Thieves in the Temple.

Down but not yet out.

The Win Without War blog posts this letter from 23 organizations supporting defense bill amendments by Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY). The Merkley amendment (S.A. 1174 to S. 1867, if you're keeping score at home) would make Mr. Obama pull out of Afghanistan more quickly, and I'm not too keen on it: I'd rather pull out of Afghanistan now, and Barbara Lee's bill, H.R. 780, would accomplish that aim. But Mr. Paul's amendment (S.A. 1064 to S. 1867) would actually revoke the President's authorization to use military force in Iraq, as passed by the 2002 Congress, and I think that would do rather nicely, thank you very much. If we're going to fight a war, we ought to go through the trouble to declare war, and not make up new powers for the President in the manner of the 2001 and 2002 authorizations. Now, I don't have a handy email contact tool for these amendments (too many of the ones I've been getting are too pro-S.A. 1174 for my taste), but a phone call to your Senators would not be untoward of you. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, you may have seen the 60 Minutes report on Congressional insider trading. But you may not know that, even in the Congress of Screw You, some Congressfolk actually want to stop the trading, via H.R. 1148/S. 1871, the STOCK Act (it's not that bad an acronym). If insider trading is illegal for private traders, as it should be, then it should certainly also be illegal for Congressfolk. And it seems to me that private traders have to work to get insider information -- that they, at the very least, have to spend years cultivating relationships with people-in-the-know, including Congressfolk. Since Congressfolk are the ones who, ah, make the laws, they're actually, in many instances, the source of inside information, and can do more damage to markets with less work. Why, they could even conspire to make themselves rich at the expense of the markets. So Common Cause helps you tell Congress to pass the STOCK Act.

Finally, OMB Watch reminds us that the House is moving forward this week with H.R. 3010, the Regulatory Accountability Act, and helps you tell your House Rep to oppose it. OMB Watch provides a long analysis of the RAA here, but long story short: the RAA would actually make the already-quite-thorough process of rulemaking far slower, so that our government can't protect our air, our water, or our land from befoulment by profit-hungry corporations. Ronald Reagan once said that a government that can do anything for you can do anything to you. But apparently he did not envision the Kafkaesque democracy we find ourselves in now, where our government can wiretap our phones without warrant and detain us indefinitely without due process, but can't keep us from eating crap in our food, drinking crap in our water, and breathing crap in our air. And it won't get any better unless we stand up to more-of-the-same-crap bills like the RAA. And that's only the start of our efforts.

Brainbox pollution.

You may recall that the latest version of the Senate's defense authorization bill (S. 1867) permits the President to detain American citizens indefinitely. Soon, the Senate will vote on a Mark Udall amendment that would strike the offending sections of S. 1867, prevent American citizens from being dragged off to detention, and demand that the President defend his claim to broad detention authority. Note that the authorizations to use military force from 2001 and 2002, referenced in Sen. Udall's rewritten section 1031(b), do not permit the President to detain American citizens (though other acts of Congress may do that, at least until the Supreme Court can hear challenges to such laws). Note, also, that (John "Testicle Crusher" Yoo's opinion to the contrary) the Geneva conventions are also U.S. law, having been ratified by the U.S. Senate, and thus would curtail the broad detention powers now claimed by Mr. Obama. So the ACLU helps you support the Udall amendment.

In other news, the Electronic Freedom Foundation joins with CREDO to help you oppose invasive searches of your laptop at our borders. If anyone tells you you're "against border searches" by signing this petition, you can remind them of the word "invasive" in the previous sentence. No one opposes being searched by a law enforcement officer carrying a warrant to search you -- everyone knows that's the price we pay so that all of us can be free. But when our government can take our laptops (with all the sensitive information contained thereon) and keep them, without suspecting you of any wrongdoing, that's not "keeping us safe." That's your government stealing from you, which everyone knows is wrong. They're not just stealing property, either -- they're stealing information they don't have any right to know, by which I mean they're stealing information they do not specifically need to prosecute a specific civil or criminal case against you or anyone else. We have the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution for good reason.

Finally, OMB Watch reports that the Congressional Budget Office, which Mr. Gingrich has recently called a "reactionary socialist institution" because it doesn't tell him what he wants to hear, has concluded that deregulation doesn't create jobs. Which we kinda already know. We also know that large corporations complain that regulations cause them to fire people, though in times of relative deregulatory zeal (cf. 2001-2008) corporations find other excuses to fire people. And we also know that small businesses don't complain a whole lot about "job-killing regulations," though their nominal spokespeople (or, more precisely, spokescorporations) do. And we also know, I hope, that corporations do not deserve more rights than people or more say than people. More pertinent to Mr. Obama's supporters, perhaps, is the CBO's prediction that unemployment will stay roughly the same through the end of 2012 and that GDP will grow well below its potential. I bet Mr. Gingrich is paying attention to those predictions, "reactionary socialism" or not.

Down to this.

This should be interesting -- Avaaz helps you tell BSkyB shareholders to reject James Murdoch as chairman. Why? Because of his involvement with the News Corp. bribery and phone hacking scandals, and not necessarily because he's the son of Rupert Murdoch, who's ruined everything he's ever touched. Shareholders will vote tomorrow, so we need to get our messages out today. And here's a twist: even if you don't actually own BSkyB shares, you may already have a financial stake in this vote! If you know the name of your pension funds, or if you have money in investment funds, Avaaz can tell you if these funds have invested in BSkyB -- just enter your name and country and look through the drop-down menu in the "search for your fund" box. (Aside from the big investment firms, notable entries include various public pensions in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Ohio, California, and New York.) Even if you're not invested in one of these funds, Avaaz will help you contact BSkyB shareholders anyway. If big corporations think they've won once they've destroyed our government once and for all, they ought to think again, lest they discover what "starve the beast" really means.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd see if the Parents' Television Council's a la carte cable action alert was still active, and behold! It still is, and if you haven't told your Reps and Senators about it yet, I think you really ought to do so. We need cable companies to let us buy cable channels a la carte as much as we need internet service providers to treat network traffic the same, as much as we need our government to stop large media corporations from getting even larger -- and we may even need a la carte cable more. You might choose not to watch, say, cable news channels, and you might even go through the trouble of getting your cable company to come out and block these channels, but you're still paying for them, and as long as we're all paying for them, they have absolutely no incentive to change what they're doing so that they actually serve consumers, and not mammon. Of course, if you're like me and you're more offended by cable news than by MTV (which is not to say that MTV doesn't offend me, though it offends me mainly by forgetting what the "M" in its name stands for), you'll want to change the text of the contact tool fairly extensively.

Penny rants for Sunday, November 27, 2011.

Howard Megdal at Salon hits on something big here: thanks in part to new GOP rules which let many states allocate convention delegates proportionally, no one might win enough delegates to win the nomination. If Mitt Romney finishes first with 30% of the vote in any state, for example, he'll only get 30% of that state's delegates, and thus will find it much harder to build a commanding lead early; meanwhile, if Ron Paul consistently gets 10% in every state, he can walk into the convention with enough delegates to gum up the works. So the Republicans might have to make a deal at the convention, and their eventual nominee could even be someone who's not running now (like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie). Think the GOP didn't know that when they changed the rules? Think they weren't planning for the distinct lack of enthusiasm among Republicans for Mitt Romney? Thorough as Mr. Megdal's analysis is, it might not work out the way he suggests because, well, Mitt Romney's got a lot of money. His theoretical not-running-now candidate might not enjoy an advantage from lack of scrutiny, either -- see how fast all of these not-Romneys have crashed and burned once they opened their mouths?

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck's television network may be developing a "conservative" alternative to The Daily Show. My first impression? It looks better than Pravda TV's The 1/2 Hour News Hour, that's for sure. (Remember their Barack Obama magazine, BO? What a knee-slapper!) I want to believe, I really do, that a fellow willing to submit to the obvious pun on his initials can't be all bad, and I admit I watched about eight minutes of Brian Sack's shtick without feeling any pain, comprising about eight more pain-free minutes than I've ever experienced watching Glenn Beck. Still, that "we're going to be completely indifferent to political parties or ideology" promise has been broken so, so many times over the years that I treat it as an omen, and Mr. Sack does go way back with Glenn Beck (two years on his Headline News show, a contribution to Arguing with Idiots), so even Mr. Sack's line about translating "no sacred cows" into Latin because it makes you seem smarter could just be the bait in the bait-and-switch. Note that he makes fun of Mitt Romney for hiring illegal immigrants, but not for, you know, everything else. And that his anti-Penn State riots piece somehow includes a swipe at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I doubt is an accident.

Finally, if his first two ads are any indication, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not exactly prepared to win his impending recall fight. Ad One features a school board member looking really uncomfortable as she defends Scott Walker giving her school district "options that...reduced our biggest costs" (ellipsis mine, because there's obviously an edit). She doesn't tell us what these "options" were, but taking away collective bargaining rights for most state employees does leap to mind. In Ad Two, a public school teacher says this recall election "feels a little like sour grapes": "it's 'we didn't get our way and we want to change the outcome'." I sure hope she doesn't teach civics class, lest she teach her students they're not supposed to do anything for their country, ever, on any day other than Election Day, and that after Election Day they're just supposed to accept the result and be silent, like people in dictatorships do. (And like Republicans in Congress sure didn't do after 2008, amirite?) She then riffs about people who "say what they mean and mean what they say." Anybody remember Scott Walker campaigning on taking collective bargaining rights away from state workers? Me neither. If clowns like Scott Walker were to "say what they mean and mean what they say," they'd lose, and they know it. Be sure to visit his campaign website at nochance2012.org.

Can't happen here.

The Senate will vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) early next week. The bill sailed through committee without a hearing this week. Getting suspicious yet? You should: sections 1031 and 1032 would allow the President to detain American citizens in military custody if the President suspects them of collaborating with terrorists. Section 1032 (b)(1) states that "(t)he requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States," but that doesn't mean American citizens are exempt from being detained -- it means the Executive doesn't have to detain them, which also means the Executive can detain them. Would you like to be detained, indefinitely and without access to lawyers or trials, on suspicion of collaboration with terrorists? Of course not, but if you're an American citizen, it could happen to you. I can't help but wonder if it already happens to some folks currently occupying major cities. In any case, I think Sections 1031 and 1032 warrant a phone call to your Senator. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, the Senate will pointedly not be voting on extending federal unemployment benefits any time soon. These benefits expire December 31, and if our government doesn't extend them, two million Americans will get cut off in January, and four million more will get cut off before 2012 ends. One more time: it's not a welfare handout. You have to look for a job to keep your benefits. And nobody's getting rich off their benefits, either. I wouldn't harp on this matter so much, but corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars and not hiring anybody. I guess they'd tell you that the economy's so unstable that they just don't want to take the chance. To which I respond: what weaklings! I thought our Captains of Industry were the greatest, most daring people in the world! The TV says so all the time! Well, they might want to consider that if they actually earned their reputation as risk-takers, they might help the economy recover. Until they find their courage, Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to extend federal unemployment benefits already.

Finally, just in time for whatever size orgy of consumption we can reasonably support this holiday season, USPIRG once again provides toy safety tips. USPIRG lists the common hazards (small parts, big magnets, long cords, watch batteries) found in toys, and also helps you report dangerous toys to the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission). USPIRG even helps you get toy safety tips while you're shopping -- the toysafety.mobl site lists unsafe and recalled toys, with as much detail as you can stand on your cell phone. I can already hear the right-wing oldheads saying we were tough, we never worried about this stuff in the old days. Of course, they got tired of their oldheads telling them the same thing. But toys weren't as complicated in the '50s and '60s, and the more complicated things get, the more you have to stay on top of them. Our government helps us keep on top of them, and we'll need to fight to keep it that way.

Ring them bells.

Newt Gingrich has taken full advantage of his new-not-Romney poll bounce, not merely by calling the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office a "reactionary socialist institution" -- this guy's leading the polls? This guy has a Ph.D.? -- but by advocating replacing union janitors in failing schools with schoolkids. Obviously he's forgotten what it was like to be 12, to be unable to focus on complex tasks, or to hate someone trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. And, er, child labor laws! Which we have for good reasons -- to let kids get an education, and to prevent adults from exploiting kids, to name just two. And no doubt Tha Newtsta congratulates himself on sounding like he's "thinking outside the box" and getting rid of some pesky unions with one "very simple model." But Americans know what smart really sounds like. And Newt Gingrich is just Scott Walker with a few more letters after his name. The AFSCME helps you give him what-for.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is taking public comments on its proposed auto fuel standards, and while Mr. Obama has been unusually steadfast about getting cars up above 50 mpg by 2025, the proposed standards have some fairly exploitable loopholes. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you make sure the fuel efficiency standards are strong. Turns out the new standards still let "light trucks" get off easy, which means we'll keep getting bigger and hoggier "light trucks" as the years go on, and the standards allow for a "mid-term review" which could well let some Tea Party President get rid of the standards altogether. As for the proposal "largely ignor(ing) the pollution released from power plants when electric cars are recharged," well, I agree -- if electric cars get their electricity from coal power plants, that's not much of a win. And I also think asking for more than you think you'll get gets you more of what you want.

In other news, Green for All helps you tell the Department of Agriculture to expand food stamp customers' access to farmers' markets. Folks who get food stamps don't really get "food stamps" per se anymore; they pay with a SNAP card, which resembles a credit or debit card, and retailers who take "food stamps" all have EBT machines to process the SNAP cards. Retailers get these machines free of charge, and farmers' markets could get them, too, if the USDA permitted free EBT machines to go to retailers without a phone line. That's all it would take, and the machines can work without phone lines. And then folks who need food stamps might be able to buy something fresh and healthy, rather than spend it at so-called convenience stores (which derive most of their sales from highly-processed food and junk food). Buying food at a farmers' market is not eating like a king, either. It's eating like a human being.

Finally, I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving Day tomorrow. Try to put it out of your mind that the European virtually annihilated the Native American after they broke bread together, and just enjoy the time you spend with family and friends.

Karma police.

You probably heard about cops pepper-spraying occupiers at the UC-Davis campus. (In a related note, you might have seen John Pike pepper-spraying memes multiplying like wildfire.) As you might expect, occupiers are getting more and more ambivalent about their relationship with law enforcement -- cops are absolutely part of the 99%, but they're also, in this instance as in others, doing the bidding of the 1%. But we are still a nation of laws: the law already commands that police officers not beat people up, and if we don't believe that we can enforce these laws, then the terrorists have already won. Besides which, hating the cops is what the elites want us to do! So, because we're a nation of laws, Roots Action helps you demand action from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, Keystone Progress founder Michael Morrill has started an unusual petition, in which you ask those members of Congress who voted to destroy Medicare to refuse government-funded health care themselves. Congressfolk, in case you didn't know, get the best of everything in health care -- and they get it for life, even if they serve only one term in Congress (which, ah, quite a few current Reps might soon find out). Maybe we've become so cynical that we just expect our leaders will demand sacrifices from us while they make no sacrifices themselves. Come on, I can hear the right-wing scolds say already, no use getting upset! Selfishness is human nature! But it's also human nature to demand better of ourselves and others, and we deserve better than a sick, immoral, and decadent culture where we expect so little of our leaders. So, yeah, I'll sign it. Maybe some of them will get the point.

Meanwhile, if you've passed up other opportunities to petition Mr. Obama to keep birth control covered without co-pay in federal health exchanges, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Of course I remain annoyed that Mr. Obama would allow religious employers and insurers to opt out because of their "conscience." Headline: they're corporations! They're not people! They don't have a damn conscience! And why does the "conscience" of corporations always count for more than the conscience of actual people? I mean, if actual people don't like birth control, they have options -- not using birth control, shaming people who do, even lobbying to make it illegal. I guess none of that makes a CEO enough money to gild his plumbing. And I wish Mr. Obama would get it through his thick skull that no one on the other side will ever vote for him, no matter how much he "reaches out" to them. They'll take his little "exemption," but they'll still call him Satan Incarnate.

It ain't easy.

Because we're all about solutions, Kevin Zeese has written "the 99%'s Deficit Proposal," presumably to guide the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction during its death throes. The 99% proposal is a whopper -- it would tax financial speculation, it would the rich at a higher (though, frustratingly, unstated) rate, it would tax capital gains income as income, it would tax offshore profits as domestic profits, it would cut military spending, it would allow Medicare to negotiate its own damn drug prices, it would write down underwater mortgages to their current value, it would extend Medicare to all Americans, and it would lift the payroll tax cap for Social Security, among other things. What on Earth is wrong with any of that? I mean, of course, besides the fact that none of it allows bankster CEOs to gild their plumbing. Occupy Washington, D.C. helps you support the 99%'s proposal.

Meanwhile, the government of Syria continues to oppress its population, having killed over 3,500 good Syrians since March, when (perhaps not coincidentally) anti-government protests began. And it's about to get much worse, as four Western technology corporations are helping the government of Syria find internet users. That's right, kids -- you upload a video of Syrian thugs beating up your fellows, and then they find you, knock on your door, and kill you. This is worse, even, than the internet kill switch the Mubarak regime employed (and which Joe Lieberman hopes to bring to America). I understand how tyrants and thugs sleep at night -- they all imagine they're the oppressed, and their people are their oppressors. But how do technology executives sleep at night, knowing they're aiding and abetting murder? Anyway, since we're all about helping people be their best selves, change.org helps you demand that Western technology corporations stop helping Syria kill its people. Because there is-so such a thing as bad PR.

Finally, closer to home, the Delaware River Basin Commission has cancelled today's meeting, during which they would have voted on their plan to let corporations frack in the Delaware River Basin, from which 15 million good Americans get their drinking water. That's no doubt due to public pressure from good folks like you -- over 40,000 of you who wrote or called the Commission, the President, and the Governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. So congratulate yourselves, and then you may tell the EPA to issue strong regulations that would limit air pollution from oil/gas drilling. And, if you live in Pennsylvania, you may tell your state legislators to oppose the bad gas drilling "reform" bills, HB 1950 and SB 1100, which permit counties to set very low impact fees but don't permit counties to enact strong environmental safeguards against gas drilling. That's not only hypocritical, it's not even conservative.

Tighten up.

The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you demand that the FDA require genetically-modified food to be labeled as such. Ask literally almost any American and they'll tell you they want their Frankenfood labeled as Frankenfood. For many Americans the "ick" factor suffices as a reason, but they'd have other reasons, too -- like that corporations tend to modify food so that it tolerates herbicides and pesticides better (often their own herbicides and pesticides), which means they use more herbicides and pesticides, which we know isn't good for us. And what's the harm in labeling it? The "harm" is to corporate profits, and nothing else. The FDA isn't in the business of protecting corporate bottom lines above a consumer's right to make informed choices, let alone the health and safety of said consumers. Or, at least, the FDA shouldn't be in that business. But we may have to use "force message multiplication" to remind them of that. It's OK. It's part of our citizenly duty.

Meanwhile, you may not know this, but when UNESCO (that arm of the U.N. which promotes education and culture) admitted Palestine as a member state, American law compelled us to withdraw all our funding from UNESCO, which comprises over one-fifth of the UNESCO budget. That doesn't sound anything like a ransom, does it? So Peace Action West helps you demand that Congress change this policy. I'm as much a friend of Israel as anyone else, but friends don't let friends take good organizations hostage. I guess a lot of John Bolton's friends will look at the list of things UNESCO does and snicker about how hifalutin thinky-think it all must be. Isn't that why we tossed John Bolton's kind out of office in 2008? Were we not disgusted with people who don't know anything and don't care to learn anything always running everything? Admittedly recent events have reminded me of the difficulty of getting stupid people out of positions of power, but still.

The implacable fury of Linkswarm!

The Congress of Screw You mulls H.R. 3261, now called the Stop Online Piracy Act, but still the "internet blacklist" bill to us. And if you thought S. 968, the original PROTECT IP Act, was bad -- and it is, you know, since it would give our government the ability to shut down websites accused, not convicted, of copyright infringement -- H.R. 3261 is even worse: your frickin' cloud could get shut down if some corporation can't get all five fingers of its hand in your pocket. Perhaps not coincidentally, the various iterations of the "internet blacklist" bill have attracted several hundred thousand letters in opposition, but without Trent Lott and Byron Dorgan around to remind Congress that the people's will rules, whether Congress like it or not, Congress clearly needs even more counsel from us. Avaaz provides one contact tool, Demand Progress (still) provides another, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation provides yet another.

Meanwhile, I don't know why anyone still pays any attention to the Joint Committee on Taking Everything the People Own so the Super-rich Can Gild Their Plumbing, but the politicians and their "liberal" media enablers are, so we must address it, in force. The AFSCME helps you fight the Balanced Budget Amendment, and Moms Rising helps you call your Senators about this Sen. Toomey proposal, which would, and I know this will come as a tremendous surprise to you, increase the deficit by cutting taxes on rich folks. Also, MoveOn helps you tell Congress to keep its grubby hands off Social Security, and Public Citizen helps you tell Congress to cut "dirty" energy subsidies. Finally, for your edification, here's what Congress ought to pay more attention to: Occupy Wall Street is back. Click on the livefeed and you might see some real "force message multiplication."

Pretzel logic.

The Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction seems pessimistic that they can reach a deal before their Thanksgiving deadline. To which I say: hallelujah! Let the Congress of Screw You deal with all the Medicare cuts and defense cuts that'll result because the "Super-Committee" wants to cut taxes for the super-rich at the same time they cut Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security for the rest of us. You and I have no interest in the Joint Committee's success -- only our elites and their "liberal" media enablers have any interest in it, and the Occupy movement has rather successfully diverted the "liberal" media's attention. Now if the Occupiers start occupying Congressional offices across America, maybe the politicians will get the message. But until then, the People's Email Network helps you tell Democrats and Republicans to keep their grubby mitts off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We are, in the end, all that can keep us from a worldwide economic Armageddon. Our "leaders" can't do it. Moreover, they probably want Armageddon.

But that's not all! As part of that awful debt limit "deal" back in August, the Congress of Screw You gets to vote on H.J.Res. 2, a Balanced Budget Amendment. Balanced budget amendments always sound great -- if I have to balance my budget, why shouldn't the government have to balance their budget, amirite? Except that, well, you don't. Do you buy your house with cash? Of course not -- you pay a mortgage, which means you have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Do you pay for all your household expenses out of your savings account? No, often you use a credit card, and the average American carries almost $4,000 in credit card debt. And if you want to better yourself through schooling, renovate any part of your house, or God forbid deal with unexpected catastrophe, you'll very likely have to spend money you don't have. None of this is to say that our government shouldn't be spending its money better! But hamstringing our government with balanced budget amendments isn't just unwise; it's also, frankly, a bit hypocritical. There. I said it, and I'm glad. The National Women's Law Center helps you oppose the balanced budget amendment.

Finally, H.R. 3368, the Latin America Military Training Review Act, would at least start to clear out the rot in our dealing with Latin American nations. H.R. 3368 would assess our military and paramilitary training in said Latin American nations, suspend operations at the School of the Americas oops I mean Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, and would investigate torture manuals and other human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated at the School-turned-Institute. Sadly, America has a long history of meddling in Latin American nations, and that includes installing murderous dictators and training their thugs. Who do those thugs kill? You know, religious protestors, folks trying to start labor unions, the like. Sound like the kind of people you want to be associated with? I mean, even Americans who don't particularly like labor unions don't want to kill their organizers. So why would we spend our tax dollars helping to kill someone else's labor union organizers? NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby and I hope that gives Glenn Beck a shock every time I say it, helps you tell your House Rep to support H.R. 3368.

Trampled under foot.

You may remember petitioning the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) to maintain bans on fracking in the Delaware River Watershed, which provides water not only to residents of Pennsylvania but also to residents of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Well, despite our efforts, it didn't work: the DRBC plans to lift a three-year ban on fracking, and also plans to allow horizontal fracturing in the watershed for the first time. The DRBC plans a vote on the matter one week from today, and the President, along with the governors of the four aforementioned states, will each have a representative on the commission. So CREDO helps you tell the Governors and the President to stop the DRBC's plans. Unless, of course, you'd like the drinking water relied on by four states to light on fire. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't.

Meanwhile, I'm disturbed to learn that the air in North Dakota around the Badlands and Mount Rushmore has become damn near unbreathable, thanks to big, unregulated coal plants. Unbreathable air, as you no doubt know, helps increase incidents of asthma attacks, heart attacks, and chronic bronchitis, among other unpleasant ailments, and these in turn increase health care costs, increase lost days of work, even increase fatalities. Mr. Obama's EPA wants to step in, to its enormous credit, and force the big coal polluters to rein in their destruction, but of course they must take public comments first, and the Sierra Club helps you comment on the EPA's efforts to rein in air pollution in North Dakota. It's a shame that visitors to the most beautiful areas in North Dakota have to put up with big coal's arrogance. It's even more of a shame that the folks who live there have to put up with it every day of every year.

Finally, bad news that shouldn't surprise you: most of the jobs created by this economic "recovery" have been low-paying jobs. It shouldn't surprise you because most of the jobs created during the Clinton years were low-paying jobs, even if the IT jobs got all the ink, and most of the jobs created during the Bush years (and I believe America netted a surplus of 100,000 jobs during those eight years!) were also low-paying jobs. Of course waiters, janitors, stock clerks, and child care aids work in honorable professions, but when we create the more highly-technical jobs in construction, health care and legal services, we create upward mobility for the folks working those jobs. Since our Galtian overlords are still doing just fine, I guess I must conclude, reluctantly of course, that our elites don't want an America where anyone can rise up and contribute to society. Self-interest couldn't possibly have anything to do with that!

The show so far for Friday, November 11, 2011.

We've been following a bunch of legislative assaults from the Congress of Screw You this week, and, well, so far, so good: the Senate voted against proceeding on S.J.Res. 27, Paul the Lesser's bill preventing the EPA from enforcing cross-state pollution rules, by 56-41 -- which means, yes, some Republicans voted against proceeding. And yet Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Coats (R-IN) have introduced S. 1833, which would delay cross-state pollution rules for three years and mercury rules for two more. "To provide additional time for compliance," the bill says, which I'm sure will warm the heart of anyone with asthma. I don't have a handy email tool for S. 1833 yet, but you can go ahead and call your Reps and Senators about it, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner; they'll never see it coming.

Also, the Senate also voted against proceeding on S.J.Res. 6, which would have nullified the FCC's net neutrality rules, on a strict party line vote, which tempts me to say there is a benefit to having a Democratic Senate! Admittedly it'd be more of a benefit if the Democratic FCC's net neutrality rules weren't so weak in the first place. The party-line vote also disturbs me. Sure, it's nice to see that Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson aren't going to vote like Republicans on everything, but the votes against media consolidation in 2003 had substantial Republican support, and from unlikely Republicans like Trent Lott, too. Now the right seems to have abandoned net neutrality, as it's somehow become an "Obama thing." When some big corporation blocks their traffic because they haven't ponied up extra money, they may remember where the right side is. I'd much rather it didn't come to that, of course.

In other news, the Obama Administration delayed approval of the Keystone XL pipeline until it can complete a new environmental review, which likely won't be done until after Election Day. (You may recall that the old environmental review had, er, issues -- mainly that the corporation contracted to undertake the review had strong ties to the corporation building the pipeline.) I'm not the first person to wonder about Mr. Obama's timing -- I mean, who wouldn't rather make that decision without having to face the voters again? -- but the delay will save the heartland from tar sands oil spills for another year and a half. In any case CREDO helps you tell Mr. Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all.

Finally, today is Veterans' Day, so thank a veteran. They deserve it.

Say no go.

For some reason, Congress wants to ran through H.R. 3035, which would let corporations make "informational calls" to your cell phones and use up all your minutes. Not only would H.R. 3035 destroy the Do Not Call lists on which we all rely, it would prevent states from enacting any similar protections for cell phone lines. Why would anyone pass such a thing? They talk about making it easier for debt collectors to find debtors, but I think I know the real reason: they want corporations and politicians to robo-call your lines repeatedly in the run-up to Election Day 2012. What more do these people want? Corporations can already spend unlimited funds on political campaigning; now we'd let them call our cell phones? And we'd let politicians push their obnoxious robo-calls on our cells, too? Hell to tha no! I suspect approximately 100% of Americans would oppose this bill, if they knew about it. So MoveOn helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 3035.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, aims to give the Department of Homeland (sic) Security the right to waive any of over three dozen environmental laws within 100 miles of our borders with Mexico and Canada. These laws include the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, and, well, you get the idea. Yikes, how many laws do we have to break to keep ourselves safe from, er, invading hordes of Mexicans and Canadians? Do we gut environmental protections to keep Mexican drugs out of America, which is not as great a problem as the "liberal" media may have led you to believe? Or do we gut environmental protections in order to keep Mexican workers out? The way to "keep Mexican workers out," if that must be one's goal, is to treat American workers well. The Pew Environmental Group helps you hand out the beatdowns.

Finally, on a lighter note, dig this amazing video of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) actually yelling at his constituents at a townhall. Trust me, this isn't the kind of video you stop watching thirty seconds in and decide I get it, he's a prick, now I've got dishes to do -- it just gets worse and worse. And better and better, in a way -- his constituents fight back in a far more civil and peaceful manner than I would. One constituent firmly says, "stop screaming at me" when Mr. Walsh gets in her face, and a few seconds later, when Mr. Walsh incongruously yells "I need another coffee," she responds, loud enough for everyone to hear, "I think you've had enough." By the end, Mr. Walsh threatens to throw a constituent out (of a public place, there's small government for you!) for the heinous crime of trying to answer Mr. Walsh's question. Civilly, I might add. Need I mention that Mr. Walsh's blow-up stems from being told the banks are responsible for the mess we're in? Most people don't blow a gasket defending the banks. Be sure to visit Joe Walsh's campaign website at nochance2012.org.

Are you ready for the country?

The Obama Administration -- despite apparently realizing, in demoting Chief of Staff Bill Daley, that, dig this, "Americans were not itching for Obama to make peace with corporate America" -- still seems to be pushing for state Attorneys General to make a "deal" with Wall Street banksters over foreclosure fraud. The "deal" would collect a few billion dollars -- that'll be a big help in fighting our $1.5 trillion deficit! -- and would immunize banksters against any further investigation of foreclosure fraud. Such an investigation would, as you probably know, very likely put a lot of people in jail, beginning with the people who signed off on mortgages without reading them and the people who let robo-signers do same. As I've noted, at least two AGs, Messrs. Schneiderman of New York and Biden of Delaware, aren't going along, and they're not bit players -- banksters tend to concentrate in Mr. Schneiderman's state, and Mr. Biden, well, you may have heard the name. But even without two powerful allies, it doesn't matter what they want. It matters what we want. CREDO helps you tell the Obama Administration to enforce the frickin' law already, and prosecute Wall Street banksters to the fullest extent thereof.

Meanwhile, in Ecuador, "clinics" try to turn you away from homosexuality. In what must be the wet dream of many American religious-rightists, gays endure assault, insults, and sexual abuse, as well as having cold water and urine dumped on them. I'm not seeing where these tactics change hearts and minds, but then I'm just a lowly hourly-paid American worker bee, clearly not privy to the deep insights of worldwide elites. The government of Ecuador did shut down over two dozen of these "clinics" this past year, but about six times that many remain open, and, perhaps not surprisingly, women comprise the vast majority of their "clientele." Hating gays and women at once! If only I'd thought of that, why, I'd be a member of the one percent! So the Fundacion Causana, an organization of Ecuadorian women, have come together to fight back -- and one way they're fighting back is starting a petition on change.org. Think that's not terribly impressive? Well, it is -- imagine how they would have called attention to themselves in the '70s, or '90s. Tough to imagine, isn't it? And I can assure you if I had been treated like that, my first thought wouldn't be anything so civil as to start a petition to gain worldwide attention. The change.org petition is here.

Finally, Election Day yesterday yielded some pretty inspiring results -- Ohio voters defeated SB5, the anti-collective bargaining law, by an even wider margin than polls predicted; Maine voters demanded, and got, their same-day voter registration back; and Mississippi voters rejected the "personhood" amendment, again by an unexpectedly wide margin. Also, Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce -- the author of the notorious Arizona anti-immigration law, and an apparent recipient of gifts in contravention of ethics laws -- got tossed via recall, as did Michigan state Rep. (and union-busting homophobe) Paul Scott. And yet there's still much work to do. How do I know? Because this AP report totally bollockses up the job of telling folks who spent more money on the SB5 repeal effort. The lead paragraph casually tells us that SB5 went down "after an expensive union-backed campaign," which couldn't be because the AP wants Ohio voters to think Big Bad Union Money manipulated them, could it? We don't hear about SB5 finances again until paragraph 25, when the article claims that anti-SB5 forces outspent pro-SB5 forces by 3:1. Their proof? They compare spending by unnumbered "opponents" with spending by one pro-SB5 group. Stacked deck much? Plus, they don't mention that corporations don't have to disclose spending on political campaigns, or that other corporate groups spent money supporting SB5. Sadly, I expect less of the AP all the time.

The levee's gonna break.

Talk about bad timing: millions of Americans are out in the streets protesting the fact that corporations get all the say about everything in America regardless of which party's in power, and then Citizens for Tax Justice puts out this report, informing us that the 280 most profitable corporations in America shield half their profits from taxation. Individual cases are, of course, far worse: from 2008 to 2010, General Electric paid an effective tax rate of negative 45% -- that's right, they got welfare handouts from our government totaling almost half their profits, in addition to keeping all their profits. Wells Fargo and Verizon were also among 30 corporations paying negative tax rates. Corporate CEOs want personhood rights for corporations without, apparently, doing the hard work of being persons -- and that includes paying taxes for the services we all get. So Roots Action helps you tell these bozos to pay up.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's nefarious HB 934, which would require photo IDs at the voting booth, still hasn't passed the Senate. It's as if they're afraid of the popular will or something. Still, the Senate might decide to pass HB 934 when no one's looking, so the ACLU of PA helps you tell your state Senator to vote against HB 934. A lot of right-wingers love to say that our reforms are "a solution in search of a problem," but HB 934 is, actually, a solution in search of a problem -- the voters ain't committing the most fraud, the state trying to prevent the voter from voting are committing the most fraud. Plus, more than 10 percent of Americans don't have the photo ID HB 934 requires. Bet you can't guess who most of them are: elderly, minority, disabled, poor, students, and folks just out of jail. I can't imagine why a Republican-controlled legislature, at the behest of a Republican Governor, would want to make it harder for these people to vote. I just can't.

Finally, speaking of voting, ah, remember to vote today! Voting, as I've said, is the minimum requirement for citizenship -- think of the millions in the streets of Iran in 2009, defying a state perfectly happy to beat the crap out of them, and cherish what you have. As always, 1.800.OUR.VOTE (a.k.a. 1.800.687.8683) is the number to call if you witness, or experience, any voting right infringement. And even though 2011 is an odd-numbered year, meaning this election won't get as much ink as the last one or the next one, important things are still happening today: Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia legislatures are up, Kentucky and Mississippi governors are up, and Charlotte, Houston, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia mayors are up. Also, Mississippi's draconian Initiative 26 (which would grant "personhood" rights to fetuses, plus other "unintended" consequences) and Ohio's nefarious SB 5, which "addressed deficits" by rescinding collective bargaining rights, stand before the voters. So get out there and vote! And then come back here and continue your work.

Travel so far.

The Senate votes this week on S.J.Res. 6, which would nullify the (admittedly weak) net neutrality rules the FCC issued late last year. We know we want net neutrality because we don't want corporations telling us where to go and what to do on the internet. But what to say to your Senate co-sponsors (there are over 40 of them) who insist that regulation kills innovation? You say that without net neutrality, the thing they want to kill, there'd be no damn innovation on the internet at all -- there'd be no twitter, no facebook, no youtube, no political blogs, because corporations wouldn't have imagined making money off those things and thus would have never created them, or, possibly, would have imagined losing money off those things and so would have blocked their creation. Are we not a better nation, a better culture, with political blogs, facebook, youtube, twitter? Of course we are. Tell them, also, that strong net neutrality provisions don't "regulate" so much as they prevent corporations from regulating us. Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to oppose S.J.Res. 6.

Meanwhile, the Senate also plans to vote this week on S.J.Res. 27, which would block the EPA from implementing cross-state air pollution rules. (Does the Senate plan on doing anything good this week?) S.J.Res. 27 is the brainchild of Paul the Lesser, who no doubt believes he's supposed to serve the coal companies of Kentucky and not the people breathing the air in Kentucky -- or, more precisely, the people breathing the air in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia, whose inhabitants could also be breathing the air in Kentucky. I'm getting tired of hearing the GUMMINT REGULASHUN IZ EVUL line here as well -- if our government doesn't regulate the air, then corporations will, and you know corporations don't give a damn about your breathing if it interferes with their profits. Corporations don't care about anyone except their shareholders, and only then because they have money. Should we only allow people with money to have a say about anything? CREDO helps you tell your Senators to oppose S.J.Res. 27.

Finally, as ExxonMobil reports third quarter profits exceeding $10 billion, as Chevron announces third quarter profits exceeding $7.5 billion, and BP -- BP! -- announces third quarter profits of almost $5 billion, the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell Congress to end subsidies to oil corporations. Our government's subsidies to the oil industry total about $4 billion. Now refer to the figures given above: in just three months, three oil corporations made more than five times the oil subsidies given out to all oil corporations over an entire calendar year. I'm sure the oil corporations will complain that their shareholders will suffer (certainly the executives won't suffer!) if the subsidies aren't there. Thing is, a sizable number of their shareholders actually care about other things besides money, and would be willing to initiate shareholder resolutions demanding that their boards refuse any more subsidies, since, you know, everybody's gotta sacrifice in these hard times. Corporations think they'll win by buying Congress? Wait 'till they face their shareholders.

Storm in my house.

The Food and Farm Bill runs out in 2012, and the House is, as we speak, trying to ram through a new Food and Farm Bill without very much public scrutiny. I wonder why they'd do that! Not because they're going after subsidies to big corporations, because they'd have no need to keep that from the public. And the House will almost certainly blame the whole Super-Committee structure that demands cuts by Thanksgiving, though no one put a gun to their head and made them do a Food and Farm Bill in a week. No, most likely the House wants to cut conservation programs, nutrition programs, and sustainable agriculture programs, rather than cut welfare handouts to big corn producers so junk food can remain artificially cheap and our kids can remain artificially fat. Again: it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. So the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell Congress to cut subsidies to big corporations and protect programs that actually help people.

And the Congress of Screw You wreaks its havoc elsewhere, too! The House has introduced several poison pills in its version of the Whistleblower Protection Act. The House version would strip federal employees of their right to a jury trial, would strip more "liberal" appeals courts of their jurisdiction over whistleblower cases -- sore losers much, Republicans? -- and would let a politically-appointed board dismiss whistleblower complaints without a hearing. Gosh, wouldn't conservatives want to empower whistleblowers, so that our government doesn't screw us harder? Of course, today's most vocal "conservatives" are anything but -- they're more concerned about frivolous lawsuits than anything else, and by "frivolous lawsuits" they don't mean lawsuits filed by corporations, which total four out of every five lawsuits filed in America, but lawsuits filed by people trying to do the right thing. I really wish it weren't as simple as that, but it is. At least the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell Congress not to run roughshod over whistleblower rights.

Finally, RootsAction helps you tell Congress to pass a small financial transaction tax. You can amend the tool, if you like, to reflect your desire, if you share this desire, that we focus on taxing financial speculation, and to reflect your desire that a tax on speculation be higher (like, say, one percent). Ralph Nader has called for a tax on speculation of 0.5 percent, and I guess when the "liberal" media gets it wrong and calls it a "5 percent tax" it won't be as bad as when Mr. Obama proposed an 0.25% tax. How does no one in the "liberal" media ever get fired for such things, I wonder? And why did Mr. Obama, widely regarded as a smart man, fail to see such a "mistake" coming? Anyway, Mr. Nader reminds us that high-frequency trading (ubiquitous with the advent of the internet) and similar strategies now comprise over two-thirds of all trading volume. Does a society become healthier if it can "trade" in ever-more abstract financial concepts at the speed of light? Or does it become healthier if it can, you know, make stuff, sell stuff, and save money?

Happy hour.

Millions of good Americans have taken to the streets to protest corporation domination, and yet the Obama Administration still wants to "settle" a suit brought by over 40 state Attorneys General against the banksters. The banksters sold bad mortgages and then foreclosed on homeowners without proving they even owned the properties, but Mr. Obama wants a "deal" that would net a few billion dollars and then close off the investigation into their wrongdoing forever. Does the phrase "law and order" mean anything to Mr. Obama? Some Attorneys General (Messrs. Schneiderman of New York and Biden of Delaware, among others) aren't having it, and good for them. But none of us should be having it, either. So MoveOn helps you tell Mr. Obama not to cut a bad deal with banks who committed crimes. And they did commit crimes -- after all, we have good reason not to let corporations forge documents, or let robo-signers notarize documents without even reading them.

Speaking of banksters, families have been losing their homes and pulling their kids out of the public schools in Minneapolis, yet the public school system remains a client of Wells Fargo, who were pushing bad mortgages to borrowers everywhere, and have foreclosed on hundreds of Minneapolis homes. So a Minneapolis resident, Steve Fletcher, has started a petition on change.org to get the Minneapolis public school system to move its money out of Wells Fargo and to a community bank. Why the hell not? Why go with some Leviathan of a bank that doesn't respond to the needs of local communities, or even the needs of anyone other than the CEO's? Change.org helps you tell the Minneapolis public school system to move its money to a good and safe place, far away from the venality and greed of the big banks. Don't worry: if the place Minneapolis moves its money eventually becomes corrupt itself, we'll tell them to move their money again. There are a lot of good people in the world. Some of them even run banks.

Finally, some bad news. You may remember telling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (or CFTC) to limit energy price speculation, specifically by placing limits on how much individual traders (or individual corporations) can trade. Well, the CFTC blew it -- they listened to the big corporations, and not to you, though listening to you is their job. Another part of Mr. Obama's 12-dimensional chess game, no doubt! But what part of "do something good for people and people will stand by you" does the Obama Administration not understand? Do they really think the American people are going to stand for another lost decade, another two terms of broken promises? Do they really think the American people are happy with voting for someone merely because he doesn't eat nuns and children for breakfast? The people don't care that Mr. Obama reaches out to the other side and tries to get something done, they only care that he does good things, and the people will elect that disgusting Mitt Romney in 2012 because Mr. Obama betrayed them. Mission accomplished!

UPDATE. I know this will come as a tremendous shock to you, but Wells Fargo doesn't pay taxes, either.

Million miles.

In case you were wondering, Congress's Joint Committee for Deficit Reduction, tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from our national debt before Thanksgiving, is nowhere near a proposal that reflects the will of their constituents. Republicans want to lower corporate tax rates and cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. And Democrats? They want to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits a bit less. Heckuva job, Democrats! Since they obviously suck at what they're tasked to do, Rep. Waters (D-CA) has introduced H.R. 3201, which would eliminate the task, and the folks doing it, by eliminating the Joint Committee for Deficit Reduction. And that's all. The Committee acts like there ain't millions of people in the streets protesting everything they stand for. Maybe more of us need to be getting up in their grills, as this woman did. In the meantime, Roots Action helps you tell your Representative to support H.R. 3201 and repeal the so-called "Super Committee." Super my ass.

Meanwhile, the reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce has lashed out against characterizations of H.R. 3261/S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act, as an "internet blacklist" bill, on the grounds that the PROTECT IP Act doesn't actually use the term "blacklist," or actually create a blacklist. I guess they also think the PATRIOT Act is perfectly OK because it doesn't come out and say it wants you to be afraid to speak your mind. If the PROTECT IP Act passes, our government will be able to shut down websites whenever someone files -- not wins, files -- a copyright-infringement complaint against them. So our government could very easily draw up a list of folks they want to shut down, remind their corporate paymasters to file copyright-infringement suits against them, and then shut them down. Presumably said government will be smart enough not to post their blacklist where everyone can see it, lest the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notice. Demand Progress still helps you oppose the internet blacklist bill, as does the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

Finally, I have a considerable amount of good news. Remember that Pennsylvania coal plant that was polluting New Jersey air so badly that even Gov. Christie appealed to the EPA about it? Well, the EPA has ruled that the GenOn Energy plant must clean up its act within three years. You probably wrote the EPA about that, so go treat yourself to lunch. Also, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to give 12,000 federal prisoners a shot at shaving a few years off their crack-cocaine-related sentences, so their sentences can conform more closely to the reforms in the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act. Families Against Mandatory Minimums can help you see if a friend or family member might benefit. Finally (I said it was a considerable amount!), Bank of Amerikkka dropped its $5 monthly debit card fee, after much public criticism. Now Consumers Union helps you move your money out of there. The banksters will no doubt tell you that if so many people move their money at once, they'll hurt the economy. Like we could possibly hurt the economy more than they do!

Beggars can be choosers.

Pennsylvania has installed 50,000 homes' worth of solar power over the last couple of years, meeting its annual mandates in the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. Yay Pennsylvania! But, ah, having met these mandates, Pennsylvania needs incentive to do better. And here comes HB 1580, which would mandate increases in the amount of solar energy sold in the state after June 1, 2012. You might read the bill and find the mandates are smaller than you'd expect -- 0.15% (that's fifteen one-hundredths of one percent, not fifteen percent) of all energy sold derived from solar power for fiscal 2012, versus the 0.051% originally mandated by the Standard. But Pennsylvania's efforts have already put it in the top half of solar states in America, and created thousands of jobs, and actually helped wean us off less politically- and environmentally-stable energy sources. So the Sierra Club helps you support solar power.

Meanwhile, over a dozen members of Congress have signed a letter to the State Department Inspector General demanding an investigation into the Obama State Department's "review" of the Keystone XL pipeline, given that State outsourced said review to a corporation with strong business ties to TransCanada, the pipeline's builder. And many of these members of Congress are the Republicans who swept into office demanding accountability from Mr. Obama, right? Sadly, no: they're all Democrats, except for the fairly left-of-center Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders. Oh, well -- sad that you can't even count on the fairly right-of-center Nebraska delegation, whose state sits squarely on the Ogallala Aquifer that the Keystone XL pipeline would threaten. But if the Ogallala can't count on them, at least it can count on us, because CREDO helps you tell the State Department Inspector General to investigate the State Department's review process. Time's a-wasting, as TransCanada has already sued dozens of landowners throughout the heartland, despite not actually getting its project approved. Why are corporations such pricks these days?

Time for some good news! JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo have dropped their planned debit card fees, and Bank of Amerikkka is "refining" its own. Nice to see that the patina of "liberal" media coverage has changed somewhat -- remember when the "liberal" media uncritically reported that government regulations forced poor, poor Bank of Amerikkka to assess the fee? Didn't see any mention of that on that ABC report. We did see on ABC that BOA CEO Brian Moynihan is as clueless as ever -- are you familiar with the concept of empathy, sir? And, given that, why should we care that you're "incensed" at the backlash against your lousy business decision? And Key Bank CEO Beth Mooney had a little trouble stringing complete sentences around platitudes like "tough times," which also testifies to the disconnect CEOs seem to experience when trying to think about other people. I wonder how that happened.

UPDATE. Scratch that word "refining" above -- Bank of Amerikkka has apparently scuttled its planned $5/month debit card fee entirely. Mr. Moynihan apparently could not bring himself to announce the news.