Thieves in the Temple.

"Really? A light posting notice? I hadn't imagined!"

Not to belabor the obvious, but I won't have any new posts up until the New Year -- or until some politician does something so unconscionably stupid and evil that I won't be able to shut my yap about it, whichever comes first. These days, you never know.

There will be stuff to do at the year's outset, of course -- the FDA used the Christmas holiday to announce that it won't issue rules to stop rampant antibiotic abuse at factory farms, and the Republican House majority has already signaled that it will go after the EPA's new mercury/air toxin rules. So enjoy your break, because, as a citizen, you don't get very many of them, especially with the clowns we have in high office.

Alive and kickin'.

The FCC voted to loosen media consolidation rules, again. They figured no one would notice, I guess, because of the holidays, but they are, as usual, wrong. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell faulted the rules because they didn't allow the same big four corporations that already own most American media to own even more media, "given the explosion of media outlets." But the splendid (and outgoing) FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called that "an illusion of plenty," saying that while "the barriers to self-publish have never been lower," the big corporations still get "the majority of eyeballs and clicks." Remember who occupied Technorati's Top 10 blogs in 2005? It was all Instapundits and Eschatons back then; just three years later Technorati's Top 10 were all big corporate blogs. The big corporations don't need more freedom; they need less, so we can have more freedom. I don't have a handy leave-a-comment-to-the-FCC tool yet, but nothing prevents you from calling your Reps and Senators about it. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration announced higher fuel efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks last month -- and the Sierra Club helps you submit a public comment supporting standards. A dozen big automakers support the Obama standards, but the National Automobile Dealers Association opposes them! How could this be? It could be a double game, whereby the auto industry pretends to be split on an issue in order to lull their opponents to sleep. But you know how to split that particular Gordian knot, right? Always attack! Accept no compromise with corporate whining! These big corporations could make the 54.5 mpg-by-2025 standard now, but they care too much about mammon to do that. And they say regulation stifles innovation? Rubbish! Regulation forces innovation! Corporations would force the same crap down our throats year after year if we let them. But we won't let them. Not in my America.

Finally, the EPA issued fairly strong toxic air pollution rules on Wednesday, covering (among other things) mercury, arsenic, and lead. The EPA got almost a million public comments about the proposed rule, which I'm told is a record, and the vast majority of said comments supported strong regulations on the pollutants that cause so much childhood asthma and bronchitis every year, so congratulate yourself. And then steel yourself for the coming Republican onslaught -- the REGULASHUNS KILL JOBZ!!!! crew will try to undo the mercury rule the minute they get back in January. We, of course, know that forcing coal plants to upgrade their equipment will actually create jobs -- jobs for the people who have to design better equipment, the people who have to build it, and the people who have to install it. And if all that job-creation prevents some Koch brother from gilding the plumbing in his 33rd vacation house, well, we all have to make sacrifices. The League of Conservation Voters and CREDO both help you thank Mr. Obama and the EPA for the mercury rule.

Penny rants for Thursday, December 22, 2011.

No, "Do They Know It's Christmas" is not the "most insufferable Christmas song ever," not in a world where some bastard at Motown once made Eddie Kendricks sing "Rudolph." Yes, it is blindly ethnocentric and full of itself, but I've long blamed the things I didn't like about the song on Bob Geldof's lyrics. Was he just unsure of how to express his newfound passion, or did he tailor his message for the most offensive Thatcherites he could think of? "Where nothing ever grows/no rain nor rivers flow" just isn't true of Africa, after all, but maybe he thought Thatcherites only understood hyperbole, and I confess I might also be tempted to say "well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you" to someone I thought was unusually and willfully cruel. Still, even at the height of her power, I doubt Mrs. Thatcher's most obnoxious supporters were all that numerous, and even if they were the proverbial emptiest wagon of British public discourse back then, it'd be dumb to aim your message squarely at them without imagining how everyone else might hear it.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul looked absolutely terrible defending past racist diatribes in twenty-year-old newsletters bearing his name. Mr. Paul generally handles hostile questioning better than almost any other politician, so taking off his microphone and walking away constitutes, for him, a meltdown. And it isn't just his stammering over "I didn't write them" that makes me doubt him more than I did back in 2008. I suspected he didn't write them, but I still wondered why anyone in his employ would think racist diatribes would be appropriate in a newsletter with his name on it, and his claim that he "didn't read them" doesn't say much for his executive ability -- if I put my name on a newsletter, I'd make damn sure I approved of every last damn thing in it, lest some clown ruin my reputation later. Ron Paul isn't that dumb, so I have to assume that whether he wrote them or not, they were really in his heart, and yesterday's "disavow(al)" of those diatribes won't ring true until he can explain how his heart changed. This might be a challenge for him, especially if it involves lying, which isn't his strong suit.

Starve the beast (reprise).

Remember earlier this month, when we encouraged Google to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Well, some 200,000 petition signings later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has responded (at about the 55-minute mark). Long story short: Google hasn't left the U.S. Chamber, despite its multitudinous sins. So Sum of Us helps you post to Mr. Schmidt's Google+ page, send a tweet to Mr. Schmidt's Twitter account, or post to Google's Facebook page. You won't lack for things to say. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends tens of millions of dollars opposing clean energy, opposing gay rights, opposing net neutrality, and electing right-wing idiots to Congress. You'd think they'd take all that money of theirs and create jobs or something.

Meanwhile, the Parents' Television Council still helps you demand that cable corporations start offering channels a la carte and letting you pay for them a la carte. Incredibly, this cause has, lately, gotten a small amount of elite media attention -- namely, from the conservative blogger (and former New Republic editor) Andrew Sullivan, who covered it here, here, here, and here. These posts comprise a pretty comprehensive summation of pros and cons, though the telecom attorney's cons, of course, don't convince me. And the reader quoted in the last of the above links makes the moral case -- that a la carte is the only way to discipline cable networks that give their consumers nothing but the back of their hand. They deserve the back of our hand, and with a la carte, we can give it to them.

Head held high.

Did you know your local broadcasters must provide a "public file" detailing how well they're serving the public interest? They are, you know, supposed to serve the public interest, in exchange for using the public's airwaves. And in this file you can find out many things, like who complains about endless Lindsay Lohan coverage or which corporations give buku bucks to the station. Of course, your local broadcasters don't have to make it easy for you to view their public file -- you usually have to go to the TV station to do that, and only during hours you're probably already working. Oh, and many times they don't even let you in, without an "appointment" or some idea of who you "work for." To which I'd say: I work for America, pimps! But the FCC is mulling whether to make your local broadcasters put their public file online, so you can search it whenever you like. I have no idea what reasonable objection broadcasters could have, though these days so many folks say things like "we should be able to control who sees our public file!" without very much apparent self-awareness. Anyway, Free Press helps you tell the FCC to make your local broadcasters put their public files online.

Meanwhile, H.J.Res. 88, a Jim McGovern (D-MA) production, would amend the U.S. Constitution so that "The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state." In addition, the amendment would add that "such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution." In a nation where over two-thirds of Republican voters disagree with the Supreme Court that corporations are "people" for the purpose of making political donations, the passage of this amendment should be a no-brainer -- which would confirm our suspicions that the folks in Congress who'd never, ever vote for such an amendment possess less than no brain. Still, if they think their jobs are on the line, they'll dance. You may call your Reps and Senators using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

Finally, in these "interesting" times, we should always count the victories whenever we can, and we've got three to celebrate this week. AT&T announced yesterday that it's abandoning plans to merge with T-Mobile, this after an antitrust suit filed by the Department of Justice and (let's not forget!) all your letters to the FCC and to your Congressfolk opposing the merger. But that's not all! H.R. 3035, the bill that would have allowed robocalls to your cell phone without your permission, is (in co-sponsor Lee Terry's terms) "dead, done, buried" after co-sponsors Terry (R-NE) and Edolphus Towns (D-NY) asked House Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) to keep the bill from advancing through committee. And the nefarious Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. the "internet blacklist" bill, did not get a vote in the House Judiciary Committee as planned on Thursday. But Harry Reid promises he'll bring the PROTECT IP Act, the Senate version of the "internet blacklist" bill, to the floor when the Senate comes back in January, so you may want to tell him to forget about PROTECT IP or any of its iterations.

Long dark road.

The House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony today relating to the nefarious Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. As you know, SOPA would give our federal government the power to shut down any website accused of copyright infringement. Our Founders would be so thrilled to find contemporary Americans being punished before conviction! And pretty much anyone can accuse a site of copyright infringement, on the flimsiest of pretexts -- such as linking to someone else's article or video -- so SOPA could turn into a giant bludgeon on our First Amendment rights. And anyone who thinks "their" President would exercise more restraint than someone else's should consider how great a friend the last two Presidents have been to civil rights and the rule of law. Who helps you stop this trainwreck of a bill? Roll call! The Electronic Freedom Foundation! Demand Progress! Daily Kos!

Meanwhile, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, or SRBC, governs the 400-plus miles of the river's run, affecting water usage in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. Both Maryland and New York have been rather more conservative about this rush to drilling than Pennsylvania has -- Maryland and New York seem like they'd like to see how this whole drilling thing is going to work before plunging ahead and causing problems. Pennsylvania's nominally "conservative" Governor and legislature, though? Not so much. In any case, it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. The SRBC will be meeting today to consider applications from gas drillers, regulations on project approvals, and the transport of wastewater. Don't delay; be heard today! The Sierra Club helps you tell the SRBC to vote against proposals that would weaken oversight of the Susquehanna River and its water that good folks use.

Fire, fire.

Pennsylvania continues its death-march toward an oppressive photo voter ID regime that would effectively disenfranchise many seniors, ethnic minorities, and poor people. HB 934, passed by the House, now stands before the Senate, and both CREDO and Keystone Progress help you tell your Senators to oppose it. Why? Sen. Daylin Leach (D-17) explains why in this December 11 Philadelphia Inquirer editorial. Here are two highlights: no one risks years in prison (the penalty under current law) just to vote fraudulently in an election, and even the Bush Justice Department counted exactly 86 cases of voter fraud nationwide from 2002-2007, out of 300 million votes cast. In other words, the "problem" HB 934 seeks to "solve" isn't that folks rampantly commit voter fraud -- it's that too many voters still vote Democrat. Rest assured that I'd be just as upset about a Democrat plot to keep rich white voters away from the polls. Frankly, though, I've never seen that happen.

Meanwhile, the home improvement chain Lowe's recently pulled its advertising sponsoring a TLC reality show called All-American Muslim. Why? Because the Florida Family Association lobbied them to do it, and they suggested that any depiction of American Muslims doing anything so mundane as living a normal life constitutes an attempt "to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad." By that logic, they must also think any show depicting a homosexual as anything other than a slobbering sex hound constitutes an attempt to "manipulate" Americans into ignoring the clear and present danger to their nether-orifices. But I'm not going to hate too much on the Florida Family Association -- they did what I think we all should do, which is lobby corporations to stop funding shows we believe hurt our culture. And no law, ethic, or moral stops us from doing the same, even in response to someone else's campaign. So Sum of Us helps you tell Lowe's to reinstate their advertising on All-American Muslim.

UPDATE. One reader reports getting an error message from the CREDO link (first paragraph). I didn't have any problems, but make a note of it.

Good as gold (stupid as mud).

House Republicans know they'll have to pass an extension of federal unemployment insurance before it expires on December 31 -- so they're planning to pass one that's been slashed to within an inch of its life. H.R. 3630 would not only cut the number of weeks you can get benefits in all states, it would save the biggest cuts for the states with the highest unemployment. Now that's some seriously compassionate conservatism! Further, H.R. 3630 would let states impose mandatory drug testing on unemployment claimants, and (naturally, because these things are so super-duper-related) would demand a decision on the Keystone oil pipeline by the FERC within 30 days. A lot of these Congress-schmucks are going to be unemployed themselves in November of 2012, which'll be too late for them to learn from their mistakes, I suppose. But not too late for us! The National Employment Law Project helps you call your Congressfolk and tell them to oppose H.R. 3630, while the Coalition on Human Needs helps you email your Congressfolk. But hurry; the House might vote on H.R. 3630 today. They always move quickly on the things that hurt us the most.

Word on the street is that the government of India wants internet companies such as Facebook and Google to pre-emptively censor content -- and if they won't do it, the government will do it. I'm tempted to say in a nation of over a billion people? Good luck with that! But then I remember that an overmatched government could just go bat-guano and censor everything -- your photos, your blog posts, your online petitions -- or could cherry-pick its villains so they can intimidate everyone else. And I oppose any attempts to gut network neutrality or install internet "kill-switches" or shut down websites accused-not-convicted of internet piracy in America, so why would I tolerate India's bluster? India Institute of Technology engineering student Ritesh Singh has started a petition on change.org to tell India's government to abandon their mad scheme, and you can sign on here. People have been in the streets all over the world this year, fighting the stupidity, venality, and cruelty of their governments, so naturally said governments want to stamp out our ability to communicate with each other. But if we keep fighting, they will lose. All of them will lose. It's that simple.

Finally, if you haven't told your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 3035, the bill that would let corporations and political action groups robocall your cell phone and use up all your minutes, CREDO still helps you do that. I feel I need to assert something pretty basic here: corporations do not have a "right" to flog their goods to you. And politicians do not have a "right" to spew their spiel to you. But you have the right to refuse to associate with anyone, as long as you're not trampling on someone else's rights -- which, as I've said, you're not doing by not listening to robocallers. No doubt some right-wingers respond by saying, well, don't answer the phone if you don't know who's calling, then! Ha ha ha! Victory lap! Silly right wingers! They know most people think people who don't answer the phone are rude. You know what else is rude? Assuming that if you've ever given your phone number to a business, they have the right to call you and use up your minutes whenever they like, without your express consent. And H.R. 3035 does that, too. All hail the free market -- free for corporations, never for people!

Bottom to the top.

The Pennsylvania state Senate may vote as early as today on some iteration of the two nefarious pro-lighting-your-tap-water-on-fire bills, SB 1100 and HB 1950. These bills would set low (and optional) gas drilling impact fees dwarfed by just about every other state's drilling fees, and these bills would also prevent local communities from setting environmental limits on gas drilling, even as it would only permit counties to levy the fee. "Local control when it benefits corporations, state control when it doesn't" seems to be the motto of SB 1100 and HB 1950. If you haven't taken action on the gas-drilling bills yet, PennEnvironment still helps you write your state Senators. One hopes that the Senate understands that nobody but them and their gas drilling cronies want these bills, but nobody's gone broke underestimating the ability of politicians to ignore what their constituents tell them. That only means we tell 'em more and louder. 'Cause we're still the boss of them.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. You remember the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, passed by Congress (and signed by Mr. Clinton) in 1996? DOMA prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, thus denying the thousand-plus legal benefits of marriage to gays. And look how much more moral we've become since we kept gays from marrying! Why, we lie less, we commit to our communities more, we raise children more effectively, we've become less attached to sensationalist media -- oops, sorry, forgot which evil alternate universe I was in for a moment. Anyway, the Respect for Marriage Act (S. 598), which would repeal DOMA, has somehow passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and now awaits a full Senate vote. Will Republicans be smart enough to actually pass this bill, thus testing Mr. Obama's will to take on the hatemongers during an election year? Nah, I doubt it. We should still tell them to do it, though, because repealing DOMA is the right thing to do.

Finally, the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1876/S. 984) would allow anyone working full-time at a business with more than 15 workers to earn up to seven days of paid sick time every year -- unless an employer wants to give more, of course. Don't laugh; mine does, though apparently some 40 million Americans don't get any paid sick time at their jobs. The Department of Labor instructs us that a national paid sick days policy would have prevented five million cases of the flu in 2009; whether that's actually true or not, you know from being a sentient life form that if folks had paid sick days, they'd go to work sick a lot less (and/or send their kids off to school sick a lot less), and we'd all be better off. I notice that S. 984 has 19 sponsors, and none of them are Republicans. Oh, for the halcyon days when Republicans were occasionally progressive! Wait, that wasn't so long ago -- the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was also a supporter of federally-mandated paid sick days, and I already told you what I think happened to him (see third paragraph). Anyway, Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to support the Healthy Families Act.

Distant early warning.

House Republicans plan to attach all manner of anti-air regulation amendments to a must-pass appropriations bill, so the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell them to cut it out. The fourth paragraph, explaining how environmental protections actually help the economy, may well be worth expounding upon further in your letter to your Congressfolk. In a related development, the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell Congress not to attach any Keystone XL-related provisions to any payroll tax/unemployment extension. Not just because it's bad policy, but because we've all had it up to here with Republicans taking us hostage. Our very own Speaker of the House referred to the Keystone XL amendment as an attempt to turn "chicken shit into chicken salad." One wonders why he thinks a David Frum idea that cuts taxes for working folk is "chicken shit." Mr. Obama, for his part, said he'd "reject" any attempt to attach such a provision to his payroll tax cut extension, though the word I was looking for was "veto."

In other news, the EPA wants a small amount of information from concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOs, also known as factory farms, as in the ones that pen up animals in cramped and filthy conditions and dump hog manure into rivers all over the Midwest. The EPA wants to know where the facilities are and what waste they produce, but the big factory farms are acting like we're all up in their grills. Hey, factory farms: you're dumping crap into our water! No right to a "trade secret" supersedes our right not to drink crap in our water! And when factory farms profess to feeling all jittery over other corporations possibly finding out about their inner workings, I feel like grabbing them by the scruff and saying, hey, I thought you guys were our best and brightest! I thought you liked the rough-and-tumble of the free market! Typical, how they think rules are for everyone else. Anyway, enough rant: the Pew Environmental Group helps you leave a public comment supporting the EPA's effort to get more information out of factory farms.

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell corporations to stop funding the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. I'd support such an effort on general principles -- ALEC is responsible for a lot of legislative rubbish, especially at the state level -- but lately ALEC has also written the model for many "voter fraud" laws states have passed this year. You know, the bills that demand all sorts of photo ID that poor folks, ethnic minorities, and seniors are less likely to have? And not just what right-wing idiots call "those people," either -- if you don't own a car, you're a lot less likely to have the right ID. Should we discriminate against people because they don't drive? And if you're moving out of state, you may have a new state's photo ID laws to deal with. Maybe you'll move to Wisconsin, where apparently you need a photo ID to get a birth certificate and a birth certificate to get a photo ID. Anyway, I'd be worried if I were ALEC's patron corporations. Color of Change did virtually stop advertising on the Glenn Beck Clown Show, after all.

Million miles.

Today is National Call-in Day about federal unemployment extension, I'm told, and the toll-free number to call your Congressfolk is 1.888.245.3381, per the National Employment Law Project and other organizations. If you're feeling ornery, as I usually am, you might remind your Congressfolk that your desire to extend federal unemployment insurance for good Americans does not mean you'll swallow any mound of turd to get it done -- if Republicans insist on attaching Keystone XL-related rubbish, or any other species of rubbish, to an unemployment extension, I'm happy to let it fail and let Republicans take the blame, and then maybe they'll see the error of their ways and pass a clean unemployment extension when millions of their constituents get cut off. This might not be so urgent if those corporations sitting on trillions of dollars would just start hiring some people already. It's the least they could do, after all we've done for them.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, PA, has denied a 13-year-old honor student/athlete admission because he's HIV-positive. Lest you think but they're a private school!, note that private schools don't get to discriminate against folks living with HIV, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act. And the Milton Hershey School has stated that "we cannot accomodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety" hey dungheads! HIV doesn't travel on cooties! The kid would almost have to force himself on someone sexually to pass on the disease! So another HIV+ student partnered up with Advocates for Youth and started a petition on change.org, which you may access here. If the Hershey School doesn't want to deal with the difficulties of providing a public service, I suppose they can always stop providing it, instead of pretending the law doesn't apply to them. Some people running schools are so damn stupid.

Go hard.

Though I try not to wade into Presidential appointments and confirmations, I'm going to urge you to tell your Senators to confirm Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Why? Besides the fact that it's almost as good as having Elizabeth Warren? A bloc of 44 Republicans, enough to sustain a filibuster, have pledged to block Mr. Cordray's nomination (or anyone else's!) until the CFPB is completely defanged so that it can do nothing about predatory payday loans, nothing about crap mortgages, nothing about banksters betting against their own crap securities. Remember that very few Americans agree that what America really needs right now is less financial regulation. And that Republicans have already had a chance to debate the matter in 2010, and they lost that debate. And that Republicans then had their day at the ballot box in 2010, and though they won the House back, they could not win the Senate back, and thus can't bring very much leverage to another debate about financial regulation. So what do they do? They take hostages. I am so, so sick of right-wing hostage-taking, and, apparently, so are Americans for Financial Reform and USPIRG, both of whom help you tell the Senate to confirm Mr. Cordray already.

Meanwhile, we've spoken quite a bit lately about companies doing whatever they like with your information without asking you about it, and now Consumers Union helps you tell CEOs to respect your privacy and ask you before using your information. Try to put it out of your head that a lot of those CEOs will laugh at you, and remember that, ultimately, without your patronage, they're nothing. The more congenial among them will tell you, we need all that information to deliver better service. If you refuse it, you'll break the whole system. Such dreamers, our entrepreneurial class! Such risk-takers! Here's what'll happen: they won't be able to target ads more precisely to you. Sound like Teh Death of teh Internet to you? And let's assume that Carrier IQ's assertion from the other day, that they need all that information to do quality assurance on cell phone service, is true. If you deny them your information, they won't suddenly be completely unable to fix dropped calls and dropped connections and the like -- they'll just have to figure out another way to do it. Like our great Captains of Industry supposedly do all the time! If our great boss-class has such trouble living up to their own PR, we should give them all the help we can. Opposition builds character, you know.

Finally, closer to home, Pennsylvania gas-drilling corporations are on the verge of winning historic victories against the people's will -- HB 1950 passed the House already, and the similar SB 1100 sits out there, too, like a vulture on a cliffside. These bills actually make it harder for communities to control the environmental side effects of gas drilling, which may include (but are not necessarily limited to) explosions, air pollution, and water pollution, to the point where your tap water catches on fire. These bills also give gas drilling corporations way too much say in the permit process and set extraordinarily low extraction fees (which aren't even mandatory). So PennEnvironment helps you tell your Pennsylvania state Senators to oppose HB 1950 and SB 1100. Asking whose side they're on -- the people's, or the big gas drilling corporations -- wouldn't be untoward of you. Some people would call that uncivil, but, in my experience, they're generally the same people who always just ignore (and thus excuse) far worse rants from right-wingers.

Starve the beast!

Republicans want to add a Keystone XL-related poison pill to payroll tax/unemployment legislation -- not only do they want to strip Keystone XL approval from the President and assign it to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, they want to force the FERC to rule within 30 days. Let's see if I get this straight: they want to completely hamstring the entire regulatory process (via the REINS Act and the Regulatory Accountability Act), except when they want something done, in which case they want our government to hurry up already. Can't have it both ways, boys. CREDO helps you tell leading Congressional Democrats to resist pressure to let Republicans attach Keystone XL-related legislation to unrelated legislation. Jesus Mary and Joseph Mr. Obama's proposed payroll tax cut for corporations is a damn Republican idea. You'd think Republicans would want to take some credit for that, instead of turning everything into a crap sandwich for everybody.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior is still taking comments about granting new oil drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean, and the Pew Environment Group helps you leave a comment calling for a moratorium on new leases. It's really not enough to say don't hurt the polar bear! -- or the walrus, the ice seal, or the bowhead whale. Our problem with drilling in the Arctic is twofold: a) we don't know enough about the ecosystem to know what kind of damage we'd cause, and b) it'll be a lot harder to clean up a spill in a frozen ocean than it was to clean up a spill in the Gulf. And you all remember how well that went! Seriously, Mr. Salazar has proven to be one of Mr. Obama's better Cabinet appointments, but he's better on issues that relate to his home state of Colorado. He may need some additional guidance to do the right thing in the Arctic. And we, of course, are happy to give it to him.

Finally, MoveOn helps you encourage Google to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Why? Because Google is a big, big corporation, one that prides itself on doing right (however spotty its record) in addition to doing well. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has become a right-wing noise machine on issues it did not previously burden itself (like climate change), spending millions of dollars to elect right-wing idiots like Ron Johnson. Put simply, it's a beast that needs to be starved of the money its member corporations pay. This hasn't come out of the blue, either -- apparently, Google employees have been talking among themselves about the need to leave the U.S. Chamber. You may also want to consider that a) you use Google and b) Google makes money off that. Do you want your money going to an organization friendly to anti-gay bigots, friendly to the Koch Brothers, friendly to big corporations that want to tell you where to go and what to do on the internet, friendly to "Democrats" like Dan Boren and Mike Ross? I thought not.

The darkest ending.

S. 1747, the Computer Professionals Update Act, would modify the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to make it harder for computer professionals to get overtime -- basically, by making a longer list of IT professionals who can't get overtime. This, in a field where systems could crash at any moment and require skilled techs to repair it at any moment. The CEOs clamoring for bills like these so they can "reduce labor costs" and "create more jobs" may want to consider how well S. 1747 would go over with the folks who run their networks, without whom, as many IT professionals have pointed out to me in the last few days, they'd be well and truly screwed. I note also that S. 1747's four (so far) co-sponsors comprise exactly two from each party. Ah, bipartisanship: when Democrats and Republicans come together to give corporations whatever they want. If you call your Reps and Senators and urge them to oppose S. 1747, they'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, super-secret software installed on Android smart phones can record your every move and send those records to a corporation you've probably never heard of. Said corporation, Carrier IQ, says the software is for "quality control" purposes -- to monitor battery life, dropped connections, crashed apps, like that. You can see the problem with that, right? You didn't know about it until now -- you might have agreed to let your information be used that way (though with more safeguards on your privacy than Carrier IQ obviously offers) if Carrier IQ or your service provider had asked you. Do you remember being asked? I thought not. Corporations need to ask us whether we really want our information to be used in that way, lest it fall into the wrong hands and be used in some other way. And making corporations do that won't "break the internet," either. So Free Press helps you tell the Justice Department to investigate Carrier IQ.

Finally, the "liberal" media (excluding McClatchy) couldn't get a damn thing right during the lead-up to the Iraq war, and now they can't get a damn thing right about its consequences. A CBS Evening News report from December 1 suggested that the U.S. somehow got "caught in the middle" of an Iraqi religious war (invading another country does tend to embroil you in drama, doesn't it?), and then told us that "more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the war." Fifty thousand? According to CBS's source, icasualties.org, that's how many died up until January 2005. Over six years have passed since then; many of these were not exactly pleasant. And icasualties.org only tallies deaths reported by news outlets, and is more than happy to tell you that other reputable organizations put the figure much higher. Learn any of that from CBS News? No, of course not. If you had, you might be even more angry about our great nation being manipulated into war by arrogant thugs than you already are. FAIR helps you tell CBS News to get their act together on reporting Iraqi civilian deaths.

Social casualties.

Keystone Progress helps you tell Congress not to cut Medicare and Medicaid. I know, it sounds like something we've told them a thousand times already, but we've got reason to tell them again: part of the debt limit "deal" from August forced Medicare cuts (along with defense cuts) if the Joint Committee on Stealing the People's Wealth didn't come to an agreement. Said Committee didn't come to an agreement, so the cuts -- specifically, cuts of Medicare payments to health care providers, which will induce some providers to stop taking Medicare -- begin in January of 2013. It has been highly amusing to watch Republicans talk about "getting all those defense cuts back one day." Hey, dungheads: if you want to keep your jobs, you'll try to get all the Medicare cuts back. And if Mr. Obama actually does veto any attempt to keep the cuts from taking place, then work the magic of bipartisanship and get a big enough margin to override his veto. These things are not very difficult.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that the FCC, currently evaluating media ownership rules, plans to leave media consolidation rules in more or less the same shape they were in 2006, when the FCC permitted, for the first time, cross-ownership of broadcast and newspaper media. Tell me why we bother electing Democrats again? The FCC fell down on net neutrality, and now that Byron Dorgan and Trent Lott and Chip Pickering are gone from Congress, they plan to fall down again on media consolidation? They're forgetting something: we ain't gone nowhere, and we drove Messrs. Dorgan and Lott and Pickering to do what they did to stop media consolidation back in the day. So Free Press helps you tell the FCC that we want less media consolidation, not more. Four corporations own most of the broadcast media in this country, and the result ain't better news, not with fewer reporters, fewer reports, and more PR propaganda presented as "news." The Founders could've told you that, but some people only seem to care what the Founders thought (or, more precisely, "thought") about abortion, gay marriage, and social welfare programs.

In other news, you may not know that Starbucks gift cards come with a surprise -- a forced arbitration clause preventing you, the gift card holder, from ever suing in a court over your gift card, or joining with other consumers in such a suit. You may well be saying: what's the big deal? It's a gift card! The big deal is that Starbucks could slap on hidden fees after you buy the card (just as they slapped hidden fees on certain bags of coffee). How do you feel about hidden fees again? Real good, right? And Starbucks could actually make a lot of money slapping hidden fees on millions of cards, meaning that if you want to stop that sort of dishonesty, you have to band together with other cardholders to sue. But Starbucks doesn't let you band together -- if you want to fight them, you'll have to fly out to Seattle to make your complaint with a corporation Starbucks pays to arbitrate its cases. Got a guess how that'll turn out? What the hell is the problem with taking matters to the courts, anyway? These aren't "frivolous lawsuits," not in a society where four out of five lawsuits are filed by corporations. So Public Citizen helps you tell Starbucks to abandon its "forced arbitration" clauses.

Finally, Southampton Academy's football team features a female starter, Mina Johnson, who garnered four sacks from the linebacker position in a Sept. 22 game -- but had to sit out two other games because rival football teams threatened forfeits if she played. Southampton's team is in Virginia, and the two other teams came from the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association, which, guess what? Doesn't allow girls to play on boys' teams, even if the school doesn't have a corresponding girls' team. Of course the NCISAA's rule isn't fair, but does anyone else notice that the NCISAA rule gives teams an excuse to keep good certain football players off the field? You know, certain football players who can get to the quarterback from further away than most players and who just happen to be female? So the U.S. National Women's Tackle Football Team, in cooperation with change.org, helps you tell the NCISAA to change its rules so that, at the least, girls can play on boys' teams when there's no comparable girls' team. Certainly the NCISAA wouldn't want anyone to think it was using the rule to gain an unfair advantage on teams like Southampton.

Who's in control.

I've got bad news and good news. The bad news? The Senate voted, by a 61-37 margin, to permit the President to detain American citizens indefinitely without due process. The good news? Mr. Obama has threatened to veto the entire defense authorization bill containing the offending provision -- and the Senate's vote margin, while disheartening, wouldn't overcome a veto. Sadly, because these are interesting times, the good news comes with a warning: Mr. Obama can be browbeaten into signing the bill by bad Senators and their "liberal" media enablers. Mr. Obama was against warrantless wiretapping, remember? But then, after much fearmongering, he voted to make warrantless wiretapping legal in 2008. You will not get anywhere by trusting Mr. Obama to do the right thing. You will only get somewhere by making him do the right thing. And if anyone tells you that an Obama veto would be an unprecedented act of obstruction that would "put our troops in harm's way," remind them that the Republicans filibustered the last defense authorization bill over the repeal of don't-ask-don't-tell. Were they "putting troops in harm's way" then? Anyway, Demand Progress helps you put some steel in Mr. Obama's spine.

Meanwhile, child labor laws have been in the news lately, with major Republican figures like Newt Gingrich, Mike Lee, and Gary Johnson favoring repeal of said laws. But all we have to do to see what a bad an idea that would be is look to Uzbekistan, whose government forces over a million children every year to harvest cotton or face beatings and expulsion from school, or to the Ivory Coast, where cocoa plantations use trafficked children from Mali and Burkina Faso to grow what's in our candy bars or face beatings and isolation. Can you feel the character being built up in those kids through hardship and terror? What "thinking outside the box" it would be to bring this sort of thing to America! Well, our Socialist Nazi Communist Kenyan anti-colonialist President actually plans to make corporations that supply goods to the U.S. government certify that they've made "good faith" efforts to root out slave child labor in their products' supply chains, and the International Labor Rights Forum helps you support that effort. It's not much, but it is still progress. We could do more by boycotting cotton shirts that aren't made in America, and by boycotting Hershey chocolates, which use Ivory Coast cocoa. The corporatists couldn't complain that we're killing jobs when we're actually killing slavery.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to oppose the PROTECT IP Act. I don't think their rhetorical hook -- that PROTECT IP would permit our government to destroy the internet as we know it -- is an exaggeration. If copyright holders can get our government to cut off people accused (not convicted!) of copyright infringement, then pretty much anyone can help shut an Administration's political opponents down. I occasionally link to news articles, and plenty of corporations argue that a link to one of their sources is somehow "copyright infringement"; hence, I can be accused of infringing someone's copyright and shut down by an Administration that doesn't like me (which, if I'm doing my job right, would be any Administration). I think a link is the same as a footnote -- it demonstrates that you know what you're talking about -- and a footnote doesn't infringe anyone's copyright. But, you know, that's a sane opinion, and sane opinions don't help redistribute wealth upward to undeserving CEOs, so I might "lose" that legal battle. Unless we can stop PROTECT IP in its tracks.