"!)

Have you heard of Steve Bannon's little Damascus moment in the "war on terror," when, as a Naval officer in the late 1970s, he visited a Pakistani port? Well, Peter Maass at The Intercept did a little digging, and found that Mr. Bannon couldn't have visited that port at that time. He was almost certainly in no position to describe 1980 Iran as being as desolate as the moon from miles away, either. So many life-changing moments just aren't as dramatic as literature tells us -- my own transition from cowardly centrist to proud liberal took at least a year. Still, Mr. Bannon's false narrative would be a worse lie than the ones we generally tell ourselves, and not just because it would cause more harm to others.

Finally, a Harvard economist says "Liberals are Terrible at Arguing with Conservatives." Having accepted his conclusion (that arguments require "both facts and values") for close to 15 years now, maybe I'm not as impressed as I should be, but I don't think he actually describes arguing with conservatives -- I think he describes arguing with reactionaries, which one should never do. You're really better off leaving the changing of reactionary minds to God, and working instead on the vast number of folks who aren't yet reactionaries. (As for his assertion that liberals care more about consequences and conservatives care more about processes, I'm inclined to think good processes tend to create good consequences, though not necessarily in each and every case.)

Around the table: in which we discuss worker rights, "free" trade, health care, the "age tax," and right-wing whining.

Workers at a Mississippi Nissan plant reject UAW representation by a nearly 2-1 margin -- and Joe Allen at In These Times wonders what the UAW might have done wrong. Long story short: "the UAW has become a prison of its modern history," and didn't, for example, try to organize temps and other workers at the weak points of Nissan's Just-in-Time-reliant supply chain. Meanwhile, Joe Atkins at Labor South is more optimistic, not just because heartbreak on the road to recognition is not uncommon, but also because it'll be more difficult for "free" trade deals, and other nefarious forces, to destroy a 6,400-worker auto plant than to destroy textile mills.

Dean Baker wonders "Is the New York Times Required to Lie to Push Trade Agreements?" Short answer: yes. Somewhat longer answer: the lies are getting a little better now, since they depend on you, like most folks, not knowing the precise size of Japan's beef market or the precise role of the Canadian softwood industry on the value of American home construction, so that in the end you're a lot more susceptible to scare numbers. Also, too, collecting anecdotes is the beginning of science, not its end. Hell, it's not the end of journalism, either. It's not even the end of storytelling.

Steven Rosenfeld at AlterNet offers "11 Steps States Could Take to Rein In Healthcare Costs While Building Toward Single-Payer Universal Coverage." Mr. Rosenfeld suggests we should attack the "medical billing complex" as a stepping stone to universal health insurance coverage; most of them require increased state regulation, and when right-wingers rise to squeal ZOMG TEH REGULASHUNZ RAISEZ TEH COSTZ!!!!!, folks who are aware how much our health care already costs may not be very impressed.

Democrats start running campaign ads against 10 House Republicans for voting for the notorious House repeal-and-replace bill, accusing them of supporting an "age tax." That's not bad, and it's not a lie, either -- letting health insurance corporations charge seniors five times as much for insurance, rather than three times as much as Obamacare presently allows, is rather like assessing a tax on someone just for being old. Maybe my wish that all campaign ads attacking Republicans were like this one has prejudiced me, but the "age tax" isn't the best arrow in Democrats' quiver -- other, sharper arrows include they tried to kill Medicaid! and they tried to take money from Medicare and give it to rich people!

Finally, a Breitbart writer suggests that a Vogue cover showing Jennifer Lawrence and the Statue of Liberty comprises more liberal bias from the media. You know, because of that pissing match White House aide/face even a mother could punch Stephen Miller had with CNN reporter Jay Acosta about the Statue of Liberty and immigration law. Only after being told that covers are generally shot months in advance of publication did Mr. Carney finally say he was only "teasing," which he would have said at the beginning if it were really true. Anyway, it's nice to have the Statue of Liberty back from right-wingers, even if only because right-wing drama hounds have decided it's too liberal for them.

Action: government oppression, offshore drilling, and bad media.

The government of Turkey sure has been on a roll lately, purging itself of thousands of workers President Erdogan has deemed insufficiently loyal after an apparent attempted coup in 2016, and arresting and detaining many more private citizens, including 10 human rights workers at a meeting at a hotel near Istanbul about a month ago. Among these detainees is an Avaaz staff member named Özlem, and Avaaz helps you call for her release. Also among them is Idil Eser, head of Amnesty International's Turkish branch, and Amnesty International helps you call for her release as well. If you can put a face to Turkey's oppression, you make it that much harder for Turkey to oppress folks. If you can put a relatively prestigious face (like Ms. Eser's) on Turkey's reign of terror, you can certainly move the needle a bit. But if you can also put a relatively unknown face (like Özlem's) on it, you can remind good folks all over the world that folks like them get caught up in government oppression, too. We might also find it useful to remind President Trump (whose Administration has, surprisingly, condemned the arrests, instead of ignoring them) that the Big Stick of Bad PR can come his way if he gets ideas.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration wants to open our coasts to offshore drilling again, apparently thinking we've all forgotten the Spillageddon in the Gulf a mere seven years ago, a spill that made British Petroleum look like the most heartless corporation in the world (in a contest that always has a lot of entrants!) and devastated the local economies of Louisiana and Florida for years to come. But, you know, some oil or gas CEO needs to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home, so to hell with what the people need! Naturally the Department of the Interior will only take comments on the offshore drilling plan for another six days, so Food and Water Watch helps you tell our government to protect our water and our livelihoods and stop new offshore drilling. No use arguing this is about "American energy independence" -- real American energy independence would begin with expanding renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Trouble is, that program would also grant us independence from oil and gas CEOs getting all the say about everything, and we can't have that in the greatest democratic experiment in Earth's history!

Finally, Media Matters helps you tell major corporations to stop advertising on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. While it's true that Mr. Hannity's program has morphed from a garden variety right-wing hackfest into a full-blown Trump TV operation, basically we should be encouraging corporate advertisers to run away from his program because of everything he's ever said. (OK, he hasn't been as bad on gays as other right-winger blowhards, but that's nothing to take to the Pearly Gates.) And just to review: the First Amendment protects you from your government; it does not protect you from your employer or from your advertisers, and it certainly does not protect you from activists, critics, or customers. I say this not just to pre-empt charges that a campaign targeting Mr. Hannity's advertisers somehow "oppresses" him, but to pre-empt corporate attempts to expand this "right" into a weapon they could wield against, say, a disgruntled customer's negative online review of their product, or even a customer's desire to buy a competitor's product, or no product. When our politicians constantly whine about the First Amendment when someone criticizes them, these things are not so hard to imagine.

Around the table: in which we contemplate a tale of burner phones and dead cats.

Trump Administration abandons effort to defend FCC rules capping prison phone rates from multiple lawsuits. FCC Chair Ajit Pai not only uses anecdotal evidence (that someone could stuff a burner phone into a dead cat and throw it over a prison wall!) to defend his inaction, but uses anecdotal evidence that actually obliterates his argument (lower phone rates would, I would think, obviate the need to use dead cats to smuggle burner phones). Anyway, letting corporations charge usurious phone rates because prisoners and their families literally can't do better isn't the definition of "free market conservatism," no matter how many of today's "conservatives" confuse their ancient philosophy with "letting corporations do whatever they want."

Five transgendered American soldiers sue our government over President Trump's declaration on Twitter that "the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military." It's possible the lawsuit gets thrown because Mr. Trump hasn't apparently lifted a finger to actually enforce this declaration, but his whining about the "cost" of health care for transgendered soldiers when it costs more to send Mr. Trump on the taxpayer dime to Mar-a-Lago every weekend would support the plaintiffs' "arbitrary and capricious" claim.

California farmers are losing money, and letting some of their crops rot, apparently due to the lack of migrant workers available to pick the crops. Let's not tacitly accept the notion that only-a-migrant-worker-would-pick-strawberries, though -- instead, let's ask whether maybe folks who would pick fruit (and Americans aren't as loathe to do dirty work as Our Glorious Elites are!) might have a little more leverage now when it comes to getting better pay and working conditions. No use complaining that higher wages cause higher prices when, ah, not having enough workers to pick the fruit already causes higher prices.

Let's not obsess too much over a Democrat's 54-44 win in an Iowa House special election on Tuesday -- President Trump took this district by over 20 points, but it was still a Democrat hold (the previous state Rep died in office earlier this year) and turnout just eclipsed 40%. It is good that the ZOMG TEH TRANZ PEEPULZ WILL USEZ TEH BATHROOMZ!!!! hysteria didn't work here (and could have caused a backlash, for all we know!), just as it didn't get North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory re-elected. The better lesson to learn? Social wedge issues all the way up to abortion won't work against Democrats who can convince people they won't sell them out to Our Glorious Elites -- but Democrats won't try this in large numbers, either out of weakness or out of a desire to keep that Glorious Elite campaign cash coming.

Finally, I've been churning over President Trump's continued refusal to denounce or even acknowledge last week's bombing at a Minnesota mosque, and I've concluded (not that this was a difficult analysis to undertake) that his silence is a dog whistle to his votaries. I've also concluded that when he does denounce the attack, as I'm sure he'll do soon, that act will be another dog whistle to his votaries, as in I tried to ignore a matter that certainly doesn't concern you, but look what PC culture made me do! Of course, I'm sure Mr. Bannon is counseling continued silence, but I bet Mr. Trump knows what's best for those poor beleaguered racists.

Action: arbitration fairness, worker rights, and free speech.

You might deduce, from how quickly the House passed H.J.Res. 111 last month, that H.J.Res. 111 is a horrible bill -- and you'd be right! H.J.Res. 111 is yet another "resolution of disapproval," this one aimed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent rule preventing banks from putting forced arbitration clauses in customer contracts -- a rule that hasn't even taken effect! It's like all this Congress can do is "disapprove" of, and destroy, good works. And the banksters are all lined up to tell you that you should have the "choice" of arbitration (how is a forced arbitration clause about "choice"? You figure it out) and that arbitration payouts are on average larger than class action payouts. Oh, but we already know what to say to that: you win less than 10% of the time when you go to arbitration with a corporation, meaning that ore than 90% of all customers win, on average, zero dollars. And corporations can take you to arbitration, and they win more than 90% of the time there, too -- and customers pony up over $7,000, on average. Got $7,000 lying around? If you're like most people, you don't. So call your Senators and tell them to reject H.J.Res. 111, lest they be perceived as lawmakers who only care about banksters.

Meanwhile, the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell the Colombian government to investigate Alberto Román Acosta González's murder and protect other Colombian trade union leaders as if, you know, they were citizens with rights and stuff. Mr. Acosta was president of his local agricultural workers union, largely representing sugar cane workers. Remember back in the day, when sugarcane workers simply died after working two or three years in the fields? Things are slightly better now for sugar cane workers -- they make a little less than $200 monthly, nearly twice the poverty line in Colombia, but they also work 14-hour days to get there. And clearly someone doesn't want them to get any more than that, since two gunmen shot Mr. Acosta to death while watching his son play soccer. Well, that'll teach a man to be there for his family! I sure hope I don't need to ask the question: does being a labor leader justify the death penalty? Sugar cane workers deserve all the good pay and decent working conditions they can get as members of a civilized society. Some folks will actually respond, even now, BUT THAT WILL HIKE TEH PRICEZ OF TEH SUGARZ!!!! But that might be a cue for those of us with First World Problems to eat less chocolate and more fruit.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 1697/S. 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. Both H.R. 1697 and S. 720 enjoy broad bipartisan support in Congress, which should tell you that they do not, in fact, enjoy broad bipartisan support among the American people, who are, by and large, rather skeptical that we should just do whatever Israel tells us to do. But S. 720 has also had one high-profile defection, that of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who withdrew her sponsorship after being confronted about the matter at a townhall. I shudder to think that encounter will induce her, also, to stop meeting with her constituents, though I'd be happy to be wrong. But these bills don't imitate various efforts to deny state funding to organizations associated with the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (or BDS) movement, efforts I find distasteful but not unconstitutional -- these bills would actually put you in jail and/or assess steep fines for associating with the BDS movement. That's not only unconstitutional, but it should make you wonder whether Israel really has the moral high ground, if it needs this much help.

Around the table: time for another exciting campaign from Danny Tarkanian! And other stories.

Martin Longman at Washington Monthly says Democrats might fight their way back to power in rural/poor white districts by fighting monopolies again. I'd quarrel with some of his points, but if you're looking for something that unites rank-and-file Americans, fighting monopolies might be it, particularly since monopolies lay waste to communities that never vote Democrat anymore. Fighting monopolies might even be the idea that unifies all the other things that unite rank-and-file Americans across the ideological spectrum (like opposition to media consolidation, corporate crime, "free" trade, and bankster power).

Apple removes some of its Virtual Private Network (or VPN) apps from its Chinese app store, which just so happens to jibe with China's ongoing internet crackdown. Apple is notorious for strong-arming app developers into making their products to conform to its rigid hardware and software requirements, but it would have been a vain hope to think they'd play hardball with the Chinese government. So remind your friends and family to avoid thinking we should let corporations do whatever they like, so that corporate power can be a bulwark against totalitarians.

If you've fallen prey to the notion that we shouldn't expect to see life-saving vaccines if there's no money in it (cough ebola cough), Dean Baker reminds us that our government can play a role in developing such vaccines, such as the Zika vaccine. Of course, corporate whining about government involvement in vaccine development is doubly offensive when you consider how much taxpayer money goes into developing big pharma drugs -- and sigh, our government will grant the corporation it paid to develop the Zika vaccine a seven-year monopoly on it.

Political gadfly Danny Tarkanian says he'll take on Sen. Dean Heller in the 2018 Republican primary, because Mr. Heller isn't pro-Trump enough. Can he win the nomination? Sure he can, even against a formidable campaigner like Mr. Heller. Can he win the general? Of course he can, even though he's now lost five attempts for high-profile office since 2004 -- 2018 isn't going to be a year for non-ideological problem-solvers to win office, but a year for populists and fake populists to win office. Still, we can't discount the possibility that the end result (or even the intent!) will be that Mr. Heller looks more palatable to the good folks of Nevada -- he really blew it with that last health care vote, after all.

I've long believed that websites like Napster existed because people really, really wanted to download music and the record corporations should have moved a lot more quickly to fulfill their desires, but my generosity most certainly does not extend to the hackers who are trying to blackmail HBO into giving them a cut of their largesse. We may reasonably debate whether HBO has too much money, but that doesn't make everyone who wants to take it from them into Robin Hood, even if it means some folks will get to see the next Game of Thrones episode a few days early. So yeah, this "Mr. Smith" is just an asshole, or a group of assholes.

Finally, since we're on the subject, I'm with Charles Blow's characterization of Donald Trump as "America's Whiniest 'Victim'" -- until he suggests that Mr. Trump's votaries are just as whiny as he is. A lot of votaries have legitimate grievances (corporations have utterly ravaged their neighborhoods and livelihoods, after all), though TEH BLACKZ GETZ ALL TEH GOODIEZ!!!! is, frankly, not a legitimate grievance, and if we addressed their legitimate grievances, a lot of their illegitimate ones would magically disappear. Still, it is a shame that none of them will never add the sum of Mr. Trump's whining and deduce that he is, in fact, a whiner.

Action: tax "reform," law and order, and clean air.

Heard those radio ads lamenting our "highest in the world" corporate tax rate? And did you immediately respond, so why do so many corporations pay no taxes? Strange that right-wingers would think cutting the corporate tax rate might be the most popular part of the Trump tax "reform" plan -- apparently no one's buying tax-cuts-for-the-rich as "middle-class tax cuts" anymore. But you know why Congress always waits until budgeting has to get done to pass their corporate welfare "tax extenders" -- because corporate tax cuts are unpopular. So use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of the page, if you're on a cellphone) to tell your Congressfolk you want them to keep the corporate tax rate right where it is and close corporate tax loopholes so that the corporate tax raises more money and so good citizens and small businesses don't have to shoulder even more of the tax burden. And no, corporate tax cuts won't "liberate" CEOs to "create jobs" -- CEOs only create jobs when we make them, and when we close corporate tax loopholes, and bring back the return of the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, we'll make them.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and S. 1693, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, don't actually do much about sex trafficking, despite their titles -- instead, they allow internet service providers to be held liable for the activities of those folks who use their platforms. They won't go after phone corporations for letting sex traffickers use their phone lines, of course, but I digress. These bills would do nothing but cow a lot of internet service providers into shutting down services that sex traffickers might use, but which law-abiding Americans do use, like message boards, mailing lists, and dating apps. And right-wingers who constantly complain that liberals "blame the wrong people" should note that these bills actually do blame the wrong people -- only those ISPs that actually participate in sex trafficking should ever be held liable. I mean, that's basic law-and order, and when politicians use the horror of sex trafficking to curtail the freedoms of law-abiding citizens, they also do evil. So the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell your Congressfolk to vote down H.R. 1865 and S. 1693.

Finally, S. 263 might be called the Ozone Standards Implementation Act, but mostly what it does is prevent our government from implementing ozone standards! S. 263 would, ho hum, give states more time to comply with the ozone standards the Obama Administration EPA put out in 2015, would allow the EPA to review those standards every 10 years instead of every five, and would force the EPA to jump through even more bureaucratic hurdles before it can issue new ozone-related regulations. A lot of right-wingers seem to think (or, more precisely, want you to think) that the EPA doesn't consider economic costs at all when issuing regulations, but it always does, perhaps too much so, and "economic costs," here, shouldn't just mean a CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home, but health care costs, which would go down at least $2.9 billion annually if the standards stay the way they are. Note well, also, that this bill's main sponsor is West Virginia Senator Shelly Moore Capito, who made a lot of noise about opposing the Trumpcare bill only to vote for the "repeal only" bill in the end. CREDO helps you tell your Senator to help keep our air clean by rejecting S. 263.

Action: government oppression, food safety, and marijuana prohibition.

Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Venezuela to release its political prisoners. Venezuela just had an election, as you know, and it wasn't quite the resounding victory for which incumbent President Nicolas Maduro might have hoped -- in fact, given the increased number of protestors out in the streets after the election, it may well have been a loss. Mr. Maduro has taken a page from Mr. Assad's playbook by shooting those protestors, a few short years after following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, by wresting rule-by-decree power, this time while the opposing party controlled the nation's assembly. But it doesn't matter whether I might agree with any part of Mr. Maduro's political philosophy, because governments are always wrong to fire on their protestors, and governments are always wrong to detain their political opponents. And if governments do either one, then they are failed governments, and deserve to be out of power.

Meanwhile, Food and Water Watch helps you tell the U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to keep unsafe Chinese chicken out of American stores. Specifically, you'll ask the USDA to deny "granting equivalency status for the poultry inspection system in the People's Republic of China," which the USDA would like to do though China's lackluster poultry inspection system is notorious the world over, allowing things you might expect (sick birds and antibiotic abuse) and things you might not (using recycled cooking oil from street gutters, yum!). This is the kind of thing we supposedly put Mr. Trump in office to stop, but the Trumpoids have an answer: it's a great deal, a YUGE deal, really, because we're opening up their markets to our beef! So we're selling safe, high-quality beef to China, and we're getting crappy, disease-ridden chicken in return. Yeah, that's a great deal like getting Jason Grimsley for Curt Schilling was a great deal for the Astros.

Finally, Sen. Booker (D-NJ) has introduced the Marijuana Justice Act, an ambitious bill worthy of the man Mr. Booker pushed out of the Senate, the late Frank Lautenberg. Among other things, the bill would end federal scheduling/prohibition of marijuana, withhold funding from states that continue to criminalize it (which they'd have the right to do) if they disproportionately arrest and convict non-whites on pot charges, and establish a Community Reinvestment Fund to help those communities most harmed by the "war on drugs" (which, as John Ehrlichmann himself said, was always about demonizing blacks and anti-war activists). Fact is, pot is no worse than alcohol or tobacco, and if it's a "gateway drug" to anything, it's most likely a gateway drug to "getting hemp grown the way we've historically grown cotton," which may explain Attorney General Sessions's opposition to it even more than any racist feelings he might have. Anyway, Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Marijuana Justice Act.

Around the table: featuring truly bad arguments and governments gone wild!

Laura Gottesdeiner at Mother Jones finds our ongoing war against ISIS to be, well, rather less "precise" than advertised, to the point where many Syrian citizens think the Americans' main aim is to kill as many civilians as possible. You'd hate to think we've outdone Mr. Assad in the area of killing Syrian civilians, let alone ISIS, but in May and June we managed to outdo both in that area. And if you're thinking destroying ISIS is more important than worrying about the "collateral damage," you have to consider what killing civilians always does in the long term -- namely, that it creates more ISISes.

You've heard from right-wingers that consumers win more money through arbitration than class-action lawsuits, but the Economic Policy Institute reminds us that so few consumers ever win in forced arbitration -- a mere 9% do, making that nice-looking $5,000-plus average virtually meaningless, since you get zero dollars if you lose. Also, and we often forget to talk about this when we talk about forced arbitration, that corporations win even more often when they take you to arbitration, and they collect, on average, over $7,000 when they win. Class action lawsuits may not make you rich, but it ain't all about you -- it's also about everyone else who got harmed, and making sure corporations don't harm people again.

The Turkish government has detained half a dozen activists for the heinous crime of discussing and learning about encryption and digital security. Oh, sure, the charges include things like "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organization without being a member," which sure sounds like a made-up thing, but make no mistake: they're oppressing good activists laying their lives on the line for their fellow citizens. And like so many other governments around the globe (cough Venezuela cough), Turkey's government does these things because it knows it will shrivel and die under ordinary circumstances. (But remember that our own CIA Chief, Mike Pompeo, has all but equated encryption to criminal activity as well.)

Ho hum, would-be Estate Tax killers still trot out family farms, even though the stodgiest Estate Tax opponents have never been able to find even one family farm that succumbed to it. Last month a House Ways and Means Committee hearing brought in a North Dakota farmer to decry the Estate Tax when his farm won't be subject to the Estate Tax, and a 2014 ad campaign against the Estate Tax featured a Kentucky farmer who took over $150,000 in farm subsidies over the previous 20 years! The Estate Tax repeal movement has always been one of America's stupidest -- but how many more bullets do we have to pump into this zombie lie to keep it down for good?

Finally, Janine Jackson at FAIR reminds us of the dangers of believing credulous "liberal" media stories about attacks against America by describing how the Tonkin Gulf "attack" led to the catastrophe in Vietnam. You have to hope that if/when Donald Trump tries something similar, today's "liberal" media will hate him enough to be a bit more skeptical, except that the "liberal" media seemed to love him best earlier this year when he fired a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at a just-deserted Syrian air base. So it's down to us to keep us out of war, as usual.

Around the table: the "Pharma Bro" heads to jail! And other stories.

President Trump supports bill that would cut legal immigration in half. So how will those white folks who always work themselves into a red-faced rage about TEH ILLEGULZ!!!!! prove they're not racist now? After all, they deflect charges of racism by saying but of course I support legal immigration, but this bill curtails legal immigration, so if you support this bill, you support less legal immigration. Of course, less legal immigration means more undocumented immigrants for people to get into a red-faced rage about, and thus more souls for the Trump goblins to harvest.

Joshua Holland at The Nation argues that single-payer isn't the solution to the problem of achieving universal health insurance coverage in America. So what is the solution, then? Well, the two solutions offerred by Mr. Hacker at Yale would both improve the system, and might even ultimately lead to single-payer coverage, but mainly we learn that converting to a single-payer system in America would be really hard, that not every "single-payer" system is a single-payer system per se, and that the folks fighting hardest for it should be nicer to their opponents. In other words, it sounds like folks slightly to our right want us to feel ashamed of ourselves for fighting so hard. Good luck with that.

Strangely enough, the title of this Patrick Eddington article at The American Conservative --"Why is Mattis Declaring War on Whistleblowers?" -- kinda buries the real story: that a group of NSA employees created a good system for constitutionally sifting internet traffic for terrorist activity, a system that some observers say could have prevented 9.11, but because the NSA Chief hated it and wanted to develop an entirely different and inferior system, the NSA buried it, and the folks who created it suffered greatly, at least in part because they filed whistleblower claims about it. In any case, it sure does look like the Trump Administration will be no better at protecting whistleblowers than previous ones.

Adam Johnson at FAIR describes the "liberal" media's addiction to "perseverance porn" -- i.e., the news stories about folks walking 10 miles each way to work, going right back to work after a serious accident, etc. The "liberal" media extolls these stories as proof that anyone-can-make-it-if-they-try, instead of asking fairly obvious questions, like "why isn't the walking man's area served by public transportation?" or "why doesn't his job pay him enough so he can buy a second-hand car"? As with the notion that the man who walks the streets of a "dangerous" neighborhood without incident for decades isn't news but the one who gets mugged is, one should wonder why the folks who can't get to work after getting run over don't make the news.

New study suggests that "Obama-Trump" voters may be more likely to simply be Republican voters who voted for Mr. Obama, rather than disaffected Democrats who voted for Mr. Trump. Thus, of course, getting those voters back is a fool's errand. Actual economic populism of the Bernie Sanders kind is, of course, the Gourdian knot that slices this problem -- an actual economic populist might expand the number of Democrats who actually come out to vote, and attract some Republicans whose emotional attachment to their party might only be built on rage. I guess that's why Democratic elites won't ever do it.

Finally, hedge fund manager/HIV drug price gouger Martin Shkreli now faces up to 20 years in prison after his conviction on securities fraud (two counts) and conspiracy (one). And just as Al Capone ultimately went to jail for tax evasion, the original Man with a Face Even a Mother Could Punch didn't get nailed for jacking up the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet, which is what he'd go to jail for in a sane and healthy society. (No, he wouldn't go to jail for being a sexist pig -- though, in a sane and healthy society, he would be more thoroughly shamed and ostracized for being one.)

Action: health care, pollution, and food labeling.

You've likely heard by now that a group of "centrist" Congressfolk have come up with ideas for health care reforms to write into a bill. Headline: their ideas are mostly bad. Of course I'd like Congress to continue funding Affordable Care Act subsidies, but not at the price of applying the employer mandate only to corporations with 500 or more employees, versus corporations with 50 or more employees. The right constantly tries to see exactly how big they can make a corporation and still call it a "small business," but does 499 employees sound like a Mom and Pop store to you? They also want to get rid of the medical device tax and want to mess around with the pre-existing conditions ban, in the name of "innovation." You can't call a pile of dung meatloaf and then congratulate yourself for "innovating" on the definition of meatloaf. And why should I care that these ideas have ever received "bipartisan support"? I don't care about "bipartisan" ideas; I only care about good ideas, and these ain't those. Tools are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to help you call your Reps and Senators.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania state Senators have used a bill originally dealing with internet sales, HB 542, as a vehicle to gut clean air and clean water regulation in the Commonwealth! HB 542, in its relatively uncontroversial form, passed the House with a staggering majority back in May, but the Senate amended it thereafter to include a slew of pro-pollution amendments and then passed it by a far, far narrower margin. Hence the bill going back to the House now opens the door to privatizing the whole permitting process for gas and oil drilling, while also creating a legislature-appointed board that can veto clean air and clean water regulations and automatically approve drilling permits after 45 days. The bill also creates a fracking tax like the one the majority of Pennsylvanians have wanted for years, but again, why should we accept a slew of bad initiatives just to get one good one? That, folks, is called hostage-taking, and we Americans don't do hostage situations. Of course, having been so radically altered, HB 542 has to go back to the state House for approval, so both Penn Environment and Food and Water Watch help you tell your Pennsylvania House Reps to reject HB 542 when it comes back around.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FDA to finalize its food labeling rules, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The FDA finalized food labeling rules for menus from restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, and movie theatres, and the rules require menus to give information about calories, sugar, fat, and salt. But delay, delay, delay is the Trump Administration way, so the FDA has mooted delaying the rules until 2018, presumably so it can collect more comments from corporate types about how oppressive it is for them to tell people how fatty their burgers are or how sugary their soft drinks are. I'm a compulsive food label reader myself, and I've seen the positive changes in my life once I decided that maybe a proper serving of pasta was better than just eating with my eyes. But I'm not the only one -- a lot of folks make better dietary choices, even when eating out, once they're supplied with good information. Of course, a venal fool like President Trump -- for whom sensation is everything and thinking about the future is for "losers" -- probably doesn't understand that very well, and reflexively anti-government Republicans will do little but enable him. But we don't have to enable him.

Action: redistricting, and drug pricing.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA helps you tell your PA state legislator to support real redistricting reform by co-sponsoring HB 722/SB 22. HB 722/SB 22 would, as you know, take the decennial redistricting process away from the state legislature (which has tended to redraw districts according to its members' interests, rather than the interests of the good citizens of the Commonwealth) and give it to a redistricting commission composed of elected partisans in equal number as well as folks who don't hold elected office and who are selected by the partisans (and, again, with an equal number of partisans, they'd have to agree, rather than having one side or the other ram their choices down the other side's throats). Fair Districts PA asks that if your Rep or Senator already sponsors the bill, you tell them to talk to Sen. Former and Rep. Metcalfe to schedule hearings in their respective committees. HB 722/SB 22 has actual bipartisan support in both houses of the legislature, which is rare -- but we've still got to keep the ball moving.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to oppose H.R. 1223, which would let big pharmaceutical corporations hold onto certain drugs' exclusive rights for even longer, then both and CREDO and People's Action still help you do that. Why should we compel big pharmaceutical corporations to let other corporations use their property so those latter corporations can make cheaper, generic versions of those drugs? Part of the answer lies in the phrase "their property" -- big pharma depends so much on taxpayer assistance to begin with that we can easily establish a right to oversee "their property" for the public good, since it's also our property. And we can also establish that paying less money for medications people need to take, in order to be healthy enough to exercise their freedoms under our Constitution, is a public good, a more important public good than letting big pharma exercise absolute property rights on drugs that don't exist without government research or funding. In short: our freedoms matter more than big corporate freedoms.

Around the table: in which we contemplate White House drama, Russian oppression, and bankster corruption.

In case you were thinking the former Marine General who's now President Trump's Chief of Staff will stop all the drama in the White House, the incomparable Heather Digby Parton at Salon warns us that President Trump hasn't gotten on quite well with perceived military strongmen as time has gone on. Gen. McMaster, in particular, was "the new sheriff in town" not long ago, and now they're pushing him out of the way like he's Mayor Farnum on Deadwood. But here's a question: if Mr. Trump does turn on yet another man he sees as "a 'tough' leader, like himself," will Trump votaries start thinking maybe Mr. Trump isn't actually tough? Or will they continue to equate acting like a prick with "being tough"?

Speaking of the President acting like a prick, now the White House tells us his statement to Long Island police suggesting they should not be "too nice" when apprehending certain suspects was a "joke." If you find police brutality funny, or if you think all suspects are guilty merely because the police arrest them, then I guess the "joke" worked for you, even if it apparently didn't work for dozens of police departments, who don't routinely get criticized by the right for being so "sensitive" like the rest of us do.

Russian government passes law banning Virtual Private Networks (or VPNs), as well as other means of surfing the internet anonymously. Like our own CIA chief, the Russian government seems to think that the mere act of trying to protect your identity (or your data) online means you're a criminal trying to cover your tracks. You could just be a patriot, trying to protect yourself from the state! Why do I suspect that Trump supporters -- who call themselves patriots an awful lot, after all -- would cheer this on? Because their "patriotism" mainly means sticking it to liberals, that's why.

Wells Fargo admits to charging "several hundred thousand borrowers for car insurance they did not want or need," which of course enabled them to collect unearned missed-payment fees and repossess some 20,000 cars. Is this why we should let our bravest and boldest entrepreneurs do whatever they please, with no fear of government regulation? Not only do these bravest-and-boldest contribute nothing of value to our civilization except perhaps their bad example, they don't do any real work, either. Concocting a fraud scheme isn't work.

Finally, Brian Klaas at USA Today reminds us that President Trump "Embodies Every One of the Seven Deadly Sins." "He made the Boy Scouts speech about himself rather than about serving others" is the perfect sentence I spent a whole paragraph trying to write last week. But despite the cascade of irrefutable charges I'm sure Trump votaries won't be swayed, for how much of themselves will they see in this portrait of Dear Leader? There's nothing wrong with giving all your enemies what-for, they'll say, though I'm sure all of them, at some point, accepted the notion that some enemies are best ignored.

Action: rational budgeting, climate change, and abusing federal workers

The Trump Administration "Hard Power" budget -- no, I'm not calling it the "skinny budget," not just because "skinny" seems unthreatening, but because we should always call Trump Administration initiatives by their supervillain names, especially when the Trump Administration is dumb enough to hand them to us! -- would cut a lot of government spending that actually helps the good Americans who fund our government in the first place, and one of them is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC). How much does the CDC get annually? In FY 2016, the CDC's budget was a little over $11.5 billion, which ain't chump change (not even to Donald Trump!), but which also represented less than one-third of one percent of all federal spending that year. You'd think with all the CDC actually does for America as far as fighting infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance, and obesity, we'd actually increase their budget, not cut it. So PennPIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to cut the CDC budget.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Gap, Disney, and Pepsi to end their association with the reactionary climate change deniers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sadly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has mutated from your grandparents' pro-business organization to a behemoth that lurches as far right as it can on every conceivable topic. Want banksters to stop stealing your money? Then the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will fight you. Want our politicians to stop giving welfare handouts to oil and gas corporations and start helping develop a renewable energy grid that would be the envy of the world if we but had the will to build it? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will fight you there, too. Getting corporations to quit the Chamber because of its reactionary economic views isn't so effective, of course -- why, big corporations generally have the same views! But big corporations (Gap, Disney, and Pepsi among them) also like getting on the public's good side in re climate change, and so you hit them there.

Finally, the Department of the Interior has reassigned over four dozen high-level employees to new jobs -- including Joel Clement, formerly the head of Interior's Office of Policy Analysis, who spoke out publicly about climate change's impact upon Alaska's Native communities -- so the Sierra Club helps you tell Interior Secretary Zinke to stop moving Senior Executive Service employees around after they say things that make the Trump Administration uncomfortable. Once Mr. Zinke gets down from that horse he always seems to be riding whenever the cameras are around, he'll tell you that he can move employees as he sees fit -- which is true generally, but not if he's doing it in retaliation for whistleblowing, or to force workers to quit. But behold! Mr. Zinke has already said, out loud, that he would use "reassignments" as one tool to reduce the Department's workforce. Logically speaking, how would that work? By sending people to places that would provoke them into quitting, that's how! And why should we allow him to do that?

Action: tax "reform," and pro-rape laws.

Since many Republicans seem anxious to move on to tax "reform," 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 Congressfolk and tell them to oppose the Republican tax "reform" "plan." As always, they'd give the biggest share of their tax cuts to the very rich -- and that's true of both their income and corporate tax cuts, since if corporations get to keep more of their profits, who do you think they're going to give it to? Their rich executives, of course. And if Congress repeals the Estate Tax, which doesn't affect estates under $5 million, who benefits from that? The very rich, again. No use telling me TEH RICHEZ CREATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!!!, not only because corporate executives never create a job if they can get away with it, but because higher taxes on the rich and on corporations create jobs -- when corporations have no incentive to hoard money or pay their executives outlandish sums, they'll hire more workers to make more stuff and call that an expense. I mean, that's how it worked in the country I grew up in -- you know, that place teabaggers keep wishing we could go back to?

Meanwhile, Jordan's Parliament may consider, as soon as today, repealing a law forcing rape victims to marry their rapists in order to "protect family honor." One wonders why the rapist doesn't bring dishonor on his own family through his action, or, you know, upon himself. (I presume we don't need to gender-equivocate about this matter as it occurs in Jordan or the seven other nations that still have such laws on their books.) But this is not a matter that should be left up to "cultural relativism" -- if a woman gets raped and then gets forced to marry the man who raped her, that's abominable simple and plain, not least because it takes away her freedom to be who she wants to be. And if the victim is a minor, who could not legally consent to sexual relations at all in America? That's even worse. So don't feel like a scold or a snob for telling people how to be civilized if they need to hear it. And of course some Jordanian lawmakers want to keep the law, because, I guess, change is hard and we can't just ignore tradition. But, ah, yeah, we can, in fact, ignore "tradition" that places a family's "honor" ahead of a woman's freedom and a civilization's justice. So Avaaz helps you tell the Jordanian Parliament to get rid of their pro-rape law.

Action: the 17th Amendment, and health care.

OK, let's cut this beast's head off while it's still small: Mike Huckabee, who used to be charming but has been intolerable since President Obama's election, called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- which provided for the popular election of U.S. Senators for the first time -- in the wake of not-enough Senators voting for any of the notoriously cruel and unpopular Republican health care "reform" bills. So call your Reps and Senators and state legislators today (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or on the bottom of this page, if you're on a smartphone) and tell them you absolutely will not stand for repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and you will regard anyone who supports such repeal as being objectively anti-democracy, since if you support repealing the 17th Amendment, you essentially oppose people voting. The fact that two-thirds of state legislatures just so happen to be held by Republicans right now must be a coincidence, right? The 17th Amendment improves on the Constitution, just as the Bill of Rights did, just as the 13th and 14th Amendments did, and amending the Constitution doesn't somehow dishonor our Founders, or their achievement. Rather, it does the opposite -- it says they taught us well.

Speaking of repealing things, Republicans would like you to believe that their health care "reform" effort is dead -- but OMB Director Mick Mulvaney not only told us that President Trump wants health care "reform" done before anything else, but he actually said that this was "the national attitude toward it." Good Americans would like our health care system to work better, but assuming that they must therefore support Republican efforts to make it worse is, to put it kindly, quite the logical leap. So, while you have your Reps and Senators on the phone about the 17th Amendment, go ahead and tell them what you want: that you want tens of millions of good Americans to be able to keep their health insurance, that you want Congress to expand federal Medicaid spending, not cut it; that you want them to preserve the pre-existing conditions ban, rather than give states and corporations ways to work around it; that you want them to keep the funding mechanisms for the Affordable Care act, rather than give yet more welfare handouts to rich people in the form of tax cuts. You know what else? Tell them you want them to force President Trump to fund the Affordable Care Act's subsidies, that you want Medicare to be able to negotiate its own drug prices, and that you want them to support H.R. 676, which would establish a national Medicare-for-All, single-payer health care system.

Around the table: in which the Democrats put forth a "strong, bold" economic agenda I'm sorry I couldn't get through that without laughing.

Miles Kampf-Lassin at Nation of Change evaluates what Sen. Schumer calls the Democrats' "strong, bold economic agenda," and finds it wanting. The plan's got antitrust enforcement, a $15/hour minimum wage, and paid sick and family leave, but no Medicare-for-All, no universal public college, no renewable energy grid refitting, and no 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, plus they're still plugging that damn retraining tax credit like that's ever been anything but corporate welfare. Also, too, "10 million more jobs over five years" will only run a little ahead of the population entering the workforce during that time, so it's not much of a promise. Remember, folks: don't invest yourself in the damn Democrats; invest yourself in the things you want your Congressfolk to do.

Speaking of corporate welfare, there's President Trump joining Rep. Ryan and Gov. Walker at a big to-do in Wisconsin announcing a new LCD screen-manufacturing plant supposedly to be built in Kenosha, which would create 3,000 jobs averaging $54,000 annually -- but would be financed by corporate welfare to the tune of at least $270,000 per job! Of course, if our state and federal governments were to spend, say, $54,000 on each $54,000/year job they created, Messrs. Trump, Ryan and Walker (who is, as you know, the King of Corporate Welfare) would call it SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!!! (Also, too, when you read the article, you'll find out that just about none of the promises made add up -- and that Foxconn, previously notorious for worker suicides at its Chinese plants, has walked out of deals like this before.)

The incomparable David Dayen tells us where a state-wide single-payer health insurance system could actually begin -- in Maryland, where many factors that would help establish a single-payer system (key among them being a) the relative absence of restrictive budgeting rules and b) the ability to level off hospital reimbursement rates) already exist. The Democratic front-runner for the 2018 gubernatorial race is a single-payer advocate, too, though we saw how that played out in Vermont. But then again, we can make things happen -- which is the only thing we should count on, since we're counting on ourselves.

Ho hum, major "liberal" media organs haven't critically investigated Amazon or its owner, newest-richest-man-ever Jeff Bezos, in nearly two years. This is despite (because of?) the fact that Mr. Bezos now owns the Washington Post (which has, I grant, surprised me at times since he took over). It's also despite the fact that close to one out of every two dollars spent online goes through Amazon, and that Amazon seeks to leverage its monopoly power in online commerce to get monopoly power in every other market eventually. I mean, no one thinks (in the absence of strong antitrust regulations) that Mr. Bezos will simply decide one day that he has enough money.

Finally, after the failure of the Republicans' latest (but surely not last!) health care "reform" effort, Fox and Friends's Brian Kilmeade bemoaned the fact that "the healthy people are paying for the sick people." Ugh, one more time: that's how insurance works -- and it's illogical to divide people into "healthy" and "sick," since anyone can be either healthy or sick at any time. And boy the Fox and Friends prettyheads sure complained a lot about Democrats celebrating the Republicans' failure. I wonder how they felt about the Republicans celebrating the passage of the House bill.

Around the table: in which we contemplate Trumpcare's apparent end, and other matters.

Michael Corcoran at TruthOut discusses "How Civil Disobedience Helped Kill Trumpcare -- At Least For Now." To the degree that we've won -- and we have to fight to preserve every victory, because nothing endures quite so long in Washington as a bad idea! -- it's because we looked around the morning after Election Day and we realized it was down to us. Now let's keep thinking that way in the coming fights over tax "reform" and the Trump infrastructure "plan," rather than worrying about getting more Democrats into the House and Senate.

Dig this understated headline from ITEP's Just Taxes blog: "GOP Leaders in Congress and the White House Set Out Goals for Tax Reform that Their Plans Fail to Meet." Remember: when they say they want to "fix our broken tax code for families, small business, and American job creators," they really only mean "American job creators," and by "job creators," they don't mean "anyone who buys something," though that's what "job creators" actually means -- they mean corporate CEOs, who would never create a job if they could help it.

Reed Richardson at FAIR reports on the "liberal" media's shameful rediscovery of the inaccurate body count in covering the "war on terror." It's bad enough that we hear so often these days about how many thousands of people we've supposedly killed, but the numbers all too frequently don't add up -- the "liberal" media regurgitate official kill figures such that "the official estimated size of ISIS in 2015 and 2016 averaged 25,000 fighters, which means the US coalition had supposedly wiped out the equivalent of its entire force over both years without making a dent in its overall size." You'd think that would pin their BS detectors to the red.

Nicholas Thompson at Wired talks to Tristan Harris about "how technology is hijacking people." Ever find yourself watching Paul Davis videos on YouTube when you only meant to check email? Well, that's the technology -- created and curated by engineers at very, very large corporations -- hijacking you. And if you don't like it (maybe you like Paul Davis better than I do, but at the point you're watching "Superstar" I think you've gone too far), you'll want to contemplate the difference between "ethical and unethical persuasion," or whether a "let's meet" button would be better than a "comment" button.

Finally, President Trump says we should get rid of the Senate filibuster in order to prevent failures like the Senate health care bill -- though that bill, thanks to arcane Senate rules, wasn't even subject to the filibuster! Of course, he has also complained that Democrats are stalling his nominees, though thanks to Harry Reid's 2013 "reforms," Democrats can't filibuster a single Presidential nominee anymore! Mr. Trump sure will say anything to divert your attention from the concrete cold fact that only the people stand between him and his cruel and stupid agenda.

Action: "free" trade, free speech, and EPA funding.

CREDO helps you tell our U.S. Trade Representative to put people first, not corporations, when he renegotiates the North American Free Trade Agreement. CREDO presents an impressively detailed list of demands: an "open and transparent" negotiation, the elimination of the "investor-state tribunals" that allow corporations to nullify our laws and exact tribute from taxpayers, strong environmental and labor standards, strong product safety standards for imports, and strong protections for citizens against higher drug prices. Who could possibly oppose these things? Why, no one, of course -- which is why "free" trade votaries try to distract you with irrelevancies like "booga booga China" and "polls say everyone likes trade" and "OK, we hear your complaints, just let us have this trade deal and we'll listen next time." That's mostly stuff corporate Democrats say, but don't be lulled into complacency by the presence of President Trump, because he appointed a lot of "free" traders to his cabinet, and because, you know, duty is duty.

Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 1697/S. 620, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. I've held that past attempts at the state level to zero out government funding for groups associated with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (or BDS) movement are odious, but not unconstitutional -- you have a right to free speech, but you don't have a "right" to collect money from your fellow taxpayers. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act goes further than that, though -- it prohibits any American citizen "engaged in interstate or foreign commerce" from "requesting the imposition of any boycott by a foreign country against a country which is friendly to the United States" or "supporting any boycott fostered or imposed by an international organization, or requesting imposition of any such boycott, against Israel." That sounds an awful lot like our government telling us what to do and what to think, so let's not put up with that.

Finally, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose proposed Trump budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, and also to expand EPA funding so it can do the job the people have commanded it to do. Our government's failure to properly fund the EPA's mandate to keep our air, water, and land clean has been a problem almost since its inception under President Nixon, and you may be surprised to learn that even a few far-right Republicans aren't necessarily that anxious to cut EPA funding further: "There's not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud," says Rep. Simpson of Idaho. Now, if we get EPA funding up to the point where it actually can inspect fracking wells, for example, I bet Rep. Simpson reverts right back to complaining about how the EPA "oppresses small businesses" and "kills jobs," though nobody wants the EPA to be 20 percent of our federal budget. More than 0.22% (that's 22 one-hundredths of one percent, not "22 percent," "liberal" media) of our federal budget would be nice, though.

Penny Rants for Friday, July 27, 2017: well, *someone* had a really good week.

Don't believe the hype that President Trump wants a middle-class tax cut and he wants rich folks to pay more. Not just because he's already proposed massive tax cuts for rich folks: don't believe it because we know that Mr. Trump will say anything to foment drama and chaos, and that fomenting drama and chaos is the only way he can get anything done. Of course, he's not really talking to us, at any rate -- he's talking to his votaries, who will dutifully cling to the belief that TRUMP CUTZ MY TAXEZ!!!! even as they're figuring out for the 20th straight month whether to keep the gas or the lights on. I really had my fill of government-by-drama-and-chaos during Tha Bush Mobb years; obviously God decided that, as a nation, we really didn't learn our lesson. Too often -- like, when I contemplate sensationalistic "liberal" media coverage in 2016, or how thoroughly Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory over the years -- I find it hard to argue with that conclusion.

Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo explains why he doesn't "lay into" President Trump like many of his fellow Democrats do: "As a general rule, I haven’t found nasty ad hominem attacks on a person whose cooperation is needed to help your state especially helpful." Anti-kudos to Mr. Cuomo for using the word "help" twice in five words -- and that's not counting the synonym for "help" he used four words before that. "He decided early on he wasn’t going to stick a finger in Trump’s eye" would have considerably more gravity, of course, if Donald Trump didn't spend all his time sticking his finger in everyone else's eye. And Mr. Cuomo's statement also translates pretty well into "I'm happy being a hostage to circumstance, as is our unique heritage as Americans." If Mr. Cuomo is the Democratic nominee in 2020, Mr. Trump will beat him to a pulp -- why, Mr. Trump may even win the popular vote if Mr. Cuomo runs! He may even get a majority of the popular vote!

Hot on the heels of Mr. Trump's announcement of a ban on transgendered soldiers, ostensibly because their health care "costs so much," Josh Hafner at USA Today informs us that the added cost of transgendered soldiers' health care needs is equivalent to about four trips the President takes to his resort in Mar-a-Lago. It's also equivalent to 14 hundredths of one percent of our government's spending on our soldiers' health care, but the Mar-a-Lago figure is the most telling. I said yesterday that the up-to-$8.4 million added cost of transgendered soldier health care would be "chump change" in any other context to Donald Trump, but I forgot that his corruption always goes deeper than that: he also high-fives himself for sticking the cost of a month of weekend travel to Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayer, while crying crocodile tears about the "disruption" and "burden" of covering transgendered soldiers' health care for an entire year. What a fucking asshole.

Action: transgendered soldiers, internet freedom, and the minimum wage.

Yesterday morning, President Trump announced -- on Twitter, of course -- that our government would no longer "accept or allow" transgendered soldiers to serve in our military. Oh, but he didn't stop there -- he said our military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military (sic) would entail." What "disruption" is he talking about? Apparently, he's talking about an annual $8.4 million (at most!) increase in health care costs for the military, but you know that in any other context, Mr. Trump would call $8.4 million "chump change," just to remind everyone how rich he is; what a whiny crybaby he becomes ("ZOMG $8.4 MILLYUNZ!!!!!") when it's time to score points with those other notorious crybabies, the religious right. Hence Freedom for All Americans helps you tell the President to retain current U.S. policy regarding transgendered soldiers and their continued service to our country, and to apologize for his disgusting remarks.

Meanwhile, Free Press helps you tell the FCC to investigate Verizon Wireless for possible violations of net neutrality. What has Verizon done? Apparently they've slowed videos from Netflix and YouTube, and worse, gave conflicting explanations as to why: first they were doing a "test," then they were "optimizing" video streaming. Perhaps "optimizing" is just their euphemism for "throttling," or the intentional slowing of your network connection -- ISPs can slow down traffic in the service of "reasonable network management," but slowing down one kind of traffic, or traffic from one or two sources, isn't "reasonable network management," it's discrimination. And, you know, the FCC hasn't gotten rid of the 2015 Open Internet Order yet, and thus has a duty to investigate any possible violations of that Order. This is a duty the FCC currently doesn't give one rat's hind quarter about, no doubt, but that doesn't make it any less of a duty -- or, to be more direct, any less of a legal obligation.

Finally, the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 15/S. 1242, the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase our federal minimum wage to $15/hour by 2024. Folks who constantly squeal about small businesses making payrolls should attend the words "by 2024"; the minimum wage would increase by roughly a dollar an hour every year for the next seven years, which isn't a hardship for bosses. Of course, these folks don't really care about small businesses -- they care about large corporations, whose executives regard every dollar spent on a worker's salary as a dollar they could have had! And if the BUT TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!! crowd really want to do something for small businesses, they could, oh, I don't know, fight the monopoly power of corporations like Amazon, which controls half of every dollar spent online, and has put more small businesses out of business than perhaps any other corporation in history (maybe even more than WalMart!).

Action: arbitration fairness, blockades, and unions.

Yesterday the House up and passed H.J.Res. 111, which is yet another "resolution of disapproval," this one aiming to nullify the Consumer Financial Protection's Bureau's new rule preventing banks from putting forced arbitration clauses into customer contracts. Remember: Congress does something quickly when they don't want people to know what they're doing -- I mean, what populist revolution awaits TEH FREEDUMZ OF TEH BANKZ TO KEEPZ TEH CUSTOMERZ OUTZ OF TEH COURTZ!!!!!!? They can call it "meddlesome government regulation" all they want, but I'd rather our government "meddled" in banksters' attempts to force you into an arbitration case they're likely to win, rather than a class action suit that gives you a fighting chance. And personal to those tempted to squeal TEH TRIAL LAWYURZ HAVE TOO MUCH OF TEH POWERZ!!!!!: did trial lawyers crash the economy in 2008, or did banksters? Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to tell your Senators you don't want banks to force you into arbitration if you have a grievance against them, and to reject H.J.Res. 111.

Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell the New York Times and the Washington Post to start covering Israel's blockade of Gaza, which has lately caused the citizens of Gaza to go without electricity for over 20 hours a day on average, which means no sewage treatment, no reliable refrigeration, no adequate hospital care, and certainly no air conditioning in, you know, a desert, in summertime. I know right-wingers who'd happily call a blockade an act of war, but they're strangely quiet about this particular blockade, possibly because "it's only Arabs." (Or maybe "it's only Muslims"; in these times, folks say such things out loud like they're civilized or something.) This blockade has been going on for over a decade, though, which is certainly long enough to learn that it's not bringing you the security you deserve if you're Israel. But if you didn't know it was going on, who can blame you, when our national papers of record have hardly covered it?

Finally, Jobs with Justice helps you tell Nissan to stop intimidating Mississippi factory workers who are mulling joining a union. You won't be surprised at any of the elements of this tale: managers pulling workers aside to gauge union support, management subjecting workers to anti-union films, managers even threatening to fire workers or just up and close the whole plant, all of which would be of some interest to the National Labor Relations Board if President Trump weren't staffing it with anti-labor types as we speak. Plus they bemoan the "interference" of the United Auto Workers! Clearly they must think "United Auto Workers" constitutes a cuss word, and the only thing the UAW might be "interfering" with is an automaker CEO's ability to redistribute more of his workers' hard-earned wealth upward to himself. More than a few car manufacturing corporations already locate plants in the South just so they can get away from unions, so let's help cut off that particular avenue of escape.

Around the table: in which we confront financialization, again, and traumatic brain injury in NFL players, more fully.

Another economist reminds us that "financialization" of the world economy has turned it into a "house of cards." Read the whole thing, and then recall that Republicans, the "conservative" party, have become the apostles of handing over our economy to banksters (even more so than Democrats!), and ask yourself if chasing short-term profits and strangling corporations and households with debt exemplifies "conservative" values. I always figured being in it for the long term was more "conservative."

Greg LeRoy argues that politicians shouldn't hand out tax breaks to Amazon in an attempt to get them to bring their warehouses to their state or locality, but rather should impose new taxes and fees upon them. After all, Amazon has largely destroyed local retailing almost everywhere, more, even, than giant chain stores ever did, and while Amazon has been collecting sales taxes for some time now, they've been seeking out corporate welfare handouts to offset that "loss." So why won't politicians impose new fees and taxes? Answers could range from "abject cowardice" to "the hope that Amazon will kick back some campaign donation cash."

Boston University study finds evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or CTE) in a staggering 110 of 111 brains of deceased former NFL players. There's tremendous "selection bias" in the brains, warns a lead researcher -- BU examined only 111 of some 1,300 brains of players who died after 2008, and many of these brains came from a player's family, some in accordance with the player's wishes -- but even if none of the others showed evidence of CTE, the resulting percentage would still dramatically exceed what you find in the general population. Note well, also, that a lot of these players had long retired before the era of the 300-pound-plus offensive lineman, meaning we can no longer blame the size of the players. We have to blame the game.

Finally, in a development sure to unnerve close readers of the Book of Revelation, a Wisconsin corporation actually plans to offer implantable chips to employees -- so those employees can "open doors, buy snacks, log in to computers, and use office equipment like copy machines." Which we know is absolutely necessary, since it's not like there's any other way to do any of these things. The implants are optional, of course -- until a series of "equipment upgrades" makes them "necessary," no doubt! As Leonard Cohen might say: I have seen the future; it is murder.

Finally, President Trump speaks to the Boy Scouts Jamboree in West Virginia and does what he does best: act like he's the center of the universe and nobody else, even his audience, matters.. I'm not particularly bothered that he "brought politics" to the Jamboree, or even that he yammered on about "fake news" or joked about firing his HHS Secretary or called our Capitol a "cesspool," but it's profoundly uncivilized behavior to take an event that belongs to other people and talk about nothing but yourself and your obsessions, and taking adult topics to a meeting of youngsters, frankly, just heaps injury upon insult. And seriously, segueing from "a scout is trustworthy, loyal" to "We could use some more loyalty"? You could try earning some loyalty, Mr. President.

Action: big corporate mergers, conservation funding, and clean water.

Demand Progress helps you tell the Justice Department to block the proposed AT&T/Time-Warner merger. Our government hasn't really cared about curbing monopoly power in America for many decades now, but our duty remains our duty. And don't sit back and wait for President Trump to stop the merger, because he likely said he would just because it was what you wanted to hear. Certainly don't let right-wingers harangue you that AT&T is big in cellphones and Time-Warner is big in entertainment so this deal won't make them a monopoly in either one, because in a world where entertainment can be delivered easily over cellphones, that doesn't mean very much, and if AT&T can get you to watch Time-Warner content (which includes HBO and TBS) on their phones (a lot more likely in a post-net neutrality world), they'll get even more power. And, as with the proposed Amazon-Whole Foods merger, we should stop corporations from leveraging their monopoly power in one area to get a foothold in another.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the reactionary Pennsylvania state legislature not only aims to slash conservation funding, but hand over the resulting "savings" to big oil and gas drilling corporations! If that isn't government picking winners and losers, I don't know what is -- and, no, "government funding state parks and waterways" isn't "picking winners and losers," but is government doing the people's will, since people generally approve of state parks and clean water more than they approve of corporate welfare. Hence Penn Environment helps you remind your Pennsylvania state legislator that conservation funding is more important than another round of handouts for corporations. Among the very successful programs on the chopping block: the Farmland Preservation Fund, which keeps farmland from morphing into strip malls and parking lots. Strip malls and parking lots aren't inherently evil, of course, but fertile land is far more valuable and durable.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunties to tell the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) to keep banning fracking locally, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. The DRBC imposed a fracking moratorium in the Delaware Valley some seven years ago, but now they're mulling the matter again; one wonders what changed in the meantime, since fracking hasn't become less toxic, nor have folks evolved beyond the need for clean water. Wait, now I remember: Donald Trump got elected President, and wants to drill for everything everywhere, and damn the cost to regular folks (even those who delivered Pennsylvania to a Republican for the first time since 1988!). You can't convince large numbers of people that allowing more gas drilling pollution in their drinking water helps them, but you still need either strong opposition from Democrat politicians or strong opposition from the people to defeat such evil. We're not getting the first item, so you know what to do.

Action: health care, the "war on terror," and the Grand Canyon.

Despite reports last week that Senate Republicans don't have the votes either for their planned repeal-and-replace-badly bill or their just-repeal-and-don't-bother-replacing bill, word on the street is that they're going to try and vote on one or the other of these monstrosities anyway. The Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) hasn't helped Republican efforts, of course, by calculating that the just-repeal bill will kick 32 million more Americans off their health insurance, with more than half of those losses (17 million) coming in just the first year. But of course, when some Republican Senators talked about both bills' inadequate funding of Medicaid and/or fighting opioid addiction, you should have known what would come next: an offer of tens of billions just for funding Medicaid and fighting opioid addiction in the states those Senators just so happen to represent, which is exactly the kind of naked who-cares-what-it-looks-like opportunism that has made Mitch McConnell so beloved the world over. Still, you can call your Senators and remind them that the whole point of being a Senator is not to strike deals with other Senators, but to represent their constituents. And you can ask them if handing out massive tax cuts to the wealthy while throwing tens of millions of people off their health insurance (which both bills will do) represents their constituents.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that has enabled so much unconstitutional war-making over the last 16 years. Yeah, we're coming up on some anniversaries -- not just the anniversary of 9.11, of course, but the anniversary of every bad idea Tha Bush Mobb forced down the throats of the American people afterward, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the AUMF, which latter item President Obama used to justify military operations (in Libya and Syria, to name two) he didn't get approval from Congress to undertake. But when the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment from Rep. Lee (D-CA) that would repeal the AUMF, a spokeshack for House Speaker Ryan (E-WI) quickly declared that the amendment "endangers our national security," though of course Mr. Ryan supported the Iraq war, which we can pretty much say created ISIS, and thus "endangered our national security." And now the Lee amendment has somehow been quietly disappeared from the defense authorization bill; Ms. Lee blames Mr. Ryan, which, if true, gosh, whatever happened to not stepping on your Committee Chairs' toes? That has, after all, been Mr. Ryan's go-to excuse whenever someone actually calls upon him to, you know, lead. They have an excuse for every occasion, don't they? Would it be too much to ask for Mr. Ryan's not-that-red district to send him packing in 2018?

Finally, President Trump wants to drill everywhere, even (or maybe especially!) on public lands, and guess what that means for the Grand Canyon? It means that former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's one great achievement -- banning uranium mining in the area around the Grand Canyon for 20 years -- is in danger of going down. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to keep uranium mining corporations out of the Grand Canyon. He doesn't care what you think any more than his boss does, but let's tell him anyway, because it's our duty. The Colorado River, as you know, winds through the Grand Canyon, and it provides drinking water to over 40 million people in seven states plus the northwest region of Mexico -- and, well, it provides noticeably less drinking water to those good folks now, thanks to increased demand and climate change. Now imagine leeching uranium into that water. Does that sound like a good idea? Especially given that some uranium already leeches into the water naturally? Why, it's enough to make you think maybe tourism is the best economical use for the Grand Canyon, which is one of our national treasures, even if our government hasn't formally designated it as such. (Yes, Mr. Obama forgot to do that, too, during his last year in office.)

UPDATE. "Coming up on some anniversaries" is how that phrase in the second paragraph should have read! Error corrected.

Around the table: how the Trump Administration will "let Obamacare fail," and other lessons.

Trump Administration uses "consumer information and outreach" money to make scare videos of folks allegedly harmed by Obamacare. And some of their other adventures may have broken the law (against advocacy by Executive branch agencies); I bet I can guess how much the law-and-order Trump Administration cares about that. This is beyond "let Obamacare collapse under its own weight," of course; this is heaping hundreds of anvils on top of Obamacare and then saying look, it collapsed under its own weight!

Nate Silver writes a pretty excellent piece of fiction, in the style of an AP report from an alternate universe in which Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. Click through and read the whole thing, but in the meantime, I will say this much: the piece maps pretty well onto my hunch that had Mrs. Clinton won, politics-as-usual would have gone on, meaning Democrat capitulation to Republicans and that particularly shallow brand of "liberal" media sensationalism we've all come to hate. Not that he's meant to, but Mr. Trump has done one good thing: he's woken a lot of people up, and some of these folks, praise the Lord, actually work in the "liberal" media.

Thomas Adam at The Conversation describes how higher education devolved from a tuition-free "public good" available to everyone who could benefit from it, to a "vehicle for individual enrichment" with the high costs we've (sadly) come to accept. For once, the change happens before the Reagan Administration, which I guess is of some comfort, and doesn't involve privatizing a public good so much as personalizing it. I still won't call the obviously-better-way-to-do-it "free" college, since we would still pay for it, but if we make college a "public good" again, we can make it more about our communities than ourselves. Selfishness is evil, after all.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) releases hold on Mr. Trump's nominee to head up the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel after said nominee finally agrees that yes, you can perform oversight on the Executive branch even if you're not a Committee Chair. After all, a Representative or Senator works on behalf of their constituents, not on behalf of the President or their party. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Sen. Grassley's own 40-plus year career of Congressional oversight has yielded many good works on behalf of the American people, but I just hope he doesn't excuse such ignorance coming from the OLC because Mr. Trump's new at this.

Finally, The Straight Dope explores the question "How Have Most Human Beings Died Throughout History?" You may have heard differently, but almost 90 percent of everyone who's ever lived died before 1850, so one way to approximate an answer (in the absence of forensic breakthroughs) is to see how most folks die in lower-income countries that best approximate pre-1850 conditions (throwing out causes of death like HIV, which didn't exist back then). The answer? Lower respiratory infections like the flu. Recall that a flu epidemic wiped out at least 50 million people over 60 years after the 1850 cutoff and you'll appreciate the power of that answer.

Around the table: why the President's cronies shouldn't hold their breath waiting to be pardoned, and other lessons.

Come on, folks, President Trump will not issue mass pardons in order to thwart Mr. Mueller's investigation of his Russian ties. I'm sure Republicans have already told him exactly how that would look to the nation, but why would Mr. Trump want this whole Russia drama to go away in the first place? I mean, the man loves drama, and he also loves the way drama keeps people from looking where they ought to be looking, at things like his crappy health care "reform" bill and his crappy tax "reform" plan and his crappy "voter fraud" commission. Which is why we pay attention to these things, and not the big drama.

And never mind Mr. Trump's young-people-paying-$12-monthly-in-premiums figure, which sounded like hyperbole from the get-go -- his statement that letting health insurance corporations sell policies across state lines would reduce premiums by "60 and 70 percent" is the real whopper. Of course no one in the Trump Administration can cite evidence for this assertion, because it's utter rubbish. And it's not just rubbish: it's also a plot to wipe out what little power state regulators have to keep health insurers from screwing you. Note well, also, that healthy-people-should-pay-less-than-sick-people is an article of faith on the right, never mind that folks can be both sick and healthy at different times in their lives.

Neal Gabler explains the right-wing's Russia-love by telling us that "conservatives have a deep affinity for authoritarianism and an even deeper distrust of modern Western culture." I'm sure that's true of some folks who call themselves "conservative," and I don't doubt that Mr. Putin's "embrace" of "moral values" tricks some conservatives as well, but of course I'd argue that a love of authoritarianism is fundamentally not conservative -- and that a true conservative would fight concentrated power everywhere, even when that concentrated power benefits him in some way. So that should tell you that the biggest lovers of Vladimir Putin shirtless on horseback are not conservative, but reactionary, like too many who call themselves "conservative."

Some liberals sure are wringing their hands over the hosts of the Chapo Trap House podcast telling center-right Democrats that if they want to work together to beat Trumpism, they have to "bend the knee" to more hardcore liberals. Speaking as someone who finds Chapo Trap House sympathetic, I do find it more than a little absurd that this article spends more time wondering if "bend the knee" might be sexist or whether "dominance politics" is incompatible with egalitarianism than examining whether DNC let's-all-get-along types have thoroughly bollocksed everything up and maybe the real liberals should drive the car for a while. (And calling "bend the knee" sexist is a reach, though it's not a big reach.)

Ho hum, a Republican punditoid, who used to go on cable news all the time to defend President Trump, has taken money from Mr. Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. At least the Fox Business Channel has started to identify Mr. Serrano as a Trump campaign "senior advisor," but dig the Trump campaign saying they paid him for "communications consulting" and not for his TV appearances! It's like they think we're the stupidest people on the face of the Earth. Let's keep reminding them that we're not.

Finally, now that the Congressional Budget Office has said the Trumpian repeal-and-then-maybe-replace-later bill would kick more than 30 million folks off their health insurance, Republicans are stepping up their attacks on the CBO itself. But surely they know their arguments ("they were wrong about a relatively small matter a while ago, so of course they must be hysterically wrong about this much larger matter!") will be even less persuasive now that the CBO has been telling them the opposite of what they want to hear for months now. And if they keep the CBO from looking at the Trump tax "reform" plan, they must know how that will make them look, too -- i.e., like diaper-loaded infants, without the promise that they'll be charming again once you change their diaper.

Action: "free" trade, asset forfeiture, and the Saudi war in Yemen.

As you know, President Trump made opposition to "free" trade a central part of his platform -- but given his appointment of "free" trade-loving banksters to his cabinet, his own refusal to scuttle the "investor-state tribunal" in NAFTA, and his Commerce Secretary's odd compulsion with remaking NAFTA into something more like the hated Trans-Pacific "Partnership," you have every reason to believe Mr. Trump is playing us. I mean, if you get us out of the TPP but make all your trade deals like the TPP, what have you accomplished? Besides the appeasement of Our Glorious Elites, I mean? Of course, what he wants matters far less than what we want, so the Sierra Club helps you tell Congress to make any future trade deals work for people, not for polluters and corporatists. And you can take heart that even a conservative's sense of balance between government regulation and pollution isn't the same as yours, that a conservative would still hate having our rule of law upended in courts not created by our Constitution.

Meanwhile, actual conservative Radley Balko at the Washington Post thoroughly demolishes Attorney General Sessions's decision to ramp up asset forfeiture. Long story short: some state laws forbid asset forfeiture except in case of conviction, but our federal government helps local law enforcement entities turn local cases into federal ones, and thus evade those state laws -- while still getting the lion's share of any assets seized by the feds! This effort, in other words, exists solely to let localities unconstitutionally seize money and property of folks accused, not convicted of a crime -- and the Obama Administration was winding it down in states with laws against asset forfeiture, but naturally the "states' rights" "law-and-order" Trump Administration has scrapped that. But you can do something about it, by letting the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Congress to pass H.R. 1555/S. 642, the FAIR Act, which would reform asset forfeiture at the federal level.

Finally, as you know, the House has passed three amendments to its defense authorization bill that would restrict our government's ability to help the Saudis fight their war against Yemen, so Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell the Senate to vote the same way the House did. As you know, the Senate gets to write its own defense authorization bill, and they'll no doubt puff up their chests and talk about how they're the Greatest Deliberative Body in the History of the Universe and they'll castigate the House for being so irresponsible as to hamstring the President's ability to "protect the country." But, frankly, helping the Saudis (oh, and al-Qaeda, by the way -- yes, they're also on the Saudis' side here) fight a war against Yemen that has caused a cholera outbreak and nearly caused a famine is itself irresponsible. And can you figure out how helping the Saudi war against Yemen "protects America"? I can figure out one way it doesn't -- the Houthi rebels, a Saudi target, have proven to be pretty good ISIS killers.

Action: Social Security, and corporate transparency.

Social Security Works helps you tell Congress to protect and expand Social Security, not cut and privatize it. Since everyone who tries to destroy Social Security says they're trying to save it, you have to be specific: if someone's out to cut Social Security benefits, or give it up to the vagaries of the stock market so banksters can collect unearned commissions, then they're not trying to save Social Security. Even if they say so! Good intentions don't go a long way with me ordinarily, but lying about one's good intentions goes nowhere with me at all. You know what else goes nowhere with me? Scare stories about TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ IZ RUNNINGZ OUTZ OFZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!!! I'm old enough to remember when very serious projections from very serious people said the trust fund would run out by last year. And even if it were in trouble, very simple solutions present themselves -- chief among them, lifting the payroll tax so that income above $121,000 gets taxed into the system -- if our politicians had but the will to, you know, do the people's will.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3089, the Corporate Transparency Act, would force folks who start corporations to disclose that corporation's "beneficial owners," i.e., anyone who has (or shares) voting power or investment power in a corporation. Disclosing such information would essentially end the practice of forming a "shell corporation," which generally exists to launder money, and no, right-wingers, the Corporate Transparency Act would not infringe someone's "freedom of speech"! Money is not speech, and using corporations to conceal one's Medicare fraud or tax evasion or drug trafficking or terrorism certainly doesn't qualify as "speech," either. You may be pleased to learn that, in this drama-soaked, hyper-partisan time, three of H.R. 3089's seven House sponsors are Republicans -- two from New York and one from California, and you might describe any of them as moderates in the right light. You might even describe one of the Democratic sponsors as a moderate in the right light! So Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight corruption by supporting the Corporate Transparency Act.

Around the table: in which we contemplate a foreign guest worker program Mr. Trump likes.

Wondering why President Trump wants to give out more H-2B visas this year for temporary workers from overseas? Because he likes to use H-2B workers at his own enterprises! Of course his DHS made this move the same week that Mr. Trump proclaimed "Made in America" week. Last year, of course, Mr. Trump said he just couldn't find cooks, waiters, waitresses and housekeepers during the summer at his Mar-a-Lago resort -- probably because he wouldn't pay them enough or give them enough hours! Hence he, like so many corporations, uses H-2B visas to get workers who'll do those jobs for less.

Jesus Mary and Joseph what is wrong with people who can't accept a woman as the new Doctor Who? Doctor Who has long been more feminist than folks have given it credit for -- was Barbara Wright a shrinking violet next to William Hartnell's Doctor? -- and the ability of a Time Lord to switch genders during regeneration has been canon at least since the Neil Gaiman-penned 2011 episode The Doctor's Wife; folks who found it amusing then have no standing to be disgusted now, and folks who are wringing their hands now after failing to do so when the Master became Missy ought to look in the mirror.

Marshall Allen at ProPublica, as part of a series on waste in the U.S. health care system, wonders if health care providers are throwing away perfectly good drugs because they've expired. In 2012, California researchers tested 14 caches of literally decades-old drugs, and found that 12 of them had lost very little potency. That doesn't mean you ignore expiration dates on drugs, but it does suggest that we don't set those expiration dates very effectively, or that we don't do enough work testing expired drugs to see if they're actually still safe and effective. Of course, big pharmaceuticals have a massive financial incentive to keep shelf lives short -- they get to sell new drugs whenever the old ones expire.

You've heard about President Trump's falling popularity, but you may not know that a Bloomberg National poll finds even lower approval ratings for Hillary Clinton right now. The poll finds 39% of voters approve of Mrs. Clinton, versus 41% for Mr. Trump; don't fall into the trap of wondering how they'd do head-to-head, because, well, we've already seen that train wreck. But feel free to wonder whether maybe nominating the most popular politician in America (i.e., Bernie Sanders) might have been a better idea than nominating, ah, "the one who can win."

Finally, in the wake of the implosion-for-now of the Republican health care "reform" effort, would it kill the "liberal" media to stop using phrases like "the Republican Party is at war with itself"? The Republican Party is not "at war with itself" -- it is at war with the will of the American people, as it has been for many, many years. But it sure is funny how the "liberal" media constantly disappear us from the conversation. You have to wonder why they do that.

Action: health care, forced arbitration, and monopolies.

After two more Senators came out against the revised Senate health care "reform" bill Monday night, Mr. McConnell announced a new health care bill that would (much like the bill Congress passed early last year) simply repeal the Affordable Care Act and give the Senate another two years to come up with something. But then Sens. Capito (R-WV), Collins (R-ME), and Murkowski (R-AK) announced they'd oppose the new bill, too. So is the Republican effort to destroy Obamacare finally over? Don't bet on it -- the new bill is actually a dream bill for Republicans, one that repeals all the taxes that fund Obamacare and makes severe cuts to Medicaid while leaving the pre-existing conditions ban intact, plus it would kick even more people off their health insurance! You can go ahead and call your Senators and tell them you oppose the new-new bill, too, because it still hands out welfare to rich folks, because it still cripples Medicaid, because it still kicks tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) has just finalized a rule preventing banks from forcing customers to redress grievances through arbitration -- which allows customers to band together in class action lawsuits against banks for the first time. (The CFPB's authority to issue this rule, by the way, comes from Congress via the Dodd-Frank law, so brook no silliness about "regulatory overreach.") If someone says "class action lawsuit" and you automatically think "frivolous lawsuit," you won't be impressed with the CFPB's rule, but you might be more impressed if you were one of those folks who had Wells Fargo open up fraudulent accounts (and collect fraudulent fees) in your name. Forced arbitration, as you know, tends to benefit the banks more than it benefits you -- sure, it's "quicker," but if that means a bank can pick the "right" arbitrator more easily and thus win a case that you should have won, why would speed matter? So Congress is trying to roll back the CFPB's rule, because of course they are, so People's Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect your right to a day in court and reject any effort to roll back the CFPB forced arbitration rule.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to hold hearings on Amazon's proposal to buy Whole Foods. Politicians of both parties have shown little taste for pursing antitrust matters, and they've also shown a distressing ignorance about the disruptive power of technology corporations. Hence they'll likely reason that since the proposed sale of Whole Foods to Amazon doesn't give Amazon anything close to a monopoly of grocery stores, it's not an antitrust matter. If, like me, you think a corporation should never own another corporation, you'll be less impressed. You'll also be less impressed if you foresee a time when Amazon will take over all markets -- a takeover greatly facilitated, of course, by Democrat and Republican fiddling while Amazon usurped internet commerce to the point that one out of every two dollars spend online goes through Amazon. In short, Amazon would leverage their monopoly power in one fairly large market to gain monopoly power in all markets, and that's definitely a matter that requires further Congressional investigation.

Action: tax "reform," and endangered species.

President Trump seems awfully anxious to get past health care "reform" and on to tax "reform," and you can see why. The Affordable Care Act went to such labyrinthine lengths to preserve corporate health insurance that no one who might have fought for it could say, simply and directly, what they were fighting for, but now Republican "reforms" have been, if anything, more labyrinthine -- plus millions of good Americans have now benefitted from Obamacare and thus have something tangible to defend. Getting the rich more undeserved tax cuts should be easier, since most folks hate paying taxes, and since folks often find the things taxes pay for to be intangible. But I think folks are getting wiser about all that, and the Tax Policy Center makes the whole matter pretty simple, by showing how big Mr. Trump's tax cuts would be for the very rich ($900,000!) and how tiny they'd be for poorer working families ($40), a message so simple you could turn it into a 30-second ad. So that should help you call your Senators and tell them to reject more tax-cuts-for-the-rich.

Meanwhile, I still have two action alerts relating to Congressional efforts to gut the Endangered Species Act: the first, from Penn Environment, helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 717, the so-called Listing Reform Act, which would force our government to jump through all kinds of flaming hoops before listing a species as endangered, and the second, from Environmental Action, helps you writing a letter-to-the-editor opposing H.R. 2134/S. 935, the so-called Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act, which would give our government a mere five years to rehabilitate an endangered species enough to delist them. Both bills follow the right-wing playbook of messing with anything our government does well -- and rehabilitating 98 percent of all the species ever listed as endangered is pretty darn good! They also follow the right-wing playbook of invoking "reform" and "self-determination" when they really mean "letting oil and gas drillers do whatever they like."

Around the table: in which we contemplate various apocalyptic dramas.

U.S. District Court Judge voids Utah's "ag-gag" law, ruling that it violates citizens' First Amendment rights. I find ag-gag supporters' arguments quite disgusting, not just in their indulgence of apocalyptic drama ("ZOMG TEH PETA IZ TRYINGZ TO DESTROYZ TEH FARMURZ!!!!!") but in their insistence that you either support people eating or you support animal rights' activists. As Judge Shelby says, the state "has a variety of constitutionally permissible tools at its disposal" to protect farms, but "suppressing broad swaths of protected speech without justification...is not one of them."

Simon Haeder at The Conversation tells us "Why Health Savings Accounts are a Bust for the Poor But a Boost for the Privileged." Of course this is because the poor don't make enough money to save, nor can they endure the high-deductible health insurance plan you need to start a health savings account, and thus only the relatively well-off can take advantage of it. It'll still shock you to hear people call health savings accounts "the new 401(k)," and some enterprising reporter should cite that phrase next time Paul Ryan talks about them. Also, too, do conservatives really believe HSAs will help people make "better choices"? You know what'll help people make better choices? When we make a world where folks don't feel like they have to run to stand still all the time.

Cora Currier at The Intercept finds some American border officials flat-out lying to asylum applicants in an apparent attempt to turn them away unlawfully. If you embrace the fact that civilization is supposed to be hard work, of course, you don't support this sort of thing, and if you're a law-and-order chest-thumper, you have no business supporting this sort of thing -- but if you're a Trump votary, who secretly admires how your Personal Lord and Savior has cheated his way through life, maybe you're fine with it, and if so, there's no talking to you.

President Trump suggests that British Prime Minister Theresa May "fix" the "press coverage" before he makes his trip across the Atlantic. To which I can only say: waaaaaaah! It's possible he's joking, I suppose, but really, if you're Donald Trump and you can't get the British tabloids on your side, that's your own damn fault. Besides, a lot of his votaries don't know he's joking -- they think he's expressing their sense of deprivation for them.

Finally, horror film director George Romero has died at the age of 77. If you've ever watched Walking Dead, and I bet you have, try to imagine it ever existing without Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. Then consider that the former film cast a black man as the lead as if he were, you know, like anyone else, or as if he could be a hero in more or less the manner motion pictures made white folks heroes. And Dawn of the Dead is even better! Or maybe I just have a soft spot for apocalyptic films set in shopping malls.

Action: health care, Medicare drug prices, and clean water.

Sen. McConnell (E-KY) has postponed voting on the latest iteration of the Senate health care "reform" bill, ostensibly because Sen. McCain (R-AZ) just had surgery, but call your Senators anyway and tell them to reject this bill, too. Why? Certainly because it injures Medicaid just as much as it did before, but also because it would do a brand new injury to Obamacare exchange users by allowing health insurance corporations sell a crappy, high-deductible plan as long as they sell Obamacare-compliant plans as well. Not only does that allow insurers to evade the pre-existing conditions ban in their crappy, high-deductible plans, it siphons off most of the healthy people from the good plans, which means sicker people will use the good plans, which will make the good plans more expensive. The new Senate bill excises three (but not all) of the tax major-cuts-for-the-rich, but don't celebrate: if the Senate passes this bill, the House's bill will still have all those tax cuts in it, and guess what'll happen next? The reconciliation bill will have all those tax-cuts-for-the-rich in it. I mean, I'm no oracle, and I know they'll do that. So let's stop them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) says he'll wait until after this whole Senate health care "reform" bill is over and done with before he introduces a single-payer health care bill, but no power in the universe constrains us from expressing our will about health care issues, so Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to allow Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices. Medicare has only had a prescription drug program since 2003, and one of the prices of creating it was that Medicare could not negotiate for better drug prices with big pharmaceutical corporations, you know, because that was "big government" or something. You won't be persuaded by that argument, of course, if you think of "big government" as our government, nor will you be persuaded if you think lower drug prices for seniors is a better goal than inflated salaries for big pharma CEOs, which is basically the choice here. Oh, and don't count on President Trump's "leadership" on this matter; he thinks Medicare is the biggest price-fixer on the market, despite its complete inability to negotiate drug prices! That's why you never count on "Presidential leadership" -- and you only count on your leadership.

Finally, Penn Environment helps you tell the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) to keep banning fracking in the Delaware River area. The Delaware River still provides drinking water to 15 million Americans, so fouling it up with carcinogenic fracking chemicals would be a bad idea. Don't let right-wingers browbeat you with their ZOMG WE NEEDZ TO GET OFF TEH FOREIGN OILZ!!!!!, because if we get ourselves off foreign oil but can't drink our own damn water, then we've played the game wrong. Also, there are other ways to get yourself off foreign oil -- solar and wind power, for example. And certainly don't let right-wingers drone on about the cost to small businesses and the higher energy bills, because, again, our descendents won't be sitting around a fire telling each other that even though no one can drink the water now, it sure was a good thing that electricity bills were a little cheaper! If that's even true, of course -- I mean, really, between "lower electricity bills for regular folks" and "more unearned money for executives so they're better able to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home," the latter is the more likely outcome.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the "war on terror," free speech, the "liberal" media, smart birds, and an actual conservative health care plan.

Good news, everyone: U.S. House of Representatives passes two amendments to its defense authorization bill that would prevent American involvement in the Saudi-led war against Yemen. Yes, these amendments could well get conferenced out in reconciliation, particularly if President Trump demands it (and what an "independent" he'll be if he does!), but it's still a good first step -- particularly since it should be hard for Mr. Trump to use the 2001 AUMF (specifically aimed at those who attacked us, or harbored our attackers, on 9.11) to justify continuing to participate in a war on the same side as al-Qaeda and against Houthi rebels who fight ISIS well.

Ed Dolan at Vox explains "What a Good Conservative Health Care Plan Would Look Like." How do I know that these are actually conservative ideas? Because I'd actually be willing to implement some of them (definitely greater price transparency and drug reimportation from Canada) in an honest negotiation about health care reform -- though the other side would at least have to give up a public option, of course. I mean, negotiations have to be win-win. And I hasten to point out that a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system would wipe away any complaints about employer-sponsored insurance tax deductibility.

Glen Frieden at FAIR notes the relative absence of actual liberal populists from NPR's "varied mix" of on-air perspectives, while giving yuge airtime to right-wing commentator Jonah Goldberg, often without identifying his political bent. NPR professes to like Mr. Goldberg because he's not as "predictable" as the others, but the only thing "unpredictable" about him is exactly which tortured road he will use to arrive at the same place all the other right-wingers go. Also, he's really bad at punditry -- I can't tell you how many columns of his I've read where he accidentally destroys his own argument, and not even by trying to be hip.

Ho hum, Trump lawyer threatens unnamed individual in a string of profane late-night emails. The lawyer later apologized, and I suppose we could argue whether Mr. Kasowitz's threats rise to the level of criminality ("I already know where you live" and "You will see me. I promise. Bro." sure weren't his two best ideas that day), but certainly responding with four profane, rage-addled emails to someone best ignored describes a man who may not be the best person for whatever job he's got. I can already hear Mr. Trump saying I hire only the best people, the classiest people! The best!

Finally, researchers find ravens able to plan for the future. Ravens already save food for later, but scientists suspect that ability may be hard-wired, so they trained them to a) choose a rock from among a series of items, and then drop that rock into a tube to release a treat from a box, and b) exchange a token for a food reward. And ravens show more long-term planning than a lot of politicians do, by actually doing better on experiment a) when waiting 17 hours for a reward than they did after waiting 15 minutes, and by preferring to hold on to their tokens for the promise of a better reward later in experiment b). So think about all that next time you watch The Birds.

Action: fair housing, and ANWR drilling.

CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1447, the Fair and Equal Housing Act. What would H.R. 1447 do? It would (per its summary at congress.gov) amend the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to add "sexual orientation and gender identity" to the list of classes the law protects against discrimination "in the sale, rental, or financing of housing." H.R. 1447 would also define "gender identity" "without regard to the individual's designated sex at birth," and would extend protections against discrimination to people who associate with gays or transgendered folk or folks merely perceived as belonging to these classes. And among this bill's 18 co-sponsors are seven Republicans, including original bill sponsor Scott Taylor of Virginia. I'll brook no caterwauling from the far-right about how this bill would violate the "right" of people to live only next to people who don't offend their "religious beliefs," because no religious belief grants you the right to discriminate. And I'll tolerate no silliness about how H.R. 1447 gives "special rights" to gays, either, because equal rights aren't "special rights for those other people."

Meanwhile, CREDO also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Back in the day, we learned that the amount of oil we'd get out of ANWR wasn't going to be very much, so why do certain elements in our government insist on opening it up? Possibly out of an ideological hostility to protecting public lands, possibly out of an ideological hostility to protecting wildlife, and possibly out of a desire to enrich one's oil corporation cronies. If these all seem like the same thing to you, I wouldn't exactly blame you. But you can't just consider the harm that oil drilling will do to the rare species and Native Americans who live in and near ANWR -- you must also consider the harm that a massive oil spill would do, since our government doesn't make oil corporations take preventive measures against oil spills anymore, nor does our government properly punish the corporations who cause the spills. They say fossil fuels are dependable and reliable, though of course they're more dependable as sources of unearned income for their executives -- the damage they cause to our way of life, whether through pollution or accidents, will prove far more "dependable."

Around the table: in which we witness the party leave another Republican.

The McClatchy group does pretty good work, so there may be something to the notion that Russian hackers were able to target specific voters in swing states with fake stories about Hillary Clinton -- and possibly even the notion that the Trump campaign colluded with them in this effort. Of course, if Democrats had nominated Bernie Sanders (or, indeed, anyone who's not a dull corporate centrist), we might be having a very different conversation about all of this today. To paraphrase Phil Jackson: when the referees oppose you, you play above them.

Matt Stoller at the New Republic talks about "The Return of Monopoly," largely in the context of the rise of Amazon, Google, Monsanto, and Facebook. If you're still thinking we shouldn't "punish success," then attend the words of Justice Douglas, who said economic power "should be scattered into many hands so that the fortune of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men." I'd hate to think our descendants will tell the tale of how we gave away our freedoms in exchange for free same-day shipping.

The Consumerist laments that the FCC apparently doesn't care very much about those fake anti-net neutrality comments "filed" by people whose personal info got hacked in data breaches. To suggest (as the FCC does) that weeding out fake comments "undermines" their ability to do their job is well beyond absurd and into evil. Of course I'm terribly unsurprised to learn that when Mr. Pai was a Commissioner he raised his hackles over every little perceived procedural mistake during the 2014/2015 net neutrality process. Oh, well, this is going to wind up in court, and the courts haven't exactly smiled on the Trump Administration.

Former U.S. House Rep./Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough announces he's leaving the Republican Party. I wish this meant more -- not only is Mr. Scarborough known better to Beltway types than to the vast majority of Americans, but this'll also look like he's bolted the party because President Trump insulted his fiancée, though he's been a fairly trenchant critic of Republicans since at least 2006. (He probably doesn't want that well-known, either, since many folks will then say what took you so long, as if it's so easy to discard that big a part of your identity.)

Finally, four Chinese students enter a bunker designed to mimic living-on-the-moon conditions, and hope to live there self-sufficiently for 200 days. And you're wondering why it's the Chinese that send people into space and build mock space stations and not us, all you have to do is look at our President, the apotheosis of the greed-is-good-and-fuck-the-little-people ethos that has strangled this nation for almost 40 years.

Penny Rants for Thursday, July 13, 2017: of "treason" and higher education.

Rick Hasen at the Election Law blog lays out the possible charges Donald Trump, Jr. could face for allegedly soliciting "dirt" on Hillary Clinton from a well-connected Russian lawyer. Chiefly, Trump the Younger faces a fairly serious campaign finance charge, by soliciting a contribution "from a foreign individual or entity." And "contribution" doesn't just mean pile of money -- a contribution can be "anything of value," and "some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" (as Trump the Younger's email contact put it) would qualify. And Mr. Trump isn't going to get off the hook by saying the emails don't actually show him asking for that information -- it's hard to imagine that a Russian official simply emails you with such an offer out of the goodness of his heart, and I doubt he'll convince a judge that "I love it" doesn't mean "I can't wait to see it." Mr. Hasen lists other charges Trump the Younger might face, but n.b. that none of them are "treason," a charge Sen. Kaine (D-VA) floated a few days back. Sorry, folks, that kind of thing really sticks in my craw. Isn't potential lawbreaking enough of a reason to act?

In a strange reversal, Pew finds that a stunning 58 percent of Republicans say that American universities have a "negative effect on the way things are going in this country." That's up from 37% just two years ago! And Democrats' attitude toward higher education has remained fairly constant (they're generally for it), which must mean they're the conservative party in America now. The Pew study (which also has much to say about Democrat/Republican feelings about other institutions) doesn't tell us why Republicans have come to hate college so much, but you could be excused for thinking it's all because of "political correctness," i.e., because right-wingers can't get a "safe space" for their ideas, and by "safe" I mean "safe from criticism." And dig Gov. Walker (E-WI) praising a bill allowing college administrators to expel students who "disrupt" speeches given at the University -- for its "commitment to free speech"! Call me old-fashioned, but I think protestors who are actually disruptive damn themselves in the eyes of all who see them, and that people who actually have something to say can handle criticism from any quarter.

Action: Yemen, and pensions.

As the House mulls its defense authorization bill -- in public, by holding committee meetings, unlike the "greatest deliberative body in the world," the Senate -- some Congressfolk have offered amendments that would help keep cluster bombs out of Saudi Arabia, keep American military bases from refueling Saudi warplanes on their way to bombing Yemen, and keep weapons from going to Saudi Arabia until it ends its blockade of Yemen. If you've looked into the recent history of Yemen, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a reason to justify helping Saudi Arabia bomb its citizens into famine and cholera. In fact, you'd come up with at least one reason to justify going the other way -- that one of Saudi Arabia's explicit targets, Houthi rebels in Yemen, just so happen to be pretty good ISIS-fighters. And ISIS is, at least nominally, a preoccupation of our current Administration. Of course, Congress gets to make this policy, not the President -- at least under ideal conditions, which we will attempt to create by letting MoveOn help us pressure our Congressfolk into acting against the Saudi war on Yemen.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Labor, again, not to gut the "fiduciary responsibility" rule that makes pension advisors put your interests ahead of their own, then the Economic Policy Institute still helps you do that. The Department of Labor knows rescinding the rule would be unpopular -- since favoring a pension advisor's "right" to put his own money-making interests ahead of your retirement security would be unpopular! -- so it's resorted to yet another delaying tactic, a "request for information" about the "effects" of the rule, presumably so hedge fund managers can cry poor in public. Now, to a man like Donald Trump, who thinks your right to make as much money as you like is more important than any other right, such crying is undoubtedly persuasive. If you think, say, First Amendment rights are more important, you're no doubt less persuaded. And if you think letting people make as much money as they want gives them more power to run roughshod over your rights, you're probably even less persuaded. Why, one might even call you civilized.

Action: pollution, tax "reform," and drug monopolies.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state legislature has passed SB 624, which would allow longwall mining corporations to dump their waste in Pennsylvania's streams as long as they come up with a "plan" to clean it up later. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you told your kid to clean his room, would you let him dump his clothes all over the floor and just let him come up with a "plan" for cleaning his room later? No, you would not. And your kid isn't planning to poison the drinking water in public streams! It gets worse: SB 624 would also apply retroactively, meaning the Consol corporation would get off the hook for the pollution it's already caused, and if that isn't the very definition of corporate welfare, I don't know what is. But Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf still has to sign the bill in order for it to become law, so you can call him at 1.844.906.0777 and tell him to veto SB 624. He wouldn't just be protecting good Pennsylvanians' drinking water, he'd be protecting the rule of law. I mean, if corporations can just get crony legislators to get them off the hook for their wrongdoing, do we even have a rule of law?

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration now says it wants to lay out a tax "reform" plan in September and get it passed by year's end -- and Treasury Secretary Steve "the Foreclosure King" Mnuchin said it absolutely won't raise taxes on the rich, despite reports that Steve Bannon wanted to see a "4" in front of the top tax rate (though I guess we can't discount the possibility that he really meant he wanted the top tax rate to be 4 percent!). But we know this drill: Republicans would merely give massive handouts to the rich and to corporations, and while we've done good work with our resistance to the health care "reform" bill, we're going to have to do a lot more heavy lifting to stop Republican attempts at tax "reform," in part because, well, a lot of folks don't remember that taxes pay for things. So go ahead and 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 real tax reform would bring back the 91% tax rate on millionaire income, raise the Estate Tax rate, close corporate tax loopholes, and favor lower-income families more than the wealthy.

Finally, H.R. 1223, the Orphan Products Extension Now Accelerating Cures and Treatments Act, is known as the OPEN Act, though its title actually produces the acronym OPEN ACT Act. Which is awkward! And as with so many bills with allegedly clever titles, this bill will do us harm by giving big pharmaceutical corporations an additional six months of exclusive rights to a drug the FDA approves for an additional, rare health condition. How does that help folks who have such conditions? Why, by forcing them to pay through the nose for the use of that drug for six months, that's how! In other words, H.R. 1223 is nothing more than a corporate welfare handout disguised as a way of "encouraging" big pharma corporations to treat rare conditions. If you're about to argue that their rarity precludes a big pharma corporation seeing it as a money-making opportunity, then slap yourself! Seriously! Stop accepting the lie that helping people must make someone rich -- because that's a good way of ensuring that people keep getting rich without actually helping anyone. Social Security Works helps you tell your Reps and Senators to oppose corporate welfare and drug monopolies by opposing the OPEN Act.

Around the table: in which we are reminded to define terms like "treason" and "free markets" precisely.

Well, this timing sure is suspicious: not long before the ongoing five-nation terror campaign against Qatar began, the Trump family tried to get a Qatari billionaire to put half a billion dollars into their failing 666 Fifth Avenue property. So just remember that the next time President Trump says Qatar "has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level" -- if the vaguely-put "at a very high level" doesn't already strike you as coming from a man who's lying. And maybe the next time your Republican Senator rushes from his car to a meeting of rich people, you could ask him whether President Trump's real estate failures are going to dictate our entire foreign policy from now on.

Speaking of Trump and failures, Charles Pierce at Esquire looks at Trump the Younger's apparent attempts to get "dirt" on Hillary Clinton before the election and concludes that when the Trumps deal with Russian mob figures, they're "punching out of (their) weight class" and are little more than "compliant minnows in a shark tank." As a bonus, we may have learned why the Trump Administration really fired former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Study, though, the works left behind by Sergei Magnitsky, because he was obviously an extraordinarily courageous man, facing as he did certain death by exposing Russian corruption on an almost unimaginable scale.

But Jesus Mary and Joseph can Sen. Kaine (D-VA) stop with the "treason" talk already? It sure looks like Trump the Younger broke the law by soliciting "dirt" on Mrs. Clinton, but is that treason? Article III, Section 3 of our Constitution instructs us that "(t)reason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Has Congress declared war against Russia? No, it has not -- and I refuse to distend the definition of "enemy" further than that. Anyone who's ever been called a traitor for no damn good reason -- and their numbers include not just you and I, but this nation's Founders -- appreciates the importance of defining terms precisely.

Sam Pizzigati at the OurFuture blog reminds us that the ongoing downfall of Sears more or less reflects our ongoing downfall as a civilization. Wasn't that many decades ago that Sears executives didn't make silly money and its employees got good treatment -- though the 91% tax bracket kept executive salaries down and Sears treated its employees well to keep them from joining a union. Today, of course, the top tax bracket is over 50 points lower and unions have a third of the membership they used to have, so of course a vain bankster runs Sears into the ground and you might find more rats than employees in a store on a given day.

Charles Ornstein at ProPublica describes yet another way right-wingers injure Medicaid users: by demanding that the folks who get it verify their eligibility twice annually instead of once. And here you thought being conservative was about streamlining government services and reducing paperwork! Sadly, today's "conservatives," who we'd better describe as reactionaries, would only reduce the "burden" of "bureaucracy" for corporations, not people. Plus they think any program that works for everyday Americans is evil. Am I beating a dead horse? In these times, beating a dead horse is an act of courage.

Finally, Dean Baker reminds us that "Paul Ryan Hates the Idea of a Free Market in Health Care" and "He Wants to Give Money to Rich People." "There are no government-granted patent monopolies in a free market," Mr. Baker reminds us. "It is possible to argue for the merits of government granted monopolies...but it is not possible to deny that these monopolies are a government policy, not the free market." More to the point, this policy doesn't make people free, not if we pay $360 billion more every year for prescription drugs. Of course, the intellectually-bankrupt Mr. Ryan doesn't oppose any of that, nor does he oppose big pharmaceutical corporations taking taxpayer money to make drugs in the first place (which entitles us to rather more oversight than we've got!).

Action: preserving *real* internet freedom.

Tomorrow is the deadline for comments on the FCC's so-called "Restoring Internet Freedom" initiative, which would rescind the Title II classification for broadband under the Telecommunication Act of 1996 -- which just so happens to be the legal underpinning for the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2015, the order that (finally!) codified net neutrality as a principle of law. So why do they call it the "Restoring Internet Freedom" initiative? Clearly because your actual freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, is clearly far less important to the Trump FCC than corporate "freedom" to make you pay more for some websites than others, to make some websites load faster than others, to block and throttle websites that haven't paid the proper tribute to ISPs, and generally herd you into junk news alleys. That's par for the course for people like Donald Trump and Ajit Pai -- a citizen's freedom is meaningless, but a corporation's "freedom" to make money is sacred.

In any case, John Oliver's website, gofccyourself.com, still helps you leave your public comment with the FCC. (Click the "+ Express" button on the FCC's page, and make sure the right docket number, which is 17-108, loads.) I'll be honest with you, though: I hit the submit button on my comment dozens of times back in May and nothing happened, and boy does that seem suspicious! I mean, it could be coincidence, sure but the FCC is the same agency that didn't care whether organizations sent anti-net neutrality comments in the name of people who didn't actually sent them, but whose names were stolen in data breaches, so I'd be a schmuck not to be suspicious. You might honestly be better off mailing your comments to the FCC, being sure to make the number of copies the FCC requests, and also being sure overnight them. I'd make them sign for it, too, but that's just me.

Remember that literally the only people in America who want to destroy net neutrality are the big telecom corporations and their lackeys in Congress. Why, that must comprise hundreds of Americans! And that's not nearly as impressive a number as the millions of Americans who have written in support of net neutrality over the years, so why should the big telecoms get more say than the rest of us? Because they "know more" about the internet? The only thing they "know more" about, about anything, is how to extract money from something. And when you look at the "arguments" the anti-net neutrality crowd deploys -- and you may want to address these in your own comment to the FCC, if for no other reason than that it'll be entertaining -- you will see their rhetorical desperation.

For example, anti-net neutrality proponents constantly claim they want "light touch" regulation, but the FCC's net neutrality regulations are "light touch" regulation! Net neutrality isn't "big government telling us what to do," it's our government preventing corporations from telling us what to do. And their arguments get worse. Why can't you simply get internet corporations to put net neutrality in their terms of service, Chairman Pai has wondered aloud? Oh, gosh, I don't know -- because broadband corporations monopolize markets and can thus dictate terms to consumers? Mr. Pai also likes telling us that all the great innovations of the 2000s didn't happen under a net neutrality regime, but, actually, they did -- under FCC Chair Kevin Martin, net neutrality rules were weaker, but the big telecoms didn't challenge them successfully in court until near the end of his term. And don't brook any rubbish about net neutrality letting "government picking winners and losers." It doesn't -- but the Trump/Pai plan lets corporations pick winners and losers.

This is, sadly, probably the most important communication you'll make to your government all year -- and in all likelihood, Mr. Pai will ignore it and do the bidding of his corporate cronies. And yet it may be a good thing if we see the ill effects of his decision right away -- a lot of folks go absolutely bat-guano if their preferred websites don't load quickly enough, and if big telecom corporations decide to put a crapload of pop-up ads and make us watch Miley Cyrus twerking videos before getting where we're trying to go, that's going to create a lot of angry customers. And how is Donald Trump going to blame Big Gummint for that, when it's his government that caused it? Still, I'd rather not face that trauma -- I'd rather our government did the right thing, and that's why I'm going to encourage them to do the right thing.

Action: health care, and student loan debt.

Congress comes back to work this week (such as they "work"), and the Senate will be all hot to pass that monstrosity of a "health care" "reform" bill, so you can call your Senators and tell them to oppose it, whether you've done that already or not. And I would recommend making a list of all the things about the health care bill you don't like. For example, I would tell your Senators you do not want them to cut the Affordable Care Act's taxes, most of which are on the very wealthy and some of which help fund Medicare. I would tell your Senators they should expand federal Medicaid spending, not cut it. I would tell your Senators you do not want to give states any wiggle room to allow insurers to deny people with pre-existing conditions. I would tell your Senators you do not want them to allow insurers to charge seniors even more than they charge younger folks. And I would tell your Senators you do not want them to make Obamacare's tax subsidies worse than they are now. I think you need to make very specific demands, in order to make your will clear to your Senators.

Meanwhile, you may know that Education Secretary DeVos has "frozen" Obama-era protections against predatory student lenders -- protections that would prevent for-profit colleges from using forced arbitration clauses, among other things -- but her move has apparently prompted 18 state Attorneys General to sue the Department of Education. Anyway, the Department of Education also plans to gut the Gainful Employment and Borrower Defense rules, which would force for-profit colleges to live up to their claims that the education they're offering can actually get you a job and protect students from predatory for-profit colleges, respectively.  The Dept. of Ed is taking public comments on their plans to gut these rules, but only until this Wednesday, of course (that'll probably be another lawsuit eventually); here's where to leave your comment. You might want to mention that for-profit colleges generally get taxpayer money, which means we get stuck with the bill when for-profit colleges like Corinthian saddle their students with useless degrees and mountains of debt.

Around the table: from real journalism to a real "American Caesar."

Issie Lapowsky at Wired profiles the Syrian journalists who are risking death to spread the word (largely via social media) about how ISIS and the Syrian government are destroying their country. You know, in case you were wondering what real journalism looks like -- the kind of journalism that speaks truth to power and puts the lives of its practitioners at risk, rather than the kind we're used to from the "liberal" media, where journalists suck up to the powerful and pretend they're "cultivating sources."

Bad news for the Trump Administration -- from the Trump Administration! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issues report finding, among other things, that the mix of sick and healthy folks on the Obamacare exchanges was about the same last year as it was the year before. Well, that's one hell of a "death spiral" there! And when they get around to evaluating how well the exchanges did in 2017 versus 2016, they run the risk of blaming themselves for any problems! No wonder they're so hot to get rid of Obamacare.

I wouldn't blame you for being skeptical about research indicating that counties where law enforcement receives military equipment from our government have a higher incidence of police violence, although the authors say they controlled for all the factors you might think of (violent crime and citizen wealth in a county, to name two examples). But the finding that police get attacked more when they've got military equipment should give you pause under any circumstance -- if the whole purpose of military equipment is to "protect police," we have to assume that's not working, don't we?

Eric Anthony at Streaming Observer estimates that ESPN makes some $4.5 billion annually from broadband customers who don't actually want to watch it. Which is, you know, more than half of the people who get it in their basic cable package. You know what'd fix this? A la carte cable packaging, that's what! (And the "a la carte" services don't really serve channels up a la carte: Sling TV, which used to tempt me, now carries four ESPN channels in its basic "Orange" package.)

Finally, 18 state Attorneys General sue the Department of Education over its decision to delay enforcing rules protecting students from predators in the financial and for-profit college industries. The Trump Administration obviously thinks they've found a loophole in the law by "delaying" or "pausing" rules, instead of going through the trouble (and it is trouble!) to repeal or rewrite them. But while executive branches may get to set enforcement priorities, they can't just refuse to enforce a law because they don't like it, or even because they believe it's a bad law. Isn't this the kind of behavior the Founders warned us about?