Thieves in the Temple.

Action: discrimination, fossil fuel funding, and campaign finance reform.

S. 2525, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, would not "defend the First Amendment" so much as give various bigots the "right" to discriminate against people they fear will give them cooties. No, their position does not deserve more civility than that. The First Amendment prevents our government from putting you in jail for your speech and prevents our government from establishing a state religion, but refusing to serve people because they're gay isn't "free speech," it's discrimination, and when our laws say you can't refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because "conscience," our government isn't "establishing a state religion," but preventing you from discriminating against people who also have rights. So Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to protect everyone's rights by rejecting the First Amendment Defense Act.

Meanwhile, U.S. Bank's CEO said last year -- in the wake of popular pressure following the Dakota Access protests -- that his corporation would stop financing gas and oil pipelines. But, possibly because we can't look at everything at once, U.S. Bank has pumped some $2 billion into these pipelines, including nearly $500 million into Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind Dakota Access. Just so happens, however, that U.S. Bank's annual shareholder meeting is later on this week, so Climate Truth helps you tell U.S. Bank to divest from oil and gas producers. You know what would help get us off oil and gas, besides big energy corporations throwing money into solar and wind? Big banks deciding to invest more in solar and wind! I mean, don't our best and brightest entrepreneurs always look to the future and plan ahead? We may have to pressure them a bit harder to get them to be those people.

Finally, H.R. 4077/S. 1959, the Honest Ads Act, would put online political ads under the same scrutiny the law already gives to print and broadcast ads, meaning voters could more easily find out who's funding them. We couldn't find out who's funding these ads as easily as we could if Congress had passed the DISCLOSE Act on any of the multitudinous opportunities they had to do that, but online political ads have escaped even the amount of scrutiny other political ads get, because the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 specifies only print, broadcast, and "satellite" communication. Recall that in 1971 ARPANET was in its infancy, and it'd be 20 years before the High Performance Computing and Communication Act (authored by one Sen. Albert Gore, Jr.) kick-started the internet. So Issue One helps you tell your Congressfolk to support campaign finance reform by passing the Honest Ads Act.

Action: campaign finance, vote suppression, and discrimination.

Congress has (sigh) only two weeks to pass another spending bill, etc., to avoid yet another government shutdown, etc., etc., and word on the street is that Republicans want to take us hostage yet again, etc., etc., etc., to gut campaign finance laws a little more, so their sugar daddies can spend even more money influencing elections. So both Common Cause and Public Citizen help you call your Congressfolk and tell them that you will not stand for any of that. Republicans hope to (among other things!) gut enforcement of the famous Johnson Amendment law prohibiting politicking from the pulpit and forbid the SEC from forcing publicly-held corporations to disclose their campaign spending. Money in politics being unpopular across the political spectrum, how much of a chance would Republicans have to pass this fecal mess as a stand-alone bill? Approximately none. And remember: folks who try to do dirty work in the dark are admitting they can't win in the light.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell your state Secretary of State to stop participating in the nefarious "Interstate Crosscheck" database. Why? Because "Interstate Crosscheck," under the guise of "stopping voter fraud," is actually a tool to stop people from voting, by helping states deregister people who have similar names to folks in other states. But a lot of people have similar names to people who live in other states -- especially black and Hispanic folks, it just so happens! And folks can stay on a state's voting rolls for years after they move out, and it doesn't mean they're breaking the law! And "Interstate Crosscheck" doesn't even check Social Security numbers or middle names! And, seriously, depriving folks of the right to vote before proving they've done anything wrong should offend anyone who values law and order. So your state Secretaries of State need to hear from you, with a quickness.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Administration to scrap its plans to let employers discriminate against their employees in the name of "religious conscience," then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. That's what the Administration's proposed rule would do -- it'd let some boss's conception of his own "conscience" deny you the health care you need, and to hell with whatever your conscience tells you. If you're a gay couple trying to get fertility treatments, a woman trying to get a birth control prescription filled, or just someone whose boss doesn't believe in (for example) bipolar manic depression, then you could find yourself out in the cold thanks to someone else's "conscience." But our President believes, first and foremost, that only other bosses matter, and folks who work for a living don't. So will remind Mr. 46%, as often as necessary, that we actually do matter.

Action: health care, and campaign finance disclosure.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize both the Children's Health Insurance Program (or CHIP) and the Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (or MIECHV). The House passed a CHIP reauth bill, as you may know, but funded it in large part by defunding Affordable Care Act-sponsored prevention programs -- because, after all, why would anyone want to prevent illnesses from happening in the first place? -- and the Senate hasn't yet figured out how to fund it. Of course, Congress let both CHIP and MIECHV lapse at the end of September, after trying for yet another month to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and now of course their nefarious tax "reform" bill sucks up all the oxygen in the room (with a resolution funding our government beyond next month on tap). It really is like Congress doesn't know how to do anything right, though of course that's just what they want us to think. Clearly they've calculated that gerrymandering and Voter ID and Interstate Crosscheck insulates them from the consequences of their actions. They'd better hope Tuesday's results in Virginia aren't predictive.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FEC to require campaign finance disclosure of political advertising on social media, then CREDO still helps you do that. And the FEC, like all of Mr. Trump's other federal agencies, has provided only an absurdly short window for the public to comment upon the matter -- why, it's like they really don't think the public should have very much of a say about anything they want to do! -- and, sadly, that window closes today, so you want to get right on this. Strange -- it seems like only a week ago I was bringing this up for the first time. Anyway, as you know, the FEC already requires TV and radio ads to disclose the source of their spending, so why not social media ads, particularly since more folks get their news from social media than ever before? "Why not," for right-wingers, may well come down to TEH LIBRULZ WANTZ IT THEREFOREZ IT'S TEH BADZ!!!!!, but they don't get all the say around here -- unless their comments to the FEC outnumber ours, I suppose. Let's try to avert such a catastrophe if we can -- and we can.

Action: government spying, campaign spending disclosure, and voting.

S. 1997, the USA RIGHTS Act, would go considerably farther in protecting our right not to be spied upon by our government than H.R. 3989, the bill Congressional leaders would obviously rather pass. As you may know, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA) authorizes our government's collection (though not scrutiny) of electronic communications without getting a warrant from a judge, like the Fourth Amendment mandates. But where H.R. 3989 would actually expand such surveillance under Section 702, the USA RIGHTS Act would limit it, by preventing our government from collecting as much information or using that information in court, and would also prevent our government from conducting "reverse targeting," where they pretend to spy on a foreign target so they can actually spy on an American who might be communicating with them. That's so low it's a little hard to believe we'd have to tell our government not to do it! But we do. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect good Americans from unwarranted government spying by passing the USA RIGHTS Act.

Meanwhile, pension fund corporation Vanguard holds a shareholder meeting this month -- its first since the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2009, wonder how they got away with that -- and thus this shareholder meeting will be the first opportunity for shareholders to address Vanguard's intentions in re campaign spending and disclosure. Vanguard invests in a lot of different corporations, as you might imagine, and so they actually have a lot of leverage in affecting corporate campaign finance disclosure -- not as much as, say, an SEC rule forcing publicly-traded corporations to disclose their campaign spending, but that's just another thing President Obama couldn't deliver on, despite having plenty of opportunities to do so, and we're certainly not going to get something like that from the regulation-hating President Trump. So Public Citizen helps you tell Vanguard to push the corporations in which they invest to disclose their campaign spending. If they did anything else, they'd be enabling big corporations to spend more money in secret.

Finally, today is Election Day, which means you ought to go out and vote, even though it's an odd-numbered election year. If you have any trouble voting, of course, you should call 1.866.OUR.VOTE (or if, like me, you hate mnemonic devices for remembering phone numbers, 1.866.687.8683). You know what'd be a good reason to call 1.866.OUR.VOTE? Well, of course, being told you can't vote if you have unpaid parking tickets or child support, or getting challenged by official-looking people who don't actually have any authority to challenge voters, or getting a flyer telling you Election Day is on Wednesday for people like you wink-wink are all good reasons to make that call, but what if you show up at the polls and the election worker says they can't find your registration? Well, you might be a victim of lousy recordkeeping, or you might be a victim of the Interstate Crosscheck database, which, as you know, helps nefarious state actors deregister voters with the same name as voters in other states, though most names are, as you know, quite common (and Interstate Crosscheck doesn't check middle names of Social Security numbers!) In any case, that's something we'd definitely want to find out. Good luck and God bless.

Action: tax "reform," education, and campaign finance.

The House has released its tax "reform" plan, which would, as expected, cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, and eliminate the Estate Tax; the plan would also limit mortgage interest deductions on new homes and deductions for state and local taxes, and moving from seven to four income tax brackets will cause some middle-class families to pay more in taxes. On the plus side, the House plan would expand the standard deduction, expand the child tax credit (but for only five years), and would keep the 39.6% tax bracket on millionaire income, but let's not give them too much credit -- better to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page to call your Reps and Senators and say no to a tax plan that (still!) benefits rich folks more than working families and would explode the deficit in such a way as to prompt Medicaid and Medicare cuts further down the line. Why, it's almost like that's the whole idea.

Meanwhile, the President of Tanzania said back in June that pregnant school girls shouldn't be allowed back into school because they'll make sex more attractive to other girls. But sex is about as attractive to everyone as it's ever been and hardly needs the sight of pregnant girls in schools as an advertisement for it. And I find it hard to imagine that the sight of a pregnant teenager makes other girls go oooh I want to be like that! -- in my experience, it makes girls whisper in shameful tones about the pregnant girl's promiscuity, and I don't imagine Tanzanian girls do less of that. The President's statement didn't necessarily have the force of law, but since then schools in Tanzania have been expelling pregnant girls, so they must know the President's got their back. Thus Change.org helps you tell the Tanzanian President to let pregnant girls finish school, so they can have more of a chance at a better future, and thus more of a chance at providing for their families.

Finally, Public Citizen, Common Cause, and Demand Progress all help you tell the Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to require that online ads disclose the entity that has paid for them, just as print and TV ads must do. You've no doubt heard of all the ads Russian entities bought on social media platforms during the 2016 election, but if you've been getting most of your news from the internet over the years, you already know where the big money's going to go. And while the Supreme Court has decided corporations are "people" with "free speech rights" and can thus spend more or less what they like on political campaigning, the Supreme Court has also expressly blessed disclosure as a remedy. Also, a Marist poll says that nearly 80 percent of Americans want this kind of disclosure on their social media political ads; as Newt Gingrich says, if more than 70 percent of Americans want something, they should get it. (Though I wonder what half-assed deflection he'd employ if he were questioned about this!)

Around the table: a town called Malice.

Donald Trump orders a Dodd-Frank "review," and halts Obama Administration fiduciary responsibility rule requiring pension fund financial advisors to put their customers ahead of their profits. They say bankers are "shackled," and I say if only they were! They also say the fiduciary rule doesn't have enough "consumer protections," when its obvious effect will be to protect consumers! Remember: there's no debating whether they're stupid or evil, because, as we learned from Tha Bush Mobb, stupid is evil.

Poor wittle Congressbabies complain about being "hammered" by constituent phone calls since the new Administration took office. Does someone need their wittle diaper changed? I couldn't care less when people whine about having to do the job for which they signed up, particularly when that job is "doing your constituents' will." Perhaps if these morons did less evil, they wouldn't have to hear so much from us.

A dozen folks file suit against three manufacturers of insulin for consorting to jack up the price of the drug -- a drug upon which many folks depend to keep on living, I feel compelled to add. From 2002 to 2013, the price of insulin almost tripled; did inflation almost triple during those years? No, it did not. President Trump, of course, is very upset about such matters, and has proposed to solve it by slashing the kind of regulations that might prevent it in the first place.

Ho hum, Politico advises us that "Businesses Grow Concerned About Trump After Early Excitement." Because of the immigration orders and the sense that Mr. Trump is "making policy on the fly," when he most assuredly is not. Again: it's all theatre! And it's bad theatre! Those corporations will be pleased as punch with what they get out of Donald Trump, no matter what they're telling you now. And more to the point, you won't be.

Congress passes bills reversing two Obama Administration anti-pollution rules. Are these the good works our Congressfolk want to take to the pearly gates? Yes, Lord, I made it easier for coal corporations to pollute good Americans' clean water, and I also made it harder for Americans to know whether fossil fuel corporations are paying foreign governments. I mean, gosh, that would give me pause. Do you need to get a lobotomy to serve in Congress?

Finally, and I really saved the worst for last this time, South Dakota lawmakers rushed to repeal the campaign finance disclosure law the state's voters approved on Election Day. And even if they're right that the law's aim was too broad, it hardly required "emergency" status; the real "emergency" for South Dakota legislators, it seems, is that good folks will find out what they're really up to. The bill goes to Gov. Dennis Daugaard; his phone number is 605.773.3212. In the meantime, the shame of South Dakota legislators is infinite.

Around the table: celebrating various Election Day victories (after witnessing a most necessary post-mortem for the Democratic Party).

Krystall Ball at the Huffington Post writes an excellent article, entitled, of course, "The Democratic Party Deserves to Die." Much has been made of the white working-class voters widely presumed to have delivered the Presidency to Mr. Trump -- as it should be, since our economy is crushing them! -- but Ms. Ball really takes you there, not just by describing (in paragraph 4) Democrat elitism almost as good as Thomas Frank usually does, but by showing us how her forgotten Ohio hometown could soon be your hometown if we're not careful. And yeah, trying to make a truck driver into a computer programmer is a bit like making everyone into a nail because you have a hammer.

More from the "Americans Aren't Stupid" file: voters in four states approve minimum wage hikes, while voters in South Dakota rejected a law that would have lowered the minimum wage for workers under 18. South Dakota voters, you may recall, also voted for a campaign finance disclosure initiative on Tuesday, this as they were delivering their electoral votes to Mr. Trump. My great worry now is that more states will get rid of ballot questions like Michigan did in 2012 ago after voters repealed their emergency-manager law. You'd think that'd be, you know, unpopular, but politicians only care about their popularity with their big donors -- unless we get in their grills and stay there.

In other good news, Maine voters approve a referendum that would institute ranked-choice (or "instant runoff") voting for state and federal elections. Voters would rank their choices for state and federal offices from 1 to 5; the candidate with the fewest "1" votes gets eliminated, with their votes going to those voters' second choice, and so on until someone gets a majority. Ranked-choice voting would have eliminated the entire reign of Gov. Paul LePage (first elected with 38 percent in 2010, then 48 percent in 2014), but third-party candidates are more persistent in Maine than elsewhere; now voters have limited the damage they can do, while still giving them a place in the process. (I'm not that invested in the notion that Hillary Clinton might have won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc. if those states had ranked-choice voting, though I suppose she might have.)

Kudos to Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post for asking the obvious question about the three states that legalized recreational marijuana on Tuesday: what happens to enforcement of the federal prohibition of marijuana under a Donald Trump Justice Department. President Obama, after all, essentially let Colorado and Washington state alone after they legalized marijuana in 2012. Naturally Mr. Trump has given mixed signals about it -- though neither Messrs. Giuliani nor Christie, both mentioned as possible Attorney General picks, have ever seemed particularly flexible about the matter.

Finally, in news almost as good as Evan "the Lesser" Bayh's utter drubbing in his attempt to win back that Indiana Senate seat he abandoned in a fit of pique in 2010, notorious Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his re-election bid by 10 points. Mr. Arpaio was notorious for all his many attempts to prove he had bigger balls than the undocumented immigrants he detained, often making them wear pink underwear or work in 145-degree heat, which latter item certainly qualifies as torture. Yeah, we'll really miss that old coot -- unless, I suppose, he turns up in Mr. Trump's Administration.

Around the table: stories concerning tomorrow's election.

In a completely surprising development, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting analyzes front-page election coverage at three major print dailies and finds "a strong emphasis on horserace politics at the expense of issue coverage." Plus you get more coverage of terrorism than climate change, and guess which one of those two might actually destroy our civilization? Reporting on voters' concerns isn't nonexistent, but it sure does look like the major dailies want you to think the election is a giant sporting event that you're supposed to watch and not play in. I wonder why they would want you to think that.

PayPal co-founder/Trump shill Peter Thiel says -- in defending his decision to fund Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, which essentially drove Gawker out of business -- that "a single-digit millionaire...(has) no effective access to our legal system." If you were ever held in jail for weeks on end for a crime you didn't commit because you and your family and friends couldn't raise the bail money, of course, you might feel differently.

And it begins: Heritage Action just comes out and says Republicans should not confirm "any liberal nominated to the Supreme Court" if Hillary Clinton wins tomorrow. That's a bit different from the wait-until-the-people-speak line the right has peddled up to now, you notice. And if Ruth Bader Ginsberg were to succumb tomorrow, God forbid, you better believe they'd change their tune, and then they'd call you un-American for noticing they'd changed their tune.

Ho hum, the Center for Media and Democracy finds the gnarled hands of the Koch brothers behind an effort to defeat a campaign finance disclosure/public campaign financing ballot initiative in South Dakota. South Dakota will go hard for Mr. Trump tomorrow, and Sen. Thune will inflict a 30- or 40-point beating on his opponent, but I bet Measure 22 passes rather easily, regardless of what the Koch brothers want or do. That's because I think people are good and wise stewards of democracy -- once you remind them they're people, and not players on some team or other.

Finally, Theo Anderson at In These Times summarizes major ballot initiatives at the state level that liberals ought to attend. California will vote on legalizing recreational use of marijuana and banning single-use plastic grocery bags (which latter item I find infinitely preferable to a plastic-bag tax), Colorado will vote on a single-payer health care system, four states will vote on minimum wage hikes (as we discussed last week), Washington state will vote on a public campaign finance system, and Maine will vote on a ranked-choice voting initiative, which might as well be called the "No More Paul LePages Please" initiative. (Note, also, the South Dakota campaign finance initiative described above, and Missouri's initiative that would amend the state constitution to permit campaign donation limits.)

Action: product safety, and campaign finance disclosure.

Lithium button batteries have come a long way over the last few years -- but not necessarily at Duracell, which still makes lithium button batteries for toys, remotes, and the like that can burn through a child's throat in a mere fifteen minutes, if a child happens to swallow one. But they just tell parents to watch their kids and make sure they don't swallow them. Even though toddlers can get into a whole lot of things with a quickness, most folks (even most parents!) want to tell parents that at some time or other -- after all, it's been pretty obvious for a while that no one watched Donald Trump enough when he was a kid. But what we need to train ourselves to do more, frankly, is tell corporations: if you can make something so that it's safe, why not just do it already? Maybe Duracell will tell you making their button batteries safer would drive up the price, but so what? No one who loses their child to a swallowed battery will console themselves with the notion that at least they didn't pay as much for it. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Duracell to help keep children safer by making their batteries safer.

Meanwhile, H.R. 430/S. 229, the DISCLOSE Act, would require corporations, unions, and other entities to disclose any campaign spending of more than $10,000 they undertake -- and would also require those entities to disclose the names of any donors who contributed more than $1,000 to that effort. Why? Because money is not speech, and disclosing the names of the big donors who seem to get whatever they like after they donate their money is not "bullying," as Super Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell has called it. The DISCLOSE Act would also expand the definition of "independent expenditure" so that corporations et al can't hide their donors as easily behind an "issue ad," which may slam a particular candidate while avoiding literally expressing a preference for one. I disagree with the part that would let folks 17 and under donate money to campaigns, not just because children aren't supposed to have all the same rights as adults, but also because "contributions from children" sure looks like a way to launder money. Still, Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the DISCLOSE Act.

Around the table: Democrat weakness, overtime pay, millennial longings, security questions, and the prisoners' strike.

Congress averts a government shutdown by extending funding through December 9 -- but includes neither of the legislative priorities Democrats supposedly fought for, i.e., funding for Flint clean water efforts and the SEC being permitted to mandate publicly-traded corporations disclose their campaign spending. Which means Democrats can now ride campaign ads about Republican opposition to clean water and campaign finance reform all the way to victory in November! I kid, of course -- the only thing Democrats do well is let Republicans kick sand in their face.

The House also passes H.R. 6094, which would delay the Obama Administration's overtime pay rules for another six months. Note well that some House Democrats were pushing a similar bill not long ago, though only five House Democrats actually voted for this one. President Obama has threatened a veto, and the House won't be able to override it without somehow getting 46 more votes. And, ah, note to the folks who are still complaining that the cost of living varies from region to region: one, that's one reason the Obama Administration didn't raise the pay threshold even higher, and two, state governments are mostly twiddling their thumbs on this matter, so our federal government must act.

Harold Meyerson reminds us that "Young Voters Love Gary Johnson -- For All the Wrong Reasons." Mr. Johnson would legalize pot, of course, though I doubt that's as important to young voters as his stated aims to ditch the surveillance state and fight police brutality against black folks -- but Mr. Johnson would also do nothing about climate change or student debt, and would replace what remains of our progressive income tax with a totally regressive national sales tax, all of which will hit our youngest voters the hardest. I haven't given enough credit to millennials for supporting Bernie Sanders, the only candidate for whom I could vote without holding my nose. But their support for Mr. Johnson just reinforces the stereotype we oldheads tend to have about them -- that they don't care about the future.

Lily Hay Newman at Wired suggests it's "Time to Kill Security Questions -- or Answer Them With Lies." The hacking of half a billion Yahoo! accounts suggest that security questions have become just another piece of data that can be stolen, and used against you -- you can imagine a hacker stealing your identity this way, particularly in an age where social networks reveal a lot of this stuff anyway. Hence security experts suggest that you lie when answering these questions, and though they suggest you lie by answering with a nonsensical series of numbers and symbols and then use a password manager to store it, I find the prospect of simply answering with lies (using "Blanco" for my mother's maiden name, for example) more fascinating, since what do your lies say about you? is one of the more interesting questions pondered in literature.

Finally, Beth Schwartzappel at BillMoyers.com presents "A Primer on the Nationwide Prisoners' Strike," now in its third week. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlaws slavery, of course -- "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." But I question whether the Constitution really allows inhumane treatment of a citizen under any circumstances, including as punishment for a crime. (Personal to the fools who think that sentence means "prison should be a country club": learn to read.)

Action: bankster misbehavior nay, public health insurance yea, and campaign finance disclosure yea.

As you know, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf answered questions before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday; he said he was sorry, etc., and would make amends, etc., etc., but note well that Wells Fargo has fired the employees who were ordered to open fake accounts for customers, while the executive who gave those orders hasn't given back any of her nearly $125 million in retirement money. After all, rules are for us "little people," not the "job creators" without whom, we are constantly told, we would be nothing. Hence CREDO helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to use its authority to "claw back" income from Wells Fargo executives who oversaw lawbreaking. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in 2010 give the CFPB the authority to do that, and why not? They're ill-gotten gains, after all -- money those executives could not have made without lawbreaking. And people who complain about schoolkids getting "participation trophies" have no business excusing all the bonuses banksters hand out to themselves; they hand out so many anymore it's hard to tell what they did to deserve them. Besides coerce employees into breaking the law, that is.

Meanwhile, several big health insurance corporations are either leaving the Affordable Care Act-created health exchanges or threatening to do so, but let's not view this development as merely an opportunity to laugh at big corporations whining because their CEOs can't gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home boo-freaking-hoo, though it is surely an opportunity to do that, one we should not pass up. We can also press our advantage in other ways, such as agitating for a public health care option, as Presente helps you do. President Obama unconscionably used the public option as a bait-and-switch to get liberals to support a right-wing health care reform law -- one that has made our health care system better, to be sure, but how difficult is it to improve on that system, really? -- but that doesn't mean we can't press for a public option, even if we really want a Medicare-for-all system. A public option, whereby one would buy into Medicare or something like it (though I can't imagine why it wouldn't, or shouldn't, be Medicare) would give HMOs the vigorous competition they all say they like about capitalism. So let's give it to them.

Finally, H.R. 430/S. 229, the DISCLOSE Act, would mandate that corporations, unions, and "certain other entities" (including political action committees) disclose any campaign spending they undertake over $10,000; they would also have to identify all donors who gave over $1,000 toward such efforts. The majority in the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision seemed flabbergasted that anyone would want to restrict campaign spending when disclosure would seem to be an adequate replacement. Silly Supreme Court Justices! The DISCLOSE Act "only" got 59 out of 100 Senate votes in 2010, which, as we all know, means it's exactly as much a law as it would have been if it had received zero votes in favor. Still, since we now must amend the U.S. Constitution to get decent campaign finance laws back, we are perfectly right to insist on disclosure of big donors in the meantime, even if Super Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell, once a supporter of campaign finance disclosure, now thinks it's "bullying." Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the DISCLOSE Act.

Action: transparency in elections, and fishery management.

Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a couple of bills that would help restore freedom and transparency to our elections. S. 6, the We the People Act, would combine the efforts of previous Congressional bills that would have forced disclosure of campaign contributions and slowed the revolving door between Wall Street banksters and our government; S.J.Res. 5 would amend the Constitution so we could reverse the deleterious effects of recent Supreme Court decisions vastly increasing the amount of money that flows into our elections; S. 1538, the Fair Elections Now Act, would institute a public campaign finance system for federal elections whereby small donations could be matched with federal funds; and S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, would force Justice Department pre-clearance of voting rights law changes in states or localities which have demonstrated a clear pattern of vote suppression. Who could possibly oppose these things? Congressfolk who worship only at the altar of mammon, that's who -- and sadly, that's most of them. But they want to be good people, so we should speak out and try to help them be good people.

Meanwhile, Congress has the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in its sights. Why? Because the Magnuson-Stevens Act manages U.S. fisheries very well, keeping fish populations from collapse, rejuvenating some species, and reducing "unintended bycatch" (when fishing concerns accidentally catch fish they don't actually intend to catch). You can see where this is going, right? Some Congressfolk, it's true, want to destroy anything about our government that actually works well and works on behalf of the American people, but many more Congressfolk have more mundane aims in mind -- reducing protections for fish opens up waters for the big agricultural and fossil fuel corporations who'd like to "save money" by polluting fish habitats. But well-maintained fishing populations also means a well-running fishing industry -- and jobs for people who work in it -- whereas gutting those protections only means that CEOs redistribute more worker wealth upward to themselves. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop trying to gut fishery conservation laws.

Action: pipeline safety, campaign spending disclosure, and human rights in Honduras.

Ever wonder how pipeline-building corporations get around those pesky risk assessments and environmental reviews -- not to mention public comment periods! -- they're supposed to get before building? Well, of course you haven't; you don't spend all your waking hours thinking up ways to get over. Anyway, they get the Army Corps of Engineers to approve their really long pipeline project as a series of much smaller pipeline projects, since smaller projects don't require all those reviews. The Corps has the authority to approve small pipeline projects via a process called Nationwide Permit 12 from the Clean Water Act, but if big corporations are using it to pretend their big pipelines are really a bunch of little pipelines, then we might call that a loophole big enough to build a pipeline through. We could also call it an abuse of power, a circumvention of the democratic process (since risk assessments, environmental reviews, and public comment periods benefit the public), and, not incidentally, yet another way of using small operators to shield the abuses of big operators. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop fast-tracking big pipelines as small ones just to avoid public review.

Meanwhile, we could all grow old waiting for President Obama to issue his purported Executive Order mandating that federal contractors disclose their political campaign spending -- seriously, didn't we hear the Order was imminent, like, weeks ago? -- so, in the meantime, People for the American Way helps you tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to require publicly-traded corporations to disclose their campaign spending. I know, getting the SEC to do anything on behalf of the people (versus the banksters!) is like pulling teeth, but the SEC has already received over a million public comments demanding such campaign finance disclosure. The SEC looked pretty bad when they ignored all those comments, and you may argue that this means they won't act now, but I'd argue that we only need remind them of how bad they looked, because people don't want to look bad once, let alone twice. I'd also remind the SEC that protecting investors from abuse by corporate executives and corporate boards is their job, and that campaign spending by those executives and boards is something those investors deserve to know about. And if you're invested in a pension fund, you're likely one of those investors, too. So let's remind the SEC that they're supposed to serve people, not "markets."

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5474, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, and thus demand better human rights protections from the government of Honduras, then Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn still help you do that. H.R. 5474 would end American training and funding of Honduran security officers until the Honduran government launches a credible investigation into the murder of numerous human rights activists there, including Ms. Cáceres. After our government pulled a Hamlet and debated the precise definition of "coup" during the right-wing military coup of Honduras -- which, I feel compelled to add, deposed a democratically-elected President whom most corporations found too worker-friendly for their tastes -- this is, frankly, the least we can do. And I'll brook no silliness about the even-worse government we could have in Honduras if we don't support this one, because you know that's a hostage situation -- and you also know that exactly zero self-styled "foreign policy realists" were advancing that argument as the military was deposing President Zelaya in 2009. Call me quaint, but I think values actually matter, and they matter more when actions reflect them.

Action: maltreatment of asylum-seekers, and campaign finance reform.

Sum of Us helps you tell Spanish corporation Ferrovial to withdraw from its contracts running inhumane detention centers on Manus Island and Nauru. Some background: Australia detains asylum-seekers, who are running from war and torture in their homelands, on these islands -- and then outsources their operation to private corporations. But the 1,200-plus asylum-seekers detained at these two centers suffer inhumane treatment condemned by the U.N.; if a government wants to treat people badly, I'd rather it do the dirty work itself, because then it would have to be more directly accountable to the people. But involving private contractors adds another layer between the people and their government, almost like that's the idea. At least, that would be the idea from government's end -- the idea from the corporation's end, of course, is to make money, and the prevailing "wisdom" among corporations is that you only make money by cutting costs, and treating asylum-seekers humanely costs money. But the Big Stick of Bad PR may yet force Ferrovial to yield -- if we wield it.

Meanwhile, H.R. 5494/S. 6, the We the People Act, would combine a number of popular and effective ways to regulate campaign finance in America -- it combines the DISCLOSE Act (which fell to a 41-Senator filibuster in 2010), the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, a bill regulating SuperPAC coordination, a bill mandating 48-hour disclosure of PAC donations over $1,000, and a bill banning Congressfolk from lobbying, among others. Sounds ambitious? So did cleaning up the Augean stables -- and if anything, cleaning up the Augean stables is a day spent tending your tomato plants next to the task of wrenching our government free from wealthy donors. Sadly, the We the People Act would give right-wing mouth-holes more opportunities to throw old arguments against the wall (disclosure is bullying, etc.) to see what sticks. The good news? All their arguments are the kind of rubbish only desperate people throw against the wall. So People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to loosen the grip big money has on our elections by supporting the We the People Act.

Action: corporate disclosure, fair treatment of farm workers, and fair legal access for refugee children.

As the Panama Papers promise more revelations Our Glorious Elites would prefer remain in the dark, here comes H.R. 4450/S. 2489, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act, which would force corporations to disclose the names of all their beneficial owners (that is, the owners who actually make money when a corporation makes money). Why do that? Partly because it would help law enforcement find terrorists and stop money laundering, partly because it would shine a light on the massive campaign donations that distort our democracy, but also because folks use anonymous "shell corporations" to hide their profits so our government can't tax them, and when they do that, it means less money for roads, for schools, for police, and for firefighters -- and more taxes that must be collected from working families and small businesses, who are already paying their fair share. So CREDO helps you tell Congress to support the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and thus support law and order in America.

Meanwhile, blueberry season is upon us soon, but blueberry season in America really only runs from June through August, so you're getting your blueberries from nations like Chile and Peru if you eat them during the winter. And if you suspect blueberry workers in those countries may not be the best-treated, well, the big ag corporation that produces nearly half the blueberries Americans buy from Peru has lately fired and pressed charges against nine of its workers -- who, perhaps not coincidentally, comprise all nine officers from their union's executive committee. As it happens, one of our "free" trade agreements is with Peru, and demands better worker treatment from Peruvian corporations, but action on that front could take time, if it ever comes -- and these workers need their jobs back now. Hence the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell Tal S.A. to hire these workers back, stop harassing them, and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with them in good faith. And remember: you eat the blueberries, so you have the leverage.

Finally, H.R. 4646/S. 2540, the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, would require our government to provide counsel for foreign children and "vulnerable" individuals (such as disabled folks or torture victims), so they can at least have representation in court while they try to stay in America. Denying them good representation isn't a way to "streamline" the process or "save money, after all; it's just a way to be cruel while pretending not to be cruel. The bill would also prevent our government from deporting them until after providing them with all documents (excepting privileged or national security-related documents) relating to their time here, and it would (via pilot programs) increase case management services to certain aliens, including enrollment of children in school and health care. Yes, a sane and healthy civilization can provide such services, even if doing so doesn't inflame the rage glands of right-wingers very well. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act.

Around the table: another "war on terror" absurdity, and other stories.

Allan Hennessy, writing at The Guardian, laments that the dead in Brussels seems to matter more to the West than the dead in the multitudinous non-Western places where ISIS terrorists have also struck. Put simply, "Brown and black lives are not afforded the same respect" as white lives, and "(t)his imperialism feeds into the terrorist narrative. 'They don’t care about you,' ISIS can tell farmers suffering from drought in Raqqa." I suppose we should expect to feel fear more acutely when people "like ourselves" suffer at the hands of terrorists. But empathy still demands more of us than that, and as as civilized people, we do not make decisions based on fear, let alone reflex or reaction. That is when the terrorists win.

State of California wins $1 billion-plus judgment against Corinthian Colleges, after a San Francisco Superior Court Judge finds the now-bankrupt for-profit college chain misled prospective students about job placement rates, advertised degrees and programs it didn't actually offer, and used unlawful means to collect student debts -- among so, so many other things! Normally this would be cause for rejoicing, but it sure doesn't look like anyone's going to jail, and I wonder how California will actually collect from a corporation that doesn't actually do anything anymore.

In advance of the Wisconsin Presidential primaries, Sarah Smith, writing at ProPublica, informs us that Wisconsin's draconian Voter ID law mandates a "public service campaign" to inform the public what forms of ID will be accepted at the voting booth -- but the state legislature hasn't actually funded that mandate. That's more bold Scott Walker leadership for you! This is, of course, the kind of thing even an Antonin Scalia wouldn't sanctify on the Supreme Court -- but if a Republican wins the Presidency in 2016 in part because he wins a heavily-vote-suppressed Wisconsin, chances are pretty good that he'll be able to get someone (or several someones!) far more pliant on the Supreme Court by the time the case gets there.

You know all about Burger King and Pfizer -- now let's meet data corporation IHS, the latest corporation trying to pretend it's a "foreign" corporation in order to evade American taxes. Turns out, according to ITEP President Matt Gardner, that IHS hardly pays any American taxes right now, and thus doesn't lend itself well to the right-wing talking point that ZOMG TEH CORPORASHUNZ ARE LEAVINGZ TEH AMURIKAHS BECUZ TEH TAXUZ!!!!! That's after we confront the reality, yet again, that corporations typically buy themselves tax breaks so they don't have to pay that "onerous" 35% rate. Of course, if corporations don't pay it, then small businesses and working families do pay it, almost like that's the idea or something.

Lisa Graves, writing at PR Watch, describes something called "Democrats for Education Reform," which turns out to be (surprise, surprise!) a PAC directing millions of rich investor dollars to state campaigns. Their ideas of "reform" naturally include more taxpayer money for charter schools, ballot initiatives attempting to strangle union power, and meddling in local elections with big out-of-state money -- and their backers naturally include banksters and Koch brothers. Warning: the sheer volume of front groups described in the article may make you a bit dizzy.

Finally, Chris Cilizza finds it "absolutely insane" that Ted Cruz has become the Republicans' establishment candidate, after endorsements from such unlikely actors as Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush and support (however muted) from Mitt Romney. Mr. Cilizza's assessment is absolutely correct, but you can't ignore the possibility that this is really what the establishment wanted all along -- to anoint someone so far right he's gone right out of America as "establishment." Which would mean that whatever they say in public, in private they're toasting their dumb luck that Donald Trump came along to make Mr. Cruz look "reasonable."

Action: voting rights, and campaign finance disclosure.

In advance of the fourth consecutive Most Important Election of Our Lifetime, Food and Water Watch helps you advocate for a series of voting rights reforms. These include, of course, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court knocked out in Shelby County v. Holder, as well as the Fair Elections Now Act, which would set up a public campaign financing system based on small donations, and a Constitutional amendment overturning the pro-corporate "personhood" decision Citizens United v. FEC. The email tool also allows you to demand hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, though if (like me) you think the Senate should be able to filibuster the nomination if they want to, you can easily edit the tool. Regarding my sarcasm in the first sentence: Presidential elections just aren't anywhere near as important as what you do the other 1,460 days of a Presidential term. Those days are what this blog is all about.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Vanguard to fight for campaign spending disclosure from the corporations in which it invests our retirement money, then CREDO still helps you do that. Vanguard has been a bit wary of doing such a thing, and I bet a lot of folks who otherwise fight hard for pensions and Social Security feel a bit wary, too -- it's hard enough to make politicians preserve what we've got, so why should we make more demands? But it's precisely that manner of thinking I've consecrated this blog to fighting. If Our Glorious Elites can get you to avoid campaign finance disclosure issues because you're trying to tread water on pensions and Social Security, what have they made you? A hostage, that's what. And how do you defeat these rhetorical hostage situations? Precisely by demanding and fighting for what you deserve. If we do that, we might start moving the political center leftward again. God knows right-wingers move the center rightward far too easily.

Around the table: messages of hope and caution.

In case you were wondering, President Obama does, in fact, plan to nominate someone to replace Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. He also pointedly refused to say he would nominate someone "moderate" just to "to ensure the process runs smoothly." Early scuttlebutt was that he would nominate D.C. District Court Judge Sri Srinivasan, who would be too pro-corporate for my taste, but would also present the Senate with a dilemma in rejecting a man for the Supreme Court they already approved by a 97-0 vote for the District Court. (And when Republicans say "he's only been at the D.C. Court for two years," Democrats could respond, "oh, you mean like John Roberts and Clarence Thomas?")

Robert Reich announces "The Death of the Republican Party," as well as its replacement by "warring tribes." It's worth a read, but "Libertarians," "market fundamentalists," "Wall Street titans," and "billionaires" actually do have a significant amount in common, and recall that we've been hearing about the "Death of the Republican Party" for many years now; as long as the banksters favor them, the party ain't going nowhere. It'll just become more reactionary, and there's no guarantee -- again, as long as the banksters favor them -- that the American people will turn on them en masse.

The Ford Motor Company severs ties with that right-wing bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC). It may have something to do with ALEC's reactionary position on climate change, a position that Ford, as an automobile manufacturer, would at least want to appear progressive about, which means Ford may not actually want to be progressive about climate change. Still, the move denies ALEC real cash money, and don't think that doesn't hurt.

Nine U.S. Senators ask the Department of Education to cut off Title IV funding to any for-profit college that uses forced arbitration clauses with its students. And the Dept. of Ed can do this without running to Super Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell or Boy Wonder Paul Ryan for permission, not because AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!! but because Congress delegated this authority to the Executive branch long ago. But the wheels of the Executive branch do seem to grind slowly -- how many weeks has it been now since hearing that President Obama was "seriously considering" campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors? And how many years since we started telling him to do it?

Finally, Thomas Piketty, author of the unexpectedly best-selling Capital in the 21st Century, says that with the success of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic nomination race, "in many respects, we are witnessing the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections." I have dared to hope the same, and I hope Mr. Piketty is right -- but it sure does seem that Our Glorious Elites fight like cornered animals, and it has seemed that way to me for over a dozen years.

Around the table: why fruits and vegetables taste better in Old Europe, and other lessons.

The IRS accepts the fiction that Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is a "social welfare" organization and thus does not have to disclose its donors. You may remember telling the IRS to clarify its rules so that obvious multi-hundred-million dollar political operations would qualify as "social welfare" organizations -- but you may not know that Republicans got a rider put into the last appropriations bill forbidding the IRS from clarifying the matter any further. I wonder what other land mines are in that bill.

You knew Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), currently contending for Florida's open Senate seat, also ran a hedge fund, right? Well, the New York Times finds that his relationship to his hedge fund belies his populist reputation. Not just because one of his marketing documents cited old advice that "the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets," or because he plainly set up his hedge fund so that he did not have a fiduciary responsibility to his clients because House rules wouldn't have allowed that -- most of us will always equate a hedge fund manager with a riverboat gambler, if not a bankster. Recall that Mr. Grayson doesn't think raising taxes on the rich (like himself!) is a good idea.

Julia Belluz, writing at Vox, explains "Why Fruits and Vegetables Taste Better in Europe." As always, it's mainly because we do things big in 'Murica -- we favor the big fruit over the small fruit (because big fruits are easier to pick, and thus require less labor!) and we favor the big grower over the small grower. Also, we like to have whatever we want regardless of whether it's in season or not, and Europeans regulate their produce a lot more stringently than we do (we regulate for safety, not quality, not that I particularly want our government to regulate food for quality). But this doesn't mean we have to grow more of our own food, though we should -- it means we need to be choosier about where we shop.

If find yourself thinking today's wave of Islamophobia is a new thing, Jack Jenkins, writing at Think Progress, reminds us it's not, in relating the story of Americans in the late 19th century regarding Mormons as a non-white, "foreign" race. This may surprise you, considering the oft-repeated description of Mitt Romney as the Whitest White Man Evah, but Mormons, too, were once perceived as a "fanatical" people with beliefs "incompatible with civilization." Of course, folks these days try to avoid openly associating brown skin with Muslims, but in the 19th century, folks talked openly of a "striking uniformity in facial expression" in Mormons, at about the same time Samuel Eliot Morrison did the craniometry experiments that "proved" the supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks.

Finally, not even 24 hours after Antonin Scalia's death, Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell (E-KY) spewed this forth: "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President." Like how he infers the people have no voice except on Election Day? What law prevents the people from expressing their will to their elected representatives in the Senate whenever the President appoints a Supreme Court justice? The law of Mitch McConnell getting whatever he wants and damn the rest of us, apparently. What anti-democratic rubbish.

Action: "free" trade, and campaign finance disclosure.

"The U.S. Signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- Now Let's Kill It!" begins the latest missive from Food and Water Watch, and they do, indeed, help you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trans-Pacific "Partnership." As you recall, Sen. Portman (R-OH) came out against the TPP late last week, and his statement aligns with the stated consensus on Capitol Hill: that it would be a bad idea for Congress to vote on the TPP until after the Presidential elections. The fact that the Senate Majority Leader can actually say this out loud proves that our political class, at least, is sick, immoral, and decadent. But in a democracy, we can reverse that fact, long and difficult though that often seems. And that's why we have to press against this deal consistently in the months leading up to the election -- so that Congress doesn't use the lame-duck session to ram through a "free" trade deal that Americans do not want, a "deal" that will nullify our law-making ability and ship our jobs overseas while enriching the already opulent few.

Meanwhile, that New York Times report about President Obama considering ordering federal contractors to disclose political spending is now over two weeks old. Why the wait? We already know what Republicans will do -- they'll whine incessantly about "free speech" and move heaven and Earth to pass legislation repealing his order. But I can explain why they're wrong: money isn't speech, first off, and when corporations donate huge amounts of money to political candidates, they expect they'll be getting what they want from those candidates, whether they're stupid enough to ask for a specific quid pro quo or not. And when a corporation can swell up campaign coffers like that, they're drowning out your First Amendment right to redress grievances. Hence Common Cause helps you tell President Obama to issue an Executive Order mandating federal contractors to disclose their political spending. At the risk of piling on, this is your money they're spending to drown out your voice.

Around the table: including "free" trade and voting rights developments that a sane and healthy society could ignore.

12 nations, including the United States, formally sign the Trans-Pacific "Partnership." Naturally the 12 nations signed the "free" trade pact 90 days after President Obama signaled his intention to sign it -- which just so happens to satisfy the 90-day public review period mandated by fast-track legislation passed last year. So now's the time to fight! And don't believe Congressional leaders when they tell you it'd be best to wait until after the election. They have no time constraints now, and when you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on elections, it's a lot easier to make Americans forget how disgusted they were with the TPP.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters have been indulging in historical revisionism in re her vote to authorize war with Iraq in 2002, but Stephen Zunes reminds us what Mrs. Clinton really did back then. As with then-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) -- who went on and on about the Iraq war during that first 2008 Democratic Presidential debate only to be rebuked by then-Senator Obama, who said that "some of us were against the Iraq war from the beginning" -- it does no good to suggest that then-Sen. Clinton somehow didn't have access to the same information that also led me to oppose the war from the beginning. Indeed, she had more access to better information, and still made the wrong pick -- which, as then-Sen. Kerry proved in 2004, was pretty much the opposite of "politically necessary."

Robert Faturechi at ProPublica treats us to "The Conservative (sic) Playbook for Keeping Dark Money Dark." You won't be too surprised at what's in the playbook -- calling monetary donations "free speech," calling disclosure "censorship" and "silencing dissent," saying "private giving" instead of "dark money," pretending that the rights of the "average Joe" and not some multimillion-dollar enterprise are at stake, plus, of course, always calling it "the government" instead of our government -- but it's good to have all that info in one place. (And, you know, right-wingers shouldn't liken disclosure to the Supreme Court ruling that Alabama couldn't demand a list of NAACP members in 1958, unless they can actually prove we're coming after them with guns and clubs.)

Sue Sturgis at Facing South has good news for us: moving coal ash from unlined pits to lined landfills really does reduce contamination of drinking water. It also helps to move the coal ash away from rivers. Who knew? North Carolina, unfortunately, is still playing the Hamlet game over about half of Duke Energy's 14 coal ash pits.

Finally, Congressional Black Caucus members say that House Speaker Paul Ryan supports the Voting Rights Advancement Act, but won't use his influence to try to pass it. Interesting that Paul Ryan thinks not micromanaging Committee heads is more important than, you know, doing the people's will -- let alone considering large numbers of voters that Republicans actually care about black folks! But if we demand the Voting Rights Advancement Act loudly enough and consistently enough, it won't matter what Paul Ryan thinks.

Action: "free" trade, air pollution, antibiotic abuse, and campaign finance disclosure.

The United States will likely sign the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" next week, though, of course, Congress still has to ratify it, and if they do, the TPP will give corporations more power to nullify our laws than ever before, through its expansion of the "investor-state tribunal" -- wherein foreign investors can sue a nation over its environmental laws, labor laws, intellectual property laws, any laws that those investors feel denied them "earnings." And then if they win in these "courts," the American people will have to pay them "restitution," though you and I might call it a "bailout," or "tribute". And we just saw the bad effects of "free" trade deals, when Congress repealed our country-of-origin labeling laws for meat -- because the WTO decided it constituted an "unfair advantage" under two previous "free" trade deals. Seriously, we run the risk of never getting a good law passed again, out of fear that some "investor-state tribunal" will strike it down. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the TPP.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the EPA to act on diesel pollution from trains, trucks, and ships hauling cargo across America. The EPA isn't currently acting on this matter now, but we've already witnessed the EPA put together methane emissions regulations after the public organized to demand it, so why not more? A certain President has to be thinking about his legacy, after all, and the technology already exists to make trains, trucks, and ships belch a lot less filth into our air, technology like electric trucks, be they fully-electric, gas-electric hybrid, or hydrogen-powered trucks. Right-wingers constantly whine about the "cost" to corporations from redesigning and refitting their equipment so that it pollutes less, but they never talk about the real cost of folks paying more in health care because the air's so filthy. But there really are alternatives to the pollute-everywhere, put-everyone-in-debt-to-banksters economy. And we need to remind folks of that every day of our lives.

In other news, several fast-food corporations (including Chipotle, McDonald's, Panera, Subway, and Chick-Fil-A) have committed to getting antibiotics out of their food processing chains over the next few years, but Kentucky Fried Chicken has not, as of yet, and KFC would be a pretty big get -- even if Chick-Fil-A has surpassed it in sales in recent years, KFC still has over one-fifth of the U.S. market in fast-food chicken. And in a nation that uses four out of every five antibiotics not on sick people or animals, but on nominally healthy feed animals so as to plump them up, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming stronger and stronger, with the Centers for Disease Control (or CDC) telling us that some 2 million Americans get infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain every year, and more than 20,000 of those Americans die. Hence USPIRG joins with MoveOn to help you tell KFC to stop using chickens that get routine antibiotic treatment.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to force federal contractors to disclose their political spending -- or, hell, even if you haven't! -- then Just Foreign Policy still helps you do that. The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Obama is "seriously considering" issuing such an order, but folks like us have wanted him to issue this order for years, and having already failed to use his influence on the SEC to get that body to mandate campaign finance disclosure for publicly-traded corporations (that's not sour grapes -- President Obama did use his influence to get strong net neutrality protections out of the FCC), you'd hate to think he would hesitate to do the next best thing, and ensure that we-the-taxpayers knew how federal contractors were spending our money. And don't believe Mitch McConnell when he says such an order would be "illegal." He would apparently like you to think Presidents get their power to issue Executive Orders from somewhere other than Congress.

Action: the Iraq war, racist housing practices, and campaign finance disclosure.

Hot on the heels of the news that a Joint Chiefs of Staff report from September of 2002, lately fully-declassified, suggests that several high Bush Mobb officials already knew that their knowledge of Iraq's alleged WMD program didn't match the rhetorical fervor of their case for war, Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to demand that the New York Times investigate what senior Bush Administration officials knew and when they knew it. I know, asking the Times, which also botched its early reporting on the war, is a bit dicey, but I presume they want to continue being the "paper of record" in America, and any such investigation would shed considerable light, considering that so many Bush Mobbers are now advising current Republican Presidential candidates, and that the Democratic front-runner for President, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supported Tha Bush Mobb's case for war and famously never renounced that support, even "given what we know now" as of 2008, which I knew in 2002.

Meanwhile, in the wake of this lengthy exposé of racist and predatory lending practices at Clayton Homes, Inc. -- owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway corporation for almost a dozen years, and now the biggest player in the mobile home business in America -- CREDO helps you tell the Department of Justice and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate these allegations. The charges detailed by Seattle Times reporters Mike Baker and Daniel Wagner really run the gamut, from harassing black co-workers to illegally telling folks their in-house lending corporation is the only one operating in a particular area to pushing minority home-buyers into far higher interest rates than they give their white home-buyers. And Mr. Buffett may be everyone's favorite billionaire, but that's not such a high bar to clear after all, particularly when Clayton's market share has exploded under his ownership, and when his corporation's response to the original report is so full of let's-see-what-sticks.

Finally, we learn that President Obama is actually contemplating issuing that Executive Order we've been demanding since the Supreme Court's nefarious Citizens United v. FEC decision -- the Order that would require federal contractors to disclose their political campaign contributions -- so the Peace Team still helps you tell President Obama to make federal contractor political spending transparent. Don't believe the hype that this Order would amount to Big Brother injuring the "free speech" of federal contractors -- federal contractors take taxpayer money, which is our money, and we deserve to know if they're using our money to buy themselves some lawmakers who'll represent their interests ahead of our interests, and we also deserve to know if they're using our money to buy lawmakers who'll funnel yet more of our money to their coffers so their executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Personal to those who'd object to my use of the Italics Hammer above: just be happy I never liked shouty caps.

Around the table: mostly good news which should not induce in us a sense of complacency.

Obama Administration issues moratorium on new coal leases, and promises overhaul of how our government manages leasing programs. Federal coal leasing is fraught with problems, as you know, not least among them a fee-assessment system riddled with loopholes; the Obama Administration also promises that coal leasing will, in the future, take climate change emissions into account. A new President could scuttle the whole program, but (as we learned, sadly, when Mr. Bush embraced climate change denialism) when the President does something, people start listening.

Iran releases four prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, in a prisoner-swap deal with the United States. You may recall some far-right Senators whining that the Iran nuclear deal didn't include Mr. Rezaian's release, but apparently our government is not compelled by laws of physics to negotiate one deal with one foreign government at one time. Kudos to you if you demanded that the Iranian government release Mr. Rezaian, because you helped get results, which is more than a lot of politicians do.

Federal dietary guidelines now suggest that less than 10 percent of your daily caloric intake should come from added sugars. That means no more than 200 calories from added sugars if you're eating 2,000 calories; that's 50 grams of sugar (or 12 1/2 teaspoons), which jibes with most contemporary science about the matter. Of course, far-rightists will squeal ZOMG TEH GUBMINT TELLZ US WHAT TO EATZ!!!!!, and without FDA-mandated food labeling concerning added sugar, most folks won't know exactly how much added sugar they're eating. (Hint: if the food doesn't contain fruit, milk, or sweet vegetables, it's more likely to have added sugar.)

Ted Cruz failed to disclose a loan of $1 million from his wife's employer, Goldman Sachs, in advance of his 2012 run for Senate. The big story isn't necessarily that he may have broken the law despite assurances from his campaign that the donation got disclosed somewhere, or that it blows apart the narrative that the Cruz clan sank all its savings into his Senate run -- but that Ted Cruz frequently rails against banksters and bailouts while taking bankster bailout money. Such hypocrisy should finish his campaign -- at least, it would, in a sane and healthy society.

Finally, Santa Fe, NM restaurant workers suggest a way to defend workers' rights without forming a union. The way includes filing National Labor Relations Board complaints and hitting the employer with the Big Stick of Bad PR, but the "Somos Model" (so named for Somos un Pueblo Unido, the local worker rights center), contains other good advice, too -- like don't talk the employer alone, or sign anything alone. Turns out, in some cases, that forming a union might actually be an "extra step" -- something the SEIU clearly believes, given its efforts to get a $15/hour minimum wage for folks who aren't SEIU members.

Around the table: banned books, creationism, bathroom bans, political correctness, campaign finance disclosure, and hair spray.

Israel education ministry bans high schools from teaching a novel about a Jewish/Palestinian love affair. Why? The ministry says that "(a)dolescent youth tend to romanticize and don't have, in many cases, the systematic point of view that includes considerations about preserving the identity of the nation and the significance of assimilation." Yeah, it sure would be a shame if kids didn't learn to be more "systematic" about such things. The decision shows, at the very least, a lack of confidence in Israeli school teachers' ability to help students understand the book, which is not terribly secure of the ministry.

Creationist asserts that "God put things" in the Bible "that would appear without digging to be contradictions" in order to "weed out" non-believers. With that logic, such as it is, you could write a bad novel with flatly contradictory plot turns and then say you wrote it that way to "weed out" the "non-believers" who noticed them. And while I defended creationism in an equally absurd manner when I was 13, that was a long time ago (never mind how long!), and this guy doesn't look 13, even if he hasn't put away childish things.

Ho hum, Indiana state legislator tries to get attention for himself by introducing a bill forcing transgendered folks to use public restrooms according to their sex at birth, not their sex at present. Would it be too much to ask to get ahead of the inevitable pederasty hysteria this time? Transgendered doesn't equal pederast any more than gay equals pederast, and pretending that such equations exist insults everyone's intelligence.

From the "I Wish I'd Said That" file: Paul Waldman, writing at The American Prospect, says, about right-wingers obsessing about "political correctness," "(t)he truth is that what conservatives (sic) call political correctness is often better described as 'people telling you not to be such a jerk.'" And I've watched political correctness inflict a lot of "friendly fire" in my day, but I've also learned that good folks stop doing that to other good folks as they get older and as they get better at empathy and mercy. But all Trumpcruzcarsonetal do with their rhetoric is enable whiners who take being told to act like civilized human beings as an excuse for a don't-tread-on-me tantrum.

Wealthy California Republican may succeed in getting an initiative on the ballot that would force state legislators to actually wear the logos of their 10 biggest donors on their dresses and suits whenever they get up to speak in the legislature! The biggest problem will be figuring out how to depict individuals in logos, I suppose. But where a William and Mary professor sees "a textbook example of invalid compulsory speech," I see "disclosure."

Finally, Everyone's Favorite Blowhard blames President Obama for having to use a pump instead of an aerosol hair spray. Of course, the EPA, FDA, and CPSC banned chlorofluorocarbons, not aerosols, in 1978, some 30 years before Mr. Obama took office, and non-CFC aerosol hair sprays still exist -- though Mr. Trump may have a reason for not knowing these things, amirite? Possibly worse is his apparent belief that whatever he sprays in his penthouse stays in his penthouse.

Action: campaign finance disclosure, and methane emissions.

Nearly six years after the Supreme Court ruled (in Citizens United v. FEC) that corporations have "the rights of personhood" and thus the right to make campaign donations with very few limits, what has President Obama done, besides urge Congress to fix it? Nothing. And he can issue an Executive Order mandating that all federal contractors disclose their campaign donations (which they're by definition using our money to do!), and he can tell the SEC to protect shareholders by forcing all publicly-traded corporations to do the same. Neither of these would be unprecedented -- Republicans have already thrown hissy fits over the much milder executive orders Mr. Obama has issued, and you may recall that in 2014 the FCC was trying to find some way, any way, to pretend they were issuing strong net neutrality rules without actually issuing strong net neutrality rules, until President Obama told America exactly what he preferred the FCC to do. So a broad coalition of good-government groups help you tell President Obama to fight big money in political campaigns for-real for-real. (The Peace Team, formerly the People's E-mail Network, helps you do the same.)

Meanwhile, the EPA is still taking public comments about its proposed methane emissions standards, and the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to issue the strongest methane regulations possible. Methane is, sadly, a ubiquitous by-product of fracking, and when folks tell you that fracking won't contribute as much to climate change as, say, coal production will, they're leaving out the fact that methane is actually a considerably more efficient deliverer of carbon emissions into our air than coal production, and an entire industry (the methane mitigation industry) has now arisen to contain the leakage of methane from fracking operations. Some would call that "job creation," but at the point one says that, one could call any disaster a "job-creation opportunity" at that point, and that would justify doing anything. The whole point of being civilized is that you choose to do some things and not others, and that the mass of knowledge and experience that civilization offers can guide you into choosing well. But justifying any old disaster as an "opportunity"? That's cynical, and therefore evil.

Around the table: more tales about political correctness and Democrat weakness.

Barack Obama writes a pretty generic editorial supporting the Trans-Pacific "Partnership." Two problems: one, nobody and I mean nobody ever opposed exports, so arguing that corporations that export do better than corporations that don't is simply a red herring. Two, if you're looking for some assurance that the "investor-state tribunals" won't nullify our laws and force us to bail out big corporations whenever they dump crap into our air and water, you won't find it here. There's no China-bashing, at least, though he probably figures he can leave that to Larry Summers.

Bristol Palin says the whole Starbucks red cup controversy is "an attempt by the left to make Christians look stupid." And she might be on to something! Starbucks may well have rid their cups of all those snowflakes and reindeer because they knew someone would have a tantrum about it and they knew that would bring them more publicity, and I would of course disapprove of such cynical calculation, since I prefer enabling fewer tantrums. But naturally Ms. Palin can't take that theory all the way -- that is, to instruct Christians to ignore what Starbucks is doing -- because if she did, she couldn't drink from the cup of self-pity.

Hillary Clinton describes the problems with charter schools fairly lucidly and succinctly. She's saying the right things, again, which means it will be quite disappointing when she doesn't act on them so she can prize "bipartisanship" above all. You have to wonder, too, how charter schools had this very specific purpose (i.e., to be a sort of laboratory for public schools) and yet so quickly morphed into something else entirely.

U.S. Supreme Court decides not to take up a challenge to California's non-profit donor review law, one that allows the state to determine whether a particular non-profit group is actually doing charitable work. The plaintiffs allege freedom of speech infringement yadda yadda yadda, but the state doesn't even reveal donor names publicly. In any case, this Court has always looked more kindly on campaign finance disclosure than on campaign spending limits. Perhaps the next right-wing court, the one that makes the Roberts Court look as liberal as the Rehnquist Court looks now, attacks all campaign finance disclosure as Communist and un-American.

Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz says atheists should never be President, adding that "(a)ny president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander in chief of this nation." Again: how is this not "political correctness"? How is this not an attempt to scare people into adhering to a particular, rigid ideology, and condemning those fellow-travelers who would deviate, however slightly, from that ideology? This seems the very soul of "political correctness" to me.

Action: banksters, pensions, hedge funds, and fossil fuels.

Stunningly, Goldman Sachs is trying to buy a GE Capital online banking organ worth some $16 billion. I was just saying to myself, self, you know what the real problem with America is? Banksters just aren't big enough! What would this acquisition do for the American people? Spoiler alert: it would do nothing for the American people, though it would do something for ideologues who think you should be able to buy whatever you like and push the consequences onto others. And it would make Goldman Sachs bigger, at a time when we really should be making sure banks are smaller and thus more responsive to a community's needs. I know, I know, that sounds so conservative, but it's also right. Anyway, the Federal Reserve can quash the acquisition if it so chooses; it may not be inclined to choose to do so, being as it is populated with former Goldman Sachs execs, but our duty is no different. So CREDO helps you demand more public scrutiny of the Goldman Sachs/GE Capital deal. It's good that GE is trying to get out of banking, by the way, but no law of physics compels them to sell their assets to someone even bigger.

"Corporations are channeling unprecedented amounts of secret money into our elections," Public Citizen's latest email missive begins. "Even worse, they're doing it with our retirement savings." How, you ask? Pension funds invest in big corporations that spend money secretly -- which means your money could be going to Congressional and Presidential candidates who would, once in office, go around screaming WE'RE BROKE!!!! and then "fix" the "problem" of "being broke" by stealing your retirement savings from you! Nice work if you can get it! Hence Public Citizen asks you to tell America's largest retirement savings manager, the Vanguard Group, to keep our money out of political campaigns. Will this work? It's hard to tell -- on one hand, Vanguard's executives no doubt want to keep making money, and this will make that task a bit harder, but on the other, bad PR is bad PR, and Vanguard has a lot of leverage, leverage I imagine it would hate to lose. But you know what won't work? Doing nothing. So let's not be those people who do nothing because we're afraid of failure.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2889/S. 1686, the Carried Interest Fairness Act of 2016, would close loopholes that allow hedge fund managers to have their income taxed as "capital gains," rather than, you know, as "income." The capital gains tax rate is, as you know, 15%, which is considerably lower than the income rate most hedge fund managers would pay on their millions (that would be 39.6%) -- and that means hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than the police officers, firefighters, nurses, and teachers who do a lot more to hold our civilization together. Praise the Lord that some Democrats have finally figured out that maybe instead of folding such initiatives as the Carried Interest Fairness Act into these Leviathan bills that nobody understands, putting them up as single-issue bills would do better! Certainly it would force Republicans into defending the loopholes hedge fund managers enjoy, which even Donald Trump and Jeb Bush won't do. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Carried Interest Fairness Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Justice Department to investigate whether Exxon covered up climate change research while pumping millions of dollars into climate change denialism, then Food and Water Watch still helps you do that. There is, as you know, precedent for this sort of investigation -- the landmark tobacco settlement began with an investigation into whether they covered up knowledge that cigarettes cause cancer -- and there is also, as you know, evidence that Exxon knew the disastrous consequences of human-aided climate change but chose to "emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions" about climate change and "urge a balanced approach," the "balance," presumably, being between the vast amount of scientific research (including Exxon's own research!) and the funhouse-mirror "science" corporations prefer folks to believe. And by their own hand they damned themselves, saying they chose the path they chose because the impact of regulatory efforts would "come sooner" than the impacts "from climate change itself." I'd say there's certainly enough there for an investigation.

Action: police in schools, better redistricting, and corporate campaign contributions.

By now you've heard about the Columbia, South Carolina police officer who body-slammed a Black girl to the ground in a high school, for not getting out of her chair when told to. Infuriating, to be sure, but here's the big question: what on Earth was a police officer doing in school in the first place? Yeah, I know this happens all the time now, but why? Because Kids Today Don't Respect Authority, a tune every generation plays? (Every generation also plays its follow-up, No This Generation Is Really Different.) If kids don't respect your authority in the classroom, that's almost certainly because you don't respect your authority, either, and they're certainly not going to respect it if they know a police officer is in the building ready to hand out beatdowns. Hence the ACLU helps you tell Richland County Authorities to enact common-sense reforms when having police interact with children -- like, don't have police there in the first place unless it's actually a very serious problem. I turned out all right without police patrolling my school's halls, and so can today's kids.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: SB 484 would amend Pennsylvania's constitution to allow the legislature to appoint an 11-member commission -- four each from the Commonwealth's two largest political parties, plus three more whom are registered with neither party -- to redraw state and federal districts every 10 years. Typically the legislature itself redraws the districts, but we've seen all too well how that turns out: the party in charge of the legislature tends to, ah, favor itself in the redrawing of districts, creating those hysterical "gerrymandered" districts that legislators now have the technology to draw to exclude individual houses, districts that look like no amoeba or Rorshach blot ever created. I'm always saying that when representatives don't do the people's will, the people should throw them out. But, in practice, that's hard, and it shouldn't be -- no representative is entitled to a job representing the people. So Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state rep to support SB 484, and thus support more power for the people of the Commonwealth.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to mandate, via executive order, that all federal contractors disclose their campaign financing, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. If you hear from right-wingers that such an order would violate those contractors' free speech rights, here's how to answer them: if you take the taxpayer's money, as federal contractors do by definition, you have to follow the taxpayer's rules, which would (in this instance) be set by the President with the authority Congress granted him. And since you're the taxpayer, it's your money these contractors spend to influence elections and issues. Just as you never hand over your gun to someone who might use it against you, we really shouldn't hand over our money to corporations who'll then use it to influence our representatives to get more unearned goodies from us. But, as long as we have federal contractors, we ought to at least be able to know what they're doing with our money, so that we can at least wield The Big Stick of Bad PR against them. Bad PR is still quite powerful.

UPDATE. I erred in failing to point out that SB 484 in Pennsylvania covers state-level redistricting as well as federal; error corrected above.

Action: supporting free speech in Saudi Arabia, tax relief for working families, and campaign spending disclosure for federal contractors.

A few weeks back, good folks started pressuring world governments to urge Saudi Arabia to cancel the execution of 21-year-old activist Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, and since then the governments of the United Kingdom and France have started to apply such pressure on the Saudi government. Guess which government hasn't? That's right, our government, beacon of freedom and hope around the world. You'd think even a teabagger could find it in his heart to oppose the sentencing of a 17-year-old to death just for exercising his free speech rights, let alone beheading him, crucifying him, and displaying his body in public for three days like we all live on Game of Thrones. So why has our putatively liberal Administration done nothing? Surely it doesn't need Mitch McConnell's permission to condemn Saudi Arabia not merely for being barbaric, but for breaking its own laws (Saudi Arabia ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1996, which gives that Convention the force of law there). Hence Avaaz helps you pressure our government to try to keep Saudi Arabia from executing a political prisoner.

Meanwhile, you know how Congress constantly wrings its hands over the "tax extenders" that basically comprise welfare handouts for corporations? And how little Congress ever thinks about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or Child Tax Credit (CTC), which give actual tax relief to working families? It's well past time to change the conversation about tax credits, so the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the 2009 improvements to the EITC and the CTC permanent. Making big corporate "research" tax credits permanent won't create jobs -- working people with more money in their pockets is what creates jobs. In fact, it's the only really dependable way to create jobs. Big corporate tax credits don't create jobs so much as they create richer corporate executives. And one more time, the EITC and the CTC aren't "handouts" -- they help folks get through, and they stimulate the economy, but they don't make people quit their jobs and stay home and watch Matlock reruns all day. (I do recommend watching Matlock reruns in your spare time, by the way.)

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to issue an Executive Order mandating that federal contractors disclose their campaign spending, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. Imagine, President Obama actually being able to do something good for the American people without having to run to Super Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell for approval. Sadly, it's easier to imagine than to witness: Mr. Obama has been making noise about signing such an Executive Order for literally years now, and we still haven't seen it, even though money is not speech, even though a similar initiative mulled by the SEC got over a million comments in favor, even though campaign ads are almost certainly the least popular thing anyone could see on TV, even though polling tells us two-thirds of Republicans think the Supreme Court screwed up in Citizens United. You'd think that famed seeker of bipartisan consensus Barack Obama would be able to tell when bipartisanship all but shouts in his face. I guess we just have to keep telling him.

Action: campaign finance disclosure, and the minimum wage.

Over five years ago, the Supreme Court issued its nefarious decision in Citizens United v. FEC, contending that corporations have, at the very least, enough of a First Amendment right to make certain unlimited political donations. And our government has failed to stem this tide of money-not-speech at every turn -- Republicans repeatedly filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, Democrats did nothing to move the Shareholder Power Act even when they had a Senate supermajority, and the SEC keeps failing to issue regulations requiring publicly-traded corporations to disclose their political donations, despite over a million comments supporting such rules. And President Obama has failed to issue an Executive Order mandating federal contractors to disclose their political contributions. He's a lame duck now, so maybe he'll do it. I kid, of course: none of them ever do anything good without pressure from us. So Public Citizen still helps you tell President Obama to order federal contractors to disclose their campaign donations. They're spending our money, after all, so we get to know where it's going.

Meanwhile, CREDO still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3164/S. 1832, the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. Folks who constantly complain that raising the minimum wage will KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! should note that Australia has a $15/hour minimum wage and enjoyed 5% unemployment rates during those years our unemployment rates were above 7%. They should also note that the city of SeaTac, Washington, has seen its unemployment rate continue to fall (from 5.8% to 4.5%) since enacting a $15/hour minimum wage early in 2014. I mean, if minimum wage hikes kill jobs the way right-wingers say it does, then it should be happening everywhere the wage is high or goes up, but clearly it doesn't. Why does a higher minimum wage really bother right-wingers? Because it prevents CEOs from gilding the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. And since, as the saying goes, America is full of people who consider themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires, I figure right-wingers don't oppose minimum wage hikes on behalf of CEOs, but on behalf of themselves.

Action: concerning discrimination, campaign finance, and sugar intake.

In all the noise about the "religious freedom" to discriminate against gays, the ACLU reminds us that a Bush Mobb legal memo concluded that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 essentially authorizes taxpayer-funded organizations to discriminate against certain folks on "religious" grounds, and thus helps us tell President Obama to review this Office of Legal Counsel memo that bigots use to justify their "right" to discriminate. We presume that if the former Constitutional law professor orders a review, then the rickety legal standing of "religious freedom to discriminate" will collapse faster than that house on stilts from Lethal Weapon II, and while that may not happen -- after all, this former Constitutional law professor has actually expanded unconstitutional terrorism-related surveillance since ascending to the office -- putting pressure on the President is never a bad thing. And while it's bad enough that our laws would permit bigots to claim "conscience" in depriving others of their freedoms, it's even worse that our government would fund such bigotry.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yarmuth (D-KY), who lives out in coal country, has introduced H.R. 2125, the Keeping Our Campaigns Honest Act of 2015, and guess what acronym that bill's title spells out? KOCH, of course! The KOCH Act would compel the FCC to require SuperPACs and other political organizations to disclose their big donors in their radio and TV ads. You may recall that the majority in the Citizens United v. FEC decision wondered why disclosure of donors' identities wasn't enough to keep big money at bay. Perhaps we could test that theory, if we could get adequate campaign finance disclosure in the first place! But Republicans filibustered the DISCLOSE Act every time it was offered between 2009 and 2014, and Great American Super-Real and Awesome President Mitch McConnell, once an advocate of campaign finance disclosure, now likens disclosure to bullying. It's enough to make a man think that the real weaklings in America are the people with the most money. Anyway, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to support campaign finance disclosure in the KOCH Act.

Finally, you may recall that the FDA planned to revamp the nutrition labels that tell you how many calories, carbohydrates, etc., are in your food, and that we wanted them to include the amount of "added sugar" on every label. The good news is: not only does the FDA plan to do that, they also plan to mandate that food labels include an estimated recommended daily allowance for added sugar. Folks are probably going to find that number uncomfortably low (I'm sure I will, too!), but the corporations who try to defend all the sugar they pack into their foods can do little in opposition but mutter about regulations and Big Gummint and say the science on sugar is "inconclusive." But while fine details about sugar intake may not be concluded as of yet, no one can reasonably say sugar is good for you -- and no one can reasonably say that the big agricultural corporate corn subsidies that keep the price of junk food artificially low is a good thing, either. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the FDA to include both added sugar and percent of daily value figures on food labels.

Action: slave labor, campaign finance disclosure, and reining in bankster power.

First things first. Sum of Us helps you tell Canadian mining corporation Nevsun to stop supporting slave labor in Eritrea. Slave labor at Nevsun mines in Eritrea, that is -- though the Eritrean government calls it "national service," which will make me think less benignly on the term the next time John McCain calls for it. "National service" in Eritrea doesn't just mean forced labor, it also means rape, torture, and execution. But Nevsun pays over a billion dollars a year in royalties to the Eritrean government, meaning they're likely making a lot more, so when they tell us that the U.N. report exposing their role in Eritrean slave labor didn't rely enough on Nevsun's own assessment, you could be forgiven for thinking they might have some self-interest in saying so. Also, they claim it's out of their hands, because the workers are "subcontracted." That's some cojones right there: slavery as "subcontracting." And again: "national service" by working as a slave for foreign corporations! There may be something less popular in the world, but I'm having trouble thinking of it right now.

Meanwhile, Common Cause helps you tell the IRS to close loopholes allowing superhuge political groups to hide their donors, which action will help us find out who's paying out the wazoo to influence our elections. How do groups like Crossroads GPS keep their donors' identities a secret? By calling themselves non-profits, which, by law, must spend most of their money on "social welfare," not political advocacy. But the IRS may well define "political activity" more precisely, so that (hopefully!) the unscrupulous are less able to argue that such activity is really "social welfare" activity. Republicans, naturally, think all of this infringes on "free speech." How many times must I tell these pimps! Money is not speech -- money is property, and laws can regulate property. And, again, this is disclosure we're talking about, which Great and Awesome Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell used to support, until disclosure looked like it might happen, when he started calling it "bullying." Disclosure is really not too much to ask.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to support S. 1709, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, which would force banksters to either provide traditional banking services or engage in casino-economy speculation but not both, then Americans for Financial Reform still helps you do that. Why? Because banks hold your money, and if we allow them to indulge in hifalutin "securities" with your money, they will be far less careful with your money, which exemplifies a conflict of interest. So what do you say when some pedant says "the repeal of Glass-Steagall didn't really cause the financial meltdown, because the Treasury Department had already broken down that wall"? You say, banks hold your money, and if we allow them to indulge in hifalutin "securities" with your money, they will be far less careful with your money, which exemplifies a conflict of interest. Yes, I copied-and-pasted that, because you don't need to go through a lot of trouble to smack a pedantic argument down.

Action: corporate taxes, corporate campaign spending, and paycheck fairness.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to close corporate tax loopholes like the one that allows them to "reincorporate" as "foreign corporations" to evade American taxes. The recent news hook, of course, is Monsanto's decision to assimilate purchase Swiss corporation Syngenta and then reincorporate in Great Britain, because, apparently, having the power to mandate what gets grown in America isn't enough power -- they also "need" the power to avoid paying the taxes that pay for services we all use in America, services like roads, bridges, libraries, police, and firefighters. Monsanto won't even be moving its corporate headquarters, let alone getting its seed out of American soil; they'll still be here, turning everything they touch to slime. But H.R. 415/S. 198, the Stop Corporate Inversions Act, would subject corporations to American taxation if most of their management occurs in America and if they do "significant domestic business" here, namely more than a quarter of their business. No ZOMG TEH JOBZ WILL DIEZ!!!! arguments will be admitted.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell President Obama to sign an executive order mandating that federal contractors disclose their political spending. Here I was, thinking that all the reversals his party suffered in 2014 might have reawakened Mr. Obama's populist streak; apparently, that was just a feint, as his SEC head still won't let publicly-traded corporate campaign spending come to a vote despite the millions who have demanded it, and he won't mandate that federal contractors do the same, which he can do without getting permission from Super-Great and Super-Awesome Real American President for Change and Hope Mitch McConnell. Citizens United v. FEC, as you know, invoked corporate "personhood" to declare that corporations can spend however much money bthey want, pretty much however they like, on political campaigns, but when corporations contract with the federal government, they are literally spending your money on political campaigns -- after all, federal contractors get paid in taxpayer money. So tell President Obama to do the right thing.

Finally, Republicans may control both Houses of Congress now, but that doesn't mean we stop fighting for equal pay for women, versus the 70-odd cents on the dollar women get paid on average. Hence both the National Women's Law Center and Moms Rising help you tell your Congressfolk to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1619/S. 862) would help women get the pay they deserve (for do they deserve less money than men, really?) by forbidding employers from retaliating against workers who discuss their salary with each other (since this is usually how women find out they're being discriminated against), preventing employers from paying women differently on any basis other than "bona fide factors, such as education, training, or experience" (no, these factors don't explain the pay gap!), and tightens up penalties for pay discrimination. Personal to those who say the Paycheck Fairness Act is nothing more than a boon to trial lawyers: if your favorite corporations would simply do less evil, they wouldn't need to fight "trial lawyers" as much.

Action: government spying, campaign finance disclosure, and uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area.

And just like that, the House passed the USA FREEDOM Act, now watered down beyond our ability to tolerate it as free people, now a bill that actually makes certain intelligence practices a court just struck down legal again, a bill that makes it all but impossible to challenge unconstitutional surveillance in the courts, a bill that (like the nefarious FISA Amendments Act!) grants not just immunity but compensation to the corporations that help our government spy on us. Hence CREDO helps you tell Congress to let critical parts of the PATRIOT Act expire in early June, and Roots Action still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the far superior H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, instead of the USA FREEDOM Act. H.R. 1466 would repeal both the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act -- meaning our government would have to get a warrant from a judge to investigate Americans for alleged terrorism -- and even makes it a little easier for whistleblowers from within the ranks of intelligence agencies or their contractors to submit complaints about our government's wrongdoing. President Obama won't like that, but he doesn't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, the SEC still hasn't issued rules mandating that publicly-traded corporations reveal their political contributions, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of public comments supporting the notion, despite the fact that these corporations are really spending someone else's money -- their shareholders' money -- to elect candidates who support more unearned tax breaks for large corporations. And when we say "shareholders," we don't just mean people who invest directly in corporations, go to shareholder meetings to vote on resolutions, and the like -- we mean just about anyone who has invested in a 401(k) or a pension fund, since those funds also invest in corporations. So justifying the public interest in such campaign finance disclosure is quite easy, whereas justifying the corporate interest becomes increasingly difficult -- while even our right-wing Supreme Court Justices wonder aloud why disclosure isn't enough, Senate Majority Leader McConnell likens disclosure to bullying. Both Roots Action and Public Citizen help you tell our government to support campaign finance disclosure for publicly-traded corporations.

Finally, Sum of Us helps you tell our government to close uranium mines in the Grand Canyon region. Didn't we do this already, you may be wondering? And the answer is yes: thanks in part to our pressure, former Interior Secretary Salazar issued a moratorium putting the Grand Canyon region off-limits to new uranium mines for the next 20 years. Trouble is, that order apparently didn't assess the possibility that corporations would re-open old mines and start up again, and Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., plans to do just that in mid-June, which would make its mine the first operating uranium mine within six miles of the Grand Canyon in 20 years. Now, it isn't just that, hey, this is the Grand Freaking Canyon we're talking about here -- uranium mining contaminates groundwater, and this mine not only threatens the basins that provide the indigenous Havasupai people with their one and only source of clean drinking water, but all the water in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies drinking water to over one out of every eight Americans. A little short-term profit doesn't justify that.

Action: campaign finance reform, and antibiotic abuse on factory farms.

Both Common Cause and People for the American Way help you tell your Congressfolk to support a constitutional amendment allowing our government to rein in the big-money influence unleashed by the Supreme Court's regrettable Citizens United v. FEC decision. I'm old enough to remember when our leaders deliberated over whether we should limit donations or merely disclose them; now, for Senate Majority Leader Upon Whom God Super-Smiles Mitch McConnell, even disclosure amounts to "bullying." And the forces who like having their campaigns bankrolled by billionaires have dredged up the Stupidest Arguments Evah to buttress their position, like ZOMG TEH GUBMINTZ WILL CENSOR TEH CANDIDATEZ!!!! or SILENCEZ TEH PREACHURZ!!!! Both of which happened when, exactly, under the McCain-Feingold regime? Oh, right, never. Just don't expect that Sen. McCain is anxious to support such an amendment, either -- he voted to filibuster the last one, and he's got an election next year, dadgummit, which means he has to act extra mean for a while.

Meanwhile, Rep. Slaughter (D-NY) has reintroduced H.R. 1552, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would phase out the rampant use of antibiotics on healthy farm animals, since doing so is neither (per Section 5) a "medically important antimicrobial" or an instance of "nonroutine disease control." Why is it not medically important? Because factory farm corporations pump their animals full of antibiotics mainly to ramp up their meat content and help them better tolerate the squalid conditions in which they live. Why is it not "nonroutine"? Because if our culture gives four out of every five antibiotics in America to healthy farm animals, you can safely call that "routine." The whole point of H.R. 1552 is to make sure we don't cause a situation where antibiotics simply stop working because we've overdosed so many animals that we've created antibiotic-resistant superbugs that'll take us back to a world where the next cut could kill you. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1552 and thus prevent the catastrophic growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Around the table: a *completely surprising* utterance from the Koch brothers! And other stories.

Brookings Institute economist suggests that the skilled "middle" of the job market isn't "hollowing out," but changing -- fewer construction workers and clerks, more health care and machine maintenance techs. I keep telling folks that Our New Robot Overlords are still going to require humans who can fix and maintain them, and though Our Glorious Elites might gamble that we'll just accept a future with malfunctioning machines all the time if that's the only choice they give us, I remain faithful that even they will see, as Henry Ford saw, that you can't sell stuff to people who ain't got no money.

FAIR finds a New York Times author claiming that Americans "don't want to soak the rich." His evidence? Polling on the question has, over the years, yielded "little change" on the question of whether the rich should pay more in taxes, but that's far less interesting than the fact that those polls have showed consistently solid majorities in favor of raising taxes on the rich. And when he goes on to offer "the actual policies espoused by candidates for office and enacted by Congress" as further proof, as if candidates never, ever do whatever their paymasters tell them to, you know he's writing with one hand in his pants.

ProPublica and the Daily Beast find that donations to SuperPACs funded mainly by one donor increased at least four-fold in 2014. You already know this development makes a mockery of laws against coordination with candidates, but it also makes a mockery of laws requiring campaign donor disclosure in political ads -- "It looks better to say the ad is from Americans for Good Government than from John Smith," one former FEC lawyer says. But the biggest of all the 2014 one-donor SuperPACs was Tom Steyer's -- nearly twice as big as the next 19 biggest one-donor SuperPACs combined -- and you see how well that worked out for Democrats last year. It's like they can't even do that right.

The Koch brothers tell fellow big-money donors that they think Scott Walker is the Republican party's best chance to take back the White House in 2016. And THAT! Is the MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! Have EVER! HEARD!

Finally, we look at "8 Far-Out Contraptions 'Jetsons' Contraptions that Actually Exist Today." But a lot of them are still kinda far out -- no one's actually built a flying car yet, jetpacks haven't taken off (so to speak) because they're not terribly fuel-efficient, and the robotic help isn't really all that great yet. And aside from 3-D printed food -- which, like, would actually change the world, enough that we might regret it someday -- I don't see a whole lot of necessary on this list. I guess we dream more idly than I'd prefer to believe sometimes.

Action: protecting the Amazon rain forest, and forcing publicly-traded corporations to disclose their campaign contributions.

Avaaz helps you tell the governments of Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia to create the world's largest environmental reserve in the Amazon rain forest. While some 80% of the planned reserve already enjoys some form of protection, the planned 135 million hectare reserve would wind up being more than twice as big as France -- no, the whole country of France -- and it's long overdue, not just because the huge rainforest slows down climate change by trapping carbon emissions, not just because a tenth of the world's known animal species live there, but because the forest has been threatened by developers for decades now, still losing some 100,000 hectares annually just to illegal logging. A few million dollars for a few developers (and, no doubt, their legislator cronies) versus helping to protect the planet and its diversity -- well, call me a hippie if you like, but I know which one would be better for all of us. And deforestation has started to go up again, particularly in Brazil. Oh, and the indigenous communities in the planned reserve are already on board, so no taking them hostage, right-wingers.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell SEC Chair Mary Jo White to require publicly-traded corporations to disclose their political campaign spending. The cartoon video (length: one minute, six seconds) accompanying the action alert is amusing, and it reminds us that it's "your savings and investments" corporations use to "buy dirty political favors," which is a message we can't repeat enough. So we'll repeat it again: corporate executives throw away your money on political candidates who'll do their bidding when they're supposed to be doing your bidding! Of course, SEC Chair Mary Jo White hasn't been "granted special powers by the government" -- the legislative branch has given the SEC the power to regulate what publicly-traded corporations do with their shareholders' money. No doubt corporate executives say we don't need to be told what to do! Everything we do is to make the shareholders richer! Of course, they do what they do to make themselves richer, but the shareholders should make that call -- they may actually have priorities other than money.

Action: transparency for franchising agreements, and campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors.

The city of Philadelphia is set to renegotiate its franchise agreement with Comcast -- but city government hasn't been very transparent about it. That's a shame, chiefly because the city government negotiates this agreement on its residents' behalf, and Philadelphia residents are the owners of city government. And the franchise agreement will include, among other things, franchise fees for using public resources to deliver cable services to the city's residents. The city has been soliciting public comments about Comcast, and has compiled those comments into a "needs assessment" report -- but the city hasn't released the report. And, as with the TPP's negotiation, if the powers-that-be aren't particularly forthcoming with information, it may well be because the people who need to hear it will hate it. Hence Common Cause helps you tell the government of Philadelphia to release the report and conduct public hearings on the Comcast franchise renegotiation. Comcast may be a big corporation, but it's not bigger than the people of Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, a multitude of good-government groups have organized a national day of action tomorrow, April 2. The target? Money in politics. I know, big target, and one the current Republican Congress seems to think isn't a target at all -- which you wouldn't, I guess, if your idea of "public service" meant "serving the wants of your biggest donors to the exclusion of all others." But President Obama can ameliorate the problem of money in politics -- without having to genuflect before Great and Awesome American Super-Gigundis President Mitch McConnell -- merely by issuing an executive order mandating that federal contractors (who are paid, after all, with our tax money) disclose their political spending. So if you're looking for a rally near you, or if you're looking to host one, go here. And if you can't attend a rally (because, hey, maybe you can't get off work) and you'd still like to tell President Obama to make federal contractors disclose their campaign donations, a few organizations can help you do that -- like Just Foreign Policy, CREDO, USAction, and Friends of the Earth. Sadly, big corporations tend to donate in the millions and get contracts in the billions -- but that's worth knowing, especially since, again, it's our money.

Around the table: internet freedom, corruption in Wisconsin, sentencing reform in New York, Army apologies, bad tax plans, and another right-wing attention hound in Congress.

Supreme Court of India strikes down one section of that nation's Information Technology Act and narrows government interpretation of another. The Court found that Section 66A of that Act allowed for too much state interference in freedom of expression, while the government's interpretation of Section 79 gave it too much power in forcing online platforms to take down content. But the Court still allowed the government to take down entire websites without very much oversight or transparency, so we still have some ways to go on this. Still, it was a good day.

Billionaire Wisconsinite gives over $1.5 million in secret donations to the pro-Walker Wisconsin Club for Growth -- then gets $1.8 million in tax credits over just two years from the Walker administration! Nice work if you can get it! Gov. Walker's spokeshack, Laurel Patrick, employs classic misdirection in the official response -- says Mr. Walker was "not involved" in the decision made by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation he chairs, and anyway Mr. Walker's Democratic predecessor gave Mr. Menard buku tax breaks, too (though of course she does not say whether Mr. Menard made secret donations to pro-Doyle groups). She'll do a heckuva job for President Walker, just like Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino did for Tha Bush Mobb.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) aims to end the state's nearly 200-year-old practice of treating 16-year-olds as adults in criminal proceedings -- but the plan isn't without its problems. Among them: it would make sentences stricter, allow judges to consider previous violent offenses if that person is charged with another one -- and he's using the state budget process to ram these changes through, which is, at the least, not terribly honest. Admittedly, some states do much worse, like try 12-year-olds as adults for serious crimes, which action is a lot like giving up the responsibilities of being civilized people.

Army Undersecretary apologizes to over 600 soldiers exposed to sarin and sulfur mustard gas in Iraq and then given substandard medical treatment afterward. Sounds like the Pentagon used a loophole to fail to report this matter to the Senate, plus they put a gag order on the soldiers exposed to the gas. But, you know, apologies, and bygones. And TEH TERRURIZTZ MUSTZ NOTZ WINZ!!!!!

Citizens for Tax Justice alerts us to Sen. Ted Cruz's support for the flat tax and the so-called FAIR Tax. The former would replace low- and high-income tax brackets with a single tax bracket, the latter would replace the income tax with a national 30% sales tax, and both would give the rich yet another massive, unearned tax cut while slamming middle-class working families hard. Say it with me: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Again: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Now all we need to do to make Ted toast is get the "liberal" media to keep repeating it -- a difficult task, admittedly, given their utter cowardice in the face of right-wing bluster.

Finally, Texas U.S. House Rep introduces bill that would force Air Force soldiers to say "so help me God" in their oaths, then defends his bill by saying, "Americans have the freedom of religion -- but not freedom from religion." He may be too impressed with his parallel construction to realize he's utterly misrepresented what the First Amendment says, but let's not call this guy "traitor," OK? Because the Constitution sets a high bar for that. Certainly there are plenty of other things we can call him -- like "moron," or, more precisely, "attention hound."

Around the table: the world is big and wild and half-insane.

The Center for Public Integrity describes the secretive group Law Enforcement Alliance of America, which has spent millions of dollars over the last fourteen years attacking state-level candidates it finds insufficiently "tough on crime." Woe betide you if you've ever failed, as a judge or legislator, to kill a murderer or sexual predator with your bare hands, because the LEAA will find out and crucify you -- and you will very likely never find out who gave the LEAA all that money to do it with, because it's a 501(c)(4) non-profit. The good news: the LEAA doesn't appear to have filed necessary tax forms in a few years.

Colombian government reports that American soldiers and contractors sexually abused upwards of 50 underage children from 2003 to 2007 -- and the "liberal" media remains silent on the matter. And I guess I can see why -- the story gives no room for right-wingers to call outraged liberals "anti-troop," since no one wants to be known as "objectively pro-pederasty."

Chris Morran at the Consumerist tells the worse-than-Kafkaesque tale of a man who has to sell the house he just bought in Washington state because no corporation can get internet to his house. (The man works from home, so it's not like he's selling his home because he can't play games or watch House of Cards.) Among the many cautionary tales: don't believe it when corporations (or our government) tell you that there's a crapload of competition in your zip code -- and don't let state legislators mandate that public utilities have to sell to resellers, not consumers.

Rep. Pete Sessions (E-TX) says Affordable Care Act enrollees cost the taxpayer $5 million each -- when, actually, they cost the taxpayer around $9,000 each. No sense in tasking Mr. Sessions's math skills, when he obviously pulled that number out of his nether regions. Seriously, though, $9,000 per person is actually too high, and that's because ACA enrollees are all buying private health care plans. A single payer plan would bring that number way down -- British folks pay less than $3,500 per person for the socialized medicine they're always complaining about, and the French pay a little over $4,000, with the Canadians paying a little more than that. And if you've been to the doctor in America, you know you're not getting more for your money -- but some CEO is.

Arizona Republican Senator suggests that maybe we should "requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday," to foster a "moral rebirth" in America that would, apparently, be the only thing that would ever prompt fewer folks to carry guns. Got that? No word on whether you can attend mosque on Friday or synagogue on Saturday (or Saturday evening Mass, that was always my preference back in the day) and still fulfill your civic obligation under such a mandate. All of which proves one thing: that most politicians really need to talk less. God does give you two ears and one mouth for a reason, after all.

Finally, alleged libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) actually introduces a budget amendment sharply increasing defense spending, despite his previous pronouncements that we should at least "look at" cutting defense spending. And THAT! Is the MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! Have EVER! HEARD!

Action: dirty air amendments, Pentagon slush funds, fracking on public lands, and campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors.

First things first: Sen. Portman (R-OH), that reputed "moderate," has introduced a Senate budget amendment which would let states "opt out" of a Clean Air Act provision covering pollution from smokestacks. If you're the kind of person who likes to live and let live, and thinks that, well, maybe we can give individual states a little leeway regarding clean air laws, simply answer one simple question: do air pollutants respect state boundary lines? If the answer is "no" -- which, spoiler alert! The answer is no -- then you cannot in good conscience support such an amendment. And what does that have to do with budgeting anyway? Sen. Sanders offered an amendment closing corporate tax loopholes to pay for infrastructure improvements, and Sen. Enzi (R-WY) claimed he voted against it because Sen. Sanders's amendment should have been heard by a different committee. In light of that strange explanation, I wonder how Sen. Enzi will justify voting for Sen. Portman's amendment. Anyway, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Sen. Portman's dirty air amendment.

Meanwhile, despite its deficit-preening, Congress actually aims to add to the Department of Defense's Overseas Contingency Operations account for war-making, even though Congress has not declared a war, or done anything to restrain President Obama's war-making adventures in the Middle East, in some time now. This so-called "Pentagon slush fund" essentially allows Defense to skirt difficult questions like shouldn't we pay for wars out of whatever money we allocate through the budgeting process? and do we really want to keep paying for open-ended military adventures without clear goals? For some people, the latter is not a difficult question: they're the ones still saying ZOMG TEH MUZLIMZ WILL KILLZ ALL TEH PEEPULZ!!!!, which, as we remember from living through Tha Bush Mobb years, can be twisted to justify just about any policy objective. But they don't get all the say around here! So the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell Congress to end the "Pentagon slush-fund."

In other news, the Bureau of Land Management has released finalized rules for fracking on public lands, and, as you may expect, it takes a few steps forward (prohibiting those awful open pits for fracking fluid storage) while leaving a lot of work undone -- important work, like making fracking corporations disclose the chemicals they use to us, and not to some corporate, third-party website. Or getting rid of "trade secret exemptions" to disclosure rules. Or giving local communities more of a heads-up before fracking starts in their backyards. And we already know that fracking puts toxic chemicals in our drinking water -- so much so that it becomes flammable, gelatinous, or brackish -- and our air, just as we already know that claims that expanded fracking will slow the advance of climate change is rather optimistic, when you consider that methane packs a much larger climate-change wallop than even carbon dioxide. Luckily, Rep. Pocan (D-WI) has introduced a bill to ban fracking on public lands outright, and Food and Water Watch helps you tell the BLM to enact much stricter rules regarding fracking on public lands.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to force campaign finance disclosure from federal contractors, then both Common Cause and People for the American Way still help you do that. We can do that, of course, because, well, who pays federal contractors? We do, that's who -- with our taxes -- and don't we deserve to know what those contractors are doing with our money? You know, since it's our money? There's no arguing that we're "singling out" federal contractors unfairly, because, again -- and let me know if I'm belaboring the point -- it's our money. And though Congress would certainly try to stop President Obama from doing his job if he does issue such an order, they can't actually stop him unless they pass a bill either nullifying the order or stripping him of his authority to issue such an order -- and, well, President Obama would get to veto such a bill, and the Republicans in Congress couldn't override it, given their numbers. It's a no-brainer, really -- which is probably why Mr. Obama won't do it without massive public pressure.

Action: net neutrality, and campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors.

The FCC may have made the right call on net neutrality regulations, but that won't stop Marsha Blackburn! Rep. Blackburn (E-TN) has introduced H.R. 1212, perversely entitled the Internet Freedom Act; the bill would reverse what the FCC did and prevent them from doing it again in the future. Of course you must ask: freedom for whom? Not freedom for you, that's for sure, because you'll have freedom if you get to pick where you go on the internet -- she must mean freedom for big corporations to censor and slow down websites and deliver their "partners"' websites to you more quickly, so that if you want to read your favorite ass-kicking-name-taking political websites, you'll be forced to look at Miley Cyrus twerking videos or some other hysteria first. Note, also, that 29 of the bill's 31 sponsors have received campaign contributions from big telecoms -- one almost wonders what on Earth is wrong with the other two! -- and Ms. Blackburn herself has received over $250,000 from these corporations over the years. Free Press helps you tell your House Rep to preserve real internet freedom and reject Ms. Blackburn's bill.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous action alerts helping you tell President Obama to issue an Executive order mandating campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors, then the People's Email Network also helps you do that. This is not "unfair" to federal contractors -- federal contractors know if they take government money they need to follow government rules. No private investor would invest without some control over their investment, so why should our government -- especially considering they write their checks with our money? This bears repeating: the corporatists constantly whinge on about "big government," hoping you'll forget that this government is yours -- it derives its authority from you, and the money it spends is your money. And if right-wingers really think that the American people don't deserve to know how big corporations are spending their money, I wish they'd just come out and say so, instead of squealing ZOMG OBAMA TEH DIKTATUR!!!!, when they called you "traitor" for questioning any of their Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush's Executive orders back in the day.

Around the table: Senators breaking laws, religious folks feeling persecuted, zombie lies about the economy refusing to go away -- it can be challenging sometimes.

Daily Kos diarist Lestatdelc says that the now-infamous letter from 47 GOP Senators to the government of Iran violates the Logan Act. Clearly the 47 Senators -- by voicing the strange argument, to the government of Iran, that the next President could simply overturn any agreement on nuclear non-proliferation the U.N.-backed negotiations produce -- have demonstrated, at the least, "intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof," though I suspect only the State Department has standing to sue these Senators under the Logan Act. Let's stop already with the "treason" talk, though, because that's a much higher bar.

The Department of Justice will charge Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) with corruption this week. Sounds like pretty typical stuff, too -- Mr. Menendez allegedly got sizable gifts from an eye surgeon and then worked to change Medicare reimbursement policies that just so happened to benefit said eye surgeon -- though it's no less tolerable for being typical. Meanwhile, Republicans consistently block any attempt at campaign finance disclosure or reform, and President Obama still seems too timid to push for Executive branch action that would go a long way toward such reform.

Lawrence Summers tells us that "a good TPP" would benefit America. In other news, a winged horse would help you fight evil, an especially meaningful set of numbers would win you the lottery, and tax cuts for the wealthy would jump-start the economy. Seriously, saying we should get "free" trade agreements "right," and suggesting that the alternative would be to put America at the mercy of nations that negotiate other trade agreements -- these things sound like the desperate flailings of a man who knows he's lost the argument. And we're not "judging" the TPP against a "past in which U.S. workers did not face foreign competition" -- we're judging it by what we know from leaks is in the TPP. Would it be piling on to note that Mr. Summers's argument doesn't at all justify fast-tracking the agreement's passage? No, it would not be piling on.

The Pew National Trusts provides a handy graph characterizing how difficult it is to drill in the Arctic region. Thing I did not know but probably should have known: the nearest U.S. Coast Guard station from the Arctic is nearly a thousand miles away, and getting from that station to the Arctic by sea will be far worse than doing so by air, because Alaska is so, so huge -- people really don't understand how huge it is, though the second map certainly helps in that regard.

Robert Boston, writing in Salon, presents "The Ultimate Guide to Debunking Right-Wingers' Insane Persecution Fantasies." Terrific as this article is -- it excerpts Mr. Boston's book, called Taking Liberties: Why Religious Freedom Doesn't Give You the Right to Tell Other People What to Do, which I will seek out -- I wonder whether facts will ever convince right-wingers of anything. A better response to your right-wing uncle's religious persecution fever-dream might be: "do you hear how you sound when you whine like this?" I'm completely serious about that -- shame might reach them more quickly than facts do.

Finally, the architect of Tha Bush Mobb's tax cuts seems to be back in favor on Capitol Hill, still pushing tax theories thoroughly discredited by events in actual space-time. I had forgotten exactly how he'd managed to make Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts seem to cost less than they actually did, but I'm glad to be reminded -- and so is Scott Walker, I'm sure, who knows that, in the absence of Democrats who'd actually fight for working families, it's a lot easier to fool the people.

Action: campaign finance disclosure, smog pollution in Pennsylvania, and "free" trade.

Maryland state Sen. Jamie Raskin has developed a model bill that would mandate that corporations take a vote of their shareholders before making campaign contributions and disclose those contributions on their corporate website within 48 hours, and Roots Action helps you tell your state legislator to introduce similar legislation. Mr. Raskin's model legislation would go further than that, by preventing corporations owned by institutional investors that can't take political positions from making any campaign donations at all, and would also mandate rebating to shareholders of that percentage of a corporation's donations they don't agree with. I don't agree with the fourth item -- it's the same logic that employers use to refuse to pay for birth control for their employees -- but we've tried to do the first two at the national level and the third item makes perfect sense. I guess next we'll hear from right-wingers that such bills are like "bullying." But let them defend the notion that allowing shareholders to determine how their corporation spends its money is "bullying."

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you (change this link!) tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to work harder to reduce smog pollution in Pennsylvania. How bad is smog in Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania doesn't get all the ink of a Los Angeles or Houston or Teheran, but 17 Pennsylvania counties have areas that don't meet federal smog pollution standards. Now, this doesn't mean everybody in those counties chokes on smog every day, but it does mean that on bad days, folks with asthma suffer a lot worse, and it also means that more people get heart attacks in the short run and lung and heart disease in the long run. Who stands in our way? Coal corporations, of course, whose CEOs don't want to reduce their emissions even when they already possess the technology to do so, apparently because freedom Obama Hitler small businesses. But, even though it might not seem like it, they don't get all the say around here. And Tom Wolf certainly doesn't get a pass because he's a Democrat.

Finally, some good news: Sen. Hatch (R-UT) has said he probably won't introduce a "free" trade "fast-track" bill until April, which might well have something to do with the fact that virtually everyone outside of corporate boardrooms and Congressional halls hates "free" trade pacts that outsource our jobs to foreign wage slaves and subjugate our laws to extralegal "investor-state tribunals." These tribunals, as you know, can decide that because a corporation lost money due to some labor or environmental law, that the taxpayers of a particular nation should reimburse them the money they lost! And never mind that we can demonstrate fairly easily that labor and environmental laws actually save corporations money -- the "investor-state tribunal" should really be known by another name: a bailout tribunal, since it forces taxpayers to bail out the corporations who break our laws. Anyway, the "fast-track" bill isn't coming soon, but when it comes, it's bound to come quick, so Public Citizen still helps you tell your Reps to reject "fast-tracking" "free" trade bills.

Action: voting rights, saner sentencing, and campaign finance disclosure.

Various good-government groups will, this coming weekend, commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Montgomery to Selma led by Dr. King (dramatized in the outstanding film Selma), and hence the ACLU helps you tell Congress to repair the damage the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. As you remember, the Supreme Court found the Voting Rights Act's preclearance formula outdated (though, given the swift post-ruling proliferation of anti-voter legislation in a lot of the states the original Voting Rights Act targeted, maybe not so much out of date, amirite?). But the Court did not preclude (could not have precluded, really, so let's not give them too much credit) a different formula with which the Justice Department could preclear new state laws regarding voting rights, hence H.R. 885, the Voting Rights Amendment Act, an actual bipartisan piece of legislation. I would not be tremendously offended if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell worked to pass this legislation to prove that a Republican-run Congress isn't something to fear.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous alerts concerning H.R. 706/S. 353, the Justice Safety Valve Act, then Lisa Angelos, of Sandy, UT, has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fairer and saner sentencing for non-violent drug offenders. Ms. Angelos, as it happens, has a very personal reason to support the bill: her brother, a father of three, got 55 years in prison for a pot-related offense a little over a decade ago, and (in what has become a familiar refrain) the presiding judge opposed the sentence that mandatory minimum laws forced him to give. The Justice Safety Valve Act wouldn't change or repeal mandatory minimum laws, but it would give judges the ability to give sentences below statutory minimums if they can justify doing so, and the bill would also give all parties involved the opportunity to respond to the judge's decision. So, the bill would not only let judges judge a bit, but it would still allow a fair hearing of opinions about the judge's judging. Sounds like a win-win -- but only, of course, if we make ourselves heard.

Finally, President Obama has spoken more than once about the need for a constitutional amendment to overturn the nefarious Citizens United decision, but if you're a bit tired of Mr. Obama acting like there's little he can do about campaign finance corruption, you're not alone, and there are indeed many tools available to him. One such tool -- which would not require approval from Great American Super-Awesome President of Fun Mitch McConnell or his trusty sidekick Orange Johnny -- would be an executive order mandating campaign finance disclosure from any corporation that receives federal contracts. That would mean any corporation spending our money must account for its campaign spending to us. And note that corporations getting federal contracts could very well donate to those politicians who have helped them get federal contracts in the first place -- and if that isn't a recipe for corruption, I don't know what is. Hence both People for the American Way and Free Speech for People help you tell Mr. Obama to mandate campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors.

Action: coal leasing, and campaign finance disclosure.

Not long ago, the Center for American Progress informed us that the Appalachian coal basin -- which includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky -- faces economic challenges that other coal-rich areas of the country don't. The chief hurdle CAP identifies is the favoritism federal policy shows toward the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana (which provides 40% of the nation's coal) -- turns out we lease our public lands to coal corporations for much less money in the Powder River Basin than we do in the Appalachia, and the land in the Powder River Basin accounts for most of the federal land we lease to coal corporations. That's a much better explanation for Appalachian hard times than REGULASHUNZ KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! CAP suggests we either raise the royalty rate on PRB coal or force mining corporations to apply the rate differently; the latter sounds like the fall-back option, so you can guess which one I'd prefer. The Sierra Club helps you tell the Office of Natural Resources Revenue to vigorously reform our coal-leasing process.

Meanwhile, President Obama has made all the right noises about the Supreme Court's nefarious Citizens United v. FEC decision, and has called for a Constitutional amendment (much like the one Senate Republicans made up stupid lies about and then filibustered last year) to remedy the onslaught of corporate campaign funding Citizens United has unleashed. But he has the power to issue an executive order mandating that all corporations that do business with our federal government disclose all their campaign spending, and, naturally, he hasn't done that yet. Yes, a Constitutional amendment would be better, but it's still odd that a man who called us "sanctimonious purists" for opposing his 2010 tax-cut "compromise" would be willing to let the perfect murder the good here. Perhaps he just needs more talking-to, which wouldn't make him unique on Capitol Hill, and both Common Cause and Public Citizen help you do that. Don't believe the hype that this order would "single out" federal contractors -- I've always said that if you take our money, you follow our rules.

Action: net neutrality, consumer protection, and campaign finance disclosure.

The FCC's net neutrality vote is less than 10 days from now, and Demand Progress helps you tell your government that you want the most vigorous net neutrality protections possible. Because anything less, as the old ad used to say, would be uncivilized. No, really, it would be uncivilized to let big corporations with bad arguments win this battle simply because they have a lot of money. Americans deserve an internet where we, not some big corporation, determine which sites we want to visit, without big corporations censoring websites they don't like, without big corporations slowing down websites they don't like, without big corporations delivering some websites to your computer more quickly simply because those websites' owners have paid them for the privilege. Net neutrality won't create some Big Gummint-controlled internet -- it will give our government the tools it needs to prevent a corporation-controlled internet. I prefer a people-controlled internet myself, where anyone can start a web page with minimal financial investment, and where the best ideas really do have the best chance of flourishing.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject any efforts at gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, then National People's Action and Roots Action still help you do that. The CFPB has done yeoman work in curtailing the worst excesses of corrupt home lenders, greedy for-profit colleges, and predatory payday and title lenders, so why would Congress want to cripple the agency? Because it works for people, and doesn't work for their biggest donors, who are by and large the only people Congressfolk like to listen to. You'd think that Congressfolk would have realized by now that though money can buy you elections, votes actually win elections, and doing good works for the voters can actually win you elections even when you're outspent. Of course, as Ann Kirkpatrick would tell you, you have to actually advertise your good works to your constituents. I guess I can see why just listening to your biggest donors and blankly doing their will is the easier path. But that only means we have to make it that path the harder path.

Finally, the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) was considering whether or not to force publicly-traded corporations to disclose the campaign contributions they make, but whether because of SEC Chair Mary Jo White's own pro-corporate biases or because of fear that Congress (now dominated by Republicans) would slash their agency's budget if they issued those disclosure regulations, the SEC has all but abandoned the idea, despite getting several hundred thousand comments from good folks like you and I in favor of it. Hence Avaaz helps you tell the SEC to force publicly-traded corporations to disclose their political contributions. The SEC is well within its right to do that, given that its mandate, by law, is to protect shareholders, and shareholders don't just care about money, they also care about good works. And we shouldn't let Republican hostage-taking deter us -- put the Republicans in a position where they have to defend cutting the budget of the SEC because it did the people's will and fought secret campaign contributions that no one but rich donors likes.

Action: net neutrality, campaign finance disclosure, and state fracking bans.

Congress did hold hearings last week on the as-yet-untitled-and-unnumbered Thune/Upton bill that would purport to achieve net neutrality objectives while hamstringing the FCC from achieving those objectives with the authority the Legislative branch has already given it; the hearings did not, apparently, result in a bill actually being proposed (congress.gov has no bills from either Sen. Thune or Rep. Upton at the time of this writing), but you can look at a "discussion draft" of the bill here. It's a short read, a little over six pages, and it confirms our suspicions that the bill does not actually achieve net neutrality -- it fails to define "reasonable network management," and it should, since that's the exception to all of its proscriptions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Plus it also strips the FCC of its authority to do these (and other) things, almost like that's the whole idea. So Common Cause helps you tell your Reps and Senators to reject the Upton/Thune net neutrality "solution."

Meanwhile, as we're all too aware, Republicans control both houses of Congress now, making passage of campaign finance disclosure laws -- especially in the Senate, whose Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, equates campaign finance disclosure law with "bullying" -- a daunting if not impossible task. But President Obama, who had some tough talk about "dark money" ads in his most recent State of the Union address, has the power (granted to the Executive branch by a past Legislative branch, and not repealed by the current Legislative branch) to change the game, and not even by putting pressure on the very, very recalcitrant Securities and Exchange Commission: he can issue an Executive Order mandating that any corporation that does business with our government disclose its political spending, and Public Citizen helps you tell the President to do just that. Right-wingers complain this violates corporations' "privacy," as if a corporation is a person and not a thing. But we have the right to know what corporations receiving taxpayer money -- our money -- do with it.

Finally, Roots Action helps you tell your state legislators and Governors to ban fracking in your state; just find the state in which you live and click on it, and write yourself a letter. Why ban fracking? Because gas drillers can't do it safely -- they can't do it without befouling the air and water, particularly the water, and they can't do it without ratcheting up climate change radically, since the methane gas escaping from fracking wells traps much more heat than even carbon dioxide does. And why do we dare hope our state will do it? Because New York state, sitting on a massive chunk of Marcellus shale, did just that, and their Governor, Andrew Cuomo, is certainly no liberal. Perhaps he hoped the science would tell him fracking was OK for our air and our water (certainly the gas drilling industry employs enough scientists who'll tell you that), but it didn't, and it may be a long time before the gas industry figures out how to get the gas out without allowing massive amounts of carcinogens and other toxins to enter our water tables and endanger our health. Certainly we don't need to be their guinea pigs until then.

Action: net neutrality, Social Security, and campaign finance disclosure.

Word on the street is that the FCC will, in fact, reclassify internet service providers as utilities, as we have been telling the FCC to do since time immemorial, it seems. But when you recall that, on two separate occasions last year, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler released net neutrality proposals that were basically giveaways to big telecom corporations, you realize this is a big deal. Of course, having the power to regulate net neutrality -- so that you, and not some big corporation, can determine where you go and what you see on the internet -- doesn't necessarily mean the FCC will actually use that power. And we should expect a lot of interference, not just from the corporate front groups aiming to confuse people about what net neutrality really does (and, er, has been doing all along), but from a Republican-dominated Congress that works exclusively for its biggest donors, even though most of their conservative constituents feel the same way about net neutrality as liberals do. So Free Press helps you tell our government to enforce the most vigorous net neutrality provisions possible.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House went about laying landmines right away, by passing a rule mandating that funds from Social Security's "old-age fund" can't be reallocated to Social Security's disability fund unless accompanied by tax hikes or benefit cuts. Sounds obscure, doesn't it? Thing is, the disability trust fund may run out next year, while the old-age trust fund is in good enough shape that Congress could reallocate funds such that both funds are solvent for almost 20 more years, which is hardly a burden on current or future retirees, no matter what Republicans say. The disability fund has come under some fire from the "liberal" media lately, which often portrays folks getting SSI as lazy, or scam artists. But SSI doesn't pay out benefits to just anyone, and anyway fraud is always a separate issue -- fraudsters should be rooted out and put in jail, and preventing reallocation as part of some manufactured hostage crisis is cruel to the vast majority of folks who aren't scam artists. Hence Social Security Works helps you tell your lawmakers to protect Social Security for everyone, and stop pitting Americans against one another.

Finally, the Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) is still taking public comments about updating their campaign finance disclosure rules and their enforcement thereof; you can leave a public comment at the FEC's page here. But be quick, as the public commenting period ends next Friday. This past election, as you no doubt know, was the most expensive midterm in history, and we don't know where a lot of that campaign spending came from. And we ought to know who's behind the political ads that pollute our airwaves -- after all, what do they have to hide? That they would prefer lawmakers who act not on their constituents' behalf, but exclusively on the behalf of their biggest donors? That they prefer policies that make corporations even more powerful, and that befoul our air and water? If you're stuck on what else to say, click on the "campaign finance disclosure" topic on the right hand of this page; I may have said a few things that might help. And remember, also, to note that you're submitting a comment "on behalf of yourself," and don't leave identifying information you don't want public (like your Social Security number).