Thieves in the Temple.

Penny rants for Sunday, December 1, 2024: special “goodbye to all that” edition.

Folks, you all know TFG's not leaving office except in a box, right? Because the minute he leaves office, he's going to jail! So how would he stay in power? Berin Szóka at The Bulwark explains how. The 22nd Amendment is pretty plain on whether he can actually run for President again (i.e., he can't), but he might be able to run for Vice-President – whether as the "real" power behind the "President" or as the next "accidental" President, whatever keeps him out of prison – and although the 12th Amendment pretty clearly states that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States," a far-right Supreme Court might rule that this eligibility question relates to earlier questions of eligibility and not the 22nd Amendment. Of course, TFG could also just purge our military of "disloyal" generals, run again, win, and have our military forcibly install him in defiance of our Constitution. So we have four more years to turn our backs on him – and on all his enablers.

Mike Lofgren, the ex-Republican who has published some withering Jeremiads against his former party, bids goodbye to America "for the last time" in this Salon piece. And I find Mr. Lofgren's disgust sympathetic. I always thought the people were better than the politicians, and I've known about America's dark side forever, but I didn't believe America had this many dangerously self-absorbed people who value nothing other than a) their own pocketbooks and b) nobody ever telling them they're wrong about anything ever. And the 2024 election reflects badly on the character of most Americans – whether they actually voted for TFG, refused to vote for the Black woman when they voted for the white guy in 2020, or just stayed home, all of those people watched a Grown Man Act Like That for ten years, and not only decided his tantrums were OK, but that they shouldn't stop him from being President. Nothing's irreversible, I suppose, but I doubt America will ever earn my love back.

Around the table: grown man acting like that, part 989.

Ho hum, TFG's foot-dragging on signing standard ethics and transparency pledges – which finally ended on Thursday – means that his Cabinet will be behind on its "work," since signing those pledges was a necessary and legal precursor to gaining access to sensitive government servers. You know what's happening here, right? They're going to blame Mr. Biden for all their early mistakes. Because that's what ball-swingers do – blame everyone else for the problems they cause.

Matt Stoller says that TFG will have to "pick two out of three" among high tariffs, high corporate profits, and low prices. My guess: he'll pick high tariffs and high profits, because, after all, his people won't be paying for them! Only us "little people" will! After all, how can you keep stoking rage against convenient "others" if people aren't already miserable? Again, ball-swingers never fix a damn thing; they just cause more problems, in the hopes you'll cleave to them harder.

Factcheck.org expresses a justified skepticism that TFG will be able to pull off mass deportations. Long story short: he likely won't get the shock-and-awe he supposedly wants – for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that coordination between various agencies would be extremely difficult – but then that's not really his aim: his aim, as always, is to look like he's doing his job without actually doing it, and then blame other people when he fails. All of that is apparently just dandy with at least 77 million Americans.

Oh, but TFG doesn't want to stop there! His Administration will continue trying to deport naturalized American citizens, under the guise of rooting out "fraud" in the naturalization process! My guess is naturalization "fraud" is about as prevalent as voter "fraud" or SSI "fraud," which is to say virtually nonexistent, and certainly not proven by hysterical anecdotes or bogus statistics. Will TFG's 77 million votaries protest when the folks they know and love who are obviously citizens also get deported, as always happens with mass deportation efforts? I'd like to think so! But I won't hold my breath.

TFG's Reign of (T)error won't end there, as ProPublica describes how he might simply decide not to spend money Congress has appropriated – as part of his plan to gut our government, of course! Since no "Department of Governmental Efficiency" not actually created by Congress will mean a damn in the eyes of our laws! The plain language of the law and of at least one Supreme Court ruling tell us he's wrong about his plans to use the Impoundment Control Act to his advantage – and again, cutting spending that dramatically would make right-wingers happy, when the whole point is to keep right-wingers enraged. But we'll keep fighting TFG's efforts to make our country his fucking plaything.

Finally, Elon Musk appears to be publicizing the names of certain federal government workers he wants fired, which of course has led to threats against said workers. Of course, I don't blame Mr. Musk as much as I blame the knuckle-draggers who think threatening federal workers gives them large dicks, but he knew this would be the result, because it always is, so he deserves blame for enabling them. This is why you don't put assholes in charge of anything. It's also why a healthy society doesn't let assholes get this rich in the first place.

Action: concerning freedom of the press, health care, and Congressional ethics.

Long story short: tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act and the ETHICS 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.

Free Press helps you tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, which would prevent our government from putting reporters in jail for not revealing their sources, among other evils. But of course, since this bill would prevent evil – forcing reporters to reveal sources who could be killed as soon as their own being so obvious an evil that our House has already passed the bill in an actual bipartisan manner – our President-elect, who loves nothing so much as hurting people (and has a list of journalists he wants to hurt as we speak), wants our Senate to block final passage of the bill. So many of today's journalists are self-absorbed clowns that we often forget how many journalists have made this country better, so how about we not hurt the good ones? How about we not hurt own country?

More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act. Fight back against what, you ask? Against the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (or PBMs) that are slowly killing them, that's what! PBMs are, you guessed it, middle-men who keep you from getting the drugs you need to be healthy – and keep your pharmacists from making enough money to stay open without being chained to a giant multinational corporation like CVS, which is, of course, firing as many pharmacists as it can so its executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. The Pharmacists Fight Back Act would make PBM reimbursements fairer and keep PBMs from owning pharmacies, and these are good first steps. What, you think TFG will solve this? Ha ha ha ha no! It's up to us, as always.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the ETHICS Act, which would ban lawmakers in Congress from owning or trading individual stocks, and assess stiff penalties for contravening that ban. Because owning individual stocks is an obvious conflict of interest for a lawmaker! It's really not that damn much to ask that they don't trade on their influence and their knowledge of legislation about to pass in order to enrich themselves. And these clowns all make upwards of $174,000 a year; if they can't live on that, maybe they should stop eating avocado toast. The ETHICS Act would prevent Congressfolk from buying new stocks immediately and would make them divest from all individual stocks and related assets by the start of 2027; that's more than enough time to get themselves right with the people.

Action: concerning government spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to hold on to their Constitutionally-mandated spending functions and not to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamps. 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.

Bowers News Media helps you remind your Congressfolk that they, and not some extra-governmental "Department of Governmental Efficiency," initiate and approve all spending legislation. Our Constitution is pretty plain on that! Of course it could get even worse: our incoming President-elect could simply refuse to spend funds as Congress has appropriated, and use the Impoundment Control Act to demand that Congress rescind those funds. All so a bunch of assholes can ram through spending cuts to hurt hundreds of millions of good Americans and protect billionaires. How about we throw sand in those gears?

In a related note, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Social Security or Medicare, while the Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Medicaid. They'll claim America's broke – hell, they'll make America broke! – and then claim we just "have to" cut programs that help tens of millions of Americans, instead of, you know, bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income that created the greatest middle class in history. Those 77 million self-absorbed Americans who hate being told they're wrong about anything will see very shortly that their pet monster only hurts people. I hope their pain is instructive.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen, not cut, food stamp benefits. Right-wing politicians have such a hard-on for cutting Medicaid and food stamps, don't they? It's like they know they're good programs that help a lot of people. They impose all these work requirements and felony requirements on them under the guise of "stopping fraud," but these things don't stop fraud but mercy. Seriously, what a leader would to is a) make sure everyone has what they need and b) put fraudsters in jail. No one seems to understand what leadership is anymore. And they watched Joe Biden for four years, so they have no excuse.

Action: concerning Social Security, food for poor seniors, and confirmations.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act and fully-fund the Meals on Wheels program, and tell your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible and re-confirm Lauren McFerran to our NLRB. 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 Alliance for Retired Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act, which would allow good Americans to collect Social Security benefits and government pensions or pensions and disability plans from employers that did not collect Social Security taxes. Seems to me if you've earned all of these things, you should get them, without some boss somewhere pretending to worry about "double-dipping." No, they're pretending – all they really worry about is "saving money," which is all bosses worry about, since they have no vision for making money other than cutting pay and services to the bone. This is actual bipartisan legislation, by the way, the kind we're not going to see for a while, so let's get it done.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to save the Meals on Wheels program by fully-funding the Older Americans Act. Meals on Wheels delivers over 250 million meals to over two million seniors every year, but now virtually all Meals on Wheels programs report challenges to completing their work, and one in three programs report waiting lists of 90 days or longer, so clearly Congress needs to do more. I'm sure Meals on Wheels will be the target of much Musk/Ramaswamy meme-based ridicule in the coming months, but they're ridiculous human beings from whom no one should get guidance about moral or spiritual matters. I'd rather adhere to the Baltimore Catechism, which instructs us that "feed(ing) the hungry" is one of the seven Corporal Acts of Mercy. And our government should do the same.

Finally, MoveOn helps you remind your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible before TFG takes over, while the Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran. Confirming judges ensures that at least some judges will listen to us over the next four or so years, while re-confirming Ms. McFerran to our NLRB ensures TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to that board until the end of 2026, meaning our NLRB, too, might listen to us a little better than the Insane Clown Posse TFG will install in our Executive branch agencies. Things will get very, very uncomfortable for good, decent, and moral Americans over the next four or so years, but that doesn't mean we should neglect the civilization we've built over the previous 250 years.

UPDATE. I experienced some mild annoyance trying to sign the MoveOn petition from the previous paragraph, but it worked on the second attempt.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” Presidential nominees, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Senators to kill the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act and refuse to rubber-stamp our President-elect's nefarious nominees, and tell your Congressfolk to keep funding our IRS so it can keep going after rich tax cheats. 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 the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act last week – though with fewer votes than expected – so both Common Cause and 350.0rg help you tell your Senators to kill that damn bill. No President – especially the monster the American people elected earlier this month – needs the power to declare non-profits as "terrorist-affiliated" because he doesn't like them, but this bill would give him that power, so our Senate must kill the bill. Do not admit the "but the bill gives American hostages in Israel a break on the taxes they can't file" argument. They could have made that its own bill. You already know why they didn't.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senate to refuse to rubber-stamp TFG's awful nominees who will all hurt good Americans with their evil acts. I hope I'm being perfectly clear about how I feel about all of this! People tell me I hold back on my emotions a lot! We're telling our Senate not to be a rubber-stamp because a) a rubber-stamp is about all that'll get these clowns confirmed and b) our House may well be planning to make a motion to adjourn in advance of our Senate, which would (per Article 2, Section 3 of our Constitution) give TFG the authority to adjourn both Houses indefinitely. Your Senators need to hear from you that this is evil – and that no President should be so afraid of the popular will that he resorts to such evil.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop cutting funding for our IRS. Let it be known that nobody voted for TFG so that our IRS could have less funding; if that were true, surely Republicans would have done better in the 2022 midterms, when they whined about increased IRS funding non-stop. But more than that, we need to communicate as clearly to our Congressfolk as possible that we want to make rich people stop cheating on their taxes, and increased IRS funding collects $6 more in unpaid taxes for every $1 spent. Taxes pay for things we all need, after all! Even when right-wingers call that socialist! You know, there’s another name for cutting IRS funding: defunding the police. Go ahead and use their words against them.

Action: concerning government subversion, working families, and law and order.

Long story short: tell your House Reps to refuse to collaborate with our President-elect's plans to ram his Cabinet nominees through without Senate confirmation, tell your Senators to re-confirm Lauren McFerren to our NLRB and pass 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.

Apparently President-elect TFG has been concocting a scheme – one blessed by our Constitution, apparently – to adjourn Congress indefinitely so he can ram his repugnant Cabinet nominees without a Senate vote, and he'd need the help of our House to do that. Could it be that nominating actual piles of dung to important government positions is a bad look? I was starting to think nothing, no matter how disgusting, was a bad look to Americans anymore. Anyway, Bowers News Media helps you tell your House Reps to do their damn jobs and foil TFG's plans to ram his Cabinet through without our scrutiny. (Senators work for us, after all. Right?).

The Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerren now. Why? Because then President-elect TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to our NLRB until 2026! (NLRB members get five-year terms.) And then our NLRB might actually be able to defend working families from corporate predators while TFG sets fire to everything else! Our NLRB recently outlawed "captive meetings," in which employers force employees to sit through anti-union propaganda. I've got a damn job to do, bossman; maybe stop interfering with it? Seems reasonable – to everyone but a boss.

Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, which would prevent private data brokers from selling our personal data to law enforcement, so that law enforcement can skip getting a warrant for that data. What kind of Kafkaesque hell is this, where our government can use our taxpayer money to buy our data so they can oppress us? It's so Kafkaesque, apparently, that our House has already passed the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act; we only need our Senators to act, and we will get ourselves some breathing room from government oppression. You may have heard that America elected an asshole to the Presidency again, so of course we’re worried about that.

Action: concerning the debt limit, non-profits, and federal judges.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise the debt limit without drama, tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and tell Democratic Senators to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible. 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.

We hit the debt ceiling again on January 2, so today is a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to lift the debt ceiling before then without any poison pill drama. Why? Because, as Dave Troy reported in the Washington Spectator back in July, the incoming Administration might allow a government default to happen, simply because it might financially benefit one of the Vice President-elect's pals, the notorious Peter Thiel. You'd hate to think the incoming Administration would simply ignore the calls of literally every corporate executive in America that a default would lead to depression, millions of lost jobs, and trillions of dollars of wealth disappearing. But you would also be a fool to count on the incoming Administration to be rational! Best to count on ourselves and our good works.

We thought the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act died an ignominious death last week, but now Republicans (and way too many Democrats!) want to bring it back — because what zombie don’t they want to bring back? Thus Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the "non-profit killer" bill. Our President-elect just spent an entire election cycle telling everyone that he would get revenge on anyone who had ever wronged him; why would we give him more power to do that, specifically by letting him revoke tax-free status from certain non-profits he would designate as "terrorist-supporting"? And anyway, what the hell is "terrorist-supporting"? What a mealy-mouthed term! And one we certainly shouldn't leave up to TFG to define.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell Senate Democrats to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible before TFG takes over. Because you don't want him filling judicial vacancies! And it's not like Senate Democrats have anything else to do, and I would want to distract them from all the navel-gazing they're doing about what went wrong with the election. Here's what went wrong: 77 million Americans voted for selfishness, venality, and drama because that's what gets them hard, and at least six million other Americans wouldn't vote for the Black woman because she's a Black woman. How do you make all that meaningless? Oh, I've only been telling everyone how to do that for almost 20 years now – you pass policies that actually help working families and that keep rich sociopaths from hurting them. Democrats won't be able to do any of that for at least two years, so they ought to give us some judges who will at least consider the inevitable lawsuits over the evil TFG is about to do.

Action: concerning pollution, bogus spending commissions, and tax cuts for the rich.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to repeal Biden Administration rules that benefit all of us, ignore the Musk/Ramaswamy cost-cutting commission, and let the bad parts of the 2017 tax "reform" expire. 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 Lever reminds us that the incoming Congress would just love to repeal as many Biden Administration rules as possible, so now would be a good time to call your Congressfolk and tell them to oppose any effort to repeal said rules. These include our EPA's lead pipe rule (which would result in cleaner water and less brain damage for our children) and methane emissions rule (methane, as you recall, packs a much bigger climate change punch than coal emissions). Republicans hope you don't remember that, you know, you hate pollution, and you like clean air and water and a non-burning planet. But will remind everyone if we have to.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to ignore the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency (or DOGE), particularly since such a Commission would have no Constitutional power to do a damn thing (since spending laws can only come from Congress). Even our President-elect says it will "provide advice and guidance from outside of government," which sure doesn't sound like big talk. And isn't it strange that our President-elect promised to put Elon Musk at the head of the DOGE – and then put Vivek Ramaswamy at the head of it, too? Putting two egomaniacs at the head of a commission sure sounds like a recipe for disaster! Still, we can't count on fantasies of realpolitik; we can only count on ourselves speaking out.

Finally, More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to let all the worst aspects of the 2017 tax "reform" bill expire. They weren't all bad – expanding the personal exemption was good, and we should expand it further – but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and massive corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the rich (all of which were bigger than any tax cut you or I got!) were terrible. These people don't need more tax cuts! They already have enough money! And cutting their taxes will mean one thing down the road: a manufactured "crisis" leading our government to try to take everything from us, like our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If we don't speak out, we can kiss all of that goodbye.

Action: concerning our military, press freedom, and tax enforcement.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop our President-elect from convening a military review board designed to make our military loyal to him rather than the American people, tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS so we can keep catching rich tax cheats. 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.

With news that our President-elect plans to convene a "review" board supposedly to remove generals who "lack leadership" but which we all know means "aren't loyal to President Bigbaby," now's the time to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to oppose this vigorously, because Presidents who want to make everyone take loyalty tests should be stopped. Furthermore, he could create a military who'd bless an unconstitutional third Presidential term, and we had better err on the side of caution where that's concerned. Strangle this baby in its crib, before President Bigbaby gets his way.

Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell our Senators to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would prevent our government from forcing journalists to hand over the identities of their sources (except when our government can prove it's necessary to stop an imminent attack). Because usually our government demands sources just to harass journalists and sources! And surely we don't think our government will do less of that under President Bigbaby! Our Senate must pass this bill, not least because our House, in a fit of actual bipartisanship, has already passed it! You never see actual bipartisanship anymore, especially for good! So let's grab that while we can.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure they fund our IRS to it can continue to catch rich tax cheats. Because we need to spend money to do that, since rich tax cheats will spend big money on lawyers! But for every dollar we spend on enforcement, we get six dollars back – to the tune of over $1.3 billion in back taxes just since last fall. And not just that! Average phone wait times are down from 28 minutes to 3 minutes and our IRS now handles 65% more phone calls than it did before; doesn't customer service mean something to conservatives? I kid, of course – there are no conservatives in the Republican Party anymore.

Action: concerning good judges, real disaster relief, and education funding.

Long story short: tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible in the time left to them, and tell your Congressfolk to enact real disaster relief and reject education funding cuts. 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.

People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible before Big Baby Ball-Swinger takes over. We need halfway-decent judges who might actually apply the law and show some humanity, not cruel mindless automatons who just do whatever Dear Leader tells them to do. And we're only going to get that as long as we have 51 Democratic Senators, which we'll have for about another month and a half. So they've got to get to stepping.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real disaster relief for good Americans still suffering from the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Real disaster relief would include a food stamp expansion for hurricane victims (hurricanes do throw people out of work, after all), so don't brook any cruelty about how "people need to fend for themselves." And certainly don't brook any poison pill spending cuts. A lot of bad Americans screwed this election up for the rest of us, but we will not be their hostages.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect public education funding. Admittedly actually abolishing our Department of Education would be difficult, even for Big Baby Ball-Swinger, but we must also stand our ground against the idea of education funding cuts, because no doubt the evil bastards float the former so we get used to the latter. But we don’t have to get "used" to a damn thing. This is our country, no matter what Dear Leader wants.

Around the table: the continuing follies of our Big Baby President-elect.

Our big baby President-elect still plans to use our military against immigrants and protestors in contravention of our laws. Will our military refuse to obey illegal orders, as is their duty? Depends on whether or not our President-elect purges all the "disloyal" generals first, I suppose! See, all you suddenly tariff-skeptical voters? Actions have consequences, especially when they feel good.

Speaking of which, quite a few military observers absolutely hate our President-elect's pick for Secretary of Defense, noted misspelled white supremacist tattoo-wearer/germ skeptic Pete Hegseth. Recall that our President-elect also wants to get rid of "disloyal" generals and you might think nominating someone like Mr. Hegseth – a man who seems almost designed to provoke decent and competent people – was a mistake. But then a compliant "liberal" media could help him get away with it anyway, and given how they ran Joe Biden out of the race and "covered" that shitshow of a Republican campaign, they sure look awfully pliant.

Our President-elect can't stop whining and yelling as he says he'll seize the endowments of colleges "illegally" promoting DEI initiatives and give that money to "wronged" white people. You know DEI must be doing good, or else right-wingers wouldn't throw such tantrums about it! And would white people ever get reparations from Dear Leader? Of course not! That might make them happy, and the whole point is to keep them enraged!

Here's some good news, at least for the moment: our National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) has ruled that bosses can't force employees to attend meetings about how bad unions supposedly are, since that's basically coercion. The bad news? The next President's NLRB could reverse the decision. The good news? That'll take a new case before our NLRB. The bad news? Big corporations no doubt already have a new case or 20 ready to file as we speak. BTW, no corporation has "First Amendment rights." Corporations are things, not people.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says hell yes she's going ahead with her prosecution of the alleged fake electors scheme in that state in 2020. And since it's a state trial, Dear Leader can't legally stop it from happening, nor can he pardon any of the defendants if they're convicted – though, again, if Dear Leader manages to purge our military of "enem(ies) within," I suppose he could send troops down there to intimidate her.

Finally, It Begins: our President-elect "jokes" that he could serve a third term if our House decides "he’s so good we got to figure something else out." Not a joke, and not just because it's not funny. The 22nd Amendment to our Constitution is quite plain, and frankly Dear Leader's 75 million-plus supporters don't have the guts to force their will on the rest of us – but, again, if he reshapes our military in his image, he could serve additional terms until he's a brain in a jar. Remember, folks: once he's out of office, jail remains a very real possibility.

Action: concerning taxes and law and order.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to extend tax cuts for the rich and to pass the Clean Slate Act so good Americans can get back on their feet after paying their debt to society. 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.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to renew the President-elect's infamous tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-corporations law. It used to be hard to get rich! That's because we taxed millionaire income at 91%, so the rich couldn't compound their power without end! During the New Deal era we had one billionaire; now we have hundreds, and none of them contribute a damn thing of value to this world. Meanwhile health care workers and first responders and store clerks and baristas – not to mention scientists, philosophers, and artists – all go hungry, and our nation becomes so sick, immoral, and decadent we elect an overt fascist to the Presidency. Tax the rich like we used to and we stop all of that dead.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Clean Slate Act, which would seal federal records for criminal case dismissals and acquittals and – most importantly! – convictions for nonviolent offenses, so the good Americans who've paid the debt they owe to society can get on with their lives and contribute to civilization again. Also, if these folks can get on with their lives, they'll be less likely to go back to jail, though our private prison-loving President-elect might not see that as a good thing. I've long tried to turn law-and-order talk on its head – stop detaining drunks and street fighters and drug-users indefinitely, and start putting real sociopaths like polluters and pension-raiders in jail. The Clean Slate Act will contribute toward that worthy end, so we should support it.

Around the table: love lives forever, hate consumes the hater.

Why won't MAGA ever let America "bring down the temperature," according to Amanda Marcotte? Because "Trump needs 'enemies' that he is forever threatening to conquer. But he can't actually conquer them, because if he ever achieved the alleged paradise of conformity he promises, his followers wouldn't need him anymore. So there will always be a new made-up baddie that is supposedly threatening the good white straight Christians." Why hasn't half of America figured out they're being played after all these years? Because they don't want to. So let's stop trying to "reach out" to them, to "understand" them. We already understand them. They whine because it makes them feel good.

Ruben Gallego wins the Arizona Senate race, and naturally right-wingers smell election fraud. I was going to respond, "an alternate explanation would be that Kari Lake is a fool," and she is, but (as I think we all understand a little better now) Ms. Lake also lost because she's a woman.

Shasta County, CA pays $300,000 to 11-year-old girl after shooting her pet goat. The girl thought she was taking her goat to an exhibit, but instead it was an auction! And a state Senator "won" the goat! And even after said state Senator said he wouldn't try to take possession of the goat if the girl really didn't want to give it up, the county sent two cops to seize and kill the goat! Remember that the cops who did this are exactly the kind of person our President-elect wants to empower even more – the kind of person who cares about nothing but their own feelings.

Ho hum, big home oxygen corporation Lincare has been defrauding Medicare (and therefore you and I!) for over 20 years, but Medicare can't seem to put it to a well-deserved death. Read the whole thing, and then remember that Lincare is exactly the kind of corporation our President-elect wants to empower even more – his "Department of Government Efficiency" would kill thousands of federal jobs but enable more corporate criminals to steal your money.

Finally, Fox News's Jesse Watters alleges that his own mother has not invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. Thus has Jesse Watters added his name to the list of people who'll die alone and unloved.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” freedom of the press, and poverty.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, pass the PRESS Act, and help our seniors better avoid hunger. 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.

MPower helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would let our President designate non-profits as "terrorist" organizations and revoke their tax-exempt status more easily. The President-elect, you may recall, has vowed vengeance against anyone who's ever wronged him, and this bill would help wreak that vengeance when he should be working for us. The bill would also postpone tax deadlines for American hostages held abroad (i.e, by Hamas), but obviously Congress can pass such a tax deadline postponement without the poison pill attached.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would make it harder for our government to force journalists to give up their sources. Again, the man-child about to take office in January would stop at nothing to intimidate journalists, so this bill, if it becomes law, would at least put another law between him and his desires. The fact that we haven't made him pay for his law-breaking doesn't mean "laws are worthless" – it means we don’t have enough laws between an evil man and his evil deeds.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (or CSFP), which helps over half a million senior Americans avoid hunger. If Congress expands this program now, they would also pre-empt Elon Musk's rein as Secretary of Cruelty or whatever, since he'll no doubt tell us in 2025 (after much "study") that we can't give food to hungry people if we want to stay afloat as a nation. Of course, that'd be evil – we can be both fiscally-responsible and humane. Particularly if we tax the talentless rich a lot harder than we're doing now.

UPDATE. The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act has failed — our House tried to pass it more quickly with a suspension of debate rules, but under those conditions a bill needs two-thirds of the vote, not a simple majority, and this bill didn’t get that. The circumstances, of course, allow some folks to brag about voting for the bill they knew wouldn’t pass anyway, which is cynical, but we can always use their cynicism to our advantage. Let this be the first of many victories.

Around the table: we are so sick of this shit, part 811.

Ho hum, plenty of big tech executives professed to be very, very upset about the January 6 treason but they all congratulated the President-elect who fomented it this week. Are they cowards or were they lying? Doesn't matter. There is no relationship between wealth and talent.

A few of our President-elect's voters may be wondering whether they should have voted for the guy, as evidenced by their post-election"are tariffs bad" web searches. Not being a “free” trader I'm agnostic about tariffs myself, but maybe do your homework before you vote? Voting for that man is a lot like masturbating, and that apparently includes the post-orgasm ennui.

Five masked individuals wave Nazi flags outside of a Michigan production of The Diary of Anne Frank. So there's five more people who'll die alone and unloved.

Losing Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde whines about Democrats boosting a right-wing third-party candidate who may have taken votes from him. Instead of whining, though, he could wonder whether I can't tell you what I'm going to do as your Senator until you give me the job was a good thing to say to the voters. Only one Wisconsin politician was ever going to get away with that, and that was Ron Johnson in the middle of a Republican wave.

Oh, look, a "scoop" from Axios! Sen. Tom Cotton (E-AK) has secured the necessary votes to become the #3 man in GOP leaderszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Finally, you may have heard some right-wingers disparage ballot initiatives – like the minimum wage/paid sick leave/abortion initiatives that reflect well on the Americans who passed them – by saying "they all win with out-of-state money." Jesus Mary and Joseph maybe if you guys put forth ballot initiatives that didn't hurt people, you might attract some of that out-of-state money for yourself! Right-wingers have already bought all the Congressfolk and state legislators – which is why good citizens need ballot initiatives in the first place! Just as there is no relationship between wealth and talent, there is also no relationship between power and talent.

A few thoughts about the election.

First, we have some good news.

Missouri voters enacted Proposition A, which raises the state minimum wage to $15/hour and guarantees five to seven paid sick days annually from most private employers. Workers can get five days at employers with 15 or fewer employees; I'm pleased that Prop A didn't simply give big corporations the opportunity to pretend they're small businesses because they might have fewer than 15 employees at a particular location. Nebraska voters also voted to mandate private employers to provide paid sick leave; voters here mandated five days at employers with 20 employees or fewer and seven at larger employers. And while the tally isn't final yet, Alaska voters have apparently voted to mandate paid sick leave, raise the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2027 and a prohibit captive audience meetings at workplaces, so that your employer can't force you to sit through political or religious meetings if they don't actually relate to your job.

Massachusetts voters approved a law allowing "transportation network drivers" (i.e., Uber/Lyft drivers) the right to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. And Nebraska voters weren't done, as they also repealed a state law using taxpayer money on private school scholarships by a 15-point margin. They weren't the only ones, either! Kentucky voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have permitted taxpayer money to flow to private schools. I am heartened that, even in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, good citizens like those in Nebraska and Kentucky agree with the common-sense notion that we ought to use public money on public schools (and certainly we should stop pretending that charter schools are somehow a way out of whatever problems we have in public schools, problems that do not result from CRT or whatever but from our refusal to fund them properly in the first place).

This year's pro-abortion initiatives met with some success, as voters in seven states expanded abortion rights at the ballot box, while voters in three others did not. The Missouri initiative, which guarantees a right to an abortion up until fetal viability in that state's constitution, will get most of the ink, largely because Missouri was the first state to ban abortion in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, but don't sleep on Montana voters, either – a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling locates the right to an abortion within the right to privacy, but precedents never change until they do, so enshrining abortion in the state constitution was a smart move on their part. I suspect initiatives like the ones that failed in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota might succeed in future years when some other Republican candidate is at the top of the ticket. (The one in Florida only failed because Florida required a 60% threshold for passage; clearly Florida politicians don't like it when good Floridians tell them what to do.)

Not every good ballot initiative succeeded, unfortunately, as Ohio voters rejected an amendment that would have created a bipartisan redistricting commission to start undoing decades of right-wing gerrymandering of that state's Congressional seats. Don't be too quick to blame Ohio voters for that – Secretary of State Frank LaRose wrote the amendment misleadingly in an obvious attempt to make it fail, and in any case Ohio Republicans have simply ignored previous directions from the electorate that would have compelled them to draw maps more fairly. What could they be afraid of? (Do go ahead and blame Ohio voters for replacing one of our Senate's finest human beings, Sherrod Brown, with Bernie Moreno, who clearly aims to threaten Tommy Tuberville for the title of "America's Stupidest Senator.")

I have little else to say about the national election. Somehow the whiny, traitorous asshole is back, so those Americans who want to threaten immigrants, beat up transgender folk, sling racial slurs, grab a woman's breasts in public, taunt Muslims on trains, and whine about all their clearly deserved rejections once again have a guardian angel who'll bless their every noxious urge. I pray that America survives another four years of this disgusting drama.

Where we are now.

So a man goes to the doctor and says, “doctor, recent events in American politics have left me feeling really depressed.”

The doctor says, “you should go read Thieves in the Temple; it’s a blog by this guy Alec Mento. It’s really incisive about politics, it’s funny, and he has this unlikely, irrepressible optimism about the American people no matter what happens! Go read it right now; you’ll feel better about everything!”

“But, doctor,” the man says, “I am Alec Mento.”

Action: vote!

Today is Election Day, though many Americans (in states that allow it) have already voted, either in-person or by mail. So if you have any problems voting today – including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues – call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. (In Spanish, that phone number is 1.888.839.8682, or 1.888.VE-Y-VOTA. See other phone numbers at the Election Protection website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931. I remain worried that bad Americans will harass good Americans at the polls, but if our enemies are smart (and, despite appearances, they are) they'll also try to obstruct the vote-counting wherever it happens, so you may want to go to your state's Secretary of State website, find out where they're counting the votes in your area, and call 1.866.OUR.VOTE if you see anything untoward. Don’t be skittish about making such calls, because our enemies sure aren’t skittish about preventing good Americans from voting.

Voting, as I've often said, is a citizen's minimum duty in America – this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. Our politicians would prefer that you vote for them on Election Day and then just shut your yap, but over the years, more and more of us have hounded our elected officials the way we should, and they listen more than they used to – certainly more than they did during the Bush/Obama years. The last four years have seen monopolies take a body blow from which they won't recover for at least six more years (when our FTC updates antitrust enforcement guidelines again); it was the right battle for Joe Biden to pick, and he most certainly paid for it by being hounded out of the Democratic Presidential nomination by his own party and by our "liberal" media. The last four years have also seen major climate change and health care reform legislation pass, as well as bipartisan infrastructure legislation that has at least made "government spending money to build good stuff" possible again, and a virtual neutering of House Republicans' ability to hold everyone hostage to stupid legislative demands. I wish I could say America is a more perfect union than it was four years ago, but only we can make it one, and I know for a fact it's a more perfect union than it would have been if we'd simply given up after 2016 – or "let Biden handle it" after 2020.

But while voting is our minimum duty, our work on every day thereafter will be much harder if we don’t turn all the bad politicians out of office we can. And there are only bad reasons for not voting. Negative campaigning is an especially bad one, though, frankly, the choice has been made easier by the major political parties this year, as Republicans have run mostly negative, empty, and angry ads and Democrats (perhaps having learned from Hillary Clinton's failed "just let Trump's ramblings write our ads for us" strategy) run mostly positive, substantive, and uplifting ads. So let's get out there and vote today – and then tomorrow, let's get back to giving our elected leaders, whomever they may be, the what-for they most definitely deserve. Sadly, that task will probably also include having to keep fighting for the electoral victories we’ve already won, as the Trump campaign plans to contest any vote-counting that doesn’t go their way. I expect, in fact, that their efforts will be worse than last time. But at least we can be prepared.

Penny Rants for November 4, 2024: special “you know what to do” edition.

So why is Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner suing Elon Musk and AmericaPAC over their plans to give away $1 million to various petition-signers? Mr. Krasner's complaint alleges that the Musk/AmericaPac lottery is "plainly not a lawful lottery," in that the state of Pennsylvania doesn't regulate it – and also hasn't published "a complete set of lottery rules or shown how they are protecting the privacy of participants’ personal information," as Commonwealth consumer protection laws require. The suit also alleges that they're not selecting winners randomly, as they promised. Well, Mr. Musk is the guy who broke Twitter, so I hardly find this complaint outlandish – I'll bet he even anticipated all the complaints in this lawsuit and just figured he'd spend his way out of them (or his Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump would somehow intervene). But I think he'll have a tougher time with all that. Now cue the Musk dittoheads who'll insult Mr. Krasner's masculinity and call that an argument.

Donald Shaw at Sludge asks: "What Does Mark Cuban Want?" He's been a Republican most of his life, after all, and yet now he vehemently supports Kamala Harris for President, so it's a question worth asking! Particularly since he's invested in blockchain (sigh) and AI (sigh), he runs a Pharmacy Benefit Manager at a time when PBMs are extremely unpopular, and hates the Biden Administration's antitrust lawsuit against Google because it means some other country might develop AI faster. Jesus Mary and Joseph if someone else gets to AI faster maybe it ain't worth it to get there at all! And "but it's an emergency" doesn't justify enforcing antitrust laws selectively. Why, he even gives a shout-out to a fellow whose corporation faces a federal antitrust lawsuit as we speak – and praises him by saying "he can pretty much define what's going to happen by how he prices things." Does he not understand why people would be upset with that – or does he just want you to think that? Either way, file under "With Friends Like These."

Ho hum, America's biggest health insurance corporations often outsource medical reviews to other corporations that operate on a "denials for dollars" scheme. And the biggest one, EviCore – did you originally read that as "EvilCore"? I sure did – uses, double ho hum, an algorithm called, of course, "the dial" that can of course be adjusted to send more claims to doctors, which generally results in more denials – particularly since EvilCore EviCore makes its doctors review a case about every four minutes. And EvilCore EviCore execs did adjust "the dial," per employee testimony, when their clients weren't "saving enough money." And their PR hacks brag about denying care! Which one could only get away with in a civilization that worships mammon. Hate to pile on, but Cigna owns EvilCore EviCore (and Elevance Health, the Artist Formerly Known as Humana, owns the second-biggest denials-for-dollars corporation, Carelon); think maybe there might be a conflict of interest there? Say it with me: it's a question worth asking!

In a related note, Eric Gardner at More Perfect Union explains "Why Crypto Hates" Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) Chair Gary Gensler. Long story short: because Mr. Gensler has moved aggressively against cryptocurrency – a phenomenon described by at least one observer as "fake money for criminals" – using existing law; crypto barons claim that crypto is so ground-breaking that it needs all new laws, though fraud is fraud pretty much anywhere you go. Naturally Mark Cuban also thinks Gary Gensler is doing a bad job – as with Lina Khan and AI, he says Mr. Gensler is "pushing the crypto industry overseas," to which I'd say Godspeed! – and Donald Trump, who said just three years ago that our government needed to regulate crypto "very, very high," has now seen the light, and I'm sure his own (desperate?) crypto venture which he helped launch just last month has nothing to do with that.

Finally, also peripherally-related to many of the above-described matters, Matt Stoller reminds us that the real problem the rich have with folks like Lina Khan and Gary Gensler is that, in G.K. Chesterton's words, "(t)he poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly," whereas "(t)he rich have always objected to being governed at all." Dig the rage coming from these contemporary robber barons! What is Jamie Dimon's reaction to our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) telling banks to give a good American's personal data to another bank if said good American requests it? Not regulators don't understand how hard that is, or we need a light touch toward these things, or even nanny state! – it's literally "I've had it with this shit." And his attitude (and potty mouth!) are endemic with his kind. It's well past time good Americans said I've had it with this shit – to the rich.

Action: concerning taxes, banksters, and corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, and the ETHICS 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.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would (among other good works) raise taxes on the rich (though not as much as I would), raise the minimum wage to a $20/hour "cost of living" wage (which is a better way of putting it!), and expand the personal exemption to that $20/hour figure (resulting in a tax cut that would benefit working families considerably more than rich folks). I've already said what I'd fix (i.e., I'd create a 91% tax bracket for millionaire income like we had in the '50s), but the American Stability Act would make life better for most Americans, so we should pass it.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, which would (among other good works!) prioritize workers, not shareholders, when winding down a bankrupt corporation, which all by itself would remove most of the incentive big banksters have when they try to kill a corporation with debt and then extract all the value of that corporation's husk for shareholders (i.e., themselves). You're seeing it with the end of Red Lobster – no, Red Lobster didn't die because of "endless shrimp" promotions but because hedge fund managers sold the land out from under them and made them lease it! Should civilized people stand for such shenanigans? No, we should not.

Finally, Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks (or ETHICS) Act, which would (all together now: among other good works!) ban Congressfolk from ever holding or trading in stocks. Because a lot of corporations feed at the taxpayer teat, and Congress must make sure corporations don't waste that money – but how likely are they to do that job if they invest in the corporations they're overseeing? The answer is not very likely. Don't brook any nonsense about how you can trust Congressfolk to do the right thing, because trusting your elected officials is un-American. What's American, then? Holding your elected officials accountable, that's what.

Action: concerning taxes, pollution, and cruelty to animals.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to end the Trump tax cuts and pass working family tax cuts, reject the so-called Energy Permitting Reform Act, and pass the Snowmobiles Aren't Weapons 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.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps youtell our House's Ways and Means Committee to let the Trump "tax cuts" expire and focus on delivering real tax relief for working families. Because the Trump "tax cuts" delivered massive tax cuts for the rich and tiny tax cuts for working families, whereas the Child Tax Credit expansion under President Biden delivered $250 and $300 checks per child per month to qualifying families in 2021. Will Republicans do any of that? Of course not! But will it cost them politically if they ignore us when we get in their grills? Yes, it will. After all, tax cuts for working families are popular, whereas tax cuts for the rich are, er, not.

The Native Organizers Alliance Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Energy Permitting Reform Act, which would fast-track approval of fossil fuel projects – whether they're actually safe or not, what's the difference? – and would also open up more public lands to mining and oil and gas drilling. "Fast-tracking approval," of course, also means taking away tools good Americans have to stop pollution in their backyards. Too many Americans think faster is better with every damn thing, but faster isn't better when you're trying to avoid spewing filth into our air and water. I'd say you should err on the side of taking your time and doing things right, but gosh, that would sound awfully conservative of me.

Finally, the Endangered Species Coalition helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Snowmobiles Aren't Weapons Act, which would, as its title implies, ban using snowmobiles to murder animals on public lands. Because who would do that? Some asshole in Wyoming, apparently, who ran over a female wolf with his snowmobile and then paraded her not-dead-yet body around a bar before finally shooting her. But this bill is so obviously a lay-up that it's nine House co-sponsors include four Republicans, including the bill's main sponsor, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and the otherwise-notorious Matt Gaetz of Florida. But too often a no-brain Congress forgets to pass no-brainer bills, so we should still speak out.

Action: concerning vote suppression, jobs, and electioneering.

Long story short: tell our Justice Department to investigate Florida's government for intimidating pro-choice voters and Elon Musk's SuperPAC for allegedly bribing people to register to vote, and tell Boeing's CEO to stop laying off workers and invest in them instead. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Civic Shout helps you tell our Justice Department to investigate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's anti-choice voter suppression tactics, including sending cops to the houses of folks who favor a ballot initiative that could enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. On what probable cause? I kid, of course – those who know they're about to lose everything will do anything, law and order and morality be damned. America is full of law-and-order type who'll break the law and then say but my case is different! But this is only different in that it's overtly fascist to send cops to scare people into voting differently. So let's make sure he loses that vote – and let’s also hold him accountable for his fascism.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell Boeing's CEO to stop laying off workers and start investing in them instead. Let me guess: the Boeing machinist union strike is causing the layoffs! Because, after all, when you're already down workers, the obvious solution is to lay more off! They're really laying off workers, of course, so they can goose up stock prices and profits and indulge in more stock buybacks, none of which has anything to do with building planes that don't fall out of the sky. Would it be piling on to note that Boeing has gobbled up nearly $150 billion in corporate welfare handouts? No, it would not. Clearly Boeing needs us to help it see the light.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell our Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to investigate Elon Musk's SuperPAC for possible illegal electioneering. Apparently he's been paying Trump-leaners to register to vote in swing states, although these benighted folks are really getting a chance at a big payoff if they register; I guess that's how he'll claim it's not really a "payment," but a chance at a pile of money is still a bribe. We outlawed paying people to vote in the first place because the people with the most money can literally buy the outcome they want. Anyway, don't worry about exacerbating Mr. Musk's persecution complex; he'd find a way to do that anyway, and were he still so emotional, he could cry into his $200 billion.

Around the table: right-wingers behaving badly in public, part 733.

Former Republican Mike Lofgren recounts some of the friendships he's lost to Trump Derangement Syndrome (actual) over the years, reminding us, among other things, that "people who truculently parade their skepticism are actually the most gullible people on earth." The stories he tells won't surprise you, not if you've been living and breathing these last few decades; of course, for me the Rubicon was Tha Bush Mobb, not Donald Trump. One question: was the fellow who hated the Iraq War but embraced climate change denialism confusing symmetry with fairness – or was he embarking on his own quest to hold on to other friendships?

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, tells us "How Not to Get Shafted Out of Your Vote." First, check our SaveYourVote.org and make sure you're registered; second, vote in-person and early if you can (and avoid mail-in ballots); third, don't accept a "provisional" ballot, but "politely but firmly" demand a regular ballot and bring proof of your address (which could be an electric bill). Mr. Palast also cites 1-800-OUR-VOTE if you witness, or suffer, vote suppression at the polls. It's good to know that in 22 states (including Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan) have same-day registration, meaning that if you've been unfairly deregistered which will more likely happen to you if you're not white, you can demand a registration form (and thus a ballot) right then and there.

So how's Iceland's experiment with a four-day work week going? Quite well, thank you very much – lower unemployment and faster economic growth being just two of the boons Iceland has enjoyed. Of course you already knew that, but we would do well to remember that the only people who oppose a shorter work week are the overpaid executives who can't think past the next monthly report. So bold, they are! And don't ever believe the hype (directly counteracted by this article, I'll grant) that ZOMG HOWZ WILLZ WEZ EVAHZ RENEGOTIATEZ TEH UNIONZ CONTRACTZ!!!!! Right-wingers just love pretending that a minor bump is an insurmountable obstacle, and they only do it to gaslight you.

By now you've heard that former Trump Administration Chief of Staff John Kelly has called Mr. Trump a "fascist," which, like, duh, but let's look at his testimony that Mr. Trump used to say Hitler did some good things too "more than once." "Do an in-depth report on Adolf Hitler's term in office" used to be an exercise in some high schools, no doubt out of a misguided/evil desire to be "fair" to everyone. Remember that almost everyone does good things by accident! But if a guy kills six million Jews, you don't say you know, he sure had that economy humming for a while! about him unless you're an asshole.

Ho hum, MAGA hat-wearer punches Texas poll worker after poll worker tells him to remove his hat at the polling place. In other words, a right-winger responded to requests from a law enforcement officer to obey the law with violence; why, this is almost becoming a stereotype! Since the poll worker is a senior citizen, the right-winger – no, I'm not going to name him, why give him more attention than he deserves? – now faces a third-degree felony charge. I bet he gets all law-and-order about immigration, though I’d be happy to be wrong about that. I am almost certainly not wrong about that.

Finally, I bet you know someone who canceled their Washington Post subscription after that "paper of record" decided not to endorse a candidate for President this year, to get back to their nonpartisan roots yeah sure. While it sure seems like these newspapers are rushing to oblivion, I can't be too hard on them, because I never endorsed a Presidential candidate, either. So I'mma fix that: vote for Kamala Harris! And vote against every single Republican on your ballot! They've fucked shit up enough!

Action: concerning Medicare.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare to cover long-term, home-based care, and to reject any of Project 2025's plans to privatize 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.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare so that it covers home-based, long-term care. We're all probably going to need it when we get old! But Medicare, despite covering health care costs that, you know, old folks have to pay, doesn't cover it, and don't let anyone tell you the private sector can just take care of it, because the crap-ass long-term private sector care costs six figures a year. Of course the situation is even worse than that – only Medicaid currently covers long-term care, and you have to spend all your money and sometimes even get divorced to qualify. No one should have to do all of that! It's cruel and evil! So let's get to stepping.

Social Security Works also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Project 2025's nefarious plans for Medicare. Which are to make Medicare Advantage – the privatized Medicare health insurance plans that don't cover your needs and siphon off taxpayer money we'd better use to improve real Medicare -- the default option for all new Medicare enrollees, meaning that when you get old enough, they'll automatically put you in a crap-ass Medicare Advantage program that only delivers "advantages" to their executives. “Advantages” in the form of money they don't pay to cover your needs that they redistribute upward to themselves, in case I'm not being clear! So we've got to put a stop to that.

Action: concerning banksters and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act and the American Stability 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.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. I guess a bill with the words "stop Wall Street looting" could be about anything, but this bill concerns what happens when banksters buy corporations like Red Lobster and then suck all the money out of them like the vampires they are. The Stop Wall Street Looting Act, among other things, would prioritize workers, not shareholders, when corporations go bankrupt – which would pretty much take away banksters' incentive to do the whole saddle-them-with-debt-then-distribute-assets-to-shareholders two-step. Corporations wouldn't take care of workers unless you made them, so why would we expect more from banksters?

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $20/hour and raise taxes on millionaire income. The bill would also raise the personal exemption on your income taxes to that same living wage of $20/hour, which means working families get a massive tax cut. (Rich people would get that cut, too, but it wouldn't help them nearly as much.) Of course I quibble with raising the rate on millionaire income only to 40% and the rate on income over $15 million to 43 percent. They both need to be 91%! Like they were back when we had a thriving middle class! But this bill would improve lives, and thus deserves our support.

Action: concerning health care and right-wing drama.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Global HER Act and expel Rep. Higgins from our House. 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 pass the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (or Global HER) Act, which would kill the notorious Global Gag Rule dead forever. The Global Gag Rule – generally imposed by Republican Presidents and rescinded by Democratic ones on their first days in office – prevents taxpayer money from going to any foreign organization providing health care in a foreign land if they dare to mention "abortion" or provide abortion-related services; the Global HER Act would allow foreign organizations to receive such money if they abide by U.S. federal law and the laws of other host nations. The Global Gag Rule is just one of many right-wing dramas I want to end, and if we pass this bill, we can end it.

Speaking of right-wing dramas, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to expel Rep. Clay Higgins (E-LA) from our House of Representatives. Most people were disgusted by the Trump/Vance ticket's promotion of completely false and racist stories about Haitian immigrants eating other people's pets – but not Rep. Higgins! He doubled down on the drama, repeating the false stories and further saying they should "get their mind right and their ass (they only have one ass? No wonder they’re a menace!) out of our country." He's said stupid, hateful crap like this his whole life, even as a police officer, and it's about time he paid for it. No, our First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a House seat if you say stupid, hateful crap.

Action: concerning executive pay and betting on elections.

Long story short: tell our government to crack down on federal contractor CEO pay and outlaw betting on elections. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Other 98 helps you tell President Biden to crack down on excessive CEO pay in corporations that contract with our government. Because once you take taxpayer money, you have to play by taxpayer rules! And our laws already empower President Biden to mandate that federal contractors narrow the gap between executive pay and typical worker pay. What on Earth can right-wingers reasonably say to that? Nothing, but we'll still get a load of nanny-state-American-Caesar-kill-innovation-kill-jobs-wokeness nonsense. Just remember: we taxpayers should make the rules about how our government spends our money. And seriously, nobody likes overpaid bosses!

Public Citizen helps you tell federal regulators to outlaw betting on elections. You know how your friends and co-workers all say their favorite sporting events are rigged after they lose bets on them? Think of how bad that'll get when we start letting everyone bet on elections – and people in power will absolutely rig those, particularly if a lot of folks bet a certain way. Alas, the D.C. Court of Appeals just allowed betting corporation Kalshi to start taking bets on which party will control the House or Senate next year; Pandora never did anything so foolish. We already treat political races too much like they're sporting events, and if we don't start giving our democracy more respect, we'll be ruled by assholes forever.

Action: concerning pollution and racism.

Long story short: tell our EPA to protect communities from the hazards of vinyl chloride, and tell a Texas county to stop reclassifying Native American history as "fiction." Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Hip Hop Caucus helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to protect communities from the evils of vinyl chloride. You remember vinyl chloride from its featured role in the East Palestine (OH) train disaster in early 2023? Well, our EPA has already designated vinyl chloride as a "high priority chemical," and scientists have told us vinyl chloride causes cancer. And the corporations manufacturing vinyl chloride tend to neglect communities they displace of build through, hence we demand that our government step in. You think corporations will do the right thing on their own? Ha ha ha corporations are like children without the charm.

The National Campaign for Justice helps you tell Montgomery County (TX) to stop reclassifying Native American history as fiction. Just when I think they can't sink any lower! Montgomery County told libraries to stick Colonization and the Wampanoag Story in the fiction section, though it is actual history written by an actual historian, after secretly creating a "Citizens Review Committee" and keeping actual librarians off said "committee." I guess the exercise was "say 'we never oppressed Native Americans' without actually saying it." But too many assholes already tell too many of us that our lived experience and heritage is fiction, so how about we prevent a local government from getting away with that particular evil?

Light posting notice plus warning.

Hello, good peoples! Posting will be light or nonexistent this week, so be happy and safe out there. Also, read Greg Palast’s report describing how December 11 could be the new January 6. Better to know two months ahead!

UPDATE. However! A Fulton County, GA judge has ruled that Georgia’s election board must certify election results, writing that “(i)f election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so—because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud—refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced. Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.” This ruling might throw a wrench into right-wing plans to keep state Governors from sending slates of electors to the National Archives (which would essentially throw the election to the House of Representatives, which would be bad). Of course, whiners will whine and drama hounds will drama, so I expect there’ll still be riots in swing state capitals in early December.

Action: concerning voting rights, price-gouging, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell our government to investigate Ohio's recent voter purge, tell airline CEOs to stop using hurricanes as an excuse to price-gouge, and tell Tennessee to investigate hurricane-related worker deaths. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Civic Shout helps you tell our Department of Justice (or DOJ) to investigate the Ohio state government for its recent voter registration purge. Brook no silliness about "a government's duty to purge voters who no longer live in Ohio," because purging voters from Black and Brown neighborhoods disproportionately (which several civil rights groups allege Ohio has done) is not part of that duty, and anyway no one should lose a right simply because they haven't exercised it in a while. "Oh, but they can just go re-register!" Ah, not if they don't know the state has de-registered them, and besides, making people jump through extra bureaucratic hoops just makes it harder for them to vote. Is that right?

More Perfect Union helps you tell airline CEOs to stop price-gouging for flights out of the way of incoming disasters like Hurricane Milton. It's a shame we even have to say such things out loud, but apparently United and American have done this exact thing, despite the fact that we now live in an age where virtually anyone with an internet connection can discover them doing this exact thing. If anyone tells you this is just how the "free" market "works," ask them how they'd feel if it were their own family members facing this kind of price-gouging. Some people love saying grandma needs to be "sacrificed" to make burdens lighter for the rest of us, but those folks don't mean their own grandma.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to, well, investigate Impact Plastics of Erwin, TN for telling their employees not to leave as Hurricane Milton was hammering them. At least three people died because their bosses told them the emergency just wasn't bad enough for them to evacuate, and then they were all trapped, and then when they tried to escape anyway they found themselves in the middle of a catastrophe. But good managers foresee catastrophes (like a hurricane whose approach has already been on the news for several days!) and plan for them. So we should keep demanding accountability for those who do not plan, and who kill their employees as a result.

Action: concerning the Israel/Palestine war, food stamps, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop further arms sales to Israel, reject food stamp cuts, and fully fund our IRS. 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.

Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject further arms sales to Israel. Now Iran has gotten involved, a move pretty much predetermined the moment Mr. Netanyahu decided to kill as many Palestinians as possible without hurting Hamas, though of course, this being Iran, they waited a very, very long time. But that doesn't mean we’re all suddenly pro-genocide! And it sure doesn't mean "Donald Trump should be President"! He'll rattle his saber at Iran, but ultimately do nothing, because that’s what Mr. Putin wants. We'd do much better to force an end to the Netanyahu stratagem, and that'll only happen when we stop giving him weapons. Certainly let’s not count on Donald Trump to do that!

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to put families first and reject cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (or SNAP), better known as food stamps. I'll keep saying "food stamps," I don't care! There's no shame in getting help from your government, since you fund your government. Why, food stamps are rather like insurance! But, of course, right-wingers want you to think we should be ashamed, because you don’t want to be Those People, do you? But we should not be ashamed! And we should not be cruel to those who've lost their job, or (more likely these days!) those whose job doesn't pay enough. Maybe we should go after corporate farm subsidies instead of hurting working families?

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS's efforts to find and punish wealthy tax cheats. Somehow, Congressional Republicans have made this the hill they'll die on! But did all that whining about our IRS help them win the 2022 midterms? No, it did not: to review, Republicans lost a net of one Senate seat and we only knew they'd narrowly won the House after another week of vote-counting. But if we want to find and punish rich tax cheats, the kind who hire rich lawyers to get them off, then we need to fully fund our IRS. Why, it's almost like Republicans are objectively pro-rich tax cheat! They certainly don’t love the poor tax cheat.

Action: concerning labor, campaign coverage, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell Marathon to bargain with striking workers, tell the New York Times to stop "sanewashing" Trump coverage, and tell our Department of Labor to enact a vigorous heat standard for workers. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell oil refinery corporation Marathon Petroleum to bargain with striking workers. Whose contract ran out nine months ago, and who were working without a contract until it became obvious management wouldn't talk to them. Marathon made almost $10 billion in profits last year, and has indulged in $35 billion in stock buybacks just over the last three years, but can't break off any of that for the good folks who make their wealth possible – though they can pay scabs twice the going rate! Need I mention that oil refining is actually difficult work requiring workers of some experience and skill? I guess Marathon will find that out, but if they’d just deal fairly with their workers, they wouldn't have to.

Civic Shout helps you tell the New York Times, one of our "papers of record," to stop "sanewashing" their coverage of Donald Trump. Are they simply numb to the onslaught of obnoxious behavior from Mr. Trump or do they want to pretend this should be a race? It matters not, because civilized people treat assholes like, well, assholes; we don't just hand out respect to Presidential candidates (or Presidents!) unless they earn it. I mean, this is America, dammit! And our "liberal" media have called his claims the 2020 election was stolen from him the "Big Lie," so I must presume they are capable of calling out Mr. Trump's obnoxious behavior. Now all they need to do is start doing it.

Finally, More Perfect Union also helps you tell our Department of Labor to enact its heat standard for workers. Broadly, this standard would require bosses to make sure their workers don't die of heatstroke; more precisely, it would ensure workers have enough shade, breaks, and water, particularly since a lot of farmworkers don’t get the kinds of protections other workers get under the National Labor Relations Act. I suppose right-wingers will challenge the standard by saying that Congress expressed its intent by excluding farmworkers from that bill, thus making the DOL's standard "unconstitutional." But why would anyone want to put that kind of work before the Lord on Judgment Day? Defending the powerful sure ties a mind in knots!

Action: concerning Medicare, taxes, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect Medicare from privatization, pass the American Stability Act, and ban guns from polling places. 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 protect Medicare from Project 2025's privatization efforts. The notorious Project 2025 leaves a trail of slime wherever it goes, and when it goes to health care policy, it's no different! Project 2025 advocates making private Medicare Advantage plans the default option for new Medicare enrollees, although Medicare Advantage plans have rather notoriously denied or delayed coverage and pushed seniors' doctors out of their networks, all so corporate executives can redistribute even more income upward to themselves. Health insurance is supposed to be there for the people who need it, not just corporate executives.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the American Stability Act, which would raise the minimum wage to a "cost-of-living" wage of $20/hour and raise the personal exemption for federal income taxes to the same amount, plus it would hike taxes three percentage points on millionaire income (and five points on income over $15 million). I’ve said many times that I'd go at this problem a whole lot harder than that! I want the 91% tax bracket back on all income over a million bucks! But the American Stability Act would still do working families a lot of good, so we ought to do it.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban guns from all polling places. Hard to believe we have to do that, but we do, and who needs to bring a gun to the polls? Probably the same people who bring guns to the supermarket! (Who also rather incongruously call themselves "tough guys.") Brook no nonsense from the folks who say their right to bring a gun anywhere they want is absolute. Bringing a gun to the polls is a threat! Anyone who brings a gun to the polls intends it as a threat! And it ain't that far a walk from bringing a gun to the polls to waving it around at people you think won't vote the way you want them to.

Around the table: half of what you see, none of what you hear, part 982.

When we contemplate the fact that in many Republican-dominated states, folks can spy on/rat out their friends and neighbors on abortion-, gender-, and race-related matters without ever being held accountable for their intrusions, we would be right to wonder how right-wingers imagine that these acts adhere to conservative principles. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when conservatives could be proud live-and-let-live types. Of course, right-wingers would also need to explain why abusive assholes deserve so much power to make other people's lives miserable. And none of them should ever get to whine about "cancel culture" again, since they support a Cancel State.

Matt Stoller sees Michael Jordan's antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR as evidence that "(w)hatever happens in the next election, the antitrust revolution is unstoppable." I hope he's right, but he highlights the Jordan lawsuit because it's a private lawsuit – one neither Lina Khan nor Jonathan Kanter has anything to do with – and Mr. Jordan has filed it after decades of folks rarely filing such suits because of bad court decisions that make them hard to win. Now, with even Google losing an antitrust lawsuit, the climate may be significantly better. Anyway, Mr. Jordan's lawsuit alleges a lot of bad behavior from NASCAR that can't be explained away by blithely presuming that sports leagues "should" have monopolies.

Ho hum, "liberal" media articles about the recent port strike quoted more investment banks, big ag lobbyists, and wine importers than union leaders. I would be ashamed of having such priorities! But I suspect our "liberal" media are, er, not ashamed, as they are so thoroughly captured by the corporate world; only people who make lots of money matter, their editorial decisions say to us. Maybe that's why the port workers accepted a short-term settlement that didn't address automation; in a less toxic business-reporting environment, they might have held out for everything they wanted, and if they had, they'd have won a big victory for all workers. (Also too: are union leaders ever as "rich, corrupt, and incompetent" as a bankster? Reader, the answer is no.)

In the middle of this article about how two right-wing billionaire pastors are turning Texas into a haven for Christian nationalism you will find this nugget about one of them describing how he "discover(ed)" his "charitable side": "part of our reward will be being invited into people’s homes (i.e., in heaven) to reciprocate for things we did for them in this life, and we’re supposed to make that part of our investment calculation." In other words, you give to others so that they give back to you! His weird phrasing (charity as an "investment calculation"? Seriously?) is a dead giveaway, but what happened to doing good works because good works help people?

Ho hum, the LAPD raids a medical lab after "deducing" that its "higher-than-usual energy use" must have meant it was hiding "unlicensed" marijuana – and a cop loses his rifle to a highly-magnetized MRI machine. No use saying "not all cops" or whatever, because the character flaws that led to this debacle – mistaking a stupid idea for a clever one, needing to prove a point or justify a budget, making up excuses to soothe one's conscience – plague all of us. Granted, not all of us would have gotten our rifle stuck in an MRI machine (after he emptied it! At what we may never know!), but we all still need to be better than our flaws – particularly if we're armed officers of law enforcement.

When I hear that Melania Trump has apparently offered a fairly emphatic defense of abortion rights, writing that "(i)t is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government," I still think that's all just right-wingers foisting more drama upon us. Republicans are objectively suffering at the ballot box because of their decades-long opposition to abortion – opposition that's had real-world consequences, including death, since our Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – so they have to win contestable elections by conning people into thinking they're somehow nuanced on the topic. See, Mrs. Trump is pro-choice! Republicans aren't as bad as you think! I want to believe her advocacy is sincere, and I know it won't be useless even if it's not, but we all know how right-wingers operate by now.

You've been hearing that the President has been "using FEMA money" on "illegal immigrants"? Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post reminds us that the President who actually did that was Donald Trump! But wait, there's more! Mr. Trump did that in defiance of Congress's will as expressed in spending legislation, whereas the Biden Administration spent FEMA money (including money for FEMA's Shelter and Services program, which occupies a sliver of FEMA's budget) as directed by legislation — legislation the Republican House blessed. None of this will ever convince a Trump votary, of course, because rage is a hell of a drug.

Finally, another day, another scientific study demonstrating that social media content moderation actually has a “bias" against stupid and obnoxious content and not a “bias" against conservative content. Of course, if right-wingers don't seem to know the difference, perhaps that's because they purvey most of the stupid and obnoxious content! You know, I remember being younger and complaining about censorship all the time, but then I became a man and put away childish things, while too many of today's right-wingers prefer to whine about rejections they deserve. People who spew noxious crap and act like an asshole deserve rejection! It ain't that deep!

Action: concerning striking workers and financial predators.

Long story short: tell port CEOs to accept striking portworkers' demands, and tell your government to protect us from financial predators in the green lending industry. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell port CEOs to accept portworkers' demands. 45,000 port workers went on strike this week to protest low pay (no, really, only $20/hour for that work?) and automation (ho hum, corporations making billions in profits want to give as many jobs as possible to robots). On occasion, legitimate, life-improving technological progress forces people out of work, but robots ain't that – robots will screw everything up while CEOs make even more money forcing the world to accept incompetence. These CEOs deserve to fail – but they won't, unless we pressure them to give in to their workers' demands.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell various federal agencies to protect good Americans from financial predators in the green lending industry. Lending programs that help folks deal with pollution and climate change are relatively new – which means they probably have a disproportionate number of scam artists, since new areas of our economy tend to get the necessary regulatory scrutiny much later than more established ones. And you know right-wingers stand ready to declare the green lending industry "unreliable." Their hell will be just as hot as ours, but why should any of us live in hell?

UPDATE. Port strikers have reached a tentative agreement with management, one that would raise pay 62% over the next five years but does not address automation. Go ahead and send your message anyway, amending it as you need to. Once you win, you need to keep fighting to keep your wins, and big bosses need to know we’ll do that.

Action: concerning hurricanes and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to fund FEMA and stop our government from making privatized Medicare plans the default option for new enrollees. 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 National Campaign for Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass immediate disaster funding. They're out of session right now, which is usually a good thing, but as you know, a Category 4 hurricane just slammed Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and our Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) has run out of money after Congress stripped $10 billion in the last authorization bill. So, they need to get back to Washington, D.C. with a quickness and help good Americans again. And brook no stupidity about cutting school lunch funding or renewable energy funding to pay for more FEMA funding! We are not hostages in America!

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to let the nefarious Project 2025 impose its will on our Medicare benefits. That's right, there's nowhere that Project 2025 doesn't leave its trail of slime, and Project 2025 would (among other "reforms") make privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default option for new Medicare enrollees. If you've read all the news reports about Medicare Advantage plans denying care to our seniors – or, you know, if you're one of those seniors – you will want to get on the horn with your Congressfolk about this, before they decide no one will ever hold them accountable for their evil.

Action: concerning voting rights and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and expand (not repeal!) Medicare drug price negotiation. 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.

People Power United helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The first bill would standardize early and mail-in voting, ban gerrymandering, and force disclosure of big campaign donations, while the latter would give our government the power to investigate and end racist voting practices more vigorously and allow our Justice Department's ability to pre-clear voting law changes in any state or locality that has established a record of vote suppression. Who's against these bills? Self-serving Republicans, and approximately no one else. Must they win again? If we speak out in numbers they can't deny, they'll lose, and we'll win. It's that simple.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate prices for more drugs not fewer. Because "fewer" is the Republicans' preferred position, apparently! Many Republicans are actually running on repealing Medicare's ability to negotiate prices for a few drugs beginning in 2026. Taking such a position, in public, used to end political careers, but not in this sick, immoral, and decadent world; how do we begin to bring a sane, moral, and decent world back? By demanding that Medicare should be able to negotiate the price of any drug, on behalf of both seniors and taxpayers, since that's our tax money they're spending. If we speak out enough, our Congressfolk will heed our will.

Action: concerning health care and nativism.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Health Over Wealth Act and expel Rep. Higgins from our House. 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.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Health Over Wealth Act, which would make it harder for bankster hedge fund managers to take over nursing homes and strip the money out of them. Seriously, they buy nursing homes, cut services and jobs, load them up with debt, and eventually redistribute all the wealth upward to themselves when they "have to close" a "badly-functioning" nursing home – leaving seniors out in the cold! The Health Over Wealth Act would outlaw such asset-stripping and require DHS approval of nursing home sales – among other reforms! It ain't everything we'd want, but it'd make things better for our seniors, a class of people that will, ideally, one day include all of us.

Civic Shout helps you tell your House Reps to expel Rep. Clay Higgins (E-LA) for his most recent comments about Haitian immigrants. Mr. Higgins obviously thinks it's OK to say just any old thing, no matter whom it hurts, as long as you get attention for it. And while I would say he has absolute First Amendment rights to post his vile rhetoric on his Facebook page to his private (not public!) groups of friends and followers, he does not have a First Amendment right to a House seat while doing that. In fact, I'd say we have a duty, as civilized people, to keep him out of our government while he's doing that – and brook no cynicism about how “all politicians are bad,” because cynicism invites and enables bad behavior.

Around the table: in which “law and order” means something other than whatever Republicans say it means.

Springfield, OH Haitian nonprofit files six charges under state law against Donald Trump and JD Vance for their role in spreading vicious lies about the Haitian community there, and I suspect at least five of them will stand up in court – pinning domestic terror bomb threats committed by others on Messrs. Trump and Vance would be difficult, but these two clowns sure did "knowingly causing alarm in the Springfield community by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false," and they repeated those lies on TV whenever they could, and they caused others to think Haitians would threaten them, and if threatening to deport Haitians to Venezuela isn't an intimidating threat, I'm not sure what is. I wish the Haitian Bridge Alliance the best of luck in getting justice for law-abiding Haitians.

Ho hum, the Florida Department of Education has banned any instruction on consent and contraception in their sex ed classes, instead insisting on an emphasis on abstinence, which, yeah, I remember being a hormone-addled teen myself, so that won't work! And refusing to teach kids about consent? Either they're trying to convince the world that they're objectively pro-child molestation or they just assume they're raising a generation of kids that'll do what they're told, which always becomes problematic when they're older and everyone who told them what to do is dead. Jesus Mary and Joseph they've even banned the word "fluids" from sex ed classes so that kids won't know how HIV gets transmitted – in a state with more HIV diagnoses than any other! Sooner or later, good conservatives who actually want to grapple with the world as it is are going to jump off this train, and then what will the Ron DeSantises of the world do? Lose elections, that's what. Yes, even in Florida.

When I hear that good Americans spammed a Texas anti-trans hotline (one looking for "tips" on folks trying to break draconian anti-trans laws) with such things as the entire Bee Movie script, I remember that while trolling bigots is fun, useful, and honorable, Texas's anti-trans hate train still rolls on, with at least one woman actually de-transitioning back into manhood thanks to Texas law – and yet unable to be a man on their drivers' license, because that would violate the law! For about a quarter of the American population – and a rather larger proportion of the Republican Party – it really is all about the cruelty.

Rick Perlstein informs us that Presidential polling has just about always been laughably wrong, and though sometimes pollsters make honest mistakes (the future is the hardest thing to predict, correcting mistakes by fighting the last war, etc.), they're also pretty insular and arrogant, and ultimately you may decide (as I have!) that the only polling you ever want to see again is polling about issues, because horserace polling about candidates makes us all into bystanders, when we're not bystanders in a democracy. When you read about all those folks in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s going why do we even have an election when we know what's going to happen ha ha ha, that'll be reinforced for you.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court tosses the Pennsylvania state House's impeachment case against Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner, which makes sense – no legislative body takes up bills from last session (they reintroduce them!), and an impeachment is no different. So, you think PA Republicans knew this would happen when they filed their impeachment as a big-drama October Surprise, meant to rile up the voters about crime right before Election Day? I'd be a schmuck if I didn't wonder! In any case, it didn't work; one might even say (after Democrats scored numerous statewide wins, including the lower House) that it backfired. Meanwhile, nobody gives Larry Krasner any credit for that 17% reduction in the city's murder rate after blaming him when it went up.

In a peripherally-related note, Popular Information talks with Jeff Asher about why Donald Trump's complaints about FBI crime data are hogwash. Highlights: the National Crime Victimization Survey apparently has such large margins of error that you can't draw many useful conclusions about its findings, the FBI always doesn't get data from a few cities so complaining about it now is silly, "I don't think a secret like" the Biden Administration manipulating data "could be kept," and as far as people not reporting crimes because they think no one will do anything about them, "I doubt many prosecutors are refusing to prosecute murder." Remember: they whine about crime (and immigration, for that matter) because they have nothing to offer but hate.

Finally, New York City Mayor Eric Adams – once mooted by "liberal" media pundits as the Democratic Party's Future! – now faces five federal indictments for wire fraud, bribery, and campaign finance offenses. To think that some fool actually once suggested a "Manchin-Adams Democratic Party" as a Way Forward! And, just like all overrated center-right politicians, Mr. Adams, a Democratic Mayor indicted by a Democratic Administration, claims his indictment is political. Where are the Republicans who will squeal about the politicization of justice? I kid, of course – Eric Adams was always a tool of Our Glorious Elites, a tool to be discarded as soon as it stopped working, and if he doesn't know that now, he will soon. Will such a recognition scene spark good works, or more desperate chasing after power at some right-wing think tank? I think I know the answer, though I'd be happy to be wrong.

Action: concerning the Israel/Palestine war and health care.

Long story short: tell Congress to stop arming Israel, tell a big pharma CEO to make his drugs more affordable, and tell PA state legislators to expand health care access. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop a $20 billion weapons sale to Israel. You have noticed, I trust, that Israel has, ah, expanded the war on Palestine into Lebanon by blowing up pagers? That turned out to be about as "surgical" as the November air strikes on Gaza. And it's also more evidence, if we needed it, that Mr. Netanyahu has no intention of eliminating Hamas or (even) securing Israel from their enemies, but only wants to create more crises that require the people of Israel to cleave to him. And we're helping him do that! So we should stop helping him do that.

More Perfect Union helps you tell the CEO of Novo Nordisk to stop price-gouging good Americans for weight loss drugs. If you know anyone who responds by saying well people should just stop getting fat ha ha ha snort, then, well, here are three things you can say: 1) one of those two drugs, Ozempic, helps diabetics, 2) our subsidization of high-fructose corn syrup has made our obesity problem much worse, and 3) "I can see you ain't missin' no meals." I'm guessing at the last one, but I bet I'm not wrong. Also too, they charge Americans for these drugs more than they charge the British. Which is another oblique argument for a Medicare-for-all health insurance system, I suppose.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: Health Care Voices helps you tell your PA state legislator to help ensure that big health care corporations actually provide care for good Pennsylvanians. Specifically, you'd tell them to pass HB 2344, which will help good Pennsylvanians speak out against hospital mergers and closures that affect their community (right, former Hahnemann patients?), and HB 2339 would make hospitals publish prices and fees so good Pennsylvanians can know what they're getting into. These bills would make health care better, so they deserve our support.

Action: concerning Medicare privatization, workplace heat standards, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell New York City's mayor to stop forcing city employees onto Medicare Advantage, tell our Department of Labor to institute its proposed heat standard, and tell our government to reject Postal Service privatization. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Be a Hero helps you tell New York City Mayor Eric Adams to stop forcing city employee retirees to use Medicare Advantage instead of traditional Medicare. Because the only advantage to Medicare "Advantage" is that private health insurance executives make more money while denying more care – and, of course, siphoning off taxpayer funds that could have gone to traditional Medicare! Remember when they said Eric Adams was the future of the Democratic party? Well, this marks him as the same-old same-old. So let's fight him, and protect folks who paid into Medicare all their lives and deserve the best Medicare they can get.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Department of Labor to implement its heat standard rule now. Why now, as fall is upon us? Because the next President might be a whiny, traitorous asshole who will shit all over this rule, just to please bosses who think being cruel to their workers is their "right"! Also too, in some parts of the country (i.e., the South), it's still pretty hot, and Southern workers could use all the help they can get. If you hear anyone say this rule will mainly help illegal immigrants, back away from them, slowly, and maybe stop talking to them. Even if that were true, which it’s not, no living being deserves to die of overwork and heatstroke. As civilized people, we should do better.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government to reject any effort to privatize our Postal Service. Postmaster General DeJoy, who really needs to be fired and replaced with someone not-evil, has lately said, after he cut services, raised prices, and slashed jobs, that our Postal Service is in a "death spiral"! That is, of course, the nature of power in these times – take over something that works, fuck it all up with your incompetence and greed, and then position yourself as the "only person who can fix these problems." Come to think of it, I've just described the entire George W. Bush Administration. Want to be done with all of that stupidity? Then we've got to get to work.

Action: concerning price-gouging, monopolies, and public lands.

Long story short: tell our government to stop big pharma corporations from price-gouging, investigate Uber and Lyft for breaking antitrust law, and avoid building solar on public lands where wildlife thrives. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell the Biden Administration to finalize its "march-in rights" rule, which would enable our government to "march in" and license drug patents to other corporations if patentholders continued to price-gouge good Americans. Which they totally do! And if they knew they'd lose more money if they gouged good Americans, they'd stop doing it! That's what "government working for you" looks like. And yes, our Supreme Court might say it's unconstitutional, but let's make them do it, and earn even more bad will for themselves! If Brett Kavanaugh can't go out for coffee because he's afraid people will shame him, that's just how civilization works.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) that the Uber/Lyft business model actually violates our antitrust laws. How? With secret algorithms that pay drivers differently, based on factors they won't let anyone see, even if drivers use the exact same route as other drivers – all resulting in, per one researcher, "algorithmic wage discrimination." You know how cab rates have been historically fixed on time and distance? No longer! Now drivers never know how much money they're going to make! And Uber and Lyft can only get away with it because they have monopoly power in the first place! So, yeah, our FTC needs to know about this.

Finally, the Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell our government to put solar panels on already-degraded public lands, not public lands with thriving wildlife populations who might be hurt or killed by solar projects. We want a more renewable future, but we don't want to hurt living beings to do it! Right-wingers try to use this truism against us whenever they whine about "windmills being eyesores" or "windmills making noise" or "windmills killing birds," all of which they greatly exaggerate, and all of which they use to get you to oppose good things you wouldn't ordinarily oppose. But, as I've suggested in the first sentence, there is always another way to do the right thing.

Around the table: “truly the most oppressed minority."

David Corn reminds us that Donald Trump badly mishandled the COVID pandemic while he was President. Well, he also talks to memory experts to explain how Americans might actually have forgotten that (long story short: the pandemic sucked, why would you want to remember it?), but the better public service is reminding good Americans that a President less interested in creating drama at every turn and more interested in leading us through and out of the pandemic might have saved many more lives. And putting this guy in charge again would just mean more drama, more hysteria, and more assholes threatening to kill people who actually know how to do things, which is all pretty much the opposite of the future I signed up for.

Ho hum, right-wing "journalist" discovers that libel is actually a thing and not just a weapon to brandish at anyone you don't like. Specifically, a Scranton Times reporter reminded everyone that said "patriot reporter," who makes a living claiming that "certain high-ranking elected and public officials are satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles sexually abusing children and drinking their blood to ingest the life-extending chemical adrenochrome," has, in his own past, a Corruption of Minors conviction. The "patriot reporter"'s libel lawsuit, predictably, failed. Nice to know Scranton, PA still has a local daily, though will they still have one after a few more frivolous libel suits?

Portage County, OH Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski advises his Facebook followers that, if Kamala Harris wins the Presidency in November, they should "write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo...when the Illegal human 'Locust' (which she supports!) Need places to live...We'll already have the addresses of the their New families...who supported their arrival!" (Odd capitalization and use of ellipses in the original.) When he feels like responding to press inquiries, he'll no doubt say that of course he didn't mean to intimidate anyone, but was just "trying to make a point," but I'm pretty sure most folks just read "write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards" and reacted accordingly, and that's almost certainly just as he intended. In case you were wondering, I think folks so obsessed with "illegal immigration" that they'd upend law and order are racists.

With the news that the Florida ACLU has sued a state health care agency for using taxpayer money to spread lies about the abortion-related ballot initiative up before Florida voters in November, we will gain some insight into what right-wingers plan to do if they lose this fall. They'll do what they did with their book banning and masking-related attacks in 2021 – attack where liberals are strong, and with clear majorities supporting the liberal position on abortion, they'll dig in with their "abortion always hurts women's health" rubbish and their LIBRULZ AREZ TEH REALZ FEARMONGERURZ!!!!! rubbish. In the meantime, someone should go to jail for misuse of taxpayer funds. And whoever ordered police to interrogate petition-signers at their homes maybe should go to Hell – in addition to jail or in place of it, whichever.

I'm old enough to remember when saying you "create stories," as Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance did on CNN when confronted with the fact that he repeated lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats, would finish your campaign, but in the Donald Trump era, you can get away with saying pretty much anything anymore – if you're a Republican, anyway. Those who would respond "well, fiction writers create stories to get you to pay attention to other people suffering" should note that Vice Presidential candidates are not fiction writers. We should expect political candidates to tell the truth; if we don't hold them to that, we're not "superior" because we're more cynical, we're just not doing our job as citizens. (At the risk of piling on, Mr. Vance sure is one to claim that "the left needs to tone down the rhetoric," since his running mate is the one who says 99% of all the obnoxious shit we hear.)

New Hampshire Libertarian Party opines on X/Twitter that anyone who would "murder()" Kamala Harris would be "an American hero" – and then deletes the tweet, saying they only did so because the tweet violated X/Twitter's terms of service, laments that "(i)t's a shame that even on a 'free speech' website that libertarians cannot speak freely," and further adds – and you may want to sit down for this – that "Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority." Yeah, I remember when our government enslaved Libertarians and marched them off to detention centers and gas chambers and threw them out of helicopters! I kid, of course. I fucking hate whiners.

Finally, an internal Department of Homeland Security report reveals that under former President Trump, DHS tried its damnedest to link Portland, OR protestors to an "imaginary terrorist plot." Just as anyone who had even one working brain cell could have predicted when Tha Bush Mobb created the Department of Homeland Security after 9.11! The good news? Some DHS rank-and-file pushed back, because no one could prove the antifa "terrorist organization" even existed. But don't worry, folks! If we put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office this November, he'll make damn sure this time that nobody who ever stood between him and his evil fantasies will ever work for our government again! I wish I were kidding, but Project 2025 has essentially said the same thing.

Action: concerning high drug prices and Congressional corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices and stop playing the stock market. 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.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare drug price negotiation so that good Americans pay less for more drugs. Republicans in Congress have lately said, out loud, that they will repeal Medicare drug price negotiation if they win back the Presidency and both houses of Congress! How a candidate could say I will make you pay more for drugs and therefore probably make you die faster and expect that people will like him I don't know. Of course, so many seats are so gerrymandered that candidates can demand mass murder of foreigners and still win, and it sure doesn't help that Democrats never run ads about such things. Maybe they should. Maybe I should.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban themselves from owning stocks. What's that I hear? You will never get them to do something that will make them less money ha ha ha I snort at your naïveté? And yet quite a few Congressfolk – apparently even they listen to good Americans more than the cynical do! – have been proposing stock bans of varying strength these last few years, and though none have passed, that isn't a cue to throw up our hands and declare defeat, it's a cue to speak out louder. Congressfolk should never own or trade stock! It's an engraved invitation to corruption! Never let cynics tell you that you shouldn't bother doing the right thing. But remember, also, that many cynics (though not the professional ones, of course) guard painful wounds.

Action: concerning worker safety and book banning.

Long story short: tell our government to protect workers from heatstroke, and tell local officials to stand strong against professional book-banners. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our Department of Labor to implement its workplace heat standard with a quickness. Heatstroke workplace deaths do tend to make the news, as you know, and while farmworkers may feel the need for these standards more acutely than most of us, working, as they do, in 100-degree heat without adequate water breaks, Jesus Mary and Joseph I've put up with excessive heat at my job, and I wouldn't want to give any employers any ideas. Corporations need to stop using us as workjars they way they use us as moneyjars. But all they'll do is use us, until we make them stop, using our government as our tool.

Civic Shout helps you tell your local elected officials to stop placating book banners. Even the Washington Post tells us that 11 people filed 60% of all book challenges during the book-banning heyday of 2021-22, and that fact alone should tell us that the book-banning movement is horseshit. Enough with the concern trolling about TEH KIDZ!!!! already. We won't put a permanent end to this particular right-wing tantrum without getting good Americans back on school boards, but we can surely lend some steel to the spine of local elected officials by communicating our will – a will they'll surely understand, since we still tend to associate book banning with Nazi Germany.

Action: concerning AI abuse and voting rights.

Long story short: tell California's Governor to protect citizens from AI abuse, and tell Georgia's Governor to investigate ethics complains against that state's election board. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Accountable Tech helps you tell California Gov. Newsom to sign legislation protecting us from AI abuse. If you need more convincing: big tech corporations hate it, and a legislature can always improve law in the future. Indeed, this is why right-wingers have always fought any voting expansion, because they knew once we gave (for example) non-land-owning men the vote, then everyone would eventually get the vote. Right-wingers don't like that, for some reason, just like big tech corporations don't like anyone telling them they can't just run roughshod over our laws.

Civic Shout helps you tell Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to investigate ethics complaints against Georgia election board members who just gave themselves the power to nullify election results. You might be saying to yourself: self, we're counting on Brian Kemp for this? But he's already survived the Wrath of Trump, having easily beaten back a Trump-blessed primary challenger/ex-U.S. Senator in 2022, and with Mr. Trump looking ever more vulnerable, Mr. Kemp may see political value in pushing him over. Of course he should just do the right thing for the right reason, but I want to help you imagine why he might.

Action: concerning labor, food safety, and pollution.

Long story short: tell Boeing to give its workers a fair contract, tell our FDA to keep lead out of cinnamon, and tell our EPA to keep nurdles out of our water. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell Boeing that their striking machinists deserve a fair contract. Our "liberal" media have been telling you that Boeing workers went on strike after rejecting a proposed 25% pay hike. Surprise, surprise: that's not the whole story. Boeing workers are hunting far bigger game: they aim to challenge the entire corporate culture at Boeing, the culture that puts mammon above safety and quality, the culture that puts shareholder “value,” executive pay, and stock buybacks above planes being safe to fly. This could be a watershed moment in our history, like Reagan breaking the traffic controllers' union but in reverse, because if the Boeing workers win, they'll show the world that we can beat the culture of mammon, and workers all over America will suddenly find themselves more powerful than they've been in about half a century. So, yeah, we should help them do that.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to limit lead found in cinnamon. This has been in the news lately, as all manner of food poisoning tends to be; one quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon contains more lead than anyone should ever have in a day, and lead leads directly to brain damage and maldevelopment in children, so our FDA should do at least as good a job as the state of New York, which limits lead to one part per million in spices. Oh, at the risk of piling on, the Project 2025 agenda would make sure our government could never keep our food safe again, so we must act now.

Finally, PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to ban corporations dumpling nurdles into our clean water. Nurdles! They sound so cute! Reader, they are not: used to make virtually any plastic product, they find their way into our oceans and not only kill animals who literally starve to death with bellies full of them and that is a cruel, cruel death, but they can find their way into our own bodies as well, and wreak havoc on our health. Again, not to pile on, but Project 2025 would prevent our EPA from keeping such things out of our water, so we must act now.

Around the table: with more dire warnings about mistakes good people still make.

Matt Stoller tells us "How Joe Biden Engineered Apple's New Air Pods," which can, with a software update, also be used as actual hearing aids. The hate-blind will guffaw with joyless laughter at that statement, but the Biden Administration did in fact force our Food and Drug Administration, via Executive Order, to approve over-the-counter hearing aids for folks with moderate hearing loss after our FDA spent years dragging their feet (and defying our laws) on that matter. Getting hearing aids without prescriptions also breaks up the collusion between health insurance corporations, hearing aid manufacturing corporations, and hearing specialists, since most folks can adjust their hearing aids with their smartphones these days. They say the politicians don't do good things for people any more, but Joe Biden does. So of course our "liberal" media ran him out.

I am not actually sure that the Trump tax "reform" "led to a $20 billion reduction in charitable giving within a year." The evidence: that "Americans who stopped itemizing their tax deductions gave less to charity in 2018 than they otherwise would have," but if only 30% of Americans itemized their deductions before that, what of the 70% of taxpayers who weren't itemizing their deductions in the first place? We don't learn. Also, charitable giving has gone up and down over the last six years, and ended up $35 billion higher in 2023 than in 2017. The expanded standard deduction is one of the few good things about the Trump tax "reform," and though we ought to allow more working families to deduct their charitable deductions more easily, the "finding" described above isn't a reason for that. So file this under "The Flesh is Willing, But…"

Some red states – namely Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska – will put paid family/medical leave before the voters in 2024. I suspect that voters in all three states will handily approve paid family/medical leave, since voters are generally better human beings than their representatives – but those representatives, in at least two of those states, will try their damnedest to overturn the express will of the people, and may even succeed. (I give Alaska politicians more credit than those of Nebraska and Missouri. Especially Missouri. What a political cesspool! They should all be turned out of office!)

So now we hear that the individual who first posted about "immigrants eating pets" on Facebook "was simply repeating a story she had heard from a neighbor," "who’d heard it themselves from a friend, who’d heard it from someone else" Jesus Mary and Joseph I can't even. This rumor enabled domestic terror threats against the government of Springfield, OH, which, last I looked, was composed of people, despite what right-wingers want you to think. And while I'm tempted to say people should just STFU until they know what they're talking about, I don't even believe the rumor-spreader's story. I think she knew full well what she was doing, because Trumpholes don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. How can they, after all these years?

When I hear that Democrat politicos are salivating at all the attack ads they can run against Donald Trump just using clips from his disastrous recent debate, all I can say is: have these fuckers learned nothing from 2016? Because I remember watching negative ad after negative ad in 2016 and thinking too many independents were going to throw up their hands and stay home because "everyone's so negative," and that's what happened, and Donald Trump got elected. Democrats have lately been running ads that focus on issues and solutions; they've even run some funny ads. They need to keep doing that, so people see the difference between them and Republicans, whose ads will all be shouting at the top of their lungs about crime and immigration because what else have they got?

Finally, I feel compelled to warn you, yet again, about stories of right-wingers fighting each other over that immigrants-eating-pets fake news: just like with the recent Marjorie Taylor Greene/Laura Loomer "fight," remember that right-wingers occasionally disagree with other right-wingers just to look "sane" or "independent" every so often, so they can bring it up next time you accurately call them insane or a jackboot lockstep marcher. So don't ever get sucked in by the drama! And don't start a lot of sentences with "even so-and-so thinks." That's how they get you to normalize them, and we should never, ever, ever normalize these awful people.

Action: concerning arbitration fairness, real tax cuts for working families, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to end forced arbitration and expand the Child Tax Credit and food stamps. 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.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (or FAIR) Act. Because forced arbitration is an injustice! Corporations used forced arbitration clauses to herd people with legitimate disputes into arbitration hearings where they almost always lose, instead of a court of law, where they're far more likely to win. Ignore those who say "people win more money in arbitration than in court," because people don't win, period, often enough for that to mean a damn.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand the Child Tax Credit (or CTC). You know the drill: Democrats in Congress enacted a major expansion of the CTC in 2021 which put $250 and $300 checks per child, every month, into working families' bank accounts. And then Republicans plus Joe Manchin let it expire, because we can't have nice things in America. CHN will help you advocate for a return of sizable monthly checks in your email to Congress.

Finally, the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to improve, not cut, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, better known as food stamps. Because any one of us could fall on hard times as quickly as we get hit by a car or let a major health problem go one day too long because we're working all the time, so brook no silliness about Those People Who Get Food Stamps. And brook no silliness about "rampant fraud," either. The solution to fraud is prosecute and jail the fraudsters, not take food out of the mouths of good Americans.