Thieves in the Temple.

New world man.

Word on the street, once again, is that Joint Committee for Deficit Reduction Democrats have offered $3 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts -- possibly so they can get a deficit-reduction "deal" before Thanksgiving, possibly because they're playing the good cop to Republicans' bad cop. Better for us if they let the deal fail, and saddle the Congress of Screw You with the resulting Medicare cuts they'll have to restore if they want to keep their jobs in 2012. Anyway, it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want, so both CREDO and the Campaign for America's Future help you tell Democrats to stop acting like weaklings and defend the benefits that we've worked for and paid for all our damn lives. Because if they don't represent, what the hell good are they?

Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Pingree (D-ME) have introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act (bill numbers not available yet). The bill would (among many other things) help farmers grow more organic crops, help farmer's markets promote their goods, expand loans to local food enterprises, and train more farmers in food safety (as mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010). Of course most of us liberals would get behind this effort, but I think conservatives should get behind it, too. I mean, conservatives want healthy food just as much as liberals do. And this bill would help local and regional food producers, the ones more likely to produce healthy, organic food, and would address the market distortions that massive corn subsidies cause. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you support it.

Finally, what a terrible weekend Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain had! First Politico reported that two women had complained of "sexually suggestive behavior" on Mr. Cain's part while Mr. Cain headed up the National Restaurant Association -- and both women received payouts to leave. Then the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal reported that Mr. Cain's two top campaign aides ran a Wisconsin-based corporation that paid many of Mr. Cain's campaign expenses, possibly violating federal law. Guess which accusation Mr. Cain denied today? And here I thought John McCain had made campaign finance reform sexy again. As with Sen. Johnson's possible campaign finance violations which apparently led him to take the Senate hostage for a day, if there's no penis, the "liberal" media's not looking.

Not dark yet.

You may have heard that police put down an Occupy Oakland protest with tear gas and rubber bullets on Tuesday -- and you may also have heard that Occupy Oakland has returned to the streets in much larger numbers. But Iraq war vet Scott Olsen paid a heavy price -- he suffered a fractured skull in the Tuesday attack, and though he's apparently much better now, he was in critical condition for a while. What does "protect and serve" mean, again? So Roots Action helps you demand that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan fire her interim police chief, investigate police misconduct, and permit Occupy Oakland to remain in Frank Ogawa Plaza (or, as protestors have renamed it, Oscar Grant Plaza). One has to ask oneself why police need to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at people whose biggest crime is keeping other folks from getting to Raiders games. And contrary to what you may have heard from the "liberal" media, they're most likely keeping rats away from the park.

Meanwhile, as you may know, the federal unemployment insurance program expires December 31. If Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats let that program expire, then two million good unemployed folks would get cut off in January and six million more would get cut off during 2012. I wouldn't be so upset, if corporations weren't obviously doing everything in their power not to hire people. Those trillions in profits they're sitting on? How about they build some damn factories and put some people to work? What's the big damn deal? In the meantime, the National Employment Law Project helps you tell Congress to extend federal unemployment insurance past 2011. With unemployment officially over 9%, with almost half of 14 million-plus unemployed Americans out of work for longer than six months now, I think it's well past time to act. And no, extending unemployment insurance does not constitute a "moral hazard." The far bigger moral hazard is protecting our elites at the people's expense.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you support four excellent pro-people, anti-corporate tyranny initiatives at once! And they say the internet doesn't improve our lives! What are these four initiatives? You'll recognize some of them. The first is the Shareholder Protection Act (H.R. 2517, S. 1360), which would let shareholders have more say in how their corporation spends political donation money. The second is an initiative to require the SEC to mandate that publicly-traded corporations disclose all political spending (and, ah, to prod Mr. Obama into issuing that Executive Order that would require such disclosure of government contractors already). The third is the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1404, S. 750), which would chase a lot of corporate money out of campaigns by creating a national public campaign financing system. And the fourth is H.J. Res. 78, which would amend the Constitution so that we don't treat corporations as "people" for the purpose of dealing with campaign contributions. I know, I know, Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats don't like any of this, but they're supposed to represent people, not corporations. Which aren't people.

So easy going, so hard coming back.

Google's motto, as you may know, is "Don't be evil," and when they aid and abet the Chinese police state, they get flak for it. Here's something else they ought to be getting flak for: they're anxious, just like most American corporations, for a "tax holiday," in which they bring back the billions they're stowing overseas to avoid taxation, but then get taxed at a much lower rate than the normal 35%. And now we know why they used to call it a "tax amnesty." Why do we reward so much bad behavior from our elites? If we want to be a free and democratic society, we must restrain the behavior of our society's most powerful members. And no tax amnesty will result in "more jobs," either -- the last tax amnesty, in 2004, didn't create jobs. Actually, the big winners in that one cut jobs. Oh, and then jacked up executive bonuses. Yeah, I know I sound like a broken record, but so do our elites, and until they actually address anything I or any other good American has to say, I'm not going to worry about how many damn colors are in my garden. PennPIRG helps you tell Google not to be evil.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you call President Obama and tell him to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. If you do, I promise it won't turn you into a long-haired tree-hugging hippie, or a terrorist. Frankly, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline ought to be a conservative cause. We not only don't know this pipeline will be safe -- we have good reason to believe it won't be safe. And if the pipeline blows up, it will cause serious damage to the water that millions of Americans drink. What could be more conservative, really, than making sure the solution isn't worse than the problem before implementing the solution? I know, I know -- today's nominal "conservatives," with the help of their "liberal" media enablers, have basically tortured the word until it tells them what they want to hear, namely that corporate CEOs are the Greatest Americans Evah and must be allowed to do exactly as they please. I suspect their forebears, who hated concentrated power anywhere, would be very sad to see that.

Finally, Planned Parenthood helps you tell the Department of Health and Human Services to allow women to buy health insurance that happens to cover abortion. As you know, the massive Obama health care reform forbids the federal government to cover abortions directly, and the House of Representatives has tried to keep health insurance corporations that cover abortion out of the health care equation entirely. Trouble is, if you keep corporations that cover abortion out of the health care equation entirely, that limits the choices of the people who matter, i.e., the people who buy health insurance. Who might want to be covered for something else besides abortion. And last I looked, abortion was legal. Dammit, I'm sick of a few nuts getting all the say about abortion policy in America. If you want to make abortion illegal, make it illegal. But don't cut off people's access to good health care just because it covers something you don't agree with. If I started playing that game, it'd get ugly in here quick.

Bloody money.

Wonderful news! JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo have suggested that they'll implement a debit card fee, just like Bank of Amerikkka did, and right around the same time Bank of Amerikkka did! And you see how well that's all working out for Bank of Amerikkka! Here's the rub, though: what they're doing might just violate federal anti-trust law -- if, indeed, the banksters are working together to saddle their customers with unpopular fees so that said customers don't have adequate choices in the market, then the banksters could actually be breaking the law, in addition to being a bunch of thugs. And if they say oh just join a credit union already you dirty hippie, they won't be off the hook -- credit unions can restrict their membership and aren't even available all over the country. So USPIRG helps you ask Attorney General Holder to investigate the matter. Certainly, it's worth investigating.

Meanwhile, FactCheck.org evaluates Republican claims that the so-called "Obamacare" federal law has caused health care premiums to skyrocket, and finds their claims lacking. I must admit I always expected that health care corporations would jack up insurance rates in the years before the bigger parts of the law kick in -- especially without the presence of some government competition, in the form of a public option, say. But, in fact, the law has accounted for less than a third of the hike in premiums over the last year, meaning, of course, that health insurers are jacking up premiums largely because they can. And Republicans, naturally, aren't saying that part of the premium hike for which they might blame Mr. Obama actually results from good policies -- increasing annual coverage limits, for example, or children getting coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions. So how do they explain those 13% rate hikes in 2002 and 2003?

Even now.

Congress is holding hearings as we speak on two terrible pieces of legislation, the REINS Act and the Regulatory Accountability Act. The REINS Act (H.R. 10/S. 299) would block the Executive branch from making new regulations, even the ones Congress has already empowered it to make, unless Congress approves them within 90 days -- and if Congress doesn't bother to act within 90 days, that voids the regulation. Sounds like cowardice to me! And I'm one of those people who'd rather Congress make all those regulations to begin with, but since they won't, they shouldn't get two says on every regulation. Meanwhile, the Regulatory Accountability Act (H.R. 3010/S. 1606) would add enough hurdles to the rulemaking process (corporations could sue over drafts of regulations, for example, which screams "frivolous lawsuit") that corporations can make their food and toys and workplaces as toxic as they want, and you get no say over any of it. That's what this is all about, after all -- their mammon versus your safety. Public Citizen helps you tell your House Rep to oppose these bills.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support real food system reform. Their six-point program includes a) promoting healthier foods, b) limiting handouts to big agribusiness and supporting sustainable farming, c) expanding access to healthy food, d) reforming anti-environmental practices at factory farms, e) stopping corporations from marketing junk food to kids, and f) supporting fair working conditions for farm and food workers. Sound like a big job? Well, it is -- kids are getting fatter faster than ever before, and, as adults, their health problems are going to cost us all a lot of money. Turns out your letter won't come at a better time, either -- the impending deficit reduction Armageddon puts pressure on all of our efforts. But we still want what we deserve, and maybe, just maybe, some overpaid Wall Street hooligans can pay for it. After all we've done for them, really, it's the least they could do.

Meanwhile, the House might introduce the PROTECT IP Act as early as tomorrow; this bill, also, has a bipartisan stench to it. As you may recall, the PROTECT IP Act would give our government the ability shut down websites accused of copyright infringement -- don't worry about actually convicting someone, fellas! -- and would permit our government to bully third-party ISPs into blocking websites. Anybody else think our government will abuse this power? I mean, we all link to videos and news articles -- frankly, my links are merely footnotes, that demonstrate that I'm not full of soup when I say something -- and those of us who criticize the government exactly as often as they deserve it could find ourselves disappeared from the internet. That would not exactly honor our democracy, or our most cherished beliefs. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the PROTECT IP Act.

Second guessing.

CREDO helps you tell the EPA to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. Specifically, we'll ask the EPA to reject the State Department's environmental impact report, which it may be inclined to do, having already criticized two earlier drafts of said report, which the State Department appears to have outsourced to a contractor with (you guessed it) business ties to TransCanada, the pipeline's owner. You remember TransCanada? The corporations with the crappy safety record with regard to, you know, pipe leaks? And now they want to build a massive tar sands oil pipeline 1,700 miles long running directly over aquifers that help deliver clean water to millions of American heartlanders? When they have to drink water with muck in it, they'll wonder whether this was really worth it in order to wean ourselves off Middle Eastern oil. And much as I want America to get off Middle Eastern oil, I won't blame them.

Meanwhile, the Senate voted on S. 306, Sen. Webb's National Criminal Justice Commission Act, not as a stand-alone bill but as an amendment to a spending bill, and the amendment, unfortunately, lost, by 43-57. That's right, once again, a clear majority doesn't win in the Congress of Screw You. Still, there's hope, in that four Republican Senators (Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, and Orrin Hatch) decided to buck their party's will and back a commission that will evaluate our criminal justice system up and down for the first time since 1965. So Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you thank your Senator for voting for the NCJCA, or urge your Senator to vote for it in the future. (I'll have to do both.) I'd prefer that our Senators take a hard look at policies that actually put more people in jail for more frivolous crimes. So, I expect, would most Americans, who very likely know someone who fell victim to a three-strikes law or a mandatory-minimum law, while Wall Street hooligans walk free.

Finally, you may be pleased to know that while Bank of Amerikkka hasn't dropped its $5/month debit card fee, the campaign against the fee has received a lot of very positive publicity -- the change.org petition you may have signed a few weeks back now has almost 300,000 signers, and Molly Katchpole, the petition's creator, has been on ABC and CNN (the latter with Rep. Brad Miller, discussing a bill that would make it easier to change banks). Ms. Katchpole has also, not incidentally, closed her BOA account, just as I hope everyone else will do, especially now that Bank of Amerikkka has reported $6 billion in profits for last quarter. And BOA's CEO, Brian Moynihan, has been in trouble, not least for defending the fee by saying "a bank has a right to make a profit." As if said "right" magically protects a bank from the will of its customers! In any event, you can still sign the petition here, if you haven't already.

Satin in a coffin.

Word on the street is that Interior Secretary Salazar will issue fracking chemical disclosure regulations in about a month -- which gives us time to call his office and demand that he force gas drillers to disclose the chemicals they use. Sadly, it also gives gas drillers a month to butter up or rough up Mr. Salazar. But buttering up and roughing up are the gas drillers' two choices, since, you know, they are among the least popular entities in America right now. Seriously, how many good Americans see gas drillers pump enough Frankencrap into the ground to make tap water catch fire in western Pennsylvania and then say, well, I guess they have our best interests at heart? A few, I'm sure. But the time when they got to make all the decisions in America is over. It's our time now -- if we stand up and be counted, of course. And make no mistake, forcing disclosure is only the beginning of our work. The fight will continue once we know exactly what's leeching into our water tables and sickening our communities.

Meanwhile, you well know that corporations love to sell your information to other corporations, but, until recently, Verizon actually didn't. But now Verizon only protects customer privacy by the customer's request -- it now sells information concerning your browsing history, your purchases, your gender, your age, even your physical location, to other corporations. Luckily, Roots Action helps you tell Verizon to go back to automatically protecting the privacy of its customers. Verizon, for their part, claims that they need that information to deliver "more relevant" information (i.e., a restaurant recommendation based on your physical location in space-time) and that it protects your identity when it sells the info, but even setting aside how easily "anonymous" information can be breached, all that's beside the point. It's our information, and we should have the final say in how it's used. And their first responsibility is to provide a safe experience for their customers. Bells and whistles really aren't as important. (And if Verizon can't provide bells and whistles, it won't "break the internet," either.)

This devil's workday.

Federal long-term unemployment expires on December 31, and if Congress doesn't renew it -- and you better believe the Congress of Screw You will try not to renew it, or extract some ransom in exchange for its renewal -- some 2 million folks will be cut off in January, and 4 million more will be cut off during the 2012 calendar year. Now, I'm not a fan of welfare handouts, but I am a fan of unemployment insurance. And under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't be a fan of unemployment insurance that goes on for years, either, but, frankly, corporations aren't hiring anyone despite the trillions of dollars they're sitting on. The saner of them will say it's "lack of demand," but, ah, how about spurring that demand with some hiring? People spend less money when they ain't got money. And why are our Captains of Industry, whom right-wingers claim are so superior to anyone who works in our government, suddenly so utterly helpless when America needs them? Unemployedworkers.org helps you demand that Congress extend federal unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's American Jobs Act failed in the Senate, because 51 out of 100 votes is apparently no longer a majority anymore, so he's decided to break the bill down into pieces, in the perhaps vain hope that Congress will digest them better. I was always lukewarm toward the bill, and interpreted his attempt to break it down as more craven capitulation at first, but I like the Putting Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act (no entry on thomas.loc.gov as of yet), which would spend $40 billion on creating/saving jobs for educators, cops, and firefighters, financed by an 0.5% tax on millionaire and billionaire income. That's one-half of one percent, not five percent, "liberal" media! So the AFSCME helps you tell your Senators to vote to help teachers and first responders. The alternative is, of course, bucking the will of the people in favor of their corporate paymasters, which they've done time and time again. One wonders if they notice all those millions of people in the streets -- or how long they (and their "liberal" media enablers) will be able to rationalize them away.

Pressure drop.

Sadly, this got past my radar: H.R. 2273, the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act, passed the House by an almost two to one vote last week. H.R. 2273 would mandate that the EPA defer to states in re regulation of coal ash and other coal residuals. What's the problem with that? Well, for one thing, most states don't even have their own regulations to which the EPA would defer. For another thing, coal residuals can get into the water supply of states other than the state that would be regulating it, which makes it a national concern. Doesn't anybody remember the Tennessee coal ash spill from 2008? Of course, the EPA's own coal ash proposals aren't necessarily the strongest they could have proposed, but Congress, in its anti-regulatory insanity, doesn't even want these, all so we can have dirtier land, dirtier air, and dirtier water, but corporate CEOs can have bigger bank accounts. You may want to tell your Senators to vote against H.R. 2273 when it comes up in that august body; as usual, you can find contact info for your Senators using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction still focuses on dumb crap like cutting Medicare and Social Security, but Public Citizen helps you refocus their minds on things that might actually work, like cutting oil subsidies and enacting a small financial speculation tax (not necessarily the one from yesterday). Public Citizen estimates that, by doing these two things, the Joint Committee would reduce the federal deficit by $1.1 billion over ten years, which is just short of their actual goal. Not that the Joint Committee cares, of course -- they only care about raiding the giant sources of funding you and I have paid into for all these years. But it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. Millions of folks are in the streets all over the country right now, while millions more wish they were. If the Joint Committee pulls some crap like cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of "deficit reduction," those millions of folks will make sure the members of the Joint Committee all lose their jobs. And that's as it should be.

Finally, Citizens for Tax Justice looks at Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan and, as you might expect, finds it wanting. Instituting a national 9% flat income tax, a 9% corporate income tax, and 9% national sales tax (which replaces the Estate Tax, I should add) would, I hope, strike you almost immediately as something that would help the very rich at your expense, but it's nice to have some numbers behind it, as in the top one percent paying $210,000 less on average, while you pay $2,000 more, when a $2,000 tax hike would hit you a lot harder. The stunning thing is that Herman Cain himself seems to understand that his plan is bunk -- witness his answer to this admittedly stunning David Gregory question that assumes that the 9-9-9 plan would hit workers harder than the rich. When "you do the math," you're going to "benefit several other ways" other than paying less in taxes? In a sane society, such a remark would finish a Presidential candidate. In this society, not even Mr. Cain's "jokes" about killer border fences can finish him.

There she goes, my beautiful world.

I'll be frank: I'm torn about the "small tax on financial market transactions" described here. Will it work? Well, it will raise tens of billions of dollars in revenue. Does it represent a burden on investors? Well, the tax would be ten cents per $100, which no one who trades stocks will even notice. But I have two beefs: one, this tax goes after all financial transactions, not speculative ones, and I'd prefer to target the speculative transactions -- you know, the ones that crashed the economy -- and leave normal stock trades alone. Two, some "liberal" media idiot is going to "misreport" the ten-cents-per-hundred-dollars tax as a "10% tax." What on earth is wrong with making the thing simple enough so everyone can understand it and (more importantly) no one can get away with lying about it? Tax speculation, at one percent, that's what I say. But if you want to support this effort, well, the link's at the top of the paragraph.

Meanwhile, Sen. Paul the Lesser (R-KY) is at it again, introducing S.J.Res. 27, which would not only block a cross-state air rule the EPA is considering, but would prevent the EPA from ever regulating cross-state air pollution again (unless Congress explicitly authorizes it, as it already has). No wonder the U.S. Chamber of Commerce loved him so much! Cross-state air pollution is exactly the sort of the thing the EPA should do -- who else is going to step in when a state pumps out so much smog and soot that states downwind can't keep their own air clean? And what sort of "Libertarian" would handcuff the federal government from doing something the states can't reasonably be expected to do? You know the answer, if you know the sort of fellow I think Rand Paul is. Short answer: not his dad. The Environmental Defense Fund helps you oppose S.J.Res. 27.

Finally, closer to home, the Homer City Coal Plant of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, has pumped out so much filth that both the EPA and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection have sued the plant's owners, one General Electric. A U.S. District Court threw out the suit on a technicality, for which I'm just as likely to blame the plaintiffs than the judge, even if a judge can find technicalities more easily than I can. So the Sierra Club helps you tell General Electric to curb the amount of asthma-causing crap they pump into the air. Remember: there is-so such a thing as bad publicity, and GE's been taking enough hits over their novel approach to paying taxes (i.e., not paying them) that I wonder if they can stand any more.

Don't take your guns to town.

Today's the deadline for Congressional panels to recommend deficit-cutting measures to the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, so Consumers Union helps you tell your Congressfolk not to rain poop all over you in cutting the deficit. You can use the wording Consumers Union provides in their contact tool, and it is quite excellent prose promoting quite excellent aims, like keeping our commitments to future Medicare recipients and protecting consumers from faulty products. Of course, you can also rewrite it to your heart's content, and I'm planning to use, once again, my list of demands from early August. I like my Congressfolk to stay focused. And don't let right-wingers tell you that demanding higher taxes on millionaire income, ending wars, letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, etc., comprise a "boilerplate of liberal talking points." It's not. It's a boilerplate of stuff that works.

Meanwhile, Congress has rejected Mr. Obama's jobs bill and moved on to putatively more pressing matters, like H.R. 358, which would deny emergency abortion care even if the woman's life is in danger. Because, hey, what's breaking a few eggs when you're trying to create a vast anti-abortion omelette? H.R. 358 would also let state health exchanges refuse to sell any policy that includes abortion coverage, and would also allow states to exempt themselves from federal mandates (like the recent HHS mandate that health exchanges cover birth control). In other words, Republicans hate women almost as much as they hate clean air, clean water, and people with good-paying jobs. Really, they don't deserve any more credit than that. Both the ACLU and the National Women's Law Center help you oppose H.R. 358.

In other news, H.R. 1873/S. 987, the Arbitration Fairness Act, still sits out there, waiting for the Congress of Screw You to act on it. Why "Arbitration Fairness"? Because it's completely unfair, frankly, that banks, cell-phone corporations, and cable corporations can slip "forced arbitration" clauses into your contracts, so that you can't ever take them to court, but must submit to private arbitration paid for by the corporation you're trying to get to redress your grievance. The Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 gave corporations a mechanism for settling disputes with each other, not for forcing their customers into a mechanism that favors them. The Arbitration Fairness Act would, at least, prohibit some corporations from forcing you into an unwanted agreement; the Consumer Mobile Fairness Act (S. 1652) would do the same for cell phones and mobile devices. So Public Citizen helps you support legislative efforts that would make arbitration fairer to people.

Finally, some bad news: the "free" trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea all passed the House and Senate this week; looking over the roll call vote, I see that only six House Republicans -- Rob Bishop of Utah, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Steven LaTourette of Ohio, Frank LoBiondo and Chris Smith of New Jersey, and David McKinley of West Virginia -- voted against all three deals. The Senate votes were far worse, which occasioned Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey to say that "(t)oday is a fine example of how the president (sic) and Congress can advance policies in a bipartisan manner" blah blah blah "I am pleased that both parties worked together today to pass these three job-creating" blah blah blah. We can take comfort, I suppose, that we delayed passage of these deals for four years. We can take less comfort, however, that it seems like 90% of all the Americans who support "free" trade are members of Congress.

It's human rights Thursday!

Did the Arab Spring miss Iran -- or was Iran was ahead of the curve? Remember that millions of Iranians took to the streets in 2009 after Mr. Ahmadinejad got re-elected (or, perhaps more precisely, "re-elected"), and quite a few of them had the crap beaten out of them, and quite a few of them are in jail for no damn good reason. Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to release their student protestors. Even the mullahs will respond to pressure, if we apply enough of it. And we should: I love the Occupy Wall Street folks as much as anyone else, but realistically, at this point in our history at least, they're almost certainly not going to die on Wall Street. In Iran, if you try to bring people together to create a better life, the police will crack your head open in front of everybody -- or they'll disappear you for years. We should consider anyone who protests in Iran a hero.

And not just there, either -- in Bahrain, the military has been cracking down on peaceful protestors for months, killing 32 since February and torturing and detaining many others, and sadly you won't be surprised to learn that our very own government has been selling military gear to them, millions of dollars' worth. Think any of that was used to beat the stuffing out of someone who just wants a better life, preferrably not under an oppressive government? And do you think the "cautious" Mr. Obama would stand up for the Bahrainis by cutting off the flow of arms to their oppressors? The good news is it doesn't matter what he wants -- H.J.Res. 80, a James McGovern/John Conyers production, would prohibit our government from selling arms to Bahrain, and Peace Action West helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support the bill.

Finally, closer to home, many supermarkets and restaurants and food providers have agreed to pay Florida tomato pickers an extra penny a pound for the tomatoes they pick -- as well as ameliorate other hellish aspects of their work lives -- but not Trader Joe's. I know, I know -- Trader Joe's? The most hip, crunchy, hipstery, granola-y supermarket in America this side of Whole Foods, not doing what friggin' Burger King and Subway have been doing for years? My, it's enough to make you suspicious of marketing. But, yes, Virginia, Trader Joe's hasn't helped make tomato fields less like killing fields, though popular pressure has induced so many others to do just that. Guess what that means? It means the Student Farmworker Alliance (via change.org) helps you tell Trader Joe's to join the effort to make life a little better for Florida's tomato pickers.

Two divided by zero.

Keystone Progress helps you tell Gov. Corbett to abandon his plan to privatize Pennsylvania's public schools. Mr. Corbett's budget aimed to divert $1 billion in funds from public schools to private schools via voucher programs, but spending all that money on programs that don't work wasn't fiscally-responsible enough for legislature Republicans. Or, possibly, they simply thought passing a voucher program at the same time they were cutting almost $1 billion from public school funding would make them look bad, but I like to believe the best of people. In any case, Mr. Corbett still wants to do it, now saying it's a way of saving failing schools. Hey, Governor: how about saving failing schools by funding them properly? I worry when I see the "liberal" media spinning tall tales about Mr. Corbett's "popularity" that maybe they can do the deed. But if a lot of us good Pennsylvanians give him what-for, I'll worry a lot less.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Chris Sigler wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school, and even printed T-shirts supporting such a club -- but when he wore it to school, the Principal allegedly stormed into his economics exam, ordered all the other students to leave, and shoved Mr. Sigler against the wall, bumping his chest repeatedly and saying "who's the big man now?" All together now: someone's got a crush! The county failed to investigate the matter, for some reason, but then the Tennessee Equality Project and the GSA Network started a petition on change.org demanding a full investigation of the assault, and you can add your name to that petition here, if you like. Little men like Maurice Moser (who, incidentally, does not appear to defend his position terribly well when afforded the opportunity) will wilt before public scrutiny. I guarantee it.

Finally, Free Press has provided a handy whip-list counting Senators for, against, and undecided on H.J.Res. 6, the "resolution of disapproval" that would overturn the FCC's (admittedly weak) net neutrality rules. At this writing, only 12 Senators oppose the resolution (including Bill Nelson, of all people), but the resolution's supporters number 38, which isn't 51. Actually, they won't have 50 even if they can get every other Republican plus Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin aboard. Even that, of course, would be appalling, because, as I've said before, Americans across the ideological spectrum support stronger network neutrality provisions than the FCC issued. Nobody in America wants a corporation to be able to tell them where they can and can't go on the internet. Only the corporations want that. And, last I looked, they're not people.

Little America.

We'll have been in Afghanistan for ten years this week, so Council for a Livable World helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the war already. Because, you know, we can't afford it and we've already killed Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Obama plans to keep combat troops there until 2014, but it ain't his decision; it's ours. Congress can tell him to end the war and he can't do a damn thing about it. Hence Barbara Lee's bill, H.R. 780, which would specifically fund withdrawal of troops and contractors from Afghanistan, and nothing else concerning our military operations there. How about that! A bill that ends the war and gets our troops out of harm's way! Remember when "keeping our troops out of harm's way" was the excuse they gave for not ending the Iraq war? What a profound offense to my soul. Anyway, you can mention H.R. 780 in the email tool provided above.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, apparently "doesn't give a (hoot)" about polls showing clear majorities in favor of aggressive environmental regulation. Perhaps not coincidentally, I don't give a (hoot) about fat cats who think they know better than the rest of us. If he really wants Americans to have more poop in their meat and more sewage in their water and more smog in their air, he ought to just have the courage to come out and say so. The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Bill Daley he should give a hoot about what the people think. The people, after all, put his boss in office with a mandate to change things -- and then the people stayed home on Election Day 2010 when he failed to change things. If Bill Daley can't make the connection, we'll have to make it for him. I'm always happy to serve. Unlike some Chiefs of Staff I could name.

Speaking of sewage, I've got a few more Bank of Amerikkka-related debit-card-fee-of-doom action alerts, one from USPIRG and another from Consumers Union. It doesn't matter if you don't bank with Bank of Amerikkka. Do you bank with any of the other big banksters who'd love for this thing to work out? Then you have a stake in this debate. Hell, if you have a mind and a mouth and change in your pocket you have a stake in this debate. And no, it's not the federally-mandated slash in merchant's fees that's driving them to do this; it's their own stupidity and arrogance. They were just about go belly-up a few weeks back when Warren Buffett helped them out. Also, Consumers Union helps you move your money to another bank with this handy seven-step checklist. Because they're awesome. Go ahead, join that credit union. I promise it won't make you a Communist.

Criminal behavior.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (or FAMM) has asked us to call Senators Reid and McConnell today and urge them to pass S. 306, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act. S. 306, a Jim Webb (D-VA) production, would establish the first comprehensive study of our nation's criminal justice system since 1965. A few things have happened since then: the prison population has exploded, for example, especially with small-time drug-users serving mandatory-minimum sentences, which don't deter drug use but do funnel lots of taxpayer money to private prison corporations. Violent crime has become more commonplace since then, also, and so have state overreactions to violent crime (of which we'll discuss one in a minute). It's behind a subscription wall, but Scientific American published a terrific study of New York City's dropping crime rates in their August 2011 issue. Long story short, more precise tracking of high-crime areas, and increased police presence in those areas, not more and longer prison terms, did the trick. I know, I know -- Scientific American. I'm such a liberal.

As promised, from the "state overreactions to violent crime" file: a Florida prosecutor plans to charge 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez, accused of first-degree murder of his two-year-old brother, as an adult. I could recount the multitudinous hardships visited upon Mr. Fernandez by his abusive stepfather, for example, or the mother's decision to research her son's condition online while he lay unconscious, but they're beside the point. The point is: he's twelve years old. And no matter what a twelve-year-old does, you treat him like a twelve-year-old, who, by definition, cannot make adult decisions and thus cannot take adult responsibilities. If a child fails, that means we failed him, and that's true no matter what amount of rage we might feel over a tragic death, no matter what temptation we might have to seem like we have larger testicles than the next person. And if you don't think society can reform Mr. Fernandez, then you have the duty and responsibility to remake your society into one that can reform him. I do not brook cynicism here. So change.org helps you tell Florida state's attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian Fernandez as a child.

Finally, "liberal" media coverage of the ongoing occupation of Wall Street has, ah, not been particularly fair or balanced. Case in point, a CNN "factcheck" on the protests pretended the protestors "did not know" what they were protesting (apparently she didn't talk to this guy), then pretended the protest was all about the TARP bailout, and thus "answerable" by pointing out that our government did eventually make all that money back and then some, which fact does not make the monstrosity of TARP more moral. This is rather like inventing a game, not explaining the rules to any other players, then doing a victory lap. The punchline? The perpetrator of the "fact-check," Erin Burnett, has a long, long relationship with the very corporations a bad factcheck on Occupy Wall Street might protect. But it doesn't matter that the "liberal" media are either owned by big corporations or are big corporations; their responsibility, still, is to the facts and to us. So the FAIR link above helps you advocate for better coverage of Occupy Wall Street.

UPDATE. We discussed the Regulatory Accountability Act yesterday, and now the director of the Maine Small Business Coalition tells you what you probably already know from not being a TV-watching zombie: that small businessfolk don't reflexively think environmental regulations are bad, that big corporations use small businesses in a game of bait-and-switch, and that "a 'time-out' for regulations means a free-for-all for corporations." Well said.

Get down and get with it.

Mr. Obama has finally submitted the three "free" trade deals -- with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama -- to Congress. The House will vote next week on these "deals," which will hemorrhage good American jobs and let foreign companies get away with breaking good American laws. They'll also increase trade deficits. And that has nothing to do with how much money American workers make! The corporate-types who run things love to tell you that if American workers make too much money making stuff, we won't be able to sell any of our stuff overseas. If that's true, then how did we ever routinely enjoy trade surpluses during those years American workers were relatively well-off, until the early '70s? But they lie when they say we can't make it happen again: "free" trade deals are unpopular across the political spectrum, and indeed popular pressure is all that's been able to stave these deals off for four years now. Public Citizen still helps you kill these trade "deals" for good. (You'll need to amend the text a bit, because it refers more to the Korea deal than the others.)

Meanwhile, H.R. 3010/S. 1606, the cleverly-named Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011, would actually hamper our ability to prevent dangers to our health and environment. The bill would give corporations more opportunities to oppose bills -- what, public commenting periods aren't enough for them? -- and would let courts review regulations not just at the final stage, but at the proposed stage, which seems to me a profound waste of time. Corporations act like regulations are preventing them from spending the trillion or so dollars they're sitting on, when, ah, it's the fact that nobody wants to buy anything in a bad economy. You have to wonder if that's the idea -- to make the economy so bad for so many people that corporations wind up sitting on all this cash. I think opposition to this bill merits a phone call to your Congressfolk; tell them we stand for real accountability, not accountability to corporations.

Finally, S.J.Res. 6 is still out there, threatening to undermine even the FCC's weak net neutrality rules, and CREDO helps you tell your Senators to vote against the resolution. The internet is one of the greatest inventions ever -- never before have so many folks been able to communicate with so many people so freely -- and cable giants like Comcast and Verizon want to turn it into their own playground, where everyone has to play by their rules, and not the rules of a free and open society. Democrats are down to 53 Senators, as you know, and though right-wing Democrats like Evan Bayh are gone, quite a few still remain, and they might be tempted by all that corporate money that can be had so secretly now. So let them know you will abandon them if they abandon you, if they abandon the internet that lets you, and not some corporation, dictate what you see and where you'll go.

Gangsta gangsta.

You've no doubt heard that Bank of Amerikkka plans to charge its customers $5/month to use debit cards. You've probably also heard, from the "liberal" media, that Bank of Amerikkka must enact this unpopular fee because of their horrible business decisions which have led them to take almost $50 billion in government bailouts and, just recently, another $5 billion from Warren Buffett just to stay afloat. Nah, just kidding -- the "liberal" media are blaming new government regulations for it, specifically the one that prevents banksters from charging fees to merchants when customers buy things with their debit cards. In other words, Congress actually did something for small businesses, but big corporations got it twisted. And yet who feels sorry for Bank of Amerikkka? It still doesn't pay any federal income tax and still pays its executives millions in bonuses; could it maybe break off some of that unearned largesse instead of slamming their customers with yet another fee? Change.org helps you tell Bank of Amerikkka not to charge the new debit card fee.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the notorious Koch Industries have, among other things, "flout(ed) law with secret Iran sales." I suppose it won't be tough for the "liberal" media to massage Tea Party voters that such charges aren't all that important, even though they involve one member of Mr. Bush's Axis of Evil, because, hey, they're fiscal conservatives first and foremost and who among them really wants to remember that they voted for Mr. Bush anyway? But this is a sordid tale, not even of corporations cleverly finding loopholes in the law, but of corporations brazenly ignoring the law, and then firing the folks who tried to alert them to said ignorance of the law. The Koch boys, you must remember, think laws are for little people, not for them. And by the time you read about the pipeline they knew was unsafe that then burst and set a pair of teenagers on fire, teenagers who were trying to get to a phone to call 911 no less, I wouldn't blame you for never wanting to buy Dixie cups or Stainmaster carpet or Quilted Northern toilet paper again.