Thieves in the Temple.

Second guessing.

H.R. 1489, the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2011, would restore Glass-Steagall-era protections for banking consumers. Like prohibiting banks from being owned by investment firms. Or prohibiting officers of banks from serving on boards of investment firms. Or prohibiting investment firms from doing commercial banking. These firewalls between the banking and securities industries existed until 1999, when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed them. But we had those protections for a reason -- the more investment firms get involved in commercial banking, and the more banks get involved in the shell-game economics that ruined our economy, the less safe your money is. I'd much prefer that my bank wasn't in the business of selling derivatives; not only could I be reasonably sure that my money'll be there tomorrow, but I could also be reasonably sure that my bank wasn't lying to me so it could make more money off me. If you feel the same, you may want to call your Reps and Senators and ask them to pass H.R. 1489.

You may recall that Congress seemed unable to pass the James Zadroga 9.11 Health and Compensation Act late last year until The Daily Show shamed them into doing it. Well, the Act no longer covers cancer treatments, which leaves a lot of first responders out in the lurch. So The Petition Site helps you tell your Congressfolk to help out these good Americans. I guess the response from Our Lords and Masters will be a) WE'RE BROKE WAAAAAAA! and b) who can really say whether anyone got cancer from 9.11? And my response would be a) change your diaper and tax the rich already and b) after ten years, I think our scientists know enough about the chemicals 9.11 first responders encountered as they were rescuing folks and cleaning things up. We could, you know, just bypass this thorny question entirely by passing H.R. 676, which would establish a single-payer health care system in the United States, which would be much cheaper and more amenable to the people's will than our private health care system. Just sayin'.

I don't know why some people still do what they do, but apparently an Arkansas high school couldn't let a black student be a valedictorian this year, though she finished first in her class. According to the student's mother, the school feared a "big mess" if Kymberly Wimberly was valedictorian, so they named a white co-valedictorian. The school, for its part, claimed that school policy demanded that students who take more course work but get a lower grade (like the other student) not be "penalized," which sounds like the lie folks come up with after they know they've stepped in it. This all reminds me of a story someone once told me about their high school bringing in a phonograph so the kids could dance during their lunch period, then taking it away the day after a black boy and a white girl danced together; now, who told me that story? Oh, I remember: my grandmother. Color of Change helps you tell the school to do the right thing already.

Finally, hard as it may be to believe, I've got two pieces of good news. One, the Danville, Virginia IKEA workers -- the ones who'd been facing pay cuts, scheduling insanity, dangerous working conditions, and racial discrimination -- voted to form a union on Wednesday. No word if IKEA plans to suddenly close the plant, as WalMart did to its Jonquiere, Quebec store in 2005 shortly after workers unionized there -- but, admittedly, IKEA doesn't have as many options as WalMart, given that all their Swedish workers belong to unions. And two, Mr. Boehner's debt "reduction" "plan" vote never happened yesterday, as Republican House leadership apparently couldn't whip enough votes to pass it. They'll try again today, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is moving his own not-all-that-different bill as we speak. All the anti-Boehner links I posted yesterday are still active, and certainly nothing prevents you from calling your Senators and telling them that the Reid bill doesn't raise revenues, cuts from programs people need, et cetera, and that they shouldn't support it.

Indirect enquiries.

John Boehner's debt "reduction" "plan" gets a vote today, with Republicans apparently whipped into fervor by this scene from a movie that was out last year. Sorry, all I've got is faith. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Rep to oppose the Boehner plan. So does the People's Email Network. So does the AFSCME. So does Color of Change. Our "leaders" from the President on down stand far to the right of their bosses, the American people. The people want the rich to pay more in taxes; Congress does not. The President supposedly does, but also seems awfully quick to give that point up in negotiations. It's almost like that's the idea.

Meanwhile, our leaders are busy setting fires elsewhere. Currently, whistleblowers in the financial services industry must report the lawbreaking they see to the SEC. But H.R. 2483, from Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), would force those whistleblowers to report that lawbreaking to their bosses first. You can see the problem with that, right? It would give their bosses the opportunity to cover up what's going on. The bill even lets employers write their policies so that when they retaliate against a whistleblower, the law won't call it "retaliation," even if it obviously is. It's sad that so many "tough on crime" law-and-order types look the other way when Republicans let corporations nullify laws that protect good citizens. And, ah, guess how much money Mr. Grimm got from the financial sector for his 2010 campaign? $330,000! See a connection there? Demand Progress helps you tell your Rep to oppose H.R. 2483.

In other news, you've probably heard about the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K., where News International (a subsidiary of the News Corporation) allegedly allowed employees to hack into cell phones and bribe police officers, in the name of getting scoops. And, as you might expect, News Corporation's domestic organs, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, have opined that there's nothing to see here in the U.S., though families of 9.11 victims are as we speak meeting with the U.S. Attorney General to discuss similar phone-hacking allegations. Perhaps some folks who watch Bill O'Reilly don't realize that he's an employee of the organization he's telling us has done nothing wrong -- or maybe so many corporations own so many other corporations now that folks have become numb to the obvious conflicts of interest. But we have laws for a reason; one of them, sadly, is to remind us of how we ought to be when we've strayed from the path of righteousness. Free Press helps you tell Congress to investigate the News Corporation.

Finally, I have good news related to Tuesday's opening paragraph: Raquel Nelson, who faced three years in jail for vehicular homicide, a homicide committed against her 3-year-old son by a different and inebriated driver who only served six months for the crime, did not go to jail and will get a new trial. Even if I could be convinced that Ms. Nelson "caused" her son to die -- which, in case I wasn't clear enough the other day, she didn't -- I would not throw her in jail for something someone else did. The perp in this account isn't the mom, it's the guy who never should have taken painkillers with his booze before getting on the road. Am I getting my point across? Are we so addled with rage that we decide that anyone peripherally-related to any injustice must be vanquished? Perhaps not: “When I was upset about what [Guy] got," Ms. Nelson's brother said, "I was angry, and my sister told me not to have hate in my heart." They're better people than I am.

The sound of sinners.

You may know that half a dozen states have passed (and a dozen more have tried to pass) voter ID laws that require photo ID, which many low-income and senior voters do not have. Never mind the real problems voters face -- harassment at the polls, getting purged from the voting rolls for no good reason, and all those don't-vote-if-you-got-a-parking-ticket flyers that seem to crop up near Election Day. (And don't even get me started about that disgusting Scott Walker, who's now closing down 10 DMVs in Wisconsin after signing a voter ID bill into law.) The forces of evil have already conned millions of voters into voting against their interests; now that those voters have seen that mistake, they want to make sure those voters don't get a chance to correct it. But federal action remains an option. So the ACLU helps you urge the Department of Justice to investigate these voter ID laws. If DOJ finds these laws violate the Voting Rights Act, we can stop this madness.

Meanwhile, word on the street is now timber corporations want an exemption from the Clean Water Act, like gas drilling corporations currently get. Why? Because polluted stormwater from logging roads carries a lot of sediment, which carries a lot of other pollutants. Sigh. Instead of demanding exemptions that most people don't get, how about, oh, I don't know, evolving? How about figuring out how not to pollute the waterways around you? I mean, this is a can-do country, isn't it? And I bet plenty of people within the logging industry would be eager to work on this very problem if their fearless leaders would make it enough of a priority. Why, working on safer, cleaner logging would create jobs! Ah, but what do I know? I'm not a big corporation, obsessed with cutting all its labor so the CEO can gold-plate his plumbing; I'm just a regular old American who believes in getting things done. And I don't believe in dumping crap in the water everyone uses just to protect some corporation's profits. If you feel the same, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose special treatment for the timber industry. The timber industry should thank you, because you're helping it build character.

Finally, Mr. Boehner has submitted a debt limit "plan" that he's already had to re-do because the math didn't work out right, and it's another plan that gives Americans the back of our government's hand, that leaves war spending untouched, that doesn't raise taxes on the rich though none of them need a damn fifth vacation home. The good news? No one likes it, not even the Tea Party caucus in the House, and Mr. Obama has already said he'll veto it. But that doesn't mean the people shouldn't pile on! The National Women's Law Center provides one email tool, the Coalition for Human Needs provides another, and NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, provides another. The latter two alerts are more general in subject than the first, but you can rewrite any of them to your taste.

Now with more bile than ever before!

First things first: Georgia resident Raquel Nelson faces three years in jail for vehicular homicide in the death of her four-year-old son. But here's the catch: she didn't drive the car -- one Jerry L. Guy did, and he was drunk, and he served six months. Three years, six months -- when did this stop being America? I'm as much for encouraging parental responsibility as anyone else, and I see people cross busy highways, too, and I often think they're dumb. But I never think of charging them with murder when their kids get hit, and I certainly don't think of punishing the mother more than the person who actually hit the kid. This is what is wrong with America: we never punish the right people (case in point: Goldman Sachs still makes money), and then we punish people with a sledgehammer when a rubber mallet would do the job. And yes I do rather suspect the color of Ms. Nelson's skin has something to do with it, even if that something is that nobody cares about getting public transit right in "those" neighborhoods. A bus stop three-tenths of a mile from a traffic light? Really? Change.org provides the relevant petition to Ms. Nelson's judge and Governor.

Meanwhile, the House has put together an Interior Appropriations bill that must rank as one of the most insane bills ever to come out of committee. What does this bill do? Roll call! Blocks the EPA from regulating mercury from power plants! Opens up Grand Canyon-area land to uranium mining! Completely defunds federal efforts to list plant or animal species as "endangered"! Guts Clean Water Act protections for over 100 million Americans! Blocks the EPA from regulating almost any greenhouse gases! Blocks almost anyone from regulating mountaintop removal mining! Gives Big Oil a slew of waivers from the Clean Air Act! Limits public comments on any regulation promulgated by the Forest Service! In a sane and healthy society, voting for this bill would end any Representative's career -- "Republicans just aren't convinced by all that science telling us that breathing and eating and drinking crap makes us sick" -- but, you know, Democrats are hardly the Great Shepherds of what we've earned through hard work, either. Both the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club help you oppose the Interior Appropriations bill.

Finally, the debt limit. (Did you think I forgot?) No, I didn't watch the speeches of President Appeasement and House Speaker Cryboy -- I have better taste in drama than that, and anyway, what they want doesn't matter; what we want matters. So Color of Change helps you tell our government, again, that they should balance the budget on the backs of the rich and not on the backs of people who get Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And I'm getting action alerts demanding a clean debt limit increase, without a "deal" attached; True Majority helps you email your Congressfolk, and United for a Fair Economy helps you call your Congressfolk at 1.800.830.5738, both toward this end. Meanwhile, MoveOn cleverly helps you petition big Republican corporate donors to stop giving to Republicans until they raise the debt limit (under threat of boycott, of course). Finally, Campaign for America's Future helps you find your local Rep's office, so you can protest outside at 12 noon today. Many of your fellow Americans will be there. Good luck to everyone fighting the good fight today.

Don't sell your dreams.

I don't care how the debt limit "negotiations" are going -- I only care about doing the right thing, which is telling our "leaders" to cut the deficit fairly. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, provides one email tool, the Coalition for Human Needs provides another, and the AFSCME provides a toll-free number, 1.888.907.1485, so you can call your Congressfolk. Also, former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) reminds us of a number of other things that could help cut the deficit, which you may add to the list I provided last Friday: end the damn wars, eliminate the long-term capital gains tax loophole, let Medicare negotiate the price of prescription drugs (just like private insurance companies and the Veterans Administration do), and require folks to pay payroll taxes on income over $107,000. And Wealth for the Common good reminds me of two more: supporting the Fairness in Taxation Act, H.R. 1124, and the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, S. 1346. All our government wants to do right now is hurt us. I'm going to say that one more time, just in case you think I don't mean it: all our government wants to do right now is hurt us. But if they become afraid of losing their jobs because they do the wrong thing, they'll do the right thing. And they'll only become afraid if we all speak out.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the state of New Jersey plans to fund an offshore wind power plant, but the nefarious Koch brothers have struck with an "analysis" of the project that (hard to believe, Harry!) finds it wanting. They say it'll somehow cost jobs though actual human beings will have to build it, they say it'll raise energy prices by a number that may or may not outpace inflation, they cite short-term costs of wind energy in cents per kilowatt as if those costs will never come down with increased usage -- long story short, it's a big plate of stupid with stupid sauce. So The Petition Site helps you support the New Jersey wind power project. Gov. Christie did sign $100 million in wind power subsidies into law, and New Jerseyans do like their politicians to be independent of special interests, so perhaps Gov. Christie will see it in his own interest to flip a bird to the Koch brothers this time (as he did not do when he withdrew New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative).

Finally, H.R. 2497, the so-called HALT Act, would hamstring the Executive branch's ability to carry out the law in re certain immigration matters -- waivers, adjustment of legal status, temporary protected status, and the like. All ye need know about the Act is that it aims for the "suspension of effectiveness of certain laws" -- the bill's words, not mine -- and that said "suspension" would end on January 21, 2013, a date I'm sure the bill's sponsor, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, chose entirely at random. All of Mr. Smith's "suspensions" would put real people in real danger -- victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking -- just so Mr. Smith can score cheap political points against Mr. Obama. (And I'm all for scoring political points against Mr. Obama -- I'd just like for someone, anyone, to earn those points with good policy.) And if Mr. Smith is so bent on fighting undocumented immigration, he might consider supporting the Employee Free Choice Act as written before 2010, which would better enable workers to bargain collectively so they can't be replaced with cheaper foreign workers. Tools for contacting your Congressfolk are, as always, in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

Pirate days.

Word on the street is that Mr. Obama may be ready to give up on getting Republicans to agree to new revenues, in order to get a debt deal done. It might be right, it might be wrong; Mr. Obama might be evil, or he might be stupid. None of it matters: if he's seriously considering becoming a Republican in all but name, the people need to push back, and big. The White House contact page is here; the White House's phone number is 1.202.456.1111. Message: raise taxes on the rich; end offshore tax havens for corporations; close corporate tax loopholes that allow bailed-out banks to pay nothing in taxes; enact a financial speculation tax of one-quarter of one percent. That's just off the top of my head; I'm sure you could add other things.

It doesn't matter, either, that none of that is "on the table" for this "grand bargain." The people express their will; their representatives act on that will. That's how it's supposed to be. No one with a functioning brain or heart thinks cutting Social Security and Medicare is a better idea than raising taxes on people with too much damn money and power. I keep hearing that politicians can't do good because the corporations will come after them. But the people aren't like corporations -- do right by the people, they'll have your back. Strange, that no one in Washington seems to understand that. It's almost like they have a professional interest in not understanding that.

Pandemonium.

Another week, another House vote to cut the deficit sort-of on the backs of workers, another "Gang of Six" "grand bargain" that would cut the deficit sort-of a little less on the backs of workers. The silver lining? Lots of folks in both parties in the House and Senate don't want any of the "bargains" they're being offered. Hey, neither do I! So once or twice or thrice more into the breach: Roots Action helps you tell the House Progressive Caucus to stand up for our will, and the National Womens' Law Center helps you tell your Reps and Senators to leave Social Security alone in debt limit talks. And if you'd like to call your Reps and Senators and tell them that closing corporate tax loopholes, closing offshore corporate tax havens, and raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires will all cut the deficit, well, I'm not going to stop you.

Mr. Obama passed over Elizabeth Warren for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, but he did pick former Ohio AG Richard Cordray for the job, and (especially with rumors that Ms. Warren might take on Scott Brown for the Senate in 2012) that doesn't feel much like a loss. But the Senate is already ahead of Mr. Obama on that chessboard, too -- 44 Republicans declared months ago that they'd filibuster any CFPB nominee until the CFPB is fixed to their liking, "fixed" in normal folks' speech meaning "gutted." It's like they think we don't remember that the big banks crashed the economy, then took hundreds of billions in bailout money and -- hard to believe, Harry! -- didn't resuscitate the economy with it. In a sane, healthy society, 44 Republicans' careers would end at the next election, as ads accusing them of letting banksters run amuck flood the airwaves, but this is a sick, immoral, and decadent society. So let's try to make society a bit more sane and healthy by telling the Senate to vote on a CFPB director already.

Hard travelin'.

Today the House takes up H.R. 2560, the infamous "Cut, Cap, & Balance" bill (the Senate version is S. 1340). CC&B cuts spending in 2012 by $111 billion, with everything but "the global war on terrorism" taking a hit, and then caps spending after that, reducing that cap every year, in areas somehow not including defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits, and debt interest. But it doesn't stop there: CC&B would also submit a balanced budget amendment to the states for ratification. Does CC&B raise taxes on the rich or close the tax loopholes that allow big bailed-out banks to pay nothing (or less than nothing) on their billions in profits? Of course not. All our government wants to do, it seems, is cause us pain. But it doesn't matter what our government wants; it matters what we want. So NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you oppose H.R. 2560. NETWORK also helps you support S. 1346, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which would prevent American corporations from hiding profits overseas, thus raising $100 billion annually in revenue.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama still plans to push three Bush Mobb-era "free" trade deals (with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama) that'll push even more American jobs overseas and essentially negate American legal protections whenever they threaten a corporation's "will." Most Americans, regardless of ideological stripe, oppose "free" trade deals, so who is the other pole in this endless Obama quest for the "middle ground"? Must be American corporations, who love nothing so much as cutting jobs so their bosses can skim more in salary and bonuses and options. Last I looked, a corporation was a thing, and the person running the thing didn't get more say than the rest of us, because that isn't democracy. In a democracy, we get the say, and if somehow that hasn't magically changed with all the changes in power we've engineered over the last few years, that only means we gotta talk more. Public Citizen helps you oppose these "free" trade deals.

The rising.

We've talked a bit about hydrofracturing, or "fracking" -- when gas drilling corporations inject a mixture of sand, water, and toxic chemicals to fracture underground shale, thus releasing natural gas -- and now Public Citizen provides a handy guide explaining why our government should regulate fracking more than it does. We learn (or are reminded) what fracking is, how fracking might affect the water supply (in addition to lighting your tap water on fire, you might also get sick coming out of the shower), how our government has failed to regulate fracking, and how states are trying to fill the regulatory gap. Oh, and at the end, Public Citizen also helps you tell Congress to close the loophole that lets gas drilling corporations get away with polluting our water. Clean water is the most important resource we have, but corporations would destroy it to make a buck.

Meanwhile, I'm delighted to inform you that ex-Tea Party activist Shane Brooks has delivered an inspiring pro-freedom rant from the conservative side. He's more worried about deficits and debts than I am (as I've never assumed that government regulation and government spending must be accompanied by deficits and debts), but Mr. Brooks is just as worried about corporate tax avoidance and corporate power abuses as I am. This is no surprise to me, of course; I think worrying about corporate power is (or should be) just as much a conservative worry as a liberal one -- the Founders, after all, despised concentrated power, and surely would be aghast to find that corporations not only have so much power these days, but that they also enjoy the rights of personhood. Here's to hoping Mr. Brooks's journey leads to more real bipartisanship in America -- you know, versus the false "bipartisanship" corporations and their media and Congressional enablers constantly peddle.

Upside down.

S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act (yes, it's a painful acronym), would give our government the power to force internet service providers to block sites accused of copyright infringement. Sound like a tool-of-fascism to you? "That site said stuff we didn't want Americans to hear, ahem, stands accused of copyright infringement, by, you know, quoting an AP report. Yeah, that's it." And note well: accused! Our government apparently doesn't have to prove you've done something wrong to shut you down, only accuse you of doing something wrong! So, to sum: S. 968 punishes folks for what they're accused of doing, the last Senate Intelligence Appropriations bill very nearly gave the Director of Intelligence power to strip pensions from folks accused of leaking classified info -- and H.R. 5 would cap awards for people who win their lawsuits against negligent medical practitioners. It's like they're trying to do everything wrong. Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to oppose S. 968.

Not dark yet.

Fatima Ghazali, a Sudanese journalist, wrote an article describing allegations that Northern Sudanese security forces had raped a female activist. What do you suppose the government of Northern Sudan did then? Did they say "thanks," do a thorough investigation, and punish the wrongdoer? Did they reassign said wrongdoer, telling him this time you went too far? Why, no! They sent the journalist off to prison for a month, as they apparently plan to do to at least half a dozen other journalists who reported on the same incident. Somebody want us not to know something? Too late! The Petition Site helps you demand her release. The Sudanese constitution guarantees a right to a free press, yet journalists there wind up in jail a lot on charges like "publishing lies," where the government gets to define "lie." Let that be a lesson to us. Sadly, most of our journalists busy themselves with publishing actual corporate lies, so the lesson may be lost on them.

Meanwhile, Congress continues to leave a trail of slime everywhere it goes, now with the House Department of Interior appropriations bill, which will (stop me if you've heard this before) gut the EPA, gut the Endangered Species Act, gut the Land and Water Conservation Act, and force Interior to open up the Grand Canyon area to uranium mining, reversing one of Secretary Salazar's few accomplishments in office. You gotta hand it to Republicans: at least they ask for everything they want! You think maybe Democrats might, one day, ask for everything they want? Oh, wait: they already are. All together now: it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want. We want our government to stop corporations from dumping Frankencrap in our water. We want our government to stop corporations from ripping up the land. We want our government to stop corporations from spewing crap into the air. Eating, drinking, and breathing safely are, believe it or not, pretty popular with Americans. So the Wilderness Society helps you oppose the House's efforts to gut environmental protections.

Finally, I've got more action alerts about the debt ceiling! Yay! The Coffee Party helps you "demand an end to the debt ceiling hostage crisis", and the Strengthen Social Security campaign helps you call your Reps and Senators and demand that any debt "deal" leave Social Security alone. (They also provide a petition to Speaker Boehner, though he already knows everything and doesn't care what you think.) At the Strengthen Social Security site, you may want to read the Donna Edwards letter (signed by 70 additional House Reps) describing why tying Social Security benefit increases to "chained CPI" would be a bad idea. Long story short: seniors don't have as many "choices" as younger folks -- they have little "choice" about their health care costs going up, for example -- so using a CPI measurement that allows wiggle room for making different choices when prices get too high wouldn't accurately calculate seniors' needs.

The other window.

The debt limit isn't the only news in Washington -- the House passed a Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill on Friday that would gut financial reform enforcement, gut net neutrality, and shut down a product safety database. In any other election, we could beat any idiot who voted for any of that in November -- He voted against product safety! He voted against protecting us from credit card fraud! He voted against you controlling what you want to see on the internet! -- but this is the year a nominally Democratic President actually offered up benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare, meaning the most evil, cruel, heartless people in American politics will play the he-did-it-too card with impunity. Heckuva job, Mr. Obama! We'd do best to accept Mr. Obama's impending defeat in 2012 and fight from there. In the meantime, Consumers Union helps you oppose yet more of Congress's cruelty.

Meanwhile, the good folks at CalPIRG have provided this helpful video explaining how a Twinkie is cheaper than a carrot. Why does it matter that a Twinkie is cheaper than a carrot? For at least two reasons: one, manufacturing anything cheaper than growing anything ought to offend you, and two, because so many children in America are now obese, and if junk food weren't so damn cheap, our kids wouldn't be so fat, and they wouldn't have so many major health problems later in life. The sad answer to the question, "why is a Twinkie cheaper than a carrot?" Our government subsidizes about a dozen of its corn- and soy-based ingredients. Used to be we subsidized small farmers during the Great Depression; now we indulge in billions in welfare handouts every year to big farming corporations so crap is cheaper than healthy food. PennPIRG helps you tell your Senators to oppose junk food subsidies.

Finally, Mr. Obama will finalize new fuel efficiency standards any day now; given his recent track record of giving in at every opportunity, I don't have high hopes that he'll get us up to 60 mpg by 2025, even though quite a few cars on the road get 60 mpg right now. So if you haven't yet sent Mr. Obama a message demanding real increases in fuel efficiency standards, Environment Colorado still helps you do that. Remember the old days, when we all thought we'd have jetpacks by now? None of us needs a damn jetpack, it turns out. But back then we dreamed of doing things better, of going farther and hurting the environment less all at the same time. Now, thanks to 30-plus years of trickle-down ideology coming from corporations and their "liberal" media enablers, all we dream about is making money. Demanding 60 mpg cars -- which, despite what car corporations tell you, isn't all that much to ask -- is one way to break out of that spell. I always look for others.

Us and them.

Citizens for Tax Justice urges us to call our Congressfolk at 1.888.907.8574 and demand that they oppose any corporate tax amnesty, er, tax repatriation holiday, especially as part of any "deal" to raise the debt limit. Back in 2004, we let corporations bring back the income they'd stashed offshore -- which they'd stashed offshore specifically to avoid taxation in the U.S. -- and what good did that do? No good at all -- it didn't stimulate the economy, it didn't bring in revenues for the government, and it certainly didn't create jobs in the U.S.; if anything, it encouraged corporations to create more jobs overseas, and ship more money offshore in anticipation of another government handout. Does any of that sound moral to you? Does that sound similar to any of the values you'd teach your children? Of course not. But then, to our corporate lords and masters, values are for little people.

Meanwhile, we were able to keep that awful let-the-President-wage-war-whenever-and-wherever-he-likes provision out of the House version of the Defense Authorization bill -- but the Senate version still has some pretty awful provisions, so the ACLU helps you tell the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on them. What would the Senate bill do? The Senate bill would expand our government's ability to detain U.S. citizens without charge or trial inside the U.S., and it would transfer a bunch of Department of Justice law enforcement functions to the Department of Defense. Does any of that sound like a good idea to you? Of course not. And if you think you'd be safe because you don't do anything wrong, guess again. Our Lords and Masters already think you're doing something wrong, because you won't be their slaves.

Speaking of big government run amuck, H.R. 2164, the so-called Legal Workforce Act, would mandate that employers use the E-verify system on any new hires. Making sure your employees are legally in the U.S. before you hire them is a terrific idea -- but the E-verify system is a terrible way of doing it. The "E" in E-verify apparently stands for "error" -- it doesn't actually catch very many undocumented immigrants, and the GAO tells us that 3 million lawfully-employed folks would lose their jobs if their employers had to use E-verify. But, then, what's 3 million more unemployed to our Lords and Masters? Hungry people who'll do anything to keep a job, that's what. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you oppose H.R. 2164.

Finally, of course, we present our daily roundup of alerts opposing the direction of the debt limit "negotiations": CREDO still helps you tell Mr. Obama not to cave to Republicans demands to cut Social Security and Medicare; NETWORK, the aforementioned national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Congressfolk that cutting services people need while failing to hike taxes on rich folks is immoral; and the Coalition on Human Needs provides a toll-free number, 1.888.907.1485, so you may leave more of an impression on your Congressfolk. I've tried, I really have, to convince myself that Mr. Obama only offered to cut Social Security and Medicare because he knew Republicans would move the goalposts again. But I can't convince myself that someone who went to Columbia and Harvard wouldn't realize that no one will ever forget he offered them up for sacrifice. Also, Mr. Obama is one of our Lords and Masters now, and thus forever divorced from the pain and hurt he causes.

Cohesion.

First things first: soldier Aaron Collette returns from Iraq in a little over a month, and when he does, he and his family will be homeless, because Chase is foreclosing on his father's home. After the economic armageddon destroyed the elder Collette's flooring business in 2008, Mr. Collette asked Chase for a loan modification; Chase told him that he needed two missed payments to qualify. So Mr. Collette dutifully missed two payments -- and Chase began to foreclose on his house. Boy does that sound like a scam! And it got enough media attention (Oregon's junior U.S. Senator, the estimable Jeff Merkley, mentioned it on the Senate floor) that Chase backed off for a while. But now they've rescheduled the foreclosure for August 9, less than a month from now, and a mere 10 days before Aaron returns from Iraq. So change.org helps you pressure Chase to find a solution for the Collettes, as they suggested they would, and as would be moral and proper and just to do. What will it take for our elites, finally, to give us something other than the back of their hand? Nothing other than the expression of our will, collectively, repeatedly, until they can do nothing else.

I said some nasty stuff about Barack Obama last week, and I don't take a damn bit of it back -- he's a straight-up sell-out, and his little for the good of the country moment from last week dooms us to four or eight or a million years of some Republican monster as President. But, we still have to stop him from doing his will, so both Wealth for the Common Good and True Majority help you demand that Mr. Obama and Congress cut the deficit by raising revenues on the rich, not by cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and other programs actual human beings need. You won't be surprised to learn that, even after Mr. Obama volunteered cuts in Social Security and Medicare, Speaker Boehner (R-OH) still said no deal. He absolutely will not raise revenues on his rich and corporate paymasters, not that he put it like that. I know what I'm going to tell my President and my Congress: let the country default, if that's what John Boehner wants. I'm tired of being crapped on; let our elites eat some crap for a minute.

But enough bad news. Late last week, a federal appeals court blocked the Kevin Martin-led FCC's efforts to let broadcast media buy up newspapers. The Third Circuit reinstituted the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban for reasons that'll sound familiar -- in weakening the ban back in 2008, the FCC didn't "meet the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act," meaning, essentially, that they didn't give the public adequate opportunity and time to comment. You'd think a government owned by the people would give people enough time to weigh in on decisions affecting their well-being, wouldn't you? Banning media corporations from owning newspapers is a big deal, especially if (like me) you don't think any corporation should own any other corporation, ever -- and certainly no media corporation should own (or be owned by) any other corporation, lest the conflicts of interest multiply like rabbits. I fear the Roberts Court might try to work their judicial activism magic on the Third Circuit's decision (the Rehnquist Court, you may recall, wouldn't hear an FCC appeal on Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC in 2005), but I hope they've had enough of that, their Citizens United decision being so unpopular.

FO.

As originally reported by the Washington Post, Mr. Obama plans to offer massive Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts so he can get Republicans to agree to unspecified revenue increases. Mr. Obama, what, exactly, is the point of you? If you weren't going to defend the last three legs of the New Deal, why didn't we just elect John McCain? The toll-free number is 1.888.245.0215; the webform is here. You know what to do.

Barack Obama took on our hopes and dreams so he could dash them, so we would never hope or dream again. Luckily, I never placed my hopes and dreams in him. I placed them in America. I still do.

Buggin' out.

Mr. Obama has "stepped up" debt limit talks, and you know what that means: he's gearing up for another heartless, senseless capitulation to Republicans that (admittedly) will bolster his poll standing for a few weeks or months. It doesn't matter what it means to him, though; it matters what it means to us. You can call the White House toll-free at 1.888.245.0215, or you can write the White House here, and tell them that permitting Medicare benefit cuts, as well as other cuts (to Medicaid, food stamps, and the like) that would actually hurt people -- while making sure there's still plenty of money for more wars and more bailouts! -- is just cruel and wrong. While you're doing that, you can tell the White House you don't believe anything Bill Clinton says about the corporate tax rate being too high, and you want corporations to do more. Again, it doesn't matter what the politicians want; it matters what we want. And corporations don't pay enough damn taxes. The only place friendlier to corporations as far as taxes? Iceland. Though I hear it's pretty cold there.

Meanwhile, I've got lots of action alerts demanding an end to the Afghanistan war -- one from Peace Action West, one from True Majority, one from Just Foreign Policy, and one from CREDO. That last one is a phone-only tool, so if you use any of the first three tools, mention to your Reps that you've already written them and you're now following up with a phone call. All these action tools support a Barbara Lee (D-CA) Defense appropriations bill amendment, which would prevent the President from spending any money on anything in Afghanistan other than getting the troops out of there safely. In other words, the amendment cleverly shields itself from the absurd contention that withdrawal efforts put the troops in harm's way (as if dumb wars don't!). True, I'm not hearing that particular pile of rhetorical dung as much, now that a Democrat's in charge of the wars, but some folks never learn, and their idiocy must be neutralized.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you support the Arbitration Fairness Act (H.R. 1873/S. 987), which would void predispute arbitration agreements if said agreements require "arbitration of an employment dispute, consumer dispute, or civil rights dispute." Used to be the law only required arbitration between corporations, not corporations and people, but (thanks in part to several Supreme Court decisions) more and more disputes best settled by the courts are heading to arbitration, and guess what? If it's you against a big corporation, and the entity doing the arbitration is another big corporation being paid by the corporation you're fighting, you're almost always going to lose. That means no recourse when your cell phone provider unfairly jacks up your bill, means no recourse when your employer screws you (or, in the case of one Kellogg-Brown-Root employee, no recourse when your co-workers, literally, screw you). Is that fair?

So it goes.

H.R. 2018, the so-called Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act, would gut the Clean Water Act's ability to make states clean up their water. Didn't know keeping water clean destroyed the economy, did you? But welcome to austerity -- where government is too "broke" to do what we need them to do, but can't stop throwing money away on wars and bailouts. Too much of H.R. 2018 -- Sec. 2(a)(3) and Sec. 3(a)(2), for example -- simply lets a state disagree with the federal government when the latter catches the former doing something. If that's no way to raise a kid, then why is it a way to run a government? And Sec. 4 reduces comment periods on dredging permits from 90 days to 30. I thought conservatives were all about going slow. The Sierra Club helps you tell your House Rep to oppose H.R. 2018. (And n.b. that two western Pennsylvania Democrats, Messrs. Altmire and Critz, have co-sponsored H.R. 2018. Their sponsorship couldn't have anything to do with the gas drillers who want to pillage the land out there.)

Meanwhile, H.R. 5, the HEALTH Act (yes, it's a terrible acronym), would limit claims by victims of medical malpractice and require that the courts settle all claims within a three-year period. Can you say "defendant corporations running out the clock," boys and girls? And I'm sick of hearing about "frivolous" lawsuits, as if Republicans don't trust the judges they've been appointing for the last thirty years, as if corporations don't file four out of five lawsuits in America. And H.R. 5 would limit winning claims, which, by definition, are not frivolous. And, frankly, medical malpractice is a big problem; what fool would declare that good citizens fighting the problem is, itself, the problem, rather than supporting solutions that actually reduce the problem? It gets better: medical malpractice suit caps haven't lowered physician premiums anywhere they've been tried. Public Citizen helps you tell your House Rep to oppose H.R. 5.

Finally, anyone notice what a busy week Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson had? Mr. Johnson had been enjoying himself the last few months, occasionally popping up on cable news shows to spread lies about the corporate tax rate and otherwise keeping his head down. But a week and a half ago, reports surfaced that Mr. Johnson's plastics company paid him $10 million in deferred compensation -- and Mr. Johnson just so happened to have spent almost $9 million on his winning Senate campaign in 2010. (Mr. Johnson told the Milwaukee paper that broke the story that he didn't "have to explain it to someone like you." Nice.) Absent a compensation agreement dated well before his Senate campaign, Mr. Johnson might well have broken federal campaign finance laws or federal tax law. So what does Mr. Johnson do on Wednesday? Vows to block all pending Senate legislation until the Senate deals with the budget! (For the record, the Senate has voted down the Ryan budget, the Toomey budget, and the Obama budget.) Mr. Johnson backed down the next day, perhaps after being reminded that the Senate doesn't do any work to begin with. But the timing was a fresh breath of pure Bush Mobb. Next time he gets in trouble, maybe he'll have "evidence of environmental terrorism" or something.

Race among the ruins.

Mr. Obama, as you know, plans to withdraw one-third of our troops in Afghanistan by the end of next year, but Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) plans to introduce her Afghanistan withdrawal bill (H.R. 780, which we've supported here many times) as an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill, and the House will actually vote on it next week. So Just Foreign Policy helps you support Rep. Lee's amendment. The amendment would bar Mr. Obama from spending money on any activity in Afghanistan except for getting our troops and contractors out. And we'll be hitting a sad milestone soon: 1,000 Americans dead in Afghanistan under President Obama. Mr. Bush only managed to lose 575 lives there.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama plans to announce new auto mileage standards, but he's been hearing from weakling automobile manufacturers who just can't build better engines boo-hoo, so he's gotta hear from us, too. Some mainstream cars already get 50 mpg, so mandating all cars to get 60 mpg in less than 15 years' time isn't a whole lot to ask. Oh, sure, the big car corporations will moan and whine about how many jobs they'll be "forced" to cut, but think about how weak that is. Is this not America, where we can do any damn thing we set our minds to, because we're not prisoners of aristocracy and royalty? Or are we all now prisoners of the new corporate aristocracy and royalty? In America, we are not prisoners, not if I got a damn thing to say about it.

But enough bad news. Families Against Mandatory Minimums informs us that the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to make new crack sentencing guidelines (thought not necessarily the sentences themselves) retroactive, meaning that over 12,000 folks can have their sentences shortened by about three years on average. Now you may well be asking: isn't crack bad? Of course crack is bad! But despite what you may have seen on TV, it's not a hundred times worse than powder cocaine, though until last year the sentences were a hundred times worse. And yes I do feel bad for folks who are addicted to drugs -- addiction by definition ruins your ability to make the decisions you'd need to make to end the addiction. People need help for their addictions more than they need punishment, and we ought to man up and start giving folks that help.