Thieves in the Temple.

Us and them.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Blunt Amendment could get a Senate vote this week. You remember the Blunt Amendment? The one that would let your boss refuse to pay for any health care coverage that conflicts with his "religious beliefs or moral convictions"? Because that's what religious freedom is all about, right -- the freedom to impose your religious beliefs on other people, to the point that they don't actually have any religious freedom of their own? And never mind that America is full of people whose ancestors fled real religious persecution; the rich simply must have the right to run roughshod over other people's religious beliefs, because by golly if we don't convert everyone to the most rigid and hateful version of Christianity imaginable, God will send us all to hell! Please, good peoples, pimp-slap the Blunt amendment before it's too late.

Meanwhile, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) abruptly announced yesterday that she would not be seeking re-election in 2012. The filing deadline is only two weeks away, so I suspect Mrs. Snowe screwed the Republicans hard and good, and it's not like they didn't have it coming. But I don't mourn her exit, because she's voted pretty much in lockstep with the Republican leadership during Mr. Obama's term, usually only "bucking the party" after weakening bills as the price for her support. Even if frustration with that stratagem led to her retirement, she'd have done better to trash it and actually be a moderate, in an age that defines "conservative" and "liberal" solely in terms of whatever right-wing rageheads are mad about today. But Margaret Chase Smith she's not.

Sunshine in the shade.

Believe it or not, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow morning on the recent National Defense Authorization Act (or NDAA), which we couldn't stop despite our best efforts earlier this year. As I'm sure you remember, the NDAA allows the President to detain American citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, in violation of our right to habeus corpus, all so the President can better fight the "war on terror," or something. But when people heard about it (which Congress did its level best to prevent, holding its initial meetings on the bill in secret), a strange and wondrous thing happened -- they didn't like it! They saw that a President could cook up a rationale to detain all his political enemies without charge or trial! Hence, I suppose, the Senate Judiciary hearing. The ACLU helps you tell them how you feel about the NDAA.

Meanwhile, just in case anyone had been seduced by Mr. Sullivan's argument that Mr. Obama has outplayed the right, Rick Perlstein reminds us that the right wing still drives the official political conversation in this country. Money quotation: "the party that plants its ideological flag further from the center makes the center move," especially given "a media environment based on the ideology of 'balance,' in which anything one of the parties insists upon must be given equal weight to whatever the other party says back." Without that media, I can't imagine Republican ideas getting very much traction. I think the media does this on purpose, though Mr. Perlstein doesn't seem to think so; I'd prefer that he were right about that, of course, because I do like to believe the best of people. But in an age where articulating the obvious still meets too often with are-you-with-the-terrorists, I've certainly found it hard to believe the best of our elites.

Take it there.

Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett plugs ahead with his "asset test" for food stamps. While forbidding anyone with more than $5,500 in assets from getting food stamps might sound like a way to a) save money and b) combat fraud, consider that a) Pennsylvania won't actually save any money, since an asset test costs money to implement and monitor and b) Pennsylvania already has one of the lowest fraud rates in the nation. And if $5,500 in assets sounds like a lot, consider how long $5,500 lasts these days, or how hard it is to convert "assets" into cash. Why do politicians attack the poor in the name of being "fiscally-responsible" -- instead of, say, imposing impact fees on gas drillers? Why do they attack the poor in the name of being "law-and-order," instead of, to pull another example out of thin air, telling gas drillers they have to follow the laws on the books, rather than pre-empting them for their convenience? Change.org helps you tell Gov. Corbett to scrap the asset test.

Meanwhile, six state legislatures are still considering putting ads on their school buses -- because, apparently, children aren't inundated with ads enough already! Seriously, these state legislators seem to think school bus ads are a wonderful way of raising money for school districts, just like they thought years ago that putting soda machines in public schools was a great idea. And none of these six states plan to ban junk food ads from school buses, while several others won't even ban violent or highly-sexualized ads. How do you raise money for school districts again? You tax people fairly, and you battle corruption. Sound difficult? Of course it's difficult! Anything worth doing is difficult -- though not as difficult as cleaning up the mess from taking the easy way out. Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood helps you protest school bus advertising, if you're in one of the six states still considering it. Let's not have our children get their sense of identity from riding "the Chick-Fil-A" bus.

Finally, the House of Representatives plans a vote soon on H.R. 1837, the so-called San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act. If you've been following the Congress of Screw You at all, you already suspect H.R. 1837 doesn't promote "water reliability" -- or, perhaps more precisely, promotes "reliability" only for a chosen few. H.R. 1837 would hamstring on the Secretary of the Interior and prevent the California legislature from enacting stricter environmental laws than the federal government, while also exempting corporations from the Endangered Species Act when they move water around. Sound like special interests buying laws to you? But which special interests, you may be wondering? Opensecrets.org provides the clue: H.R. 1837's main sponsor, California Republican Devin Nunes, gets more campaign contributions from agribusiness than from any other sector of the economy, and, yeah, agribusinesses are some of our biggest water-users. American Rivers helps you tell your Congressfolk to vote against H.R. 1837.

The other window.

President Obama has rejected TransCanada's application to build the Keystone XL pipeline (though TransCanada can reapply). You may know that TransCanada has already begun seizing land to build said pipeline under eminent domain -- TransCanada has filed almost three dozen eminent domain actions in Texas courts, plus almost two dozen more in South Dakota -- though Mr. Obama clearly won't approve the project for some time now. And, er, people live on that land. People farm on that land. Our government can invoke eminent domain for public-good projects -- hospitals, highways, railroads, and the like. But not for a project that stands a better chance of polluting heartland drinking water than it does of actually creating jobs or promoting energy independence. While courts have thwarted some of TransCanada's efforts, this is no time to get complacent. So CREDO helps you tell TransCanada to stop taking folks' land from them. If you want to fell a Goliath, ain't nothing for it like bad PR.

Meanwhile, the FDA has punted on limiting antibiotic abuse in food animals, but (in a decision I'm sure they'll regret) the Obama Administration has declared that it will respond to any petition that gets over 25,000 signatures on their "We the People" website, and so the Pew Environmental Trust helps you tell Mr. Obama to stop corporations from pumping antibiotics into their food animals willy-nilly. You'd think most antibiotics would go to sick people and sick animals, but they don't: 80 percent of all antibiotics in America go to factory farm animals who do not need them. See, the factory farms give antibiotics to animals as a sort of pre-emptive measure, since the animals are going to live in filthy conditions all their lives. But when you give antibiotics to animals who don't need it, you make all the pathogens in the world more resistant -- plus you make these animals' descendants more sickly. Heckuva job, factory farms! You're putting us all at risk of getting sick, all so you can save money on the production end.

Finally, I have two action alerts defending the Clean Air Act from Republican assaults. Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to support the EPA's new mercury/air toxics standards. Mr. Inhofe said on the Senate floor last week the EPA "admit(ted)" that the new regulations would cost corporations more money than they'd make back, which would be a persuasive point if corporations breathed the air. But since we breathe the air, our government can make corporations stop pumping crap into it, and if that means some CEO can't gild the plumbing in his tenth vacation home, well, that's a risk I'm willing to take. Besides, cost-benefit analyses, as I've suggested, tend to concentrate on the losses shareholders risk, but last I looked they're not the only players in the economy -- the Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that the Clean Air Act has given us $51 trillion in economic benefits since 1970, mostly in preventing premature death from air poisoning. You may find UCS's action alert on clean air here.

Penny rants for Thursday, February 23, 2012.

Don't look now, but Mr. Obama has dropped another bomb on the American people, in the form of his corporate tax "reform." The "reform" cuts the top tax rate from 35% to 28%, thus giving legitimacy to the corporatist argument that corporations just can't compete in the world economy because every other country's tax rate is lower boo hoo hoo when, last I looked, corporations were still sitting on trillions of dollars, handing out billions in bonuses to their undeserving chieftains, and, ah, not paying any damn taxes. The punchline? Mr. Obama's tax "reform" claims to be "revenue-neutral," but though it closes a few loopholes it doesn't actually specify how it's going to make up almost $1 trillion in lost revenue over ten years. Which makes it kinda, you know, not revenue-neutral. And whatever happened to raising revenue, especially in a time of exploding budget deficits? We bail corporations out and we give them exemptions and loopholes out the wazoo, so the very least they could do is pay more money so we all might have a shot at a better life. But not, apparently, in Obama Super-Happy Bipartisan Consensus Fun Time Land.

Meanwhile, I realize I haven't just come out with what sticks in my craw about Rick Santorum, so I'll do that now: the man doesn't seem to comprehend that coerced devotion is useless. Let's say -- just for the sake of argument, and at the considerable risk of blowing open a hole in space-time -- that Rick Santorum is right about everything. If he were, as President, to force Congress to codify his hypothetical righteousness in law, such that America would have no choice but to become a Godly nation, he still won't create a Godly nation; he'll create a sham of a Godly nation, one in which good Americans go through the motions of being Godly without any pleasure whatsoever, and devotion without pleasure cannot endure, because people will not endure it. When Mr. Mencken called Puritanism "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," he might as well have been talking about Rick Santorum's 2012 Presidential campaign, which never ever shuts up about lust and homosexuality and the perfidy of wimminfolk and never ever talks about, you know, love, or friendship, or caring, or community. And God forbid he should talk about these things in his inside voice. Even Rush Limbaugh says he's loud.

It's all I can do.

The Parents Television Council still helps you demand that Congress force cable companies to offer their channels a la carte. Cable was a wonderful idea back in the day, wasn't it -- instead of just relying on your three over-the-air channels and PBS, you could watch three dozen channels! And now you can watch 500 of the damn things! Why, some of them just do reality shows all day! And some others, like the big three cable news channels and their twisted offspring, do nothing but offer us junk news and corporate propaganda all day. And I, as a consumer and a viewer, have little-if-any control over their programming, because whether I watch them or not, whether I force the cable company to come out and block them or not, I'm still paying for them. If I were able to withhold money from CNN or Fox or MSNBC, they might have some incentive to change their ways. Until then, they "undermine the values I hold dear," just as FX, MTV, and Comedy Central do for my brethren on the right. (To be fair, MTV really does suck these days.)

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum has been all over the place lately, spewing his hateful spew with little pushback from the "liberal" media, but this Freudian slip from his press secretary tells us all we need to know about his thought process, such as it is. You see, she meant to refer to the alleged "radical environmental policies" of Barack Obama, but she said "radical Islamic policies" instead; easy to see how she could have been confused! Easy, also, to conclude that the Santorum campaign just pulls words out of a paper bag at random, what with all the talk of Satan and lust and the party of Woodstock and pre-natal care leading to abortions and mainline Protestants gone from the world of Christianity and (from the same press secretary, in the same conversation) "theological secularism." I might call what Rick Santorum's doing nihilism, except that nihilism is a pretty big word and I know Republicans can go lower than this. I may not be able to imagine how Republicans can go lower, not being a nihilist myself, but I know they always do.

Mercury poisoning.

The EPA issued a good mercury-pollution standard last week -- and Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) wasted no time introducing S.J.Res. 37, which would roll back said rule. About a third of all mercury emissions come from "stationary combustion," most of these from coal-fired power plants, and these emissions cause (among other things!) asthma attacks, heart attacks, and birth defects. But for the Congress of Screw You, a better chance at a good life means little when there's money to be made -- and not money to be made by you, obviously, since the aforementioned health problems lead to lost work days and increased health care costs, which Mr. Inhofe's big donors don't have to worry about. The Sierra Club helps you fight S.J.Res. 37.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell the Federal Reserve to break up Bank of America. Why? Because it's too damn big, and if it fails -- a real possibility, as stocks plummeted by more than 50% last year, and only a last-minute $5 billion cash infusion from Warren Buffett saved the bank -- it'll take down a big chunk of the economy with it. And though a tougher too-big-to-fail provision didn't make it into the Dodd-Frank bill from 2010, Dodd-Frank does permit the Fed's Board of Governors to break up banks with more than $50 billion in assets. I presume Dodd-Frank gave the Fed this authority because the Fed isn't very likely to use it. Still, they opened the door; we might as well walk in.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell WalMart not to sell Monsanto's genetically-modified sweet corn. Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and General Mills have all declared they won't sell the Frankencorn linked to liver and kidney failure in rats, but WalMart hasn't. That doesn't mean they won't -- they did ban milk containing Monsanto's genetically-engineered hormone rBGH back in 2008; they did it after massive public pressure, but that's how it's supposed to work. If WalMart succumbs to public pressure again, it'd be a big win, not just because WalMart is the nation's largest grocer nowadays, but because the Obama Administration still won't make corporations label their genetically-modified food as such.

The bogus man.

The previous Congress couldn't pass ENDA, even with its insurmountable-for-a-time Democratic majorities, but now Mr. Obama could issue an executive order that would at least protect gays from workplace discrimination if they work for federal contractors. Given the "controversy" right-wingers have ginned up over birth control lately, Mr. Obama might not have the stomach for a fight in which the right will make all the same arguments -- dadgummit if a boss thinks gays are going to hell then he shouldn't have to protect them from discrimination! Which is an argument I've already answered ad nauseum, though I'd add that if bosses want federal money, they need to follow federal rules. So employment rights lawyer Tico Almeida (via change.org) helps you tell Mr. Obama to do the right thing. Right-wingers really are out of their damn minds these days. And every time we liberals "move to the center" and "compromise" with insanity, we make it worse.

Meanwhile, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and Stonyfield Farms chairman Gary Hirshberg (via signon.org) help you demand that the FDA mandate labeling of genetically-modified salmon. The FDA is about to approve genetically-modified salmon for, you know, eating -- salmon that grows at twice the normal rate as your average fish. Does that sound like a good idea to you? But not only is the Obama Administration the greatest friend to genetically-modified Frankenfood the big corporations have ever had, it's promised us it'll make sure GMO food gets labeled, and has never-not-once kept that promise. Around nine of ten Americans agree that our government should force corporations to label GMO food as such; you'd think the Obama Administration, so hungry for consensus, would notice consensus when it actually happens. I guess it could always be worse: we could have right-wingers arguing that mandatory GMO labeling violates freedom of religion!

Rivers of Babylon.

Pennsylvania's legislature passed HB 1950, the nefarious welfare-handouts-for-gas-drillers bill, but we still want clean water, so now we move on to demand a moratorium on new gas drilling. Not now, right-wing hacks will say, just when the economy's starting to recover and we still need jobs! But do we need jobs on terms set entirely by gas drillers? No -- certainly not at the price of air pollution, or at the price of not being able to drink your tap water without also being able to light it on fire, or at the price of more gas drilling CEOs being able to gild their plumbing while throwing the rest of us crumbs, or at the price of spoiling park and forest land the citizens of the Commonwealth enjoy for other purposes. So Penn Environment helps you demand a moratorium on new gas drilling until it can be proven safe. No, really -- if they can prove it safe, I'll be fine with it. Trouble is, gas drilling hacks typically do victory laps before they do even a half-assed job of proving it safe.

Meanwhile, a little-known slab of the Obama health care reform law mandates that if health insurers fail to spend 80 percent of their outlays on actual health care -- as opposed to things like CEO compensation, advertising, and paperwork -- then they have to rebate the difference to their customers, meaning you. Now who doesn't want health insurers to spend more of their money actually taking care of sick people? You can guess who, right? Health insurers and their cronies in Congress. Hence H.R. 1206/S. 2068, which would exempt certain administrative costs from being counted as, you know, administrative costs -- specifically, commissions insurers pay to brokers to sell their health insurance. Because, you know, they're important! They have to do continuing education and everything! (I'm paraphrasing from Section 2 of H.R. 1206.) If they're so important, Mr. CEO, then take it out of your own damn salary. Consumers Union helps you oppose this attempt to take food out of our damn mouths.

Finally, the Blunt amendment I discussed yesterday isn't dead yet, nor is its author properly shamed yet, nor is anyone who'd consider supporting such a piece of hot-and-steaming properly shamed yet, so People for the American Way help you tell your Congressfolk, yet again, that letting bosses dictate what health care the rest of us can have on the basis of their "religious beliefs or moral convictions" eviscerates our right to dictate what we can do on the basis of our religious beliefs or moral convictions. You may say, well, so what? Go ahead and buy your own health insurance if it bothers you that much! Well, for one thing, that's easier said than done in an age where HMOs continually jack up their premiums on individual buyers by over 50% a year. For another, it's not really the point -- why is a boss's "moral conviction" that people who have HIV ought to just die already more important than my moral conviction that maybe people who have HIV ought to be helped? Does he have more rights simply because he can poop money? I thought we fought a war in the late 1700s to get away from that kind of thinking.

Heart of the country.

The birth control battle drags on! Sen. Blunt (R-MO) plans to attach an amendment to that transportation infrastructure bill we were talking about yesterday that would, dig this, allow any employer or insurer to refuse coverage for any health care service if they cite "religious beliefs or moral convictions." In other words, their rights are better than yours. That's any health service, too -- if your boss's or your insurer's "moral convictions" include "anyone with HIV got what they deserved," "there's no such thing as clinical depression," "you don't need maternity leave because you be staying home with the kids anyway," or whatever pretzel logic people invoke to hate on cervical cancer screening, then no health care for you. So the ACLU helps you demand that your Senators reject the Blunt amendment. Seriously, I'm sick of the politicians telling us that rich people have more rights than everyone else.

Meanwhile, America's Last Conservative, Paul Craig Roberts, observes the breakdown of Western democratic norms, particularly in Greece and Italy, where banksters are trying to impose austerity regimes on the Greek and Italian people through leaders that weren't even democratically-elected. His last paragraph is worth quoting in its entirety: "Perhaps future historians will conclude that democracy once served the interests of money in order to break free of the power of kings, aristocracy, and government predations, but as money established control over governments, democracy became a liability. Historians will speak of the transition from the divine right of kings to the divine right of money." Of course, few elites are stupid enough to speak openly of "the divine right of money"; they always call it something else. But slashing through doublespeak has always been the challenge of modern times, especially recent times.

This could be the day.

The Senate could be voting as early as today to force our government to approve the Keystone XL pipeline (via an amendment, S.A. 1537, to S. 1813, an otherwise popular transportation infrastructure bill). I've already voiced my objections: the company building the pipeline, TransCanada, has a horrendous pipe safety record (and maybe they want it that way), and the pipeline could thus pollute heartland aquifers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans. But what are such concerns to our political class? (Especially our esteemed Speaker of the House, who has personally invested tens of thousands of dollars in the tar sands effort.) I've no shortage of action alerts in opposition, from the Climate Reality Project, Public Citizen, the Environmental Defense Fund, the League of Conservation Voters, and CREDO. Use whichever one you're comfortable with, but move fast.

Meanwhile, the Citizens United v. FEC ruling may have unloosed corporate spending on campaigns, and the last Senate may have stopped the DISCLOSE Act (since 59 out of 100 votes isn't enough to pass anything!), but the Securities and Exchange Commission can still mandate that publicly-traded corporations disclose their campaign spending, in the interest of protecting shareholders, which is, you know, their reason to exist. To the corporate CEOs who'd balk, I'd ask: what are you afraid of? If your stock prices fall because you're giving money to Scott Walker, maybe you've earned that. And the rest of us have to disclose any campaign spending exceeding $200; why are y'all so damn special? Common Cause helps you tell the SEC to shine some light on corporate campaign spending.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell your House Rep to support H.R. 631, the WAGES Act. What would the WAGES Act do? The WAGES Act would raise the minimum wage for tipped employees; said minimum wage (which is typically lower than the standard minimum wage) has been hung up at $2.13/hr for two decades now. But the WAGES Act would push that standard up to $3.75/hr after 90 days, to $5/hr after a year, and then at least $5.50/hr after two years. You'll hear a lot of whining from corporate front groups pretending to care about small businesses -- how can anyone afford to pay anyone more money? they'll squeal, when what they really mean is how can I afford to gild the plumbing on my second vacation home if I pay tipped employees more? But don't listen to them. As a famous philosopher once said, they're walnuts in the batter of eternity.

See America right.

Yikes, can't I leave the house for a few days without stupid crap happening? Just weeks after adding NY AG Eric Schneiderman to its foreclosure fraud task force, the Obama administration announced a settlement with the big banksters that's only a little bigger ($26 billion) than the one they were working on ($20 billion). The "settlement" does allow certain foreclosure-related lawsuits to go forward (including suits filed by Mr. Schneiderman, Mr. Biden of Delaware, and Ms. Masto of Nevada), but $26 billion ain't a lot to the banks that got $700 billion of our money in 2008, and the deal only compensates wronged homeowners to the tune of about $2,000 each, which might buy you two months' rent, somewhere. Heckuva job, Barack Obama! MoveOn helps you demand further justice from the Obama Administration.

Meanwhile, a lot of Catholic Bishops got their shorts in a bunch last week over Mr. Obama's mandate that religious organizations (except for actual houses of worship) pay for birth control at no cost in their health insurance plans. Now, I only pre-emptively refuted their arguments a half-dozen times or so, so I'll say it one more time: the rights of people are more important than the rights of organizations. Some fools argue for a CEO's "right" to be able to refuse to pay for a plan covering birth control for his employees. So one person's right to exercise one's putative religious beliefs trumps all other people's rights to exercise their religious beliefs? If your boss thinks birth control is wrong and you don't, his right trumps yours? When the hell did this stop being America? The National Women's Law Center helps you reject further efforts to curb the birth control mandate.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you comment to four federal agencies on enforcement of "the Volcker Rule." The Volcker Rule, as you may know, aims to restrict banks from indulging in speculative trading that doesn't actually benefit its customers, and while the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill didn't reinstate Glass-Steagall's wall between banking and securities trading, it did allow the federal government to make regulations per the Volcker Rule that would at least put some of those bricks back up. The point is this: banks are things. They're not more important than people, nor do they require more "freedom" than people. People deserve the freedom to know their banks will be safe with their money. But if we allow banks to play amateur gambling addict with our money, where is our freedom? Do we have the freedom to work toward a better life if we allow banks to piss all our money away in bad bets?

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Arturo de los Santos is an ex-Marine living in Riverside, CA, with his wife and four kids. He worked in a Santa Ana metal factory for over 20 years, and then the banksters collapsed the economy, etc., and he lost his job, etc., and he fell behind on his mortgage payments, etc., and the banksters told him to fall behind further on his payments so he could qualify for a mortgage modification, etc., and you see where this story is going, right? Foreclosure and eviction last year, even as his income recovered and he could start making the original payments again! Let's be absolutely fair and note that Freddie Mac seems at least as much to blame as JP Morgan Chase Bank in all of this -- and then let's tell their CEOs to help keep these good people in their home. The banksters got plenty of bailout help from us, after all. It's really the least they could do.

Hot off their "success" in passing the nefarious welfare-handouts-for-gas-drillers bill, HB 1950, the Pennsylvania legislature may strike again with the nefarious anti-voting-rights bill, HB 934. HB 934 would require citizens to present picture ID to vote. What's wrong with that, you ask? Easy: not everyone has picture ID, and too many can't get picture ID -- too often you have to have ID to get ID, and a lot of poor folks don't even have birth certificates, since in the old days the hospitals often didn't bother. HB 934's proponents say the bill prevents "voter fraud." With even the Bush Mobb's Justice Department counting exactly 86 cases of voter fraud out of 300 million votes cast between 2002 and 2007, HB 934 is a solution in search of a problem, as well as a problem requiring the people's solution. So Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state senators to oppose HB 934.

Finally, Consumers Union helps you support H.R. 1895, the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011. What would H.R. 1895 do? H.R. 1895 would limit website operators' ability to track your children's activities on the internet and to sell such tracked info to third parties. It's one thing to be an adult and be bombarded with ads that suspiciously reflect your own surfing habits; you have more of an ability to counteract that. But to do it to kids, who aren't old enough to make big decisions, who are already bombarded with commercials on TV, who may have their parents working two jobs so they can't be standing behind them all the time while they're online, golly, you wonder how some people can sleep at night. Actually, by now, I don't wonder. But I still think big corporations ought to be ashamed of themselves -- and if they can't be shamed, the law has to step in and restrain them.

Idiot country.

The Pennsylvania state House still hasn't voted on HB 1950, the nefarious welfare-handouts-for-gas-drillers bill, but may vote on it today. The House would have voted on Monday, but didn't, possibly because, well, they didn't have the votes. Hey, that's how it's supposed to work! So today is the day to remind the House that they still don't have the votes -- or at least they won't have any votes from us, the people of Pennsylvania, if they ram through what must be the most unpopular bill any of them have ever seen. You may find contact info for your state legislator here. HB 1950 doesn't protect our drinking water and doesn't extract enough of a fee from gas drillers -- plus it pre-empts stronger local environmental laws that would demand more of gas drillers than the state does. And here I was thinking that conservatives preferred that the smallest, most local government do the most work. (You may conclude, from that statement, that Pennsylvania's Republicans aren't actually conservative.)

Meanwhile, MoveOn helps you tell President Obama to veto any attempt by Congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top income brackets. Republicans might try to tie an extension of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000 to any bill extending unemployment insurance and/or the payroll tax cut. Because, you know, the rich are job-creators, which must be why unemployment's so damn high. I'm tired of the hostage-taking, and Mr. Obama should be, too. And, if you like, you can double your impact by telling your Senators to support S. 2059, the bill that would enforce a minimum 30% tax on millionaire income, as True Majority helps you do. Is Sen. Whitehouse's bill everything I want? Of course not! Would it help the economy, either by reducing government deficits or by forcing millionaire CEOs to pay themselves less and spend more money on creating jobs? Of course it would. Remember during the '50s, when we generally had 4% unemployment and a 91% top tax bracket? It's not a coincidence.

Finally, Alabama state Senator Shadrack McGill told a prayer breakfast last week that "it's a biblical principle: if you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach." To my knowledge, he has not specified where you may find this "principle" in the Bible, though my King James mentions teachers 23 times and doesn't bring up salaries once. (Yes, that search took two minutes. Computers are very good for some things.) Then, in explaining the "context" everyone somehow missed, he alleged that God weighed "the Earth and the valley and the mountains and the hills" on a scale because "he knew he was going to be spinning it real fast." The punchline? This idiot makes 50% more than the average Alabama teacher as a part-time legislator, though he's given none of it back out of a conviction that if you pay legislators too much, you might attract people who aren't called. Care2 helps you hand out the beatdown.

Head in the sky.

Maybe Congress took a dive on SOPA and PIPA because they knew that big brother, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, was coming. ACTA's negotiators have done their damndest to keep its contents secret -- after all, it's not like we would all want to know what we're going to be doing! -- but we know ACTA would do a lot of the things SOPA and PIPA would do, plus it would create an independent judiciary (as in "independent of the U.N., even") to enforce its provisions. Plus, a former leading French negotiator of ACTA tells us that ACTA would treat generic drugs as "counterfeit" drugs, even though generic drugs are literally a lifesaver for many people and aren't actually illegal. And here I thought the patent system existed for a reason! The European Parliament still seems bent on ramming ACTA through, despite over 300,000 petitioners demanding a "no" vote; you can add to their numbers here.

Meanwhile, federal unemployment insurance still expires at the end of this month, and February ain't a long month and it's further along than you might think. And House Republicans still want to extend unemployment benefits only if they get to gut the whole program. Officially, unemployment fell to 8.3% last month, which may make Mr. Obama's re-election prospects look better, and I know people do feel better about the economy in general, and that's no small thing. But fact is we're far from out of the woods, and a lot of folks are still suffering, through no damn fault of their own, and the last thing they need is to find out they're getting less money, or they suddenly have to have a GED or take a drug test, or their state won't pay them because it's trying to fill a budget hole, most likely one of its own creation. So the National Employment Law Project helps you demand a clean extension of unemployment benefits from Congress.

Finally, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) fired his first shot in his 2012 Senate campaign against incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow, and boy oh boy is it an ugly, racist piece of dung. The loud faux-Asian music and putative Chinese citizen's broken English makes 2010's DSCC and Jack Conway ads look subtle by comparison. Rep. Hoekstra, for his part, thinks that "what we have said is what the American people feel," but he's only half-right at best -- the American people do feel, by and large, that we shouldn't turning decent-paying American jobs into lousy-paying Chinese jobs so American CEOs can get even richer, but that doesn't mean Americans hate Chinese folks, who are just trying to get along like we are. At least Mr. Hoekstra wasted a lot of money running this ad during the Super Bowl, when no one wants to see a political ad.

Penthouse and pavement.

The Pennsylvania legislature plans to vote either today or tomorrow on HB 1950, the nefarious welfare-handout-for-gas-drillers bill that would help gas drillers pollute our water with near-impunity. And though Gov. Corbett and his fellow Republicans salivate at the prospect of building gas drilling wells fifty feet from residences and smashing local environmental regulations and making impact fees forever small and optional, we've done a good job of derailing HB 1950 (and its evil twin, SB 1100) thus far. But, you know, they're politicians, and they can't help giving away what's ours to the undeserving few. (Please note that by "undeserving few" I mean the gas drilling CEOs who funnel money into their campaigns, and not the "villains" they continually offer up to get your support on matters you wouldn't otherwise support.) So Penn Environment helps you write your Reps, one more once, to demand they oppose HB 1950.

But wait, there's more! Courtesy Ron Slabe, I have contact information for certain Pennsylvania legislators. You may contact PA House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Turzai (R-28) at 1.412.369.2230 or 1.717.772.9943, or at mturzai at pahousegop dot com. You may also contact Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R-25) at 1.814.726.7201 or 1.717.787.7084, or at jscarnati at pasen dot gov. And you may also contact Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-43) at 1.412.241.6690 or 1.717.787.7863, or at costa at pasenate dot com; Sen. James Brewster (D-45) at 1.412.380.2242 or 1.717.787.5580, or at brewster at pasenate dot com; Sen. Wayne Fontana (D-42) at 1.412.344.2551 or 1.717.787.5300, or fontana at pasenate dot com; Sen. Rich Kasunic (D-32) at 1.724.626.1611 or 1.717.787.7175, and Sen. Tim Solobay (D-46) at 1.724.746.3762 or 1.717.787.1463. The Republicans have the numbers in the legislature to pass HB 1950. But we-the-people have the numbers in the Commonwealth -- if we speak up.

Roll call.

First things first. Nigeria will try two labor activists, Osmond Ugwu and Raphael Elobuike, on attempted murder charges, which could lead to the death penalty. The police describe the evidence: Mr. Ugwu tore a police officer's uniform as he was being dragged in his underwear by his legs, after police broke up a peaceful prayer meeting among labor activists. (No, really -- a police officer on the scene described the meeting as a "prayer meeting.") And the police also allege that the crowd threw "stones, bottles, and other objects" at them -- well, golly, was that before or after you fellows fired shots into the air and beat people who were praying? OK, I think that's enough: the state is obviously trying to silence labor leaders who have a shot at providing a better life for their family, friends, and neighbors. Change.org helps you demand the release of Messrs. Ugwu and Elobuike.

Meanwhile, SOPA and PIPA might be near death, but H.R. 1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, passed out of committee in December and awaits a full House vote. Now, why would we be upset about that? It says it's protecting children from internet pornographers! Here's why: H.R. 1981 would force ISPs to collect and store every last IP address used by every last one of its customers, meaning you, because, hey, everyone's a suspect! And it would let law enforcement access that information for any investigation, not just child pornography cases. Probable cause, anyone? It's almost like they don't know your computer pretty much logs everything you do anyway, and that law enforcement could, you know, get a warrant and seize your computer if they really thought you were doing something wrong. The Electronic Freedom Foundation and Demand Progress help you oppose the H.R. 1981 power grab.

Meanwhile, our government plans to move spent nuclear fuel to "temporary" storage sites around the country, versus keeping it where it's generated. No solution for getting rid of nuclear waste is ideal -- the ideal would be, you know, not generating any of it -- but moving it has really terrible drawbacks, if you think about it. A nuclear waste accident on the highway would be nowhere near as benign as it was in Modern Problems. Also, we've tended, historically, to dump our waste on native American reservations or poor communities, with financial incentives that, ah, aren't worth all the damn sickness and death. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any plan to move nuclear waste around. Though the Congress of Screw You probably finds nuclear waste just as icky as you do, we better come out in force anyway, just in case they like money more than they like their descendants growing extra limbs.

UPDATE. Change.org appears to be having some trouble today. I sure in hell hope it isn't from some group of elite jerks/college boys who aspire to be elite jerks someday. In the meantime, be patient.