Thieves in the Temple.

For God's sake give more power to the people.

Undoubtedly you've heard that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act -- but you also know that perpetuates our for-profit health care system, one that spends a lot more on health care per capita than other nations that ensure better care, one that continues to enrich health care corporations (though perhaps not as grotesquely as before) at the expense of the citizenry. So Roots Action helps you tell Congress and President Obama to remove barriers states face in implementing single-payer plans. Vermont has already created one, and Montana and California might not be far behind, but under current law states would not be able to implement their plans until 2017; the President could grant a waiver allowing states to begin in 2014, but, of course, we have to convince Mr. Obama to do that. Single-payer systems would also rely on increased federal funding, and Congress holds those strings. I can think of a few wars that could be cut to pay for that.

Meanwhile, the EPA is now mulling a fine particulate standard, or a soot standard. Soot is made from smoke, liquid droplets, and metal particles, and fossil fuel plants, oil refineries, and car exhausts tend to make a lot of it. No matter how many images you may have of lovable hobos covered in soot, fact is soot's not a good thing to breathe in -- soot particles are small enough that they can get in your bloodstream, and in its gas phase soot contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs), which are both mutagenic and carcinogenic. Of course the big polluting corporations oppose any attempt to restrict the amount of soot they put out, because JOBZ!!!!!! And again, we must remind them that taking jobs hostage every time they're asked to do something for the common good is not how big boys respond to life's challenges. The Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to keep more soot out of our air and thus keep our air cleaner.

Finally, if you've missed earlier opportunities to fight the big agricultural corporations' efforts to curtail judicial review of genetically-engineered Frankencrops, Organic Consumers provides another one. To review: Sec. 733 of the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill (H.R. 5973) would force the Secretary of Agriculture to allow any "farmer, grower, farm operator, or producer" to continue growing their Frankencrops while still evaluating their application to have the Frankencrop approved. And any farmer whose crop gets contaminated by someone else's Frankenseed wouldn't be able to challenge it in a court of law (because the offending Frankenseed would get "immediate" approval). This all just makes no damn sense. If you don't know something is safe, why let people plant it while you're figuring that out? What conservative would do that? A "conservative" only looking to preserve corporate profits, I suppose -- which statement directly translates into "no conservative at all."

Around the table for Friday, June 29, 2012.

The Daily Show excoriates CNN (and, to a lesser extent, Fox News) for getting the Supreme Court health care ruling exactly wrong. I hope the CNN brand suffers horribly, but I also don't want to hear all the hand-wringing CNN punditoids will do. How did we screw up? Dunno -- maybe because you're greedy?

Several alleged conservatives now think John Roberts is a liberal because he ruled to uphold the health care law. This is how the right wing moves politics further rightward, so that one day they can get an actual rabid raccoon appointed to the Supreme Court. And they'll call that raccoon a liberal after he bites Sam Alito! Also, memo to Ben Shapiro: don't front about George W. Bush; you sucked up to him every chance you got during Tha Bush Mobb's heyday.

News Corp. plans to split into two corporations. One will comprise its highly-profitable "entertainment operations," and the other will comprise its significantly-less profitable publishing businesses. And yes, Fox News Channel apparently counts as "entertainment" to Mr. Murdoch. So sayeth the Wall Street Journal, soon to be banished to the other corporation.

UPDATE. More right-wing reactions to John Roberts's "betrayal" here. I find the second twittering from Ben Shapiro (a "butterfly"?) completely incomprehensible.

Take the money and run.

First things first: Bahraini police arrested an 11-year-old child for "illegal gathering" and "disturbing security," then detained him for 23 days without letting him see a lawyer, after which Mr. Hassan -- who, being eleven, is surely not trained in the ways of surviving an absurd and incomprehensible interrogation -- finally "confessed." I say again: an 11-year-old! What goes through the mind of the people who do this? "Well, that'll show all those people protesting peacefully in the streets! After all, imprisoning, torturing, and killing them didn't show them." In the long view, I suppose all this means that the Bahraini government is thisfar from crumbling, but that's not much of a comfort to Ali Hassan or his family, nor to our need for justice, so Amnesty International helps you tell the Bahraini authorities to drop the charges against Mr. Hassan. We have reasons to protect children, you know, and the Bahraini government seems to be acting out most of those reasons as we speak.

Meanwhile, closer to home, HB 1659 would "reform" the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's permit review process -- but not to better protect our air and water, but to better protect corporate profits. HB 1659 would deem all applications "accepted" if they're not reviewed within 90 days, regardless of whether or not the granted permit would harm our air and water, and Section 303 of the bill would mandate the DEP to "implement a plan to use qualified nondepartmental employees to undertake permit application reviews," and by "nondepartmental employees" they surely mean corporate executives and campaign donors. The bill's author, of course, cites exactly one example of a coal company that allegedly waited a few years for a permit, but as Neil Gabler might say, one incident of chicken pox doesn't constitute an epidemic. So Penn Environment helps you tell your state Reps and Senators to oppose HB 1659.

In other news, you may know that scientists have linked the ubiquitous plastic chemical bisphenol A (or BPA) to cancer, obesity, diabetes, estrogen disruption, and genetic defects -- but you may not know that soup maker Progresso, despite its attempt to position itself as a "healthy" canned soup choice, lines its cans with dangerous levels of BPA. That's "dangerous" as in 80 times more than you should have in a day in some samples reviewed by Consumer Reports. Now, I suppose some folks will tell us that we shouldn't be eating canned soups anyway, or even debating how to make canned soups healthier, but I'd respond that those people must never have had to raise a family or get anywhere quickly. So change.org helps you tell Progresso to remove the BPA from its soup cans. This isn't a shot in the dark -- Campbell's has already agreed to stop using BPA in its soup cans after a similiar public outcry, so, like so may other things in life, we can do this.

Finally, if you've missed opportunities to stop the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" from moving forward, Sum of Us provides another one. This petition concentrates on the TPP's attempts to clamp down on normal, everyday internet use, and the TPP is truly a SOPA or PIPA on steroids -- it would allow corporations to shut down your website merely on accusations of copyright theft, and it would allow corporations to collect all sorts of private information about you merely by making such an accusation. And people think government is like Big Brother! The TPP would make any corporation a far worse Big Brother -- one you can't fight back with your government's help, no less, since the TPP also subjects disagreements over copyright infringement to its infamous "investor tribunals." You'd think corporations would avoid copyright infringement simply by co-opting the technologies that enable it -- after all, it worked for iTunes. But, by and large, they won't, because they only care about short-term profits, not the long-term health of the societies in which they operate -- or even long-term profits.

Two rooms.

Ever heard of the "Farmer Assurance Provision"? Sounds fairly innocuous, doesn't it? Of course, it's not: it would prevent federal courts from halting the planting of unapproved genetically-modified crops if the USDA is still evaluating their safety. Imagine that! The "Farmer Assurance Provision" would let agricultural corporations poison your organic or otherwise-grown crops with their Frankenseed before our government can determine they're safe! I wouldn't call that a "provision" so much as I'd call it a loophole. And clearly the only "farmers" being "assured" by this legislative rider (Sec. 733 of the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill) are the big farmers; small farmers can only be "assured" that the courts won't be able to stop big farmers from pooping all over them. Both Just Label It and the Organic Consumers Fund help you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the so-called Farmer Assurance Provision.

Meanwhile, did you know that Sallie Mae only lets active-dury military folks defer on their private student loans for three years? And Sallie Mae is pretty much alone in that -- federal student loans allow servicemembers to defer their student loans for as long as they serve their country in the military. I'm sure some folks say, well, we don't want to provide an incentive for people to just defer their loans forever. Hello! They're in the military! They could be shot at! They could have bombs blow up next to them! They could be caring for people who get shot at and have bombs blow up next to them! And for all that, the pay is kinda crap! Frankly, there are much easier ways to "game the system" than to endure all those conditions for another four years simply because you love your country. So change.org helps you tell Sallie Mae to change its deferment policy for military servicemembers.

Finally, in the wake of the Supreme Court's striking down Montana's ban on corporate campaign financing, a revised DISCLOSE Act (S. 2219/H.R. 4010) would shine some light on campaign contributions of $10,000 or more, and Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support it. Public Citizen also reminds us that Sen. McConnell (E-KY) told us in 1997 that "(p)ublic disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate," but lately he's joined a filibuster on the earlier DISCLOSE Act from 2010 and called disclosure initiatives "harassment and intimidation." Setting aside that anyone who can give $10,000 to a campaign can buy a bodyguard to protect themselves from the likes of me: in what universe does criticism equal "harassment and intimidation"? If you're such a weakling that you can't withstand your huge campaign donations being pointed out to everybody, you need to take your $10,000 ball and go home.

Penny rants for Tuesday, June 26, 2012.

WA-01 Republican Congressional candidate John Koster claims "there's no Federal Defense of Marriage Act that I know of" during a debate -- and then "corrects" his mistake by saying that since Mr. Obama stopped defending DOMA in court, gay marriage has been left to the states. Uh, no: refusing to defend a law in court doesn't actually mean the Executive branch gets to ignore the law, unless and until the court actually overturns the law. So why is the headline "John Koster owns up to gaffe on federal gay-marriage law"? Long story short, the author asked the candidates during the debate to describe a mistake they'd made and what they'd learned from it, and Mr. Koster answered him after the debate. Strange that he'd credit Mr. Koster for that, given the timing -- and given Mr. Koster's continued ignorance about how our government works.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports on a massive, and apparently controversial, solar energy project on the California/Nevada border. It could kill birds! Flip airplanes! Attract heat-seeking missiles! But n.b. that the project doesn't use photovoltaic cells -- it uses mirrors and a water tower to generate steam, in what seems (to me, at least) a rather Rube Goldbergian scheme. So when the Times asserts that "(t)here is already documentation linking solar power to bird deaths," you could be forgiven for thinking that putting a few solar panels on your roof might make you a menace to the bird population, though the Mojave desert project doesn't use those panels. It's almost like that's the idea! Also, too, the article doesn't source any of said "documentation," despite running on for almost 40 paragraphs. Also, too, the passive voice sucks.

Pressure drop.

First things first. Minneapolis resident Alejandra Cruz paid her mortgage online for seven years, but then one month PNC Bank, her mortgage holder, forgot to withdraw the money, and instead of saying oops, we forgot to withdraw the money, let's go ahead and do that, no harm, no foul, the bank said your penalty for missing your mortgage payment is now two months' payment due immediately. And then the bank put Ms. Cruz into foreclosure, and then the police came at 4 am and used a battering ram to get into their house and arrest everyone there. No lie. After reading that, I feel a little silly saying that change.org helps you tell PNC to settle this like adults, when I feel like putting PNC executives in jail for using their own mistake, if indeed it was even a mistake, to terrorize their customers. But, truth be told, a little bad PR is, often, all it takes to right such matters. It's already worked for a fellow Minneapolis resident, so it may work for Ms. Cruz as well.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Pennsylvania state Senate passed SB 9, which would require folks to have government-issued ID before receiving public benefits. You remember from the PA Voter ID bill brouhaha why that's a bad idea, right? Because a lot of poor and elderly folks don't have the documentation (what poor hospital gave out birth certificates eighty years ago, for example?) that you'd need to even get government-issued ID. So, while SB 9 supposedly takes aim at undocumented immigrants, who aren't eligible for public assistance anyway, the bill actually smacks down poor people generally. It's almost like that's the idea! And the House plans to attach even worse amendments as it considers the bill -- like one that would make it a felony for undocumented immigrants to carry Access cards for food stamps, never mind that their children might be citizens and thus eligible for food stamps! This matter may merit a letter and/or phone call to your state House Rep; you can find your state House Rep here, and the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition can help you compose a letter.

Around the table for Monday, June 25, 2012.

Moody's downgrades Citigroup and Bank of America credit scores. But not "because of the difficult business conditions they face," New York Times, but because of their incompetence and arrogance.

The Cato Institute finds that corporate welfare outstrips "traditional" social welfare programs by about three to two. You'd think the Cato Institute would find corporate welfare programs more insignificant than that.

The Vatican hires a Fox News correspondent as a media advisor. After all their hilarious attempts at demonizing their critics, I thought the Vatican's brain trust were already taking Fox News advice!

Michael Reagan says Mr. Obama's "mini-DREAM Act" executive order proves "he's doing to Latinos what Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly did to the children of Pennsylvania." Hey, Michael: your Dad called. He wants you to know that you're still not getting any more attention from him.

A jury finds Church of God minister/serial end-of-world forecaster Ronald Weinland guilty of five counts of tax evasion. Seems like a rather banal crook, actually -- $400,000 doesn't even buy as much house as it used to -- but, in a sign the apocalypse is not coming, the jury deliberated a mere four hours before returning the verdict.

This wheel's on fire.

So who favors a Trans-Pacific "Partnership" that rewards corporations that outsource their jobs to wherever the wages are lower, and lets foreign corporations cherry-pick which environmental, safety, and labor laws they want to follow? Just about nobody in America -- well, nobody but the corporations and the politicians, like Mr. Obama, who once made a few (not many) favorable noises about the need to renegotiate NAFTA, but who has since pushed through three Bush Mobb-negotiated "free" trade agreements and begun this new one (which now includes Mexico) on his own time. It's like the corporations and their lackeys in politics think they call all the shots around here. They don't. So Roots Action helps you tell Mr. Obama and your Reps and Senators to scrap the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," while Public Citizen helps you urge your Rep to sign on to the DeLauro/Miller letter demanding more transparency in TPP negotiations. Because transparency on "free" trade deals is like throwing a vampire out into the daylight.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett has taken a lot of well-deserved flak for pushing a massive tax break for Shell Oil to build an "ethane cracker" facility in Beaver County -- at $1.7 billion (over 25 years), it would be the largest corporate welfare handout in state history. And Shell made over $30 billion in profits this past year -- considerably more than than their own planned investment in the facility, and even more than the entire Pennsylvania state budget! Yet Mr. Corbett still pushes this handout, while slashing funding for cops, firefighters, public schools, state universities, and environmental programs. The Corbett Administration claims it can't lose a "bidding war" with Ohio and West Virginia for the Shell facility, and for all the jobs it'll create (whether that's 400 jobs or 10,000 jobs). In other words, we're all hostages and we have to do whatever corporations want -- which is, I insist, not so. SignOn.org helps you tell the Governor and the state legislature to give up on this elephantine tax break.

What keeps mankind alive?

Amnesty International helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a good Violence Against Women Act reauthorization. The story hasn't changed over the last few weeks: the Senate passed a good VAWA reauth after massive pressure from their constituents, but the House, which apparently faces no pressure except from the most rage-addled of our countryfolk, passed a bad VAWA reauth that denies help to gay, Native American, or undocumented immigrant women. Folks who scoff at helping undocumented immigrant women need only answer this question: are undocumented immigrants human beings? Folks who buy the rubbish that the Senate VAWA runs roughshod over the rights of non-Native Americans living on Native American reservations need only answer this question: who put a gun to anyone's head and made them move to a reservation and then beat up their partner? Folks who don't like protecting gays don't need to answer any questions. They just need to get the hell out of our way.

Meanwhile, using antibiotics only on sick people and animals enjoys the support of approximately everyone in America, but neither Congress nor the Executive branch has done anything about all the antibiotics we pump into animals on factory farms. To our government, factory farms' "need" to commandeer 80 percent of all antibiotics so they can mask their animals' squalid living conditions trumps our actual need to have antibiotics that actually fight disease. And that's why Consumers Union helps you ask Trader Joe's to sell no meat from animals raised with antibiotics. If we can persuade a national grocer to exclude antibiotic-raised meat from its stores, we'll make the factory farms and our government nervous. It's a shame it had to come to this, though. Americans both liberal and conservative oppose factory farm antibiotic use. The only people who support it are the factory farms. And they don't get to make all the decisions around here.

Speaking of people who shouldn't get to make all the decisions around here, Jim Inhofe's evil Dirty Air bill, S.J.Res. 37, lost in a Senate vote yesterday. And by "lost" I mean it actually lost -- the bill didn't even get a simple majority in favor. Five Republicans joined 48 Democratic caucus members in voting against it; of course the Brown/Collins/Snowe axis comprised three of them, but Lamar Alexander and Kelly Ayotte? Didn't see those coming. Sadly, I did see the "yes" votes coming from oil industry lackey Mary Landrieu, coal industry lackey Joe Manchin, and "bipartisanship" industry lackey Ben Nelson, though I don't understand why Virginia's delegation joined them, as Virginia's not a big coal-mining state. (Jim Webb, why do you frustrate me so?) I hope Mark Warner isn't auditioning for Ben Nelson's job as the Democrats' Minister of Fake Bipartisanship -- especially since he's a lot more telegenic.

Counting to one.

The Senate is, at this writing, about halfway through voting on 70-plus amendments to the S. 3240, the Farm Bill; the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell your Senators to support or oppose certain amendments. Sadly, a few good ones -- like the Gillibrand (D-NY) amendment restoring deep cuts in food stamps and the Paul (R-KY) amendment forbidding folks making over $250,000 from getting subsidies -- didn't pass yesterday, but more get a vote today. S.A. 2186, a Coburn (R-OK)/Durbin (D-IL) production, would cut subsidies somewhat for rich farmers -- though I prefer S.A. 2201, the Shaheen (D-NH)/Toomey (R-PA) production that would cap the amount crop insurance would pay out to all farmers, which (per Sen. Toomey's office) will also get a vote today. Also, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has offered a GMO-labeling amendment (S.A. 2256), and Sen. Merkley (D-OR)'s amendment (S.A. 2382) would ensure that crop insurance pays organic farmers more fairly. The "junk food" subsidies lay untouched, however; if that sticks in your craw, then PennPIRG still helps you tell your Senators to vote against the Farm Bill until the subsidies are removed.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Pennsylvania state government continues acting on very shoddy budget and environmental priorities -- leasing state forests to gas drilling corporations while blocking a decent solar energy bill, HB 1580, and figuring, somehow, that Pennsylvania taxpayers can cough up $1.6 billion in tax breaks so that Shell can build an "ethane cracker" refinery in Beaver County. That last item (negotiated in secret by the Corbett Administration -- what, they don't have enough Republicans in the legislature?) has earned the Governor some well-deserved PR backlash, but he's like all the other wannabe Bushes and Walkers: he doesn't care what you think. Still, we must ask: what giant corporation needs yet more tax breaks? Put a few beers in a corporate CEO and he'll tell you the truth: they'll take whatever tax breaks you offer them, but they don't need them, nor do they consider them very much in making decisions on where to build their facilities. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your state legislators to get their priorities straight.

Waiting for the flood.

Wanna know why people don't shop at WalMart? Here's a reason why: they benefit from slave labor within our borders. C.J.'s Seafood, a Louisiana company which sells over 80% of its products to WalMart, forces its guest workers (though not its American workers more adequately protected by law) to work 24 hours at a time and threatens them with violence and retribution if its guest workers so much as take a break. If this is how they treat foreign workers who are here legally, I shudder to think what they might do to their undocumented workers -- or to the rest of us, if we keep electing teabaggers to Congress. And WalMart has said it's "unable to substantiate" claims against C.J.'s -- while not talking to any of the workers who made the claims. I expected better from them, actually, because they've done better; I guess that just means they need the heat turned up. Change.org helps you tell WalMart to demand better worker treatment from its suppliers.

Last week, the Pennsylvania state House passed HB 2400, which would enable a lot more surveillance of you by your government, and even by your neighbors. Pennsylvania law currently requires the permission of both parties before taping their conversation, but HB 2400 would upend that requirement by allowing folks to tape other folks willy-nilly if they have a "reasonable expectation" the person they're taping will commit a heinous crime. You never argue with any of your neighbors, right? Worse, HB 2400 would allow law enforcement to listen to incoming messages on seized cell phones without getting a warrant, and before you say it shouldn't be such a big deal to listen to things already in your possession, imagine the possibility that the police seized the phone just to harass its owner. Also, HB 2400 lets our government conduct surveillance on any state property where they've stuck up a sign informing you that you could be watched. They might even stick that sign up where you can see it! The Pennsylvania ACLU helps you thank-or-spank your state House Rep for their vote on HB 2400.

It couldn't happen here.

Roots Action helps you tell several folks-in-power to stop using drones to kill people randomly. I presume we use unmanned airplanes because we don't want to lose soldiers at war -- whether that means we hate losing our troops' lives or our government hates losing PR face -- but if we're going to kill other innocent folks randomly, that doesn't really put us ahead now, does it? After all, the CIA keeps asking for authority to carry out "signature" drone strikes -- that is, drone strikes in which the CIA can't be absolutely sure whom it's killing. And what of the news that drones now patrol the U.S./Canada border? You'd think there's just no way that our government would "accidentally" kill Americans -- until you remember that using a drone is a lot easier than getting a warrant. (And then, if you're really paranoid, you remember "Second Variety.")

Meanwhile, Left Action helps you tell the House of Representatives to stop blocking abortion access for raped soldiers. Yes, Virginia, a soldier raped overseas can't get an abortion unless she pays for it out of her own pocket, which State Department employees don't have to do. But last I looked abortion was legal, meaning the question isn't "why should a soldier's health insurance have to pay for that?" but "why shouldn't it?" And no, "because of the insurer's religious convictions" is no answer, because patients have religious convictions, too, and their convictions are just as good as their insurer's. Even the putatively pro-life John McCain thinks soldiers should have the same access to abortion that State Department employees get, but apparently the House does not agree. Until we make them agree, that is.

In other news, the Sierra Club helps you tell the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission to keep up, not cut back, state energy efficiency requirements. The Energy Savings Act of 2008 mandated PA public utilities to cut back on energy waste by 3%, and these efforts have reduced energy usage, reduced pollution, saved consumers money, and created jobs -- but in 2013 the mandated energy waste cutback actually falls, from 3% to 2.3%. You could assert that the 2.3% change of 2013 roughly equals the 3% change of 2008 -- or you could assert that increased efficiency not only becomes more urgent over time, but becomes easier over time, as the utilities benefit from advancing technology. Besides which, most of the utilities have exceeded the 3% benchmark over the last five years, and given that, you'd find it hard to argue that they now need a break.

Mis-shapes.

We're two weeks away from the day that federal student loan interest rates double, and guess what the Congress of Screw You has done about it? Nothing, that's what. But hey, college students and college graduates are only people. It's not like they're corporations or something. Seriously, a doubling of the federal student loan interest rate from 3.4% to 6.8% will bump up student loan payments by about $1,000 a year, on average -- which isn't a lot, I suppose, to people who've never had trouble making ends meet and never get set back significantly by unforeseen catastrophes. I'm sure the Congress of Screw You will attach some disgusting poison pill to the loan rate extension, but we'll deal with that when it happens. In the meantime, PennPIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to extend the lower student loan interest rate already.

Meanwhile, we discussed the loophole Public Health Service (PHS) whistleblowers face a while back, and the Senate has responded -- by proposing to cover PHS whistleblowers under the military whistleblower law, which doesn't give PHS workers that much more independence to expose fraud and wrongdoing, since under the military whistleblower law the Secretary of Defense, not a nominally impartial judge, makes all final decisions. It is better, I suppose, than depriving PHS whistleblowers of the most basic protections simply because they're "uniformed," and the House Hater Caucus surely doesn't care about this issue. Still, it doesn't matter what they want: it matters what we want. So the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell Congress that military protection for PHS whistleblowers isn't enough -- only civilian protection is enough.

Fireworks.

The big news this week: Trans-Pacific Partnership details got leaked, and they don't paint a pretty picture. This "free" trade deal, if passed, would let foreign corporations cherry-pick which environmental/safety/labor laws they want to follow, and if they don't like the laws, they get to appeal them to an international tribunal, which could override the laws. Hey, that rings a bell: oh, right, we discussed a Canadian mining corporation's similar efforts to override Salvadoran clean water laws just three days ago. Read the Huffington Post article above and you'll learn that corporations think laws that protect their customers are "discriminatory," which is a slap in the face to folks who face real discrimination. Public Citizen helps you demand more transparency, and better trade policies, from our government.

And speaking of problems with "free" trade, the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 2884/H.R. 5542) would give corporations a tax credit if they relocate outsourced jobs back to the U.S., and would end tax deductions corporations get when they move their operations offshore. And the tax credit would only help with moving expenses, and would only go to corporations that actually employed more workers here at home. You'd think this would all be fairly noncontroversial, but this is the Obama Era, where the Congress of Screw You calls any decent idea COMMUNISM SOCIALISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!!!! And though we won't see Democrats run ads in October slamming Republican opposition to bringing jobs back to America, if we bring enough pressure, we'll win, so True Majority helps you tell your Senators to support the Bring Jobs Home Act.

Meanwhile, Facebook is mulling allowing children under 13 to use their site. Those of us who grew up without Facebook may not immediately grasp why that's such a terrible idea, but our children know too well that when every damn thing some knucklehead says can now be broadcast to hundreds of people at a time, it can hurt a lot. And Facebook would collect data on our children and use it to target ads and get them on various marketing bandwagons, just like they do to us. See, this is why the family unit is falling apart -- because big corporations like Facebook help other big corporations use social networking to tell kids what's right and wrong, rather than people far more likely to know and love them. So the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell Facebook not to open up its services to users under 13. (And, yes, you can also like the "No Kids Under 13 on FB" page. Hey, if they drop a hammer on the ground, I'm gonna pick it up.)

Perfect circle.

Republicans are always talking about making government smaller, right? Then why does H.R. 4471, the Gasoline Regulations Act, create a "Transportation Fuels Regulation Committee," to be composed of six already-sitting Cabinet members and three other Executive branch administrators? Check out H.R. 4471's proposed agenda for said Committee: to evaluate all proposed air quality and fuel emission regulations strictly on how much their implementation will cost big corporations, not on how much money they'll save in healthy people actually getting to work and not needing expensive care. And then note that Sec. 5 forbids any final action on any air quality or fuel emission standard for at least six months after this "committee" produces its report. Now you have your answer: for Republicans, Big Bad Government is A-OK as long as it protects corporate profits. The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you demand that your Congressfolk oppose H.R. 4471.

Meanwhile, Apple has come under fire for unsafe working conditions -- conditions that may have led, at least indirectly, to worker suicides in 2010 -- at the foreign factories that make its gadgets. Apple claims things are getting better, but even the business-friendly Fair Labor Association uncovered plenty of problems earlier this year, and a Hong Kong watchdog group finds that little has changed since then. Hard to see how things are "getting better" when management plays games with overtime, workers can't speak to journalists without management approval, workers get zero safety training despite working with neurotoxins, or management disciplines its workers by making them clean toilets and read confession letters out loud in front of their co-workers. Last week, a thousand factory workers rioted at an iPhone factory; reports differ on what actually sparked the riot, but I think we all know what kept it going. Sum of Us helps you tell Apple CEO Tim Cook to make good on his promises.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose two pro-corporate secrecy measures we've discussed here recently. One is the Keeping Politics Out of Federal Contracting Act (S. 1100), which would forbid our government from disclosing the political contributions of federal contractors. S. 1100 wants you to think it would stop Big Government from becoming Big Brother, when big corporations, busy collecting and selling all your personal information as we speak, are actually becoming Big Brother. The other pro-corporate secrecy measure is the House's amendment that would keep the FCC from mandating that broadcasters' public files be posted online. Broadcasters are already supposed to make those files public at their physical locations; if the files are online, all that means is we'll actually get to look at them, without the broadcaster running interference. I guess that's what the Congress of Screw You really hates: good Americans finding out what big corporations are doing to them.

Between two islands.

The Senate finally passed a transportation/infrastructure bill, but the House wants to add all sorts of poison pills to it, chief among them approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would be built by a corporation with a bad pipe safety record over heartland drinking waters that would never recover from a serious spill. The House also wants to gut any oil-related environmental reviews -- after all, what could go wrong? It's not like the Gulf of Mexico endured a Spillageddon in 2010 or anything! -- and forbid the EPA from regulating poisonous coal ash. The EPA's coal ash proposals weren't even as strong as they could have been, yet Republicans want to destroy them, which points up, again, the uselessness of pre-emptive compromise. The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a good transportation bill without any poison pills attached. I'm sick of being a hostage to big corporations, and I'll bet you are, too.

Meanwhile, the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 mandated that our government offer emergency contraception over-the-counter to Native American women on reservations, just like it does everywhere else in the country -- but, apparently, Indian Health Services (IHS) hasn't done the will of the American people as expressed by their representatives in Congress. More precisely, IHS has blocked Native American women from getting contraception -- told them they needed a prescription, told them to drive an hour away to another clinic, even told them it's their fault if they got raped. That's a problem with having an Executive branch -- not only does it do things Congress and/or the Constitution don't authorize, it doesn't do the things it's actually supposed to do. Still, this is America, so change.org helps you tell the IHS to comply with the law and provide emergency contraception, without a prescription, to women over 17.

In other news, you know our government pays out billions of dollars to big agribusiness corporations (not "small farmers," despite what the politicians may have told you) to keep high-fructose corn syrup and therefore junk food cheap, but you may not know that public schools sometimes have junk food machines and even junk food lines in their lunch rooms! Think that might link to rising child obesity rates? Seems the opposite is true, at least -- California passed strong guidelines on snack foods in its schools under former Gov. Schwarzenegger, and voila! California kids eat 150 fewer calories a day as a result, which, trust me, adds up. No reason that only has to be California, though: Congress mandated the Executive branch to come up with stronger standards for food in public schools nationally in 2010, so Moms Rising helps you tell the USDA to get the junk food out of public schools.

Finally, speaking of Stupid Government Subsidies, S. 3080/H.R. 5475, the provocatively-named End Polluter Welfare Act of 2012, still awaits committee action in the Senate (Finance) and the House (subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources). Read the bill, if you get a chance, and observe the multitudinous pathways for our taxpayer money to flow into fossil fuel corporations' coffers! Did you know, for example, that oil corporations enjoy liability limits on their offshore operations? Or that our government funds World Bank coal/oil/gas projects? Or that fossil fuel corporations still get breaks for developing "innovative technologies"? Or that oil corporations have wormed their way into getting "alternative fuel" tax credits? Or that coal royalties get treated as "capital gains"? All gone, if S. 3080/H.R. 5475 ever makes its way to the President's desk. Roots Action helps you help that process along.

Green grow the rushes.

The FCC did the right thing in April, and required broadcasters to post their public files (including records on political advertising) online -- but a House of Representatives subcommittee voted to quash that requirement with a quickness! And they say Congress doesn't know how to act fast anymore! Republicans tell us it's "free speech" when their corporate paymasters can spend hundred of millions of dollars spewing filth on TV without any public disclosure, but I'm not sure that argument would pass muster in this case, even given the post-Citizens United Supreme Court -- over-the-air broadcasters exist at the pleasure of the general public, after all, and the law subjects those broadcasters to reporting requirements in the general public's interest. And I don't think this gets past the Senate, even as an amendment snuck into a must-pass bill. Even so, we should go all Ferdinand Foch here and demand that Congress uphold the FCC's disclosure mandate.

Meanwhile, the Canadian gold-mining corporation Pacific Rim has challenged El Salvador's water protection laws -- mainly because it never finished filling out mining permit applications -- and a World Bank tribunal composed of three private-sector lawyers allowed most of that challenge to go forward in an international arbitration court. Does that sound like how things ought to work? Should corporations get to override laws they don't like? Sadly, that's how things get done once we go all-in on "free" trade agreements -- corporate titans have more rights to riches than everyone else does to clean air or water, and our laws don't matter anywhere near as much as some corporation's lust for money. (The "free" trade agreement in question here is CAFTA, passed by a margin of two votes in 2006.) Public Citizen helps you tell the World Bank to stop using "free" trade agreements to abrogate a sovereign nation's laws.

Light posting notice.

I won't post again until Monday.

So Congress, no shenanigans in the meantime!

While you see a chance.

The Senate votes on the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 797) today; the AFSCME helps you call your Senators and tell them to vote for it. Women still make, on average, some 77 cents for every dollar paid to men, and for women of color, it's worse -- African-American women make 70 cents on the dollar, while Latinas make just 61 cents. Equal pay laws already exist, but the Paycheck Fairness Act would allow women to band together in class action lawsuits, stiffen penalties for employers who violate the law, and forbid employers from punishing workers who discuss their wages with their co-workers. I'm hard-pressed to imagine what legitimate objections lawmakers would have. Sadly, I'm not hard-pressed to imagine the illegitimate objections, which pretty much begin and end with COMMUNISM SOCIALISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell Tyson Foods to stop putting its pigs in gestation crates. Pigs in gestation crates live terrible lives -- the crates generally measure two feet by seven feet, such that the pigs can't move or even turn around, and the pigs that live in them (and they live in them only to give birth to dozens more pigs over a few years) suffer joint damage, weakened bones, decreased muscle mass, obesity, and heart problems, not to mention depression and aggression. (Pigs are quite social animals ordinarily.) Plus, they're pumped with antibiotics, which not only makes antibiotics less effective when we use them, but doesn't actually keep them from dying of infections. You might be surprised to learn that big corporations like McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's have stopped using the crates; now it's Tyson's turn.

Finally, we've got elections happening all over the country today -- not just in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker and four state Senators face a recall, but in half a dozen other states holding Presidential and Congressional primaries. As usual, the number to call if you face any problems at the voting booth, or if you observe someone facing problems at the voting booth, is 1.866.OUR.VOTE (or 1.866.687.8683, if, like me, you remember numbers better). I must admit I'm not terribly hopeful about Mr. Walker's recall -- if nothing else (and I do mean "nothing else"), Mr. Walker doesn't get rattled and always has a counterpunch, and I suspect voters respond to that as much as they respond to his "boldness." But this isn't his election, it's the people's election, and I'd be happy to have them prove me wrong.

Hard times.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 1307, allegedly designed to help public schools through their "fiscal crisis," would give the state more control over local public school districts -- the state would be able to cancel labor contracts, turn public schools into charter schools, and allow the State Board of Education to take over any district in the state. Trouble is, the "fiscal crisis" didn't just happen -- Gov. Corbett exacerbated it, if he didn't create it, with his draconian budget cuts. And you can see, just as well as I, how "turning public schools into charter schools" can become a patronage trough. And, ah, Philadelphia public schools have been under state control since 2001, and that hasn't worked out for Philly's kids. It's almost like that's the idea. You have to wonder, also, if Gov. Corbett simply wants to accomplish what Gov. Walker's accomplished (i.e., crippling public-sector unions), just by more devious means. Keystone Progress helps you tell Gov. Corbett and your state Reps and Senators to oppose HB 1307.

Meanwhile, the House-passed defense authorization bill also prevents our military from developing any biofuel technology if it's more expensive than existing technology. If that sounds inoffensive, consider that remaining dependent on oil from other countries isn't exactly the smartest defense posture. Consider, also, that biofuel technologies might be more expensive only because they're new and thus too few folks use them, and if the military uses these new technologies, other folks will use them, too, and that will bring the price down for everyone. It's not just me, right, who remembers a time when conservatives always used to tell us to take the long view? Where are those conservatives now? One thing's for damn sure: they're certainly not in Congress. CREDO helps you tell the Republican leadership to drop its plan to hamstring the military from using better fuels. They're Republicans, of course, so they don't care what you think -- until they've got all of us shouting in their ear, that is.

How far.

By now you've heard the news: Florida, a state which should know better by now, has begun another purge of its voting rolls, ostensibly aimed at "non-citizens" but we all know how that really works out -- a lot of perfectly decent citizens with odd-sounding names get "accidentally" purged from the rolls, which is intolerable. The purge is so unpopular within Mr. Scott's administration that Secretary of State Kurt Browning resigned after refusing to release his very flawed list of "non-citizens" to county officials. And now Mr. Obama's Justice Department has demanded that Mr. Scott stop his voting roll purge. Mr. Scott doesn't care what anybody else thinks, of course -- he thinks the people of Florida are more like his employees than his employers. But we'll try anyway: People for the American way helps you tell Florida Gov. Rick Scott to stop his voting roll purge.

Meanwhile, CALPIRG still helps you tell Congress to end junk-food subsidies. I've made the case against subsidies for high-fructose corn syrup (namely, that they help make our children fat) many times, but this has become quite topical now that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) wants to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 oz. What's the big deal about big drinks? I hear my inner libertarian saying. I mean, I don't drink them, and I think they're unhealthy and I'm actually a little ashamed of anyone who'd be so gluttonous as to drink one, but people gotta learn to do the right thing their own way. That is, of course, true -- but we don't need our government making it easier for people to do the wrong thing. And too much cheap sugar will make you fat. Maybe even stupid, too.

Finally, the War on Planned Parenthood has come to Pennsylvania's state legislature, thanks to HB 2405, a Daryl Metcalfe (R-12) production. HB 2405 would deny state funding to "any entity that performs nonfederally qualified (sic) abortions or maintains or operates a facility where nonfederally qualified (sic again) abortions are performed." That would exclude Planned Parenthood, though it spends 97% of its money on family planning, cancer screenings, services for domestic violence survivors, and the like. I'd be much happier if Mr. Metcalfe and his ilk would try making abortion illegal, instead of taking services people need hostage to his agenda. Really, honesty is the best policy. Both CREDO and Keystone Progress help you oppose HB 2405.