Thieves in the Temple.

All I want is a fighting chance.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state Senate has passed SB 354, which would prevent implementation of the national ID card program, Real ID; the House may soon vote on SB 354 as well. Yes, you read that right: the Pennsylvania state legislature might actually pass a law that does something good, which would run rather counter to recent trends. What's wrong with a national ID card? It would create a nationwide database of state licenses, giving identity thieves only one database to break into -- if identity thieves have to navigate a hodgepodge of state databases, it's actually harder for them to steal your identity. Thus Real ID makes your identity less secure. So the ACLU helps you tell your state House Rep to vote in favor of SB 354, and thus against implementing Real ID in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Free Press helps you demand that AT&T respect network neutrality in its wireless networks. As you may know, the FCC's Net Neutrality rules don't cover wireless networks, and as more and more internet traffic moves to wireless networks, it looks more and more like the FCC has provided corporations an escape hatch. But the corporations still have to face their shareholders, and AT&T shareholders, including Beastie Boy Mike D, have organized to force votes on net neutrality in upcoming shareholder meetings. It's entirely possible that AT&T shareholders could well force AT&T to adhere to the same principle that gives us a truly innovative internet -- the principle that you, not the corporations, dictate what gets delivered to your device. And that would be fine. When people have maximum freedom, freedom flourishes; when corporations have maximum freedom, freedom dies.

Finally, Amnesty International helps you support S. 952/H.R. 1842, the DREAM Act. Currently a sizable bloc of politicians opposes any legislation that might help immigrants, because RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!, but if you read the bill, you find that the DREAM Act would help young immigrants get a reprieve from the constant threat of deportation as long as they stay in school or enlist in the military -- in other words, as long as they contribute to American civil society, as most folks want. Frankly, a bill like this might have been considered too moderate for our political culture in the 1970s, yet today even pro-business Republicans can't get behind it, for fear that they won't demonstrate the adequate amount of mindless rage that some of their constituents seem to want. That's a very sad commentary on American politics, and I wish it weren't true.

Higher ground.

"You've heard of slash and burn," the National Women's Law Center's latest email missive begins, "but how about slash and burden?" Of course they're talking about the Ryan budget for 2013, up for a House vote today, a budget little changed from the one that aimed to replace Medicare with a voucher program that would buy seniors less health care for the same money, the one that aimed to cut top income tax rates again, the one that slashed Medicaid, Head Start, Pell Grants, and food stamps. This one also does all damage, as if Mr. Ryan has learned nothing from anything that's happened over the last calendar year. So if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your House Rep to vote against the Zombie budget, the NWLC provides another one. And, as I said, the vote's today, so time's a-wasting.

Meanwhile, the FDA may decide tomorrow if it will ban BPA from food packaging. As you may recall, studies have linked BPA to early puberty, breast cancer, and prostate cancer, among other things, and California recently banned BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups. And yet you can still find BPA in the lining of your canned food (including canned soup) -- as well as in 90% of all pregnant women. But who doesn't want BPA banned from food packaging? The industry front-group American Chemistry Council, which tells us that "(t)he consensus of government regulatory bodies around the world...is that BPA is safe for use in food-contact materials." Which, you may notice, is not exactly the same as saying "the consensus of scientists," which surely they would have preferred to say, being the American Chemistry Council and all. So CREDO helps you tell the FDA to ban BPA from food packaging.

Last but not least, the EPA has issued its proposed carbon emission standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants, and thus the public commenting period begins. Both the Environmental Defense Fund and the League of Conservation Voters help you leave your comments with the EPA. I should mention that the first contact tool (from the EDF) allows you to modify your comment, whereas the second one (from the LCV) does not. Big corporations, as you no doubt know, will fight the standards -- they'll deny the science, and when that doesn't work, they'll put a gun to the heads of American jobs and threaten to blow their brains out. No doubt another "resolution of disapproval" will sprout forth from the head of Jim Inhofe. But if we speak out enough, we'll win. Our opponents really have nothing on their side but their money.

UPDATE. CREDO finds the EPA's carbon emissions proposals wanting, and so helps you demand stronger carbon emissions rules from the EPA.

Disorder.

Hot on the heels of President Rep. Ryan's budget plan, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released their own budget. It sure as hell doesn't do everything I'd want it to do, but it does create a public financing system, invest in job-creating programs, end the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%, end all the overly generous Bush-era dividend/capital gains tax cuts, and cut military spending, all good ideas needing a lot more support in an era where the "liberal" media calls all ignorance and arrogance "courage." So True Majority helps you oppose the Ryan plan and support the CPC plan. And you can modify the contact tool to include initiatives you'd like to see. Like I said, the CPC plan doesn't go far enough -- it's the plan I might settle for (n.b. "might"), rather than the plan I'd fight for, which would more closely resemble this plan.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama stopped the Keystone XL pipeline process temporarily, thanks to Congress's efforts to shove it down our collective throat, but still persists in pushing the southern portion of the pipeline (running from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast). Did something change? Did some corporation that gives a damn about pipeline safety take over the southern portion of the pipeline? The answers are, sadly, a) no and b) no. Conventional wisdom has Mr. Obama playing his usual game of nine-dimensional chess with his opponents, though for all we know Mr. Obama might think we're his opponents. If he wants to appear tough on rising gas prices, he should go after oil speculators who drive up the price of gas. Why do I suspect that's not on his nine-dimensional chessboard? CREDO helps you tell Mr. Obama to stop with the pipeline games already.

Finally, you may know that Hyatt housekeepers have been trying to better their working conditions, and that Hyatt suspended a 15-year veteran of its housekeeping force, Morena Hernandez, after she leafletted outside her own hotel and talked to local politicians about the abuses she and her co-workers have suffered at Hyatt's hands. So UNITE HERE helps you tell her boss to put Ms. Hernandez back to work. Now, you've no doubt heard me say (in re Mr. Limbaugh's recent embarrassments) that the First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a job. And it doesn't! But the First Amendment also doesn't protect bosses from embarrassment -- suspending a worker for political reasons, even when it's not unlawful, makes you look like an idiot, and if you're acting like an idiot, why should we feel compelled to be silent about it?

Million miles.

Senator Inhofe (E-OK) is still pushing S.J.Res. 37, a "resolution of disapproval" which would not only block the EPA's recent mercury/air toxics standards, but would prohibit the EPA from ever enacting similar standards in the future. What does he have against clean air? I'll bet he says he has nothing against clean air, but he has something against "unelected bureaucrats" telling us what to do all the time. Here's the thing, though: even when bureaucrats are appointed, we do, in a sense, elect them when we elect a President, and recent experience suggests that if we elect Republican Presidents, they'll install incompetent and/or malicious bureaucrats, and if we elect Democratic Presidents, they'll install competent if somewhat timid bureaucrats. (If we'd elected Ralph Nader, of course, we'd have had righteous warrior bureaucrats.) In the meantime, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you smack down S.J.Res. 37.

Meanwhile, the Senate may vote on S. 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, which would, as the title suggests, limit four tax deductions oil corporations commonly take, representing some $20 billion over the next decade. That's not a whole lot of money when we're running trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits, but why should oil corporations be getting subsidies at all? They're making money hand over fist on their $4-a-gallon gas. S. 2204 also, incidentally, extends tax credits for energy-efficient homes and for certain alternative energies, not all of them renewable (refined coal) or particularly effective (cellulosic biofuel). If you see Republicans go on the TV and complain that the bill doesn't extend enough tax credits, kindly point them to Title I, Secs. 101-118 of the bill's text and tell them to stop their whining. Public Citizen helps you support S. 2204.

Finally, just when you thought the battle over the Obama Administration's birth control rule was settled, it's public comment time again, because the Administration has issued its final policy, which requires another round of public comments. And that's as it should be! You think the other side watched right-winger after right-winger implode last month and said, well, we did our best, but that's ballgame, everybody? No: like warriors, they said, just wait until the next comment period, and then we'll fight twice as hard. They might have also said, batter this President enough and he'll fold, just like he always does, but they're not the only warriors out there. So Planned Parenthood helps you support the Obama Administration birth-control rule.

Here comes another one.

As you probably know, President House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has put out another budget, and, just like the last one, it replaces Medicare-as-we-know-it with a voucher program that will inflate seniors' health care bills and still won't reduce Medicare spending. Plus the budget chops spending across the board, rather than, you know, cutting bad spending and increasing good spending. Plus, as a final insult, the budget chops the top tax bracket from 35% to 25%. And Governor Etch-a-Sketch says his budget plan "shares the same core principles" as Mr. Ryan's, which I suppose gives him that all-important wiggle room to deny that it shares any of said core principles later. Sometimes I wish I were younger and less (more?) spiritually-advanced, so I could laugh at all this absurdity. The AFSCME helps you tell your Congressfolk to kill this budget already.

Meanwhile, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, passed in 2007, cut interest rates on federally-subsidized Stafford loans in half over a period of four years -- but the cut expires on July 1, and the House Republicans have shown no interest in extending it. I guess they'll tell us it's just another government handout for lazy, undeserving people, meaning the working-class parents (the majority of Stafford loan borrowers) who can better afford college for their children. Uh, doesn't the fact that they're trying to send their kids to college kinda mean they're not lazy? Note, also, that both banks and government can borrow money at just about zero percent interest, so at 3.4 percent everyone's still making money, just maybe not enough to gild the boss's plumbing. So CREDO helps you tell Harry Reid to fight for Stafford loan interest rate cuts.

Finally, OMB Watch discusses H.R. 4078, which would impose a moratorium on all new regulations until the unemployment rate falls below six percent. And the bill's title? The Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. I laughed out loud when I read that! (Perhaps I'm less, or more, spiritually-advanced than I'm inclined to think.) Let me guess: the Republicans wanted to kill regulations, and also wanted to stick the word "jobs" in the bill, and voila! No clean air regulations, no clean water regulations, no food safety regulations, no sunshine-on-derivatives regulations, no medical device regulations, nothing until the Obama Administration comes up with a creative way to count only 6% of Americans as unemployed. I think H.R. 4078 warrants phone calls to your Congressional delegation. If you also found the bill's title funny, you can mention that to your Congressfolk.

Nothing lasts forever/Nothing ever ends.

We beat back SOPA, but the anti-freedom forces won't go away: H.R. 3523, the so-called Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, essentially lets corporations and the government spy on your internet activity even if that spying contravenes existing law. Probable cause, warrants, who needs 'em? Look, we're either a nation of laws or we're not -- we can't be a "nation of laws" only when it comes to punishing petty crimes, and then not a nation of laws anytime some corporate or government hack can competently utter the words "I did it for cybersecurity!" And no, we don't need new laws to fight idiots who think it's their birthright to watch movies for free; we need motion picture corporations who'll adapt to the technology people already want and use. That's what our bold entrepreneur class always does, right? The Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you oppose another corporate/government internet power grab.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum's campaign appears to be over, not because he lost Illinois by a big margin, but because he told the world on Monday that "I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be." Of course his point was a tad subtler than that -- that a statistic isn't as important as the "foundational" change in American society he envisions -- but any time you give Mr. Corporations-are-people-my-friend an opening, he'll run through it, and the "liberal" media, with its limited attention span, will enable that. Should we be thankful that Mr. Santorum didn't say "I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be, because you never know when the Rapture's coming"? No, of course not. But if we can make folks see that Mr. Santorum's votaries are losing the key economic and social debates because they're wrong and can't do anything about it except ventilate rage and self-pity, then we can be thankful.

The great leveler.

CREDO helps you tell our government not to use unmanned aerial drones to spy on American citizens. Seems self-evident, right? Not to Congress, nor to the Obama Administration, which recently directed the FAA to issue regulations on using drones in domestic airspace, with no guidance from Congress as to how to protect our privacy. But that's what happens when our government listens to corporate lobbyists instead of listening to government's owners, the American people. And, of course, it's worse when they listen to corporate lobbyists who think of "civil liberties" as a "challenge" to be overcome, rather than as rights to be respected. I know, I know, establishing probable cause and getting warrants is all so "quaint" in our post-9.11 age. Well, color me conservative, then.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that AARP's CEO will meet with, and I quote, "powerful Washington establishment figures who are on record favoring cuts to Social Security and Medicare," while AARP staffers conduct a "listening tour" presumably aimed at ordinary folks. Who will they listen to? Us, of course, if we speak loud enough. After all, we worked for these benefits, and we all can think of other ways to cut the deficit that don't involve cutting a good program that doesn't even cause deficits -- closing offshore tax havens, letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and raising taxes on millionaires, to name three that took me less than a second to come up with. So both the Campaign for America's Future and Firedoglake help you tell the AARP to stop with the cutting Social Security talk already.

Finally, the Indian government passed a patent law in 2005 preventing drug corporations from extending drug patents by making insignificant tweaks to their drugs. Yay for the Indian government! But the drug corporations won't take this lying down -- Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is suing the Indian government, hoping to get the Indian Supreme Court (which plans to rule in eight days) to overturn the law. If Novartis wins, prices for dozens of drugs will automatically go way, way up, well beyond what citizens in the developing world can afford to pay. But wait, you may ask -- doesn't Novartis have intellectual property rights in this instance? Of course they do -- they just don't have a "right" to make insignificant changes in their drugs just so they can get around the law. Sum of Us helps you remind Novartis CEO Joe Jiminez of this fact.

Driftin' too far from shore.

The FCC has been taking comments on its nefarious plan to loosen media consolidation rules so that big corporations can own TV stations and newspapers in the same market. Perhaps not surprisingly, some 90% of the comments they've received so far have opposed their plan. But Mr. Obama doesn't appear to be listening, despite his stated commitment to local and diverse news sources, so Free Press helps you tell the FCC more directly that you oppose their plan. Occasionally I wonder if Mr. Obama goes back on his media-related promises so often because he trusts that newer, internet-based media will blow old media out of the water. And who wouldn't want to believe that? The problem with that is that it doesn't work that way -- "old media" adapts the new media to its purposes, and many Americans don't even have access to the "new media," since they don't have broadband at home (and a cell phone isn't really a good delivery device for the "new media").

Meanwhile, the EPA plans to set carbon emissions caps for power plants. This, you may recall, was the reason we didn't need some Grand Bargain on climate change from Congress -- per a Supreme Court ruling authored by Justice Scalia, the EPA already has the power to set carbon emissions limits under the Clean Air Act. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to set strong carbon emission protections. Protections for us, that is, not the bank accounts of power plant CEOs, which is all Jim Inhofe's waaah-climate-change-is-a-hoax-waaaaah brigade really cares about. One hopes that Mr. Obama holds the line on this matter -- after all, Fox News must have been trumpeting the reality of climate change for months now, since we had such a mild winter here in the Northeast, just like they yelled during previous winters that every 20-inch snowstorm in the Northeast proved climate change was a hoax. Wait, they haven't been doing that? (Puts on surprised face.)

Finally, we don't have another action alert on forced arbitration clauses today -- you know, those clauses in contracts that push your grievances out of the courts and into arbitration hearings rigged against you -- but, courtesy Public Citizen, we have something almost as good, a list of corporations you likely do business with who have forced arbitration clauses in their contracts with you. Not just banks and cell phone providers, either -- also nursing homes and home builders. Nursing homes! And Public Citizen lists six corporations who put forced arbitration clauses in their employment contracts. Sadly, you'll recognize most of these names -- but you can stop doing business with a lot of them, and tell them why you're not doing business with them, and once enough of us do it, the lost business and the bad PR will take its toll.

I send a message.

The South Korea "free" trade pact went into effect yesterday, giving away American jobs and giving corporations more ways to set themselves above our laws -- but hundreds of thousands of South Koreans marked the event by marching in protest in Seoul, and the party that pushed the treaty faces a tough election on April 11, with the opposition party vowing they'll terminate the agreement without major changes. Before getting too annoyed that we didn't put together a similar rally here, remember that we did delay this deal for four years -- and then remember that Mr. Obama wants to sign an even worse "free" trade deal with nearly a dozen Pacific-area nations, a deal that would expand "investor-state tribunals" so that corporations could supersede our laws and our courts even more. So Public Citizen helps you oppose the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Meanwhile, British Petroluem, progenitors of the 2010 Spillageddon in the Gulf, has claimed $10 billion in tax credits by writing off the expenses they incurred cleaning up the mess they made. In other words, we paid to clean up their mess. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do that? If we could, say, ram our cars into other cars -- or other people! -- and then write off the damages we caused as losses? It's not likely that we'll ever do that, of course, since a) we have morals and b) we don't contribute millions to Congressional campaigns. In any case, the Department of Justice plans to sue BP for environmental fines -- and BP will write those off, too, if Justice has the lack of foresight to settle with them. (Fines can't be deducted from corporate taxes, but settlements can.) So PennPIRG helps you tell the Justice Department not to settle with BP.

Finally, Mr. Limbaugh has lost over 140 advertisers since his three-day attack on Sandra Fluke, but only a few radio stations have dropped his program, so Keystone Progress helps you tell Pennsylvania radio stations to boot his show from the air. No, we're not abrogating Mr. Limbaugh's rights, even if Bill Maher thinks so -- there is no First Amendment "right" to be paid for your speech, or to be protected from activists, employers, advertisers, or customers. I'm disappointed to see Mr. Maher miss this point, and to fudge the difference between citizen-driven activism and government-driven oppression, and to suggest that the only alternative to an unfettered Rush Limbaugh is a land where "we all talk like White House spokesmen." He sounds like he worries about his own livelihood. He shouldn't -- he's considerably better than Mr. Limbaugh, and he won't suffer for work if his radio show falls apart.

No time to lose.

First things first: 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, visiting a relative in a Florida gated community, walked to the store for Skittles and iced tea -- and was shot and killed by a "neighborhood watch leader" afraid he looked black, I mean suspicious. No, the shooter, George Zimmerman, explicitly said that he shot Mr. Martin, this after the police (to whom he reported Mr. Martin's presence) explicitly told him not to confront Mr. Martin. And nobody has arrested Mr. Zimmerman! Too many damn Americans act like they're World Sheriff and only they can set things right, and the rest of us have every right to wonder if that's because they can't set a damn thing in their own lives right. Mr. Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, has begun a petition on change.org, so you can call for the police to investigate the death.

Meanwhile, did you know that Public Health Service (PHS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees still do not enjoy even the most basic whistleblower protections? That's right -- if you're an employee of either of these two agencies and you expose corruption therein, they can fire you. Apparently, a loophole within the Whistleblowers Protection Act regards PHS and NOAA as uniformed personnel, not civilians, who would be protected under the law. You might say it seems silly to get all befuddled over a uniform -- or you might say the person who decided this was a loophole worth driving a Mack truck through should rightly have trouble sleeping. The National Whistleblowers Center helps you demand protection for PHS and NOAA employees.

Finally, you may have heard of the U.S. soldier who allegedly murdered 16 civilians in Afghanistan earlier this week, which no sentient being would cheer (though plenty of right-wingers did). A propos of this event, H.R. 780 -- which would, no, not provide a "timetable for withdrawal," but would fund only the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan -- is still out there. So Just Foreign Policy still helps you ask your House Rep to co-sponsor H.R. 780. Clear majorities have supported withdrawal from Afghanistan for years now, and in a welcome development, the "liberal" media has stopped calling this position an "extreme left" position. After all, what is the possibility that a majority of Americans are "extreme left"?

Freewill.

After a rash of forced rape, er, mandatory ultrasound bills in state houses, we have this doozy from Kansas, H.B. 2598, which would permit doctors to withhold information about any birth defect a baby might have when it's born. I guess they think a doctor's conscience is more important than that of any hundred of his patients! As it happens, I don't think much of someone who'd abort a baby because it has, say, Down's Syndrome -- some of the finest people in the world have Down's Syndrome! -- but I think even less of folks who think so little of women that they won't tell them everything they're entitled to know, particularly things that would, you know, prepare them for motherhood. The ACLU helps you tell Gov. Brownback to oppose H.B. 2598. I'm sure he couldn't care less, but let's at least let him know we're watching.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell the Republicans to stop obstructing Mr. Obama's judicial nominees. Note that I've said nothing about Republicans filibustering nominees, because they're not even going through the trouble of putting their finger up, saying they'll filibuster, and then going off to the theatre. No, Republicans are only putting individual holds on nominees, nominees who've generally cleared the Judiciary Committee with zero or one vote against, for no reason other than, well, because they're a bunch of big diaper-loaded babies whining that they don't have all the power in the world yet. OK, that's not what they would say about it, but that's how it looks to life forms of moderate sentience. Unless I missed the part where Mike Lee got elected American Dictator-for-Life.

My October symphony.

The House passed something called the JOBS Act yesterday and, as you might expect, it guts a lot of regulations under the premise that REGULASHUNZ KILL JOBZ. No one in Washington thinks letting corporations do whatever they want kills jobs? The JOBS Act would roll back Sarbanes-Oxley protections enacted to prevent another Enron from happening, and also would roll back Dodd-Frank protections enacted to prevent another 2008 financial armageddon from happening. Washington will tell us that the JOBS Act only eases regulations on behalf of small businesses, but actually it affects just about all but the very largest corporations. And don't accept the lie that corporations can't create jobs because of "restricted capital flow." They're sitting on trillions in capital right now; they don't create jobs because they don't want to. So Public Citizen helps you oppose the JOBS Act and other efforts to ram through deregulation.

Meanwhile, Pakistan would like to erect a giant wall of government-sanctioned censorship around the internet (because China's censorship wall is so popular!), even going so far as to take out an ad in national newspapers asking for corporations to help! Sadly, many corporations would be willing -- but most of them wouldn't be willing to put up with the PR headache if we all spoke out against them, as the corporations contemplating helping Syria build a massive surveillance network earlier this year could tell you. Freedom, as you know, is popular, and oppression, despite the obvious attractions it offers to our elites, is not. And anyone who helps Pakistan in this sorry end could be accurately described as, well, objectively pro-oppression. So Access Now helps you tell corporations local and worldwide to refuse to help the government of Pakistan oppress its people.

Inertia creeps.

CREDO helps you tell Attorney General Holder to release the assassination memos. A few days ago, as you recall, Mr. Holder announced that the Obama Administration could assassinate U.S. citizens without giving them a chance to respond to the Administration's charges against them. Mr. Holder claims the Administration would use this power against terrorists, and some folks will find that explanation satisfactory and go back to watching Jersey Shore. Not so for those of us who know how quickly, say, a peaceful Occupier or a peaceful Tea Partier can morph into a "terrorist" in an Administration's eyes. Mr. Obama goes to some length to assure us he won't just shoot Americans willy-nilly -- after all, he's serious, not like that last guy, or whoever runs against him in 2012. But the Founders didn't create this nation because they thought you should trust your leaders; rather the opposite, in fact.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard of the unfortunately-named "pink slime" in beef, that heady mixture of cow connective tissue and ammonia. You probably heard about it because the USDA was poised to buy about seven million tons of it for school lunches. You may or may not know that "pink slime" is also ubiquitous in the ground beef you find in your supermarket. You may even be wondering: if it's in 70 percent of all supermarket ground beef, it can't be so bad, so what's the big deal? Big deal number one: all that ammonia still doesn't kill all the E.coli and salmonella it's supposed to kill. Big deal number two: fast food giants don't use it, not even Taco Bell. Taco Bell! And if it's not good enough for fast food, it's not good enough for school lunch food. Both CREDO and change.org help you tell the USDA to avoid the pink slime like the plague. So to speak.

Wasted hours.

First we go to Honduras, where women laborers on melon plantations suffer long hours, toxic chemical exposure, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and forced pregnancy tests. It gets worse: the corporations running these plantations often don't pay into Honduras's Social Security program (which covers employment-related health issues), and hire most of their workers as temps, even the ones they've been hiring every year for decades. Did I mention they also pay their workers like crap? The vast majority of melon workers get less than minimum wage, while about half work unpaid overtime and most work Sundays and holidays without pay. Honduras has laws against all this, but doesn't enforce them, whether through indifference or corporate strong-arming (or both!). So the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell the melon corporations and the government of Honduras to treat melon workers better. Because, as I've often said, there is-so such a thing as bad PR -- and the melon industry, still recovering from a rash of contaminated melons six months back, should know that by now.

Meanwhile, Apple turns out its new iPad this week. Nice-looking, ain't it? The future of computing, I'm told. But if it's like Apple's other gadgets, the workers who made it probably worked tons of unpaid overtime. Apple took a big PR hit over that (as well as the N-hexane issue) earlier this year, and they responded by saying they care about their workers and they follow the law and a "third-party" "labor watchdog" would look into the allegations. Turns out their "watchdog," the Fair Labor Association, gets its funding from major corporations -- including, as of January of this year, Apple! And a little over a month later, the CEO of the FLA was praising Apple's worksites in China! So Sum of Us helps you demand that Apple release its workers' clock-in and clock-out reports, so they can actually prove they're not abusing their workers. You are not a hypocrite if you sign this using an Apple computer; you're only living in a world you didn't create from scratch. Like all of us, including the idiot who'd call you a hypocrite.

This devil's workday.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder told us that the Executive branch can murder execute U.S. citizens without giving them a chance to respond to accusations against them, and that the only "due process" they get is a secret Executive branch review. That's right, folks: the President can be judge, jury, and executioner, all because the "war on terror" could take place anytime, anywhere. Sounds awful convenient, don't it? Makes John Kerry's 2004 insistence that fighting terror was a law enforcement matter sound a lot better, don't it? Osama bin Laden laughs at us from beyond the grave, for we are doing the work of dismantling our freedoms much better than he ever could. Firedoglake helps you demand that the Obama Administration release the legal memos justifying their position. Of course they exist -- if a minor-league operation like Tha Bush Mobb could take the time to write memos justifying torture, certainly Mr. Obama's minions have also done their homework.

Meanwhile, if you missed earlier opportunities to tell Rep. Hoyer (D-MD) not to cut a backroom deal with Republicans to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, CREDO still helps you do that. Mr. Hoyer has responded to reports of his backroom dealing with assurances, etc., that we need to cut the deficit in a "balanced" way, etc., but Mr. Hoyer is fairly center-right, even as Democrats these days go, and he did suggest raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 not too long ago. (I can almost hear him say "but it was just a suggestion!") And you remember as well as I do that the Democrats conceded big Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts to Republicans during the whole Super-Committee ordeal just to get vague promises that they might raise revenues somewhere someday, so I wouldn't trust them to protect the people. Mainly, of course, I trust the people to protect the people.

Finally, home health care workers still don't enjoy the protection of minimum wage and overtime laws under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Department of Labor apparently aims to fix that via regulation, and is still accepting public comments until Monday; the National Women's Law Center helps you leave said comment. You may want to mention that home health aides average under $10/hr and a quarter of them don't even make minimum wage. You may also want to mention that taking care of folks is hard work, but necessary work, and should be rewarded as such. And what arguments will the other side have? That they just can't make ends meet if they pay their workers as they should be paid? That's another hostage situation ("don't make me do the right thing, or I'll blow this business's brains out!"), and I don't tolerate hostage situations.

Witness the change.

Have you thought about which right-wing knuckle-dragging politician your 401(k) might be supporting? Your 401(k) doesn't have to support them directly; it only needs to invest in corporations that do. Luckily, the Securities and Exchange Commission can protect you, by requiring publicly-traded corporations to disclose all their campaign spending. Since CEOs always tell us that corporations should only be accountable to their shareholders, they should get on board. What do they have to hide, after all? And while some complain that the Executive branch can mandate disclosure without getting President Scott Brown's approval, they neglect to mention that the legislative branch has ceded the Executive branch this power through legislation. Chew on that the next time some right-winger natters on about Barack Obama, American Caesar! USPIRG helps you tell the SEC to protect 401(k) investors from campaign contributions that contravene their will.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh has now lost 33 advertisers over his three-day-long sexist flatugasm, but his paymasters at Clear Channel have stood by him: "We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions." Clear Channel did not explain why Mr. Limbaugh needs to be paid $50 million a year to be able to exercise said right -- after all, no one has proposed putting him in jail, nor would we if he were "expressing those opinions" on a street corner. But one D. Washington has created a signon.org petition demanding that Clear Channel fire Mr. Limbaugh; over 320,000 folks have signed it, as of this writing. You can add your name here, if you like. For me, it isn't so much this one thing Rush Limbaugh said, but everything he's ever said. The sad part is that so many other right-wing talkers are worse nowadays -- and he's only partly to blame for that.

Finally, if you've missed your opportunity to leave a comment with the FCC about their plan to loosen media-consolidation rules, Free Press helps you talk to the big man himself, Barack Obama. You remember Barack Obama? Not the President who's broken so many promises, but the Senator who, in 2008, told us that the FCC's plan to let big corporations own media across platforms was a sop to "the Washington special interests." Pitch-perfect populism, that; but apparently forgotten today. Who on earth wants more big corporations to own more little TV stations and newspapers, so we can have even more junk news and even more sensationalism and even more cheerleading for politicians disguised as analysis? Nobody on the left or right, that's for sure -- only the big broadcasters want it. Well, last I looked, they don't run things around here. We run things around here, and Mr. Obama, like every other politician, needs reminding of that from time to time.

Paint it black.

Has Rush Limbaugh has really stepped in it this time? After several days of personal attacks on a woman planning to testify about the health benefits of birth control medication, seven advertisers dropped Mr. Limbaugh, and he offered an apology, which just about nobody accepted. At this writing, 13 more advertisers have dropped his show, bringing the total to 20. Daily Kos still provides a petition demanding that corporations pull their ads from his show, as well as a call for the Armed Forces Network to drop his program, while Americablog provides a list of advertisers still running ads on Mr. Limbaugh's program, complete with twitter handles. Remember, the First Amendment protects you from your government when you speak, but it does not protect you from activists, advertisers, or consumers, nor does it guarantee you a $50 million annual salary.

Meanwhile, Congress continues to move slowly on S. 1813, a transportation and infrastructure bill, mainly because Republicans keep offering poison pill amendments like the Blunt Amendment. And, as if to demonstrate, yet again, the uselessness of Republican moderates, Sen. Collins (R-ME) has offered another one, which would nullify recent EPA regulations on mercury emissions from industrial boilers. The amendment's co-sponsors (including two Democrats, testifying to another kind of uselessness) tell us that regulations prevent corporations from hiring workers. What rubbish! Suggesting that corporations have to be prodded to keep their workforce down is like suggesting that four-year-olds have to be prodded into eating chocolate-chip cookies. Moms Rising provides the contact tool.

Finally, David Wong at Cracked magazine's website -- you remember Cracked, right? It was almost as good as Mad -- offers "Six Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying," an article which absolutely shreds the arguments rich folks offer when we confront them with the horrors they've wrought. Not just because rich folks are stupid-or-evil, either -- also because they're human, i.e. "biologically programmed to not notice their advantages." Oh, and don't skip by the photos or the captions, because they're hilarious. I must say I'm a bit ashamed that I've only put maybe half of Mr. Wong's arguments in heavy rotation here at this blog. Sadly, I'll have a gazillion chances to rectify that error, because I imagine our elites will keep screwing us and will keep constructing Rube Goldbergian arguments to justify it.

World where you live.

The Arizona state House of Representatives is mulling HCR 2056, which aims to lower the minimum wage for certain classes of Arizona workers. Why lower the minimum wage for anyone in a time of economic armageddon? HCR 2056's proponents give the same reasons as always: competitiveness, capitalism, small businesses. Arizona already excludes small businesses with less than $500,000 in revenue from the minimum wage law, but why worry about facts? And hearing restauranteurs, who already get to pay their tipped workers less under the law, call minimum wages laws "anti-capitalism" is, as they say, rich -- as if their workers don't deserve a better chance to eat some of that capitalism pie! And it couldn't be a coincidence that Florida is mulling similar legislation, could it? LUCHA helps you tell Arizona's legislature to stop trying to hurt working families.

Meanwhile, Tide's "Free and Gentle" detergent might be free of dyes and perfumes, but it's sadly not free of 1,4-dioxane, a known carcinogen in animals which has proven tough to get out of the water table once it gets in. Now, you may be thinking that carcinogens are everywhere anyway and what really matters is how much you get exposed to them, right? According to this 2010 study, Tide Free & Gentle contains 29 ppm of the offending chemical, where the CDC's threshold limit value is 20 ppm and several other big-name brands (All, Clorox Green Works, Seventh Generation Free and Clear) have none or almost none. Tide's parent company, Proctor & Gamble, basically poops money, so I can't imagine P&G would find it difficult to reduce the risk, especially when so many others have already done so. Change.org helps you tell Tide to get the 1,4-dioxane out of its detergent.

Finally, Dow wants the USDA to approve its genetically-engineered 2,4-D-resistant corn. 2,4-D has been used as a successful pesticide/herbicide since the end of World War II but plenty of studies suggest that 2,4-D causes cancer (though the Bush Mobb's EPA didn't agree in 2007); does that sound like something you'd want on your food? Because if Dow makes corn more resistant to it, you'll get it on your food, and the Obama Administration won't make them label it despite Mr. Obama's explicit promise to make the FDA do just that, so we'll have a hard time avoiding it in the store. Happily, the USDA must take public comments on Dow's Frankencorn, and Just Label It helps you leave that comment. I'd prefer, though, to be able to edit the comment. I'd like to be able to say that keeping products from market when we're not sure they're safe is a profoundly conservative thing to do, even if today's nominal "conservatives" don't appear to understand that.

How much is enough?

Word on the street is that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is pushing again for a "grand bargain" with Republicans on the budget. Remember the last time they tried a "grand bargain," during the so-called "Super Committee"'s failure to rein in the debt? Democrats offered massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for maybe one day getting some revenue increases out of Republicans pretty please with sugar on top. So it looks like our distinguished leaders need yet another pimp-slap from their employers, the American people. I suppose Mr. Hoyer may have announced this push to Third Way, an allegedly center-left think tank in D.C., because he saw some advantage in telling them something they wanted to hear. But I don't play nine-dimensional chess. The people's will is a blunt instrument, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Meanwhile, negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, another of these so-called "free" trade agreements, continue in secret. What do they have to fear? That people will be afraid of, say, giving corporations even more rights than they deserve? Apparently so. Almost twenty years ago, Chevron made a big mess in the Amazon, and both an Ecuadorian court and a U.S. court ruled that the company had to pay to clean it up. Nothing wrong with that, right? You make a mess, you clean it up; you learned that from your parents. But Chevron has turned to an "investor-state" tribunal created under a previous "free" trade deal to evade their responsibility. Is this the world we want -- a world where corporations, which are not accountable to you, trump government, which is accountable to you whether they like it or not? Public Citizen helps you tell your representatives in federal and state government that this is not the world you want.

Finally, the FCC plans to lift decades-old bans on media cross-ownership, meaning that corporations could soon own major daily newspapers and TV stations in the same market. We have plenty of good reasons to oppose media cross-ownership. For one, consolidation means fewer jobs, and that means fewer local newsrooms and more "local" stories that are apparently local to several disparate markets. For another, it means fewer viewpoints, and that means more junk news and more "action" shows and more "reality" shows. For another, too few corporations already own too damn many media outlets in America -- if the 13th and 14th Amendments supposedly grant the "rights of personhood" to corporations, why don't they prevent corporations literally owning others? Isn't that, you know, slavery? So, if you haven't left a comment with the FCC, avaaz.org helps you do that; the comment period ends Monday, so get to stepping.

Dirt road blues.

President Obama rejected TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline last month -- yet earlier this week seemed pleased that TransCanada planned to move forward with building the southernmost leg of the pipeline, running from Oklahoma to Texas. What gives? That southern leg will still be built by a corporation with a lousy pipe safety record, and how does he think the tar sands oil will get from Canada to Oklahoma? By transmat? CREDO calls this "TransCanada's latest end run around the State Department's formal review process," but what if Mr. Obama is to blame here? I suspect that either Mr. Obama isn't the defender of clean heartland water he seemed to be last month, or he's doing psyops on his opponents. I'm long past the age where I find psyops against your opponents particularly effective, or a necessary evil, or even amusing. CREDO helps you tell Mr. Obama to abandon this latest Keystone XL-related silliness.

Meanwhile, the poop is really starting to hit the fan for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, as London investigators tell us that News Corp. actually authorized hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to British cops and government officials. So what, you say? Turns out that's actually against the law here in the U.S. -- the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids American corporations from paying off foreign officials. And, needless to say, Mr. Murdoch is trying to get his friends in our government to look the other way. So Free Press helps you tell U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Mr. Murdoch's empire. If Zombie Ben Franklin ever drops by again, I'll be sure to tell him the amazing story of the American corporation that thought it was just fine to throw money at foreigners so they can get salacious stories to print. Of course, last time I saw him, he had trouble getting around the whole corporations-are-people-but-can-still-own-each-other thing.

Finally, if you've missed any previous opportunities to petition the Obama Administration about antibiotic abuse in farm animals, Consumers Union reminds me that you may still do so. The petition has garnered (at this writing) a little over half of the 25,000 signatures it needs to prompt a response from the Administration. Who favors giving 80 percent of all antibiotics used in America to farm animals that ain't sick? Who favors diseases getting far more resistant to antibiotics as a result? Who favors animals producing ever-weaker descendants as a result? Who favors giving bioterrorists an opening by constantly making our antibiotics more useless? Nobody who thinks about the matter for a minute, that's for sure. Only the factory farm industry wants things this way, and even though Mr. Obama is friendlier to big agribusiness than he is to perhaps any other undeserving sector of the economy, big agribusiness doesn't run things around here. We do.