Thieves in the Temple.

Action: health care, immigration, and public lands.

The so-called "moderate" health care "reform" bill -- a.k.a. the Graham-Cassidy bill -- still stumbles through the hallways of the Senate like a zombie, threatening to take down the Affordable Care Act's pre-existing conditions ban through yet another clever loophole, kill the medical device tax that only bothers medical device corporations, zero out all of the Affordable Care Act's subsidies, and end Medicaid funding within a decade. That they're even calling this monstrosity a "moderate" bill shows you how thoroughly right-wingers have destroyed the word. And if it passes, it could get worse -- what's to stop this reactionary Congress from "reconciling" it with the hated House bill so that nearly all of the House bill becomes law? Look, if I thought of that, then they thought of it months ago. So give this zombie health care bill the headshot it deserves, by using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a smartphone) to call your Senators and tell them to reject the Graham-Cassidy bill.

Meanwhile, President Trump has occasionally seemed to be of two minds about the DACA program that defers deportation for certain folks who were brought to America as children. Now, we don't need to pay too much attention to this apparent dichotomy -- oftentimes politicians seem to be "conflicted" about something about which they're not actually conflicted, and they do it to put people off their game -- but the problem of DACA's end in less than six months still remains, and helping these good folks out is our duty as Americans. I mean, seriously, we're going to blame them for something they literally had no say in doing? And send them back to countries they likely wouldn't even recognize? All so people can have swordfights over "who's more conservative"? So People for the American Way helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass H.R. 3440/S. 1615, the DREAM Act, which would not only protect a lot of immigrants brought to America as children, but would actually help them contribute more to American society.

Finally, Brazil's government would like to sell off vast swaths of currently-protected Amazon rainforest for the benefit of, you guessed it, corrupt cronies, and Brazil's President plans to travel to the U.N. building in New York next week to drum up support (and possible buyers, I presume), so Avaaz helps you tell the government of Brazil to stop selling off Amazon rainforest. It's a pretty simple principle, really: hold on to public lands, use them for the public good, and care for them on the public's behalf, and they'll last forever, but you can only sell public lands off once, and the money you make from them won't last forever. Besides, governments typically sell off public lands for one of two reasons: to make up for budgetary shortfalls they could have avoided, or to funnel money to some crony or other. And contemplate a rainforest that's home to approximately one out of every ten species of animals on Earth and produces more than a fifth of the world's oxygen, and selling off chunks of it sure does seem small, doesn't it?

Around the table: more follies concerning health care, budgeting, propaganda, and infighting among white supremacists.

The CBO won't have a preliminary report on the Graham-Cassidy health care "reform" bill until early next week (and won't be able to do a proper score before September 30 at all!), but the Center for American Progress finds the Graham-Cassidy bill similar enough to the CBO-scored Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act (which the Senate couldn't pass in July) to say that Graham-Cassidy will probably deprive 32 million good Americans of health insurance by 2027 -- and maybe even more. Which you likely already knew, but it's good to have some numbers behind it.

Michael Corcoran at FAIR writes a truly breathtaking article about the "liberal" media's repeated suggestions that single-payer and the various Republican health care bills are somehow equally "extreme." I suppose it's good news that the "liberal" media is starting to call Graham-Cassidy something other than "moderate," but it's still a bit dispiriting to witness the sheer hypocrisy of even relatively reasonable punditoids -- they excoriated liberals for being too "militant" in supporting the public option (!) back in 2009 and 2010, but now put forth that very same public option as the "real" solution to our health insurance woes! Then again, even that hypocrisy is a step forward for the media -- and another lesson that our job, as citizens, is to fight for what we want, not play 13-dimensional chess.

Alex Emmons at The Intercept points out that the Senate's $80 billion boost to defense spending would have paid tuition for every student at a public college -- a proposal roundly decried as pie-in-the-sky when Sen. Sanders proposed it last year. Well, at least guns are forever, while better access to higher education has absolutely no long-term benefits for a civilized society! Seriously, this may not be the best way to make the point -- too many Americans are afraid of suggesting we should spend less on defense -- but it sure does demonstrate that the money's there if the will is there. It also illustrates that when your opponents say things like "your proposal is too idealistic," it means they can't actually win the argument on the merits.

If your right-wing uncle cites some piece of reportage from something called The Free Telegraph, feel free to remind him that The Free Telegraph is a propaganda arm of the Republican Governors Association -- "propaganda" is a word a Republican campaign consultant uses, not me! -- and didn't identify itself as such until the Associated Press questioned them about it. All of which exemplifies dishonesty, corruption, and cowardice. And some of the RGA's emailing about the site shows extravagant self-pity, too -- Republicans shouldn't whine about "decades of demonizing Republicans" when Republicans have been the dominant party in American politics for almost 40 years.

Finally, when I first read that Nazi wannabes were actually fighting amongst themselves about whether to include gay members in their club, I have to admit I found it pretty hilarious. But when I started to read about the gay men who have tried to join the Nazi wannabe movement -- like the one who's attracted to other men but says he's not gay per se, or the one who posits "white homosexual masculinity" "as the idealized opposite" of black "violence, hypersexuality and stupidity" -- I have to admit I found the whole thing even more hilarious, a stew of PC infighting undreamt of on the left. And no, it doesn't "mean something" that some Nazi wannabes have tried to find a place for gays in their club -- not every incongruity rises to the level of irony (or even interest!), and even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Action: forced labor, national monuments, and gerrymandering.

It's "harvest time" in Uzbekistan again -- which means the Uzbek government conscripts its good citizens to work the cotton fields, regardless of whether they're already nurses, business owners, teachers, or college students. And of course folks who monitor and document "harvest time" risk detainment, deportation, and assault, almost as if Uzbekistan has something to hide. Now, if Uzbekistan's cotton-harvesting scheme sounds remotely like "everyone coming together for the common good" to you, please remember that you can't force people to work for the common good (though you can restrain people who work against the common good), and remember, also, that when good Uzbeks toil in cotton fields, they don't really work for "the common good" so much as the good of the government's crony cotton industry CEOs. So, at the very least, it's well past time to shame actors who pump money into Uzbekistan's cotton trade, hence the Action Network helps you tell the World Bank to support freedom in Uzbekistan by withdrawing its funding from Uzbekistan's forced labor scheme.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration's Department of the Interior has finally let slip which of our national monuments it would like to "modify," either by shrinking their size or by opening them up to commercial mining, drilling, logging, and fishing. Naturally Bears Ears in Utah is at the top of the list -- Mr. Trump's obsession with undoing specific Obama works has become quite annoying -- but the Trump Administration would also allow commercial fishing in the Pacific Remote Islands, designated by George W. Bush in one of his last acts in office in 2009 and expanded by Mr. Obama in 2014, and in another Bush-designated monument, the Rose Atoll. But opening up national monuments to activities like drilling and mining is not exactly a way of protecting those monuments. Fortunately for us, President Trump doesn't actually have the authority to alter national monuments -- only Congress can do that. So both the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club help you tell your Reps and Senators to stand against the Trump Administration's plan to hand over some of our public lands to corporate cronies.

Finally, Pennsylvania state legislative leaders still haven't considered anti-gerrymandering bills HB 722 and SB 22 despite actual bipartisan support. If I were less (or more?) spiritually-advanced, I'd find that comic -- a leadership structure protecting its power by refusing to hear bills that would challenge that power! HB 722 and SB 22 would take the redistricting power out of the legislature and put it in the hands of an independent commission, comprised of the Majority and Minority leaders of both parties in both houses plus a chairman selected by the other four. And that's going to be a damn sight better than letting legislators draw their own districts to their own interest -- or, perhaps more precisely, to the interest of their biggest donors. Passing HB 722/SB 22 would give you a fighting chance of getting legislators who might actually respond to your will. And all I ask for is a fighting chance! PA Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislative leader to give the anti-gerrymandering bills BH 722 and SB 22 a fair hearing.

Around the table: includes follies about healthcare, law and order, transparency, and big telecom service.

Dean Baker describes the "massive shift of resources" that would accompany a move to a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health insurance system. He generally finds less savings from single-payer than you'd hope, but also finds more savings in the area of prescription drug costs than you'd think, and he also thinks it's "a good working assumption" that, under a single-payer system, wages would rise by about the amount employers are paying for health insurance now, and I hope he's right, because I suspect big corporations would try their damnedest to keep that money for themselves and push the cost onto their workers in the form of payroll taxes. (He's also skeptical of raising taxes significantly on the wealthy, figuring they'll try harder to avoid it -- but we largely prevented that in the 1950s, so why can't we do that now?)

The Obamacare repeal deadline is all in the news these days (and the CHIP reauthorization deadline, which is the same day, uh, isn't,) but yet another health care-related funding deadline is coming up, and that's for federal funding for community health centers. 61 Senators, from both parties, have gone on record supporting reauthorization of this funding, so if Congress fails at this, it should be grotesquely easy to run ads against incumbents next year. If Congress kills it with poison pill amendments, of course, they could avoid defeat more easily, since most folks don't like to peer inside the sausage-making factory. But they would deserve defeat. Evil works always deserve defeat.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) demands information about "wasteful and potentially unlawful spending by the U.S. Marshals Service" with assets seized from civil and criminal proceedings. I do like it when Mr. Grassley performs actual oversight the way an actual people's representative would do, though his moments of partisan hackery, unfortunately, seem to get more attention. And if you'd prefer he concentrate his efforts on ending asset forfeiture, keep in mind that a damning indictment of asset forfeiture abuse would help such an effort.

The AP reports on state government bodies actually suing folks who request public records. Can you say "frivolous lawsuit," boys and girls? If you're even entertaining the notion that state government agencies might have a point, look at their argument -- "it’s best to have courts determine whether records should be released when legal obligations are unclear" (as the AP summarizes it) cries out for a punch in the nose. It's so obviously an attempt to intimidate watchdogs and muckrakers that the reactionary Michigan state House unanimously banned the practice earlier this year. It's so awful maybe even Neil Gorsuch would rule against it.

Finally, Verizon disconnects over 8,000 rural customers, thus threatening the ability of these residents to deal with emergencies (among other things). By the time you figure out the labyrinthine reason Verizon is dropping these folks, you'll be thinking maybe the real problem is that Verizon wanted to look like it was serving rural customers without actually doing the hard work that comes with serving them. Either that, or that they're just not very good at anything but making money. You know what would solve this problem? Community broadband! You know what big telecom corporations like Verizon spend inordinate amounts of time and effort fighting? Community broadband!

Action: tax "reform," corporate welfare handouts, and bad mining projects.

It ain't just health care Republicans want to screw up this week -- it's also our tax code, and since they're not squabbling among themselves over the debt limit and a continuing budget resolution, they can devote more time to their one sole aim: delivering more unearned tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Right-wingers have foregrounded corporate tax cuts this time, knowing that some center-right Democrats also hold the mistaken belief that corporate tax cuts "help" corporations hire workers (though corporate tax cuts usually just go right to shareholders and executives). But make no mistake: though even Sen. Ron Johnson, the man who gives the Citizen Legislator a bad name, knows that tax cuts for the rich is a "pretty impossible" sell, they will try to do it, preferably when they think no one is looking. So use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a smartphone) and call your Reps and Senators and say no to more tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

Meanwhile, you know Congress has had its ear to the ground with this whole Equifax data breach, right? And they've come up with legislation that's really strong and has big sharp teeth so that 130 million Americans don't see their data out there again? Gosh, I almost got though that without laughing. Of course Congress plans to do the precise opposite of help -- H.R. 2359, the FCRA Liability Harmonization Act, which would cap damages from class-action lawsuits against credit reporting corporations to $500,000 or less, which means credit reporting corporations will be able to avoid getting sued when they do something wrong a whole lot easier than they can now! The threat of a big damage award isn't inherently unfair to corporations, but actually discourages corporate misbehavior. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to help good Americans hold credit reporting corporations accountable and reject H.R. 2359.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Trump Administration not to waive Clean Water Act restrictions just so the Pebble Mine project can pollute the water and salmon industry in Bristol Bay, Alaska, then the Alaska Wilderness League still helps you do that. It would not be untoward to call Pebble Mine a job-killing project, since it would almost certainly pollute the water in Bristol Bay enough to kill off the massive sockeye salmon population -- which, of course, supports the massive sockeye salmon fishing industry and the 14,000 jobs that go with it. The mining corporation pushing the project saw its stock plunge this past winter, but, as you know, some investors just love buying low and selling right before the next bust -- or getting bailed out after the next bust. Capitalism sure does involve risks, don't it? Risks for us, that is -- good people lose clean water and good jobs, and bad people suck all the money out of failed ventures like the vampires they are. So let's see if we can apply a bit of daylight.

You know what else? Tell your Senator to reject the Graham-Cassidy health care "reform" bill that's even worse than those other health care "reform" bills they couldn't get done. If you haven't already, that is. You could add it on to your phone call about tax cuts.

Action: three alerts about health care and child care costs.

The first two paragraphs today should comprise one phone call. First up: Sen. Sanders has released S. 1804, the Medicare for All Act of 2017, and while it leaves a lot of details up to the Executive branch the way most bills do, and doesn't specify how we're going to capture the trillions of dollars we already spend on health care and divert it into the Universal Medicare program, it would allow Universal Medicare to cover virtually all of our health care needs and rein in prescription drug costs, and it would prevent private health corporations from insuring health care needs covered by Universal Medicare. It would also complete our transition to Universal Medicare over four years (starting with children under 19 within a year after passage), and would allow individuals to contract with providers for health care services not covered by Universal Medicare. So you can 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 Reps and Senators and tell them to support real health care reform in America by supporting S. 1804. (Alternately, you can text M4A to 69866, per National Nurses United; this will send your Reps and Senators a text message of support on your behalf.)

But wait, there's more! Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have released their own health care "reform" bill, widely and inaccurately considered to be a "moderate" reform bill though neither Senator is particularly moderate (no, you should not confuse Lindsey Graham's occasionally-welcome orneriness with being a "moderate"). Their bill would convert Medicaid funding into a block grant that states could use to remake their Medicaid programs any way they like -- and then completely cut off that funding in 2027. Graham-Cassidy would also eliminate Affordable Care Act's subsidies and give states even more room to evade pre-existing conditions than the Trumpcare bills. True, it would also keep most Obamacare taxes-on-the-rich in place, but BFD if they're trying to set fire to everything else -- and since we can urge our Senators to reject the Graham-Cassidy bill and keep both the taxes-on-the-rich and the parts of Obamacare that actually work for us. (Again, use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page to find your Reps' and Senators' phone numbers.)

Finally, both the National Women's Law Center and Moms Rising help you tell your Congressfolk to support the Child Care for Working Families Act (which has no bill number as of this writing). What would the Child Care for Working Families Act do? It would, as the title suggests, expand federal coverage of child care so that families making less than 150% of their state's median income pay no more than 7% of their combined income on child care. We're looking at two fundamental realities here: one, that working families have mostly been two-income families since the early 1980s, and two, that child care costs a crapload of money -- I personally know families who have paid one entire partner's annual income on child care, and I bet you do, too. Working families already pay too much for too many necessities -- health insurance, of course, also among these. The bill would also ensure that child care workers get more pay and better training, and why shouldn't they? They're not just working for working families -- they belong to working families themselves.

Around the table: featuring health care scare numbers and tax code silliness.

The quite estimable Harold Meyerson likes Sen. Sanders's Medicare-for-All bill because it doesn't try to do everything at once. He makes a compelling argument for extending Medicare to children and workers 49 and over first -- for example, will right-wingers be very successful calling health care for kids "socialism"? Still, as you know, I prefer opening with what I want and then negotiating -- though of course this bill is way less of a pre-emptive compromise than the Affordable Care Act was.

Republicans respond to the release of the Medicare-for-All bill by pretending it would require $32 trillion in new spending. Over 10 years, of course, though nobody ever says that. Problem with that is that we spent $3.4 trillion on health care spending just last year, which projects to $34 trillion over 10 years -- or, if you account for premiums going up, $49 trillion. So the answer to the question WHERE DOEZ HE COMEZ UP WITH TEH MONEYZ!!!!! is "out of the much larger pile of money we're already going to spend."

The incomparable Bruce Schneier informs us that the only solution to big data breaches like the recent Equifax breach is (drumroll, please) government regulation. The "free market," after all, won't fix it: "The companies that collect and sell our data don't need to keep it secure in order to maintain their market share. They don't have to answer to us, their products. They know it's more profitable to save money on security and weather the occasional bout of bad press after a data loss. Yes, we are the ones who suffer when criminals get our data, or when our private information is exposed to the public, but ultimately why should Equifax care?" Particularly when Target, Yahoo!, et al, haven't suffered in the long term. Regulate and punish them and they'll learn through their suffering.

Another day, another analysis (this one from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy) showing us that the Trump tax cut plan would benefit the rich more than working folks. And no it doesn't deliver them bigger cuts because "they make more money"! Just look at the frickin' charts! And it certainly doesn't matter that President Trump himself says his plan won't deliver huge tax cuts to the rich -- it only matters to him that his votaries believe that, and that they scream it in your face when you try to argue with them. (You're not trying to argue with Trump votaries, though, are you? Don't argue with them; just outvote them.)

Finally, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore -- who may soon be the Republican nominee for the Senate seat until recently held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- said back in February that the 9.11 terrorist attack was "divine punishment." For failing to restrain financial predators with tough laws and regulations, no doubt! I kid, of course. But can Mr. Moore be the next Senator from Alabama? Of course he can! He's a Trumphole even if Mr. Trump is officially pulling for his opponent. It'd be nice if the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, runs on his successful prosecution of the last two perps of the 1963 Birmingham bombing that killed four black girls. The national party is no doubt giving him the exact opposite advice as we speak.

Around the table: racism as a virus, cowardice as a Democrat virus, and other high concepts.

U.S. House passes an actually-bipartisan amendment that would essentially roll back the Department of Justice's efforts to expand asset forfeiture. Allowing police to seize property from the accused, not the convicted, is obviously unconstitutional -- except to the politicians who prefer posturing about being "tough on crime" to actually solving problems. The Senate could still shoot it down -- as they just shot down a Rand Paul amendment that would have repealed the 2001 AUMF that three Presidents have now abused -- but it's still a step forward.

The incomparable Heather Digby Parton writes a long and thoughtful article (including excellent analysis of recent polls) wondering whether making a deal with President Trump on the debt limit was a "trap." Call me old-fashioned, but I think you can walk through a lot of traps if you stop playing 13-dimensional chess and just work for your constituents, though that seems to be a lot to ask of contemporary Democrats. Certainly one should cast a wary eye at Democrat efforts to "win back" Trump voters, the vast majority of whom were Romney voters, McCain voters, Bush voters, et cetera. The worst thing about the debt limit deal, as I've said, was that it cleared the board for Republicans this month, so they can exert more effort on odious tax "reform" and health care "reform" efforts.

Credit reporting corporation Equifax removes forced arbitration clause from the free credit monitoring service it set up in the wake of its now-notorious data breach, but not from its general Terms of Service. That means that Equifax could try to force you into an arbitration court if you have a dispute with them over this whole imbroglio (which means that even if you threw their own statement saying they wouldn't force arbitration on you back at them, you might be doing so before an arbitrator). So I'd be conservative and monitor your credit using an actually-free credit report via annualcreditreport.com. (Yes, that is a totally valid way of using the word "conservative," though I guess I can't blame you for doing a double-take.)

Adam Johnson at FAIR informs us that the six top US newspapers actually spent a little more time condemning anti-fascists than they did condemning fascists after Charlottesville. Even if I were generous, and assumed that the "liberal" media condemn anti-fascists because it doesn't actually take a lot of moral courage to condemn fascists, I still don't think the isolated incidents of violence from folks resisting fascists is more than half of this story. I think Nazi wannabes committing considerably more acts of violence against people they think should be wiped from the Earth is more than half the story, actually.

Ho hum, Martha Pskowski at TruthOut describes how Coca-Cola has been sucking the water out of the ground in an area of rural Southern Mexico. Conservatves ought to find a lot of these themes familiar -- like the city overtaking the farm and the extermination of local traditions -- but too many of today's "conservatives" simply repeat the words free market over and over again, possibly in an effort to position themselves for their next job as a corporate PR hack. Trouble is, Coca-Cola's water-draining arrangement probably violates Mexico's Constitution, which literally guarantees clean water to its citizens.

Finally, we've been hearing a lot lately about the "intra-Democratic divide," which is a vast improvement from our "liberal" media treating Barack Obama like he was Thee Most Liberal Liberal Imaginable, but too many folks treat "reaching out to working-class whites" or "keeping black and Latino voters" is an either-or. Mr. Marshall is right to suggest that racism is a "virus" that lies "dormant" but can be "activated" by the right set of conditions, but one of the conditions that helps activate that racism is a corporatist Democratic candidate who has nothing to offer other than not being a Republican. Give people the economic populism they crave and deserve, and racism won't be anywhere near as important.

Action: protecting the Rohingya, and promoting renewable energy.

Avaaz helps you tell our government to cut off support for the government of Burma until it stops the ongoing massacre of the Rohingya people by Burmese soldiers. Even with the 2015 electoral victory of the famous political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, the military still holds far too much power in Burmese politics, and after a Rohingya raid on a police station, the military has killed several hundred Rohingya and displaced tens of thousands more, largely by burning their homes and villages. If you're inclined to argue that "the Rohingya started it," please do three things: 1) slap yourself, 2) consider whether killing hundreds and displacing thousands is a fitting punishment for a pre-dawn raid, and 3) recall that the Burmese have persecuted the Rohingya (whom they now routinely describe as terrorists) for a very long time, and it could have something to do with the fact that the Rohingya are mostly Muslim and the Burmese are mostly Buddhist. At least we, as good Americans, can exert some pressure on our government to use its leverage on Burma's government to rein in its military.

Meanwhile, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has introduced H.R. 3671, the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act, which would ban the use of fossil fuels in the production of electricity or automobiles by 2035. H.R. 3671 would also end fossil fuel subsidies, impose a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects (like pipelines), extend tax credits for wind and solar production, and ease the transition of fossil-fuel workers to the new power grid by extending unemployment benefits, health insurance, and job training to those workers for several years. You know, just in case your Trump-supporting uncle was about to say BUT TEH WORKERZ!!!!! It's a fairly ambitious plan (more ambitious than China's plans, which we discussed yesterday), but if you've attended the falling prices of solar and wind power over the years, you know it can be done -- and you also know fossil fuel corporations will do anything to hold on to their unearned power. So Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to support renewable energy by supporting H.R. 3671.

Action: children's health insurance, and the militarization of police.

Congress might have the debt limit and the continuing resolution off their plate for the month, but they don't have Children's Health Insurance Program (or CHIP) reauthorization off their plate, because that expires September 30. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize CHIP for the next five years. Of course, a bill reauthorizing the enormously-popular CHIP -- which helps deliver health insurance to almost 9 million children and (along with Medicaid) keeps the uninsured rate among children down to 5% -- would be as close to a must-pass bill as you could get, this side of an appropriations bill. And you know what that means! It means Congressfolk attaching all manner of evil to it, in the hope they can get that evil passed when it would otherwise wither under sunlight. So feel free to use the "personal message" section of the Moms Rising tool to express your will on that matter as well, i.e., "no poison pills!" or "no irrelevant amendments!" (Though tempting, "no shenanigans!" would probably be too vague.)

Meanwhile, given that the Trump Administration has lifted Obama-era limits on the notorious 1033 program, which allows our Defense Department to give local police departments military weapons, Roots Action helps you tell Congress to enact legislation banning this practice. Crime being down generally since the early 1990s -- regardless of what unscrupulous politicians and the nightly news and 80 million cop shows might suggest -- you have to wonder why police officers would need things like tanks and grenade launchers. And I think you would conclude that they don't need them to fight crime, since they're not very good crime-fighting tools, but to control and intimidate protestors. Donald Trump must love protestors an awful lot, since he's made so many of them, and if he wants fewer protestors, maybe the solution isn't to arm police like they're soldiers. Maybe, just maybe, the solution is to stop doing things people hate -- and start serving the people's interests.

Around the table: from hackable voting machines to antitrust regulation.

Virginia state officials order the replacement of hackable and not-tremendously-verifiable touchscreen voting machines in at least 22 localities in advance of the 2017 elections. Touchscreen machines don't leave a paper trail, as you know, meaning (among other things!) that you can't do recounts properly and can't figure out if a hacker has changed a crapload of votes. That's good news -- and now perhaps Virginia can work on its absurdly strict Voter ID laws and use of Interstate Crosscheck to deregister voters with similar names to voters in other states.

China announces plans to end production of fossil fuel-powered cars within the next quarter-century. I wonder how significant it is that China plans to ban production, while England and France plan to ban sales -- I suppose China could still import gas-powered cars after banning their production domestically, though by 2040 or later not very many Chinese may want them. Meanwhile, in the U.S., car-making corporations are working with the Trump Administration to weaken fuel emissions standards, because in Trumpland, the greedy, like the racist, can live out in the open.

The incomparable Dean Baker reminds us that Wall Street fees on 401(k) and IRA retirement funds could strip $1,000 annually from those workers who invest in them. "It's important to realize that this 1 percent fee is not for actually managing the money," he says -- that fee is essentially for the very very hard work of sending you quarterly reports; the funds in which your 401(k) invests charge their own fees for managing your money, so this additional fee essentially amounts to a $1,000 annual welfare handout to folks who are already rather wealthy. But please, right-wingers, tell us again why we can never regulate the financial sector because jobs and bootstraps and Big Gummint.

Well well well, three Equifax executives just so happen to have disposed of hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock each just a few days after Equifax found the hack that exposed so many good Americans to identity theft. I'm sure it's true that the corporations hadn't notified the executives formally, but I'd be a schmuck to imagine the three fellows just had no way of hearing about it through the grapevine. Also, "(n)one of the filings lists the transactions as being part of 10b5-1 scheduled trading plans," which generally help executives avoid charges of trading on exactly this sort of information.

Finally, Ramsi Woodcock at The Conversation instructs us as to how, exactly, the Amazon-Whole Foods merger could still be reversed using antitrust law precedent. I suspected that allowing the merger simply because Amazon didn't have a presence in the grocery market was a pedantic and narrow interpretation of antitrust law, but it's good to have more concrete examples -- Proctor & Gamble had such a vast product line last century and a vast TV ad presence that the FTC nixed its purchase of Clorox in 1957, saying P&G could leverage its massive power to stamp out Clorox's competitors. Sadly for those competitors, P&G was able to hold onto Clorox for over a decade before the Supreme Court finally upheld the FTC's decision -- thus today when you think of bleach, you most likely think of Clorox. Still, the Court did help set a precedent we could use today.

Action: clean water, and auto emissions.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the Delaware River Basin Commission will vote Thursday on whether to move forward on banning fracking outright in the Delaware Valley, so Penn Environment helps you tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to vote for a fracking ban. Currently the DRBC has enacted a moratorium on fracking in the area, which isn't bad, but the DRBC can, in theory, lift the moratorium at any time -- like, at a time when the gas drilling industry has bought enough politicians to get whatever it pleases whenever it pleases. A permanent ban in would be harder to reverse, particularly since the Delaware River provides drinking water to 15 million good folks, and because gas drilling corporations have polluted the water in other parts of the state -- to the degree that's been hard to establish, that's only because our federal government has allowed fracking corporations to keep their chemicals secret since 2005. Without clean water, we ain't got health. So let's get to it.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA not to weaken auto emissions standards that not only cut pollution but lower gas prices, then Penn Environment also helps you do that. Anytime someone tries to whine about the hardships of automakers having to make their cars more fuel-efficient, just remind them that cleaner air and cheaper gas are things that help everyone, and maybe big corporations shouldn't get all the damn say about everything. We do live in interesting times, when corporations are more naked about their intentions than ever before -- during Tha Bush Mobb years, they at least tried to seem concerned about matters that affect everyone. Now you hear it from our government, and you hear it from big auto corporations -- the former doesn't want to make corporations do stuff, while the latter doesn't want to be made to do stuff, so no cleaner air and cheaper gas for you. Of course, Trumpholes don't get to ignore the popular will just because they run federal agencies. So let's make it impossible for the EPA to ignore us.

Action: health care, and data security.

With the debt limit and the continuing resolution off their backs for the next three months, Republicans can get back to doing the things they do best -- like destroying our health insurance protections while pretending to save them. President Trump has said he wants "one last push" on health care, and Congress would need to finish an Obamacare repeal-and-replace by September 30 under budget reconciliation rules (they could do it after September 30, but then it'd be subject to a filibuster in the Senate). So today would be a good day to call your Congressfolk (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or on the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to say no to the Republican wish list on health care. That means no to Medicaid cuts, no to tens of millions of Americans losing their health insurance, no to loopholes in the pre-existing conditions ban, no to letting insurers charge even more to seniors than they already do, and no to handing out more tax cuts for the rich (which repealing Obamacare taxes would do). That also means you'd say no to the Graham-Cassidy-Heller bill, widely (and incorrectly!) supposed to be a "moderate" "reform" bill.

Meanwhile, you've heard of the data breach at consumer credit reporting corporation Equifax, one which may have exposed names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, and even drivers' license numbers of close to half of all Americans. And naturally, Equifax offered credit monitoring services to those who might be affected -- services that force you to waive your right to take Equifax to court! Sigh. There is something to be said for seeing opportunity in failure, but mainly you should see the opportunity to correct your failure, not profit from it. Of course, this has been all over the news, so even Congress can't ignore it, and will in fact hold hearings on it soon, hence Consumers Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to hold Equifax accountable for what it's done, to enact stronger data security laws, and to preserve your Constitutional right to a day in court when you've been wronged by data breaches. They're going to act like it's too much to ask -- what more can we expect of a poor, beleaguered corporation? But Equifax has over $6.5 billion in assets and made nearly $500 million in profit last year, so I think they can weather a little accountability.

Around the table: tales of corruption both fiscal and spiritual (plus dogs are, like, self-aware).

USA Today finds that rich corporate-types now have access to our President as no rich corporate-type has ever had access before -- through membership at Mr. Trump's private golf clubs. Members who talked to USA Today said they didn't use their access to discuss matters before our government, but the Trump Administration doesn't disclose whom the President plays golf with, citing, of course, "privacy and national security concerns." What happened to the ethic that public servants should avoid the appearance of corruption, let alone the existence thereof? Hell, what happened to the notion that the First Amendment right to redress grievances should be for everyone and not just folks with money?

Even the notoriously moderate Factcheck.org finds wanting Administration claims that "most economists believe" that corporate tax cuts would help out workers. What happened during the New Deal years, when our government forced corporations to pay 35%, rather than let corporate welfare handouts drag that rate down to half that or less? We created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, that's what -- because corporations couldn't pay their executives outlandish salaries, and didn't want to hold on to too much money in profits, so they created jobs for people to make stuff, and let them pay taxes on it! Don't need an economics degree to see how that worked.

Now that the NFL season has started, Neal Gabler at Moyers and Company reminds us that "professional football gives vent to some of the country's worst impulses." Not just racism and tribalism, of course, but in this description of how the NFL, like most American corporations, treats its workers: "Damage your employees while they are in your service and earning you a fortune, underpay and then discard them." (As an aside, I think Colin Kaepernick is better than 12 starting QBs in the NFL right now, though maybe I shouldn't count the Jets' Josh McCown, since the Jets are tanking. But I just can't imagine why Mr. Kaepernick doesn't have a job.)

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) has decided to retire rather than run for re-election in 2018. But while this "moderate," this self-described "member of "the governing wing" of the Republican Party, did in fact vote against the House's monstrosity of a health care "reform" bill back in May, you should remember that he voted for Paul Ryan's plan to destroy Medicare numerous times, and you don't get to call yourself a "moderate" if you voted for that. (Come to think of it, all of the three "moderate" House Reps who've recently announced their retirement recently voted for the Ryan plan -- and none of them ever voted against it.)

Finally, a Barnard College study finds that dogs do have the ability to recognize themselves. Dogs don't really recognize themselves in the mirror as far as we can tell, but if you've ever been around dogs, you might surmise that dogs find smell a more important way of understanding and organizing their world than sight -- so now we have at least two studies finding that dogs can recognize their own odor even when it's presented in a mix with other odors. This finding could lead us to presume that pretty much any animal is self-aware, and that we just have to find the way it relates to the rest of the world. Count me as one of the people who thinks only good can come from that.

Action: "free" trade, and immigration.

NAFTA renegotiation drags on, and so CREDO helps you tell our Trade Representative to negotiate NAFTA openly and transparently, to negotiate without using the nefarious Trans-Pacific "Partnership" as a starting point, and to get rid of NAFTA's "investor-state tribunals," among other things. Going over the rest of CREDO's list: I don't particularly want to use "free" trade deals to force other nations to adhere to our environmental and labor standards -- if I don't want them nullifying our laws, I certainly don't think it's fair to nullify theirs, and besides, a lot of countries have those standards already, but hardly enforce them, for a variety of reasons. But requiring imports to meet our product safety standards is not only fair but necessary, and I don't want "free" trade deals to run roughshod over Buy American and Buy Local policies, either. And I certainly don't want "free" trade deals to shovel more money toward big pharma monopolies; seriously, how much is enough for these clowns? As always, though, the "investor-state tribunal," or "investor-state dispute settlement mechanism," is my main target -- we go through a lot of trouble in America to get the laws we want, and why should we let a trade deal give corporations the right to nullify those laws and exact tribute from the taxpayer for their trouble?

Meanwhile, as you're no doubt aware, President Trump has announced his intention to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (or DACA) in six months' time, which would presumably give Congress six months to come up with a replacement (that Mr. Trump may or may not sign; people seem to forget that part!). If Congress doesn't come up with a replacement that could withstand a Trump veto, Mr. Trump says he'll "revisit" the issue, which sure doesn't have his trademark look-at-these-balls-swing swagger, does it? The DACA program, as you know, allows folks brought here by their undocumented immigrant parents as children to stay here, free of fear of deportation and free to work and contribute to society, as long as they reapply to the program every two years. We could argue that they're important to our economy, but we don't have to: even if you're of the mind, as I am, that we shouldn't enable big corporations replace us all with cheaper foreign workers, you would still, I'd think, regard deporting children to countries to which they have no emotional attachment -- indeed, countries of which they likely have no memory -- as a cruel act. Messrs. Trump and Sessions apparently don't see it as cruelty, but you'd have good reason to doubt their moral compasses point anywhere but to themselves. So CREDO, MoveOn, Color of Change, and Moms Rising all help you advocate for these immigrants, all brought here without their consent, who now call America home.

Around the table: how *not* to interrogate a Senator at a townhall, and other lessons.

President Trump comes to agreement with Democrats on a deal to increase the debt limit and finance our government's operations into mid-December. Congressional Republicans could still scuttle it, I suppose, but I feel compelled to note that this "deal" actually takes pressure off Republicans, who may now devote far more time to their tax "reform" scam. (Also, Sen. Heitkamp doesn't really imagine aligning herself with Mr. Trump will protect her seat come 2018, does she? Unless she magically transforms into an economic populist, she's toast no matter what.)

Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch, noting that Donald Trump's favorite generals have survived a lot of turnover in his Administration, reminds us that they're all veterans of a failed-and-still-failing policy, the "war on terror." Gen. McMaster, widely perceived as a voice of relative sanity in the Administration, has said the "war on terror" will go on forever because "(t)his enemy is dedicated to our destruction," though I wouldn't blame you for thinking there are other reasons this war would go on forever. Still, failing upward has been a pretty permanent condition in America if you're lucky enough to be a member of Our Glorious Elites -- recall the various banksters and bankster-enablers Barack Obama picked to get us out of the mess they made!

From the "Stupid Liberals Not Helping" file: apparent liberal activist asks Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) -- doing a rare townhall meeting with constituents and Democratic and Republican party poobahs -- if he can "confirm whether or not your daughter, Bridget, has been kidnapped," then gets ushered out by the TV studio broadcasting the townhall. Seems the interrogator was trying to make a point about DACA and family members suddenly getting deported, but Jesus Mary and Joseph there was just no other way to do that? He couldn't have made that point after saying something about DACA? All this moron did was get attention for himself and sympathy for a Senator who wouldn't otherwise get it, and I bet Mr. Toomey is a head-in-a-jar before he holds another townhall. Which leads me to wonder if his interrogator was actually a right-wing agent provocateur.

Kanawha County (WV) prosecutors drop charges against Dan Heyman, arrested for the horrible crime of asking HHS Secretary Tom Price questions at the state Capitol in May. If you advocated with County authorities for this result, go get yourself a Buffalo chicken cheese steak, or whatever else you like -- and then prepare yourself for future similar insults against our democracy and our civilization.

NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds well over half of Americans "comfortable with the nation becoming more diverse and tolerant of different lifestyles, gender roles, languages, cultures and experiences," but also finds some 24 percent of Americans, well, not comfortable. Some of the breakdowns are interesting (some 48% of seniors say they're "comfortable," which is a bit higher than I expected), but note well that this 24% figure maps pretty well onto my conviction that 25% of the electorate is bat-guano crazy. Note well, also, that they can only win elections with help from the not-crazy.

Action: fighting forced arbitration, the militarization of police, and corporate greed.

As you know, the House passed H.J.Res. 111 a mere five days after its introduction in July, which means H.J.Res. 111 must be a bad, bad bill. And H.J.Res. 111 would nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's regulation keeping banks from forcing consumers into arbitration (and thus out of our courts) to settle disputes. Banksters love talking about how consumers win more money from arbitration than from class action lawsuits, but they, ah, leave out a few things. One, consumers rarely win in arbitration; if you don't win, you collect zero dollars, so it's no consolation that someone else, somewhere, won thousands of dollars. Two, banks can use arbitration against you, and they almost always win when they do, which means you lose thousands of dollars. And if you have a better chance of bringing a bankster to justice in a real court -- and this is the banksters' real issue! -- you should put aside your own lust for "winnings" and actually, like, win. I know that's a novel concept in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, but I advance it nonetheless. So use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to protect consumers by rejecting H.J.Res. 111.

Meanwhile, given the Trump Administration's zeal for putting military weapons in the hands of local police officers, Demand Progress helps you tell Congress to put an end to the 1033 program that allows our Defense Department to give local police departments military-grade weapons. Why would the police need bazookas? Not to fight crime, surely, since a bazooka (or a grenade launcher, or a machine gun, or a tank) is actually a very imprecise tool toward the end of apprehending suspects and interrupting crimes. But bazookas, grenade launchers, machine guns, and tanks are very good for crowd control, of course, and what with the rise in anti-trump and anti-Nazi wannabe rallies over the past eight months, the Trump Administration is very concerned with controlling crowds, regardless of what they tell you. If the Trump Administration were actually concerned with doing the people's will, rather than holding onto power and wealth by any means necessary, they wouldn't have to worry so much about all these protestors. But Congress created the 1033 program, via a 1997 defense authorization bill, and Congress can take it away, too. So let's encourage them to do that.

Finally, the good people of Mina la India, Nicaragua, are trying to keep the British mining corporation Condor Gold from mining for, you guessed it, gold in their locality. Gold! It's like they live in the 19th century. Doesn't matter that a Canadian corporation mined gold here for close to 20 years in the middle of the last century -- it only matters what the good folks of Mina la India want, which, sadly, doesn't seem to matter to their government, which has handed over more than half of the mining concessions Condor Gold possesses in the area over the last decade. The Condor Gold project threatens to displace families from their homes, destroy livelihoods, and pollute the waters, and the corporation has even gone so far as to sue the citizenry there. So here's where the Big Stick of Bad PR comes in: the Condor Gold project's second-largest investor is the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank; if we can get the IFC to pull its money from this project, this project will have a much tougher time succeeding, and the good folks of Mina la India will be closer to securing their future. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell the IFC to divest from Condor Gold's efforts to build a gold mine in Mina la India.

Around the table: in which we are reminded that "free" trade deals are (at least!) a two-way street.

Margaret Flowers at TruthOut finds the upcoming Sanders "Medicare-for-All" bill to be noticeably weaker than Rep. Conyers's H.R. 676, long the "gold standard" of single-payer health insurance bills. Well, that would explain why Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX), the latter Sen. Ted Cruz's likely challenger in 2018, have embraced the cause! Mr. Sanders appears to have learned the wrong lesson from Mr. Reagan's similarly close loss in the 1976 primaries -- whereas many people then asked "wouldn't it be nice if Ronald Reagan could manage facts and figures?", no one is now asking "wouldn't it be nice if Bernie Sanders could 'play the game'?" When you've already changed the game, you don't play the old one.

Canada demands that the U.S. drop its state-level "right to work" laws and institute a generous paid family leave program, as part of NAFTA renegotiations. So that's what Barack Obama was talking about when he said "free" trade deals would force other nations to protect their workers better! But did he fail to consider it'd be used on us? I oppose any attempt to bargain away our laws in trade deals, even laws I don't like. But this sure is what's-good-for-the-goose territory for "free" traders. If we're very lucky, it might be the kind of thing that induces President Trump to throw up his hands and withdraw from NAFTA entirely.

"JPMorgan Software Does in Seconds What Took Lawyers 360,000 Hours," reads this breathless headline which, at any site other than Bloomberg, might be followed by an explanation point. I would advise my fellow liberals to avoid celebrating at the misfortune to be suffered by password-resetting techs and lawyers who used to read commercial loan agreements -- I mean, are any bosses suffering in this scenario? -- and attend to the very real possibility, unaddressed by this apparently slightly-rewritten PR release, that software is a way to avoid accountability for human mistakes and human wrongdoing. Also, JP Morgan Chase fucking cloud computes? Doesn't anyone care about security anymore?

Hillary Clinton alleges, in her upcoming election loss post-mortem, that Bernie Sanders caused "lasting damage" to her campaign, that he "made it harder to 'unify progressives'," and even paved the way for Mr. Trump's "Crooked Hillary" line of attack. These charges may be true in the strictest sense, but surely she remembers (for example) that George W. Bush's "flip-flopping" charges against John Kerry originated with Howard Dean (who used actual flip-flops!), and surely she knows that these things always happen in primaries. So I submit that as more evidence that she thought she had some kind of right to the nomination, if not also to the election, and we all know what that kind of hubris brings.

Finally, in a truly stunning display, the Trump Administration EPA goes to considerable lengths to attack one AP reporter over his work finding seven out of seven Superfund sites in Houston "inundated" by water. Tha Bush Mobb would simply have split hairs over whether "inundated" means "flooded," and I'm almost nostalgic for that kind of silliness, though the EPA's claim of having examined sites through "aerial imaging" does recall Bush Mobb reports that Mr. Bush had seen Katrina damage from on high. But the kicker, of course, is the personal attacks on the reporter for an unrelated story -- because when you can't win the case on the merits, personal attacks are all you have left.

Action: Social Security, and pollution.

Was I not just talking about how the only ideas Our Glorious Elites ever offer about Social Security involve cutting your benefits? Well, there was former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson -- whom I used to find profoundly irritating, not knowing how much more irritating future Republican Senators would be! -- on CNBC last week telling us we should raise the retirement age to 69 and calculate inflation to reduce benefits for seniors. Sigh. I'm old enough to remember when punditoids used to go on the TV and say Social Security would be broke by 2016! You might say wait until all the boomers retire, then you'll see! But I'd respond that Social Security will pay off full benefits until 2034 and then three-quarters after that, and we can address that shortfall by lifting the payroll cap on Social Security, since income over $117,000 doesn't get taxed into the system at all. Anyway, since Congress is back to work (or, perhaps more precisely, "work") and needs to pass a budget and lift the debt ceiling, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to use the budget and the debt ceiling to cut Social Security benefits. Because we're not hostages in America. We're free people.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your state Assembly member to reject the bizarro pro-pollution bill HB 542 (printer #2259), then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. As you may recall, HB 542 started out life as a bill addressing internet sales taxes, and that bill passed the House by a wide margin. But then the Senate added all kinds of anti-regulation, pro-pollution riders, like the one letting gas and oil corporations do a lot of their own permitting, and the one letting the legislature veto clean air and clean water regulations coming from the state DEP. Because, after all, what says "we fight corruption" more than letting corporations regulate themselves? And what says "cut bureaucratic red tape" more than making clean air and clean water regulations jump through yet another hurdle before good Pennsylvanians can have clean air and clean water? Thus mutated, HB 542 passed by a narrow 26-24 vote, and now has to go back to the Assembly, because it's been so mutated. The good news? That gives us another chance to stop it. If we can't, it goes to the Governor -- and if he signs it, it very likely goes to the courts.

Action: tax "reform."

Every time Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the Presidency, we hear about the crying need for "tax reform," and when you hear that, you should be scared, because to Republicans tax reform generally means rewarding the rich and throwing crumbs (if that!) to working families. And indeed, the Tax Policy Center has already analyzed the Trump tax "reform" plan, such as it is, and found it would give the average family making less than $25,000 annually a $40 tax cut, while giving folks earning more than $3.4 million annually a $900,000-plus tax cut. That'd be two $20 bills standing next to a stack of $20 bills more than 16 feet high. I suppose we should count it as a victory that Republicans have largely avoided talking about income tax cuts this time around, as if they know we know it's a scam -- mainly, they've talked about corporate taxes, in terms of "competition" with foreign corporations (a cause close to Mr. Trump's heart, amirite?) and the "job creation" that would supposedly result from cutting the corporate tax rate.

And I suppose "hmm, our corporate tax rate is higher than Freedonia's" has some appeal if you don't think very much about it -- but if you think about it even a little, you'll see through it like you see through everything else. Of course corporations get so much welfare from our government that they don't pay anywhere near the 35% rate, and they don't create more jobs when they pay lower taxes, and a a "territorial" tax system would encourage corporations to pretend they make even more money overseas when they actually make it here. But arguments supporting corporate tax cuts also fail for one other reason: because people hate corporations. When the story of the last 10 years is the story of corporations crashing our economy, laying off millions of good Americans while sitting on trillions of dollars in reserves, and soaking up virtually all of the gains from this most recent economic "recovery" and using it not to create jobs, but mainly to buy back stock so as to concentrate their executives' power, then most folks would likely say why would we give these assholes a tax cut?

So I recommend that you 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 smartphone) and tell them no to a cut in the corporate tax rate, no to a "territorial" tax system, and no to any tax cuts (including Estate tax repeal or capital gains cuts) that benefit the wealthy more than they benefit working families. You could also offer viable alternatives: pass legislation like S. 863, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, and H.R. 1932, the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act, which would help prevent corporations from pretending they're "foreign" to avoid paying their share of taxes. You could tell them to cap (not eliminate!) the mortgage interest deduction so homeowners can take it but slumlords and vultures can't. Or you could tell them to simply end corporate welfare tax breaks and bring back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income. Now that's a job creation program, right there -- we've seen it work before, during the New Deal years, when CEOs couldn't pay themselves astronomical salaries because our government would tax most of it away, and didn't want to show a whole lot of profits, either, so they built more factories and paid more workers to make more stuff which more people bought, which helped create the greatest middle class this planet has ever seen.

And one more thing: you should prepare yourself for anything you can imagine this Congress would do, including pretend to have a discussion about corporate tax cuts that proves merely to be a smokescreen for getting massive income tax-cuts-for-the-rich done. You saw how far Congress was willing to go to pass their health care "reform" bill -- i.e., not even putting the bill through Senate committees or holding public hearings on it -- so why shouldn't we expect them to ram a tax "reform" bill down our throats before we can even catch our breath? Why shouldn't we imagine that they'll attach their tax "reform" effort to a debt limit increase or a budget resolution? You've been hearing enough about how "brutal" September's going to be (Congress has to deal with both the budget and the debt limit before month's end) that you'd be right to suspect it's a possum game, and that they're planning to take us hostage. So be sure to remind your Reps and Senators, as always, that this is America, and we're not hostages -- we're free people. Thank you, and God bless.

Around the table: meet the new boss, same as the old boss, part 873.

Jesus Mary and Joseph House Speaker wannabe Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) not only peddles the "corporations can't compete because of the tax rate" lie, but also says Democrats "can’t just be the party of redistribution of wealth." This gives right-wingers an opening to say LOOK EVEN TEH DEMOCRATZ!!!!, but American corporations are doing quite well, thank you very much, despite the 35% rate most of them can bribe their way out of paying. But doesn't Mr. Ryan know that Republicans are also "the party of redistribution of wealth"? Republicans just prefer to redistribute wealth upward.

President Trump plans to end President Obama's DACA program, which helps children of undocumented immigrants stay in America and contribute to society -- but will do so six months from now, ostensibly to give Congress time to "fix the problem." Or, perhaps, to give his CEO friends six months to get used to not having these folks around. Still, it's like King Solomon decided to just split the baby in half for real. And deporting folks who had absolutely no say in emigrating to the United States and wouldn't recognize their "home" countries at all remains cruel, but then "cruel" describes Donald Trump's main constituency.

In case you were wondering, no Donald Trump can't simply designate antifa a "terrorist" group. That'd be tough, in theory, because there's no actual hierarchy to the mulititudinous groups who call themselves antifa, but it's also impossible because the State Department can declare foreign organizations as "terrorist" groups, not domestic ones, and our government has no formal mechanism to designate a domestic group as a "terrorist" organization. And that's for the best! It'd too easy to dismiss the other side's arguments merely by brandishing scare words like "terrorist." It'd also be fair to ask exactly whom is "terrorized" by antifa -- from here, it sure looks like folks "terrorized" by antifa might really be terrorized by the quite reasonable fear that they can't actually win arguments on the merits.

Surprise, surprise, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt imposed a 20-month delay on implementation of EPA regulations concerning chemical plant safety not even three months before a plant damaged by Hurricane Harvey started blowing up. And these were the regulations the EPA put together after that big chemical plant explosion in West, TX that was all over the news in 2013! And you likely filed a public comment about those regulations! Why does it seem that the regulations President Trump hates the most are the ones that protect ordinary people the most?

Actual "fake news," er, satirical website runs story claiming a mosque also closed its doors to non-Muslim Hurricane Harvey victims, and gets gobs of attention, despite describing a mosque that doesn't exist and picturing an imam who was nowhere near Texas at the time. Too many fake news outlets are hiding behind "satire," and one day one of them is going to lose a lawsuit because a judge is going to point out that none of this "satire" is actually funny. And then they'll close up shop, and then they'll cast themselves as "free speech martyrs" or something, because self-pity does seem to be an endlessly renewable resource on the right.

Finally, Shaun Richman at In These Times presents "A New Bill of Rights for Workers: 10 Demands the Labor Movement Can Fight for and Win." I'll admit this list is a little mind-blowing -- I hadn't thought of "right-to-work" laws as a violation of the 5th Amendment's takings clause (i.e., its proscription against being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"), nor had I thought of "scope of bargaining" restrictions as free speech restrictions. I also hadn't contemplated a national campaign against at-will firing, which would (as Mr. Richman says) actually make unions a lot more popular (just as the SEIU's assistance to fast food workers has done very well for their rep, though not increasing their membership).

Seven Things to Avoid Doing Now that Donald Trump is President.

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: With Congress coming back tomorrow, I thought I'd repost the early January epic "Seven Things Not to Do When Donald Trump Takes Office" -- slightly rewritten and retitled, of course, to reflect the passage of time since the New Year, and also to conform with my video, "Seven Things to Avoid Doing Now that Donald Trump is President." I thought it'd be a good way to assess how we're doing, and to remind us of our real relationship to our Congressfolk (i.e., that we're the boss of them, not the other way around). So take a few minutes to re-read it -- and have a happy Labor Day holiday, because you know what? You earned it.)

A great many of us fear the next four or eight years of a Donald Trump Presidency, and for good reason. But this moment in our history also offers a unique clarity: no longer can we fantasize about Democrats protecting us from the worst that Republicans do, not merely because, well, they've never been very good at that, but also because they can't now. Only we can protect ourselves from the worst they'll do, and the sooner we understand that, and practice that, and live that, the better. Hence I offer seven things we should avoid doing when Mr. Trump ascends to the Presidency.

1) Do not bother with media horserace coverage. The media treat everything like it's a big sporting event, and they treat you like a spectator. They routinely choose sensationalism over substance, and they're a big reason we're stuck with Donald Trump as our President right now. If they obsess about something (like, say, Russian hacking), you can pretty much assume it's not worth your time -- or that they want to distract you from something more important (like, say, vote suppression). And when they report on fissures within the Republican party, you should assume any such "fissures," or reports about them, are feints, designed to lull you into a false sense of security so that you don't do your duty to your country by communicating your will to your representatives. Certainly do not bother with media speculation on how much of the coming horror is Mr. Trump's fault and how much is Mr. Pence's, or that of Republicans, or Democrats. If we're all hurting, it doesn't matter -- it only matters what we do about it.

2) Do not accept the narrow choices Our Glorious Elites offer in policy debates. Whenever they talk about government deficits, the only choice they offer is spending cuts; about Social Security, benefit cuts; and about Medicare, privatization. But we know better: we can (for example) cut deficits by closing corporate tax loopholes and bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income. And we can improve Social Security by lifting the cap on payroll taxes so income over $117,000 can be taxed into the system. And we can improve Medicare by letting it negotiate its own drug prices and by hiring more investigators to stamp out fraud. There are always good alternatives to the moronic ideas Our Glorious Elites peddle -- after all, isn't America the can-do country that always finds a way?

3) Do not support Democrats. Not just because they're weak, and not just because their weakness has enabled the coming horror, but because it's not your job, as a citizen, to "support" a politician -- it's the politician's job to support you. They're supposed to do our will regardless of what party they belong to, regardless of what ideology they profess to hold, so don't concentrate on getting more of them into office who might listen to us: just call them and email them and demonstrate in front of their offices and ask them pointed questions at public events until they have no choice but to listen to us. Now, Democrats will ask you to soft-pedal your demands -- they'll say your demands don't help them hold the center, or something. Ignore them when they do. Seven short years ago, they held the Presidency, a 70-seat majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and still they lectured us about "the art of the possible," rather than widening the palette of the possible, as Republicans always do, regardless of their numbers in Congress. Remember: your will is your will, your duty to communicate it to your representatives is inviolate, and any Democrat who insinuates otherwise deserves defeat.

4) Do not "give Donald Trump a chance." Of course we all want him to do well, despite the multitudinous indications that he won't, but "giving him a chance" is, again, beside the point of our democracy -- our job is to express our will, and his job is to execute that will. And there is no "waiting and seeing" in the country we love; there is only doing, and people who tell you to "give him a chance" (or "accept the results," or "get over it") really have a different aim in mind: they want you to be silent, because they're afraid if you're not silent, you'll make good things happen in America. And when good things happen in America, Our Glorious Elites don't get richer. And anyway, Donald Trump is going to be a pretty terrible President. You wouldn't look at a mound of dung in the middle of the sidewalk and "give it a chance" to magically transform itself into meatloaf, would you?

5) When terrorists inflict a 9.11-sized (or larger!) attack upon us -- and we just know they will, though we don't know where or when -- do not "pull for Trump" the way we all pulled for Mr. Bush after 9.11. In fact, your solemn and immediate duty as an American citizen is to criticize Mr. Trump for failing to keep us safe. And when I say "immediate" I mean "the minute of." He deserves no less, having already strutted around like he knows everything (more than "the generals," even!) while ignoring most of his early intelligence briefings. All this, after 54% of the electorate voted for someone else for President! If his cock-swinging arrogance means anything, it means he gets no grading on a curve when it comes to protecting our country. And don't flinch when Our Glorious Elites then say "how dare you attack the President at a time like this!" Criticizing the President, at any time, is one of your inviolable rights as an American, so do not be silent when Our Glorious Elites bid us be silent -- be ten times as loud. For America is greater than any one President, and criticizing a President does not injure our country. And anyone who thinks it does is a weakling. Make sure you tell everybody that, and make sure you use the word "weakling." Our Glorious Elites love calling us weaklings, so they deserve some of their own.

6) Do not take slurs on your character lying down. When people say "you hate America" or "you're a traitor" or "you're with the terrorists" or "you want Donald Trump to fail," do not be courteous in response -- be fierce, and don't be afraid to shame people who attack you like that. Too many liberals think shaming is something only conservatives do, but it's not -- it's something civilized people do, to anyone who injures their community. And certainly don't worry whether you're "too angry" or not, because such slurs against your character deserve nothing but anger -- and besides, your enemies will say you're "too angry" even when your voice is perfectly even and low. But when they attack you, remember this: Our Glorious Elites are morally and intellectually bankrupt. Their program of austerity-for-the-people-but-gluttony-for-themselves has led to disaster all over the world, so they can't win arguments on the merits -- all they can do is lie about our patriotism, our strength, our intelligence, our commitment, and our character. Don't be afraid to give them hell when they do. Because hell is what they deserve.

7) Do not allow Our Glorious Elites to sow doubt inside you. You are right, and they are wrong. It's that simple! If you want our government to provide the good services we've paid for with our taxes and then leave us alone, you are right, and the people who want to cut your services and funnel your hard-earned taxpayer money to their cronies and spy on your every move are wrong. And if you have learned (either from emotionally manipulative people or from post-modern literary theorists) that there really is no such thing as good and evil, unlearn it now. Our Glorious Elites are evil, and they know we know that, so they're going to try to take everything from us -- our right to dissent, our right to privacy, our right to clean air and clean water, our right to an economy that works for all of us, our right to protection from financial predators, our right to not have the crap kicked out of us by police, and our right to a safe and secure old age. Taking away these things is evil, and the people who would take them away are evil. So the time for navel-gazing is past. The time for civilized action is now.

Most of us have now twice experienced eight-year Democrat Administrations that consistently failed us. A far-right Republican Administration, one that ran roughshod over our rights and listened only to its super-rich cronies, followed the first one, and by all indications, a worse far-right Republican Administration will follow the second. That could mean 32 years of America vacillating between weak Democrats and malicious Republicans, and we have got to break that wheel. But we're not going to break that wheel by helping out the damn Democrats. We will only break that wheel by saying no to Our Glorious Elites' attempts to make us spectators in our own democracy, in our own country, and by speaking out so powerfully that politicians from both parties will have no choice but to follow us. So when your friends and relatives and neighbors ask you "what do you think will happen under Donald Trump?" you should give one answer and one answer only: whatever we make happen. Because that is the stone-cold truth. Either we, the American people, stop Our Glorious Elites from destroying the country we love -- or no one does.

Action: "free" trade, torture, and immigration.

Sum of Us helps you tell our government that any renegotiated NAFTA absolutely can not have an "investor-state dispute settlement" mechanism. Why? Because the ISDS (a.k.a. the "investor-state tribunal") allows corporations to sue governments if the laws they pass cost those corporations money -- and then extract tribute from the taxpayer if it wins! That is exactly the sort of thing that should unify law-and-order conservatives and law-and-order liberals -- I can't think of anyone who would want a multinational trade agreement to interfere with how we legislate in America. This is true even though the laws corporations would most likely sue over are laws protecting our workers, our financial system, and our clean air and clean water -- real conservatives are no less concerned about these things than liberals are, though they may insist on achieving positive results differently. But the "conservative" or "liberal" who'd applaud a system that nullifies our laws, is no kind of conservative or liberal at all.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Bahrain to release human rights activist Ebtisam al-Saegh. Bahrain, as you know, detains and tortures activists, bans them from traveling, and even occasionally strips them of their citizenship -- plus they won't let independent human rights observers in, almost like they have something to hide! Bahrain has detained Ms. al-Saegh many times over the years, but most recently in early July, after she spoke out on Twitter about the horrible conditions (including torture and rape) faced by female detainees at the Isa Town detention center. And now they've apparently been inflicting these conditions upon her, though she's officially "under investigation" for, you guessed it, "terrorism," and will be detained until the "investigation" "concludes." Of course, any government so "terrorized" by free speech deserves to die a humiliating death, so let's fight for Ms. al-Saegh.

Finally, President Trump will decide by early next week whether to end DACA, the Obama-era program lessening the possibility of deportation of children who were brought to America by undocumented immigrant parents -- 10 state Attorneys General have threatened to sue him if he doesn't end it, though, you know, maybe he likes being held hostage as little as the rest of America does! Or maybe he'll be mindful of how much his CEO friends would hate it if he terminated DACA. Nah -- as I've said before, hoping Mr. Trump will do the right thing is fool's gold, and worse, it hampers us from telling Mr. Trump to do the right thing, which is our job as citizens. So the Friends Committee for National Legislation helps you tell Mr. Trump to keep deferring deportation for innocent young folks who contribute to American society. After all, punishing good people who had no say in whether or not they came to America is cruel, and we should never be cruel. And please understand that when I say "never," I mean never.

Around the table: corporate taxes, legislative hostage-taking, nursing home abuse, internet freedom, and military weapons for police.

"It's a Myth That Corporate Tax Cuts Mean More Jobs," says Sarah Anderson at The New York Times. So says most people who've given the matter a minute of thought, but Congressional Republicans want to lower the rate to 20 percent, and Ms. Anderson has effectively tested the effectiveness of that approach by conducting research on the 92 publicly-traded corporations already paying an effective tax rate of 20 percent or less. And surprise, surprise! As an aggregate, they're actually losing jobs -- though they're not exactly losing outlandish executive pay, or, we presume, stock buybacks. This sure seems like a head shot, to me, but I know this zombie lie will get back up.

Congressional Republicans plan to cut $1 billion from FEMA's budget, even though FEMA could be in Texas for years. And this cut is New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen's idea, so add that to your Rodney Frelinghuysen hate book. In a peripherally-related note, Congress is also contemplating holding the Children's Health Insurance Program (or CHIP) reauthorization hostage to various stupid ideas, including a repeal of the medical device tax. Is it too much to ask that merely repeating these things out loud kills them, as daylight kills vampires? I insist that it is not too much to ask. But if I have to hold the damn wooden dagger myself, I'll do it.

HHS Inspector General reports that more than one out of every four nursing home abuse cases go completely unreported. And not all of the ones that do get reported actually get reported by nursing home staff, even though that's their job. But please, President Trump, make it harder for residents and their families to sue the nursing homes that abuse them! Forcing residents and families into arbitration they're probably going to lose really shows that great big heart of yours!

If the FCC guts our internet freedom, as we presume they're about to do, part III of Free Press's official comment to the FCC on the matter describes how such an anti-net neutrality action would be open to legal challenges. The gist of it is this: you can't do whatever the fuck you please just because you're FCC Chair -- you can, in fact, demonstrate enough pig-headedness that you run afoul of the law, in this case the Administrative Procedure Act. Also, too, maybe Mr. Pai shouldn't run his mouth on Twitter so much -- you know, like his boss.

Finally, in the wake of President Trump's resurrection of the program allowing local police departments to get discount military weapons, Mark Nevitt at Just Security wonders, quite reasonably, "Why Are We Giving U.S. Police Departments Bayonets?" He describes the folly of the 1033 program pretty well, and you may not be surprised by anything you read in it, but seriously, "(t)he bayonet is a bladed weapon designed as a weapon of last resort for close-quarter, hand-to-hand combat. In what circumstance would a police department need this?" Also worth highlighting: his suggestion that IKEA gives you more instruction on how to put together its furniture than the DOD does to police about how to use its weapons.

Action: hurricane relief, and gerrymandering.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey's devastating path through southern Texas late last week, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to properly fund Harvey relief efforts, and the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that any funding package addresses the "long-term community impacts" of the hurricane as well as the short-term ones. Also, CREDO helps you tell the Trump Administration to reverse its decision to revoke the Obama-era Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which would have helped rebuilding localities better prepare for the future weather events -- and which would also, as Rep. Curbelo (R-FL) sagely pointed out this week, have saved the taxpayer money, since having to rebuild infrastructure again and again because you didn't adhere to strict standards the first time tends to cost money. Of course, the Trump Administration, like most of Our Glorious Elites, only sees the short term -- specifically, the short term in which executives suck all the money out of a project and then escape before it goes bad. But that's no reason for us to lie back and take it.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 722, which would curb partisan gerrymandering of Pennsylvania's state and Congressional legislative districts by taking the matter out of the legislature's hands and putting it in the hands of a bipartisan redistricting commission, now has nearly 100 co-sponsors (out of 203 total Assemblyfolk!) -- but the chair of the House State Government Committee, the notorious Daryl Metcalfe (R-12), won't hold hearings on the bill, and has even gone so far as to say "I don't hear from a lot of people" about the issue, which more likely means "I don't hear from a lot of my big donors" about it. And of course he wouldn't! Big donors don't want the system to work any better for good Pennsylvanians, because then the gravy train might be gone. Hence Common Cause reminds us that Mr. Metcalfe's number in Harrisburg is 1.717.783.1707, and his number in Cranberry is 1.724.772.3110, and so you may call him and tell him to schedule a hearing on HB 722. You may remind him that HB 722 counts at least 14 members of his own caucus as co-sponsors.

Around the table: contains *Game of Thrones* spoilers! (No, really.)

President Trump's decision to rescind Obama-era flood standards for federally-funded infrastructure projects is all in the news now that Houston's going to need a lot of infrastructure rebuilt, but one critic kinda blames President Obama for the mess, saying that if Mr. Obama had described his flood initiative as "a sensible taxpayer-protecting land-use measure" rather than a climate change regulation, it might still be in effect. I, too, would rather describe things simply than pretend I'm smarter than everyone else like elite Democrats do, but, ah, when is it going to start being Mr. Trump's fault that he's going after everything that says "climate change" on it?

After getting criticized on Fox and Friends, of all places, for failing to staff his government in advance of a Category 4 hurricane, President Trump takes to Twitter (of course) to tell critics his aim is to "reduce size of government." Which, as you know, is synonymous with reduce the people's ability to realize their will, since our government belongs to us. Meanwhile, Trump votaries still believe his refusal to staff our government is all the Democrats' fault, even though Democrats literally cannot stop any Trump nominees without Republican help.

Defense Secretary Mattis will allow transgendered soldiers to continue serving in our military until he can submit a plan describing how he'll enforce the President's proposed transgendered ban, which he has a little less than six months to do. And boy is his statement drenched with bureaucrat-talk, which may tempt you to hope he could be stalling, but remember: you should regard any reported infighting between Republicans as an attempt to distract you from your agenda. Besides, this whole matter could well be decided in court before then.

John Baer at the Philadelphia Daily News wonders if Rep. Lou Barletta can "make history" by upsetting Sen. Bob Casey in the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania. Mr. Baer says it's possible, but I say it's probable -- even before he was a Trumphole, Mr. Barletta made his name bashing immigrants, so he's got the edge in voter enthusiasm. Mr. Casey could help himself, I suppose, by running a thousand ads saying Lou Barletta tried to take away your health care -- and if Mr. Barletta whines about it, then run a thousand ads saying Lou Barletta whines in the face of accurate description of his actions. Well, make it snappier, I suppose.

Finally, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think this six-paragraph complaint about the Jon Snow/Danaerys Targaryen sex scene from the Game of Thrones season finale is less than useless. "I didn’t spend countless hours watching and rewatching episodes of Game of Thrones to suffer through this!" the author complains, as if we should care -- and as if sex scenes can never have any dramatic function whatsoever. Think the episode might have intercut the sex scene with the truth about Jon's birth (and the lie that started the Baratheon rebellion) for a reason? Or could it be that Jon and Dany shouldn't be together, and that they can both sense it even as they're getting it on? Too much sex on TV is merely celebratory, which, frankly, conditions us to be as sex-obsessed as our President.

Action: drug pricing, and corporate mergers.

California residents, take note: SB 17 would help curb astronomical drug prices by forcing big pharma corporations to notify drug purchasers of any massive drug price hikes or expensive new drugs they're contemplating. SB 17 would also force big pharma corporations to justify the methods they use to set drug prices, and would force health insurance corporations to tell state regulators how much they're spending on drugs. You'd think a liberal state like California could have more nice things, but the health care industry seems to have a death grip on state legislators, as evidenced by the recent scuttling of an Assembly vote on a single-payer health insurance bill (by the Assembly Speaker, who is supposedly a single-payer supporter!), and last year the industry helped kill a bill rather similar to SB 17. But they don't have to worry -- after all, it's not like price-gouging on drugs like Daraprim and EpiPen have been all over the news or anything! CALPIRG helps you tell your California state legislator to help rein in outrageous drug prices by supporting SB 17.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Justice to prevent the proposed AT&T/Time Warner merger, then CREDO still helps you do that. As you know, Comcast withdrew its bid to buy Time Warner's cable operation in 2015, after massive public pressure, but Charter succeeded in buying that operation the following year; now AT&T wants to buy the rest of Time Warner, which includes Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN, and DC Comics. As far as I'm concerned, the argument should really stop at no corporation should ever own another corporation, period, and I suppose professional pedants would tell me that AT&T provides a service and Time Warner provides entertainment so there's no problem! But of course they're both media corporations, and letting AT&T buy Time Warner would give it a longer reach into our wallets, and they'll use their greater power to buy up even more properties. Did I mention that AT&T has enthusiastically helped our government spy on customers? Did I mention that AT&T has announced it'll prioritize its own content if the FCC rolls back net neutrality rules?

Action: drug pricing, and national monuments.

H.R. 3536/S. 1681 -- a Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) production, respectively -- would prevent our government from funding new drug development with an entity until said entity agrees to sell whatever drugs they develop with our money at a fair price to Americans. You'd think that'd be common sense, but it's not, at least not anymore -- nowadays our politicians love funneling taxpayer money, our money, to their corporate cronies and then refusing to perform any oversight on their cronies' activities because TEH BIG GUMMINT!!!!! Of course, if you think of TEH BIG GUMMINT!!!!! as our government, which is supposed to work on our behalf, then you won't be as susceptible to arguments favoring corporate welfare. I suppose the will then tell us we'll never be able to develop a good drug again unless we let corporations gouge us, but that's the kind of rhetorical hostage situation that you, as a patriotic American, would find abhorrent. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fairer drug pricing with taxpayer-funded drugs by supporting H.R. 3536/S. 1681.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior has finished its "review" of our national monuments, and you'll be pleased to know that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that we not get rid of any of the ones reviewed. Strangely, however, he hasn't just come out and said which monuments he's proposed to reduce, though pretty much everyone thinks the two giant Utah monuments -- the Grand Staircase and Bears Ears monuments -- are high on the list. Now the Trump Administration may not have legal standing to reduce monuments (even though the President's authority to designate monuments comes from the Antiquities Act), but many in this reactionary Congress have spoken of the "need" to have more Congressional input into the monument-designating process, and what's to stop them from trying to repeal or gut the Antiquities Act, or grant the President the authority to get rid of monuments? Us, that's what -- the only thing that has ever stopped Congress from doing evil. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to block the Trump Administration attack on public lands.

Around the table: the cabal of lawlessness decries lawlessness, and other sad ironies.

Attorney General Sessions announces that Trump Administration will lift limits on military equipment going to local police departments. It is a bit rich that Mr. Sessions grandstands about "not allow(ing) criminal activity, violence and lawlessness to become the new normal," given that he works for a man who enables violence and clearly thinks law and order is only for little people. Suggesting police brutality is a "superficial concern" is a bit rich, too, when at least one out of every 10 Americans worry that their next police contact will be their last.

You won't be surprised to learn that ProPublica and the Texas Tribune told us almost a year and a half ago that Houston would be "a sitting duck for the next hurricane." Very often, local officials in Texas say it's our federal government's job to fix the problem -- a statement with which I wouldn't necessarily disagree, particularly given the Houston Ship Channel's importance to our economy, but also a statement which sounds odd coming from politicians who've long been ideologically predisposed to cripple the governments for which they work.

Dean Baker at TruthOut performs an enormous public service by instructing us that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a pro-growth agency. Right-wingers have drummed it into our heads that Big Gummint always strangles economic growth in its crib, but if the CFPB's new forced arbitration ban "costs" banksters $1 billion annually, that billion dollars comes from ordinary consumers like you and I, and that's not just a cost to us, but to the economy, which could use the extra $1 billion in stimulus. Also, the money banksters spend concocting ways to rip consumers off (rather than ways to provide better services than their competitors) comprises a drag on economic growth.

Illinois becomes the 10th American state (that was quick!) to pass an automatic voter registration law. Getting registered to vote whenever you renew a driver's license or a state ID should counter the nefarious effects of the Interstate Crosscheck database somewhat, but most folks aren't going to think to get new IDs done on Election Day, or have time to do it once they find out they've been mysteriously "de-registered" -- or, ah, have the ability to get to a DMV in a state that's closed as many of them as it can get away with!. Also, very few red or swing states have implemented automatic voter registration. I suspect the best solution to Interstate Crosscheck is a very good lawsuit striking it down as a violation of a citizen's due process rights.

Finally, the incomparable Matt Taibbi blames the media for creating "A World Dumb Enough for Trump." His article is a good tonic if you've been at all impressed with the "liberal" media's tough-on-the-surface coverage of Mr. Trump's Presidency -- after all, "(t)he Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed," the creation of media that constantly push "(b)ig headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad" because "they all sell." Amen.

Action: fighting banksters and "liberal" media snow jobs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Senators to protect your right to day in court against your bank by rejecting H.J.Res. 111. What would H.J. Res. 111 do? It would nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent rule banning forced arbitration clauses in contracts between consumers and banks. These clauses keep you out of court and force you to go to arbitration with your bank, and arbitrators are (as the Economic Policy Institute reminded us recently) far, far more likely to rule in the bank's favor than in yours. So when some corporate hack tells you that folks who win arbitration cases with their banks win a lot more money than folks do in class action lawsuits, just remember that you have less than a 1 in 10 chance of winning that arbitration case to begin with -- which means you're very likely to win zero dollars. Also, your bank can file a counterclaim, which they'll win more than 9 times out of 10 -- and then you'll have to pay them thousands of dollars on average. Does any of that sound like justice? No, it does not. So tell your Senators to stop serving banksters and start serving their constituents again by rejecting H.J. Res. 111.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has lately said that "the United States is not directly involved" in the Saudi Arabia/Yemen war that's causing "the world's largest humanitarian crisis," one which won't get better "unless the war ends." But a year ago, the Times told us, in a headline no less, that "Support for Saudi Arabia Gives U.S. Direct Role in Yemen Conflict." And, as The Intercept informed us last month, our government has provided Saudi planes with twice as much fuel since October, and those planes ain't carrying tourists. Moreover, the American military advisors who work directly on the Saudi bombing campaign now work in Riyadh, ostensibly, I suppose, so we can better "advise" the Saudis not to kill so many Yemeni civilians. Even if that were working, that sure seems to comprise "direct involvement" in the war that's starving good Yemeni citizens and punishing the Houthi rebels are some of the world's best ISIS-fighters, all to preserve some obscure power-sharing arrangement that collapsed in 2009. If we can't stop this war right now, but let's at least encourage our paper of record to get the record straight, as Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn help you do.

Around the table: how to deal with Nazi wannabes, and other lessons.

Laurie Marhoefer at The Conversation says "put(ting) (our) bodies on the line in counterdemonstrations" against Nazi wannabes plays into fascist hands, because they're trying to provoke us into fighting in the streets, and that usually winds up giving power to right-wingers in order to stem the tide of "leftist violence." She also says we'd be better off holding "joyful" "counterevent(s)" at some distance away from the Nazi wannabes, but I'd go one better: we should start holding "joyful protests" about single-payer health care, raising taxes on the rich, and hiking the minimum wage, so that these whites-don't-control-everything-anymore-so-sad losers get exactly the amount of attention they deserve. The times demand we play offense, not defense.

Speaking of playing offense, Branko Marcetic at In These Times reminds us that we shouldn't go easy on potential Democratic Presidential candidates like California Sen. Kamala Harris -- as too many "liberal" media types want us to do! -- but rather keep criticizing and pressuring them. Mr. Marcetic describes civil rights leaders who pressured politicians and won, as well as more contemporary activists who pressured Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and won. Of course, I'd go one better here, too, and say that establishment Democratic support of Ms. Harris means she'll lose to Donald Trump just the rest of them. People aren't tired of "partisanship" -- they're tired of politicians who don't stand for anything and don't stand up to anything.

Sam Pizzicati at Inequality.org writes about the massive corporate welfare handout the state of Wisconsin is prepared to give to Foxconn -- one that would easily amount to $500,000 in taxpayer money for every job Foxconn creates in Wisconsin, and would more likely be $1 million per job created. For jobs that might average a little over $50,000 annually in pay, and will probably be much lower! Plus Foxconn will get to ignore state wetlands regulations when they build their new plant! Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the King of Corporate Welfare Handouts, but this might well be his masterpiece.

Ho hum, President Trump's new sanctions against the government of Venezuela specifically exempt Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil corporation -- and some of his former aides just so happen to work for Citgo! And Citgo just so happened to donate six figures to the Trump inaugural celebration. Isn't this the kind of corruption the Founders wanted us to avoid?

Fran Korten at Yes! offers "three modest, winnable first steps" toward getting single-payer, universal health insurance in America. They're all good ideas, of course -- drug price controls, a public health insurance option, lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 55 or 60 -- as long as they're not accompanied by SHUTUP YOU SINGLE PAYER PEEPULZ YOU'RE MAKING IT TEH HARDER WITH ALL YOUR DEMANDZ!!!!! I mean, people say that to you when they know you're right, but it's still damn irritating.

Finally, Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich and Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper have apparently contemplated running on a "unity ticket" in 2020. A right-winger heading up a ticket with a centrist? Gosh, who does that leave out of "unity"? And dig the "veteran operative" saying it would be "(s)omething big and historic" that would "do() away with this hyper-partisanship on both sides." Republicans burn everything down and Democrats enable them; yeah, that's some "hyper-partisanship," there. No, this "unity ticket" would lose to Donald Trump just as easily as Mr. Hickenlooper would do on his own -- because it has nothing to do with reality as regular Americans like us experience it.

Around the table: featuring a busy President, war-hungry media, a depleted EPA, and evangelical racists.

President Trump pardons former Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff/infamous racist Joe Arpaio, convicted of ignoring a judge's order to stop detaining Latinos merely on suspicion of having immigrated to America illegally. But you know, this is the kind of thing that won't hurt Mr. Trump or his fellow Republicans at the polls, as long as Democrats keep trotting out these little Ossoffs who stand for nothing and stand up to nothing. 2018 won't be the year the "sane" politicians strike back; it'll be another year for "shoot from the hip" outsiders to clean up, and weakling establishment Democrats will realize this too late, if at all.

President Trump prepares to give formal instructions to the Department of Defense in re his plan to ban transgendered folks from serving our country in the military. But, in what he may imagine to be a compromise, he'll leave it up to the military to decide whether to expel transgendered folks based on how readily they'll be able to fight wars or complete lengthy missions, which sure sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Again, heckuva job, establishment Democrats who counted on Donald Trump to lose the Presidency all by himself!

FAIR finds too many "liberal" media types still getting all hot and bothered about how "Presidential" Mr. Trump was when announcing his expansion of the Afghanistan war. It isn't as bad as it was the last time Mr. Trump dropped some bombs (or didn't yell at the top of his lungs on TV!), but any amount of enthusiasm over war-making is too much -- a lot of folks who make war for a living will tell you that, too! -- and slamming the "liberal" media for forgetting all about Mr. Trump's enthusiasm about Afghanistan mineral resources is of course entirely appropriate.

Eric Katz at Government Executive reports that the EPA has lost about half of its criminal investigators over the last decade. Folks who constantly shout about law-and-order should be quite upset; if they're not, I guess that means they don't think pollution is really a crime -- or they're buying into New Democrat bullshit about the technology for this kind of crime detection being so much better than it used to be. Call me old-fashioned, but I think people are the best "technology" for crime-fighting.

On that note, we learn that Google's Artificial Intelligence (or AI) project aimed at curbing toxic online commentary isn't very good at what it tries to do. To the degree that we should be doing this, why in the world aren't we hiring people to do it? People are, after all, a lot more subtle than the subtlest computer, and the number of people who alienate everyone around them is actually very small. Maybe they use AI because they don't have to pay AI. But if you want nice things, you have to pay workers to maintain them.

Finally, Randall Balmer at the Los Angeles Times instructs us that "Under Trump, Evangelicals Show Their True Racist Colors." His business roundtables have abandoned him in Charlottesville's wake, but his big-name evangelical supporters haven't, except for the one Clinton/Obama voter who had one foot out the door anyway. Good, also, to be reminded that racism, not abortion, was the original driving force behind right-wing evangelism -- and a lot of these old school evangelicals are still with us. Maybe we could isolate their supporters from them?

Action: three alerts about clean air and clean water.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania House Rep to reject HB 542, which has mutated from a bill about internet sales into a bill that would gut clean air and clean water protections in the Commonwealth, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. HB 542 would start privatizing the entire gas and oil permitting process -- in spite of the fact that you generally don't want unaccountable private corporations regulating matters pertaining to clean air and clean water -- and would also let the state legislature veto clean air and clean water regulations issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP), for those times when the legislature can't get its act together enough to simply pass laws dirtying our air and water, I guess. Don't legislators work for people? And don't people breathe air and use water? And aren't people the real job creators anyway? Without us, no one could sell a damn thing. Not even fuel!

Meanwhile, the EPA, which has shown a stunning reluctance to do any work on the American people's behalf since President Trump took over and put pro-pollution politician Scott Pruitt in charge, skirted yet another responsibility to government's owners last month, by failing to respond to the state of Maryland's petition that the EPA require upwind power plants to actually run the already-installed pollution-controlling equipment during the summer season. Why summer? Because summer is premium smog season, that's why -- heat and sunlight are like steroids to all the pollutants power plants put in the air, which means more asthma and more heart disease for us poor schmucks who don't run fossil fuel-fired power plants. (Well, fossil fuel CEOs also breathe air, as far as I know, but they sure act like they don't.) Hence the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell the EPA to do its job and make power plants use their pollution-control equipment when people need it the most.

Finally, the Trump Administration still plans to roll back automobile fuel efficiency standards, because what is more popular than making people pay more for gas? That is, after all, the most obvious result of freezing fuel efficiency standards between 2021 and 2025 (instead of raising them every year, as our government is currently mandated to do). Of course, the worse result -- more pollution in our air -- may not be as obvious to us as the hit to our pocketbooks, but it's just as real. Why would the Trump Administration do such a thing? Besides, you know, we won fuck Obama? Because the Trump Administration believes big auto executives and big fossil fuel executives have more rights than the rest of us. But if you could "earn" more rights because you make more money, then they're not really rights, are they? The Sierra Club helps you tell the Trump Administration to keep fuel efficiency standards right were they are, so good Americans can breathe easier and save more at the pump.

Around the table: from another anti-free speech bill to another slew of corporate welfare lies.

Pennsylvania legislators introduce a bill, SB 754, which could force protestors to pay "public safety response costs incurred by a State agency or political subdivision as a result of the State agency’s or political subdivision’s response to a demonstration if, in connection with the demonstration, the person is convicted of a felony or misdemeanor offense." In other words, if you were convicted of something at a protest, the state could, under this bill, put you on the hook for anything. Call me old-fashioned, but I think you should only be punished for the crimes you actually commit. You'd think "law and order" politicians would feel the same, but they don't -- they're just looking for ways of stopping protestors, which usually means they've lost the argument on the merits.

U.S. District Court judge strikes down the latest version of Texas's Voter ID law, saying it still discriminates against minority voters. Who will be the first right-winger to say that the District Judge should have recused herself because she's a minority voter herself? We are so sick, immoral, and decadent that I'm pretty sure it won't be some right-wing talk show host who needs the attention. It might even be more likely to be the President of the United States.

Now this is good news: at least half a dozen sitting House or Senate Democrats are getting primary challenges from staunch single-payer advocates. The price of being noncommittal or evasive at citizen town halls, apparently, is a primary challenge from your left. It won't work exactly like the Tea Party challenges of 2010 did, though, because those challengers got a lot of support from corporate front groups. Still, it's better than staying hostage to weak Democrats. Yes, even if Donald Trump is President.

Bryan Menegus at Gizmodo says "The Right is Faling for Its Own Fake Antifa Accounts" -- you know, by regurgitating the hateful stuff "antifa activists" supposedly say on social media, without noting that these "antifa activists" are actually right-wing trolls in disguise -- but I submit that they're not, in fact, "falling for" anything, that they in fact mean to foment chaos and confusion, so that the rest of us talk about the chaos, rather than how we'd solve real-world problems. (See also Wonkette's reporting on this topic.)

Finally, Paul Ryan conducts a televised townhall in his home district where he says a bunch of ridiculous crap about taxes. He goes on and on about the corporate tax rate that virtually no corporations pay, since they get so many welfare handouts from Congress, and he goes on and on about "taxing our job creators" when these "job creators," who would never create a job if they didn't absolutely have to, are making tons of profits these days. And I don't even credit him for having a town hall, since that's his job. I'd say CNN's cameras were probably there to protect him, but they might also have been there to make sure he didn't run out.

Action: Afghanistan, and GMO food.

President Trump's votaries won't regard his plan to increase American forces in Afghanistan as Dear Leader transforming into Just Another Politician, but the rest of us should remember how "nation-building" began in the first place -- war is unpopular enough that Congress hasn't formally declared one since FDR, and Tha Bush Mobb correctly sussed out that A War to Hunt Terrorists wouldn't be enough to keep America voting Republican, even after 9.11. Tha Bush Mobb also correctly sussed out that deadlines for withdrawal blunted some of the criticism they deserved, a luxury Mr. Trump now won't have with his declaration that his new plan is "results-based," whatever those results would be. We should also remember how impressed Mr. Trump has been lately with all the rare earth metals one can find in Afghanistan. Anyway, Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that three Presidents have now abused to start or ramp up wars all over the planet without getting proper, Constitutional authorization from Congress.

Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has issued a 120-day ban on a Monsanto pesticide called Dicamba, due to the hundreds of complaints from state farmers about Dicamba drifting into neighboring fields and harming crops. Dicamba is yet another Monsanto pesticide designed to kill weeds on its own crops they've genetically-engineered to withstand it, which of course will ultimately have the effect of killing all the crops in the field but Monsanto's -- and forcing farmers to switch to Monsanto's GMO seed or go out of business! Can anyone say antitrust violation? I mean, seriously, this is out of a dystopian sci-fi novel. And I almost forgot to mention that Dicamba stays in the soil for a year, can find its way to nearby water sources, and thus harm fish as well. Gov. Hutchinson has done the honorable thing and listened to his constituents in this matter, but now he must ban the stuff forever and for always, so Avaaz helps you tell Gov. Hutchinson to keep Dicamba out of Arkansas's fields, and thus help ensure food safety for good Arkansans and their descendents.

Around the table: in which fools grapple with white supremacy, to unsurprising results.

Treasury Secretary's wife brags about flight on government plane and all the big-name fashion brands she wore on that plane -- then unloads on one of her critics thusly: "Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours." Well, much is required from those to whom much is given! We'll always have people who think they're better than us; our task, as civilized people, is to contain their evil.

Notorious big pharma executive Martin Shkreli has been buying up internet domains with the same names as some of his critics (mayakosoff.com, carolinemoss.com, etc) so he can better mock them. I used to tell people that Michael Jackson's Neverland was a great argument for the 91% tax bracket, but of course I never dreamed of the Pharma Bro back then. How is buying up websites so you can mock journalists an example of the genius of the free market? Hell, how is jacking up the price of a life-saving HIV drug 5000%?

Long-time seller of white supremacist merchandise decides to shut down his store and find "spiritual peace" after making the front page of the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. So how quickly did he get from ZOMG FRONT PAGE ABOVE TEH FOLD OF TEH INQUIRER WE HAVE ARRIVEDZ!!!!! to all my neighbors have stopped talking to me? Quicker, I bet, than he gets from TEH BOTH SIDEZ ARE TO BLAMEZ!!!! to I was wrong and I have no excuses.

Vice President Pence says we shouldn't take down Confederate monuments, but just build more monuments that "celebrate the progress that we’ve made since that history." How did Mike Pence ever make it as a right-wing talker? Because let's-keep-the-racist-monuments-and-then-make-new-better-monuments is about as far from straight talk as you can get; it's a little like King Solomon suddenly splitting the baby in half. And I bet historians who spend most of their time making sense of medieval balance sheets also roll their eyes. (Also, too: how is anti-racism "some contemporary political cause"?)

Finally, the Department of Justice got a warrant demanding extensive information on everyone who visited an anti-Trump website hosted by Dreamhost, but now the DOJ has amended its warrant request so that it doesn't look like a fishing expedition. Frankly, trying to convict 200 protestors of "felony rioting" is still a damn fishing expedition, but still, a little sunlight can go a long way.

Action: Social Security, and free speech.

In the middle of all this Trump-caused chaos comes H.R. 3423, the Social Security Commission Act, which would create yet another commission purportedly aiming to keeping Social Security "solvent." But H.R. 3423 mandates that Congress consider any bill coughed up by this Commission under "expedited rules," meaning full House and Senate votes less than a month after the bill's introduction and, of course, no amendments. Anyone else see a vehicle to pass an unpopular bill that would cut the benefits we've worked for and fought for? Particularly given that the 13-member Commission would, at least until 2020, have a Republican majority? I guess none of that matters to the bill's main sponsor, Rep. Delaney (D-MD); all that matters is that the bill has a "bipartisan" sheen, with two sponsors from each party in the House. Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any back-door attempt to cut Social Security benefits, which means rejecting H.R. 3423.

Meanwhile, the legislature of North Carolina seemed well on its way to passing a bill that would exonerate any person who accidentally (or, more likely, "accidentally") drove into protestors -- before, of course, that incident where a Nazi wannabe actually did drive a car into protestors, killing one person and injuring 19 more. Of course, North Carolina ain't the only state that's mulled such legislation this year (five others have done so, though none came close to passing a bill) and maybe your state legislature is contemplating how unpopular our government is and how they can best curtail your free speech without just arresting people and putting them in jail. So Demand Progress helps you tell your state legislators to reject any efforts to grant drivers immunity when they drive into protestors. The North Carolina Senate, by the way, has lately been averse to actually considering the bill, but that could just be a possum game on their part. So let's not be caught sleeping.

Action: clean air, and juvenile fees.

H.R. 806, the so-called Ozone Standards Implementation Act, would (as you might guess) implement the EPA's 2015 ozone standards badly, first by delaying their implementation for years, and then by requiring fewer reviews of ozone pollutants and requiring the EPA to "obtain advice from its scientific advisory committee" before moving further with the standards. If that last item sounds odd to you, remember that the Trump Administration is packing the EPA's scientific advisory committee with fossil fuel cronies as we speak; guess what "advice" they'll give about implementing ozone standards? H.R. 806 passed the House on a near-party line vote (though more Republicans voted nay than Democrats voted yea); now it heads to the Senate, where you might be able to peel off Susan Collins if she thinks she'll be the only one, and you might be able to peel off Dean Heller if he's feeling vulnerable ,and you might be able to peel off John McCain if he's pissed off. Still, duty is duty, so Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to protect clean air by rejecting H.R. 806.

Meanwhile, the California state legislature is mulling SB 190, which would end the state's practice of charging families administrative fees when they have children in the state's juvenile system. Turns out these fees can be quite onerous, particularly in a nation where almost half of us would have serious trouble scraping up $400 in case of an emergency, and some of these fees even violate federal law. And just as money bail effectively functions as an endless state detention system for poor folks who can't afford the bail, juvenile fees effectively keep children in that system long after it might actually have helped them, and thus also constitutes a serious abridgment of their freedoms. If you're tempted to say well don't get in trouble, then!, please do two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) recall all the times in your own childhood you acted the fool, and all the times your friends' children acted the fool and you didn't judge them. Moms Rising helps you tell the California state legislature to protect working families from onerous state fees and pass SB 190.

Around the table: in which we contemplate tried-and-true methods of getting politicians to do our will.

John O'Day at FAIR finds that the "liberal" media have reduced net neutrality to a shallow "mogul vs. mogul" kind of coverage, but of course there are reasons for that. Google vs. Comcast, or Facebook vs. Verizon, maps pretty easily onto the kind of horserace/sports match coverage the "liberal" media prefers anyway, and it also just so happens to map on to right-wing complaints about net neutrality, i.e., that they protect Google and Facebook at the expense of Comcast and Verizon. Of course, I really don't care if they do or not -- I only care that net neutrality protects people from corporate abuse. (Great article, though -- read down to the part where he reminds us that the internet didn't "flourish" under "less regulation" because the phone lines over which consumers originally surfed the internet were, by law, very heavily regulated.)

From Fran Quigley at TruthOut we learn how Nevada unions were "the driving force" behind that state's new insulin price transparency law. They didn't listen to "data-driven consultants," but did it the old-fashioned way: by going door-to-door, making thousands of phone calls to their legislators, and finding folks with unique stories to tell about how the insulin-pricing bill would help them or their loved ones (or, ah, would have helped them or their loved ones). They also supported (and helped elect) actual liberal politicians, rather than the faux-liberals to which national Democrats constantly hold us hostage. (Seriously, can you see Jon Frickin' Ossoff sponsoring a drug price transparency bill in the House? No, you cannot.)

Matt Gertz at Media Matters reminds us that "There Will Be No Pivot" into sanity from President Trump, no matter how much the "liberal" media might want it. With extraordinary generosity and restraint, Mr. Gertz suggests that reporters are susceptible to the "pivot" or "reset" narrative because they're just as stressed out about living in Trumpland as the rest of us, and also because reporters are intuitively "bias(ed)" toward finding "new" stories, and Donald Trump acting like a sane person sure would be a new story. But there's some horserace here, too -- if the "liberal" media merely tabulated Mr. Trump's insanity non-stop, how could they then build him up so there's a race in 2020? (In reality, of course, if Democrats nominate yet another I'm-sane-he's-an-ogre candidate, there'll be a race, all right, and Democrats will lose it.)

Unions turn in over 300,000 signatures (three times the required amount!) in an effort to get Missouri's new "right-to-work" law overturned by a public referendum in 2018. But ho hum, "(w)hile unions are bankrolling the anti-right-to-work campaign, it’s unclear who is paying for the other side" -- apparently the "right-to-work" law's supporters don't want to be known, for some reason. I'm also a bit unclear about why the vote has to wait until 2018; are they afraid folks won't turn out in an "off-year"? They'd be wrong about that: Ohio voters rejected their legislature's anti-public unions law by a 3-2 margin in 2011.

You've no doubt heard that President Trump has had to dissolve two business advisory councils because of all the business leaders who left them after his awful Charlottesville remarks, but that his evangelical advisory council somehow remained intact in its wake. Well, President Trump's evangelical advisory council finally has its first defection -- in a former Clinton/Obama voter who apparently decided to leave well before Charlottesville. And dig Eric Metataxas's rubbish about not abandoning people (like the President, apparently) when they're down! Mr. Metataxas has the relationship exactly wrong: the President doesn't abandon us when we're down, but we have no such responsibility to him, as he's supposed to serve us.

Finally, President Trump draws the internet's ire for saying that our great nation needs to "heel" our divisions. Gosh, Freudian slip much? He wishes he could bring the American people to heel. As long as we draw breath, he never will.

Action: concerning clean water, immigration, and the "liberal" media.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell the city of Flint, MI to stop foreclosing on good folks because of water bill delinquency. You remember Flint as the city where folks can't drink their water anymore, so taking away someone's house because they can't pay their water bill when you fucked up their water is the very height of hypocrisy. In fact, I presume there's a breach-of-contract lawsuit in there somewhere -- one we might even use to take down the whole anti-democratic concept of an "emergency manager." It was Flint's unelected "emergency manager," as you recall, who decided to "save money" by switching Flint from relatively clean Detroit water to filthy and polluted Flint River water -- and who attempted to alleviate that pollution by putting chemicals in the Flint River that just so happened to corrode the lead off Flint's water pipes! And Flint residents still pay out the wazoo for dirty water -- and state law allows cities to foreclose on homes for non-payment of water bills. Maybe they should concentrate more on fixing Flint's pipes, which Congress gave them $100 million to do?

Meanwhile, President Trump is mulling ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) program, which offers some protection from deportation to immigrants who arrived here as children and who visibly contribute something to society. Not prioritizing deporting young folks who had nothing to do with the decision to come to America but who contribute to our society nonetheless sounds like a no-brainer -- so you know what that means! It means our President, who can't get a decent piece of legislation passed by a Republican-held Congress who've maneuvered the Democratic opposition into powerlessness, can do nothing but stoke the rage of his far-right base with executive orders -- which, hey, may be all he needs to do to get re-elected, particularly if Democrats force another "someone who can win" Presidential nominee down our throats! -- and that means he's likely to send good kids off to countries they don't remember. Hence the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to act to keep these young folks safe, while Moms Rising helps you write a letter-to-the-editor about the importance of keeping the DACA program around. The rage-addled will disagree, but they don't get all the say in America.

Finally, FAIR helps you tell the New York Times to correct its absurd claim that the United States tried to help Honduran President Zelaya return to power after the military coup that toppled him in 2009. If you recall any part of that sordid tale -- where our State Department hesitated to call it a coup even though our own Ambassador to Honduras (who would know, ya think?) called it a coup, because calling it a coup might have necessitated action on our part ranging from cutting off aid to Honduras to, you know, actually helping the Zelaya government out -- then you know that's a very odd thing for our paper of record to say, even as it's reporting generally on how badly we've meddled in the affairs of Latin American countries for decades on end. The Honduras coup is, incidentally, why some liberals call Hillary Clinton a murderer -- while I don't call someone a murderer until they've actually murdered someone, the murder rate in Honduras (particularly the murder rate of activists!) has gone way, way up since the coup, and Mrs. Clinton surely enabled the new Honduran government as Secretary of State. That also helps explain why she's not President now, by the way.

Around the table: in which we are reminded that the work of defending free speech is very hard.

The ACLU, under considerable pressure from misguided liberals, announces it will scrutinize which hate groups it represents a bit differently than it has in the past, its executive director giving the wish to protest with "loaded firearms" as an example. But I find it far too easy, frankly, to defend protesting with loaded firearms as a legitimate free speech act protected by the First Amendment, even if the folks doing such protesting are assholes. Of course shooting people with those firearms isn't "protected speech," but maybe our police officers could prepare for such things, you know, the way they seem to do when liberals march?

From the "Liberals Do Obnoxious Swordfighting Too" file: Katherine Cross, at The Establishment, asserts that "(e)very person who’s ever misused arguments for free speech to defend Nazis or white supremacists...has some measure of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands." Gosh, I guess that includes me! Call me old-fashioned, but I think James Alex Fields and no one else has Ms. Heyer's blood on his hands, and more than a few liberals (Dennis Miller may be the most famous example) have switched sides after people like Ms. Cross kept shouting at them that they weren't liberal enough. Luckily for me, God made me a liberal, and I stopped bucking God a long time ago.

The Straight Dope's take on net neutrality -- the principle that says you, and not some corporation, should get to decide where you go on the internet -- isn't all that deep, but it contains one brilliant observation: that the worst thing that could happen as a result of its disappearance is "a time when an ISP might think carefully about what kind of content it allows to be seen on the Web, for fear of poking the orange dragon," i.e., our infamously thin-skinned President. That's weapons-grade PR, right there, so tell all your friends: Donald Trump wants to kill net neutrality so he doesn't get criticized on the internet.

I agree with this Las Vegas Sun editorial's description of Republican efforts to recall two state Senators (one Democratic, one independent) as "an abuse of the recall provision" and "an attempt to hijack the democratic process,", but that doesn't mean I want to stop the recalls. Let the endangered incumbents campaign against the inherent stupidity of the recall -- it's possible to do that without sounding self-pitying, you know! -- and show Republicans that future efforts to nullify democratic elections will fail. I'm not even particularly upset by the notion of "nonstop elections" -- elected officials should expect to be accountable to their bosses, the people, at any time.

Finally, you've no doubt heard that Steve Bannon's out as President Trump's "senior strategist" or whatever, and has made a soft landing at his old employer, Breitbart. And just like his old boss he continues to let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash, saying "I've got my hands back on my weapons" (I shudder to think what he's actually got his hands on) and that he's "definitely going to crush the opposition," which is what approximately zero people who crush the opposition say before they crush the opposition. I look forward to ignoring him, just like I did before he joined the Trump Administration.

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.