Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: blows against monopoly power! And other developments.

It's a pretty crap moment for good Americans right now, but Matt Stoller sees hope in eight developments against monopoly power in America. Maybe you won't think it's all that impressive that a judge failed to dismiss an antitrust case against Facebook or that a judge found an individual (the hated Martin Shkreli) guilty of violating antitrust laws or that the Biden Administration has made more progress against hated pharmacy benefit managers than any other Administration, but these are all big deals, and not just because we've been banging our heads against a wall for so long. (If you ask me, not that you would, big corporations have been stoking the flames of inflation as a retaliation against the Biden Administration's anti-monopoly push. I can't prove that, of course, but I'd feel like a schmuck if I didn't at least think it probable.)

Surprise, surprise, many nurses tell us that hospitals are so short on staff these days because for-profit health care corporations deliberately keep their staffing levels low, so as to redistribute more worker income upward to executives. Strangely, they do not typically report that staffing levels are low because of TEH VACCINEZ MANDATEZ!!!!, like Tucker Carlson said many months ago. But then, right-wingers only listen to nurses when they tell them what they want to hear. (As for California's single-payer health insurance push: no one would be happier than I to see that happen, but they've done this dance before. Perhaps the good folks of California can help rectify that situation.)

When I hear that a peer-reviewed study has found that upwards of three compounds in the marijuana plant have stopped COVID molecules from entering human cells in the lab, my first thought was that of course we would have known this sooner if it weren't so infernally difficult to research marijuana in the first place! Those of you who are able to toke without going to jail should know that smoking it is about the worst way to get these helpful effects -- the three compounds in question degrade at high temperatures, so better to take them in pills. More study will be needed, and Joe Biden could help that along by removing marijuana from Schedule I, but he won't do that, though I'll be damned if he ever explains why.

Excavations in Peru have suggested that an ancient indigenous people called the Wari actually spiked their beer with hallucinogens in order to make peace with neighboring communities. The Wari appear to have enjoyed several centuries of peace and prosperity while doing this; meanwhile, America has a serious problem with rage-filled right-wingers bollocksing up everything good we try to do, and perhaps these points taken in tandem should compel us to conclude that the "war on drugs" is lousy idea. Also, as Sam Kinison used to say, give us the pot, and we won't want the crack.

When I hear that Mitch McConnell has threatened the Democrats with retaliation if they even try to reform the filibuster so they can pass voting rights legislation, all I can say is waaaaaaaaaah. Republicans will always throw a tantrum about something, and it doesn't matter what it is. But this is what happens, Democrats, when you constantly give in to bullies -- the bullies keep taking and taking and taking, and any action becomes a slight, and thus a reason to keep taking. Meanwhile the American people only get more and more hurt. I do not know what will make Democrats learn. Defeat at the polls certainly doesn't.

Finally, the Penguin says he won't support a Democratic proposal to make the filibuster a "talking filibuster" -- you know, where you'd actually have to hold the floor and read the phone book to keep it going -- to get voting rights bills passed. This may come as a surprise to you if you recall the Penguin himself floating the idea of making the filibuster a "talking filibuster" early last year -- but it will not come as a surprise to you if you've come to regard him as a bad-faith negotiator, whether that's because he's simply a drama hound or because he's a vital part of a Democrat plan to throw the 2022 Congressional elections in the hopes Joe Biden will be re-elected more easily in 2024. Right about now would be a good time for me to say that, in the end, they don't matter, we matter.

Action: concerning drug prices, clean water, animal abuse, public lands, and family separation.

Long story short: tell our Department of Health and Human Services to allow generic manufacturing of an overly-expensive cancer drug, tell our EPA to get the lead out of our drinking water, tell Facebook to stop allowing illegal endangered wildlife sales, tell our government to keep copper miners out of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and tell our Department of Homeland Security to reunite families separated at the border. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Social Security Works helps you tell HHS Secretary Becerra to permit generic manufacturing of Xtandi, which its manufacturer currently sells for $400 a pill -- in America, at least! In other nations (including Japan, where Xtandi's manufacturer, Astellas Pharma, has its headquarters), it "only" charges about one-fifth of that, and I put "only" in quotation marks because that's still $80 a pill; allowing a generic of Xtandi would likely cut that price to $3. And our HHS can do that, using the "march-in" rights granted by the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act; most of us would say that our government should take control of a drug if the corporation that manufactures it is charging us an arm and a leg for it. I think we would say that even if Mitch McConnell calls it "socialism" or "communism." So let's do it.

Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to get the lead out of our drinking water. Just so happens our EPA is mulling this very thing, and for good reason -- basically any exposure to lead also exposes you to brain damage (and the developmental problems that come with it), and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a standard of less than one part lead per billion. Yes, that infrastructure bill provides a lot of funding for removing lead pipes, but you would hate for that money to get wasted in the wrong places just because some Congressperson or other had an outsized influence on the matter; if our EPA can contribute solid research telling us where the most lead pipes are, for example, that would help forestall such a tragedy. Wasted money here will be wasted life.

Avaaz helps you tell Facebook to ban sales of illegal endangered wildlife species on its platform. Or, as they put it, "make the illegal wildlife trade extinct" -- which spells MIWTE, so we won't think of putting that on a red hat, but still, it's a worthwhile goal for a civilized people. As we speak, only 7,000 cheetas exist in the wild, but unsavory types have sold over 4,000 more on Facebook! Don't succumb to the temptation to feel sorry for Facebook -- just like most evil people, their whole M.O. is to stoke drama, and if they can get attention for promising to make it better just like every wife-beater does when they're cornered, all the better. Still, the Big Stick of Bad PR can save lives here -- if we but wield it against Facebook. Saying most people oppose animal abuse wouldn't be a reach.

Both Environmental Action and MoveOn help you tell our Bureau of Land Management to protect the famous Boundary Waters Wilderness from copper mining. Copper's an intensely useful mineral -- if our hospital tabletops were still made of copper, we might have had a much easier time with this pandemic! -- but if you get a finite amount of a useful material by permanently damaging an otherwise renewable resource, then you're doing resource management wrong. And the Boundary Waters Wilderness -- so named because it straddles the border between Ontario and Minnesota -- contains over a thousand lakes and over a thousand miles of rivers and streams, and covering as it does around 1,700 square miles (an area bigger than Rhode Island), when pollution gets in one area, it's going to get to the others. We'd want to prevent that.

Finally, the ACLU helps you tell our Department of Homeland Security to reunite families separated at the border. You can amend the ACLU's comment tool as you see fit, but certainly we should demand that the Biden Administration reunify separated families and give them the due process they deserve -- which includes counseling for their suffering and accountability for those who caused it. Family separation was Trump Administration policy, but it's now the Biden Administration's problem to fix, and they ain't going as fast as justice demands. Luckily they're asking the American people to fix it for them, and I'm sure a few rage-heads will write comments I'd prefer not to contemplate, but I suspect the vast majority of Americans don't want families separated no matter where they're from. We were all from somewhere else once, after all.

Action: concerning voting rights, tax cuts for working families, saving our Post Office, worker safety, and gouging prisoners.

Long story short: tell your Senators to pass voting rights legislation and extend the Child Tax Credit expansion, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Postal Service Reform Act, the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act, and the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Today's as good a day as any to call your Senators and tell them to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Yeah, we know how they're going to vote -- the Penguin and the Joker won't let Democrats modify the filibuster so Republicans can't just stamp their feet and say no, and then Republicans will filibuster the bills -- even though they'll actually vote to keep debate going and then promptly end debate, because that's how the filibuster has worked for over 40 years -- but duty is duty, and putting them on the record as opposing the people's will multiple times has utility. If you can reach a live person at your Senators' offices, you can ask how many calls they've gotten about this matter and how they break down. The results may be interesting!

Citizens for Tax Justice helps you tell your Senators to extend the Child Tax Credit expansion. This'll be a phone call, so you can piggyback this alert onto the back of the voting rights alert above. January 15 just went by with no $250 or $300 checks for working families for the first time in six months, and I can't imagine working families all over America didn't notice. We've got the Penguin to blame for this one -- he didn't want to extend it in the Build Back Better Act, because, according to him -- or, more likely, his CEO pals -- people use those checks to buy drugs. Drugs! Not, you know, food or clothing or back to school supplies. Anyway, what happened to conservatives trusting people? You might conclude that when right-wingers say they "trust people," they actually mean they only trust rich bosses.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3076, the Postal Service Reform Act. You recall how virtually all of our Postal Service's financial troubles stem from a 2006 Congressional mandate to pre-fund its retiree benefits 80 years in advance? When you consider literally no other private or public entity has to follow such a mandate, you might almost think Congress sabotaged our Postal Service -- which meant it was just a matter of time someone like Louis DeJoy came along and said emergency! We have to cut services and raise prices just to stay alive! The Postal Service Reform Act would repeal this mandate, and therefore also the rationale for making our Postal Service run badly. Hey, it's our Postal Service, so we deserve better.

The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2193/S. 1068, the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act. This bill -- named for a farmworker who died after working 10 hours in 105-degree heat -- would mandate that our Occupational Safety and Health Administration (or OSHA) create a worker safety standard that would protect our workers from heat-related illnesses and injuries, meaning folks who work outside would get access to rest and shade. Don't brook any nonsense about how we don't have to care because it's only Those People who work in conditions like that, not just because that would be cruel, but also because in a few short years it won't even be true if climate change keeps working its will. Welcome to Chapter 244 of "Compassion Is Pragmatic."

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2489, the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act. As you know, big telecoms charge prisoners and their families a lot of money just so they can stay in contact, which means a lot of folks just give up because of the expense, which also means these prisoners are more likely to go back to jail. The Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act would authorize our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to cap phone rates for prisoners (more than they're currently doing, surely!) and would also outlaw "site commissions," which are basically kickbacks big telecoms pay to prisons (and which some states actually mandate by law, if you can believe it). And remember: civilized people aren't cruel to the weak, and we certainly don't gouge prisoners.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the *real* Dr. King, among other matters.

On this, the day after we celebrate the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., we should consider, as Michael Harriot does at The Guardian, how the real Dr. King would be received by today's America. Of course, Dr. King's approval ratings with whites were underwater every day of his life, and a lot of folks who venerate him today would have claimed the Fair Housing Act "went too far" in the '60s, but Dr. King also vocally fought police brutality whereas too many of today's Americans respond to yet another police killing of a Black man for brandishing a cellphone with I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! He also railed against poverty and the Vietnam War, to which too many folks back then responded we gave them the vote; what more do they want? And they'd respond the same way today.

And now perhaps the best headline of 2022 so far, from Janine Jackson at FAIR: "Elite Media Remember Lani Guinier as 'Embattled' — and Forget How They Battled Her." You may remember Ms. Guinier, who passed on January 8, as the Clinton nominee who voiced "extreme" opinions about voting, redistricting, and affirmative action; if you do not remember her as the first Black woman to get tenure at Harvard, for example, that may be because our "liberal" media repeated all the right-wing whining about her 1993 nomination to head our Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, only evaluating her writings more honestly after the drama prompted President Clinton to withdraw the nomination. (And I suspect he nominated her more to help create all that drama than solve problems in America, but Ms. Guinier would probably disagree with me.)

I've blamed the unvaccinated in America for most of the problems we're facing today, but Sarah Lazare at In These Times suggests that blaming the unvaccinated may be a way of failing to blame the Biden Administration for its leadership failures, such as failing to overcome intellectual property barriers in getting vaccines out to the rest of the world, which will allow new COVID variants to flourish, and failing to extend safety net programs (like hazard pay for those we all call "essential" workers!) that help a civilization endure a pandemic. And yet I can't stop blaming those folks who remain unvaccinated because they're still throwing their tantrums about Joe Biden winning the 2020 election. I remember how many vaccine slots were open in red states this past summer, and while I wouldn't expect poor folks from blue states to be able to scarf those up, I still think we should expend some effort blaming and shaming those close to us who have failed us.

Good news: DirecTV will stop carrying the so-called One America News (or OAN) network when their contract expires in April. AT&T is still OAN's sugar daddy, and Verizon FIOS still carries OAN, and all the cable corporations still carry the Fox News Channel, so we have more work to do to Make America Less Toxic Again (hey, that spells an actual word! Ring my promoter!), but we should celebrate our successes as we achieve them, and even though we hear that DirecTV wants to provide fewer offerings as a way to offer lower prices and compete with streaming services, this success definitely belongs to us.

Did Mike Pence really compare Democratic efforts to end the filibuster with the January 6 attempted coup? Yes, Virginia, he did, in that they are both "tragic." For Mr. Pence, of course, voter fraud is a real thing, and not just a slab of racist booga-booga Republicans always trot out because they don't have any ideas worth sharing. Even worse, state efforts to curb mail-in ballots are, for Mr. Pence, "common sense" reforms, even if they're not the "common sense" reforms he'll actually enumerate -- or, indeed, are not actually "common sense" in a world where Colorado has run its elections entirely through the mail for years.

Finally, swing-district Democrats want to break up the Build Back Better Act into elements that might pass because they're so popular, and that's not a bad strategy! They mention "curbing prescription drug costs and extending the child tax credit," and though they didn't say "let Medicare negotiate drug prices" and "extend the CTC expansion that was plopping $250 checks in millions of bank accounts every month," I would find it profoundly useful to force votes on these individual initiatives -- plus paid family medical leave, though the swingsters didn't mention that, apparently. And even though all of these bills will die in our Senate (unless they decide to pass them under reconciliation rules), at least then we can all see, once again, exactly which Senators are creating all the drama. Put these folks on the spot again and again and again until they yield, that's what I say.

Action: concerning solar power, voting rights, protecting democracy, corruption, and internet freedom.

Long story short: tell Florida's legislators to reject an anti-solar power bill, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading by members of Congress, and tell your Senators to confirm nominees to our MSPB and our FCC. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first. The Florida state legislature is mulling a bill that would cut rebates by utility corporations to solar power users, which would slow solar development in Florida, almost like that's the whole idea. And apparently it is, in fact, the idea of Florida Power and Light, which stands with state legislators against just about the entire rest of the state in favor of this absurd policy. Seriously, when only one corporation benefits from a bill, isn't that enough reason to oppose it? Let's help put a stake through this bill's heart, by calling House Speaker Chris Sprowls at (850) 717-5065, Senate President Wilton Simpson at (850) 487-5010, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at (850) 717-9337. Yeah, I know, he doesn't care what you think. Tell him anyway.

Hazmat America helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Why? Because they'd deal body-blows to gerrymandering, campaign finance bribery, and racist vote suppression, that's why. And yeah, I know the Penguin and the Joker said they wouldn't kill the filibuster in order to pass bills they supposedly both support very fervently, but Common Cause helps you call voters in West Virginia and Arizona and urge them to call Sens. Manchin and Sinema to tell them to kill the filibuster in order to pass these bills. Yeah, I know Sen. Sinema gave this big, long speech on the Senate floor that professed her deep and abiding love for these bills she won't nix the filibuster to pass, but as a famous philosopher once said, everything before the "but" is bullshit. If we can't move them, we have to humiliate them.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The bill would, as you know, keep future Presidents from profiting from their office, abusing their pardon power, declaring "national emergencies" whenever they feel a sad, and firing Inspectors General for actually stopping corruption, and if this all seems a little like closing the barn door after the horses have run out, it's not, because the guy who did all those things stands a good chance of running again and winning in 2024, and if he does he'll do all of this again, and worse. If Republicans are shouting in your ear that this is a "Democrat bill," read that list of things the bill would do again. Those aren't "Democrat things," they're American things.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading. The bill currently before Congress -- H.R. 1579/S. 564, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act -- would mostly prohibit stock trading by members of Congress, but Sen. Ossoff (D-GA) plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses, since a lot of Congressfolk just so happen to have husbands and wives who make a lot of money trading stock. Think these couples never discuss Congressional oversight? Don't be like Nancy Pelosi and retort that this is a free market, because Congressfolk oversee big corporations as part of their job, and should avoid not just corruption, but the appearance of corruption. And so should their spouses! Hey, no one put a gun to their heads and told them to get married.

The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Senators to confirm three qualified nominees to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which helps protect federal employees from retaliation by their bosses. Or it would, if it had any members! That's right, the Trump Administration let the MSPB function without a quorum during its entire tenure, virtually guaranteeing that any federal employee who, say, dimed out corruption by their higher-ups would have virtually no recourse against retaliation by those higher-ups. Like, say, President Trump himself! Remember that when the Steve Bannon-types talk about "dismantling the administrative state," they mean to dismantle that part of the administrative state that fights corruption and protects good Americans from being stomped on by powerful people.

Finally, upon hearing that big telecom corporations are actively trying to sink the Gigi Sohn nomination to our FCC -- couldn't be because she fights for net neutrality, could it? -- Free Press suggests we call Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) at 202.224.3441 and tell her to call a vote on Ms. Sohn's nomination before the end of the month. Free Press also helps you tell your Senators to support the Sohn nomination. Sadly, the reason that vote hasn't happened yet may well be Kyrsten Sinema, who has come out against net neutrality in the past, because bipartisanship maverick independent streak getting to yes. Of course the whole point of democracy isn't getting Republican bullies to yes, but getting Americans to yes, which Ms. Sohn -- through her support of internet freedom for you, not for big corporations -- has already done. Odd how politicians burnish their "bipartisan" bona fides by opposing things Americans actually want -- things that actually prove that real bipartisanship is possible in America. And when I say "odd" I mean "so stupid it's boring."

Around the table: why have COVID guidelines become so confusing? The answer may surprise you!

Matt Stoller breaks down the price-fixing lawsuit against 16 elite American hedge funds with universities attached universities. The suit's key allegation: these universities (which include a lot of Ivy League schools) violated "need-blind" admission policies by considering admission for children of rich folks who might have donated to them if they accepted their kids, which surely ain't a "need-blind" process, since those slots going to rich kids are, each of them, keeping someone less financially secure (but probably more talented!) out. Also, "when universities move away from the consensus methodology for calculating the cost of college" -- a methodology you might also call "price-fixing," and maybe even collusion -- "the price they charge goes down." And folks who whine about affirmative action when it helps Black and Brown folks might want to train more of their ire on "legacy admissions," i.e., rich kids getting into their dad's school. You know, like George W. Bush.

I'm a bit puzzled to read that "COVID's Latest Surge Spreads an Epidemic of Confusion," because all the "conflicting advice and clashing guidelines coming from government, science, health, media and other institutions" has one obvious cause: big corporations want their workers back to work. That's why we quarantine for five days instead of two weeks and schools rush to re-open -- if parents are home with their kids, they can't make money for the bossman. Anyway, it's not like the information we had at the beginning didn't shift. And no, I feel no solidarity with right-wingers who have been imbibing bad information, or pushing it on the rest of us, for the better part of two years.

Paul Rogat Loeb at Op-Ed News says that opposing Build Back Better could well end the political careers of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and I, too, have been thinking a lot lately about how all the shenanigans Messrs. Nelson and Lieberman pulled in 2010 led directly to their retirements in 2012. Lesson: doing the bidding of corporatists isn't a recipe for longevity, except for the corporations, of course. Don't feel sad, though -- Mr. Manchin is well-off enough that he doesn't need to work after he retires/gets blown out in 2024, and the ever-adaptable Ms. Sinema will surely consult on some scam designed to separate venture capitalists from their money. No, not crypto; she'd find that gauche.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he'll kick Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar off a few committees if he becomes Speaker after November, and maybe he will and maybe he won't, but his saying so aims squarely at the Primary of One, not so much to get Mr. Trump's endorsement per se (he's in trouble if he needs that in his district!), but to get the endorsements of all the Trumpholes who'd make him the Speaker of a new House majority. But yeah, knock yourself out explaining why you'd kick Ilhan Omar off Foreign Affairs -- people might actually discover they like her better than the chattering class does, since unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, she makes sense.

Peter Doocy asks Biden Administration Press Secretary Jen Psaki that since he and Ms. Psaki were both triple-vaxxed and still got COVID, how Mr. Biden can call this stretch of the pandemic a "pandemic of the unvaccinated." It's a good thing you only need two counter-examples to obliterate any broad trend! Seriously, she handled that so easily -- "(y)ou are 17 times more likely to go to the hospital if you’re unvaccinated, 20 times more likely to die" -- that I'd say generally he ought to keep that mask on, lest someone want to punch him in the face.

Finally, Future Crunch gives us "99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2021," and if the news is a bit overwhelming, well, gosh, let's have good news be overwhelming, for once. The Mississippi River is much less polluted than it was 30 years ago! The European Parliament banned predictive policing! Malaria and ebola vaccines came out this past year! I didn't hear about most of these, but perhaps signing up for every-two-weeks emails will change that. I'll certainly pass along as much good news as I can! It'll be just another way Thieves in the Temple differs from the Fox News Channel.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, pollution, landmines, and Guantánamo.

Long story short: tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject a fake gerrymandering reform bill, tell our EPA to enact the most vigorous methane emissions regulations possible and start monitoring factory farm pollution, tell President Biden to keep his promise to outlaw certain landmines and close Guantánamo Bay, and tell our USDA to stop oil trains from rumbling through Utah. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA informs us that the recently-introduced HB 2207 only pretends to create a citizens' commission for redistricting, in that it give the political parties far too much power over its composition and direction and would actually amend our state constitution to let one party have complete control over the process. They'll call that the voters' will, when gerrymandering Rorschach-blot districts that excise sides of streets and individual houses is the perfect way to subvert the voters' will! They got some cojones, these clowns, but that's all they got. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to find your state legislator's phone number so you can tell them to reject this bill -- unless it includes the Samuelson amendment that would at least give good Pennsylvanians a real independent citizens commission, which would negate all the bill's horrors.

Penn Environment helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous methane emission rules possible. Best to get to stepping, though, since their deadline for comments is Friday. Methane packs a bigger climate change punch than coal, and when big corporations let it leak from their oil or gas drilling facilities, they're not just moving the coastlines uncomfortably closer to you, they're wasting perfectly good energy -- and if they're drilling on public lands, they're also cheating you, the taxpayer, out of royalties. In short, nobody likes methane leaks -- except the big gas and oil corporations that don't want to do their part to keep our planet livable because it means the CEO can't gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And they shouldn't get their way about that.

US PIRG helps you tell our EPA to start monitoring factory farm pollution. Which cause the most water pollution in America, and which our EPA pledged to start monitoring 17 years ago; what's the holdup? The holdup, I suspect, is that big ag corporations get even more deference from our government than all the other big corporations to which our government defers -- all these big corporations have to do is dangle the spectre of high food prices and they get whatever they like. Well, we're not hostages in America -- we're free people. And asking our EPA to start monitoring (not even stopping!) factory farm pollution is not so damn much to ask. Rivers of hog poop have a lot of methane in them, too, and too much hog poop makes people sick. Don't people count for anything?

Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to re-ban anti-personnel landmines. Donald Trump lifted this ban during his deleterious four years as President, and President Biden promised he'd undo it, but he hasn't, yet, and it's not like he hasn't had the time -- a stroke of a pen is all it'll take. Put five beers into Donald Trump and I'm sure he'll tell you other countries get to do it so we should too, but the whole point of America is to be the best possible example to other countries. It's like none of these folks in politics remember that -- or, more likely, they think they don't have to earn it anymore. But we must always earn America. And landmines have been known to blow people's legs off 50 years after the war's over, so let's not let cruelty be the example we set for the rest of the world.

Amnesty International helps you tell President Biden to close Guantánamo Bay already. Again, he promised to do this, and it's not like he can't get something done if he puts his mind to it -- like, you know, our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he should have done a lot better but at least he did it; get us out of this now 20-years-going-on humiliation and he might actually start stacking up some accomplishments. Guantánamo still has almost 40 detainees, held without charge or trial, and if they'd really done something so bad you'd think our government could charge them with something. That tells you they didn't do a damn thing! Someone already stands ready to say if even one terrorist was there it was all worth it, but they'd never say that if they were detained at Guantánamo for years on end. So we can blow them off.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to revoke permits for an oil railway running through the Ashley National Forest in Utah. Jesus Mary and Joseph what is it about Utah that makes big corporations want to screw with it? Utah has some of the most beautiful country in the world! And this railway won't even dig out the minerals that big corporations often covet in Utah -- but it will ruin wildlife habitat and wetlands there, and for what? If we don't move past oil -- which is more than possible in a world where solar and wind now cost less in some places than fossil fuels -- then we're not going to have a planet left. Why, even those jerks at Fox News who spend all their time laughing at people who want more solar and wind won't have a place to go.

Action: concerning January 6, voting rights, crypto, wastewater, glyphosate, and conservation.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to expel those members who helped plan the January 6 attempted coup, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, tell our SEC to start regulating crypto, tell Pennsylvania to stop using oil and gas wastewater to tamp down dust on state roads, tell the President of France to keep his promise to fight glyphosate’s EU licence, and tell our USDA to reinstate Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

GOP Coup helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.Res. 25, which would investigate whether certain members of Congress should be expelled for their role in the January 6 attempted coup. Not just Paul Gosar or Andy Biggs, either -- also Lauren Boebert, who gave that suspicious tour of the Capitol the day before the attempted coup, and Lindsey Graham, who suggested right after the election that Georgia's Secretary of State toss legal ballots (per said Secretary of State's own testimony). If you were trying to nullify the will of the American voters -- and, to review, 81 million of us voted for Joe Biden, while 74 million of us voted for Donald Trump -- then you don't deserve a seat in Congress. I hate it when politicians tell 81 million people they should just fuck off and die, and that's what the above-named politicians have told us. So get 'em out.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act -- and kill the filibuster to do it if they have to. Which they do, because Republicans all oppose gerrymandering reform, campaign finance reform, and racist vote suppression, for some reason. (Spoiler alert: the reason is that they can't win without gerrymandering, big corporate donors, and keeping Black and Brown folks away from the polls.) And when they tell you voting reform has to be "bipartisan," remind them (as Rep. Clyburn did the other day) that amending the Constitution to end slavery and give ex-slaves the right to vote were not bipartisan. We don't care about "bipartisanship" -- we care about our government doing right by us.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to start regulating crypto. No, I'm not going to call it "cryptocurrency," because it is not currency -- it is a speculative investment, and our SEC's job is to protect investors from criminals, and boy oh boy does crypto look like an area rife for criminal activity; after all, if they call something money but can't explain how it works in terms regular folks can understand, it's BS. And a "currency" that seeks to bypass banks and governments ain't a good idea -- if you get screwed over in a crypto scheme, you're going to need a gun to get relief, and civilization's whole purpose is to stop you from doing that. I don't want banks and governments off the planet; I want them to be civilized.

MoveOn helps you tell the state of Pennsylvania to stop using oil and gas drilling wastewater to tamp down dust on state roads. Yeah, they still appear to be doing that, even though that stuff is full of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, and even though our state Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) put a moratorium on this practice four years ago. Apparently fossil fuel corporations found a loophole in the moratorium allowing wastewater use on unpaved roads, and you'd hate to think the state put out that moratorium knowing they weren't going to effectively enforce it! The best part? A Penn State study found last summer that fracking wastewater does a bad job keeping down the dust; why, doing nothing at all was better than using wastewater in some cases! So, yeah, let's stop doing that.

Sum of Us helps you tell French Presiden Macron to oppose any re-approval for glyphosate in Europe. Mr. Macron had pledged to phase out French use of glyphosate by the end of 2021, but he failed in that; soon France will take over the Presidency of the European Union this month, and glyphosate's license expires this year, so with a lot of popular prodding, perhaps he'll keep his promise then. He can't be thinking he's got a tough re-election campaign coming and he needs to be nice to the big carcinogen producers, can he? He's dumb as a bag of hammers if so: Europe has always had a much less corporate attitude toward agriculture than the U.S., and cancer-causing chemicals aren't actually popular anywhere. So we may need to lend the steel in his spine in this matter.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our Forest Service to restore Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest. I've told this story a hundred times, not just of thousand year-old trees capturing almost half of all the carbon our national forests capture, but of greedy logging corporations and their Enabler-in-Chief, whose Forest Service took away Roadless Rule protections late in 2020 even though over 95% of us left public comments supporting keeping those protections in place. After all, it's not like we're the boss of government or anything. The Biden Administration is working to restore this rule as we speak, but they've gotten cold feet about doing the right thing before (cough keeping military weapons away from police cough), so we gotta remind them.

Around the table: featuring yet another Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate!

As Connecticut-based hedge fund manager David McCormick readies a Pennsylvania Senate run as a Republican, the burning question is: will Trump votaries support a bankster for Senate? I kid, of course -- Trump votaries will "hold their nose" at his profession, particularly since he doesn't have a Jewish-sounding last name, and in any case I'm sure Mr. McCormick will quickly disavow his year-old statement blaming Mr. Trump for the January 6 attempted coup. Still, look out for Jeff Bartos, who instigated Sean Parnell's disgrace; he's currently running around 3 percent in polling but is sitting on a lot of money I'm sure he'll deploy the last two weeks of the race. If he wins, Donald Trump will endorse him as if he'd never endorsed anyone else, and then the votaries will be pacified.

Ho hum, JP Morgan Chase has resumed suing its credit card users for falling behind on their payments. What's that, you say? So what? Well, Chase hadn't been doing that for 10 years, after our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found they were filing "flimsy" suits which not only too often said customers owed more than they actually did, but which also relied on actual robo-signed affidavits (rather than billing records!) as "evidence." And now they're doing lawsuits-with-affidavits again. You might almost call these frivolous lawsuits, though the tort "reform" crowd, strangely, never talks about them. If Republicans take back either chamber of Congress in November, you'll never get that crowd to STFU -- and all they care about is stopping lawsuits that help those good Americans wronged by big corporations.

When I hear that folks from 14 to 49 are generally having less consensual sex now than they did a decade ago, and I see that researchers offer a lot of possible reasons, like increased social media use, "rough sex," lower incomes, more drinking, and (even) more binge-watching, I find myself asking about two other possibilities: increased awareness of sexual abuse and more widely-available pornography. Do people have less sex if they're wary of being caught-out as a harasser or an abuser -- or, conversely, are potential partners more wary of such folks than they used to be? Also, does all the porn one can get today help folks satiate their curiosity about other people's bodies -- a curiosity you might have had to resort to actual sex to satiate not too many years ago?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slams New York's new Mayor, Eric Adams, for referring to "low-skilled workers" as folks who "don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office." "The suggestion that any job is 'low skill' is a myth perpetuated by wealthy interests to justify inhumane working conditions, little/no healthcare, and low wages," she says, and she's absolutely right, and didn't they say Eric Adams would be a "different" kind of Democrat? By putting the guy in the "corner office" above the barista and the waiter, he's revealed he's just like all the others who look down on folks who don't happen to be entrepreneurs. Remember when folks looked down on manufacturing workers? Now that they're gone, we lionize them! And by the time we get to lionize baristas and waiters, there may not be any jobs left.

Chip Gibbons at Jacobin reminds us -- and we shouldn't have needed the reminder! -- that Dick Cheney certainly should not have gotten the warm reception he got from Democrats on January 6. Seriously, you have to do more than just be against attempted coups to be a good guy in America -- and waging war on Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, torture, and unconstitutional detainment (just to cite things he did as Vice President; Mr. Gibbons also tabulates his nefarious works during his decade in Congress) certainly don't make you a good guy. Why, whenever he thinks of how he managed to steal the 2000 election, I bet he looks at those January 6 rioters and says these guys are pikers!

Finally, Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) now apparently doesn't even support his own proposal for restructuring the Build Back Better Act. Not only does he get to explain to those good folks in West Virginia why they can't have paid family leave, lower taxes for working families, and lower prices for drugs and child care, but he has further isolated himself as The Villain of all these proceedings, which could complicate Democrat efforts to throw the 2022 midterms -- voters will less likely blame all Democrats if they can blame one Democrat. If Kyrsten Sinema is the galaxy brain she thinks she is, she'll convince Mr. Manchin to vote for the bill, since he got everything he asked for, but she's not, so she won't.

Action: concerning January 6, tax cuts for working families, raising taxes on the rich, voting rights, and abortion.

Long story short: tell our Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Donald Trump for the January 6 attempted coup, and tell your Congressfolk to extend the Child Tax Credit expansion, tax billionaire wealth, protect our voting rights, and pass the Women's Health Protection Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first. The first anniversary of Trump supporters attempting a coup against our government was yesterday, and Attorney General Merrick Garland made a point of addressing the nation about the investigation the day before, but if you're thinking the investigation will ensnare a lot of the folks who paraded through our Capitol with their Confederate flags while letting the coup's planners off, well, I wouldn't blame you. Hence Public Citizen helps you remind our Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attempted coup. He's the top dog, after all, no matter how much he avoids taking any responsibility for his many mistakes. And our House's January 6 committee has been uncovering a whole lot of probable cause for that investigation.

Both Daily Kos and Moms Rising help you demand that our Congress pass the Build Back Better Act and thus extend the Child Tax Credit expansion that has kept millions of kids out of poverty. Yeah, the pundits say the Build Back Better Act is dead, but it ain't dead until we say it's dead. Also, fuck the pundits! And seriously, if Joe Manchin wants to be The Man Who Took Your $300 Checks Away because his CEO buddies told him people just use their CTC expansion on drugs, should we allow that argument to win the day? No, we should not, and that's why we need to tell our Congressfolk to act. Yeah, we've told them a hundred times already. And we may have to tell them a hundred more! Might as well get to it, then. Nobody said democracy was easy. Nobody worth listening to, anyway.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to include a billionaire wealth tax in the Build Back Better Act. Because billionaires are making money hand over fist during this pandemic while you're just scraping by, that's why! They're not more talented than you, and they don't work harder than you, a matter in which I have received a 30-plus-year education. Now, both Joe "the Penguin" Manchin and Kyrsten "the Joker" Sinema have made positive noises lately about taxing billionaire wealth! But don't believe it -- they have thoroughly enjoyed pulling the football back at the last second (OK, that's a lot of childhood comics metaphors in one paragraph), and they'll do it again and again and again, unless we make our will unmistakable.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to do whatever it takes to protect our voting rights, including ditching the filibuster. Because with these Republicans it'll come to that! And when Joe Manchin says changes to the filibuster should be "bipartisan," remind him that you have communicated your will to him and that his entire job is doing the will of his constituents, none of whom give one rat's hind-quarter about whether rules changes are "bipartisan." And when Kyrsten Sinema talks about "changing behavior" rather than "changing rules," remind her that you have communicated your will to her and that her job is doing the will of her constituents, who won't care about her hair-splitting when they get turned away at the voting booth for no good reason.

Finally, Daily Kos also helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act. Let's list some of the things states have done in recent years: they've forced women to undergo ultrasounds and state reasons for getting an abortion before getting one, they've allowed entities to disperse lies about abortions to prevent women from getting them, they've held abortion facilities to higher standards than other hospitals for no health-related reason, and they've prevented doctors from giving abortions when the woman's health or life is threatened. The Women's Health Protection Act would sweep all of that (and more) away. Most, if not all, women would appreciate that. Those who get off on telling women what to do won't appreciate, but that's their fault.

Around the table: from climate disasters to media disasters.

Praise the Lord that Bibi van der Zee at The Guardian has compiled a list of all the climate-related disasters we faced in 2021. Surprise: it's not all bad news, and the good news runs the gamut from little victories (dolphins spotted in the East River) to the big (major court decisions in Germany and the Netherlands). The bad news (California drought, Texas power outage, floods in Queensland and Malaysia, et al) can still seem awfully demoralizing, and note well that in several American states you could run over protestors like the Insulate Britain protestors, but then, optimism is really the only sane response to any news, lest you become a Republican, or worse, a cynic.

I'm as hopeful as anyone else that Republicans will pick so many absolutely toxic nominees that they flub their chance to retake Congress, but you have to remember that when they do things like attack Mitch McConnell, all they're doing is creating drama, to distract you from what they really want to do, which is serve their corporate paymasters once they get power. Pretending to hate Mitch McConnell, what a crock. Like we're all stupid! Also remember that the actual number of Republicans who'll withhold their vote from rage-addled assholes is actually very small. The number of independents who might, on the other hand? We'll see.

I'm not sure what to think of Democrats actually taking a (weak 39-37) lead in a USA Today/Suffolk Congressional generic ballot -- Gallup had Republicans up about a dozen in their generic about this time in 2010 (though, weirdly, Rasmussen had the two parties about even at the same time). Anyway, if Dems want to keep this up, they need to do two things: 1) use their power for good, rather than continue to prop up "bipartisan" systems that just hurt us, and 2) remind everyone that the people who threaten the lives of school officials and yell at you for wearing a mask or getting a vaccine are the exact people you will be empowering if you vote Republican. A vote for this is a vote for that! History suggests that Democrats don't have the guts to do these things, but we have the guts to demand that they do.

When I hear that Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) wonders "(w)hy...we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease," I feel compelled to respond that, well, God also created viruses that kill people, and also created people who created vaccines to save them. People like Ron Johnson think they can just drop the word "God" into a sentence and end all conversations, but they're as wrong about that as they are about everything else.

When I hear that some Democratic Senators are actually having trouble figuring out how the "talking filibuster" would work, all I can say is gosh, how did they ever do it for the first 130-plus years they did it? And Joe Manchin can't possibly think Republicans would adopt a rule change they've previously favored while Democrats control the Senate. Actually, I'm sure he doesn't -- he's just hoping you do. He's sure going to have a lot of good works to bring to the Pearly Gates.

Finally, those irredeemable assholes at Fox News are telling working Americans to "get tough" and go to work and school amidst a million omicron cases a day all from inside their little remote Zoom boxes. Plus they're still telling you lies about vaccines while they're all vaccinated. "Go to work," "(l)ive with it" -- these clowns will never do one tenth the work I do, but they'll get away with pretending they're the toughest people on Earth as long as we have to pay for Fox News as part of a basic cable package. Hey, maybe we can do something about that.

Oh, I almost forgot: happy Insurrection Day, right-wingers! Don't stay out too late celebrating; some of you have to work tomorrow.

Around the table: concerning social media, law and order, and right-wing whining.

Dean Baker describes how he'd reform the law that protects social media corporations like Facebook from being sued over the noxious crap they allow on their platforms. You may recall that "(n)ewspapers and broadcast outlets do not enjoy this protection for third party content," but Mr. Baker splits all the knots here -- he'd repeal protections against lawsuits only for corporations that accept ads or sell personal info; sites that survive on subscriptions or donations would continue to enjoy those protections. These would include colleges, non-profits, and small businesses, of course, but also sites like WordPress and Blogger and Typepad, and that's where the real free speech happens anyway.

When I read about the state of Arizona going way out of its way to convince our Supreme Court to send a man back to death row despite the lack of evidence (and ineffective defense counsel) behind his conviction, I'm reminded of a hundred annoying ticky-tack arguments I've had with right-wingers about how procedure is so, so much more important than justice -- which, sadly, suggests to me that our Supreme Court, as full of ticky-tack judges as any other, will look favorably upon Arizona's request to send Barry Jones back to death row, even though you will find plenty of reason to doubt that he should ever have been convicted in the first place.

Already the right-wingers are whining about Twitter banning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (E-GA) for spreading lies about COVID vaccines, even though she entirely deserves her banning. If you're tempted to do the same -- perhaps out of a misguided both-sidesism -- recall that a) there are still plenty of social media platforms for right-wing assholes and b) if some liberal wrote an op-ed full of stupid crap, you would be perfectly right to demand that the newspaper should have exerted some editorial control, just as right-wingers will when some liberal writes an op-ed that's not full of stupid crap but just hurts their fee-fees.

Ho hum, the Trump-appointed Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair is resigning, mainly because the other FDIC members forced a vote on bank mergers. By the time you read exactly why she calls the bank merger vote a "hostile takeover" -- basically, she refused to vote on the matter, and claims the vote is thus illegal, now you try that! -- your reaction will most likely be waaaaaaaaaah. And Ms. McWilliams was explicitly trying to protect banksters' "rights" to merge at will, good Americans be damned! So to her I'd just say don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

California school superintendent investigates students wearing swastikas, then gets death threats. I believe I have already anticipated the right-wing objection: that these eight white kids who painted swastikas on their torsos were just joking. But if it's "just a joke," then why the death threats? You don't threaten to kill someone for taking offense to your gags, do you? Or do we say that's OK behavior now, just because so many rage-addled right-wingers seem to think it's OK?

Finally, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (E-CA) says Democrats are using the January 6 attempted coup as "partisan political weapon.". Well, the attempted coup was itself a partisan political weapon, so what does he expect? Frankly, I suspect Democrats aren't using January 6 as a partisan political weapon enough. And no, Mr. McCarthy you have not all "said from the start, the actions of that day were lawless and as wrong as wrong can be." I hate gaslighters.

Around the table: exploding lies about inflation, law and order, and COVID.

Matt Stoller says about 60% of the inflation hike comes from rising corporate profits. How does he know? Long story short: inflation is five percentage points higher than it was in 2019, and the sharp spike in corporate profits probably accounts for three of those five percentage points -- and n.b. we have investment managers on the record saying that they want to find corporations with "pricing power," a power you don't have unless you also have monopoly power. Thus inflation isn't just a thing that happens, but a thing people with unearned power make happen. You'll also understand "why economists tend to dislike rules against profiteering" -- because "(p)rice gouging, they believe, transmits important information." Well, as long as we have "important information," it must be OK that people get hurt! (And seriously, why do we listen to Larry Summers? Like the proverbial fool who thinks everything's a nail because all he's got is a hammer, Mr. Summers's one solution to every problem is STOP ALLZ TEH GUBMINT SPENDINGZ!!!!)

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says his administration will prosecute anyone who might have helped the St. Louis Post-Dispatch expose a massive security issue in a state website. Well, waaaaaaaaaah -- I mean, if you don't want to be embarrassed, don't earn embarrassment, and blowing the whistle on a state security issue ain't the same as "attempt(ing) to steal personal information and harm Missourians." Hate to beat a dead horse, but this is what happens when Democrats don't run economic populist candidates -- know-nothing, do-nothing right-wingers like Mike Parson coast to re-election.

Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette describes the mercurial rise of an anti-abortion Missouri state legislator who, our "liberal" media tell us, listens to Lizzo and Beyoncé and watches The West Wing, and I must admit that I, too, have long found it tiresome that our "liberal" media outlets go mining for the "unexpected" personal traits of right-wingers. It has the effect of "normalizing extreme viewpoints," as Ms. Pennachia says, and I wouldn't expect any right-winger to be impressed that "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me" are two of my favorite Merle Haggard songs (though neither one is "Branded Man" or "Uncle Lem."

Now an Oklahoma legislator, with obviously no intimate knowledge of Texas's notorious anti-abortion law, not only wants to give parents the "right" to demand that school libraries remove a book, but give them the "right" to "earn" a $10,000 bounty for every day the school doesn't comply. None of these efforts should survive even cursory legal scrutiny -- seriously, have none of them have ever heard of standing to sue? -- but perhaps a few authors will get a boost in their book sales if they get banned in Oklahoma. Why, authors could even try to get their Oklahoma buddies to demand that a book gets banned and then split the bounty! These right-wingers never think anything through.

J. Alexander Navarro at The Conversation reminds us that when folks got tired of wearing masks and social distancing in the 1918 flu pandemic, they paid and paid and paid. Today's lazy, entitled right-wingers won't listen to that, so maybe they'll listen to this: people don't actually want to fuck you as much as you think, so maybe you're not losing out all that much if you cover up that mug of yours.

Finally, Matt Novak at Gizmodo runs down "Fox News' Worst Lies About Covid-19 From 2021." I was actually disappointed to hear that Fox had peddled the BIG GUMMINTZ LYINGZ ABOUTZ TEH DEATHZ!!!! lie (which lie depends on a misunderstanding about the difference between reported deaths and confirmed deaths, not to mention the difference between correlation and causation), because when a relative parroted it to me for the first time I thought maybe it came from some YouTube "celebrity," not plain old rubbish-peddling Fox News. This is why we demand that our cable corporations stop carrying Fox News.

Around the table: the real source of American rage, and other topics.

As Joe Manchin wields excuse after excuse for killing the Build Better Act, David Dayen reminds us that President Biden can write a lot of Executive Orders that would do a lot of good. (Indeed, The American Prospect has made a list!) I sure hope President Biden isn't afraid that right-wingers will call him a dictator, since a) our laws already give our President the authority to issue these orders, b) right-wingers will say anything, no matter how stupid, and c) uh, have they met their Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump?

When I read that rural America faces an eviction crisis because American Rescue Plan Act funding for folks facing eviction has, ah, had a hard time getting to the good Americans who need it, I remind myself that this is why rural Americans vote for Republicans so much -- because Democrats don't do anything good for them when they have the power. I'm sure the information gap between what rural folks think they can get and what they can get is real, but again, shouldn't our federal government make damn sure everyone knows what they need to know?

Ho hum, a Gizmodo/Markup investigation finds that "predictive policing algorithms" tend to ignore white neighborhoods while "predicting" more crime in Black/Brown neighborhoods, meaning that "residents in over-policed areas are confronted, detained, or rung up on bullshit charges with alarming frequency" and then "this data gets fed back into the software to generate more of the same abuse." If you're still thinking but that's where more crime is har har har, all you need ask is whether every conceivable criminal gets punished. Difficulty: if you've ever committed a crime, no matter how small, and not served time for it, then the answer is "no." You did your crime out of sight, you say? Why do you suppose law enforcement didn't see you?

Noami S. Baron at The Conversation comes up with an unexpected answer to the age-old question of " Why We Remember More by Reading -- Especially Print -- Than From Audio or Video" -- that people approach audio, video, and social media with more of "an entertainment mindset," and thus don't devote their full attention to it. That's illuminating -- and mind-boggling, to me at least, since I try to devote my full attention to a TV program or an album just as I do to a book, but again, that's probably just me. All the other reasons you do better reading in print than any other thing -- because you touch paper, you remember the "physical geography" of a page, you remember what you read based on how far into the book you were, because you're more likely "multitasking" when you're on social media -- still operate, of course. Plus, I'd argue, you can re-read something in print far more easily and effectively than you can "re-read" a song or video (which occur in time and usually without accompanying written text) or even read a news article online (which could change when you read it again).

When I hear that the January 6 attempted coup has made the House of Representatives "a deeply unpleasant place to work," I'm tempted to call that a no-shit-Sherlock moment. After all, some of them helped plan the January 6 attack, while roughly a third of them enabled it by voting against certifying the 2020 election that same day for no damn good reason. When folks give you the impression they want you to die, it's hard to break bread with them. Or even drink martinis with them at D.C. watering holes. (The Wall Street Journal article referenced at the link sits behind a paywall, so I don't know how much it bought into all that both-sides-are-to-blame rubbish. Then again, maybe I do.)

Finally, as the year draws to a close, Kevin Drum's analysis of "The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage" is worth revisiting. Spoiler alert: basically, the "real source" of "our national temper tantrum" is the rise and primacy of Fox News over the last two decades -- yeah, talk radio and social media have done some damage, but not the damage Fox News has done. I feel compelled to mention, again, that what it offers its viewers -- rage -- is a very potent drug; it gives its users the illusion of control over chaos. And it's a damn shame that these very same people would never regard immigration or critical race theory as "chaos" unless some slick snake-oil salesfolk told them so, over and over again.

Action: concerning abortion, corruption, clemency, and actual cancel culture.

Long story short: tell Arkansas state legislators to fund family planning programs if they're really that against abortion, tell our Treasury Department to stop states from misusing COVID funding, tell New York Gov. Hochul to extend clemency to Randolph Jamison and Robert Webster, and tell the Sullivan County (TN) School Board to reinstate teacher Matthew Hawn. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Care2 helps you tell Arkansas state legislators to fund family planning programs if they're so concerned about abortions. And that includes birth control! Pick your damn poison, right-wingers! Of course they scream about birth control as much as they scream about abortion, which might lead you to think they don't really care about abortion; rather, they care about stoking rage over abortion, which you can't do quite as well if you actually reduce abortion, right? Colorado made it easy to get IUDs in 2009, and guess what? Their teen birth rate fell over 50% and their teen abortion rate fell over 60% over the next eight years. As long as our media use sex to sell stuff, and we keep buying it, we're not going to reduce abortions by making women wear chastity belts. But this is America! We can still reduce abortions, if we use common sense.

Black Lives Matter helps you tell our Treasury Department to investigate state misuse of COVID relief funds. Like, for example, Alabama's plan to use it to build more prisons! That's what the world needs, more prisons -- certainly not more policies that help people stay the hell out of prison! And you know Alabama ain't gonna fill those prisons with corporate criminals, but with Black folks who were all "resisting arrest." Aside from all of that, how does prison construction constitute relief for good Americans struggling to pay their bills and stay out of the hospital? The American Rescue Plan aimed to help folks pay their bills, not help state governments build prisons so their corporate cronies could get richer. So yeah, our Treasury Department should definitely be stopping corruption from happening.

Change.org helps you tell New York Gov. Hochul to extend clemency to Randolph Jamison. If you're familiar with action alerts like these, you'll see a pattern: man serves absurd amount of time not at all befitting the crime he committed, and becomes a model prisoner -- plus he's already survived cancer and COVID one time each in prison and surviving them again if (when?) they comes back ain't a sure bet, and besides, did he really do the crime of which he's convicted? That would be "possession of narcotics," said narcotics being on the floor of a car with five other people in it. For that -- and also for being Black, I'll bet -- he's already served 32 years in prison. And the laws that mandated these absurd sentences are no more, so what's the hold up?

Change.org also helps you tell Gov. Hochul to extend some mercy to Robert Webster, convicted of arson at age 17 and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison, of which he's served 34, again, as a model prisoner who's become the first member of his family to get an Associate's Degree and works to keep at-risk youth in the New York City metropolitan area out of jail. Oh, and when I say "convicted of arson," I don't mean he actually did the deed! His court case excluded witnesses and evidence that could have exonerated him, and when a police officer guarding the arson victim's home got murdered, the folks convicted of that murder actually got less time than Mr. Webster did. So Gov. Hochul can deliver justice here, however delayed that justice may be.

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell the Sullivan County (TN) School Board to reinstate teacher Matthew Hawn, fired for the unconscionable crime of teaching about racism in the classroom! Right-wingers whine about "censorship" and "cancel culture" when they are the chief practitioners of censorship and cancel culture! Right-wingers talk about how "weak" liberals are but can't stand any criticism, on any grounds, ever! Yeah, you know these things, just as you know pointing out hypocrisy is never enough -- right-wingers induce rage in other folks solely to give them the illusion of control over chaos, knowing that this illusion will keep them coming back again and again for more rage-inducing evil. So let's not have good teachers like Mr. Hawn be collateral damage in this stratagem.

Action: concerning supply chains, taxes, postal banking, voting rights, and corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, extend the Child Tax Credit expansion, expand Postal banking pilot programs, and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the Ban Conflicted Trading Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Our House passed H.R. 4996, the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, earlier this month, by an astounding (and actual bipartisan) margin of 360-64; Matt Stoller explains why the bill is a good one, and the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) help you call your Senators and tell them to pass it. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act essentially re-regulates the shipping industry, an industry in which the big corporate players have, as Mr. Stoller explains, too many financial incentives to gum up the works. Now that the works have been pretty gummed up for several months now -- and you see how gummed up they are in just about every American port! -- our House decided to do something about it. Now we must tell our Senate to follow suit, lest they think we'll forget.

You'll also want to call your Congressfolk and tell them to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent. Who's the biggest opponent of this enormously popular initiative? Sigh, it's Joe Manchin, who has apparently told his fellow Senators that parents will just waste those $250 and $300 checks every month on drugs. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) reports somewhat differently: "The stories I hear the most, if you put it in categories, are child care, school supplies, college fund, phone bills." That sounds like a Senator who actually listens to his constituents -- versus Joe Manchin, who clearly listens only to made-up anecdotes from his corporate executive pals. And again, the people who invent such crappy stories, and spread them, should not get all the say about everything in America.

Save the Post Office helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand postal banking pilot programs in the year-end appropriations bill. Since that's apparently the only thing we're going to pass this year! Seriously, our Post Offices offered basic banking services until half a century ago; now the big banksters won't go into poor rural or urban neighborhoods, leaving those good citizens at the mercy of pawn shops and payday lenders. Expanding postal banking would go a long way toward helping those good Americans make a better life for themselves and their children. (Fun fact: Louis DeJoy deserves no credit for supporting postal banking services, because the USPS labor contract actually mandates the pilot programs! So you can also tell that to your anti-union friends.)

People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. It's a good bill, even though it's Joe Manchin's bill -- it doesn't have the ethics provisions of the For the People Act, but it does almost all of the other things the For the People Act does, plus it cracks down on states trying to subvert the voters' will, which has been a problem in a lot of states this year. Of course, you'll also ask your Senators to ditch the filibuster, at least as it relates to voting rights bills, in order to pass this bill this year. Kyrsten Sinema has already said, once again, that no she will not do that, presumably because we should only "get to yes" by capitulating to Republicans on every conceivable demand no matter how absurd. We should still get ourselves, and our Senators, on the record.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1579/S. 564, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act. The news hook, of course, is the Business Insider report alleging that almost one out of every 10 members of Congress have broken insider trading and conflicts of interest laws, while over 180 Congressional staffers have failed to meet disclosure rules required by law. It's no use saying if you had that insider info, you'd try to profit from it, too, because it's wrong, and trading in corporations you will oversee as part of your job in Congress is also wrong. Thus the Ban Conflicted Trading Act would mostly prohibit Congressfolk from trading in stocks at all. Hey, if you know you can't control yourself, then you need to submit to the control of our laws.

Around the table: concerning our Postal Service, "natural immunity," taxing the rich, *Law & Order*, COVID tests, and the victory for Buffalo Starbucks workers.

Wondering how our Postal Service is doing? Well, what do mail slowdowns and the biggest executive bonuses in a decade tell you? They tell you that putting a Trumphole boss in charge of our Postal Service was not only a big mistake, but a big middle finger to the American people. Louis DeJoy got almost twice the money in bonuses this year as a starting assistant mail carrier got in salary. I'd say that's not a sustainable business practice, but folks like Mr. DeJoy are all too adept at channeling the rage of the injured against the wrong people. Keep that in mind next time your mailman complains about Muslims and immigrants.

Joshua Cho at FAIR notices that some folks are playing up "natural immunity" of folks who've already gotten COVID as a way of slamming vaccine mandates, or vaccines generally. Naturally, we learn that the single study (not peer-reviewed, naturally!) "natural immunity" proponents constantly flog actually came up with completely different results than many, many, many other studies. Dr. Marty Makary, by the way, made his bones as a gastrointestinal surgeon; why would I trust him (or, since this is going to come up a lot over the next year, a cardiothoracic surgeon) over an epidemiologist? Just because "they're all doctors" or "they're all health care professionals" doesn't mean they're all experts in everything.

ProPublica, in describing "How Three Families Shielded Their Fortunes From Taxes for Generations," does a great public service in describing the history of taxing-the-rich in America over the last hundred years, a history that, sadly, includes the damage these families have done in cutting taxes for the rich over the last 40-plus years. Particularly the Mellons, whose name these days gets buried behind the Scaifes, the family Sarah Mellon married into in 1927, and whose most notorious member -- Sarah's son, Richard Mellon Scaife -- donated bigly to right-wing causes (and ran the right-wing rag/money-loser Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) until his death in 2014. And you no doubt noticed that even Thomas Mellon freaking married into money! So much for the rich gaining all their largesse on "merit."

Public defender Olayemi Olurin writes an article at Teen Vogue that has needed to be written for a long time, entitled "Law & Order Taught Americans to Root for the Police." Law & Order "show(s) all manner of police violence, coerced confessions, and blatant violations of the law and a suspect’s rights," which helps condition us to "root for the police and the prosecutor." That's all true, and we've all seen hundreds of cop shows and thus have all rooted for the cops more than we would in more tranquil moments, but I'd say the problem is even deeper than that: all cop shows are Dragnet -- that is, they're literally melodramas, where characters only speak dialogue to advance the plot, and thus bad art begets bad civics. And, seriously, do police officers get into 22 complex life-or-death situations a year? And would the state have left Olivia Benson at SVU for 23 years-and-counting?

The Biden Administration will mail as many as half a billion free, at-home COVID tests to any home that asks for one, which is better than making folks fill out forms so their health insurers will reimburse them for their COVID tests, but you still have to ask for one, and it's not clear yet how you'll do that. Still, you asked for better from your government, and you got it! Now cue the whining from right-wingers that they're mailing tracking devices to your home! (News flash: if you have a cellphone, you're already carrying around a tracking device.)

Finally, Sonali Kolhatkar at Counterpunch covers the successful unionization effort at a Buffalo Starbucks. You'll read about the usual union-busting tricks ahead of the election -- suddenly hiring new anti-union staff, suddenly deploying external managers to that one store, management shutting down cafés so they force workers to watch Howard Schultz tell them not to join a union -- and you'll appreciate this zinger, aimed at corporate spokeshacks who call unions "third parties": "our union is going to be made up of baristas and shift supervisors who make up Starbucks. That’s not a third party." (As an aside: why do they want you to think a "third party" is a bad thing? I just can't imagine!) You might even start to think that when Starbucks executives constantly yammer on about the health insurance and tuition assistance they deign to give to their employees, they're actually delivering veiled threats! Don't join a union, or your health insurance gets it! Alternately, join a union and you'll have the power to compel better health insurance, plus you'll work the schedule of a sane person, and for more money!

Light posting notice plus bonus Manchin slam.

Posting will be light around here through the holidays, though I should note the death of the Build Back Better Act at the hands of West Virginia "moderate" "Democratic" Senator Joe Manchin.

Sen. Manchin said yesterday that he's a "no" vote on the Build Back Better Act, which in a Senate with exactly 50 Democrats means it won't pass. Naturally he adds, as he often does, that "(i)f I can't go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can't vote for it." Good! Now he can explain to the good citizens of West Virginia that he is the reason they can't get paid family medical leave, a cap on insulin prices, a cap on child care costs, higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, or an extension of the Child Tax Credit expansion that just delivered the last of the $250 and $300 monthly checks into working families' bank accounts on December 15. Of course all he'll talk about is inflation and COVID and the national debt, though all of the things I just listed would actually help battle inflation and COVID, and the Build Back Better Act would add less money to the national debt than his pet "bipartisan" "infrastructure" bill from earlier this year.

Naturally Joe Manchin couldn't stop there: he also said that the Build Back Better Act represents an attempt to "dramatically reshape our society." To which I say: that is to laugh! The Build Back Better Act is already a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a compromise, and I'm sure I left a few compromises out. And the fact is that all the Big Gummint spending programs I mentioned in the previous paragraph, all part of this effort to "dramatically reshape" America, actually promote freedom. Are you more free or less free when you're figuring out which bills you can pay this month and which ones you can get away with "forgetting" to pay? Are you more free or less free when you're paying one working parent's entire year's salary just for child care? Are you more free or less free when you can't afford insulin because big corporations charge whatever for it? Are you more free or less free when you can't take a day off to care for a sick child or a sick parent without losing pay or losing your job? Are you more free or less free when more of your taxpayer money goes right into the pockets of big pharma CEOs? Are you more free or less free when absurdly wealthy billionaires can just buy Congressfolk to change laws so they can make even more money without doing any more work or contributing to civilization in any conceivable way? I trust you know the answer to all of these questions, even if Joe Manchin doesn't.

Or, more likely, pretends not to. He's not stupid, and nor are any of his comrades in Congress, so I must reluctantly conclude that I was right, earlier, when I supposed that the Democrats set up this whole process to fail. So Democrats absolutely deserve to lose both Houses of Congress -- except that we don't deserve what'll happen to us if Republicans take Congress again, and anyway, why let the Democrats off easy? So we should still clog up their phone lines, and then make them pay for their greed and their venality and their folly -- preferably by making them lose their next elections to real liberals, but short of that, by making their names mud for as long as they're in office, the way Joe McCarthy's name was mud during his last term as Senator after he'd doubled down one time too many. I want people like Joe Manchin to be afraid to show their faces in public, and then I want them to lose their primaries and slink away. Because he doesn't have the power. We do. And we need to wield it until they all understand that.

Action: concerning press freedom, voting rights, weapons sales, "Grinch bots," and pregnant workers.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act so our Executive branch can't keep abusing it, tell your Senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act, so that our government can't use it to put journalists in jail. Yes, that's what Julian Assange is, regardless of whether or not you agree with him! And that's what releasing the Wikileaks papers was, too, and if we're going to put him in jail for that, then we should have put Daniel Ellsberg in jail for releasing the Pentagon Papers, and nobody's in favor of that, are they? I must say I find it disheartening to find President Biden continuing the unfortunate trend under President Obama of using the Espionage Act to punish truth-tellers, be they journalists or whistleblowers from within the Executive branch. American democracy demands more of President Biden, just as it demands more of us.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to vote on S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, this month. Especially now that Democrats have actually snuffed out the shutdown and debt limit dramas! And easy as it is to make fun of Joe Manchin's objections to the For the People Act, his Freedom to Vote Act is about as good -- it gets rid of ethics provisions I wonder why! but it adds provisions that would keep states from hijacking the people's will during elections, as many states have moved to do this year. And early voting for 15 days in all states, same-day voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, clamping down on partisan gerrymandering, restoring ex-felons' voting rights, and restricting dark money campaign contributions are all good works. So let's make our Senators do them.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4718, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act. In the wake of our government selling over $100 billion in weapons to nations we know abuse the rights of their citizens, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Philippines, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would allow our President to impose sanctions against any nation that breaks international human rights law, and that sure seems prudent -- I mean, you wouldn't want to be an accessory to someone else's genocide, would you? The bill would also establish a Commission on Atrocity Accountability and Human Rights, which would be able to supply Presidents with the information they'd need to determine human rights violations and impose sanctions. How would this bill's opponents object? Probably by yammering on about "socialism."

Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5263/S. 3276, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act. What are "Grinch bots"? They're pieces of software that roam the internet and buy up all the most popular items, so they can resell them at a high markup. Nice work if you can get it! Actually, since you're not a Grinch-bot -- and, very likely, you're not someone who writes Grinch-bots -- you can't get it, and more to the point, you can't get something nice for your nephew for Christmas this year because some bot has already bought it up and now wants twice as much as it paid for it. In a time of supply-chain bottlenecks caused by COVID, this ain't exactly what you need this holiday season. But Congress has done this kind of thing before, with 2016's Better Online Ticket Sales Act, so they can do it again.

Finally, the ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1065/S. 1486, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. We've been trying to get this passed for years, since too many bosses fire pregnant workers, won't hire pregnant workers, or make their pregnant workers' lives miserable; the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would prevent bosses from doing any of these things, by forcing them to make, and I quote, "reasonable accommodations" to their pregnant workers. Note well the word "reasonable," for when some right-wing prick rants about Big Gummint letting workers spend their entire shift in the bathroom, which the bill does not allow, because it is not a "reasonable" accommodation. Our House passed this bill in May by a wide margin, but the bill still needs a vote before the whole Senate, so let's prompt them to do that.

Around the table: featuring more garden-variety Congressional corruption.

Surprise, surprise, Business Insider finds nearly 50 Congressfolk have violated the STOCK Act -- law and order, people! -- while almost 75 held stocks in the three big COVID vaccine-manufacturing corporations in 2020, over a dozen have invested in big defense contracting corporations, and another dozen or so Democrats who pride themselves on their greenness have invested in big fossil fuel corporations. In order to influence these corporations' decision-making toward the good? I kid, of course -- you and I might more credibly make that claim than the people we charge with policing these corporations. Searchable database coming Friday, apparently.

From Mike Ludwig at TruthOut we learn that the third-biggest source of methane emissions in America (after fossil fuel and agricultural operations) is the American landfill, and not even our EPA can tell us how much methane our landfills belch forth. Which is to say, their way of measuring landfill emissions is two decades old and doesn't actually measure emissions at the source. The good news? Our laws mandate that our EPA review its emissions-measuring model (and update it as need be) every three years, but guess which American President didn't bother complying with the law? That means a forthcoming lawsuit will likely force our EPA's hand here. Also too, the Biden Administration has committed to fighting environmental racism, and most landfills are guess where? Near Black and Brown neighborhoods, of course. You probably didn't really need to guess.

The New York Times finds that some of the worst of the internet lies can be found in politicians' fund-raising emails, but I have to say I was taken aback by the news that Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) sent out a fundraising email saying the Build Back Better Act has Medicare-for-All in it. Maybe right-wing media have trained some of his constituents well enough to have a stroke when they read the words "Medicare for All," but, ah, is he aware how broadly popular Medicare-for-All is with conservatives and liberals? All I'm saying it that particular untruth might have backfired on him, which, sadly, makes it the exception to the rule. (As an aside: if Republicans are going to fundraise off the lie that our Justice Department wants to "label parents terrorists," when are Democrats going to fundraise off the actual death threats spewed forth by some of these parents?)

Ho hum, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) approves of federal disaster aid for Kentucky after tornadoes devastated the state, after a decade of opposing federal disaster relief for other states. I was about to say "so he'll respond by saying he always opposed deficit disaster relief those other times and not the principle of federal disaster relief," but his spokeshack's statement to Newsweek didn't even try that, instead saying leave us alone, we're suffering and grieving today. And, you know, I'm willing to discuss taking the money from somewhere else! Somehow I think Mr. Paul would oppose taking it from corporate welfare tax breaks, though.

The headline reads "Trump Says Netanyahu 'Never Wanted Peace' With the Palestinians," but the article (based on an interview with Mr. Trump) actually goes rather deeper than that: Mr. Trump apparently liked both Mahmoud Abbas and Benny Gantz, and really, really didn't like Mr. Netanyahu's attempts to annex even more of Palestine in early 2020, though if you were tempted to call no-shit-Sherlock on his claim that Mr. Netanyahu was just "tap(ping) us along," I wouldn't blame you. And though my initial reaction to the headline was "I think he's right!", my next reaction was "then why did you enable him?" History may yet record that Mr. Trump was little-if-any worse than the last five or so U.S. Presidents on Israel/Palestine policy, though that's a hell of a thing to bring to the Pearly Gates.

Finally, a right-wing pollster puts out a poll finding that two-thirds of West Virginians oppose the Build Back Better act, but I doubt Joe Manchin has been "listening" to that finding so much as rejoicing that all his hard work linking the Build Back Better Act to inflation has finally paid off! Just a few months ago 70% of West Virginians approved of the Build Back Better Act; I'd still trust that finding more than this one, since that one wasn't created by two months of media hysteria over inflation (and flew in the face of general negative or non-coverage from our "liberal" media). Also, too, most West Virginians like paid family medical leave; I wonder how they feel about the fact that their senior Senator killed it.

Action: concerning our "liberal" media, forced arbitration, women's health, protecting our democracy, and internet freedom.

Long story short: tell CNN to ask tougher questions of U.S. Senators, tell your Congressfolk to pass the FAIR Act, and tell your Senators to pass the Women's Health Protection Act and the Protecting Our Democracy Act and to confirm Gigi Sohn as an FCC Commissioner. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

FAIR helps you tell CNN to ask tougher questions of U.S. Senators during live interviews. The occasion for this action alert is a softball interview CNN did with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ), in which CNN threw a bunch of granny balls at her, and didn't ask her about how her campaign donations might influence her actions or how she could possibly say she's serving Arizona when the good citizens of Arizona seem to disagree with everything she's doing. Big media poobahs like saying you can't ask tough questions of powerful people because then they won't come on your show anymore. I can think of a few words for that, like coddling and enabling. The powerful get too much of that in America. We have to remind our "liberal" media outlets that all that coddling and enabling is what makes good Americans hate them.

Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 963/S. 505, the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (or FAIR) Act, which would, as its title suggests, prohibit corporations from forcing you to resolve "employment, consumer, antitrust, or civil rights disputes" via an arbitration process that generally favors them, not you, and certainly not justice. (Forced arbitration clauses also generally prevent class-action suits; the bill prohibits them from doing that, too.) Do you like getting a Christmas gift that doesn't work right, only to find the corporation that made it or sold it to you won't let you go to court to redress this incident, as is your right? Then you will want your Congressfolk to make this bill into law. (Don't buy reports of four-digit "average arbitration awards," for when you lose, your "average" will be zero!)

The ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755, the Women's Health Protection Act. Our Supreme Court has allowed clinics to sue over Texas's notorious SB 8, but has inexplicably left the law in place while those suits work their way through the courts; only the Women's Health Protection Act will protect a woman's right to control her own damn body, and it would do a good job protecting it, both from state-level bans and from state-level obstacles (like forced ultrasound laws, laws allowing anti-abortion clinics to give false advice, and laws requiring more from abortion clinics than they require from any other health care facility). Don't believe the hype that Susan Collins wants to help codify Roe v. Wade into law, because she's already said this bill goes too far; the best way to change her mind is to flood her phonelines.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. This bill would stop future Presidents from profiting from their office, abusing their pardon power, declaring "national emergencies" whenever their ego gets bruised, and fire Inspectors General whenever they feel like, to name just four injuries Donald Trump did to this country while President. And don't brook any nonsense about how you're "rehashing the past" if you support this bill, because under that "logic," one could reject pretty much any attempt to make anything better in America! Indeed, it's almost like that's the idea! Besides which, he's running in 2024 -- he hasn't made it official, but c'mon -- which means his evil deeds are not the exclusive property of "the past."

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Senators to confirm Gigi Sohn to be our fifth FCC Commissioner. Our Senate confirmed Jessica Rosenworcel as FCC Chair earlier this month; now they just need to confirm Ms. Sohn, and we can finally realize our dream of getting net neutrality back. That is, of course, exactly why Senators Tillis (R-NC) and Sullivan (R-AK) put a hold on her nomination earlier this month! But literally the only people who don't support net neutrality in America are a) corporate lobbyists and b) the politicians who enable them -- everyone else, conservative to liberal, supports an internet where big corporations don't get to dictate to you where you can go. It ain't just net neutrality at stake, either -- it's also all that infrastructure bill broadband investment our FCC has to manage. So let's get to it.

Action: concerning Build Back Better, worker rights, drilling near neighborhoods, probation "reform," and prosecuting Bolsonaro.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass a vigorous Build Back Better Act, tell Kellogg's and Starbucks to give their workers fair contracts, tell California to prohibit oil and gas drilling in neighborhoods, tell Pennsylvania state legislators to reject a probation-related bill, and tell the International Criminal Court to prosecute Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First up: let's call our Senators and tell them to pass the Build Back Better Act more or less as the House passed it -- plus let's make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, roll back the Trump tax cuts on corporations and on the top tax bracket, limit SALT repeal to workers making less than $400,000, and let Medicare negotiate drug prices on all its drugs. And enough of inflation as a fear stick! "Government spending more" does not mean "more inflation," no matter how much right-wingers want you to think so! You know what's driving inflation? Corporations charging you more! And brook no BS about "how much the bill will really cost" or whatever rubbish report Sen. Graham cajoled our CBO into creating. Joe Manchin is not stupid enough to "fall for this" -- more likely, they're all acting out the drama that'll enable him to vote against the bill. West Virginia residents can counter this by calling Sen. Manchin and communicating their will. Telling him they're on to the drama wouldn't hurt.

More Perfect Union helps you tell Kellogg's to give their striking workers a fair contract or else you'll continue to boycott their products. They're hiring permanent replacement workers as we speak, but that doesn't mean we should concede defeat, and anyway those replacement workers sure are in for a shock! Kellogg's actual workers are striking right now partly because of the notorious two-tiered salary system one could say is designed to pit worker against worker, but also because of 16-hour work days and forced overtime. Kellogg's last contract offer (which workers overwhelmingly rejected) purported to address the two-tier system, but would only allow 3% of workers at each plant to ascend to the top pay tier annually, meaning workers would have to wait nine years to get the pay they deserve! Keep that in mind when Kellogg's rolls out its propaganda about all the pay increases they offered.

More Perfect Union also helps you tell Starbucks to negotiate fair contracts with its workers in Buffalo who have voted to join a union. Nobody's worried that Starbucks coffees will be too expensive if Starbucks treats its workers fairly, are they? Because that is to laugh! Admittedly today's CEOs are so clueless they might well put that line out, but I've been at so many Starbucks branches that don't hire enough workers to handle the volume, plus Starbucks messes with its workers' schedules just as much as any other non-union corporation. It's well past time we recognized that work is work, that no worker is "worthless" merely because they work a service job. Unions should have led us in this direction a long time ago, frankly! But the time to do the right thing is always now.

Vision CA helps you tell the government of California to stop oil and gas corporations from drilling where good folks live. Gov. Newsom has proposed a 3,200 foot setback for drilling -- meaning corporations couldn't drill within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, and hospitals -- but only to new drilling wells; you would want existing wells to obey the 3,200 foot rule, too, right? After all, they pollute just as much, if not more, than new wells. This is an instance where "grandfathering" bad wells in will hurt people. Also, you'll urge California to ban new permits within setbacks until the rule takes effect, which will have the effect of getting drilling corporations used to the ban, since we care so much about their feelings these days. More important, of course, are the good citizens of California who deserve clean air and clean water.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the ACLU helps you tell your state Senators to reject SB 913, a probation "reform" bill that will, in the ACLU's words, "trade one bad system for another." SB 913 would, on balance, make it easier for folks on probation to get sent to jail, when the whole reason behind probation is to offer an alternative to putting everyone in jail, plus it would make it easier for poor people to be sent to jail, by keeping people on probation indefinitely if they haven't paid restitution. If the words can't do the time, don't do the crimehave formed on your lips, I would hope you'd say that to corporate criminals if you say it to the imaginary Black folks in your head, and besides, keeping people on probation forever until they've paid a fine is a very good way of tripping people up so they go back to jail again, which would be a private prison corporation's wet dream. And they already have too many of their dreams realized at our expense.

Finally, Avaaz helps you tell the International Criminal Court to open a prosecution against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, not necessarily for all of the awful stuff he's done (a Brazilian Senate committee recommended he be indicted over his mishandling of the COVID pandemic), but particularly for his actions against the Amazon and against the indigenous folks who defend it. The Amazon has lost the equivalent of 3,000 football fields per day during his nefarious rule, and he has encouraged a lot of illegal logging and mining in the Amazon, plus violence against the good folks who live there, all of which may well meet the ICC's "crimes against humanity" standard, particularly when you consider that the Amazon rain forest would be the world's best defense against climate change if we'd just leave it the hell alone. Treating the world like your personal piggy bank should have consequences, but it won't if we don't demand it.

Around the table: featuring a lot of right-wing whining and stupid plans.

Yes, Virginia, the Trump brain trust, such as it is, really did put their plans to overthrow our government into a PowerPoint presentation. Which begs the question: if Mark Meadows turned this document over to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attempted coup before he decided to stop cooperating, what far worse crap could he now be hiding? It's a question worth answering!

Right-wingers are wringing their hands over the fact that "young Democrats" don't want to date them or be their friends anymore, but what the fuck do they expect after the way they've acted for the last two decades? How many times should they be entitled to call people "traitor" and "weakling" without any consequences? I, for one, am glad that the youths have figured out that shame and shunning are real things civilized people do. And, last I looked, our First Amendment guaranteed freedom of association, which I guess right-wingers think is only for corporations.

Alex Pareene suggests that Elon Musk might be playing a long game by making his self-driving cars work so badly -- chiefly so that governments may further restrict the movements of folks who walk, "for their own safety," of course. Instead of actually punishing Tesla for developing bad technology, which would be a better way of insuring citizens' safety than walling off their sidewalks! Those of us who are trying to make our lives more walkable might take such things a bit personally. And folks who find themselves impressed at such "galaxy-brain thinking" should ask what good any plan does if its goal is "make one person richer." It's not a thing to take to the Pearly Gates, after all.

Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph now Fox News prettyheads want to call the burning of their Christmas tree outside a hate crime against Fox News! Which sure would take corporate "personhood" to a whole new level! Apparently that's about the only way to hold the accused arsonist on bail in New York City now; of course they blame TEH LIBRULZ!!!! for reforming bail laws, and whine about TEH CRIMEZ SURGEZ!!!! though not using actual facts, but seriously, it's not at all absurd to regard a guy who burns down a big Christmas tree as not much of a flight risk or a danger to others. Why, Fox News is whining so much I'm starting to suspect the whole thing was an inside job!

Uh oh: a publicist for Kanye West apparently threatened a Georgia poll-worker with jail if she didn't "come forward" with non-existent election fraud. Of course he didn't directly threaten Ms. Freeman; he just said "I cannot say what specifically will take place. I just know that it will disrupt your freedom and the freedom of one or more of your family members. You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up." And he imagines a court of law won't find that a threat? Would now be a good time to remind everyone that Kanye West's best riff comes from Phil Manzanera?

Finally, the president of California's medical board alleges that a group of anti-vaxxers, possibly associated with the notorious astroturf group America's Frontline Doctors, have stalked her, spied on her (by flying a drone over her house), and confronted her in a dark parking lot. If these allegations are true -- and local police seem to think they are -- I hope these individuals get jail time. After all, if we want to be a law-and-order country, we should go after the real enemies of law and order.

Around the table: featuring an actual outrage in Myanmar and a clueless seditionist soon to be in prison.

As Myanmar's military sentences former/actual Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi to four years in prison on bogus charges, we are reminded, I would hope, that this all started because Suu Kyi's party won parliamentary elections rather decisively in 2020, but the military didn't like it, so they cried fraud and overthrew the government, murdering peaceful protestors numerous times since then. Bunch of diaper-loaded brats with guns, these people! And, sadly, this is where we're heading, America -- maybe not in 2024, as Republicans hope to retake the Presidency through merely corrupt means, but eventually, if we fail to do our job.

Ho hum, our "liberal" media pretend that the two remaining candidates in Chile's Presidential elections -- a far-right pro-Pinochet asshole and a not-as-far-left protest leader -- are somehow "equally bad." This is similar to "liberal" media arguments that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were equally bad, a conclusion not justified by any evidence, but I also suspect that a lot of our media thought Mr. Pinochet was good for business! Another question raised by the article: if "moderates" are so great, why did the majority of Chilean voters reject them? (And we now learn that the far-right candidate's father was an actual Nazi, contrary to said candidate's statements; how will our "liberal" media deal with this one? One candidate's father was a Nazi, but the other wants to destabilize Chile by paying workers in more than dung pellets. Both sides!)

Today, in "Who's Not Paying Taxes?": real estate and oil tycoons, according to ProPublica's trove of leaked IRS tax returns. Doesn't matter that magically converting profits into losses is legal; after all, a lot of immoral things are also legal merely because rich folks buy more favorable laws from their Congressfolk, and everyone who actually pays taxes shouldn't aspire to be more like Stephen Ross, but should be furious with folks like Stephen Ross every time they bottom out over a pothole. And nobody should be fooled by the concept of depreciation wiping out a building's worth for tax purposes over a decade, as if buildings typically crumble to the ground that fast.

One of the January 6 seditionists, facing a mere 60 days in prison for her role in attempting to keep Donald Trump in office despite his being rejected by 81 million voters, says on TikTok that she's hoping "to be able to work out a lot and do a lot of yoga and detox" while in prison, and also hopes there'll be "some protein shakes and some protein bars." All I can say is that if she'd spent a lifetime being harassed by police because of her skin color, she wouldn't now be hoping she can "use" her prison term to shed a few pounds.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) won't commit to supporting the Build Back Better Act, because word salad. Between this and not wanting to hold big corporations accountable with vaccine mandates even though he says it's their "responsibility," his tough-guy image sure is suffering. Also, if the "unknown" he fears is actually inflation -- and not just "the unknown," because refusing to raise taxes on the rich and lower them on working families and give workers four weeks of paid family medical leave and cut the cost of child care in half all because of "the unknown" is just abject cowardice -- then I'm old enough to remember when inflation was twice what it is now. We are truly led by the worst people.

Finally, David Brooks laments that "(w)hat passes for 'conservatism' now" "is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered" as a young man, and though I've long been no great fan of Mr. Brooks, describing modern-day "conservatism" quite specifically as "a sort of mental brutalism" may be the best way anyone's described right-wingers screaming at the top of their lungs on TV -- make no mistake, they are absolutely trying to brutalize you. I also hadn't thought to locate the "brutish anti-intellectualism" of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers in the "epistemological modest(y)" of conservatism, and I think he's pretty courageous to say that. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Mr. Brooks has historically had too little to say about "big corporations suck(ing) the vitality out of local economies," but his entire argument is nonetheless very much worth your time. Personally I think liberals defend and maintain civilization at least as much as conservatives do, I conceive of the New Deal as a liberating force more than a planning project, and I put more faith in reason simply because I have so often witnessed it make sense of a complex world, but what a boon it would be to have these conversations again, rather than have to explain why you can't equate cancer and COVID to someone who's only trying to create drama in the first place.

Action: mostly concerning pollution.

Long story short: tell the Biden Administration to make rapid COVID-19 tests free, designate the Delaware Water Gap a National Park, restore protections for migratory birds, ban mining within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, charge more money in public royalties for coal mining on public lands, and enact the most vigorous methane emissions regulations possible. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell President Biden to make rapid COVID-19 tests free for all Americans. Last week he proposed requiring health insurance corporations to reimburse folks for the cost of these tests, but that's not really the same thing as "just make the tests free," and not just to folks who have no health insurance. If you're buying groceries and paying the bills, you might not also have $20 to plunk down for a COVID-19 test -- which would just be for you, of course; if you have children, you'd want to test them, too, so figure another $20 per child. Now it's adding up, and that's before we get to submitting forms to health insurance corporations! Many times I've had to call my insurer to get them to pay up after they wrongly rejected my claims, so we need to make this easy.

Penn Environment helps you tell the Biden Administration to designate the Delaware Water Gap as a National Park. The Delaware Water Gap is one of America's national treasures, a tribute to the success of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (now permanently authorized and funded thanks to 2020's Great Outdoors Act), and over 4.5 million folks visit the Gap every year. Incredibly, though, we have no national parks in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or New York -- no, the right word is "incredibly," if you've seen the vast unspoiled lands each of these states have -- so I'd say it's overdue. And becoming a National Park (versus a National Recreation Area, as it is now) means tens of millions of dollars more in federal funding, which means we'll have something even better to leave to future generations.

Environmental Action helps you tell our Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds from corporate harm. Specifically, you'd ask the Service to roll back the notorious Trump Administration rule "freeing" corporations from facing any accountability for their bird-killing pollution. For such a "law and order" "conservative," Donald Trump sure was all about helping big corporations escape responsibility for their wrongdoing. And the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (which the rule enforces) is over a century old; apparently the Trumpian interpretation of conservatism has nothing to do with "treasuring things that have endured," either. I kid, of course -- the Trumpian interpretation of anything is "whatever induces the most rage in the most people." But that's no way to run a civilization.

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell our Bureau of Land Management to ban mining within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness watershed for the next two decades. Because it would pollute the water, and for what? Not for jobs, that's for sure -- too many right-wingers justify any and every polluting project by saying it'll employ people, as if non-polluting projects don't employ people. This was, indeed, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's excuse for handing out billions of taxpayer money to an ethane cracker plant! But I digress. Our Forest Service concluded, in a 2016 study, that sulfide-ore copper mining would cause irreparable damage to the Boundary Waters; I bet you just can't guess what happened next: the "law and order" "conservative" President said to hell with it, we're leasing anyway. And so we reassert our will.

Penn Environment helps you tell our Interior Department to stop subsidizing coal mining. How does our Interior Department subsidize coal mining? By actually lowering the royalties corporations have to pay for drilling on public lands! You would think our Interior Department would raise those royalties, if for no other reason than to make the taxpayer more money, since royalties do belong to the taxpayer. But our government still doesn't understand the leverage we as taxpayers have. And coal corporations still account for some three-fifths of all carbon emissions, despite providing less than one-quarter of our energy; if they're that bad for America, giving them corporate welfare is even more foolish. If we really want to fight climate change, we need to stop giving out these handouts.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the strongest methane emissions standards possible. Just so happens that cutting methane emissions (which accompany every oil and gas drilling operation in America) would deal perhaps the most efficient blow to climate change, since methane packs an even bigger climate change punch than coal does. And since the methane mitigation industry has been around for at least a decade, brook no HOWZ WILLZ WEZ DOZ TEH THINGZ!!!!! malarkey from big fossil fuel corporations! They're awfully ready with excuses, aren't they? And right-wingers love pretending your actual obstacles are excuses and the excuses of corporations are obstacles. Well, good luck to all of them at the Pearly Gates!

Action: concerning our Postal Service, net neutrality, fair regulation, protecting our democracy, and marijuana legalization.

Long story short: tell your Senators to confirm USPS Board of Governors nominees who will save our Postal Service from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and confirm President Biden's FCC Commissioner nominees, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Corporate Capture Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, and the MORE Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Progress America helps you tell your Senators to confirm USPS Board of Governors nominees who will protect our Post Office from its Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Who tried to sabotage the 2020 election, as you recall, and who has lately increased prices while cutting service as his "bold" plan to "save" our Post Office, and that sure ain't helping out anyone who gets their life-saving medications through the mail. President Biden hasn't nominated new USPS Governors, but we may as well put our Senators on notice that they work for us -- a fact we need to remind them of fairly frequently! -- and they're supposed to do our will. They're not supposed to put our Postal Service on a path to privatization, because only a few crony corporations want that, and they're not supposed to get all the say about everything in America.

Battle for the Net helps you tell your Senators to confirm both of President Biden's FCC Commissioner nominees. Our Senate Commerce Committee has moved Jessica Rosenworcel's nomination out of committee, but stalled on Gigi Sohn, as at least two Republican Senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, have put holds on her nomination because she's "too pro-net neutrality." If Messrs. Tillis and Sullivan actually listened to their constituents, they would confirm Ms. Sohn precisely because she's pro-net neutrality, net neutrality being one of the few issues that actually unites conservatives and liberals. As long as they're only going to listen to big corporations -- literally the only possible "constituents" they might have that oppose net neutrality -- then we're just going to have to be louder.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 6107, the Stop Corporate Capture Act. What would the Stop Corporate Capture Act do? It would streamline our regulatory processes by a) keeping out corporate-financed "scientific" studies that aim to undermine clean air, clean water, and product safety regulations, and b) require our government to consider societal benefits a bit more broadly when crafting regulations. Too often Congress gives corporations too much of a say over regulations that are supposed to benefit all of us, not just them, hence the madness over "cost-benefit analyses" that tabulate how much money a regulation will cost a corporation, rather than how much a regulation will help all of us. The Stop Corporate Capture Act will strike a blow against all that, so we should demand it.

Public Citizen also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. You remember Donald Trump, right? Pretty much a walking advertisement for How to Abuse Presidential Power, amirite? Well, the Protecting Our Democracy Act would right a lot of his wrongs by strengthening Congressional subpoena power, giving whistleblowers more protection against retaliation, and restraining Presidents from abusing their pardon power. The bill would also restrict Presidential emergency declaration power, require Presidential candidates to release a decade's worth of tax returns, and prevent Presidents from profiting from being in office. Certainly the Protecting Our Democracy Act represents an effort to learn from our recent mistakes, and we should encourage that.

Finally, the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE) Act. The bill would not only remove marijuana from our federal Schedule I, which would essentially make pot legal across the land, and it would expunge previous pot convictions and reinvest in communities harmed by the notorious "war on drugs," which has largely become a war on Black and Brown folks. Hey, the Man's gotta keep them down somehow -- the Man can't always stop them from voting no matter how hard he tries! Pot legalization is yet another issue that, these days, actually unites conservatives and liberals -- the only folks who really want to keep pot illegal are the folks who are already in a state of rage about everything, and they already get too much say in how we run America.

Around the table: featuring yet more life lessons from Joe Manchin.

Jack Shafter at Politico says it's well past time to "pull the plug" on cable "news", certainly as far as acting like it's so damn important. The big three traditionally over-the-air networks pull in five times the viewers for their nightly news broadcasts than all the big three prime-time cable news programs put together, and it doesn't get any better when you compare them to other audiences (Netflix streamers outnumber prime-time cable "news" watchers by about 17 to 1). Problem is these channels make so much money from advertisers and cable corporations, all about as equally-deluded as to cable "news"'s importance. And that's why we'll keep telling big cable corporations to drop cable "news" channels.

Two Georgia election workers sue right-wing website Gateway Pundit for defamation. Their suit alleges that Gateway Pundit "repeatedly published demonstrably false claims that portrayed the women as 'traitors' who conspired to 'steal the presidential election in Georgia'," which apparently "incited months of death threats and harassment against them." I wouldn't put it past Gateway Pundit to assert an absence of malice because they would have attacked any election workers, not just the plaintiffs! In any case, I wish the plaintiffs the best in their efforts to get justice for what's been done to them.

Ben Horton at TruthOut reminds us that "Corporate Political Spending is Bad for Democracy", and I bring it partly because Mr. Horton actually provides some solutions in a post-Citizens United world, including limiting SuperPAC contributions and banning contributions from corporations with "substantial" foreign ownership. I also bring it up because it turns out former Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in a 1978 dissent, put the problem as succinctly as I've seen it put: our First Amendment doesn't "the public to allow 'its own creation to consume it.'" We would have to be nihilists to demand that our First Amendment provide the means for its own destruction, after all.

Margaret Hartmann at New York magazine reminds us that Dr. Mehmet Oz's Senate run in Pennsylvania forces us to "to reckon with Oprah Winfrey’s penchant for promoting pseudoscience that harms society." She brought Dr. Oz to the masses, after all, just as she brought Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine malarkey from the middle of the 2000s to the masses. She also brought Dr. Phil to the masses; the only advice most of Dr. Phil's couples deserved was "I want you two to go back in time and prevent yourselves from ever meeting," and now Dr. Phil ain't a good place to go for COVID advice, either. Ms. Hartmann's article is very well-sourced, by the way; acquaint yourself with Dr. Oz's fall from early grace now and maybe we can prevent him from winning later. (As an aside, of course all the Trumpian Islamophobes will rally to Dr. Oz's side. He tells them what they want to hear, after all, and how else to convince yourself you're not prejudiced by carefully tabulating all your non-WASP friends?)

When I hear that Joe Manchin will join all 50 Senate Republicans in passing one of those notorious "resolutions of disapproval" aiming to take down President Biden's vaccine mandate, I note that he says we should "we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from COVID-19," and I wonder why do we even have Republicans? They no doubt appreciate him making their arguments for them, but I must also ask: if it's employers' "responsibility" "to protect their employees from COVID-19," why wouldn't we punish them for evading that responsibility? I'd ask if he "incentivized" his kids doing their homework by giving them cookies before they did it, but given how his daughter turned out, I think I already know the answer.

Finally, I know the almost-shutdown is so last week's news already, but dig how House speaker Nancy Pelosi attacks the Republicans who would have shut it down in order to defund vaccine mandates: "How do they explain to the public that they're shutting down government because they don't want people to get vaccinated?" They say "Democrats can't message," but I think that's brilliant messaging, and I have to wonder why our "liberal" media doesn't recognize it as such. I can't decide if it's more because she's not a Republican or because she's not a man.

Action: Monday, Build Back Better, etc.

Long story short: tell your Senators to fight climate change, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to ensure the Build Back Better Act makes historic investments in fighting climate change. It's simple: if we don't fight climate change, we won't have a planet to live on. Why, even those who live in gated communities won't have a planet to live on! And certainly don't believe Republican hype that President Biden's climate change agenda is driving up gas prices. Gas ain't the only energy in the world, after all, and big corporations are driving up gas prices because they can. And the Build Back Better Act ain't even passed yet! Yikes, they think we're all so stupid. And "I pretended everyone was stupid so I could gaslight people into doing things they didn't want to do" is a hell of a thing to take to the Pearly Gates.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. As I said last week, Sen. Sinema complained about the price tag of the Build Back Better Act, but then crippled the bill's ability to pay for itself! And she could still stamp her feet at the 15% corporate minimum tax and the 5% and 8% surtaxes on income over $10 million and $25 million respectively; tall we can do is keep communicating our will to our Senators until they do it. It has an effect -- Sen. Sinema's office, I've heard, ain't anyone's favorite place to work partly because of all the good Arizonans giving her what-for about what she's doing. If we keep that up, we'll have more of an effect.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. Too many Democrats act like doing something for their bosses, the American people, will result in massive losses in the midterms, but does that make sense to you? Sure seems like doing something for the people makes them want to keep you in office! And just as expanding the Child Tax Credit seems like an easy thing to run on -- and not just because of all those $250 and $300 checks arriving in working families' bank accounts! -- cutting child care costs in half, as the Build Back Better Act would do, should also be an easy thing to run on! If Democrats are going to pretend doing this stuff is hard, then of course they deserve to lose. But let's make it hard for them to pretend.

Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Paid family/medical leave is yet another popular initiative that has thus far fallen victim to One Holdout Democrat, this time Joe Manchin, who apparently prefers working with Republicans and paying for it with payroll tax hikes. That won't pass President Biden's no-tax-hikes-on-folks-making-less-than-$400,000 demand, and it also won't pass a Senate with more than 39 Republicans in it, like this one. Because they block everything! But how did we even get paid/family medical leave in the bill to begin with? Through our activism. And how did we get our House to put it back in the bill after Sen. Manchin wanted it out? Through our activism. It's the only thing that works, so we have to keep doing it.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Senators put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. And who demanded the exclusion of Medicare drug price negotiation from the Build Back Better Act? Kyrsten Sinema, of course, who now says she thinks the bill won't get done until after Christmas! As if she isn't one of the two main reasons this bill isn't done now! Yikes, she's worse than a cartoon supervillain. And they usually don't do their evil in plain sight. Hell, even Joe Manchin will tell you he'd prefer to finish it up next year; he doesn't act like it's some law of physics preventing it from getting done. But folks like Kyrsten Sinema are the reason we have to keep doing what we do.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Joe Manchin has expressed his "reservations" about this as well, due to Medicare "insolvency" or something, and that's why Democrats have been either the minority party or a timid majority party for the last 40-plus years -- like a football team going into the Prevent defense with two minutes left and a five-point lead, Democrats don't play to win, they play not to lose. Instead of worrying about TOO MUCHZ OFZ TEH SPENDINGZ!!!!, they ought to focus on doing the most good for the most Americans. If they did that, good Americans would actually be excited about voting for them! And getting dental/vision/hearing care for seniors sure would be "doing the most good."

Action: concerning Social Security, abortion, data privacy, law and order, and pollution.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security 2100 Act, the Women's Health Protection Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, the People's Response Act, and the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. The Social Security 2100 Act would increase both benefits and revenues, the latter by, as they say, scrapping the cap on the income that can be taxed into Social Security, at least for income over $400,000. Why there should be a donut hole on income between $142,800 (the current cap) and $400,000 annually I couldn't tell you, but taxing income over $400,000 represents progress, and we shouldn't let the perfect murder the good. Let's not let Democratic cowardice ("there's an election coming up -- scary, kids!") murder the good, either, but improving Social Security would be both good and popular, and really, everyone should get behind it. Even Republicans!

The ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would essentially codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law. And with our Supreme Court apparently willing to bless Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, putting Roe v. Wade into law would be a good and necessary thing! One thing I rarely hear about this topic is that outlawing abortion wouldn't be like outlawing burglary -- anyone can commit a burglary, while only a woman can have an abortion, and ain't no right-wing legislators willing to penalize men for the ill-considered sex that prompted the abortion. I suspect they would enshrine ill-considered sex a Constitutional right, at least for men. But they shouldn't get all the say about everything.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Big data mining corporations are harvesting your internet surfing habits as we speak! And worse than that, those same big data mining corporations will eagerly sell your internet surfing habits to law enforcement! And law enforcement should only be able to get that information with a warrant, which means they think they have a better than 50-50 chance of convicting you of something. The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act would prevent big data corporations from selling your personal info willy-nilly to law enforcement. Your internet service-providing corporations can't do it under the law, and neither should these data harvesters. Also, they should get a real job doing real work.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4194, the People's Response Act. I could be wrong about this, but I've long thought "defund the police" a bad slogan describing good ideas -- that we shouldn't turn to our police to solve every conceivable problem, nor should we blithely assume we can simply retrain police to be every other kind of worker we need (the way some folks blithely assume that "just learn to code" is a solution to every economic problem). The People's Response Act would fund better solutions to community problems at the state and local level, so that we don't send in a guy with a gun whenever someone has a problem, because sooner or later, as we have long known, that's going to get someone killed. And whatever else you want from your government, it shouldn't kill you.

Finally, Daily Kos also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2238/S. 984, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would, among other things, make big corporations more responsible for their plastic waste, start a national refund program for beverage containers, and set minimum recycled-content standards for products. When all the haters respond by saying but we need plastic for things you stupid liberal ha ha ha snort high five!, you can take comfort in knowing that "breaking free from plastic pollution" is not actually the same thing as "never make anything with plastic again." You might even point it out to them! It won't change their minds, because they're haters, but it might change the minds of other folks who might be listening.

Around the table: from government spies ruining lives to a possible wrinkle in the CRT drama.

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept tells the story of Aswad Khan, whose life the FBI appears to have ruined after he refused to inform for them. It started, apparently, with "repeated" detainment of his known friends and associates, and since our government made it known to all of them that Mr. Khan was the reason for their detainment, they started distancing themselves from him, with some coming to believe that he had done something wrong. And now he's likely on a terror "watchlist," which (as Paul Craig Roberts has reminded us) now has so many people on it that we should be having a 9.11 every day. Needless to say, folks upset at the "nanny state" would better train their ire here than on, say, Social Security or clean water regulations.

Penn State epidemiolgist Suresh V. Kuchipudi discusses the issues surrounding the new Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, and in doing so raises the possibility, near the end, "that the unusually high number of mutations could be detrimental to the virus and make it unstable." Anyone who's ever torn down a load-bearing wall in their house could likely relate. (Full disclosure: I have never done that.) Personally I was holding out for "the virus chose the wrong 50 mutations because why should only humans be stupid," but I'd take "the virus mutated so much it couldn't infect very many people," too.

Ho hum, David L. Wilson at FAIR finds that "Media Don't Fact-Check Right-Wing Migration Myths." Lately our "liberal" media has presumed that six-figure settlements over the Trump Administration's family-separation policy -- a policy no longer in effect, remember that detail -- might induce more folks to migrate to the United States, though you can't demonstrate harm by a policy that no longer exists in a court of law. Of course plenty of actual science exists to demonstrate that folks come to America for work, not "frivolous lawsuits," and that science also maps cleanly onto common sense -- folks will work for $10/hour in America when the best job they can get in their home country pays less than that in a day. Also, too, NAFTA killed the Mexican economy, but our "liberal" media hardly remembers.

I should have realized this was going on, but Chris Walker at TruthOut tells us that big corporations have used inflation as an excuse to jack up prices. I mean, if non-financial sector corporate profits go up 37 percent and inflation goes up six percent, you would have every right to wonder whether maybe corporations could simply forego some of their largesse and help keep inflation down. They won't, of course, until we make them, but just remember that inflation (and economics, for that matter) isn't physics -- corporations will eventually use any old excuse to raise prices. Bernie Sanders gets the last word: "(t)he problem is not the worker who got a small raise and a $1,400 check 7 months ago. The problem is corporations making record-breaking profits while 700 billionaires became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic."

Finally, Jonathan Feingold at The Conversation says something fairly provocative: that the anti-critical race theory laws sweeping America actually enable more critical race theory teaching in public schools. I'll happily concede that laws prohibiting teaching that "[o]ne race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex" give enterprising teachers an opening, but I doubt the school administrators who'll enforce the law will think as subtly as this, and I wonder how many teachers will exploit that opening, knowing that they might eventually win in a court of law, but suffer greatly in the meantime. One hopes it only takes one.

Around the table: from farmers triumphing in India to right-wingers embarrassing themselves in Florida.

P. Sainath at Counterpunch describes the massive victory India's long-beleaguered farmers have recently won -- and how Indian media barely covered it. If this happened in the U.S., you'd just assume our media simply weren't interested in non-white, non-right wing protestors, but in India, you'd have to chalk it up to a general avoidance of discussing anything that would upset the rich and powerful. Indian farmers managed to get their Prime Minister to agree to repeal three onerous agricultural laws, this after surviving first-we-ignore-you-then-we-ridicule-you-then-we-bust-out-the-water-cannons, and they deserve our admiration and our support.

James Somers at The New Yorker describes scientific advances in mind-reading. Right now they're not "reading thoughts" so much as inferring them from brain patterns, and color me skeptical that it'll ever be particularly good, because the the brain is a far more magnificent thing than even neurologists know, not to mention that people will plug mind-reading tech with their own prejudices just like they did with facial recognition technology. But if the technology does get good, I'm sure Congress will be there with laws that protect good Americans from having their privacy invaded! I kid, of course; we'll have to prod them to do that, and the big data lobby could be even bigger by then.

I'm always pleased to see someone make the pragmatic case against our use of drones in foreign lands -- the moral arguments don't persuade certain people, for whatever reason, and the pragmatic case gives us an additional weapon to shame them (and prompt more moral behavior from the undecided). I'm even more pleased that former Navy officer James Durso takes the case farther than I thought to do -- by taking us past the errant drone strike (and the subsequent lack of punishment for anyone) as ISIS recruiting tool, which is where we are now, to the day when the other side have their own drones, and start taking out American embassies and other "soft" targets. Lesson: accountability is always the best policy, no matter how painful it might be.

When I hear that "QNuts" are "Falling Out of Love With Kyle Rittenhouse" -- over an apparently legit beef Mr. Rittenhouse has with former lawyer/QAnon darling Lin Wood -- I am reminded that this is how rage addicts try to convince us (and themselves) that they're not really rage addicts. Although when I hear that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), herself a Q adherent, is siding with Mr. Rittenhouse against Mr. Wood, I don't just wonder if this is just more right-wing drama to distract the folks -- I also wonder if folks like Rep. Greene abandon folks like Mr. Wood because, well, they think of Lin Wood as a loser, and you know how their real Personal Lord and Savior, Donald Trump, feels about losers.

When I hear that Donald Trump actually said that the House January 6 panel trying to get his records "will result in permanent damage to the institution of the presidency," my first impulse is to say he's got some cojones saying that, after taking a massive dump all over the office for four years. But let's grapple with the point about "preserving the confidentiality of Presidential communications," shall we? The American people deserve to know exactly what their President did and said in the time leading up to the attempted coup he instigated. There! Done grappling.

Finally, Jim Swift at The Bulwark takes us through the "anatomy of a viral lie," in this case the utter absurdity that Nancy Pelosi was about to buy a $25 million mansion in Florida, which would, somehow, justify everything Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have done. Read the whole thing, and then keep in mind that when journalists started reporting on rumors and justifying it by telling themselves they weren't doing "serious" work, they opened up a box that'd make Pandora blush. As a famous philosopher once said, when a man lies, he murders some part of the world.

Action: concerning law and order, climate change, clean water, national forests, and right-wing news.

Long story short: tell our Justice Department to investigate the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, tell federal agencies to take climate change into account when spending taxpayer money, tell our government to keep radioactive waste off the vaunted Three Rivers, tell our Forest Service to keep logging out of the Tongass National Forest, and tell AT&T to cut off life support for the notorious One America News Network. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

People for the American Way helps you tell our Department of Justice to investigate the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Not because it didn't go our way -- that's just right-wing whiners projecting their inadequacies on us! -- but because we all saw how suspicious it was. Imagine being on trial for murder and watching the judge refuse to let lawyers call victims "victims" but allow lawyers to call them "looters." That same judge allowed Mr. Rittenhouse himself to pick which jurors to send home after both sides rested their cases, and the verdict absurdly expanded "self-defense" to include brats bringing killing machines to protests "just in case." The George Zimmerman verdict sucked, but even that made more sense than this! If our Justice Department investigates this absurdity, we might get some justice down the line, and that's worth the effort.

Progress America helps you tell our government to take climate change into account in its procuring decisions. I mean, you'd want them to go the extra mile to keep our planet livable if it were your money, right? Oh, wait: it is your money. Just so happens President Biden has called for this very thing -- but of course they have to take public comments on that first, and the right-wing whine machine is out in force with their comment-bots and paid crisis actors, so we have to speak up, too. No, "paid crisis actors" is entirely an appropriate thing to call right-wing commenters who take money to leave absurd public comments on matters concerning our government. It's not an appropriate thing to call us, of course -- we do good works for free.

MoveOn helps you tell our government to keep fracking wastewater off the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers. Those would be the famous "Three Rivers" that lent their name to the Pittsburgh Pirates' home stadium back in the day. Why keep fracking wastewater off the Three Rivers? Because the good citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia depend on these rivers for clean water, and if a fracking wastewater barge sinks or springs a leak, it'll pollute that clean water so good folks can't drink it or wash with it. Seems pretty simple to me! If your snotty libertarian nephew says where will you put the wastewater then ha ha ha snort, just tell him there are a lot of ways to meet our energy needs that don't require fracking. I mean, c'mon, this is America, the can-do country!

Penn Environment helps you tell our U.S. Forest Service to restore protections to the Tongass National Forest so that loggers don't spoil it. The Trump Administration, as you recall, decided to exempt over nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest as it wound down its evil term in office last year, saying that the rule would not cause "major adverse impacts to the recreation, tourism, and fishing industries, while providing benefits to the timber and mining industries, increasing opportunities for community infrastructure, and eliminating unnecessary regulations." Not mentioned: that the thousand-year-old trees of the Tongass trap more carbon than any other area in America. But, hey, as long as timber and mining CEOs get to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home, who cares?

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell AT&T to stop funding the notorious One America News Network. Right-wingers love to talk about "starving the beast," the "beast," in their view, being our government, even though it provides services we need and pay for. Fact is, right-wing media is the beast, and I mean "beast" in the Book of Revelations sense. OANN, like Newsmax, Fox News, and The First, traffics in by far the worst drug in America -- right-wing rage -- and so they're the beast we need to starve. And yeah, I just said right-wing rage is a worse drug than heroin or fentanyl. Heroin and fentanyl destroy lives and families, but right-wing rage destroys civilizations. Take its money away and it'll go down faster than a vampire in a Nevada noon.

Action: concerning, at least one more time, the Build Back Better Act.

Long story short: tell your Senators to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. As you know, the infrastructure bill President Biden signed begins the work of getting the lead out of our water pipes, but will by no means finish that work, which is why the Build Back Better Act needs to finish that work. I'm reminded, in the wake of Donald Trump whining that Republicans shouldn't have passed that infrastructure bill, that Mr. Trump's own infrastructure plan was to use $150 billion in tax cuts to "attract" $1 trillion in investment -- in exactly the kinds of "infrastructure" that makes money for some boss-man but doesn't actually help anyone. Getting the lead out of our drinking water helps everyone, so let's finish the job on that.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. Here I'm reminded that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ) made loud noises about the cost of the bill when she originally spoke about it, but drew all her red lines around the parts that would have paid for the bill, like raising tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations! Doing that kind of bait-and-switch does open you up to the charge of being a liar, and in a sane, moral, and decent society, she would be so ashamed of what she's done that she wouldn't run for re-election. Why do I get the sense she's even more immune to shame than many of her colleagues? Anyway, that's why we keep doing what we do.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. Cutting child care costs in half would be, as a famous philosopher once said, a big fucking deal, and I guess it's gratifying that Senators Manchin and Sinema haven't spoken out about any desire they might have to kill it, but I sure hope I haven't summoned a demon by saying that. And again: child care subsidies aren't "communism." Ask anyone who says so what they would do about child care corporations jacking up the cost of child care simply because they can -- that is, because almost all two-parent families have two working parents. Just remember: if they respond by saying "that's a discussion we should have," they're signaling that it's a discussion they're never going to have.

Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Sen. Manchin is the 50th Democratic Senator who opposes this one; he says he'd like to pass something more "bipartisan," and more specifically something that relies more on payroll taxes, but he doesn't really think Mitch McConnell will allow that to happen, does he? And frankly our House's four-week paid family/medical leave plan is better, since it doesn't rely on regressive payroll taxes for funding. (Not incidentally, it also doesn't violate President Biden's requirement that the bill raise zero taxes on folks making less than $400,000 annually.) Now, previous paid family/medical leave bills did rely on payroll taxes, and they weren't onerous, but why do the worse thing if you can do the better thing?

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Senators put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. This was the other pay-for Kyrsten Sinema drew a red line against: the notion that Medicare could actually save the taxpayer money by negotiating for lower drug prices for American seniors. Seems the only folks who favor higher drug prices for seniors are the big pharma execs and the politicians who take their money. And when big pharma CEOs say that Medicare drug price negotiation will "cripple innovation," just remember that innovation only comes from necessity, not from comfort. Also remember that folks who have all the money don't "innovate" anything except how to get more money.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Joe Manchin doesn't like this, either, and to justify his opposition he mouthed a bunch of word salad about making sure Medicare is solvent first. Maybe he was just trying to avoid saying that he's been collecting a lot of money lately from big Republican donors with whom he previously had no connection. I should say that he and Sen. Sinema have been doing that, of course, and folks who shrug and say money talks really need to ask themselves: should politicians only listen to big donors? Politicians have to listen to their real bosses, their constituents, and most good Americans would have their Senators vote differently on a lot of these matters.

Around the table: from prayer apps to justice served.

"Prayer apps are flooding the market," announces Dorian Llywelyn at The Conversation, "but how well do they work?" If you think of praying as something you do on your own anyway, with only you and God around, you might be tempted to answer "not too well," although admittedly that's not all of us and folks have been spending more time alone than they'd like these days. Fr. Llywelyn sees both utilities and limits to prayer apps, but comes down more on the "limits" side, and I agree, skeptical as I am of attempts to achieve community through social media that don't necessarily involve achieving community in real space-time, and I rather suspect that if you just need reminding to pray -- hey, life gets busy! -- you've already got an alarm app on your smartphone that can help you with that.

Catalina Jamarillo at FactCheck.org patiently negotiates how "Viral Posts Misuse VAERS Data to Make False Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines." VAERS stands for "Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System," where folks have reported side effects after receiving vaccines for 30 years, but here's the thing: some haters use raw, unverified data to claim that vaccines cause much more harm than they actually do, when literally anyone can submit a claim, and frankly, haters don't even read these claims very closely -- LOOKZ ATZ ALLZ TEH DEATHZ!!!! meaning even less when, for all we know, the one who "passed away in their sleep" after getting the vaccine was ancient. Whenever you hear some guy bellowing "do your own research!" you can be pretty sure he has no idea how to do actual research.

Melvin Goodman at Counterpunch tells us "Why There Are So Few Whistleblowers." Because you'll ruin your life would, I suspect, be your first answer, but it's good to stare at the wreckage a little longer, and list the reasons your life will be ruined: because our "liberal" media will attack you, because you can count on military and intelligence agencies to actively conspire against you, because the last two Presidents (not just Trump!) have waged war on the Inspectors General who would receive your whistleblower complaints, and because today's Senators care little about protecting whistleblowers from retaliation. And I'm beyond tired of media knuckleheads charge a whistleblower with "narcissism," while permitting all manner of actual narcissism to spew forth from the mouths of politicians.

When I read that some House Republicans think "(p)eople need to get a thicker skin" is a proper response to Rep. Gosar's censure over posting a "satirical" snuff faux-anime in which his avatar kills two other avatars belonging to President Biden and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, I can only respond "well, you're one to talk!" Republicans who want us to "move on" from January 6 and "learn to take a joke" when threatened with decapitation have spent the last year whining so much about having to wear a mask, having to get a vaccine, and not being allowed on the House floor packing heat that they need their own diaper-changing stations. Which they wouldn't complain about, I'm sure, until an actual mother with an actual toddler needed to use it to change an actual diaper, at which point it would become TEH NANNYZ STATEZ!!!!!

Finally, we achieved a measure of justice in the Ahmaud Arbery verdict, as a jury found all three of his killers guilty of multiple felony murder counts, and by now you've probably heard 50 times that this verdict would never have come about without that video getting shared, and while that's true, we should also contemplate how many Ahmaud Arberys died 50 years ago when citizens were not able to carry high-quality video cameras in their pockets; the era where "everyone's a filmmaker" isn't entirely a bad thing. Moreover, we need to stop qualifying victories by saying "but it never would have happened if not for the activism," because we should be activists all the time.

Action: concerning Medicare, methane emissions, pensions, "forever chemicals," Arctic drilling, and "sacrifice zones."

Long story short: tell our government to abandon a long-term plan to privatize Medicare, tell our EPA to cut methane emissions in the most vigorous way possible, tell our Department of Labor to help protect pension plans from climate change, tell REI to get PFAS chemicals out of their products, tell the Biden Administration to reject the proposed Willow drilling project in Alaska and stop a massive drilling lease in Alaska's Cook Inlet, and tell our EPA to stop corporations from using working-class neighborhoods as their dumping grounds. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Public Citizen helps you tell our Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to scuttle a Trump-era plan to privatize Medicare. This would be the "Direct Contracting" plan, which allows Medicare to assign seniors to private health care plans managed by private corporations and insurers, even if the senior signed up for traditional public Medicare. In other words, Donald Trump told seniors that what they want doesn't matter, which should ring a bell. The fact that the Biden Administration hasn't thrown this program in the trash where it belongs means either they haven't gotten around to cleaning up that particular corner of the Augean stables or they secretly hope nobody notices it. If it's the latter, well, too late! And if enough of us speak out, Medicare will have no choice but to scuttle the program.

The Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to issue the strongest methane emissions-cutting rule possible. We have many good reasons to cut methane emissions -- methane emissions pack a much bigger climate change punch than coal emissions do, methane emissions also represent lost usable energy, and on public lands methane emissions also represent lost royalties for the taxpayer. Also, you know, air pollution; you're going to be breathing the air all your life, after all, and there'll be no gated community to run to if we can't breathe the air. You'll also ask our EPA to ensure that the rule includes older gas and oil drilling plants; too many of the biggest polluters get "grandfathered" out of anti-pollution regulations. Word on the street is the EPA's rule is pretty good, but we've still gotta fight.

The Environmental Defense Fund also helps you tell our Department of Labor to approve a proposed rule to allow retirement funds to take climate change into account when making their decisions. After all, if you don't have a planet to live on, all your 401(k) money won't mean a thing! And the Labor proposal also reflects a reality too often overlooked (or, perhaps more precisely, "overlooked") by our "liberal" media -- that solar and wind have achieved parity of cost with fossil fuels more and more over the years, and sane investors wouldn't want to be caught with all their money in dying industries. Usually that's the thing you don't see until it's too late -- especially when you're obsessed with investing in "stuff that has worked for a long time." And a lot of stuff that has worked for a long time still works! But you've also got to know when to jump ship, and now's the time.

Consumer Reports helps you tell outdoor gear corporation REI to get the PFAS chemicals -- that's right, the "forever chemicals" -- out of their products. My guess is that REI would find that challenging, what with all the PFAS in their jackets and boots and tents and such, but tough toodles, because Americans deserve corporations that can change with the times. America certainly deserves corporations that live up to their "we're so green" PR, and REI certainly pumps out plenty of that. And you can probably recite this from memory by now, but PFAS chemicals are everywhere, and they don't break down, and they easily find their way into our bodies and wreak all kinds of health care havoc there. Getting the PFAS out of even one corner of one industry would be, as a famous philosopher has said, a BFD. So let's help make that happen.

The Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell the Biden Administration to keep ConocoPhillips's notorious Willow project from moving forward, while the Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell the Biden Administration to scuttle plans to offer over a million acres from Cook's Inlet to gas and oil drilling corporations. The American people hardly ever make any money from those sales anyway, given how much say big corporations have in the royalty rates to begin with! And both of these projects will pollute the hell out of Alaska, a land about which we don't know nearly enough to go fiddling about with new drilling projects. Remember when George H.W. Bush said the caribou like the Alaska pipeline, because they brush up against it? Our civilization doesn't appear to have advanced very far from that analysis. Which is one reason we keep fighting Arctic drilling.

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell our EPA to fight big polluting corporations from creating ever more "sacrifice zones" where good Americans can't live anymore. It's been a matter of popular knowledge for more than two decades -- at least since the time I saw Mystery Science Theatre 3000 reference it in an episode! -- that big polluters love building near communities with lots of Black and Brown folks in them, figuring, I guess, that nobody will miss them and/or that the folks who live there won't organize to fight them. Of course those folks do organize to fight them, but what a big help it would be to have our government standing with them for the first time ever! But they'll only stand with those communities if we demand they stand with them.

UPDATE. I apologize for messing up the link in paragraph 3, and I've now corrected it.

Action: concerning Social Security, war on Yemen, privacy, workers' rights, women's health, and Presidential power.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security 2100 Act, block our President's recent arms sale to Saudi Arabia, and pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act; tell your Senators to pass the PRO Act and the Women's Health Protection Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Protect Our Democracy Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. Our "liberal" media love squealing that TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ TRUSTZ FUNDZ WILLZ GOEZ TEH BROKEZ!!!!!!, but we've blown past every deadline for the trust fund to go broke, and good Americans are still getting the checks they worked for, paid into, fought for, and deserve to enjoy in their old age. And while our "liberal" media loves talking about the "necessity" to cut benefits, none of them will talk about increasing revenues. The Social Security 2100 Act would not only increase revenues (by taxing income over $400,000 into the system for the first time) but increase benefits (by measuring inflation as it relates to seniors' lives a lot better). As Ross Perot might say, problem solved! If we speak out, that is.

Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to block the proposed $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which comes on top of a $500 million arms deal last month, and which the Saudis will almost certainly use in their interminable war on Yemen. And as Rep. Omar (D-MN) reminds us, we're not just selling arms to a country that's forcing Yemen into famine and destitution simply because they don't like their government, but we're also selling arms to a country that "kill(s) and torture(s) dissidents" like the journalist Jamal Khassogi, whom the Saudis killed with -- among other implements, I presume -- a bone saw. No use retorting, as Mr. Trump once did, that "(t)he world is a dangerous place!" (exclamation point in the original). One of the main reasons it's a dangerous place? We give money and weapons to killers and torturers.

Restore the Fourth helps you call your Congressfolk and tell them to pass H.R. 5524/S. 2957, the Protect Data at the Border Act. As you know, our Supreme Court ruled back in 2014 that law enforcement needed to get a warrant to search your cellphone, because cellphones, in Chief Justice Roberts's words, "hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life'." Yet Customs and Border Patrol agents routinely search your cellphone at the border -- as lower courts "struggle" with whether our Supreme Court's ruling applies there, I guess because they think folks at the border are non-citizens, although that's far from a given (and not just because borders include coastlines). What would a conservative do? Give people at the border the protections of the law until you determine for sure that they don't merit them, that's what. And the Protect Data at the Border Act would help with that.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The PRO Act would, among other things, clamp down on retaliation by employers against employees who try to unionize and clamp down on employers pulling you away from your work so you can sit for hours and hear their high-priced lawyers propagandize against unions. But all right-wingers bellow about is that it would outlaw state-level right-to-work laws, though there's a reason we call "right-to-work" laws "right-to-work-for-less" laws. Even if you're skeptical of federal influence in "state matters," you can't be in favor of firing workers just for trying to unionize, or pulling them off the floor to make them sit in stupid meetings for hours at a time. Can you?

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would essentially legalize abortion everywhere in America, now that our Supreme Court seems anxious to kill Roe v. Wade once and for all. I do not criticize anyone's sadness or pain at the mere thought of an abortion occurring, nor do I assume that the goal of anyone on the pro-choice side is "more abortions." Further, I doubt legalizing abortion would lead to that -- there were plenty of illegal abortions every year before Roe v. Wade. But we can't go back to a world that makes women into little more than breeders, and that's where right-wingers want to take us with their anti-Roe v. Wade activism. And to stop them, we have to speak out.

Finally, Daily Kos also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The Protecting Our Democracy Act would limit a President's ability to declare national emergencies so they subvert the popular will (i.e., by building vanity border walls the people's representatives in Congress have refused to fund), plus it would prevent Presidents from profiting from their office (as a certain recent occupant of the Oval Office was known to do), and would require Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates to release 10 years of tax returns (ditto). These Trump-era sins would make our Founders spin in their graves, and though they share some of the blame for these sins (having created the Electoral College!), their hatred of untrammeled executive power is one we should all share. And act upon!

Around the table: featuring astroturf moms and "enigmatic" Senators.

I should've known this already, but when you see "concerned moms" screaming about "critical race theory" in schools, chance are that an astroturf group, maybe even one attached to the Koch brothers, funds them. Folks scoff when they hear about groups like Parents Defending Education or Moms for Liberty, because gosh they look just like ordinary Americans! But of course right-wing astroturf groups would find and groom ordinary Americans to mouth their nonsense -- after all, as a famous philosopher once said, you can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema speaks with the Washington Post, and while I won't tabulate all of my objections, since they number approximately one per point she makes, I will say that we haven't been calling her an "enigma," as she supposes -- we've said she's defying the will of her constituents, which she tries to obscure by framing everything in terms of herself. ANd the notion that she's been very "open" about what she's doing matters nothing when her positions on Medicare drug price negotiation and raising tax rates on the rich and on corporations (to name two) fly in the face of the expressed will of her real bosses, her constituents. So clearly she's not being very "open" to them, and they're the people who matter most! (Hate to pile on, but when she talks about the "regular, everyday people" of Arizona, she's not only suggesting they approve of what she's doing when they clearly don't, she's also saying the rest of us really aren't "regular, everyday people." Maybe she's not the messaging Svengali she thinks she is.)

Surely Eve Ottenberg isn't the first observer to ask what the hell all this anti-vaccine sentiment not the first to ask what exactly all these anti-vaccine crooks hope to achieve -- it is reasonable, after all, to suppose that the targets of anti-vaxxers, as she puts it, have "no doubt already or will soon be relieved of every last cent they possess by internet charlatans" -- but I would submit, as I often do, that stoking rage among the already rage-addled is the endgame, not just because rage can be refocused on new targets as the "need" arises, but because right-wing politicians can so easily bait-and-switch the rage-addled into voting for them and therefore supporting things they'd never support during those moments they can think clearly, like dirty water or corporate tax cuts.

What could I possibly have to say about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying the Build Back Better Act is "Communism"? Same thing I've said more than once over the last decade: that virtually no one who brandishes “Communist” as a scare word these days can conceive of one-party elections, the abolition of capital ownership, complete central planning of the economy, citizens living in one-bedroom apartments assigned by the state, or the fear of being literally followed around by police at any moment, and calling anything else "Communism" insults all the billions of good people who suffered and died under real Communist oppression. Hey, if they're not going to change, why should I?

In a peripherally-related note, more than a few Republican Senators have smeared a Biden nominee -- whose family literally ran for their lives from Josef Stalin -- as, guess what, a Communist. Sen. Rubio, in particular, should be ashamed not just of being ignorant of Saule Omarova's personal history but of lying about her positions. "(A)bolishing private bank accounts"? Gosh, dramatic much? We can hope, I suppose, that Val Demings does America a favor next year and shoves this shit down Marco Rubio's throat.

Finally, Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Sean Parnell suspends his campaign after losing a custody battle. And yet I still think he's not done, for what energizes Trump votaries more than a sense of having something taken from you? Mr. Parnell can still sell all of this to the votaries as that whore took my kids away from me, and to rank-and-file Republicans he can claim the judge didn't really think he was a bad guy -- which isn't exactly true, but they'll ignore the details if victory depends on it. Consider, also, that our "liberal" media loves a good "comeback" story, and you'll see why the good citizens of Pennsylvania to remain on their guard. I just hope his kids overcome what's happened to them.

Action: concerning the Build Back Better Act as passed by our House and considered by our Senate.

Long story short: tell your Senators to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. Without clean water, you don't have health care; it's that damn simple. And the other infrastructure bill President Biden signed begins to do the work of getting the lead out of our water, but it doesn't finish that work, and we need the Build Back Better Act to finish that work. Even if Joe Manchin worries about the supposed "deficit" in the CBO's analysis of the Build Back Better Act, a) that deficit could be entirely made up by the IRS enforcement plank the CBO didn't include in its analysis and b) that deficit makes up a smaller percentage of the BBBA than does the deficit the CBO found in his pet "bipartisan" infrastructure bill. They'll say anything, and that's why we stay on them.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. And tell them that if they're really serious about that, they'll not only tell Kyrsten Sinema to eat the damn higher tax rates on the rich and on corporations, but they'll also tell the Northeastern Democratic House Reps that repealing the cap on state and local taxes is too big a handout to the rich! And remember that when some rich right-wing jerk says "they'll tax me today, but they'll come for you tomorrow," just remind them that you're already paying your taxes, thank you very much. Everybody can't hire million-dollar lawyers to help them evade their responsibility to their civilization, after all.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. Regardless of what you may have heard, providing subsidies to help working families cover child care is not communism! They sling that word around the way they'd sling their feces around if folks didn't already frown on that. Child care subsidies help families navigate two unfortunate realities: one, that families can't afford to have only one parent working as easily as they could 50 years ago, and two, child care-providing corporations charge an arm and a leg for the service simply because they know people need it (thanks to reality number one). And when the market fails us, as it clearly has in this instance, our government needs to step in and make it right on our behalf. This ain't that damn deep, except to folks who love stoking rage everywhere they go.

Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. The House version, passed late last week, puts four weeks of paid family/medical leave back in the bill, and apparently Sen. Manchin has already wondered out loud why they did that. Possibly because we demanded it? They act like they have no idea how this is supposed to work! Of course, they know how it's supposed to work, but they want to make politics like a sporting event, and they want to make us into spectators. But although nobody died and made Joe Manchin the One True Great and Awesome Real American President, he'll win again, unless we keep speaking out in numbers our leaders can't deny. Don't ever worry about being a pest to your Congressfolk. They're supposed to listen.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Senators put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. Our House acceeded to the unfortunate "reality" that Kyrsten Sinema and Bob Menendez won't support real Medicare drug price negotiation, and allowed Medicare to cap insulin prices (beginning in 2023!) and negotiate a limited number of drugs in 2025 and a few more in 2028. That's not nothing, but it's not good politics, either -- when eight out of 10 Americans want Medicare to be able to negotiate drug prices, you don't "look good" by delivering half-measures. Hence we go to our Senators, to tell them to do the right thing, again and again and again if need be.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Again Sen. Manchin previously cited Medicare's "solvency" in opposing Medicare coverage of dental, hearing, and vision care for seniors -- this, even though you need more of this care when you're older, not less! Which is something you would think a fellow like the 74-year-old Mr. Manchin would know! Of course, there are thousands of ways to save money for Medicare -- like drug price negotiation, which Mr. Manchin supports, but you can't discount the possibility that he supports it only because he knows it won't pass, with the opposition of Sens. Sinema and Menendez. None of that matters. All that matters is our will -- but only if we express it.

One more thing: don't let "liberal" media scaremongering about inflation deter you from your support for a vigorous Build Back Better Act. Getting the lead out of our water, fighting climate change, and enacting paid family/medical leave will all lower health care costs; helping working parents pay for child care will lower child care costs and fighting climate change will also lower disaster recovery costs. You can't just choose not to build back houses if a hurricane destroys them, after all! And if you're worried about "runaway government spending causing inflation," consider, again, that the Build Back Better Act will be paid for even if we don't get all the revenue-raisers we want, and consider, also that raising taxes on the rich and on corporations and letting Medicare negotiate drug prices all save the taxpayer money. And I dare say folks will care about all of that more than they'll ever care about a number. But we do actually have to do these things for folks to care about them.

Around the table: featuring, believe it or not, *mostly good news!*

Our House passes the Build Back Better Act, 220-213, with only one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voting against it -- and not without making a good point, that the bill gives a massive handout to rich folks by raising the SALT cap. Maybe he'll win another term! The House-passed bill includes four weeks of paid family leave, and the more times we make Joe Manchin come out against it the worse for him, and the CBO estimate said it would add nearly $400 billion to our national debt over 10 years, though said estimate didn't include incoming revenue from better IRS enforcement (though it also estimated that would raise a little over $200 billion over 10 years, which could be a bit conservative). Needless to say, making that SALT cap repeal a lot smaller would narrow that gap. Anyway, Democrats have some more things to run on; now let's see if they'll run on them.

John Deere workers who had been on strike for five weeks ratify a new contract, which gives them a 10% raise and an $8,500 signing bonus right away, preserves premium-free health insurance benefits, and strengthens their pensions. The total wage increase of 20% over six years isn't quite as impressive as the immediate pay hike, and the immediate pay hike isn't as impressive when you remember that inflation is now up to 6%, but we should still celebrate their achievement, because the best way to get treated right is to make your bosses realize they can't function without you. (The second best way would be to make hedge funds illegal. Really, how do they differ from speculators? We used to clamp down on speculators.)

President Biden fires two members of our USPS Board of Governors, including Ron Bloom, who had been a big Louis DeJoy supporter and whose investment fund just so happens to have a nice chunk of DeJoy money in it. It'll take time to get the new nominees in, who would then have to vote to fire Mr. DeJoy, but just remember that "Americans paying more for slower mail" is actually a hard sell! Especially to the good Americans who get their insulin through the mail! Then, after getting rid of Mr. Get-Used-to-Me, if we can get the Postal Reform Act through Congress and restart postal banking, that'll be a good couple of years' work. (As an aside, boy do I not care that the insiders didn't see President Biden's moves coming! We've been on him for almost a year about it, but I guess the "insiders" don't talk to very many regular Americans.)

Apple decides to let people repair their own iPhone 12 and 13 devices beginning early next year. It's not a particularly broad response to all out "right to repair" activism, and you'll still have to get Apple replacement parts, but getting Apple to go even this far testifies to our good works. I mean, this is Apple, which hates giving any control over their products to anyone! As an aside, does anyone else find it odd that Apple has long extolled its customers as "the best people" yet has spent the last two decades not trusting "the best people" to repair their own computers? I love telling folks about those halcyon days when I could replace the processor and RAM in whatever Apple laptop I had, and maybe, with a lot more agitation, those days can come back.

Max B. Sawicky at In These Times delivers another necessary reminder that all the scaremongering over inflation is "one of dumbest turns in what passes for economic thinking since voodoo economics." Saying more government spending (paid-for government spending, no less!) is "inflationary" is, for Mr. Sawicky, "like criticizing a fire company for using water instead of gasoline." And the real costs of rent, college, and health care -- all of which inflation barely tracks, I wonder why! -- have been going up for a long time, and even the Build Back Better Act as "moderates" have whittled it down would help lower these costs. And Jesus Mary and Joseph I'm old enough to remember when inflation was twice what it is now, so no breathless "news" stories about one family of 11 in one state paying $36 a month more for milk should put the scare in anybody.

Finally, Harvard Law School professor Ronald Sullivan explains why the Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict "flies in the face of legal standards for self-defense." Mr. Sullivan explains why pretty well, but all I can add is that I really wish I could see the silver lining in this verdict, but I don't -- Kyle Rittenhouse has many more (and many more obnoxious) supporters than former Most Unpopular Man in America George Zimmerman ever did, and thus he'll be feeding at the right-wing welfare trough until he croaks. Judge Schroeder sure did destroy his reputation, though. The only thing he can do now is run for Congress.

Action: concerning racism, pollution, ethics, right-wing news, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell our EPA to fight environmental racism, tell our government to keep fracking wastewater off the Three Rivers, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, tell AT&T to end its financial support for the notorious One America News Network, and tell President Biden to help us save our Postal Service. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to act against big polluting corporations that harm communities of color. Some folks will hear that our EPA actually plans to do something about this and say what more do those people want? But I hear it and say about damn time! And that's because big polluting corporations have been purposely situating their big polluting plants near the neighborhoods where "those people" live for decades. Anyway, the question isn't "when will this inconvenient anti-racism end?" but "does anyone deserve to live in an area that will give them cancer just because they live there?" And the people who would answer "yes" to that question don't get all the say about everything.

MoveOn helps you tell our government to keep fracking wastewater out of the "Three Rivers" (i.e., the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers). Because these rivers provide clean drinking water to the good citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and having fracking wastewater barges troll up and down these rivers is a recipe for disaster. Thanks to Tha Bush Mobb, big gas drilling corporations don't have to tell anyone what's in their fracking wastewater, but scientists have found all kinds of goodies in it, and by "goodies" I mean "things that destroy your health," like barium, arsenic, benzene, radium, and hydrogen sulfide. Yum! Remember: none of our descendants will sit around a campfire saying "we can't drink the water now, but at least gas was cheap for a while!"

The Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5720, the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act. The Wall Street Journal, in an article I'm sure they didn't put anywhere near page one, found that judges failed to recuse themselves from lawsuits against corporations in which they or their family had invested over 680 times from 2010 to 2018; I'm sure that's a fairly small percentage of all lawsuits, but 680 times is still 680 times too many, because we expect impartiality from our judges. The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act would require federal judges to report their stock transactions as they happen -- the law currently requires almost every federal officer but a judge to do that -- and would also mandate that our government publish those disclosures online. That's an improvement, so we should demand it.

Free Press helps you tell AT&T to drop its financial support of the notorious right-wing "news" network One America. I'll let Free Press's latest e-mail missive tell it: "Let’s be clear: OANN would not exist without AT&T’s money and DIRECTV’s national platform." And that's something even OANN executives acknowledge, rather candidly, in fact -- one executive said OANN's value "would be zero" -- and you often get that kind of candidness from folks who are pretty sure their gravy train's never going to end. But OANN's mission -- basically, to be a "news" channel for people who think Fox News has sold out -- wouldn't succeed without a sugar daddy. Does AT&T really want to be known as OANN's sugar daddy? So let's bring out the Big Stick of Bad PR on AT&T. Surely they don't want to be pariahs.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to fire USPS Board of Governors member Ron Bloom so the USPS Board of Governors can fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Mr. Bloom seems to be all that's standing in the way of the Board of Governors sacking Mr. DeJoy, and his term actually expired in 2020 (he's been serving in a "hold-over year" since then), so what's the wait? He can't be waiting for the inevitable scandal that'll occur when some good American dies because they can't get their medicine through the mail fast enough because Mr. DeJoy slowed down the mail, because that would be cruel. OK, of course I see the flaw in the above argument, but we're not cruel, so we can always demand that our President act like us when we're at our best. We deserve that much.

Action: concerning pollution, farming, prisoners, food safety, and racism.

Long story short: tell your PA state Assemblyfolk to reject pro-pollution bills, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Farm System Reform Act, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, the Baby Food Safety Act, and the GI Bill Restoration Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn Environment helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject a pair of objectively pro-pollution bills, HB 1947 and SB 275. They would, guess what, explicitly forbid Pennsylvania cities and towns from enacting laws that would help them get off our national addiction to fossil fuels. Very conservative of them! What ever happened to "the smallest body of people should make the most important decisions affecting that body of people"? Money, that's all -- if a municipality decides to buy only solar or wind power, then big gas and oil executives won't be able to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Sad! And Pennsylvania's Supreme Court found similar legislation unconstitutional, so let's save our legislature from further embarrassment by communicating our will.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4421/S. 2332, the Farm System Reform Act. The Farm System Reform Act would place a moratorium on the building of new factory farms, restore country-of-origin labeling laws for meat, and help break meat packer monopolies by reinstituting "spot market" meat sales, so that meat packing corporations don't force farmers into sales agreements that ultimately crush them. Hopefully you don't look at phrases like "no more building of factory farms" and say "but won't that drive prices through the roof?" We're seeing, right now, how oversized ships are actually driving inflation upward, simply by making themselves the only conceivable option in shipping. We're not there yet with oversized farms, but if big corporations get their way, we will be. Thus we have to stop them before they do.

Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act. Some folks pay over a buck a minute to talk to their loved ones in prison, and folks can't afford that. And prisoners certainly can't afford that, since they don't even make anything close to minimum wage in prison. If you find yourself thinking then they shouldn't have done the crime then ha ha ha snort, please do three things: 1) slap yourself, 2) consider that folks who can stay in touch with loved ones without paying an arm and a leg have a much better chance of staying out of prison once they get out than folks who can't stay in touch with loved ones, and 3) consider that just because you're in prison doesn't mean big telecom corporations should take advantage of you. If you need to slap yourself again, go ahead. Wisdom ain't easy.

Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2229/S. 1019, the Baby Food Safety Act. If you've heard of toxic metals like cadmium, arsenic, lead, and mercury in baby food, then you see the need for such legislation. And this bill's pretty comprehensive -- it'd impose maximum levels of toxic metals in baby food, require our FDA to review and lower those levels if necessary, expand our FDA's recall authority over toxic baby food, and even commission research on agricultural methods that'd reduce toxic metals in baby food. Our government, commissioning research -- why, that sounds like our government doing their job! And if the thought of government research makes you guffaw, just remember: without it, you'd have no COVID vaccine. No, really. You didn't think private corporations did all that, did you?

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5905, the Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Jr. and Sgt. Joseph H. Maddox GI Bill Restoration Act, which would extend G.I. Bill benefits to survivors and descendants of Black soldiers who fought in World War II. Why? Because the G.I. Bill enabled a lot of good American WWII soldiers of Italian, Polish, and German descent to get into the middle class for the first time -- but denied that access to Black soldiers, using methods of discrimination you won't have to work too hard to imagine. We made them a promise, and we reneged on it; now, with the GI Bill Restoration Act, we can make it right. Naturally, right-wingers will call this "reparations," like that's a bad word. They'll try to make any word a bad word! But that shouldn't keep us from doing the right thing.

Around the table: featuring *entirely unexpected Republican hypocrisy*.

The Conversation talks to three scholars about "Three Ways Congress Could Hold Facebook Accountable for Its Actions." I think good old-fashioned trust-busting is the best way to hold them accountable, but at least two of the three suggestions -- giving users more control over how Facebook uses their data in algorithms, and mandating transparency about Facebook's problems -- are good ideas. Making Facebook pay up for the broadband funding gap as a sort of win-win proposition ain't my favorite, though. I approve of win-win negotiations among good-faith negotiators, but the rest need to be brought to heel by our laws.

Dean Baker also warns against blaming Trump/Biden spending policies for inflation. Why? Because countries that actually spent more (like France and Japan) aren't seeing the same inflation, because the pandemic and the resulting supply chain issues (again) are the major causes of inflation, because proposals like universal pre-K and subsidized child care will actually alleviate inflation in numerous ways, and because higher wages and the expanded Child Tax Credit are actually helping families deal with inflation much better. We'll know more in the spring, I suppose -- if the diaper-loaded brats refusing to get vaccinated would be gracious enough to help us get out of this pandemic, that is.

Speaking of supply chain issues, the heroic Matt Stoller dives into the problems we're having with shipping. Corporations built bigger and bigger ships -- in the name of efficiency, I suppose -- but bigger ships carrying more stuff and arriving less frequently snarl trucking and railroad traffic by making them wait around for-freaking-ever, and these "too big to sail" ships also kill the smaller ports that can't handle the amount of stuff they're bringing. And that's just the beginning. Naturally, Congress's decision to stop regulating ocean shipping as a public utility in 1998 figures heavily in this story. (As an aside, trucker Ryan Johnson is really astute about supply chain problems, but I fear he'll never get the traction he deserves, not just because he says quite rightly that truck drivers should make more money, but because he's obviously not an asshole.)

Uh oh: an Iowa state audit finds that Gov. Kim Reynolds appears to have misused nearly half a million dollars in COVID relief funds to pay the salaries of office workers for three months in 2020. Hey, you know what's even more interesting? Apparently those salaries weren't in the budget Gov. Reynolds submitted before the pandemic, and the Governor's office has now said they'll provide documentation to our federal government after previously saying no such documentation existed. It ain't the barrel Kristi Noem will be turning in next fall, but what fun it would be to see a Democrat topple Ms. Reynolds in 2022, not two years after Iowa Democrats were given up for dead.

When you hear that "neoliberal Democrats are struggling to connect with working-class voters whose communities have lost manufacturing jobs," you might be tempted to say well of course they are! They're the same people who reject every actual attempt at helping to fix working class voters' problems! And then these voters turn to Republicans, who are worse but at least are willing to ape their anger, and then stoke it further. Author Joel Bleifuss says the Democrats' actual liberal wing, not its "moderate" corporatist wing, needs to stage an "intervention." Ever feel like that's what you've been doing your whole life?

Finally, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) touts the funding the infrastructure bill will deliver to his district -- without mentioning that he voted against that bill. Not only did he vote against the bill, he called it "a Green New Deal wish list" (if only!) that will "expand government control of our lives." As with the American Rescue Plan Act, where numerous Republicans tried to take credit for things they liked about the law without mentioning that they voted against it, this is a golden opportunity for Democrats to run campaign ads excoriating Republican hypocrisy. Sadly, Gary Palmer's district (Alabama's 6th) is one of the most Republican in the nation; a Democrat has crested 30% there once in the last quarter-century. I'd call that an opportunity myself, but Democrats ain't known for their bravery.

Action: concerning pollution, campaign finance, patents, and monopolies.

Long story short: tell our Justice Department to review Steven Donziger's case, tell big corporations to stop donating to anti-voting rights politicians, tell big insurance corporations not to insure the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, tell our government to ensure that our NIH gets listed on the Moderna vaccine patent, tell our EPA to to ban PFAS chemicals in food storage products, and tell our government to break up Amazon. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

MoveOn helps you tell our Department of Justice to review the Steven Donziger case and get justice for him. Steven Donziger is the lawyer who helped the Cofan indigenous people of Ecuador the biggest pollution judgment in history -- $9.5 billion -- from Chevron, after the big oil corporation illegally dumped billions of gallons of oil waste on Cofan land. That was a decade ago; after all that time, Chevron hasn't paid, but that doesn't mean they haven't been busy, trumping up a racketeering charge against Mr. Donziger in Ecuador and a contempt charge in the United States; soon he'll be reporting for a six-month prison sentence here, and if you're thinking he's really paying for daring to hold Chevron accountable, well, I couldn't blame you. Luckily, we have some say about whether justice happens in America, too.

People for the American Way helps you tell big corporations to stop donating to anti-voting rights politicians. And if that means "stop donating to all Republicans except for Lisa Murkowski," hey, that ain't my fault, just as it ain't my fault Republicans' response to any setback is to run even farther to the right. That's their fault, and it is also weak Democratic politicians' fault. And it is also the fault of big corporations that talk a good game about voting rights but still send campaign donations to politicians who suppress the vote. Corporate PR hacks no doubt stand ready to tell you their donations aren't about voting rights but about economics, or something. Trouble is sending a politician money enables them to do everything they do, and withholding campaign donations will help discourage bad behavior.

Public Citizen helps you tell big insurance corporations to steer clear of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. You know how usually we fight pipelines that run through big aquifers which provide drinking water to millions of people? Not imagine a pipeline that not only runs right through Africa's largest lake, Lake Victoria, and also runs right beside the second-largest freshwater lake on Earth -- no, really, that's in Africa! It's Lake Tanganyika, which sits on the border shared by Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo border -- but which also runs through one of Africa's few earthquake zones, virtually guaranteeing a pipeline burst even more than bad pipeline safety already does. A lot of sun falls on Africa; they should concentrate their efforts there, maybe? First, let's kill this project.

Public Citizen also helps you tell our government to ensure that our National Institutes of Health (or NIH) gets listed as a co-inventor of the Moderna vaccine patent. Sounds like not such a big deal, but it is: the corporations get all the credit for the vaccines, when actually our government does a lot of the research that makes them possible. Not to mention a lot of the funding, or in the case of the Moderna vaccine, almost all of the funding. Seriously, instead of Republicans picking stupid fights over Dr. Seuss and Big Bird, let's make them fight over our government getting the credit it deserves for making the vaccines that have saved so many good American lives. They'll lose that fight every time. Which is one big reason they pick the other fights.

Penn Environment helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to keep PFAS chemicals out of plastic food containers. They call PFAS chemicals "forever chemicals," because they're just about impossible to break down and because they get into your body and cause all sorts of health care problems -- and one of the main places you'll find them is in your plastic food containers, many of which probably advertise themselves as "microwave-safe" but, ah, no. I'm old enough to remember when "shatterproof" plastic was The Future, but now I'd take the relative fragility of glass over all the pollution and ill health plastic has caused. And I'm pretty sure we didn't really understand how bad it would get! But once you do know, you have a duty to your civilization to help fix it.

Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell our government to break up Amazon. Not just because its former CEO, the ubiquitous Jeff Bezos, is the richest man on Earth, and not just because it handles about half of all online sales, and not just because it killed all the smaller bookstore chains like B. Dalton and Encore and Waldenbooks, but because it collects so much data on its users that it can offer the same products small businesses offer at a lower price and thus crush small businesses. I used the Italics Hammer there so folks who yammer on about small businesses would see it. And no, breaking up Amazon won't mean you'll wait forever to get stuff! And even if it did, gosh, do you remember 1993? Do you remember special-ordering books you didn't see on the shelf? Gosh, do people even understand hardship anymore?

Action: concerning government spying, war on Yemen, voting rights, whistleblowers, Social Security, and our FCC.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, end our military support for the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, and pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, and the Social Security 2100 Act, and tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC nominees. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act. 20 damn years old, the PATRIOT Act is, and what has it done? Nothing, except make us less free. How do I know? Because we already had tools to prevent 9.11; Tha Bush Mobb just failed to do it, and when someone fails to use the tools they've got, you don't just give them more tools. Particularly tools that let our government spy on us without a warrant and without probable cause, in defiance of our Constitution! And those who say the PATRIOT Act has stopped terrorist attacks won't name them, because of "national security." You can say you did anything but can't prove it because of "national security"! It's stupid, and we need to stop it.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end our military involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen. President Biden's taken a few steps in this direction, but not enough, and previous bills didn't get a vote, hence we resort to the "attach amendment to defense authorization bill" method, since Congress has to pass a defense authorization bill. And this bill relates to defense, so brook no IRRELEVANTZ AMENDMENTZ!!!! arguments from haters. That amendment Rep. Russell (E-OK) tried to attach to the 2016 defense bill, which would have established a "religious" "conscience" exception so any employer can discriminate against anyone who might give them gay cooties? That's an irrelevant amendment, right there. Make sure you spell out the difference. Haters don't care, but other, more reasonable folks will.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Also, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster in order to get them passed, since a Republican filibuster is literally all that stands between these bills and their passage. I'm old enough to remember when Voting Rights Act reauthorization sailed through Congress with almost no opposition -- actually, so are you, since it was 2006! Now, no Republicans will support the fight against gerrymandering, dark money, and other forms of vote suppression, while only one (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) will support the fight to put some teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. Luckily, America has us to fight these battles, so let's fight them.

The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4107/S. 2055, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act. Currently the dysfunction of the whole IRS whistleblower process is so bad that it takes our IRS a decade to process individual cases, and on quite a few occasions whistleblowers have died before that could happen. The IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act would give whistleblowers more protections under the law and make sure they get paid more quickly -- there's nothing wrong with getting paid for the corruption you dime out, particularly since you stand a good chance of being unemployable after you blow the whistle. And you want the IRS Whistleblower program to work, because you want to bring tax cheats to justice. Tax cheats hurt everyone, after all.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. The Social Security 2100 Act would increase benefits for seniors and better fund Social Security's trust fund. It would increase benefits by, well, paying out more, but also by calculating inflation in a way that reflects seniors' real lives (i.e., by conceding that seniors face enough fixed costs that they can't just switch to a cheaper option whenever they feel like it). And it would better fund the trust fund by imposing the payroll tax to income over $400,000. Don't brook all the hand-wringing of "moderates" who want a "grand bargain" that increases revenue but cuts benefits. We deserve better than that, and the Social Security 2100 Act would do better.

Finally, Battle for the Net helps you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC nominees. It's about time he nominated them, because our FCC has a lot of important work to do, especially since the internet has been more essential to our civilization during this pandemic than ever before (and more than we'd like, I would think). I hate to have to say it, but we're actually lucky that Democrats hold the Senate, because a McConnell Senate wouldn't even hold hearings on these nominees right now. That leads me to my next worry: that a Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema would try to burnish their "independent" credentials by stymying a critical Biden nominee! Paranoid? Perhaps. But that's why we communicate our will, though -- to forestall at least some of the ridiculous dramas that hurt good Americans and injure our civilization.

Action: concerning, at least once more, the Build Back Better Act.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. The bill our President signs today provides some funding for that purpose, but not enough, and it's not "cheating" to make this bill provide the rest, it's doing the right thing, a thing we ought to encourage our Congressfolk to do more. Their excuse for cutting lead pipe removal funding, of course, would be "the BIF already does it, so why do we need to do it again?" I just explained why; now we all need to explain why to our Congressfolk. Opposing clean water is politically difficult, but Kyrsten Sinema, for one, thinks she's the greatest political operator ever, so I wouldn't put it past her to do it. That makes what we're doing a, er, pre-emptive strike.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. The American people approve of raising these taxes on the rich and on corporations at a near-supermajority level, so the 51 Senators who oppose it aren't "being bipartisan" or "just trying to get things done," they're actively trying to subvert the people's will, which is the precise opposite of their job. It's that damn simple, and all the damn drama ruins everything. I speak, of course, of the drama where politicians try to prove they're "essential" by throwing a wrench in everything that isn't "bipartisan" enough, by which I actually mean "doesn't capitulate to Republicans enough." They should think about capitulating to the people. Because that's their job.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. The fact that this plank of the Build Back Better Act has made it this far tells me this was a big priority for Joe Biden, but now that Joe Manchin is playing Henny Penny about the inflation rate, it's in as much danger of being cut (or cut out) as anything else. But we have to start investing in Americans again. Folks who think infrastructure is only about roads or bridges are shallow; they don't understand how we actually build civilizations. Of course roads and bridges are infrastructure, but without people, people who will fight for and maintain the values we pass on to our children, a civilization can't exist. Some people would like that! But they don't deserve veto power.

Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Again, part of building a civilization is treating its people right, and being literally the only highly-developed country that doesn't guarantee paid family/medical leave to all its citizens is pretty much the opposite of treating people right. Joe Manchin's fretting about "the cost" is especially offensive here -- previously, Kirsten Gillibrand's bills funded it with a tiny payroll tax, one that would have cost the worker making $50,000 annually a mere $8/month. $8! And don't let anyone tell you that because people abuse the Family Medical Leave Act (which provides unpaid leave), we shouldn't pass this. Better to simply fight fraud, than to give up on civilization because fighting fraud is hard.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. More Perfect Union also helps you tell your Congressfolk to make sure a $35/monthly cap on insulin prices stays in the Build Back Better Act; that's a big deal, since Americans pay way, way, way too much for insulin, which is a life-saving medicine, after all. Our House is apparently reinserting Medicare drug price negotiation into their version of the Build Back Better Act -- and since this would save the taxpayer money, it'd make the impending CBO score look much better -- so let's make sure everyone knows the American people's will is more important than Kyrsten Sinema's will, or Bob Menendez's will.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Democrats have gone with a different approach than I would have done, by improving health care services here and there, rather than, say, passing Medicare-for-All health insurance (and hate to beat a dead horse, but I've offered more than one viable funding mechanism in this space). Anyway, that doesn't mean the improvements they'd make aren't worth making -- but nor does it mean we shouldn't ask for more, like dental and vision care for seniors and reducing the eligibility age from 65 to 60. When we ask for more, people like Joe Manchin have to give you more. Hell, asking for anything has brought him further left than he'd like to go. So we ought to keep doing that.

One more thing: ignore all the pablum about how inflation should give us pause about passing this bill. The causes of inflation right now are a) COVID and b) supply chain monopolies, and neither of these have anything to do with paid family/medical leave, Medicare drug price negotiation, or any of the other things we've described above; these items certainly haven't become "irresponsible" just because inflation's above six percent now. (I'm old enough to remember when inflation was double that, but I digress.) Yes, Joe Manchin probably will use it as an excuse to kill the bill outright now that he's cut it by more than two-thirds, but we're not supposed to game out "what Joe Manchin will do"; we're supposed to express our will until our representatives in House and Senate do our will. We're right, and they're wrong. That ain't changed. Republicans, and people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, will always find some excuse to do the wrong thing sooner or later; the only antidote to their excuses, and their inaction, and their cowardice, and their malice, is our will, expressed in numbers they can't deny. So let's keep doing that.

Around the table: monopolies ruin everything, part 834.

In case you were wondering, no, "economic overheating" (read: Big Gummint spending too much) isn't causing higher-than-normal inflation rates, according to Economic Policy Institute director of research Josh Bivens, who points to folks spending less on services you buy "face-to-face" and more on stuff, and spending that much more on stuff makes supply-chain bottlenecks worse. Craig Austin at The Conversation concurs about the role of supply chains, but also announces "Inflation is Here to Stay,". And yet I suspect that a) conquering the pandemic and b) breaking supply chain monopolies will do a great deal to break this inflation spike. The former might not happen very soon, given the immaturity of the still-unvaccinated, and the latter might also take some time, even if Mr. Biden has put the right folks in at the SEC and FTC.

Caleb Nichols at TruthOut explains how "Public-Private Partnerships are Quietly Hollowing Out Our Public Libraries." Are private, for-profit corporations like Library Systems and Services really "improving" library services when they buy them up? Of course not -- they're firing higher-paid union workers, replacing them with badly-trained technicians, and homogenizing a library's holdings, serving localities be damned. Seriously, when you hear the words "public-private partnership," run. Big corporations don't want you as a partner; they want you as a vassal. Or perhaps "vessel" is better -- to them, you're just a delivery device for money.

In this story about how Edward Durr upset long-time New Jersey state Senator/Norcross machinist Stephen Sweeney after exactly zero media coverage of Mr. Durr's many bigoted comments on social media, I was surprised and pleased to see writer Paul Farhi discuss "the state of local news reporting" as the main reason for that lack of coverage. "Years of cutbacks and consolidation" have "left behind 'ghost' newspapers" or "news deserts," particularly in Gloucester and Cumberland counties, which each used to have their own paper but now share a single one (with Salem County, no less). This maps onto what we were just saying about local public libraries; why, it's like consolidation and monopolies ruin every damn thing. (As an aside, I don't accept Mr. Durr's explanation that he said all those things because "I'm a passionate guy." I've been told I'm a passionate guy, too, but I've never called Mohammed or Bob Menendez a "pedophile.")

I have had it up to here with Kyle Rittenhouse crying at his murder trial. I'd put it to him in language he can understand: be a man! Nut up! As more attentive folks than I have pointed out, he's crying only for himself, not for any of the folks he killed -- or even the small businesses he was supposedly there to "help"! -- but right-wingers will lap those tears up, apparently tolerating tears only from those who deserve the trouble they're in. And when a Black woman cries over being turned away at the polls for no good reason of watching her boyfriend get shot by cops for no good reason, watch these folks who lap up Kyle Rittenhouse's tears flex their rage like the drunk, abusive dads too many of them are.

Speaking of whiny-ass babies who cry all the time because the world won't submit to their drama, a right-winger with a bit of an anger management problem has somehow secured a temporary restraining order against an antifascist for the heinous crime of exposing the fact on Twitter that said right-winger was at the January 6 attempted coup. Ironically, California may be the only state that makes it relatively easy for domestic abuse victims to get some breathing space from temporary restraining orders, and that's what Adam Kiefer used against Chad Loder. Meanwhile, law enforcement seems to be ignoring actual harassment by right-wingers against Chad Loder. As I often say, assholes ruin everything.

Finally, when I hear that a PRRI survey found that only 29% of Republicans believe America has changed for the better since the 1950s, I feel compelled to note that the top tax rate during the '50s was 91%, and the corporate tax rate was 55%, and corporations and the rich had many, many fewer loopholes to avoid these tax rates than they do now. But given that many more Republicans thought America had changed for the better during those years Donald Trump was President, one has every right to suspect these Republicans are nostalgic for that time "Black folks knew their place," though back then Congressional Republicans also favored civil rights legislation a lot more than they do now, and more than many of their contemporaries in the Democratic party, as well. Living in a fantasy world must be very hard.

Action: concerning sedition, pollution, antibiotics, and student loans.

Long story short: tell Congress to investigate House Reps for helping to plan the January 6 attempted coup, tell President Biden to use federal policy to fight pollution and stop a liquefied natural gas train from being built, tell McDonald's to put its money where its mouth is in re antibiotic abuse, tell President Biden to cancel student loan debt, and tell big corporations to stop funding the campaigns of the folks who helped try to overthrow our government. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Win Without War helps you tell your House Reps to investigate (and, if need be, expel) the seven members who allegedly helped plan the January 6 attempted coup. Am I really writing that sentence? Yes, I am really writing that sentence. As you know, a Rolling Stone report from late last month that some of the coup's planners meeting with these seven House Reps "dozens" of times; if that's true, then these seven individuals need to go. One of them, perhaps not coincidentally, is Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who's gotten himself in some, ah, other trouble this past week. You can't get away with threatening your co-workers at your job, but apparently folks like him think they can get away with anything, and not just because they sit in absurdly-gerrymandered seats. But is that how civilized people act?

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell President Biden to undo the damage Donald Trump did to the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA). Specifically, you'd ask President Biden to 1) strengthen environmental reviews of potentially polluting projects, 2) allow our government to take climate change into account during such reviews, 3) keep polluting corporations from having too much a say in such reviews, and 4) give the public more time to comment on regulations aiming to protect us from pollution. Yeah, Donald Trump did the opposite of all that, and not for "jobs," either -- he did it because the only other person whose opinion he respects is a boss, and bosses hate being told to stop polluting when their money's at stake. But that's what civilized people do, and we need to do more of it, like we did just a few short years ago.

Penn Environment helps you tell the Biden Administration to cancel all permits for New Fortress Energy's proposed liquefied natural gas (or LNG) pipeline. New Fortress would run a hundred LNG rail cars across Pennsylvania every day, when less than a quarter of that carries the energy equivalent of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and once LNG gets into our air, as I expect it one day will because a train car will inevitably derail, it will expand to 600 times its volume and blow up the second someone accidentally lights a match. LNG rail was banned in America until 2019, and I bet you can't guess whose grubby pawprints are on that one. We banned it for a reason -- the money it'll make some CEO isn't worth the damage a major accident could do. Thus we, as civilized people, must step in again.

Consumer Reports helps you tell fast food corporation McDonald's to start acting on its 2018 promise to get antibiotics out of its beef supply. I bet McDonald's executives sure enjoyed all the positive attention for making that promise, but that was three years ago -- and what an innocent time it was! -- and in a world where over two-thirds of all antibiotics go to healthy feed animals, rather than sick people and sick animals, and this predicament threatens to bring back a world where the next cut could kill you, so McDonald's needs to get off the pot and start doing the right thing. A lot of people eat a lot of beef at McDonald's, to the tune of over two billion burgers every year -- they can't even put it on the sign anymore! -- so McDonald's could lead here, and I mean really lead, not pretend to lead like they've been doing.

Black Lives Matter helps you tell President Biden to cancel student loan debt. Which is in his power to do, since our government backs virtually all student loans, and canceling student loan debt would stimulate the hell out of our economy. Why, some of these folks might even buy homes one day! I'll brook no oldhead talk like I paid all my debts, why can't they? First of all, oldheads have no clue what today's student loan debt is like, because unless they're helping put their children through school they have no idea what the cost of college is today. Second, we promised students they'd get good jobs and good lives if they just went to college, and what did they get? Debt so crippling they're trapped in bad jobs and can't make good lives for themselves. It's time we made up for our mistakes. It's what adults do, after all.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell big corporations to stop funding the campaigns of Republicans who gave aid and comfort to the January 6 attempted coup by voting against certifying the 2020 election. Again, they said they'd do it, but they keep funding these clowns, so one must conclude that they simply lied to get the good PR. Thus it's time, once again, for the Big Stick of Bad PR. This sure does seem like an intractable problem, but the more we call attention to it, the more it'll embarrass them, and the more corporations will adhere to our will. Hey, it worked when we got over 100 corporations to leave the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), and when you see it work, you want to see it work all the time. And as Americans -- hell, as civilized people -- we deserve that much.

Around the table: in which we confront yet more right-wing whining.

"Are people lying more since the rise of social media and smartphones?" asks David Markowitz at The Conversation. You're tempted to say F YEAH aren't you? You know, because of all the stupid crap you read on Facebook and Twitter? But this article deals with more mundane lies -- the ones you tell your boss to get out of work, the ones you tell your friends when you just don't feel like going out to dinner -- and references a 2004 study that found that, actually, folks will more readily lie with any technology deployed over the phone, and not so much over email (at least partly, I suspect, because it feels more like "putting something in writing"). Fast-forward 17 years and a much larger study finds more or less the same, and Mr. Markowitz also found a relatively low rate of lying, generally, except from people who lie a lot. There's a lesson in there, somewhere.

When I hear that right-wingers had a whinefest about the "government propaganda" of Big Bird telling kids he got the vaccine and it's OK, I am compelled to say that it sure would help if our "liberal" media would treat dramas like these as "really, you're whining about that now?" You know, instead of they must speak for a large number of people, so let's endlessly pander to their dumb opinions and enable their weakness. (Not to pile on, but Sesame Street isn't really a "big government TV show" anymore, since HBO provides most of its funding now.)

In a peripherally-related note, Sen. Josh Hawley (E-MO) doubles down on his "masculinity" pablum because of course he does. I've already patiently negotiated his nonsense, so I think the best thing to do at this point would be to create a cartoon or comic book -- the bolder and sillier the art, the better -- showing him marching around without a shirt off (and occasionally raising his fist like he did at the January 6 rioters) yelling at people who he thinks are "injuring" masculinity. When they act like fools, we should make sure everyone sees them as fools.

I thought Elon Musk wasn't going to get the answer he wanted when he asked Twitter if he should pay more in taxes, but I was taken aback, for a moment, that the score was only 58-42 in favor of him paying more in taxes, since usually the tax-the-rich-more answer in polls clears two-thirds. But two caveats: 1) we should suspect polls that people voluntarily join more than we suspect those that pollsters have designed to actually reflect the population, and 2) I would not be surprised to learn that Twitter users have a higher proportion of get-rich-quick-wannabes who don't want to part with any of their "hard-earned money" than the general population.

Linda So and Jason Szep at Reuters write an admirable report exposing nine individuals who have threatened election officials within the last year -- and also exposing how little law enforcement has done about any of them. We learn that there are at least two schools of thought over whether "We're going to fucking kill you all" or "“You are all going to fucking hang. I’m going to make sure of it" enjoy our First Amendment protections, but that's not the most appalling thing about all of this. The most appalling thing about all of this is that law enforcement either doesn't care about bringing these irredeemable assholes to justice or secretly cheers them on -- I'm not sure how else to read a sentence like "(r)eporters connected with him in September on the phone number police called untraceable.")

Finally, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ) gives a wholly predictable assessment of Republican successes in the 2021 elections, pointing to "bickering among (Democrats)" as the cause, and further opining that Americans "just want you to work together and get stuff done." That's a big gamble, right there, that folks haven't seen her as the one who didn't want to "work together and get stuff done," since she scuttled Medicare drug price negotiation by herself and she scuttled raising corporate tax rates and tax rates on the rich by herself. I would be quite offended if she got away with taking a big dump on the popular will in front of everybody and then claiming that the problem is all these politicians taking a big dump on the popular will.

Action: concerning securities fraud, worker rights, social media, data privacy, Presidential appointees, and corporate news.

Long story short: tell our SEC to investigate Donald Trump's latest media organization, tell Starbucks to stop interfering with its workers' unionization efforts, tell our government to investigate Facebook for law-breaking, tell our FTC to protect Americans' data privacy, tell our Senators to confirm two Biden nominees to our FCC, and tell AT&T to stop funding the One America News (sic) Network. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Sum of Us helps you tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to investigate the creation of the "Trump Media and Technology Group." Not because of "politics" or "irrational hatred," but because, frankly, the whole exercise looks like a scam designed to defraud investors. And it's no use shrugging and saying ho ho ho these people deserve to lose their money, because the law should protect all of us, otherwise it's not much of a law, is it? This "Trump Media and Technology Group" merged with a shell corporation, claimed it'd make a gazillion dollars, and then told Trump votaries to invest their life savings -- and voila! The stock price went through the roof, and now they don't have to do any work. Kinda like all his other doings, now that I think about it. So it at least merits an investigation.

More Perfect Union helps you tell Starbucks to stop trying to stamp out its workers' efforts to organize for better pay and working conditions. Buffalo Starbucks workers are trying to unionize as we speak, and Starbucks has responded in exactly the manner you thought they would -- with intimidation, mandatory propaganda meetings, and store closings. I've been in plenty of Starbucks with not enough workers to handle the volume, sp why shouldn't they unionize for better pay and working conditions? Do they not deserve our respect? It wasn't that long ago that Americans looked down on factory workers and their "unearned" prosperity (which was mainly their children's prosperity); now that they're almost all gone we idealize them. Let's not one day tell that sad story about today's workers!

MoveOn and the American Economic Liberties Project help you tell our government to investigate Facebook executives for their potential law-breaking. Which might not be confined to inflating advertising stats and then lying about them to investors, but may also include private discussions to deceive investors, clients, and regulators, as two investor lawsuits allege and which Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's documents also support. I guess Mr. Zuckerman, who's not even 40 yet, will one day say that he didn't know he was breaking the law because this was the first time he was a billionaire. The Buddhists may smile upon that explanation, but I won't, and our laws shouldn't, either. I mean, fraud is fraud, and if you commit fraud, you should pay the price.

Access Now helps you tell our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to enact privacy rules that would protect Americans from the greed and venality of social media corporations (among others). You'll recall that our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) enacted pretty good data privacy rules in 2016 -- and that the Republican Congress, apparently unable to tolerate any attempt to tell a corporation not to hurt people, repealed those rules in a "resolution of disapproval," which also forbade our FCC from ever revisiting the issue. But that resolution doesn't apply to our FTC -- different letters! And even the Trump FTC fined Facebook $5 billion for privacy violations, so it has not merely a role in justice but some practice in extracting it. And President Biden's FTC is a vast improvement on Mr. Trump's.

Both Free Press and Fight for the Future help you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two new FCC nominees. Now our FCC can do its work; previously it had only four Commissioners, guaranteeing 2-2 deadlocks on every conceivable issue; President Biden has essentially appointed Jessica Rosenworcel (whose term would otherwise expire in January) to a full term as FCC Commissioner -- a position she has filled on an acting basis this year -- and former Media Access Project executive director Gigi Sohn to the position left vacant by former FCC Chair Ajit Pai's resignation this past January 20. Without five Commissioners, our FCC can't do very much business, and much business awaits it, chiefly the possibility of net neutrality's reinstatement and the resulting increased ability to stop big telecom corporations from harming consumers. So let's get that done.

Finally, both the Juggernaut Project and Common Cause help you tell AT&T to stop its financial enabling of the right-wing "news" network OAN. As you no doubt know, AT&T actually wanted a new right-wing news network that could compete with Fox News; why on Earth anyone would actually want such a thing is a mystery that will forever befuddle me, but that's why we have the "news" network that constantly yammers on about how Democrats "stole" the 2020 election from Donald Trump by getting seven million more votes. They're no better on any other issue facing Americans today, and even their founder and CEO will tell you, if you put enough liquor in him, that OAN wouldn't survive without AT&T funding. Seems to me there's a starve-the-best mandate waiting to be enacted here. But only if we get in their grills about it.

Action: concerning government spying, voting rights, Social Security, Presidential power, and data privacy.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act; pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and get rid of the filibuster do accomplish these things; and to pass the Social Security 2100 Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Daily Kos and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act already. The nefarious Section 215 -- which authorized our National Security Agency (or NSA) to collect metadata on good Americans without a warrant -- may be no more, but our work ain't done, because the entire USA PATRIOT Act is a mistake. And it's a mistake built to repel good-faith attempts to prove it's a mistake -- it allows our government to claim "national security" in court challenges and in response to calls to prove it's worked -- which is the worst kind of mistake. And I won't lie to you: I hated what the "war on terror" did to America and so I want the head of the PATRIOT Act on my mantle. Or is that not bleeding-heart enough of me?

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Also, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster in order to get them passed, since a Republican filibuster is literally all that stands between these bills and their passage. And we deserve to have them passed -- they'd take campaign financing, gerrymandering, and state efforts to rig their elections all to the mat, and it might not kill them, but it'll leave them bloodied enough for more good Americans to express their will, which is what elections are all about. Elections ain't where the work ends, but it's where the work begins. And all Americans deserve to at least begin that work.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. Anyone who bleats about TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ RUNNINGZ OUTZ OFZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! should attend that the Social Security 2100 Act would increase both benefits and revenues -- the former by increasing the size of checks and by calculating inflation in a way that reflects seniors' real costs, the latter by taxing income over $400,000 into the system for the first time. Why the bill puts a "donut hole" between the current cap ($142,800 in annual income) and $400,000 I couldn't say, but this bill will put Social Security on a stronger footing. Not that it's on a bad footing now! That's just something right-wingers say. But all victories need to be maintained, and Social Security is no exception.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314/S. 2921, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Perhaps not surprisingly, this bill aims to prevent someone like Donald Trump from putting our democracy through the woodchipper again, as it would explicitly prohibit self-pardons, limit the President's power to declare emergencies like Mr. Trump's sham "national emergency" he used to fund his vanity border wall, and protect our Justice Department from a President's political interference. People still think if the President appoints an Attorney General then that Attorney General should just do his bidding! But people who believe that are cynical, and the cynical shouldn't get very much say about anything in America.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Internet service-providing corporations can't just hand over your private data to law enforcement without a warrant secured from a judge who believes the information secured by the warrant has a better than 50-50 chance of securing a conviction -- but third-party data brokers can hand over your private data to law enforcement, and they do, for, like, money. Which, since it's law enforcement paying the money, is actually your money, since your taxpayer money funds law enforcement! So when your friends and neighbors shrug and say if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, just remind them that law enforcement misuses their money. Unlawfully and unconstitutionally, I might add.