Thieves in the Temple.

One reporter's opinion.

S. 493 would reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs -- and, as you might expect, poison-pill amendments have attached themselves to the bill like barnacles to a ship. Here are four of them: S. Amdt. 183, a Mitch McConnell production, which would prohibit the EPA Administrator from issuing regulations about greenhouses gases; S. Amdt. 215, a Jay Rockefeller production, which would suspend EPA efforts to regulate carbon dioxide or methane; S. Amdt. 236, a Max Baucus production, which would excuse agricultural greenhouse gas emitters from needing Clean Air Act permits; and S. Amdt. 265, a Debbie Stabenow production, which would suspend greenhouse gas regulation of stationary sources (i.e. power plants and not, say, cars). I can't imagine arguing, with a straight face, that small businesses emit greenhouse gases in amounts that require attaching these draconian measures to a small business bill -- the big businesses are the big emitters, and these amendments only protect them. And how much more "protection" do big corporations need? Why don't actual people need protection? (As you contemplate these questions, n.b. that three of these amendments come from Democrats.) Penn Environment helps you call your Senators and demand that they oppose these amendments.

Meanwhile, I've been pointed to this item at the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch site, entitled "Tax the Super Rich Now or Face a Revolution." Mr. Farrell doesn't draw the line between the revolutions in the Middle East and rising commodity prices quite as well as Ed Schultz's MSNBC program did in February, but his critique is surprisingly sharp nonetheless. I also agree with Mr. Farrell's source in paragraph 5 -- the super-rich aren't Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirlers, but they have isolated themselves so much that they can't care (or even connect) effectively. At times, though, Mr. Farrell equates the "Super-Rich" with "the top 1%," and I think that's a mistake -- if the top 1% of income begins at $250,000, you're not talking about people who are either in the club or a big part of the problem (though Rep. Duffy does test that belief). I'd say the top one-fifth of one percent is "the problem."

Long distance runaround.

If you saw The Daily Show two nights ago, you know that General Electric not only pays no federal taxes, but actually gets money back from our government -- this while TV punditoids shriek about how "broke" we are and how awful public workers are. So CREDO helps you tell GE that they should pay their taxes, just like we do. Some of their apologists whine that corporations will all leave because of our high corporate tax rate, though two out of three large corporations somehow avoid paying taxes entirely. Others claim that companies need tax breaks as incentives to do the right thing, as if a moral society should treat its most powerful members like spoiled children who must be placated at any cost. And certainly I do not believe that corporations "need tax breaks" in order to create jobs. Corporations can't get rid of jobs fast enough, whether they get tax breaks or not -- witness GE itself cutting about 20 percent of its U.S. workforce since 2002. Frankly, corporations need to be taxed *more*, if for no other reason that they'll plow their gross back into the economy just to reduce taxable profits. Alas, none of this reasoning seems to resonate with Mr. Obama, who's made GE's CEO the chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. It's going to take some work to get these bozos to do the right thing.

Meanwhile, Missouri may cut off federally-paid unemployment benefits on April 2 -- because four Missouri state Senators have held up a bill that would continue those benefits. So they can, you know, make a point about federal spending -- not by, you know, petitioning their own federal officials just like the rest of us do, and certainly not by pointing to waste and fraud in the defense department, but to much smaller expenditures. So the point they're actually making, of course, is that they're a bunch of jerks. Ten thousand Missourians could have their benefits cut off next week and over fifty thousand more could have their benefits cut off shortly thereafter, all so four more idiots can grandstand about an issue they've only recently decided is important. Sadly, Missouri only permits recall elections in a few of its cities; the good citizens of the Show Me state can't recall state officials like these four, er, distinguished gentlemen. I suppose we could demand their resignation. But in the meantime, let's show these fools we're watching from all over the country, and demand that these Senators stop blocking the bill.

Finally, as the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan goes from bad to worse, we go from "no loan guarantees to the nuclear industry" to "shut down the nuclear industry in America," an industry that has never made money despite all the help it's gotten from our government. USPIRG helps you tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop licensing and relicensing nuclear power plants entirely. The NRC, by the way, has never (as in not even one time) rejected a license application from a nuclear plant. You'd think they'd have rejected at least one, just to prove they're not completely biased. I mean, even Bill O'Reilly knows that trick. Meanwhile, the People's Email Network helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop all nuclear power development entirely and get with the green energy crash program already. Of course, Congress is overrun with Republicans now, and none of them would support a green energy crash program. You'd have thought the Democrats would have, you know, done something when they had the chance. It not only would have been the right thing to do, it would have improved their chances of keeping their seats. It's almost like that was the plan all along.

Big black smoke.

The Senate FAA authorization bill actually permits aviation and railroad corporations to count abstentions as votes against unionization in union elections. In case you were wondering, this is the same crowd that told us that the Employee Free Choice Act would destroy the secret ballot (which, as I've said a hundred times, it wouldn't have done). The punchline? As at least one union points out, if the bill's sponsor had to count non-votes as votes against him in his 2010 election, he would have only received 32% of the "vote" and been defeated. That's true of just about every member of Congress, now that I think about it -- even the ones who run unopposed suffer with a turnout of less than half of eligible voters. Hey, maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all! Nah, just kidding. American Rights at Work helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose this nefarious development.

Meanwhile, Council for a Livable World helps you tell your Congressfolk to fund nuclear non-proliferation programs fully. Mr. Obama requested $2.7 billion for said programs, which help find and secure loose nuclear materials before terrorists can get their hands on them, but Congress has thus far allotted a little over $2.1 billion instead. It sure is a good thing they're such big deficit hawks and can slash a little over a half-billion dollars out of a $1.6 trillion deficit. And what courage they have, to slash a program that actually works pretty well! One thing bothers me, though: the Republicans said they were going to leave defense programs untouched, yet they're cutting this. Wait, I know: it's a program that has enjoyed actual bipartisan support in the past, which means Democrats have supported it, which means it has to be cut in order to get some of the Democrat cooties off it. How could such immature behavior be tolerated by the "liberal" media? Oh, I forgot: that question answers itself.

Finally, I have a pair of alerts relating to school vouchers: Americans United for the Separation of Church and State help you oppose H.R. 471, which would re-start the ineffective and discredited D.C. school voucher program, and the ACLU of Pennsylvania helps you oppose SB 1, which would create a school voucher program in Pennsylvania. I've said many times why I oppose school vouchers -- they don't guarantee admission or even full payment to a private school, they permit private schools to continue discriminating against students, they divert public money into private hands, they support mainly religious schools, et cetera. I must add, though, that I'm tired of watching Republicans constantly whine about how "broke" we are and then begin programs that just make us more broke. You have to wonder if that's the idea. And please understand that, when I say that, I mean that of course it's the damn idea.

The slow build.

The FRAC Act is back! H.R. 1084, a Diane DeGette production, would repeal gas industry exemptions from the Clean Water Act, so that our government could prevent hydrofracking from ruining our water. Also, H.R. 1204, the BREATHE Act (yes, it's a clumsy acronym), would close a similar loophole in the Clean Air Act, and would add hydrogen sulfide (a by-product of much gas drilling) to the Act's list of hazardous air pollutants. The Sierra Club helps you support both bills. It doesn't matter that the Republicans control the House and can filibuster whatever they like in the Senate. Pressure them anyway. People don't want to light their drinking water on fire. People don't want to breathe dirty air. If your representatives don't care if you can light your drinking water on fire or breathe dirty air as long as it makes some rich crony of theirs some short-term money, then we need to call them out and make them account for their actions. It's that simple.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you support the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics standards. The standards force power plants to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic, nickel, chromium, and acid gases, which scientists link to higher incidence of asthma, cancer, and developmental difficulties in infants. I know, I know -- what a Nazi Socialist Communist Kenyan anti-colonialist way to make decisions. Why won't anyone think about the corporations? Actually, I'm thinking the corporations will survive quite well under the new standards. I'm also thinking that they'll be forced to create jobs for people who'll help them live under the new standards. It's almost like that's the idea! And, sadly, it's almost like corporations need to be forced to hire people. Wait, scratch that: it is exactly like corporations need to be forced to hire people. It's not like they're not making money.

Finally, the Coalition for Human Needs helps you tell your Senators to reject the House's budget cuts. Naturally, they're responding that the American people spoke on Election Day, and they said we need to cut the deficit. Can you see the logical problem with telling everyone that "the American people spoke on Election Day"? Of course you can: Election Day is not the only day Americans are allowed to speak. If the American people tell their Representatives and Senators, every day and in large numbers, not to try to balance the budget on the backs of the less fortunate -- a mathematical impossibility anyway -- then it doesn't mean a damn what the Republicans want you to think happened on Election Day. Citizenship is a 24-7, year-round job, even if our representatives would prefer that it wasn't.

Endless cycle.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Gov. Corbett aims to give the state Department of Economic and Community Development the power to overrule environmental regulations. Worse than that, Mr. Corbett wants to permanently install a coal CEO as the head of Economic and Community Development, a man who claimed, years ago, that he just couldn't afford cleaning up the filth fifteen of his inactive mines poured into our water. I'm profoundly sick of hearing how regulations kill jobs and profits. The only thing regulations "kill" is a CEO's ability to redistribute wealth upward to himself, and regulations create jobs for people who understand the regulations and can help corporations comply with them. I shouldn't have to add that, historically, regulations do a good job protecting us from harm. Should I? Penn Environment helps you oppose Mr. Corbett's plan to let corporations run roughshod over environmental protections.

Meanwhile, the Delaware River Basin Commission has extended its comment period on draft regulations concerning natural gas drilling, and, as you might expect from folks who think Tom Corbett got a "mandate" from voters to set everyone's drinking water on fire, the draft regulations ain't good enough. Gas drillers could be drilling up to 18,000 wells near the Basin, and one well can spew millions of gallons of benzene- and radium-contaminated wastewater into nearby rivers and streams, but the Commission has chosen to issue regulations before fully studying the environmental impact. What part of "lighting our tap water on fire" is so hard to get? American Rivers helps you leave comments with the DRBC.

Finally, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk that they shouldn't be going out of their way to preserve handouts and bailouts for Big Oil. You know, while they slash EPA funding, slash public transit funding, fight gas mileage standards, and the like. It's like Congressional Republicans are trying to be on the wrong side of every issue. It's like they're doing a big helicopter dance in front of you, all but telling you that they don't care about you, or anyone but their corporate paymasters. Congressional Republicans don't deserve to be the majority of a damn thing, except unemployed Congressfolk. Of course, Mr. Bully Pulpit sits back and lets Congress work its will. Hey, Mr. Constitutional law professor? Congress is supposed to be working our will! So we the people will work our will on Congress with a bit more vigor.

Vital signs.

Just Foreign Policy helps you tell Congress that it, and not the President, must authorize military action in Libya. I know as well as anyone else that in practice the President drives post-WWII foreign policy, not Congress, but has that worked out very well? And the Constitution tells us that Congress, not the President, authorizes war. It's like the Founders knew something. And even Mr. Bush went to the trouble of getting a broad and vague "authorization to use military force" out of Congress. Many on the left are befuddled about all of this, partly because Mr. Gaddafi is killing his own people now. But as with warrantless wiretapping (where I consistently admonished right-wingers to imagine a President Hillary Clinton spying on their private phone conversations), one must imagine what someone from the other side would do with the power Mr. Obama has claimed -- for example, a President Pawlenty bombing Iran without particularly caring about anything other than keeping the "base" stoked for 2016. And no, I wouldn't be upset if Mr. Kucinich got his way and Mr. Obama got impeached over the Libya action. Though the Tea Party won't help this end, since they're all, you know, posers.

Meanwhile, AT&T plans to merge with T-mobile, which (if you're keeping score at home) means the nation's second-largest mobile phone service will merge with the fourth-largest. It also means that, together, AT&T and Verizon would control 80% of the nation's mobile phones. Anybody else think that's too much concentration of power, the very thing our Founders opposed first and foremost? This merger won't be good for consumers (since it reduces competition), it won't be good for workers (since the merged corporations always shed workers in the name of "efficiency"), and it certainly won't be good for network neutrality (since the corporations that hate net neutrality get stronger through mergers). Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT) has insisted that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger contain strong network neutrality provisions, which is something, but there are too many other reasons to oppose the merger, so Free Press helps you do that. Dig the talking points they give you at the link, too -- there's some really impressive arguing going on there. Study and learn.

Finally, Consumers Union helps you tell Congress to stop internet service providers from unwanted tracking via their "zombie cookies." What's a zombie cookie, you ask? Besides something that sounds completely unappetizing? Well, it's a bit of code a corporation puts on your computer while you're surfing the net, and it's a bit of code you can't remove, even by telling your web browser to delete all your cookies. Does that sound like something a corporation should be able to do to you? Doesn't that sound like something the Founders would like you, the citizen, to choose to have done to you, or not? (Wow, that's three times in one day!) I shudder to think of how our right-wing politicians will try to defend a corporation's right to track everything you do. I mean, they'll just have to assert that a corporation's right to make money is more sacrosanct than your right to privacy, won't they? Sadly, what with big telecom providers asserting that their "First Amendment rights" bulldozer net neutrality (though net neutrality protects your First Amendment rights), I think that's exactly what we're going to see. And then dystopia will have arrived.

Vital signs.

Just Foreign Policy helps you tell Congress that it, and not the President, must authorize military action in Libya. I know as well as anyone else that in practice the President drives post-WWII foreign policy, not Congress, but has that worked out very well? And the Constitution tells us that Congress, not the President, authorizes war. It's like the Founders knew something. And even Mr. Bush went to the trouble of getting a broad and vague "authorization to use military force" out of Congress. Many on the left are befuddled about all of this, partly because Mr. Gaddafi is killing his own people now. But as with warrantless wiretapping (where I consistently admonished right-wingers to imagine a President Hillary Clinton spying on their private phone conversations), one must imagine what someone from the other side would do with the power Mr. Obama has claimed -- for example, a President Pawlenty bombing Iran without particularly caring about anything other than keeping the "base" stoked for 2016. And no, I wouldn't be upset if Mr. Kucinich got his way and Mr. Obama got impeached over the Libya action. Though the Tea Party won't help this end, since they're all, you know, posers.

Meanwhile, AT&T plans to merge with T-mobile, which (if you're keeping score at home) means the nation's second-largest mobile phone service will merge with the fourth-largest. It also means that, together, AT&T and Verizon would control 80% of the nation's mobile phones. Anybody else think that's too much concentration of power, the very thing our Founders opposed first and foremost? This merger won't be good for consumers (since it reduces competition), it won't be good for workers (since the merged corporations always shed workers in the name of "efficiency"), and it certainly won't be good for network neutrality (since the corporations that hate net neutrality get stronger through mergers). Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT) has insisted that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger contain strong network neutrality provisions, which is something, but there are too many other reasons to oppose the merger, so Free Press helps you do that. Dig the talking points they give you at the link, too -- there's some really impressive arguing going on there. Study and learn.

Finally, Consumers Union helps you tell Congress to stop internet service providers from unwanted tracking via their "zombie cookies." What's a zombie cookie, you ask? Besides something that sounds completely unappetizing? Well, it's a bit of code a corporation puts on your computer while you're surfing the net, and it's a bit of code you can't remove, even by telling your web browser to delete all your cookies. Does that sound like something a corporation should be able to do to you? Doesn't that sound like something the Founders would like you, the citizen, to choose to have done to you, or not? (Wow, that's three times in one day!) I shudder to think of how our right-wing politicians will try to defend a corporation's right to track everything you do. I mean, they'll just have to assert that a corporation's right to make money is more sacrosanct than your right to privacy, won't they? Sadly, what with big telecom providers asserting that their "First Amendment rights" bulldozer net neutrality (though net neutrality protects your First Amendment rights), I think that's exactly what we're going to see. And then dystopia will have arrived.

Spring is here.

Last week, Rep. Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced H.R. 1124, the Fairness in Taxation Act. The bill would create new tax brackets for income over $1 million; brackets would be between 45% (on income between $1 million and $10 million) and 49% (on income over $1 billion). Moreover, the bill would also treat capital gains and dividend income as ordinary income (which it most surely is) for taxpayers with income over $1 million. I just can't wait for Republicans to complain that Americans don't need higher taxation in a time of recession -- setting aside that Messrs. Clinton and Reagan both raised taxes in times of recession, and kickstarted the economy both times, it ain't "all Americans" suffering from higher taxes under H.R. 1124 so much as millionaires and billionaires. And I'd make millionaire tax brackets higher, frankly, but I still think you can call your Reps in support of H.R. 1124. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act by passing H.R. 1116, the Respect for Marriage Act. "Respect for marriage"? Wow, Democrats sure do sound aggressive right there! And I can already hear the right-wingers whining that they're telling us we don't respect marriage if we don't agree with them. Don't like it when it's done to you, now, do you? Well, right-wingers, welcome to the world you made by insisting that anyone who doesn't agree with you hates God and hates America and hates the troops and hates children and puppies and bunnies. And anyway, I agree with the Democrats' assessment -- I've long said that folks who get their shorts in a bunch that the gay couple down the street might enjoy the same rights they have don't respect the rights they have. If rights aren't for everybody, then they're not really rights, are they? They're privileges. And making rights into privileges rather disrespects our rights and the good Americans who enjoy them.

In other news, Public Citizen still helps you tell President Obama to end loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry. As I've said before, you don't need to cite the continuing situation in Japan to oppose the ongoing bailout of the nuclear industry in America -- and a loan "guarantee" really is just a fancy name for bailout. But if you're not convinced, along comes Greg Palast, America's Last Journalist, to advise us on what continuing loan guarantees for the American nuclear industry could mean. Among other things, it could mean the same folks who didn't plan for the eventuality that a tsunami would follow a Pacific Rim earthquake could help build nuclear power plants right here in America. And with their loan "guaranteed" by the taxpayer, what exactly is their incentive to do anything (you know, like making sure the plant works safely) besides deliver unearned taxpayer largesse to their CEOs?

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Senators to oppose H.R. 1076, which blocks federal funding for NPR. In the event that broad public support for NPR (even among Republicans) somehow doesn't sway your Senators who are after all charged with doing their constituents' will, you might want to mention to your Senators that saving tens of millions of dollars out of a budget deficit of $1.6 trillion isn't being a "deficit hawk." Letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or supporting H.R. 1124 as described above? That's more like being a deficit hawk. Trouble with all this death-by-a-thousand-cuts, of course, is that the cuts do far more damage to the folks who need them than they provide debt relief. And I know that NPR is a far better establishment news source than any that can be found on the major networks or cable news channels. Perhaps that's a little like being the best player on the 1974-75 Washington Capitals, but it's still worth having.

Noise in this world.

Public Citizen still helps you oppose the "free" trade deal with South Korea. As you know, the proposed "free" trade deal bans any reference to the International Labor Organization's fairly good labor standards, and in the wake of Gov. Walker's path of destruction in Wisconsin, that might not be a popular position stateside these days (just as it's not a popular position among South Korean unions, who have to deal with even more regressive legislation than we do). But you may not know that Mr. Bush actually insisted on that provision back when he was negotiating the deal, as a favor to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So why didn't Mr. Obama, nominally a liberal who cares about working people, remove the provision? One can only speculate. But I'll say it's because he's not the man most Americans thought he was. Unless we make him be that man, of course.

Despite merciless attacks from House and Senate Republicans, the EPA has put together regulations that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants and oil refineries, among other polluters, and Repower America helps you leave a public comment supporting strong limits. TV punditoids have done so well lying about "job-killing" regulations and about the "hoax" of climate change (and, indeed, about science generally) that the country's fairly evenly-divided on the issue. But strong regulations would create jobs, and not just in the public sector -- the private sector's obviously going to have to hire more people who can understand and implement the changes needed to comply with regulations. And I don't think very many Americans actually favor more industrial pollution. Only corporations favor that. And, as I think I've said before, I'm tired of corporations having all the say about everything.

Finally, you may be heartened to know that the campaign to stop "corrective rape" of gay folk in Africa has yielded some fruit, as a group of lesbian activists walked into the South African parliament and demanded change a few days ago. I doubt that said activists would have contemplated such an act a year ago, lest they get beaten up or "turned straight" through rape. Now, what these good folks achieved, with the help of almost two dozen other South African activist organizations -- some relief for urgent cases, a series of meetings with the ministry in six weeks, a promise for more concrete proposals -- may not sound like much. But (at the risk of sounding like our President), change is pretty hard work, and (unlike our President) these activists have been fighting as hard as they can, against pretty entrenched forces, for many years. So change.org helps you keep up the pressure on the South African government.

Shadows of a thousand suns.

The IAM Activist Center helps you support a 25% surtax on the top one-tenth of one percent of income. I'm not a big fan of dedicating tax increases to specific purposes (like the IAM's coveted WPA-style jobs program), but I think we've at least three good reasons to support such a surtax anyway. One, the program will either raise revenue or induce folks in a position to pay themselves millions of dollars every year (i.e., CEOs) to put all that money back into the economy -- in other words, either our government will use the money to create jobs, or our government will induce corporations to use the money to create jobs. Two, it's the right thing to do -- our Founders envisioned a nation that opposed concentrated power wherever it might sit, and I can't imagine they'd be happy with a nation where the super-rich have more say in everything than anyone else. Three, such a surtax would not constitute a burden unto the super-rich -- they'll still have their first couple of thousand taxed at 10 percent, the next twenty thousand or so taxed at 15 percent, and so on, just like the rest of us. They'll still be able to thrive; they'll just be less able to throttle everyone else's ability to thrive.

Meanwhile, the House plans to vote today on H.Con.Res. 28, a Dennis Kucinich-Walter Jones resolution requiring that President Obama withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan before the end of this calendar year. Just Foreign Policy provides both a sample script for a phone call to your Reps and an email tool for your Reps. The last such resolution didn't quite break 100 votes in the House (and didn't attract a large number of teabaggers), and I keep hearing that no one expects this resolution to pass, but poppycock on all that. We communicate our will to our representatives because we must, and when they don't listen, we communicate it again and again and again until they do. With over 50 House seats up for grabs every two years for the foreseeable future, sooner or later it'll come down to doing their jobs or losing their jobs.

Finally, Secretary of the Interior Salazar still mulls over new oil drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean, despite all the noise we've made about the issue. Drilling in the Arctic may well be considerably worse than drilling in the Gulf, where at least we're not trying to recover oil from broken ice, where at least we've studied native ecosystems more thoroughly, where at least we've accepted that there might be other economic interests worth protecting besides the oil industry. But of course Mr. Obama must pursue the Republicans' all-of-the-above energy policy, though they'll never give him any credit for it, and of course they'd prefer that all-of-the-above excludes any-of-the-above-that-might-work-without-making-oil-companies-richer. The Pew Environment Foundation helps you tell Mr. Salazar to do the right thing.

So much trouble.

Japan's struggling in the aftermath of an earthquake and a tsunami, and you've probably tried to help them out via text-to-donate programs -- but you may not know that since the big telecoms don't typically transfer donations until after your next monthly billing cycle, your donations might not get to where they need to go for as long as 90 days. And those folks in Japan are struggling now. The big telecoms could send your donations right away, as they did after the Haiti earthquake, but as of yet they haven't. So change.org helps you tell the big telecoms to send your donations now. The big telecoms get a lot of good PR for providing text-to-donate programs in the first place. It'd be a shame if they got a lot of bad PR for being bean-counters.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues negotiating a "free" trade agreement with eight Pacific-area nations, and the Electronic Freedom Foundations alerts us to the U.S.'s insistence on strict digital management provisions. Funny how our government ignores our own labor protections and corporate crime laws when we negotiate "free" trade agreements, but tries to force-feed other nations with ever-more draconian copyright protections, protections likely so strict that they'll compel other nations to block websites and cut off users. And I only say "likely" because the U.S. has been negotiating in secret, like it has something to hide. But the EFF helps you demand some oversight from your Congressfolk. Since, you know, that's their job and such.

Finally, Gov. Walker (E-WI) really, really liked this flatugasm from one Jonathan Rupprecht of Milwaukee on Tuesday, and just from the title ("Democracy Demands Maturity"), you can guess why. Mr. Rupprecht whines that Madison protestors, uniformly praised by Wisconsin's police for being the model of decorum, have somehow demonstrated "democracy at its worst" with their "demagoguery" and "mob mentality" and "lies" and "hatred" and "name-calling" and "a focus on me and myself," that last plaint particularly odd during protests concerning collective bargaining. I wonder if Mr. Rupprecht was just as aghast at the "maturity" of protestors who deliberately disrupted townhall meetings, carried signs at rallies with racial epithets, and called folks who disagreed with them Nazis, Communists, and Socialists. I'll bet he wasn't, since in his world "maturity" apparently means agreeing with him (or, more precisely, the Republican overlords he supports).

Already one.

Surprise! Perhaps spurred on by the continuing 80,000-plus rallies going on in Madison, Wisconsin (including another one over the weekend), progressive organizations will hold "Defend the Dream" rallies today, and MoveOn helps you find one. I must say I'm heartened to find so many good Americans so willing to stand up and demand that the government treat the American Dream as if it belongs to all the people, and not just corporations. I must also say I'm irritated that the "liberal" media -- which treated much smaller, corporate-backed Tea Party rallies as some sort of Great Awakening -- have done their damndest to ignore these good Americans. I wonder if it has something to do with all the corporations that have their grubby hands in "liberal" media outlets, and vice versa. And please understand that by "I wonder" -- ah, you can guess the rest.

Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee apparently plans to give intelligence agency directors the power to strip whistleblowers of their pensions, merely by accusing them of leaking classified information. Never mind that intelligence agencies often use such accusations as threats, or that these accusations won't get heard in court, or (even) that agencies also retroactively classify publicly-released information. Simply ask yourself: where does the Constitution say citizens must pay for crimes of which they've been accused, rather than convicted? Oh, wait: the answer has the words national security in it, right? Well, if individuals can't call out wrongdoers without fear of government reprisal, then we have no damn national security. The National Whistleblowers Center helps you demand some sense from the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Besides writing the email, you might want to call Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein at 202.224.3841.)

Finally, you all know what's been happening in Japan -- first the earthquake, now the nuclear reactor failures that seem to be outrunning the nation's ability to fix them. And you may remember that Mr. Obama has expressed strong support for loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, putting taxpayers on the hook no matter how well or badly corporations build and maintain their plants. I don't have to mention that nuclear power plants have never sustained themselves financially despite all their subsidies, or that a nuclear power plant is a giant bullseye for terrorists, do I? Plenty of reasonable people still support nuclear power these days, despite all I've said above -- it is emission-free, and doesn't demand that we use oil or coal. But I don't suspect reasonable people want taxpayers to have absolutely no say in how their money gets spent, which is all a loan guarantee will ever guarantee. And no one's going to try to blow up the sun or control the wind, either. CREDO provides the relevant petition.

Freefall.

CREDO helps you tell Senate Democrats to have the spine of the Wisconsin Democrats. I'll let CREDO tell it: "The best way to fix our economy is to get people back to work. But that message isn't something we're hearing from the Democratic leadership of the Senate or from the White House. Republicans ask for unconscionable cuts and the Democratic response is to try to suggest slightly less unconscionable cuts." The Wisconsin 14, on the other hand, left the state rather than permit an unconscionable anti-collective bargaining bill to pass, and though that bill did pass without them last week, the battle ain't over, because the Wisconsin Republicans might have broken the law in the process of passing the bill, and because a few Wisconsin Senators might get recalled. Sadly, we can't recall U.S. Senators, but Democrats have a majority in the U.S. Senate. All they have to do is refuse to play Republican games. If the 85,000-plus demonstrators in Madison over the weekend are any indication, the people will have the Democrats' back if they do the right thing. And if Democrats don't do the right thing? Then what happened on Election Day 2010 will happen again.

Castles made of sand.

Chuck Collins reminds us that instead of cutting services, we ought to be ensuring corporations pay their fair share of taxes. He calls out the following corporations: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, FedEx, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Boeing, General Electric, Mattel, Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. Fairly impressive list, ain't it? He also offers a great rebuttal to the zombies who chant that making corporations do anything for anybody will "kill jobs": "the patriotic businesses that currently pay their taxes and have to compete against these tax dodgers are the employers we want. It undercuts U.S. jobs for domestic banks, retailers, and manufacturers to have to compete against companies that can game the tax system." Now you might want to join U.S. Uncut and/or The Other 98 Percent. Or, if you own a business, or invest in a business, you may want to sign a petition sponsored by Businesses and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse.

Meanwhile, we've got a lot of folks trying to leave Libya, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine -- over 20,000 stranded at the Libya/Tunisia border as we speak. And the European Union could help resettle refugees quite well, due to their geographical proximity, but it hasn't committed to doing so yet. The United States has begun assisting Libyan refugees (via the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights), so why not the EU? I couldn't tell you. But I can tell you that Libya's neighboring countries are going to get swamped with refugees, if they're not already. I can also tell you that, despite the economic upheavals we've inflicted on ourselves out here in the Western world, we can still do a lot to help people trying to escape a damn war zone. So Amnesty International helps you tell the EU to help Libyan refugees out.

In the cold, cold night.

Public Citizen helps you tell the Senate not to cut funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. No sense asking why Republicans are doing what they're doing -- they're not stupid, and they were here when the financial sector destroyed the economy in 2008, just like the rest of us were. I can only conclude that they're evil. I suppose the better of them will contend that they're just trying to do what they must so they can keep the financial sector -- which is still doing very well in the middle of this economic Armageddon, by the way, with another year of record-breaking bonus payouts -- from funding some far worse candidate for office. But if that's anyone's honest calculation, we're in bad, bad shape. Better to choose courage in these times.

Meanwhile, a House technology subcommittee passed a "resolution of disapproval" yesterday, forbidding the FCC from enforcing any net neutrality regulations, even their extremely inadequate ones. In other words, the Republicans want the big corporations to control your internet experience, and they want you, the consumer, to have no control. They want to violate your First Amendment right to free association, so that their corporate paymasters can get even richer. And does not the Bible instruct us not to be worshipers of mammon? I mean, I'm not sure if I'm putting this plainly enough. The rest of the House Republican majority, including the worthless "insurgents" of the Tea Party, will rubber stamp this monstrosity, so Free Press helps you tell your Senators to stop it. And don't trust that Mr. I'll-take-a-back-seat-to-no-one will veto the resolution when he gets it. He might be in a bipartisan mood that day.

Finally, the Wisconsin Senate voted to strip public workers of collective bargaining rights yesterday. How did they do it? Simple: they stripped the part of the budget "repair" bill relating to collective bargaining out of the bill, and voted on just that -- and since it wasn't part of a spending bill anymore, it didn't require the quorum which the 14 Democratic Senators have denied the Senate by leaving the state. Every time I think the days of chaos are over, that Republicans won't do just any old thing to destroy any bit of progress we've made over the last century or so, the Republicans just go ahead and prove me wrong. But I don't think the good people of Wisconsin, or America, will take this lying down. More details as they arrive.

The long-awaited Italics Hammer/Linkswarm crossover issue!

Pennsylvania residents have no doubt heard about Gov. Corbett's State of the State address, during which he (and nobody could have predicted this!) said he'd just have to cut a whole slew of government services that do good -- while also cutting corporate taxes (in a state where two-thirds of corporations already don't pay taxes) and not taxing gas drillers. Clearly he's been hoping that Wisconsin's governor takes all the flack, and that Pennsylvania's good citizens don't rise up against a regressive political machine. Thanks to Keystone Progress, here's where we tell him he's wrong, that we're not going to take his arrogance lying down. And that, as they say, is that.

Meanwhile, as Senate Republicans may be getting jitters about actually having to put their names on all those proposed House budget cuts, I've still got action alerts a-plenty opposing Republican "ideas" about the deficit. Consumers Union helps you oppose Republican budget-cutting aims generally, CREDO helps you oppose the Republicans' attack on the EPA specifically, Free Press helps you oppose the Republicans' attack on NPR and PBS, and Planned Parenthood helps you oppose the Republicans' attack on, well, Planned Parenthood. Seems self-interested of them, until you remember that you might one day need cervical cancer screening, adoption assistance, or even a simple HIV test, and the Republicans' war on Planned Parenthood might deprive you of all that.

Forces at work.

I've received a few "no on H.R. 1, yes on Senate continuing resolution" action alerts, but why pass them along? What good does it do to support a continuing resolution that preserves most of the House's unconscionable spending cuts? All the time these pimps make us choose between a baby burned to death and a baby half-burned to death -- you know, versus, say, not dropping the baby in the fire in the first place. So the AFSCME helps you call your Senators and oppose cruel cuts to public services. We do face something of a paradox when defending public services: they are rather cheap when compared to the size of the deficit, but their absence damages a lot of lives. You'd think deficit hawks would like programs that don't cost a lot but give a lot of bang for the buck. You have to wonder why they don't.

Meanwhile, Congress extended expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act at the end of last month -- meaning we have until the end of May to demand meaningful reform. So the Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you support PATRIOT Act reform. Frankly, the contact tool makes too much of the "bipartisan" opposition that kept PATRIOT Act extensions going for only three months -- Tea Partiers are not now, nor have they ever been, civil libertarians; they're just part of the Trojan Horse the Republicans used to seize power in the House again. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that they're still your Representatives, no matter how much they mouth off about enumerated powers and whatnot, and their job is still to represent your will, not the will of their corporate paymasters and their media enablers. And if telling 'em once doesn't work, tell 'em twice. Or more.

Change in the weather.

H.R. 910 (a Fred Upton production) and S. 482 (a Jim Inhofe production) would prevent the EPA from combatting the threat of global climate change under the authority of the Clean Air Act. Mr. Inhofe has long been a serial liar about environmental matters (as well as, perhaps not coincidentally, a receiver of large amounts of Big Oil contributions), and Mr. Upton quickly abandoned any semblance of reason once his committee chair got threatened, so these bills (whose texts are unavailable on thomas.loc.gov at this writing) can't be good. And can we kill the zombie lie that regulations hurt the economy? Regulations, if anything, force companies to invest more in the economy, in order to meet stricter standards; regulations just don't allow corporations to invest in exactly the way they want, all the time -- which is a good thing, since our recent experience shows that corporations would rather invest in CEO salaries than anything else. The Sierra Club helps you oppose H.R. 910 and S. 482.

Meanwhile, Care2 helps you tell the governments of Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to stop permitting its citizens to terrorize gay folks. Blackmail, extortion, "corrective" rape -- these are just a few of the things gay folks in many African nations face on a daily basis, all because homosexuality is against the law in these nations. And, as you might imagine, violence against gays goes largely unreported by victims, since they don't want to be prosecuted for, you know, being gay. This crap is wrong no matter where it happens, and if we have the capability to shame these societies into doing the right thing -- a capability which, especially in the internet age, we most certainly have -- then we ought to do it.

Extreme ways.

The ACLU helps you tell the Senate to reject the House attack on Title X family planning. The House's continuing resolution bill, H.R. 1, zeroes out funding for Title X, the National Family Planning Program, which funds counseling, contraception, and preventive health screenings for women and families. (And, er, not abortions. Because that would be against the law.) In practice, zeroing out Title X means the less fortunate won't be able to get cervical cancer treatments, won't be able to take care of their babies or put babies up for adoption, won't be able to get AIDS treatment, won't get Pap smears, won't get breast exams -- starting to see a pattern? Of course you are. And zeroing out Title X isn't just a way for Republicans to tell women to go screw themselves -- it's also a terrible way of actually reducing the deficit, since it represents some $300 million. Against that $1.6 trillion deficit. Republican sugar daddies in the oil industry still get their tax breaks, though. And that Cayman Islands building with millions of corporate "headquarters" is still safe. Some deficit hawks.

Meanwhile, Citizens for Tax Justice reports, at length, about Mr. Obama's proposals in re the corporate tax rate. Long story short: closing loopholes is admirable, but cutting the overall tax rate isn't at all necessary. What part of record profits does Mr. Obama not understand? CTJ spies the central problem as Mr. Obama's insistence that any corporate tax reform be "revenue-neutral," a demand Mr. Obama hardly needs make the way Democrats made it of Mr. Reagan in the mid-1980s. But I spy the central problem as Mr. Obama's insistence that he always begin negotiations with his base's fallback position, which just about guarantees that the Republicans (who always begin with their base's most extreme position) will win something far worse. And then Mr. Obama will bless it, in the holy name of bipartisanship. I'm pretty sure, by now, that this is exactly what he wants anyway.

The battle of evermore.

I have no end to action alerts opposing H.R. 1! USPIRG helps you tell your Senators to cut real waste, not programs that help people. Odd that their missive is so short, when their email reminds me that H.R. 1 eliminates high-speed rail funding, cuts Consumer Financial Protection Bureau funding by 44 percent, cuts Pell Grants by $5 billion, cuts clean water funding by $2 billion, and cuts $88 million for food safety inspection -- all while leaving $4 billion in oil and gas subsidies untouched, leaving $100 billion in offshore corporate tax haven loopholes untouched, leaving all the waste in Homeland Security and Defense untouched. I think you could add all that in. (Consumers Union provides a similar and more expansive tool.)

No doubt you've heard how bad it is in Libya. You may not have heard, however, that two Libyan pilots ordered by Mr. Gaddafi to bomb civilian protestors did the miraculous: they refused, thus facing execution. They haven't been executed because they flew to Malta, but the President and Refugee Commissioner of Malta have refused to say whether they'll give the two pilots asylum. I hope they do, because these pilots are heroes, as are any military personnel who act on their conscience and refuse to give in to dictators ordering the murder of their countryfolk. Malta might have another reason to give them asylum, of course -- its economy depends heavily on tourism, and no country dependent on tourism needs a public relations black eye, especially one seeming to fly in the face of the Middle Eastern people's will. Change.org helps you tell Malta to grant the two heroes asylum.

Finally, back in the U.S., USA Today has, for whatever reason, consistently fouled up its reporting on public worker pay. Reporter Dennis Cauchon, filer of several reports on the "controversy" the right-wing has ginned up over public workers, consistently tells us that public workers are on average better paid than private workers. He just as consistently tell us that the "analysis" he cites "include(s) full and part-time workers and (does) not adjust for specific jobs, age, education or experience." Perhaps he thinks that's "balance." I think it's a waste of space -- if an analysis lumping together nurses and waiters doesn't adjust for education, experience and qualifications, it's not worth mentioning at all. And yet USA Today continues to mention it. Perhaps not coincidentally, they also forget to mention that other analyses tell us that Wisconsin workers actually do less well than their private-sector counterparts. You'll want to contact USA Today Standards Editor Brent Jones by phone at 1.800.872.7073, or via email at accuracy at usatoday dot com.

Some other spring.

H.R. 1, the Republicans' deficit-"busting" bill that deals death-by-a-thousand-cuts to the less fortunate while doing nothing to offend Congress's corporate paymasters, now moves to the Senate, and NETWORK, the (all together now) national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you demand that the Senate stand up for America's most vulnerable. I might use stronger language than NETWORK uses in its sample letter. Also, Public Citizen helps you oppose H.R. 1's cuts to consumer protection efforts. I'll let Public Citizen tell it: "Judging from their proposed budget, House Republicans would prefer to have Wall Street firms, billionaire CEOs and corporate lobbyists writing the rules instead of playing by them." Because that worked so well in, say, 2008! Of course, it's not that Republicans have no memory of the past; it's that they pretend not to.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Republican majority in Pennsylvania's legislature has brought us SB 3 -- it's got a high single-digit number! It must be really important! SB 3 would prevent Pennsylvania insurance companies from even offering abortion coverage to anyone in the new federal insurance exchange -- which is a bit of overkill, since the Affordable Care Act (which creates the new exchange) already bans public subsidies for abortion coverage. So the Pennsylvania ACLU helps you oppose SB 3. They ask a very good question: "Why should women who participate in the exchange in Pennsylvania be forced to accept less care than women outside the exchange?" Indeed, it's almost like the Pennsylvania Republicans want to make it unattractive for women to use the federal exchange -- especially the low-income, self-employed, and under-covered women the exchange would, ostensibly, help. And please understand that by "almost," I mean "certainly."

Finally, the state of New Mexico is mulling SB 383, the Medical Harm Disclosure Act. I was about to say I'm a bit surprised that New Mexico currently doesn't force hospitals within the state to disclose incidents of patient harm, but then I remembered that the grossly-overrated Bill Richardson (decidedly unpopular now that he's left office) was Governor for two terms. SB 383 doesn't deal with hospital-acquired infections (New Mexico already has a law covering that), but would deal with medication errors, wrong procedures, and the like. And, er, those who hear objections based on privacy rights should check out Section 6 (D) of the bill (which you can read here.) Consumers Union helps New Mexico residents support SB 383.