Thieves in the Temple.

Action: arbitration fairness, blockades, and unions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: Social Security, and corporate transparency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: health care, forced arbitration, and monopolies.

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

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

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

Action: tax "reform," and endangered species.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: fair housing, and ANWR drilling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: Yemen, and pensions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: preserving *real* internet freedom.

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

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

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

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

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

Action: health care, and student loan debt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: in which we contemplate health care, the "war on terror," and "religious freedom."

Who are the biggest opponents of a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health care system in America? According to Michael Corcoran at TruthOut, single-payer's biggest opponents are health insurance corporations, big pharmaceutical corporations, medical device-manufacturing corporations, and for-profit hospitals, who comprise the "very small and powerful group of rich people (who) would be a little less rich if single-payer became a reality." And surprise! Some of these also comprise Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)'s biggest donors, which may be why she says the "comfort level" with single-payer "is not there yet," despite solid majority support for the idea in poll after poll.

Dean Baker reminds us that the counties-only-having-one-insurer-on-the-exchange problem just so happens to be much more of a problem in Republican-controlled states. By a four-to-one ratio, in fact -- and that would be a much, much bigger ratio if Pat McCrory had won in North Carolina last year, since that state comprises the vast majority of counties with only one health insurer on the exchange among states with Democratic Governors. Hence "when Trump and other Republicans tout the lack of competition in the exchanges, they are essentially talking about their own efforts to sabotage Obamacare."

Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt at the New York Times remind us that you should be wary of "research" contending that folks on Medicaid have "worse health care outcomes" than folks on private insurance or no insurance. You can probably think of a few reasons folks on Medicaid have "worse outcomes," like that they're already poor and thus likely already in lousy health, or that the fact you can sign up for Medicaid retroactively means the system has a higher proportion of sick folk to begin with -- or that you can't run experiments with the same exact people on Medicaid, private insurance, and no insurance all at the same time. After all, you could easily imagine we have more sick folks on Medicaid because without it, a lot of them would be dead.

Eric Levitz at New York magazine suggests that President Trump hasn't come out with his big plan to beat ISIS because he's having trouble getting his military advisors to come up that's substantially different from Mr. Obama's. So to sum, he blew past that 30-day deadline (one he campaigned on) a few months ago, and has blown past at least two new deadlines since then, all because he needs a plan that he can say is really and truly his, apparently more than he needs one that actually works. Why we tolerate such drama is beyond me, but you can go ahead and add this to your list of reasons Mr. Trump has failed to keep our nation safe when terrorists attack again.

Finally, arts-and-crafts corporation Hobby Lobby pays a $3 million fine over its purchase of religious artifacts smuggled out of Iraq -- but doesn't admit guilt, at least not criminal guilt, because they're too big to fail, I guess. Thanks in large part to the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War, Iraqi archaeological sites have lost hundreds of thousands of religious artifacts to looters, and the right-wingers who run Hobby Lobby had to have known that, regardless of their claims that they're (you guessed it!) new to this. At least they didn't try to beg off their fine by claiming a religious freedom to own these items, though I bet the next "Christian" corporation caught in this pickle will try that.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the effects of fear-based politics.

You've no doubt heard by now that most states have said they won't kowtow to the Trump Voter "Fraud" Commission's demand for extensive voter information -- but Greg Palast reminds us that more than 20 states have already shared such voter information with Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach in his capacity as Kansas's Secretary of State. After all, how else could Mr. Kobach have put together his nefarious "Interstate Crosscheck" database, the one that deregisters voters on suspicion, not proof of voter fraud by checking similar names without checking middle names or Social Security numbers?

Wondering why folks think the world is getting more violent when it's flatly obvious we've come a long way since the 14th century? Mike Elgan submits that the answer might be "Mean World Syndrome," "a condition whereby people think the world is far more dangerous and violent than it really is because the economics of TV motivates the network to engage in nightly fear mongering." When the characters in Criminal Minds face 22 life-and-death situations every single year, for example, you start to think the world's a really dangerous place, even though, scientifically speaking, it's just 22 anecdotes spread across an entire continent (and also, you know, fictitious anecdotes!). Now multiply that by all the cop shows you know, and by all the if-it-bleeds-it-leads news programs you know, and you no doubt see the problem.

Speaking of fear-based politics, The Guardian reminds us that four Middle Eastern nations have threatened the nation of Qatar with sanctions and blockades if (among other demands!) the news network al Jazeera doesn't close down by Monday. I sure hope they don't bow to terror like this, because while al-Jazeera might be mistaken for mainstream cable news coverage in America, it represents profound progress for the Middle East, since "(b)efore al-Jazeera started broadcasting, Arab television news was totalitarian drivel." You think President Trump might talk to some of these nations? I kid, of course -- Mr. Trump has already swallowed anti-Qatar propaganda whole, and dutifully regurgitated it to the American people.

Matthew Yglesias at Vox tells us that yes, Bernie Sanders is obviously the front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020. He's not only hired foreign policy people, gone around the country talking issues, and put together a national operation, he's soft-pedaled some of his positions while continuing to front-line Medicare-for-All and college tuition reform, and anyone who remembers Ronald Reagan presenting himself as a wonkish mainstream politician in the 1980 primaries knows how that works. And contemplate the first sentence's list of other folks who might run in 2020 (a list that doesn't include Tim Kaine or John Hickenlooper), and consider, given that Mr. Sanders damn near beat one opponent in 2016, how easy he'd have it if four or five candidates split the not-Bernie vote. (Also, too, 80 is the new 70.)

Good news, everyone: a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the EPA can't suspend efforts to enforce its recently-enacted (under President Obama) methane emissions standards. The majority opinion -- perhaps anticipating the argument, which right-wingers of course never advanced during the Obama years, that Executive branch agencies get to prioritize enforcement of certain regulations given finite resources -- called the EPA's actions "unreasonable," "arbitrary," and even "capricious." The EPA can reverse the rule entirely, but, as we said many months ago before Mr. Trump took office, the EPA has to abide by a long-established (and long!) process to do that. Unless Mr. Trump declares martial law before then, I guess.

Finally, former Reagan Administration official Bruce Bartlett explains how the Republican Party left him -- and why he doesn't join the Democrats. "The Republican Party appears to exist for the sole purpose of acquiring power in order to shower rewards on those who support the party, especially those who support it financially," he says, about which he's absolutely right, but "the Democratic Party...doesn’t really seem to stand for anything other than opposition to the GOP," about which he's also absolutely right. Judging from where he's been and where he is now, I doubt he'd embrace a Sanders campaign or Presidency, but we need our fellow-Americans to give their honest counsel, and Mr. Bartlett has clearly done that.

Action: the "war on terror," government spying, and monopoly power in the marketplace.

Both MoveOn and the People's Email Network help you tell your Reps to support the Barbara Lee amendment that would essentially repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF), but I think this issue merits a phone call to your Reps; let's let them know what this means to us. The last two Presidents have abused the AUMF in order to launch substantial military operations without getting Congressional authorization. And House Speaker Ryan, for his part, says that the Lee Amendment "undercuts our military," thus pretending that it would require us to strand our troops wherever they are, and also saying he'd prefer to "pass one that gives the military the latitude and the flexibility they need to do their jobs," thus pretending that the AUMF hasn't always been about giving unconstitutional "flexibility" to the President. And seriously, what law of physics prevents Congress from passing an actual war resolution? Note well that the law of Congressional cowardice is not actually a law of physics, even if it often seems that way.

Meanwhile, as you may recall, S. 1297 would permanently reauthorize Section 702 of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act, which specifically authorizes our government to collect emails, texts, and phone calls in bulk and without a warrant. Look over S. 1297's list of Senate sponsors and you won't find such far right-wingers as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson, all to varying degrees skeptical of government spying, but you will find the Republican Caucus's Last Moderate, Susan Collins of Maine, and you'll also find Senate defense "hawks" such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain. I've said this before and I'll say it again: lone wolf terrorists and terrorist organizations are not "existential threats." Terrorists don't destroy societies -- they terrorize otherwise sane and healthy people into destroying their societies for them. So let's foil them by staying free. Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect the privacy of good Americans by rejecting S. 1297.

Finally, Food and Water Watch helps you tell the Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to stop Amazon's proposed acquisition of Whole Foods. Currently four corporations control 60% of America's grocery sales, and food production is really not the kind of thing we should ever allow to become monopolized, not just because monopolies can control farmers as well as consumers but because, well, everyone has to eat. And while Amazon is a monopoly in online sales, not supermarkets, we should not allow them to use their monopoly power in online sales to wedge themselves into every other marketplace. This is why I always say no corporation should ever own any other corporation, because that concentrates power in fewer hands, and the fewer the hands that hold the power, the less freedom for the rest of us. That would seem like a conservative viewpoint, of course, if conservatism hadn't been so thoroughly debased by its loudest adherents over the years.

Action: health care, private data collection, and food labeling.

Today's a good day to call your Senators and tell them not to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. But you can also let Moms Rising help you write a letter-to-the-editor of your local newspaper opposing the Senate's health care "reform" bill, a.k.a. "wealth care," a.k.a. Trumpcare. And you may want to pay attention to what your local Trumpcare-bill supporting Senator is saying. Sen. Pat Toomey, for example, served up a bunch of word salad on Sunday's Face the Nation, trying to put lipstick on the pig of cutting our federal government's share of Medicaid expansion funding from 90% to 57% over seven years, pretending that states won't have to make hard choices affecting good Americans when that happens, saying the "tax credits" are better than those in the House bill like that even merits a participation trophy, and of course claiming that the "free marketplace" creates "wonderful innovation" all over America without giving even one clear example. I'm guessing your right-wing Senator is doing similarly desperate verbal gymnastics.

Meanwhile, AT&T -- the corporation that most happily handed over your call records to Tha Bush Mobb without a warrant -- now does the same for law enforcement organs all over America. And even if you're not an AT&T customer, you probably talk to AT&T customers, which means you're caught up in the dragnet, too. Of course AT&T is more famous these days for saying they won't "sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose," but they're not selling it to law enforcement! I know getting warrants is quaint and all -- no, I will never let Alberto Gonzales live that down -- but the whole notion of convincing a judge you have a better-than-even chance of securing a conviction before you can investigate someone further protects us from abuse by the state. The Founders were quite keen on not getting abused by the state, you know. Hence Access Now helps you tell AT&T to stop selling our your privacy.

Finally, you won't be surprised to learn that the FDA has decided to delay rules that would revamp food labeling so that restaurants would have to give more nutritional information on the meals they serve, and food processing corporations would have to note such items as added sugar. Why? Oh, you know, BIG GUBMINT BAD!!!!! Or, as the FDA puts it, "(n)umerous stakeholders have informed us that they have significant concerns about their ability to update all their labels by the compliance date due to issues regarding (among other things) the need for upgrades to labeling software, getting nutrition information from suppliers, the number of products that would need new labels and a limited time for the reformulation of products." Gosh, where's their American can-do spirit? And what about the most important "stakeholder" of all, the American citizen, who generally wants more information about what they're eating? Moms Rising helps you tell the FDA to give us the food labeling we deserve.

Around the table: from the inner workings of lies to the possibility of an anti-heroin vaccine.

Adam Rogers at Wired digs deep into the workings of President Trump's lie machine. Mr. Rogers tries diligently to describe what lies are (going as far back as St. Augustine for his analysis) and what makes them evil, and his insistence that intent to do harm is critical to the definition of a lie probably makes Antonin Scalia spin in his grave. I wish he'd noted that Tha Bush Mobb were hard-core devotees of the "noble lie," though that may be personal on my part.

Government Accountability Office report finds the FCC's program subsidizing broadband for low-income working families rife with "massive fraud." Kudos to Sen. McCaskill (D-MO) for identifying the real problem here as a corporate welfare problem. And remember, kids: you don't use this news as an excuse to throw up your hands and say TEH GUBMINTZ IZ CORRUPTZ AND IT SHOULD DO TEH NOTHINGZ!!!!! Rather, you fix the program.

I'm not sure I should even be telling you that this latest push to repeal Obamacare without replacing it seems to be coming from the Koch brothers and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). But I only bring this drama up to remind you that both the Koch brothers and Sen. Sasse couldn't stomach Donald Trump not very long ago, and now they're all working together for the common evil. Remember: right-wing politicians want you to obsess over the "fissures" between them, so they can distract you from the evil they do.

Another day, another study finding that Seattle's restaurant workers are, in fact, not hurt by the city's higher minimum wage, which will reach $15/hour in 2021. Of course, arguing that TEH HIGHER MINIMUMZ HURTZ TEH WORKURZ!!!! counts on a lot of thought experiment ("but higher wages will result in fewer hours!") that not only doesn't reflect real-world conditions, but excuses a lot of bad behavior on the part of bosses. I mean, you wouldn't approve of the morality of cutting hours just because wages go up, would you?

Finally, researches successfully develop an anti-heroin vaccine that works in monkeys. Whether it works in people will take longer to determine, but the vaccine prods the body to make antibodies to heroin that keep what makes people high from ever reaching the brain. Don't get all dystopian about the possibility that corporations will use this discovery to pacify entire populations at once, though of course they might -- the architects of dystopia will always be with us, but right now opioids restrict some Americans' freedom like nothing else.

Around the table: one-third good news this one day only!

Here's a surprise: the House Appropriations Committee has adopted an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would kill the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF), which Presidents of both parties have abused in expanding the "war on terror." Kudos to Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) for fighting nonstop for the AUMF's death for over 15 years. The amendment could get sifted out in the inevitable conference between competing House and Senate bills, but this is still a big step forward.

Illinois state legislature reforms some of its asset forfeiture procedures. The two big changes are ending the use of probable cause to seize property and repealing the requirement that accused persons put up 10% of the asset seizure's value just to challenge the seizure (after all, should redressing grievances be a pay-to-play game?). Best news? Exactly one legislator voted against the bill, meaning the legislature can override a gubernatorial veto with ease. It's not total repeal, but it is progress.

Eoin Higgins at FAIR provides yet another necessary reminder that obsessing over Russian meddling in the 2016 election is much less important than covering all those other things Mr. Trump is doing or wants to do. Why, it's almost like Mr. Trump wants you to look at Russia instead of all his other dramas! I'll admit I'm a little surprised to find a near-supermajority in one poll saying the "liberal" media's obsession with Russia is "hurting the country," and I wouldn't go quite that far. But would we even be talking about Russian meddling had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic nominee?

Ho hum, the FCC stands ready to smash the last two policies that might preserve what little local media we've got left, namely the "main studio rule," in which media corporations must locate their main offices within the communities they serve, and the repeal of the "UHF discount," so big corporations can, again, own more local media stations. Why? Don't believe the hype about "changing technologies," because literally all FCC Chair Ajit Pai cares about is money. And if Democrats had smarts or guts, they'd be citing these FCC policies as proof that Republicans think rural areas don't deserve local media that serves them and not some corporate media conglomerate.

President Trump's ridiculous "Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity" has demanded complete voter registration records from all 50 states and plans to make that information public. This is not a case of "what do voters have to hide," because they do actually have something rather valuable to hide -- their personal information -- from unscrupulous people who might steal their identities or attack them at their homes. Again, if Democrats had smarts or guts, they'd call this request "voter intimidation," and then tell the "Commission" what physically impossible thing they might do with their requests.

Finally, we learn from Mark Joseph Stern at Slate that new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's first dissent -- in a case where the Court held that both female partners in a lesbian couple should be named as parents on a birth certificate -- "Has a Huge Factual Error and Terrible, Dishonest Logic." But he was so nice during his confirmation hearings! It's bad when a Supreme Court Justice not only can't agree that Arkansas refused to put both names on the birth certificate, but tells the couple they should have challenged a different law than the one that actually hurt them. Neil Gorsuch should remind you of no one so much as that right-wing kid in your polisci class who wouldn't ever shut his yap.

Action: health care, Amtrak funding, and anti-pollution funding.

As you know, Senate Republicans have postponed voting on their even-worse-than-the-House-bill health care "reform" bill, and maybe it looks bad for a bill that typically gets around a 17% approval rating (higher than Congress's approvals generally, but rather lower than Obamacare's approvals at similar points in 2009 and 2010). Still, let's not get complacent; the Senate plans to be done with revisions on the bill today, which means it would go to the CBO next week and get a vote in mid-July, and these Republicans are evil. They don't care that you rely on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion right now or might one day, they don't care that the ban against pre-existing conditions protects you from getting screwed by your insurer, and they certainly don't care that you already see through their lies about "tax cuts for the middle class" (they're for the rich, just like always!) and "lower premiums" (your premiums might go up more slowly, but who cares if you're paying more out of pocket for lousier health care?). So call your Senators again, just to let them know we're watching them.

Meanwhile, among the multitudinous other nefarious things the Trump "hard power" budget would do is zero out funding for Amtrak long-distance service for passengers. Historically, Presidential budgets that have tried to cut Amtrak funding have met with fairly steadfast resistance even from Republican Senators -- remember Mr. Specter's blithe dismissal of a Bush Mobb budget cut proposal in 2005? -- but these are, as they say, interesting times. And ending federal funding for Amtrak's long-distance train rides would essentially destroy long-distance train travel in America, denying that service to nearly half of all Americans, particularly those in areas that don't have much in the way or airports or interstate highways. The truly stunning thing, of course, is that Mr. Trump's budget actually comes out and says it'd be better for Congress to concentrate on improving Amtrak's "corridor" services, meaning, essentially, densely-populated areas. And they say Democrats hate flyover country! MoveOn helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to end funding for Amtrak's long-distance passenger service.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: your state legislators are all hot to cut funding even further for the state Department of Environmental Protection, as well as the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Why? Because these things don't make money for some politician's crony -- they only protect our clean air and clean water and public lands. But cutting funding for these two departments has real-world consequences, ranging from the closure of beaches and trails to the backlog of clean water complaints the DEP can't address because it doesn't have the staff. I shouldn't even say "staff" -- I should say jobs. Maybe then the legislature will fund the DEP and the DCNR -- because they create jobs for people who actually do the hard work of (for example) inspecting mines and monitoring fracking waste. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to protect the commonwealth by properly funding the Departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources.

Around the table: the bigliest pro-Trump network ever, and other lessons.

I've got some good-news-bad-news for you, courtesy Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch. The good news? Seymour Hersh has exposed the convenient lie that Syrian President Assad attacked his own people with sarin nerve gas in April -- the very thing that prompted President Trump to throw a couple dozen Tomahawks at a Syrian air base. The bad news? He couldn't get an American newspaper to publish it -- only the German daily Die Welt carried Mr. Hersh's exposé. Of course Mr. Trump is again claiming very loudly (with zero pushback from our "liberal" media) that Mr. Assad plans to use chemical weapons on his people again, and if any President was ever in need of a war, it's Mr. Trump.

Now Warren Freaking Buffett thinks we should shift to a single-payer health care system. And he's got an argument that might sway corporate leaders -- that health care costs, not corporate taxes, make corporations less competitive with their foreign counterparts. I've long argued that corporate CEOs would welcome paying less for their employees' health care, though of course the worst of them will want "something in exchange" for agreeing to it, as if reducing labor costs substantially isn't "something." If we're very, very lucky, we won't have some Robert Rubin-picked Democrat to conduct those negotiations.

Judd Legum at Think Progress describes "how TMZ quietly became America’s most potent pro-Trump media outlet." Its "apolitical" (and young) viewers "come for Kanye West, Lady Gaga, and Amber Rose" and then get pro-Trump coverage along with it. Of course, the mere fact that TMZ exists, and can broadcast on over-the-air channels, tells us how sick, immoral, and decadent our society has become, and just as it shouldn't be hard to believe that a President like Donald Trump could emerge from that swamp, it shouldn't be hard to believe that TMZ is his biggest cheerleader.

Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and former FCC general counsel Jon Sallet think this whole net neutrality imbroglio will end up in court. I'm inclined to agree, merely based on how many fake comments the FCC has already tolerated and could have prevented, but Mr. Sallet concentrates on what consumers can reasonably expect from their broadband connections -- for example, if your ISP says you can "go anywhere," should consumers reasonably expect legal internet sites to be censored or throttled? If the FCC does what we expect and kills net neutrality, maybe we should simply contact our ISP every time a page doesn't load fast enough.

Finally, security researchers find wind farms shockingly easy to hack. I'm tempted to say this news proves you ought to hire people to watch over things rather than leave every damn thing to computers -- or tumbler locks! But wind farms typically don't secure their computers very well, either -- even though most don't even connect to the internet, they can still be picked from afar. Of course, this is no reason to throw up your hands and accept the pollution of fossil fuels -- it's a reason to demand better security from wind farms.

Action: methane emissions, war in the Middle East, and the Johnson Amendment.

The Environmental Defense Fund helps you leave a public comment with the EPA opposing their decision to suspend the leak detection/repair part of their recently-issued methane emissions rule for two years. Two years without these requirements means two years more folks will get sick from breathing in carcinogens and two years that leaked methane assaults our climate. It's also two years that we waste methane, a perfectly usable energy source, by leaking it into the air! Those who don't care about climate change or other people's health should at least care about the wasted opportunity to make money. And of course you also know that an entire industry (the methane mitigation industry) has sprung up to help deal with methane leaks, which are as common at gas drilling wells as flies are at a pile of dung -- and the businesses doing this work charge as little as $250 for the service. So they can't really say TEH REGULASHUNZ KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! or TEH REGULASHUNZ DRIVEZ US TO TEH POORHOUSEZ!!!!!

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen -- a war we help fund, despite not having declared war with Yemen -- drags on, to the point where a cholera outbreak has broken out across that nation. And naturally the Trump Administration -- the one that promised to do foreign policy differently, to be "smarter" about getting involved in the Middle East -- does nothing. Well, those rich Saudis pay a lot of money to stay at Mr. Trump's hotels, so what do we expect? We expect our government to do our will, not fill the pockets of our President, so Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your Congressfolk to vote on our continued involvement in the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen via the War Powers Resolution. We shouldn't need a damn War Powers Resolution, for real -- the Constitution already says Congress declares the war and the President fights it, and the Founders divided those powers so that a President wouldn't ignore the will of the people and fight wars they didn't want. So let us assert our will.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from advocating for particular candidates or donating money to them, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. Does the Johnson Amendment restrict the free speech rights of churches? Ah, no, it doesn't -- churches can still talk all the politics they like, they just can't give direct aid and comfort to a particular politician's efforts to get elected or re-elected, or else they'll lose their tax-exempt status. Note well that last part, because it also refutes the BUT I GIVEZ TEH MONEYZ TO POLITICIANZ SO WHY CANTZ TEH CHURCHEZ!!!!! objection: as you're no doubt acutely aware, you are not a tax-exempt organization. Exemption from taxes isn't a right; if it were, we'd all be exempt from paying taxes. And the Trump Administration doesn't want "free speech" for churches, it wants freedom from responsibility for churches, a notion any good church would reject.

Around the table: mostly about health care, plus a bonus discussion of monopoly power.

California House Speaker decides to table Senate-passed single-payer bill for the foreseeable future. Why? Possibly because California Democrats (who run everything in Cali, and thus can't use Republican obstruction as an excuse) would rather give lip service to things people want than do things people want, though the latter would ensure their majorities as much as all the money they raise. Of course they say TEH SINGLE PAYERZ COSTZ TOO MUCHZ!!!!, which is bunk -- corporations pay too much to insure their workers now, and I can't imagine they wouldn't welcome paying less.

Speaking of which, Massachusetts state legislators introduce bills that would create a single-payer health insurance system there -- but also introduce bills that would assess the cost of single-payer, and mandate the legislature to act on findings about that cost. Of course it's cheaper pretty much everywhere on the planet you look, but making the state's nonpartisan Health Policy Commission do the counting gives us our best shot at making a convincing argument. I bet even that state's Republican Governor would think twice before vetoing a single-payer bill coming out of this process, since it would put him in the position of being fiscally irresponsible.

We talked yesterday about Mr. McConnell's flogging of lower-premiums-that-actually-aren't-lower-premiums, but the Center for American Progress reminds us of another reason you should be skeptical when you hear about lower premiums: lower premiums might well be a result of lousier plans covering fewer health conditions -- and if your lousy plan is cheaper, you won't feel like it's cheaper when you're paying more out of your own pocket. Just so happens the Senate bill would allow health insurers to cover less, which is pretty much the easiest way of making you pay more. "You pay more" really should be the backbone of a Democratic ad campaign, but I think I just hinted why that won't happen.

Mark this under "Profiles in Courage": Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) comes out against the Senate's health care bill after the Senate Republican leadership postpones the vote on the bill. I really wish the Toledo Blade, which I'm sure is a fine paper doing the best it can in a sick, immoral, and decadent society, had mentioned that Mr. Portman was one of the 13 Republican Senators who worked on this bill behind closed doors to begin with, so that we could discover that he basically opposes his own bill.

Finally, Janine Jackson at FAIR interviews Institute for Local Self-Reliance co-director Stacy Mitchell on the real consequences of Amazon's proposed assimilation of Whole Foods. Chief among them: with one out of every two dollars spent online coursing through Amazon's veins, Amazon essentially has "monopoly power in online commerce," and it's well past time we re-embraced the notion that monopoly power is dangerous no matter how great the selection or how fast the package gets to you. (Also, too, the "liberal" media covers the proposed merger like it's a sporting match, not like it's your damn life.)

Action: government transparency, Muslim bans, and energy efficiency.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, apparently inspired by the Senate leadership's example on their health care "reform" bill, now plans to debate and vote this year's defense department authorization act in secret. What do they have to hide? It must be more than the usual corruption, fraud, and waste -- perhaps they plan to fund detention centers for Americans who disagree with Dear Leader? Or fund a war they plan to start next October? Actually, it could be any number of things -- witness Congress's attempts last year to include irrelevent religious "conscience" riders to defense bills. In any case, the Senate can claim the unique honor of being outclassed by the House, which plans its version of the defense authorization bill the usual way, by holding hearings and votes in public. Hence the Project on Government Oversight helps you call your Senators and demand that they debate the defense authorization bill out in the open. You know, like adults would do -- not like whiny, self-involved fools would do.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed parts of the notorious Trump Muslim ban to operate, and that three Supreme Court Justices (Messrs. Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas, in case you couldn't guess) went on record saying they think the Trump Administration will win its case on the merits. You remember Mr. Gorsuch acting the part of someone who wouldn't prejudge? Yeah, that was all drama, too. But though you might find five Supreme Court Justices to say that Mr. Trump's obvious and well-documented animus toward Muslims (as described by Mr. Giuliani, who said Mr. Trump asked him how he could "do" a "Muslim ban" "legally") makes his "travel ban" a de facto Muslim ban, we don't have to wait for that -- we could also tell our Congressfolk to pass legislation preventing Mr. Trump's Muslim ban, as Amnesty International helps you do. Remember, folks: only cowards put walls between themselves and other people out of fear. Don't let Mr. Trump make you into a coward.

Finally, because President Trump apparently can't tolerate a single good government program existing in the same universe as him, he's trying to get rid of the Energy Star rating system for buildings, appliances, and other products. Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit when I say he merely hates good government, because his own buildings consistently receive low ratings from the Energy Star program, which means lower property values, which means less money for him. This was always the danger of electing a rich fool as President -- that he would only do what made him money, rather than the will of his bosses, the American people. And on an annual budget of less than $50 million, the Energy Star program has delivered, on average, over $15 billion annually in savings for good Americans, mainly in the form of lower utility bills. I'd say that works for us! So the Sierra Club helps you tell your members of Congress to reject the President's will and support the people's will by continuing to fund the Energy Star program.

Around the table: in which Republicans blink, for now.

Senate puts off health care "reform" bill vote until after the July 4 holiday. But don't get complacent: keep calling your Senators and communicating your will. And what's with President Trump's spokeshack saying that Mr. Trump hopes "Republicans would live up to their promise" of passing an Obamacare repeal? Like Mr. Trump never made that promise himself? Way to throw your party under the bus, Dear Leader!

So how was Mitch McConnell putting lipstick on that pig of a bill until yesterday? Why, by completely ignoring that part of the CBO report that says 22 million good Americans will lose their health insurance under the Senate bill, of course! He also pretended tax cuts going mainly to the rich were "middle-class" tax cuts, and he also "confused" rising premium prices and the rising growth rate of premium prices, so he could "accidentally" say the bill will do something about the former when it actually does something about the latter. Punchline? Obamacare has already reduced the growth rate in premiums -- and that's nothing to write home about.

Just to remind you that states aren't the only organs keeping massive amounts of data on good citizens, Cora Currier at The Intercept describes World-Check, a database owned by Thomson Reuters and used by world banks, which lists some two million folks whose alleged ties to crime or terrorism may be quite exaggerated. You might be able to get World-Check to change its data on you, eventually -- if you even know you're on it. And of course Thomson Reuters says it's a "risk assessment" tool, which is just doublespeak for blacklist.

Jeff Bryant at the OurFuture blog explains why "Charter Schools Do Bad Stuff." Long story short: "Because They Can." Long story somewhat longer: private agencies, not public ones, generally "monitor" charter school activities and "hold them accountable." It's bad enough we throw away the taxpayer money on private schools that we should be spending on public schools, but then our local governments don't even hold them accountable, instead outsourcing the job to a private entity. But really, what do charter schools have to fear from the people?

Finally, in a heroic effort, Tasneem Nashrulla at Buzzfeed tabulates recent softball questions Fox News has asked President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Ivanka Trump in the last 24 days. The list is either disheartening or hilarious depending on your level of spiritual advancement, but I'm only going to highlight one example: one talking head asks Mr. Trump if "Republican Senators are doing enough to have your back" on the health care bill, rather than the more pertinent question of whether they, or their President, have got the people's back. You see, for Fox News and for Donald Trump, democracy ain't about you, it's about them. May God have mercy on their immortal souls.

Action: health care, banksters, and GMO labeling.

Ho hum, the CBO projects that the Senate health care bill will cause 22 million people to lose their health insurance over the next decade, and 15 million to lose it by next year. That's a million fewer health insurance losses than under the House bill, but is that what you'd take to the pearly gates? "Yeah, I voted for a health care bill that only deprived 22 million of health insurance, not 23 million, so that we could give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the undeserving rich." Sure doesn't sound like something you'd say to St. Peter, does it? And neither does "I voted for a health care bill that slashed Medicaid for working families and increased the possibility that folks would get tossed off their insurance for their pre-existing conditions." Tools for calling your Senator and telling them to deep-six this bill are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone).

But wait, there's more! H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, would (among many other things!) weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the same bureau that has returned $29 billion to good Americans defrauded by financial predators -- and would eliminate the Obama Administration's "fiduciary rule," which requires pension advisors to put their customers' interests first rather than their own. And here's something I didn't know: H.R. 10 would also raise the threshold at which shareholders can file resolutions, so that only the very richest shareholders would be able to file them! Why would anyone support a bill that gives all these corporate welfare handouts to financial predators? Because they worship mammon, that's why -- and good luck taking that to the pearly gates! So PennPIRG helps you tell your Senators to reject the Financial CHOICE Act. Alternately, you could tell your Senators to oppose the bill while you have them on the phone about the Trumpcare bill.

Finally, the Department of Agriculture is mulling a new GMO labeling standard, as required by Congress last year; I always warned that some far-right Republican could get to write that standard -- but I also said that when the time comes, our duty is the same no matter who occupies the Oval office: to make our will unmistakably known to our government. Hence Just Label It helps you tell the USDA to enact the most vigorous GMO labeling system possible. What is our will in this matter? That all GMOs in food get labeled, that labels tell you which ingredients come from GMOs, and that labels be clear and easy to read. We'll have none of these "QR codes" that you'd need a smartphone app to read! Not everyone worships at the altar of the smartphone, after all -- in fact, a great many people still read, and a great many more than that don't want their food labels to mislead them. None of this is too damn much to ask. And remember, this is about disclosure of GMOs, not banning them.

Action: "free" trade, and endangered species.

President Trump may have withdrawn the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" and notified Congress of his intention to renegotiate NAFTA, but don't congratulate him too much for these things -- Mr. Trump, after all, decided not to try to get rid of the most odious part of NAFTA and other "free" trade deals, the "investor-state tribunal" that allows corporations to nullify our laws and extract tribute from the taxpayer. Also, Mr. Trump's own Commerce Secretary told a corporatist crowd that he'd start renegotiating NAFTA by adding in some of the only-slightly-less-odious parts of the TPP, like its extension of drug monopolies. You'd think any renegotiation of NAFTA would begin by putting workers' interests at its center, since that's pretty much what Mr. Trump said he'd do, so Sign for Good helps you tell the U.S. Trade Rep to make sure any NAFTA renegotiation puts workers in all three countries first. These interests include getting rid of "investor-state tribunals," requiring imports to meet strong American safety standards, protecting Buy American and Buy Local rules, and restricting monopolies on drug patents. Think they want to do any of that? Of course not. But let's make them known as opponents of the popular will, if it comes to that.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of the Interior to reverse its planned delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear as an endangered species. Interior plans to protect grizzlies inside the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and near Glacier National Park, but would rescind protections for hundreds of grizzlies in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Some of these will now fall prey to trophy hunters, whom I'm pretty sure wouldn't face a grizzly bear without a big gun. Didn't know trophy hunters got so much say about everything, did you? Particularly after more than 600,000 public comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prevented delisting last year? We do have many more grizzlies than we did 40-plus years ago, but not nearly as many as we used to, and grizzlies have lost nearly 10% of their numbers since 2014, so they still face challenges. And folks who complain about having to work to protect the grizzly for yet more years are clearly out of touch with the whole idea that anything worth doing is hard, takes time, and should be done right. You might think these are conservative values. And then you might wonder why so few of today's "conservatives" seem to hold them.

Around the table: why the FDA is a hostage to medical device corporations, and other lessons.

AP finds nearly 20 secret prisons in southern Yemen, where UAE forces torture alleged terrorists and American forces question them. The difference between the two isn't so vast, since international law looks upon the questioning of tortured detainees as complicity in that torture, and also since one Yemeni soldier has testified that at times American forces were mere "yards away" from that torture. Oh, if you're smelling that faint Trump odor, it sure looks like this has all been going on since the Obama years.

FDA strikes "deal" with medical device manufacturers which just so happens to require that the FDA exercise considerably less oversight over these same manufacturers. The FDA has to renegotiate this particular point every five years in order to continue getting funding from the medical device industry to finance a big chunk of its operations. Why not just fund it entirely with tax money, particularly since every time a medical device goes bad it hits the news big-time? At least then the FDA would be more accountable to us, instead of being industry's hostage.

Franklin Foer writes a long and generally incisive piece on how Democrats can get white working class voters back (without, you know, becoming racists again). Key points we learn from the famous Macomb County, MI focus groups: Trump votaries generally hate blacks a lot less than they used to but seem to have displaced that anger onto immigrants, and they don't care that Mr. Trump seems unhinged -- but they also don't know he's sold out to Wall Street banksters, and are very angry to learn that he has. Courageous Democrats might do something with the second item, but I think I just told you why that won't happen.

Ron Fein at TruthOut reminds us that President Trump has said bupkus about Turkish Presidential bodyguards attacking American protestors on the street last month. We can think of a few reasons, of course -- that Mr. Trump has encouraged his own supporters to act pretty much the same way, or that assholes tend to hang around with other assholes -- but you may not know that the Turkish President threatened to take Mr. Trump's name off a pair of Trump Towers in Istanbul last year. Oh, well, just another Trumpian conflict of interest that limits our freedoms.

Finally, the Carrier plant in Indiana where President Trump supposedly saved all those jobs in late 2016 will still outsource some 600 manufacturing jobs by the end of this year. Turns out most of the jobs Mr. Trump "saved" were not union-organized manufacturing jobs, but were technical and engineering positions that were never in danger of being lost in the first place! Also, the cash Carrier got as an incentive to keep the jobs? They're putting that into automation instead of actual job creation. Who "doesn't care about jobs" now, Trump votaries?

Around the table: the importance of blaming the right people, and other lessons.

Ken Levy at Counterpunch says that "Sorry, But It's Entirely the Right's Fault" we're such a polarized nation now -- and it's mainly because right-wingers argue and reason so badly. I'm pleased to see he offers "Exhibit A" as Newt Gingrich, as I found Real Change to be one of the most poorly-argued books I've ever read. Please pray very hard that I never decide to describe exactly how awful it is in excruciating detail, possibly in an e-book. (I would argue, by the way, that the "brainwashed right" comprise a smaller percentage of the American population than Mr. Levy says -- no more than 25%, not "35-40%.")

TruthOut talks to Noam Chomsky and Ha-Joon Chang about some of the "Myths of Globalization." It's tempting to blame globalization for the world's problems, particularly since "free" trade deals that foment globalization are so awful, but it isn't really the problem -- untrammeled corporate power is the problem. You'll also be reminded that you can't just turn displaced auto workers into software programmers, regardless of what the Democratic Party's said since the Clinton era. (Mr. Chang says the Scandinavians do job-displacement retraining well, so that's a subject for further research.)

Shawn Boberg at the Washington Post finds that President Trump's "hard power" budget slashes programs that combat homelessness -- except for a subsidy that goes right to private landlords. And, of course, Mr. Trump collects that subsidy, and while experts are right to caution that we can't yet prove Mr. Trump actually insisted on keeping that particular subsidy in his budget, I'm also not a schmuck. Let me guess the Trump votary response: give him a chance he knows what he's doing but her emails he shoots from the hip both sides do it fake news shutup traitor.

Amarnath Amarasingam and Jacob Davey at the New York Times reminds us that the vast majority of terrorism in America comes from the far right -- almost three-quarters of it since 9.11, per the Government Accountability Office, even if terrorism from groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda get more ink. (Though wouldn't we call them far-right, too?) Of course, part of the reason they get more ink is that right-wingers get their shorts in a bunch whenever they hear that most terrorism comes from the right, and then the "liberal" media stops talking about it after that. But, hey, facts are facts.

Finally, Wired provides a brutal timeline of Uber's rise and fall, with particular attention to the events of 2017. With all the ink spilled about the "gig economy" and "changing with the times," more folks should have realized that Uber has always acted like a corporation that doesn't perform a service for anyone, but instead just bullies other people into giving them money. The reason it's not obvious to so many observers, as Upton Sinclair might remind us, is that their salaries depend on them pretending it's not obvious.

Action: health care, paid family leave, and wage slavery.

So the Senate dropped its health care bill yesterday, and early reports indicate it's just as bad as we thought it would be: it makes some subsidies to poorer working families a little better than the House bill would, but it would cut Medicaid even more than the House bill would, and it would still substantially weaken the Obamacare ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and still let insurers charge seniors a lot more than they can now -- and, of course, it would still repeal most of the taxes-on-the-rich that fund Obamacare programs. Remember that they're trying to cut taxes for the rich now so they can cut taxes for the rich even more later on and still comply with Senate rules. So today, also, would be a good day to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and call your Senators to tell them to reject the Senate's health care "reform" bill. You might tell them to support H.R. 676 -- which would establish a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health care system in America -- while you have them on the phone.

Meanwhile, some folks try to tell you the one saving grace of the Trump budget (and after all, why would you ever need more than one?) is its boutique paid family leave plan, but don't believe that hype, either -- the Trump plan would only let new parents take the leave, and since it doesn't actually commit new funds to the plan, it would essentially force states to pay for it, likely by cutting unemployment benefits for other folks. Conservatives would call that an unfunded mandate; if you don't hear any of today's "conservatives" calling it that, well, you can assume they're not actually conservative. Around one in seven American workers gets paid family leave, and we are, as you know, the only industrialized nation on Earth that doesn't mandate it by law to new parents; that's not a good reason to start chanting WE'RE NUMBER ONE! So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trump budget and its "smokescreen" of a family leave plan -- and pass a real budget, that reflects America's real priorities, and a real paid family leave plan that doesn't leave working families behind.

Finally, the Follow the Thread Campaign has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell five big retail corporations to disclose information about where they source their clothing. Most of the clothing you buy at big-box retailers, as you know, gets manufactured overseas, quite often in factories that treat their workers badly -- certainly you recall the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which the collapse of a garment factory killed over a thousand Bangladeshi workers and injured 2,000 more, and you may also recall two factory fires in Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2012 that killed 350 garment workers. All of these disasters came about because of lax safety standards, and all of them prompted many of the corporations that source from these factories to pledge to improve those standards. Still, some fools will tell you that improved safety for foreign workers means higher prices for you. Can they find this alleged truism in Newton's laws? Of course not -- it's just another way to avoid talking about runaway executive pay, the real reason your prices would go up.

Action: fuel efficiency, work scheduling, and free speech.

Consumers Union helps you tell your Senators to reject efforts to weaken fuel economy standards. You may well be asking yourself: self, who sits at home and says you know what would be great? If gas cost more and our cars polluted more? Apparently, the answer would be the bipartisan group of five Senators who co-sponsored S. 1273, the so-called Fuel Economy Harmonization Act. So how does S. 1273 weaken fuel economy standards? Automakers get credits for exceeding fuel economy standards, and S. 1273 would allow them to increase the number of years they can use those credits to offset their performance in years they don't comply with the standards so well. S. 1273 would also dramatically increase the size of these credits over the years, doubling them in the short term and tripling them by 2022. The end result: cars that cost more to fill up and get fewer miles to the gallon. To think that people actually get rich coming up with crap like this! But we'll see how rich they are when they meet their Maker.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2942/S. 1386, the Schedules That Work Act, would require employers to give their employees their work schedule two weeks in advance, and pay employees more when they change their shift at the last minute or send them home because there's not enough work to do. The bill would also ensure that employees can request a schedule change without retaliation, and force employers to honor these requests if they can't come up with a business-related reason to deny it. Haters should note well that final phrase -- employers could still deny schedule change requests, just not merely because they feel like it. I know to some folks this'll all sound like we're handcuffing a business's ability to make money, but we're not -- if you're a manager, and you can't tell what your scheduling needs are in advance, then you're not a very good manager, and why should workers be made to compensate for a manager's incompetence? Hence the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support more stable work scheduling for working families by supporting the Schedules that Work Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from endorsing or campaigning directly for particular candidates, then Food and Water Watch helps you do that. You may recall that one of the biggest pitfalls of repealing the Johnson Amendment -- that big corporations could simply use churches to launder campaign donations to particular candidates in complete secrecy. You would be appalled, I would think, not just at the physical corruption in such a scenario, but the spiritual corruption as well -- a church that would agree to do that would become rotten to its core, and perhaps worse, would become a slave to a particular politician's or donor's wishes. Churches should not be subservient, and the best way to avoid that pitfall is for them to do their necessary work from outside the electioneering process. This is also why I tell folks not to "support" politicians and hope they'll do the right thing, but to make politicians do the right thing, regardless of allegiance.

Around the table: in which our populist instincts find little reflection in the "liberal" media.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that Arab and Muslim immigrants who were unlawfully detained and/or tortured can't sue high-ranking public officials for damages. Because national security, naturally -- how can Our Best and Brightest make "difficult but necessary decisions" if they're worried about getting sued? Seems to me if you did nothing wrong, your best course of action would be to win the lawsuit, especially since, as a member of Our Best and Brightest, you would have the means to fight it. And the Court left open the possibility that plaintiffs can sue far lower-ranking officials for damages, which is rather like King Solomon literally splitting the baby in half.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, describes the kind of "Jim Crow Scam" that could have tipped the Georgia 6th special House race to Republicans. In Georgia, of course, it's considerably worse than elsewhere -- community organizations register voters, call the state government to find out why their registrations didn't go through, get the run-around, and then get raided and shut down by the state. And Interstate Crosscheck does its dirty work here, too. Stop me if you've heard this before, but a better candidate -- not the perfect moderate, but the perfect populist -- could have won that race regardless. 6th District Democrats will disagree with me, but they're wrong -- the major difference between rank-and-file liberals and conservatives these days is tone, not substance.

Speaking of which: the stunning thing about appeals for Democrats to move right on social issues so they can win more elections (as Jim Naureckas at FAIR tells us) is that the data tells Democrats to move left on economic issues. Strangely, "liberal" media pundits never suggest that Democrats should ever target folks who are conservative on social issues but liberal on economic issues! I've long said that the pro-lifer who wants to tax the rich at 91% is more my ally than the can't-we-all-get-along pro-business pro-choicer; we know these people exist, and we also know that corporatist Democrats offer them literally no reason to vote Democrat.

Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg soberly evaluates the Kansas tax-cuts-for-the-rich "experiment" under Gov. Brownback, and finds it wanting. We need not tabulate all the ways in which Mr. Brownback has thoroughly bollocksed up his state (though Mr. Ritholtz's own tabulation is quite valuable, and "underpromising and overdelivering" is good advice for any undertaking!), but I did not know that Kansas finishes high on the list of states that lose a lot of its residents to other states. What state is at the other end of the spectrum, welcoming the most new residents? Oregon -- which passed a massive tax hike on the rich back in 2010. Could that be mere coincidence?

Finally, on the occasion of Jeffery Immelt leaving General Electric with a $200 million-plus golden parachute, Sam Pizzigati reminds us that CEOs don't really earn all that damn money. GE once gave us "breakthroughs like the first commercial electric power station (1882), the first high-altitude jet engine (1949), and the first laser lights (1962)," but not now, not when it's so much easier to artificially create a fortune by becoming a monopoly, securing corporate welfare, and slashing jobs and pensions. And the sad part is that too many Americans think "well, he made a lot of money" is an accomplishment. And that's because we don't do accomplishments anymore. Feel free to conclude that the lust for mammon keeps us from dreaming of real good works that we might pass down to future generations.

Action: internet freedom, a cease-fire in Yemen, and campaign finance reform.

You still have a few weeks to tell the FCC you want to keep net neutrality regulations exactly as they are, so that you, not some corporation, can decide where you want to go on the internet -- but why not pressure your Congressfolk, too? Both Free Press and Common Cause help you call your Congressfolk and tell them you oppose the FCC's plan to roll back net neutrality regulations, and that they should oppose it, too. Congressfolk have too often imagined that there's some mystical "light touch" regulation the FCC could apply, but that's bunk -- net neutrality, as expressed by the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2015, already is "light touch" regulation: it isn't "big government telling us what to do" so much as it's our government preventing corporations from telling us what to do. Which they will do, if we let them -- they will determine what internet websites you can visit, after extracting tribute from those websites, of course, and they will determine how fast your pages will load. So let's get our Congressfolk on board with us, for once. We deserve that much.

Meanwhile, a vote to stop munitions sales to Saudi Arabia came closer than ever to passing the Senate earlier this month, and now the U.N. Security Council has unanimously called for a cease-fire in Yemen, where Saudi warmaking (aided and abetted by American arms) has driven that country dangerously close to famine. Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with Move On to help you tell your Congressfolk to back the U.N. call for a ceasefire in Yemen. Why are we in Yemen again? The best face one could put on it is that we're trying to help keep order there -- Yemen is the poorest Middle Eastern country, with fairly weak governmental institutions -- but if that's the best face we can put on it, we probably should stay home. And that's not the best face you can put on Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen -- for years they've been financially supporting various tribal groups in their efforts to preserve their autonomy, which (again, at best) sure is a dangerous game to be playing. And with the Saudis' enemies, the Houthis, being some of the best ISIS-fighters on Earth, maybe there's no "best face" to put on this after all.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. Yesterday saw the culmination of the special U.S. House race in Georgia's 6th district, an election in which donors spent over $50 million, making it the most expensive House race in history. And 2016 saw no less than nine U.S. Senate races in which donors spent over $70 million, including the Pennsylvania Senate race between a milquetoast Democrat and a far-right Republican, neither of whom got 50% of the vote, where donors spent an astounding $175 million. You can think of better things to do with $175 million, right? Like, oh, I don't know, create jobs? The Government by the People Act would set up a public campaign financing system, funding candidates six dollars for every one dollar they raise in small donations. And to think some folks actually say we need more campaign spending! But I watched those horrible Pennsylvania ads, and those donors might as well have flushed that $175 million down the toilet. How about we discourage that kind of waste?

Around the table: modern-day wage slavery in California, and other sad tales.

Anthony DiMaggio at Counterpunch argues that we've been overestimating economic populism as a factor in President Trump's support -- and thus underestimating factors such as racism, xenophobia, and "the elitist class war against the middle class and poor." Studies find Trump voters aren't poorer, more unemployed, or more from Rust Belt regions, while other studies show sexism and racism to be better predictors of Trump support, and still other studies find a disproportionate percentage of Trump supporters being well off. And when they say 70 percent of Trump voters don't have a college education, you can always remind them that the rate nationally is 71 percent.

U.S. Supreme Court will hear appeal of a District Court decision striking down Wisconsin's most recent redistricting map as unconstitutionally partisan. Justice Kennedy has long said he'd like to evaluate a standard that deals with partisan redistricting, but that doesn't mean he'll approve of the standard advanced by the original plaintiffs, nor does his joining the majority issuing a stay of the District Court's decision suggest which way he'll rule. One thing, though: if too many Wisconsin Republican legislators said out loud that they were trying to use the redistricting process to ensure permanent or durable Republican majorities, rather than respond to citizens' needs, that could piss off John Roberts.

Brett Murphy at USA Today looks at how California port trucking corporations force drivers into becoming "modern-day indentured servant(s)." Basically, these corporations turn their mostly immigrant truckers into independent contractors who "work toward" "owning" their truck, and then use their truckers' indebtedness to force them to work 16- and 20-hour days for little pay. And if they miss work for any reason, they seize their truck, and all the money they've paid toward it! Corporate hacks have their litany of excuses -- abuses are rare, drivers are lazy, unions make trouble, it's so hard to make money anymore. I suppose once major retail corporations start bowing to public pressure to stop taking advantage of this situation, we'll also hear you don't want your prices to go up, do you?

This New York Times article describing how Mr. Trump's business ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE (and his lack of business ties with Qatar) are influencing his Middle East policy quotes Mr. Trump as saying Saudi citizens "buy apartments from me," spending "$40 million, $50 million" and then asking rhetorically "Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much." He and his votaries imagine he's just shooting-from-the-hip, but he's actually confessing that his own business ties (and not so much the people's will!) will set American policy, and confessing your wrongdoing as if it's nothing doesn't make it nothing. It sure doesn't make it "not wrongdoing."

Finally, Jon Schwarz at The Intercept alerts us to an actual historical mini-series on the History Channel called "America's War on Drugs" -- and notes that it's "the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50 years," i.e., that "the war on drugs has always been a pointless sham." It's not just a sham because President Nixon essentially created the "war on drugs" as a way of discrediting black and hippie protestors, but because of our own government's well-documented collusion with various drug cartels. Still, as Mr. Schwarz says, it's a big deal that it's on TV -- and not sequestered on a pay channel, even!

Action: fighting banksters and polluters.

H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, passed the House a few weeks ago, because what's more American than giving banksters more tools to screw good people over? H.R. 10 is so awful that its defenders have few things to say in its favor, except that ALL REGULASHUNZ IZ TEH BADZ!!!! and IT HELPZ TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!!! Here in the reality-based community, of course, we know that regulations restricting financial predators are not, in fact, bad, and we also know that right-wing politicians love telling you that they do everything they do for small businesses when, in fact, they do everything they do for big corporate campaign donors. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the biggest problem small businesses have isn't government -- it's big corporations using their power to squash them before they have a chance to do great things. H.R. 10 still has to go before the Senate, so 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 tell your Senators to protect good Americans from financial predators and reject H.R. 10.

Meanwhile, state government officials in Arizona and Utah have urged the Trump Administration to lift a 20-year uranium mining ban in the area around the Grand Canyon. These officials claim that the uranium ban kills jobs, as if uranium poisoning wouldn't kill tourism jobs, and that Big Gummint shouldn't designate monuments in states, as if that's not at all self-serving. But now they also claim, in a spurt of Bush-Mobb caliber bullshitting, that uranium mining doesn't pollute groundwater. And what's to stop President Trump from claiming that his Grand Canyon will be the bigliest yugest Grand Canyon ever, one that will magically make even more tourism dollars while making his mining cronies rich? If you mess up the Grand Canyon, you've messed it up forever -- and if you put uranium into the River that provides drinking water for 40 million people, then you've messed them up forever, too. So Roots Action helps you tell your President and your Congress that the Grand Canyon should be a national monument.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania Assemblyperson to stop two pro-pollution bills passed by the state Senate, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. The two bills, as you may know, are SB 624, which would allow longwall coal-mining corporations to pollute public waters as long as they have a plan to clean it up later, and SB 561, which would require the state legislature to approve any and all Executive branch-issued regulations that could conceivably have a "significant economic impact." Of course, a lot of clean air and clean water regulations do have such an impact -- they drive health care costs downward. But I suspect that's not the "impact" Pennsylvania's state legislators care about -- I'm pretty sure they care about the impact such regulations might have on a corporate CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And as for SB 624, why would you trust a corporation's "plan" to clean up their mess? You make corporations clean up their mess, because that's the only way it can work.

Action: health care, drug policy, and Pebble Mine.

First up this week, of course, is the Senate's health care "reform" bill. The Senate's deliberation process, such as it is, has been so secret that even Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) has said she can't answer her constituents' questions about it because she literally hasn't seen any language from it -- and, of course, so secret that there'll be no committee hearings on it, and perhaps not even a copy of the bill for the public to read. Of course, from what we have heard about it, it'd merely hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and cut more hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid -- supposedly the only "disagreement" among "moderate" Republican Senators is in how fast they'd make those cuts. Oh, and their other ideas are pretty crappy, too -- just try and explain the difference between the Obamacare mandate and "auto-enrollment." Go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to reject their secret health care bill, and if you've got a Democratic Senator, then Indivisible helps you remind them that they've got tools to fight this thing.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be hot to stamp out the spread of marijuana, everywhere (remember how he said back in the day that he thought the Klan were OK until he learned they were pot-smokers?), but H.R. 2920/S. 1374, the CARERS Act, would end federal prohibition of marijuana (which, frankly, has never belonged on Schedule I with really dangerous drugs like heroin) and thus protect the 30 states that have legalized medical marijuana. Yep, Mr. Sessions wants to go after that, even, having already asked Congress to fund efforts to prosecute medical marijuana providers and patients. The CARERS Act would also loosen some of the restrictions around marijuana research, which would, at least, cut down on the number of people who reflexively shout YOUZ CANTZ PROVEZ TEH POTZ HAZ ANYZ BENEFITZ!!!! You can't shut down all the haters, of course, but you can contain them. So Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support sane drug policy by supporting the CARERS Act.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell the EPA to reject the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwestern Alaska. Wait -- you thought that was over and done with? Well, the change in Administrations has brought a change in the EPA's heart, if it can be said to have one anymore, as the EPA has "settled" a lawsuit with Pebble Mine's owners. If you've come to regard "settlement" as a dirty word thanks to Obama-era settlements with banksters, well, this one's even worse -- all the EPA got out of it was an end of lawsuits that might well have failed anyway, and now Pebble Mine's owners get to reapply for permits to mine for gold and copper in an area with a thriving salmon industry, one that provides about half the world's sockeye. Guess what happens to them if Pebble Mine ever becomes operational? They're all going to choke to death in polluted water, and the jobs they support will disappear along with them. Still, new permits require new public comments, which the Trump Administration doesn't care about, but is still legally required to solicit -- until such time as he declares martial law, I suppose.

Around the table: the drama-smashing machine.

U.S. State Department releases volume confirming American involvement in the overthrow of the democratically-elected leader of Iran in 1954, Dr. Mosadegh, which sparked that country's quarter-century slide into Islamic fundamentalism. This has, of course, been an open secret for decades, and you may recall Ron Paul bringing this up in every 2008 Presidential debate, but it's still good to have it from our government's own mouth.

I fancy myself an optimist, but I don't know that it's true that "A Progressive Electoral Wave is Sweeping the Country." It's a big country, with over half a million elected offices, so even citing 10 recent elections won by actual liberals doesn't necessarily describe a "wave" -- even if you add in the Democrats' surprisingly good showings in two recent Congressional special elections, good showings they owe to the actual liberals who ran in them. Paragraph 8 at least reminds us that most significant electoral change starts a long way away from Washington, which is likely why our "liberal" media don't see it until very late.

Kathryn Milano at the Roosevelt Institute informs us that, contrary to what right-wingers tell you, Dodd-Frank isn't "killing" community banks. Key takeaways: community banks are loaning and making more money than they did last year, and Dodd-Frank has always had tiered regulatory structures that demand more from big banks than the community banks. Really, big banks, not big government, are holding community banks back, and I can't see another way to keep big banks from distorting the economy than through vigorous regulation (including anti-trust regulation). File this one under "big corporations using small businesses as a human shield."

Homeowners sue Wells Fargo for modifying their mortgages without the homeowners' permission -- adding 10 years to the length of the mortgage in some cases. Doesn't matter if their monthly payments went down a bit, because people get to make that decision, not banksters, and people might not make that decision if it extends their mortgage well into old age -- a move which would, of course, also make the bankster a lot more money in interest. Boy, it sure is a good thing the House just passed a bill that would cripple the ability of federal agencies to root out this kind of corruption.

Finally, some House Reps, who imagine they really went out on a limb to pass Trumpcare, are supposedly very upset that President Trump has called the House bill "mean" and asked Senators to make it more "generous" -- and even say Mr. Trump could have trouble working with Congress on tax cuts and infrastructure as a result. Uh, no, he won't -- since they all want the same thing (i.e., tax cuts for the rich, and damn everyone else), no "negotiation" over these matters will be necessary. It's drama, people! So treat it as such.

Around the table: time for another exciting round of "who's the snowflake now?"

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) says Congressfolk "absolutely" ought to cut down on public appearances (including town halls, which he absolutely talked about at length!) in light of the recent mass shooting that critically injured Rep. Scalise. That's rather insulting to the voters, when the vast majority of us are civilized people, and civilized people don't go around shooting people. Why do you suppose they'd want to conflate tough questions at townhalls with shootings? And Rep. Barletta is one of the fellows who actually charged people real cash money to go to his townhalls in 2011, so he's, like, a snowflake emeritus. Can't campaign ads address this sort of cowardice?

Researcher finds Georgia's voting system security to be almost absurdly vulnerable to hackers -- not long before the special House election in Georgia's 6th district that has the entire Beltway world aflutter. But if Jon Ossoff weren't just another let's-all-get-along-with-Republicans Democrat, he wouldn't have to worry about election hacking. America's not Iran -- you can't hack an election here unless it's already close, and here you can actually inspire large numbers of people to vote for you, versus repeatedly dragging out the spectre of The Republican Ogre Who Must Be Stopped This Time.

Kate Cox reminds us that "The Internet Can Help Treat Sick People in Rural America, But Most Lack Adequate Access." Not because net neutrality "stifles" such access, either (I know that argument's coming!), but because corporations simply don't build broadband out there because "there's no money in it." You know, the same reason we don't have an ebola virus after all these years. You know what would help rural broadband internet access? Good old public broadband funded by good old tax hikes on the rich -- and certainly not more haranguing from Democrats about how you've got to get on board with the future before the future's even arrived in your neck of the woods.

Here's something to think about: maybe mass killings of coyotes doesn't actually make livestock safer. Not that I really fault people for thinking that mass killing of predatory animals is Teh Only Way, but scientists have found that a) even the most experienced ranchers can't always tell exactly which animal killed their animals, b) killing predators tends to wreck the social structures of their packs such that their numbers actually get bigger, which makes them more dangerous, c) non-lethal means of discouraging predators (including guard animals and chemical repellants) actually protect livestock pretty well, and d) predators fulfill other important functions in ecosystems, functions you don't always see right away. Lesson: if a pen does the job, don't use a sledgehammer.

Finally, the government of China grants preliminary approval for nine previously rejected Trump trademarks. I'm sure this development is completely unrelated to the fact that Mr. Trump has stopped haranguing China for alleged currency manipulation. And no, right-wing snowflakes, that matter is precisely at the heart of the Constitution's emoluments clause. At least right-wingers can take comfort in the likelihood that Democrats will blow their chance to remove him from office by continuing to obsess about Russia.

Action: healthy school lunches, clean water, and campaign finance reform.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Agriculture to keep, and not roll back, the school lunch nutrition standards set by the previous Administration, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The right has ginned up a "controversy" over what should be a very uncontroversial matter -- keeping junk food out of school lunches and putting more healthy food into school lunches -- and it's quite possibly even more ridiculous than the other fake outrages they peddle. For a time the "controversy" relied on anedcotes about kids not eating their apples, overblown accounts of states "having trouble" meeting the standards, and the tired right-wing trope of TEH BIG GUMMINT REGULASHUNZ IZ ALWAYSEZ TEH WRONGZ!!!! But now the controversy also relies on our Agriculture Secretary's rather flexible definition of "standard." You didn't know conservatism was all about not following the rules when you feel like it, didn't you? I kid, of course -- conservatism is not about that, even when the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" act like it is.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state Senate passed SB 624 not that long ago; you may recall that SB 624 would amend state clean water laws so that corporations -- like, just to pull an example out of the air, corporations that practice longwall coal mining -- can pollute local streams with as long as they submit a plan to clean up their mess later on. Whether they actually follow through on their plan to clean up their own mess isn't even the point -- the water's polluted in the meantime, meaning you can't drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, or fish in it! If your kid didn't want to clean his room, but instead wanted to submit a cleaning plan to you so he could do it later, would you put up with that? Of course you wouldn't! And your kid isn't even planning to pollute your water! The state House Energy and Environmental Resources Committee has planned a vote on SB 624 for this coming Monday, so the Sierra Club still helps you tell your state Reps to oppose SB 624 (and also SB 561, a sort of REINS Act for Pennsylvania, which we need like we need a hole in the head).

Finally, Pennsylvania still barely has any campaign finance laws to speak of, not even gift-banning laws with any teeth, so Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to pass a strong gift ban. It's bad enough that so many of our allegedly greatest legal minds think money is speech, but they also get their shorts in a bunch when folks try to ban gifts to lobbyists, saying that of course politicians can vote objectively even though they get gifts, though virtually any sentient life form would regard such gift-giving as a temptation, if not an outright bribe. Odd, how some people find themselves defending politicians' good nature! Still, avoid the temptation to throw up your hands and say people are just corrupt -- or worse, to say that human nature is corrupt and any law that tries to change that is a bad law. People do change over time -- we settle far fewer of our disputes with murderous violence than we used to, after all. And a world without corruption would be a better world than the one we've got, and that alone makes it worth fighting for.

Action: government spying, and Congressional corruption.

S. 1297 would permanently reauthorize Section 702 of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act -- the bill Congress passed in 2008, with the support of then-Senator Obama, who cited, of course, "the grave threats we face" as a reason to unconstitutionally spy on Americans. You may recall from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing that Section 702 specifically authorizes our government to collect emails, texts, and phone calls in bulk, without getting a warrant, and therefore without establishing probable cause before a judge. So let's get this straight: lone wolf terrorists and terrorist organizations are not "grave" or "existential threats." You know what an "existential threat" is? Nazi Germany in 1939 -- not al-Qaeda, not ISIS, and not the Orlando shooter, whom ISIS disowned upon learning he might have been in the closet. Terrorists aim to paralyze us in fear so that we make our societies less free, thus the only moral response is to stay free. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect American freedoms by rejecting S. 1297.

Meanwhile, S. 1189, the Close the Revolving Door Act, would ban Congressfolk from ever lobbying Congress on someone else's behalf after they leave office. That'd be a big deal, as too many Reps and Senators from both parties become lobbyists after retiring or getting defeated for re-election. The bill would also extend the ban on Congressional staff becoming lobbyists from one year after leaving their Congressional jobs to six. Does this restrict their free speech rights after they leave office? No, it does not -- the Constitution can't prevent you from redressing grievances with your Congressfolk, but the Constitution doesn't guarantee a "right" to make money doing that, either. Former Congressfolk who become lobbyists aren't "redressing grievances" so much as they're exploiting connections, and while the First Amendment also guarantees a right of free association, it doesn't guarantee a right to make money off your "free associations," either. If Congressfolk don't like any of that, I suppose they can always work for a living. So Rootstrikers helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight corruption by supporting S. 1189.