Thieves in the Temple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: from prayer apps to justice served.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: monopolies ruin everything, part 834.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: still in the shadow of the Build Back Better Act.

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

Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. Yeah, the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" the House just passed does do some of that, and that's not nothing, but we need to do more of it. And remember: if you don't have clean water, you don't have health care, period. And no clean water isn't something we "took care of" a long time ago and don't need regulations to take care of now -- we always have to take care of clean water, just as we always have to take care of the things we win. The fight for justice never ends; only right-wingers want you to believe that, and only about the things they hate. You see they're always fighting! And they'll come for your clean water if you let them.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. The Build Back Better Act as currently constructed doesn't whiff on these matters -- an effective 42% bracket on income over $10 million and a 45% bracket on income over $25 million, plus a 15% minimum corporate tax and a 1% stock buyback tax -- but my goals are always 91% on millionaire income and 55% on corporate profits over $1 million, and just because certain people don't want those rates to go up at all doesn't mean we should stop fighting for them. Don't worry about getting blamed for the bill's failure, because America already blames liberals for everything. Freeing, isn't it?

You may want to get on the phone with your Congressfolk and tell them not to make or break the Build Back Better Act over SALT caps (or caps on deducting state and local taxes). Tom Suozzi's red line (NO DEALZ WITHOUTZ TEH SALT CAPZ GONEZ!!!!!) ain't any less stupid than all of Kyrsten Sinema's red lines, and restoring state-and-local-taxes deductions to their pre-2017 levels will mainly benefit the very wealthy. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed eliminating the SALT cap only for Americans making less than $400,000 annually, and I think that's a good compromise, because most folks just don't care about rich folks in blue states getting their state and local tax deductions back, because gosh, they're just trying to eat. And Democrats want to be about that, right? It's hard to tell.

Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Our House Democrats are dutifully putting it back in the bill as we speak, and Joe Manchin must be laughing. "Didn't they hear me the first time I said no?" The more pertinent point is that Joe Manchin doesn't hear all the good Americans who say yes. And that's no less true in West Virginia (where the whole BBB agenda is very popular) than anywhere else! And if he wants to be an asshole, that doesn't mean you walk on eggshells around him -- it means you keep doing the right thing, and see if that keeps prompting him to be an asshole. We have to teach people not to enable assholes, after all.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. You'll be happy to hear that Democrats have heard you about that -- putting a very, very small version of Medicare drug price negotiation back in the Build Back Better Act, one that would let Medicare negotiate drug prices for 10 drugs in 2025 and 10 more three years later, which is exactly the kind of reform that sounds like very weak tea now, but which folks will fight for when Republicans take control of either Congress or the Presidency again. There is absolutely no harm, however, in expressing your will for more comprehensive Medicare drug price negotiation. "Making bad Democrats lose elections" does not count as harm.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. This is the thing we've made the least progress upon, largely due (and stop me if you've heard this one before) to the bloviation of Joe Manchin, who wouldn't dare expand Medicare services until "we put Medicare on a more solid footing." Medicare, the program that's been around longer than I've been alive, longer, even, than Star Trek has been alive? What is it that keeps Medicare going? Oh, right -- the will of the American people, who have worked for it, paid into it, fought for it, and deserve to have it when they need it. These are all principles that seem to elude Joe Manchin, since he doesn't seem at all conversant in them.

One more thing: just because the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is now law -- and yes, though it's a flawed bill, it's not a bad bill, and Democrats will no doubt spend the next ten months forgetting to take the credit they deserve to take for it! -- doesn't mean we still shouldn't act on the Build Back Better Act. Withholding a vote on the infrastructure bill was the Democrat liberal wing's best chance at getting "moderate" Democrats to acquiesce on the larger Build Back Better package, and now that that's gone, what can still hold "moderates" to doing the right thing? Oh, right, us -- the only thing that has ever made politicians do the right thing. So let's hold their feet to the fire, folks.

Around the table: with more "liberal" media hackery and more sound advice from actual liberals on winning culture wars.

A couple of biologists explain how COVID-19 could become endemic, meaning it won't go extinct like the much less-transmissible 2003 coronavirus did, and we'll have to keep dealing with it, much as we still have to deal with the flu and the common cold. Scientists tell us that wearing masks and keeping your distance works against the spread of COVID-19, and that vaccines will render COVID endemic more easily than anything else, but I guess right-wingers would prefer to listen to some eye doctor at America's Frontline Doctors, since that eye doctor will tell them they don't have to be responsible for their actions.

Ho hum, our "liberal" media read the Tuesday election results in apparently the only way they can: by demanding that Democrats move to the right. Democrats spend 40 years moving to the right and it's never enough! The poster child for right-wing Democrats runs for Governor in Virginia and it's never enough! And it should be fairly obvious to anyone who's watching that it's the most right-wing Democrats helping Republicans kill the Biden agenda, even though that agenda is actually fairly popular across the political spectrum, and that the progressive wing (which wanted a $6 trillion agenda, you may recall) has done by far the most compromising, but why bother paying attention when you can just dust off the same tired shit and your boss will print it?

You may celebrate when you hear that the Arizona state Supreme Court has unanimously stayed the state's ban on mask mandates in public schools because it's unconstitutional, until you realize that their beef is procedural -- the state constitution forbids anything but budgeting from appearing in state budgeting legislation, which is exactly where the legislature put their mask mandate ban. It'll save lives, but the legislature might just get more creative. Dig the Governor's spokeshack saying "(w)e respect the role of the judiciary, but the court should give the same respect to the separate authority of the Legislature." Again, "not letting us do whatever we want" equals "disrespect"? Waaaaaah! This is why we hate right-wingers.

Matt Stoller takes us "Inside the Pharmacist Rebellion at CVS and Walgreens." Just 40 years ago (it's like that's a theme or something!), most pharmacies were either stand-alone or small chains, as they still are in North Dakota by law, but now CVS ain't just bought out at least 10 smaller drug store chains but an entire health insurance corporation (in Aetna), and the evils of monopolies now result in pharmacists -- who we've long thought of as pretty well off -- making complaints about the workplace that resemble the complaints of Amazon warehouse workers. Overworked and understaffed pharmacies mean more medical errors and ultimately fewer pharmacists (who lose their license if they make mistakes), but understaffing means the workers who stick around have more leverage. Now if only the politicians would notice!

Speaking of which, ProPublica describes how rich politicians from both parties slashed their tax bills "using strategies unavailable to most of their constituents." I do so love understatement! "(S)trategies unavailable" includes deducting funds your charitable foundation uses to promote you (as Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has done), putting your assets in a trust for your heirs (as Republican Sen. Rick Scott and Betsy DeVos have done), and taking advantage of big corporate depletion deductions (as Republican-then Democratic-then Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia has done). Oh, and Darrell Issa voted against the Trump tax "reform" in 2017 because it capped SALT deductions, of which he made extensive use (and which some House Democrats have made their red line in Build Back Better negotiations!) Dig, also, some of the hostile spokeshackery offered by Republicans to ProPublica, though the gentler Democratic spokeshack prevarication is hardly better.

Finally, Amanda Marcotte at Salon tells us that "(t)rying to tiptoe around the culture war dragon is never going to work" and Democratic politicians should just stop worrying about "offending" Republicans and take the culture war fight to them. But by "culture war," Ms. Marcotte isn't talking so much about abortion or gay marriage, but Mr. Biden's failure to put vaccine mandates out in the spring, when they would have done more good; right-wingers have made the pandemic a culture war issue, after all. Just like they do with everything! Which is why you don't walk on eggshells around them.

Action: concerning communication, occupation, saving our Post Office, robotexts, and pollution.

Long story short: tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's FCC nominations, tell Amazon and Google to stop fueling the Israeli occupation of Palestine, tell President Biden to fire Louis DeJoy already, tell our government to stop robotexts as well as robocalls, and tell our EPA to regulate "chemical recycling" as vigorously as possible. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Free Press helps you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC Commissioner nominees. They're both good -- like a surprising number of Mr. Biden's first-term nominees! -- and at the FCC they'll have their work cut out for them. Without five Commissioners, we won't be able to reinstate net neutrality, and thus our FCC won't be able to force internet service providing corporations to, well, provide service during times of trouble. Like, you know, a pandemic, when literally everyone needs internet service! Or a wildfire -- you recall how Verizon throttled California firefighters' attempts to communicate with each other in 2018? We have no reason to put up with big telecom corporations' attempts to abuse us, but we're on our own fighting it if our government doesn't punish them when they do wrong.

No Tech for Apartheid helps you tell Amazon and Google to stop helping Israel occupy Palestine. They're both invested in Project Nimbus, as it happens, which provides cloud computing services to the Israeli military -- which makes them much, much better at occupying Palestine and oppressing Palestinians. But over a thousand Google and Amazon workers have demanded that their bosses back out of this project, which makes them courageous -- I mean, folks get fired for less in this "free" market system! But though this kind of technology is spreading, we can still win this battle. We got Microsoft to stop funding facial recognition technology in Israel last year, and this year we got Amazon to stop selling facial recognition technology (at least for now). So it's time to bust out The Big Stick of Bad PR. They're afraid of it because it works.

Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to fire Postmaster General DeJoy -- or, more precisely, fire USPS Board of Governors member Ron Bloom so he can get another USPS Board of Governors member in there who will fire Mr. DeJoy. Mr. DeJoy, you recall, tried to deliver the 2020 election to Donald Trump by slowing down services knowing full well our Postal Service would be doing more ballot-delivering than ever before; he also raised prices and cut services, and I'm old enough to remember when that kind of thing would get you fired in the private sector. Also, reports of his corruption have multiplied in recent months. Remember when he told Congress "get used to me"? That sassiness works a lot better from folks who don't try to shit all over everything. Dude's got to go.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our government to fight robotexts. Our Supreme Court, in an otherwise little-noticed decision earlier this year, dramatically narrowed the reach of the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, saying that law only prevents a certain kind of robo-dialing that few robodialers actually use anymore, blasting open a loophole that now allows robodialers to spam you with texts, and guess what didn't exist in 1991? Our Supreme Court apparently loves to prove that a literal mind can be quite a curse, and often to the rest of us. You know what's on our side, though? People absolutely hate unwanted phone calls, so why would folks like unwanted texts more? Of course, first we have to make an absolute stink about it; otherwise our government will just figure everything's alright. Silence is assent, as Sir Thomas More would say.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell our EPA to regulate "chemical recycling" in the most vigorous manner possible. And if that means "by outlawing it," who am I to complain? Proponents say "chemical recycling" (or melting down plastic into fuel) will help us avoid the worst effects of climate change, but they say the same thing about nuclear power, too, and it's about as cogent an argument. They want to melt down plastic, which already pollutes, and then use it as fuel which will also pollute? This isn't a solution to the pollution problem; it's a solution to the "some CEO doesn't have enough money to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home" problem. Which isn't a real problem! The real problem is the climate change "solution" that actually causes more climate change, and that's what "chemical recycling" is. So let's fight that.

Action: concerning voting rights, social media, prison phone rates, plastic pollution, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, and the Protecting America's Workers Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. By now you may know that the Freedom to Vote Act would authorize early voting for 15 days in all states, enact same-day voter registration, make Election Day a national holiday, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering, restore ex-felons' voting rights, and restrict dark money campaign contributions; you may not know that it would prevent states from interfering in elections so that a particularly party can "win" elections when their candidates get fewer votes. So ignore the right-wing rubbish about how "states should be allowed to run their own elections." If they're going to run them badly, then our federal government needs to step in.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I know, Republicans blocked the bill yesterday, but that's one reason we pressure them -- so they know there will be consequences to their actions. Unless they think "voting against me" is a "terrorist act" or something. I wish I were kidding about that! I think we will be there soon! Anyway, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore our Justice Department's ability to stop states and localities with an established record of vote suppression from suppressing the right to vote any further. That's any state and locality with such a record -- you know, for when right-wingers try to tell you "the South has changed." When no one's brought up the South!

Public Citizen also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3816/S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Normally I blanche when I see bills with the words "innovation" and "choice" in their title, but this one's pretty good -- it would prevent big online platform corporations from preferencing their own products, or discriminating against others' products, if the result "would materially harm competition on the covered platform." All monopolistic practices, you may notice! I believe Amazon is in court for this stuff as we speak, but I can think of other big tech corporations that should be shaking in their boots, like Facebook and Google. Or how about Apple? You can only use the "uniqueness" of your operating system as an excuse for so long! At least, that's how it should be. So let's make it be.

Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act. S. 1541 would make our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) cap what big telecom corporations can charge prisoners and/or their families for staying in touch over the phone. So that prisoners and their families can afford them! Currently these big telecoms can charge an arm and a leg for these calls, which is not only cruel, but also reduces the possibility that prisoners will stay out of jail once they get out of jail, and I believe every civilized person works toward prisoner rehabilitation. The only ones who don't, I presume, are the private prison corporation lackeys who love "repeat customers." But they're not civilized. But they don't get all the say around here.

Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2238/S. 984, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. It's not just about us breaking free from plastic pollution, it's also about the world's marine wildlife, who cannot afford well-heeled lobbyists arguing for their protection. The plastic corporations have big lobbies, but the hermit crab has us, and that's going to have to be enough. Besides which, a lot of animals harmed by plastic pollution can find their way to your dinner plate sooner or later, and if you didn't feel the harm before, you will then. And anyway, you probably did feel it before then -- a World Wildlife Fund/University of Australia-Newcastle study famously told us we ingest about a credit card's worth of plastic weekly -- but you just may not have known it. Now you know, and you can act.

Finally, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2876, the Protecting America’s Workers Act. The bill would strengthen reporting requirements for workplace injuries and stiffen penalties for workplace safety violations, but it would also expand whistleblower protections, particularly for workers who won't undertake obviously dangerous tasks and those who help inspectors find workplace violations. Maybe this bill doesn't excite people, and big corporations will call it a "job-killer," but this is exactly the kind of bill that could help you out a lot if you get hurt at your workplace because of some boss's negligence. And if this bill passes, employers also won't be able to get away with hurting you just because you're a "consultant" or a "contractor" or a "temp," either. So let's get this done.

Around the table: containing last words on the Tuesday elections.

Natasha Lennard at The Intercept describes how America really has separate justice systems for fascists and anti-fascists -- but points to how that could change. The Wisconsin judge who won't let Kyle Rittenhouse's victims be called "victims" but will happily let them be called "looters" isn't even the worst of it, when BLM protestors almost invariably go before right-wing federal judges instead of local judges like Mr. Rittenhouse managed to get. But antifascists can do (and have done) better in civil cases against fascists, which have a lower burden of proof than criminal cases and which often leave fascist organizations bankrupt. Lesson: when things look dark, keep looking for light, and have faith you'll find it.

Faiza Patel and Mary Pat Dwyer at Just Security describe some of the, ah, inconsistencies Facebook deploys in deciding what to remove from its platform. Long story short: Facebook says it follows government designations (i.e., as a "terrorist organization") in making those decisions, but bans more groups than that, and anyway our government doesn't even compel Facebook to ban them. When we stop treating Facebook like This Completely New and Unprecedented Thing and more like a publishing house, "what to do about Facebook" will become clearer -- namely, that we compel Facebook to moderate public posts with considerably more scrutiny than they've been willing to employ thus far (though not private posts).

Sen. Josh Hawley (E-MO) writes a speech defending "traditional" "manly" virtues. You know, like "courage, and independence, and assertiveness," which I bet you thought were human virtues! Later on he says so, of course, though anyone with any intellectual honesty wouldn't have led you the other way in the first place, but even suggesting that folks who want men to stop raping women are against courage is gaslighting. Also, too, this "war" on "traditional masculinity" has not caused men to watch more porn; I'm pretty sure other factors have much, much more to do with it than that -- like nearly 60 years of Playboy magazine, if you want to take the long view, and the proliferation of porn on the internet since about 1996 if you don't. Used to be difficult to get porn, but not now.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rightly slams Joe Manchin for his deficit hysteria over the Build Back Better Act, noting that the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" he helped "negotiate" actually adds to our national deficit. And that's what you get when you cave to Republicans on every funding demand! President Biden wanted corporate taxes and tax hikes on the rich to fund their "deal," and Republicans said no, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, ace negotiators that they are, said OK.

When I hear that 31% of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen, I think it's officially time to revise my rule of thumb: it's not 25% of the electorate that's batshit insane, it's 30%. I hasten to point out that if we still lived in the New Deal era, that number would be a lot, lot lower. We'd still have insane people voting; we always have. But we wouldn't have to worry about them throwing bricks through our windows if we have a "love wins" sign on our front lawn, and we wouldn't have to worry about them one day deciding just to shoot up their neighbors' houses if they didn't vote Republican.

Finally, I hate to sound like a broken record, but yes, Democrats lost a lot of races on Tuesday mainly because they don't do enough with the power they have -- and when they don't do enough, then Republicans rush in with their BS about mask mandates and "critical race theory" and win. Appalling as it is that Republicans can win exclusively on such rage-stoking absurdities, we have to remember that this stratagem doesn't work when our government actually works for us. Others have said the pandemic and the economy are foremost in people's minds, and I think they're right; most folks glaze over when they confront all the inside baseball over the Build Back Better Act, but as the pandemic and the economy continue to upset voters' lives, voters will look side-eyed at the party in control, and that's the Democrats. Of course right-wingers will continue to throw sand in the gears of our recovery, but Democrats can confound them simply by doing the job we gave them to do -- end COVID, and rebuild our economy so everyone can get ahead. (And if you are looking for a silver lining from Tuesday: we'll never have to endure a Terry McAuliffe campaign again.)

Action: concerning Afghanistan, Facebook, Steve Bannon, nuclear weapons, fossil fuels, and forever chemicals.

Long story short: tell our government to help suffering Afghans, investigate Facebook, charge Steve Bannon for defying a Congressional subpoena, and curtail development of nuclear weapons; tell big banks to stop funding big fossil fuel projects, and tell our EPA to regulate "forever chemicals" as vigorously as possible. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Win Without War helps you tell the Biden Administration to release and monitor Afghan assets. Key phrase in that formulation is "and monitor" -- nobody wants to release good Afghans' assets and just see the Taliban seize them. The former government of Afghanistan kept their citizens' money in international accounts, which is why this is even an issue in the first place, and now those citizens are at risk of starving to death and running out of medicine -- never mind that they can't even buy supplies or run businesses! -- and civilized people don't wish that fate on anyone. And it is their money, after all. Don't calculate that starving a few Afghans is the price we pay for isolating the Taliban. Again, civilized people don't do that, and besides, the Taliban live in a world where even ISIS hates them.

The American Economic Liberties Project helps you tell various Executive branch agencies (including our Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission) to investigate Facebook for possible crimes. Such crimes, per the incomparable Matt Stoller, may include: wire fraud (in inflating both video numbers and advertising "reach" numbers), securities fraud (in its failure to disclose such inflation to investors), violating the False Claims Act (an inflated number is a false claim), insider trading (Mr. Zuckerberg sold a lot of stock after learning of the Cambridge Analytica imbroglio), and price-fixing (Facebook allegedly got preferential treatment from Google in exchange for not competing with them). That's all illegal for good reason, and criminal charges may be the only thing that'll bring Facebook to heel. So let's demand that.

Left Action helps you tell our Justice Department to charge Steve Bannon for defying a Congressional subpoena. Our House subpoenaed Mr. Bannon in the course of its investigation of the January 6 attempted coup, but Mr. Bannon has claimed he could not testify until various executive privilege claims make their way through the courts. Presumably he has noticed that Donald Trump isn't President any longer, despite the fever dreams of right-wingers (including himself). Our House has since voted to hold Mr. Bannon in contempt; now the ball's in our Justice Department's court to decide whether to enforce that holding. If they care about law and order, they'll enforce it; you shouldn't be able to defy a Congressional subpoena during an investigation into an attempt to overthrow our government without consequences.

Peace Action helps you tell the Biden Administration how you want their Nuclear Posture Review to proceed. Chiefly, you'd argue for fewer nuclear weapons (and no new nuclear weapons) and you'd argue to take nuclear weapons off of "hair-trigger" alert, since we already have enough nukes to destroy the world hundreds of times over and they've never been particularly precise weapons. And how good a response is a nuclear strike to most of what happens in the world today? Should we have used nukes on Osama bin Laden after 9.11? Of course not, and too much of what harms our soldiers in the field are improvised explosives, suggesting that the future of warfare might be more about guerilla warfare. All new nukes do is make defense contractors rich, which ain't a good enough reason to do anything.

Daily Kos helps you tell the big banks to stop funding big fossil fuel projects. A lot of big banks express concern over the effects of climate change -- so why do they continue to fund big oil, gas, and coal projects? Possibly because they're not really telling the truth about their commitment to fighting climate change? It's a question worth asking! It's not just about pollution, either -- it's also about running roughshod over the rights of indigenous folks who live on the lands that big corporations would like to dig up. It sure seems like they'd do less harm to the indigenous if they concentrated more on solar and wind investment. They'd enable a lot less pollution, too. We deserve more of these win-win situations in our lives, but we won't get them unless we speak out.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to regulate "forever chemicals" as vigorously as possible. They call PFAS "forever chemicals" because they don't break down and once they get in your body, they stay there -- and then they wreak havoc, causing cancer, thyroid disease, reproductive issues, and liver damage, among other things you don't want to happen to you or anyone else. Unfortunately, you can find PFAS chemicals in damn near everything, from non-stick pans to fast-food wrappers to stain-resistant carpets to water-repellant jackets to firefighting foam. Maybe that all seems to big to fight. Who could blame you for thinking so? But back in the day, slavery was too big to fight, too, but we fought it and won. And we can win here, too -- but not if we stay silent.

Action: Election Day.

Today is Election Day; many of you may have voted already, but after today, this is it. 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 866.OUR.VOTE website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931; my guess is that the folks there this year will take you a bit more seriously than the folks there last year might have done. I still worry about pickup trucks with Confederate flags rolling through neighborhoods on Election Day; now I also worry about anti-mask and anti-vax folks yelling at you as you try to vote. And right-wingers will try, once again, 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 observe anything untoward -- you know, like masses of obnoxious jerks hurling abuse at election workers in an obvious effort to prevent them from doing their damn jobs.

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 citizens 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 they don't get all the say around here, and anyway there's more to vote for on Election Day than one flawed candidate or another. The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, for example, puts a rent control initiative before its voters today -- and, naturally, the city's banksters, real estate moguls, and landlords have spent buku bucks trying to scare voters into rejecting it, even though about half of St. Paul's residents can't afford their rent anymore. Tucson, Arizona puts a minimum wage initiative before its voters today; if they approve it, Tucson would escalate minimum wage hikes faster than the rest of the state, reaching $15/hour in 2025 and indexing the wage to inflation thereafter. New York puts no less than five propositions before the voters that would strengthen the state's redistricting process and make it easier to vote, while Boston voters will try to make their city Board of Education members into elected officials again. It's not all good, though: Colorado places a plethora of questionable-and-worse ballot initiatives before its voters today -- two would slash property taxes and give state lawmakers almost-veto power over federal assistance, while a third would institute a sales tax on marijuana sales; taken together these would (sigh) raise taxes on lower-income working people so wealthy people can have tax cuts. How these play out could have more of an effect on people's lives than the venal human beings who have spent the last year or two hustling for our vote.

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.

Action: in the shadow of the Build Back Better Act.

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

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. Kyrsten Sinema said no to this in the Build Back Better Act -- for what reason, we'll never know, since she values negotiating with Republicans more than her real job, which is negotiating with her constituents -- but President Biden's revised Build Back Better framework includes a 5% surtax on income over $10 million, a surtax that goes up to 8% on income over $25 million. (This would essentially create two new 42% and 45% tax brackets.) The framework also includes a 1% tax on stock buybacks and a 15% minimum corporate tax. Maybe Ms. Sinema says no to all of that, too, because chaos. But not before we've had our say, which is, after all, the most important say.

Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Joe Manchin said no to this in the Build Back Better Act, because, and I quote, "to expand social programs, when you have trust funds that aren’t solvent — they’re going insolvent — I can’t explain that...It doesn’t make sense to me...I just can’t do it." In other words, because Social Security's trust fund is "going insolvent" (which it's not, and you didn't know any of this was about Social Security, did you?), nobody gets paid family/medical leave, even though that would have been paid for by the bill's revenue hikes, most of which Kyrsten Sinema nixed. Got it? Me, I don't think this needs to be that damn deep -- the American people want it, and it ain't that hard to pay for, so we should have it.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. Kyrsten Sinema nixed this, too, even though H.R. 3, which would have let Medicare negotiate the price of some-but-not-all drugs, would have saved (per our Congressional Budget Office) over $450 billion over the next decade; if we let Medicare negotiate the price of all drugs, that would have saved $840 billion, per the right-wing Mercatus Center, of all entities. As I said, the American people want it, and it would actually save us money, so we should have it. Even if the big pharma corporations have a tantrum about it. Like they'd make it without taxpayer handouts anyway!

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Again, Joe Manchin complains about Medicare's "stability" as his excuse to deny expanding coverage for health care seniors need, like the expansion wasn't going to be paid for or something! His "government should be a partner, not a provider" shtick is bunk -- we-the-people pay our taxes, so we provide for each other, not "the" government. The Biden framework includes Medicare coverage of hearing care, but not dental or vision care; while that's an improvement, seniors are still going to have dental and vision problems in the meantime. And our job right now is same as it ever was: communicate our will, as many times as we need to, until we get the results we deserve.

Around the table: containing hopefully our last-ever words about the "governing philosophy" of Kyrsten Sinema.

Want some good news in advance of Election Day? Steven Rosenfeld writes that "In Virginia, Organizers Are Turning Out Overlooked Voters of Color," namely, "in cities and rural areas where voters whom political insiders do not expect to turn out reside." How? By addressing a community's "pain points" (i.e., those issues where folks are really hurting, like hunger and homelessness), by doing a lot more listening than proselytizing, and by concentrating on issues relating to those pain points instead of candidates. Result: early voting among folks of color is presently much, much higher in rural areas than in urban or suburban ones. Of course, if Mr. McAuliffe wins this race, right-wingers will attack this very phenomenon when they claim the race was "stolen." But this is how we should win elections.

Sarah Mimms at BuzzFeed finds at least a dozen January 6 "protestors" are on the ballot tomorrow. If there are any non-partisan voters left, they should all reject these candidates' assertions that they were just at the Capitol but not part of the breach, or just at the rally but not at the Capitol, as if they just had no idea what was about to happen -- or what right-wing social media "influencers" wanted to happen. Certainly statements like "I don't know what constitutes the Capitol grounds" should set off their BS detectors.

When I hear that Amazon has told independent sellers who use the Amazon marketplace (and comprise most of its revenue!) that impending legislation could "force" Amazon to shut it all down, I ask myself how do our bold entrepreneurs ever do anything? Oh, right -- by necessity. If Amazon shuts down its marketplace, there'll still be an internet, and people will still find a way (or ten) to sell their stuff. I'm also reminded, of course, that big corporations always whine and take hostages at the prospect of government telling them to stop hurting people.

Uh oh: Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) called his brother-in-law the very same day he dumped $1.6 million in stock mere days before the COVID-related stock market crash of 2020 -- and his brother-in-law dumped between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of his own shares not even one minute after the call concluded. Mr. Burr also had, per our Securities and Exchange Commission, "material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus," and how did he use this information? By reassuring the public at large, while warning social club attendees that the pandemic would actually be quite dire. Mr. Burr will not seek re-election in 2022, suggesting he might actually be capable of shame.

In case you were wondering, folks are going on strike a lot lately because of bad pay and working conditions, not because of vaccine mandates. That couldn't be because our "liberal" media (not just Fox News!) constantly yammers on about workers wanting to quit or saying they'll quit over vaccine mandates that hadn't even gone into force, could it? Why, yes, it could. It could also be because unions have been trying to negotiate issues caused by mandates, such as sick leave issues; our "liberal" media ain't exactly doing a bang-up job covering those, either. All that does is help Republicans win offices they don't deserve to win.

Finally, Kyrsten Sinema still has a few defenders, including the ones who tell us she's really committed to "bipartisanship" as the best way to ensure "sturdier, long-term legislative solutions for everyday people as opposed to short-term partisan victories that have a tendency to be wiped out in a new majority just a couple of years down the road," in her spokeshack's words. Three objections: one, how does that apply to working on a bill exclusively with your own party? Two, if you dedicate yourself to "bipartisanship," the other side can just say no to everything all the time, and pull you in their direction -- as they just did with the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" she supposedly "negotiated," where Republicans said no to every proposed corporate tax hike and tax hike on the rich. And three, making "negotiating with the other side" the center of your philosophy is offensive when the only folks you're supposed to "negotiate" with, as a Senator, are your constituents. We have power, after all, and disappearing us from the conversation disrespects us. After all, who saved the Affordable Care Act from being "wiped out"? We did -- not the politicians addicted to "bipartisanship."

Action: concerning government spying, prisoner abuse, FCC nominees, clean water, social media, and medical devices.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, tell our Justice Department to investigate certain prison health care practices in an Arkansas county, tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC nominees, tell PA state legislators to stop trying to weaken clean water laws, tell your government to break up Facebook, and tell Amazon to stop classifying certain medical devices as sex toys. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Daily Kos and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act already. That law turned 20 earlier this week, and I'd joke that it's old enough to make serious mistakes now except that the law is a serious mistake. The USA PATRIOT Act did serious harm to our Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure protections -- warrants? Warrants are for losers! -- and not only has the USA PATRIOT act injured our freedoms, it's made us no safer from terrorism. Hell, January 6 taught us that! What makes a nation safer from terrorist attack? Working to create and maintain civilization at home, that's what, and freedom from state harassment is an important part of that work.

Color of Change helps you tell our Justice Department to investigate Washington County, Arkansas for prescribing ivermectin for prisoners with COVID-19. This is a DOJ matter, since our Constitution actually does require us to give prisoners the health care they need. And don't let your right-wing neighbors blather on about the "right to try," not when the state forces prisoners to take ivermectin. Ivermectin has serious side effects, including diarrhea, nausea, seizures, and those studies "proving" the efficacy of ivermectin for COVID-19? Either conducted on test tubes, not large enough to prove anything, or retracted due to data manipulation. Prisoners deserve real medical care. Yes, even though they're prisoners! A real civilization has enough confidence in its own strength to treat its prisoners like they're actual human beings.

Free Press helps you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's two FCC Commissioner nominees. President Biden has nominated current interim FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to become permanent Chair, and has nominated Gigi Sohn to fill the empty fifth Commissioner's spot; they'd do a good job, but if our Senate dallies -- and they'd better not, since the Senate majority is still at least nominally Democrat -- Ms. Rosenworcel's term as FCC Commissioner will end in January, and not only will the FCC will have only three Commissioners, two of those will be Republicans, and that means our FCC will do nothing, or only harmful things. Our FCC needs to bring net neutrality back, not least because big telecom corporations like shutting off firefighters' service in the middle of a wildfire, and surely will think of other evils to commit. So let's get on it.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn Environment helps you tell your PA state legislator to reject legislation that would weaken state protections on our rivers and streams. Specifically, HB 1842/SB 545 would let big corporations decide whether to report their spills into our waters to our government, which would be like prohibiting anyone but a burglar from reporting a burglary. The bill also somehow fails to spell out that our Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) can order polluters to clean up their messes; think of our state legislators mandating that parents couldn't order their children to clean their rooms because freedom. These Republican legislators, like the fascists they admire, want a government that bows to their corporate cronies -- not to you, like it should. That's why we gotta speak up.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk and our federal regulators to break Facebook up already. Not just because Facebook is a monopoly -- joining another social network that Facebook doesn't already own is far more of a chore than it should be in a free society -- but also because Facebook abuses that monopoly power. Seems like every day we hear another story about how Facebook shoves QAnon content in the face of right-leaning folks, or how Facebook gives more weight to emojis than likes so that the content that enrages people more gets more traction in our social media feeds. The whole point of the internet was to help people find other people on their own; it certainly wasn't to wave content from right-wing assholes in our faces. If we want a good internet again, we need to break up Facebook.

Finally, Change.org helps you tell Amazon not to categorize certain medical devices as "sex toys." That's right, Amazon wants to call kegel weights and pelvic floor wands "adult products" or "sex toys," even though these devices actually help folks deal with pelvic pain -- particularly women who've given birth. I guess Amazon thinks they're "sex toys" because you insert them into your vagina or your anus, but you do that to get relief from pain, which is not the same thing as pleasure. And reclassifying these devices as "sex toys" means fewer customers will find them -- and the ones who do will be distracted into looking at actual sex toys. You also can't help but think if men more typically used these items, they wouldn't reclassify them so easily. So let's prompt Amazon to do better here.

Action: sigh.

What an absolute shitshow the Build Back Better Act "negotiations" have become. As of this writing, the Build Back Better Act will not raise the top income tax rate or the corporate tax rate (thanks, Kyrsten Sinema), won't raise taxes on billionaires (thanks, Joe Manchin), won't let Medicare negotiate drug prices (thanks again, Ms. Sinema, and thanks, also, Bob Menendez), won't expand Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing care (thanks again, Mr. Manchin), and now doesn't include paid family/medical leave (boy, Mr. Manchin, you're really batting a thousand here). You don't need Bernie Sanders to tell you that these are all popular things, and the American people aren't wrong about wanting any of them.

So now's a good time to call your House Reps and demand they vote against the Build Back Better Act as the Senate has currently constructed it, as well as the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal," until such time as the aforementioned items are back in the Build Back Better Act. Try to make your call before 9 am EST, if you can, because apparently the House Democratic caucus will meet at that time. Now would also be a good time to take to the streets in protest of the Democrats' intolerable weakness; if I hear of any such protests (since numbers are better than one guy standing outside with a clapboard), I'll make sure you know about it.

So, heckuva job, Democrats! And thanks to the efforts of folks like the three above-listed Senators, the rest of us have to figure out how we're going to survive in a fascist America. Oh, that's definitely coming, now -- fascism always comes when politicians fail to do the people's will. Be sure to mention that to your House Reps, as well.

That's all for today, I'm afraid. "Disgusted" doesn't begin to cover how I feel right now.

UPDATE. President Biden has released a revised Build Back Better framework, which does include Medicare hearing coverage. The framework is not complete rubbish, but then Sens. Manchin and Sinema haven't had a chance to stamp their feet about it yet. My advice remains the same: kill the whole thing if we can't get all the items listed in the first paragraph. We are, as always, the only thing standing between good and evil.

Action: concerning child slavery, social media, pollution, immigration, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell big chocolate corporations to stop using child slavery, tell state pensions to stop investing in Facebook, tell President Biden to reject an oil export facility in the Gulf of Mexico, tell 88 Energy not to drill in the Arctic, and tell President Biden to stop deporting immigrants under Title 42 authority and fire USPS Board of Governors member Ron Bloom. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Care2 helps you tell big chocolate corporations Hershey's, Nestlé, and Mars to get child slavery out of their manufacturing processes. Just in time for Halloween, too! These three corporations tell us they've gotten the child slavery out of their products, but that's a lyin'-ass lie, as these corporations still get their products from West African cocoa farms that use child slaves. These children work from sunrise well into the evening, which doesn't exactly give them very much time for school or family, and it can't be a coincidence that big chocolate corporations make billions of dollars in profits. These corporations are all big enough that they could strong-arm cocoa farms into doing better -- but they won't, unless we embarrass them with the Big Stick of Bad PR. And given their record, we'll likely have to do it more than once.

Sum of Us helps you tell big state teacher pension funds to get their money out of Facebook. Yeah, it's a great investment -- until you remember that Facebook knew it was harming children and did nothing about it, and until you remember that Facebook cares about "engagement" and doesn't care whether that engagement does actual people actual harm. And by "actual harm," we don't just mean algorithms that magically connect Nazi wannabes, but the Myanmar military's slaughter of the Rohingya. Social media has fallen far -- time was you had your pick of networks to help you connect with people, but now we're all on Facebook, and only because it's a monopoly, with the other networks gone now, some of them (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram) literally assimilated by Facebook. But, again, when we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR, we do a lot of good.

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell our Maritime Administration to reject the proposed oil export facility off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. Hasn't the Gulf suffered enough from oil spills? This particular facility aims to transport close to 750 million barrels of oil annually, which is more than all the offshore drilling in the Gulf produces -- and, as you remember from the 2010 Spillageddon, you don't have to spill all of that oil to befoul our water and kill local industries. And we saw the danger again earlier this month when another underwater pipeline leak belched out almost 600 gallons of oil off the coast of Southern California. Hate to sound like a broken record, but we'd do a whole lot better relying more on renewable energy -- after all, how many bird-killing sun spills have you experienced?

Penn Environment helps you tell Australian oil corporation 88 Energy to abandon plans to drill near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR). I've said it before and I'll say it again: once you burn oil, it's gone, leaving behind only pollution and ill health in its wake, but wild areas live forever -- if we can keep them. And all the other standard objections -- that the inevitable oil spills are even harder to clean up in frigid areas than in temperate ones, that we know little enough about the Arctic that we're almost certainly underestimating the damage we'd do in drilling -- still apply. Plus you'd hate to kill the world-famous sockeye salmon industry in Alaska. Always they talk about "creating jobs," but never do they confront the jobs they'll destroy. And not for progress, either, but for greed.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell President Biden to abandon the Title 42 deportation policy, born of the mind of Stephen Miller, need I say more? I need say more: deporting immigrants solely because "there's a pandemic going on" isn't just stupid -- natural-born rage-heads are keeping this pandemic going on quite well enough by themselves, thank you very much! -- but it doesn't speak very well of our civilization, does it? Don't we bear any burden to do the right thing? The right thing to do here is to evaluate asylum claims on their merits, give everyone due process, and admit refugees running from countries that'll kill them if they return. The right thing to do is most certainly not pretend you're protecting Americans by throwing everyone out.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to fire USPS Board of Governors member Ron Bloom, which will make firing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy a lot easier. Mr. Bloom has praised Mr. DeJoy's work in slowing down services and making us pay more for them -- I guess rich people see things a little differently than we do -- and I'm sure none of that has anything to do with Mr. DeJoy investing in a fund run by Mr. Bloom! And now we have further evidence of Mr. DeJoy's corruption, as he took his time recusing himself from making decisions about over a dozen corporations he had invested in and which had business before our Postal Service. But let's not wait until it's blindingly obvious to President Biden that Mr. DeJoy has become a liability; instead, let's pressure him now.

Action: concerning voting rights, abortion, defense spending, and the filibuster.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Women's Health Protection Act, cut defense spending, and end the filibuster. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. The Freedom to Vote Act would authorize early voting for 15 days in all states, enact same-day voter registration, make Election Day a national holiday, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering, restore ex-felons' voting rights, and restrict dark money campaign contributions, plus it would prevent states from interfering in elections so that a particularly party (cough Republicans cough) can "win" elections when their candidates get fewer votes. You know, like Donald Trump tried to do after he lost the 2020 Presidential election by seven million votes. Pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and we can better keep the unworthy from office. We just had a four-year seminar in what the unworthy are like, and I ain't going back.

Both Daily Kos and People for the American Way help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill would restore our Justice Department's ability to block state or locality voting rights law changes, in those states and localities that have demonstrated a pattern of vote suppression. That means (among other things) fewer state laws making it impossible to mail in or drop off a ballot, and fewer closed polling places in Black and brown neighborhoods. Yeah, states do this all the time, and though we saw as early as the 2020 Georgia Presidential primary that folks will wait in line all day to vote, why make them? Right-wingers love saying "voting should be hard." What they mean is winning should be easy -- for them. But they should earn victory like the rest of us do.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act. Our Supreme Court refused once again to stop Texas's notorious SB 8 -- which gives literally anyone the right to sue over an abortion, since determining "injury in fact" per our Courts' ruling in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife is, apparently, something only "losers" do -- so that means we have to pass legislation at the federal level. We can't count on our Supreme Court keeping Roe v. Wade around, either; I still think they'll strike down Texas's law, for the reason I described above, but other, more direct challenges may give them the opportunity they obviously desire. Unless, of course, we pass the Women's Health Protection Act first.

Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to cut defense spending in the upcoming defense appropriations bill. President Biden is the umpteenth President in a row to propose increasing defense spending; has that made any right-wingers like him better? I kid, of course -- being a right-winger, today, is all about masturbatory rage, not about assessing situations as they are. But I feel compelled to mention, once again, that we spend more money on "defense" than the next eight nations on that list combined, and yet politicians still tell us WE'RE NOT TEH SAFEZ!!!!!! You have to wonder, also, when we can't turn Afghanistan around in 20 years, whether we're spending "defense" money on the right things. Maybe we're just spending it on expensive things.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster. Mitch McConnell actually has the gall to say if you don't like the filibuster you should win arguments, when the filibuster is a crutch for people who can't win arguments. And Republicans now use it, or the threat of it, against anything that might help the American people, and annoying as Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have been, the only reason they matter right now is that Republicans say no to everything -- why, they've even filibustered taking tax breaks away from corporations that outsource jobs! How do you filibuster that? And when you abuse a tool, we have to take that tool away, or else we just become hostages.

Action: concerning, once again, the Build Back Better Act.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for the Build Back Better Act, invest in our care economy, fund paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, expand Medicare, expand our fight against climate change, and permanently expand the Child Tax Credit. 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 raise the full $3.5 trillion for the Build Back Better Act by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. Americans for Tax Fairness also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include the Billionaire's Income Tax in the Build Back Better Act and assess a 2% tax on corporate stock buybacks. Yeah, I know, Kyrsten Sinema said no, but she has completely soiled her reputation -- no, independents aren't going to see her as all tough and mavericky after she defied public opinion (not "the special interests"!) time after time. But she ain't the boss of us, and even though she has assured this won't go our way this time, our duty is to communicate our will until they do our will.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in the care economy in the Build Back Better Act. Some Democratic Senators seem to care more about the total price of the package than what it does, but investing in the care economy is no less important than anything else, given that we're all going to need care one day, whether for ourselves or for our loved ones. It does appear that the Build Back Better Act would subsidize day care so as to limit spending on day care to 7% of one's income (at least up to a certain salary, which I'm sure was Joe Manchin's idea), and since day care is yet another one of those things everyone charges an arm and a leg for because working families need it, that would be a vast improvement, and communicating our will about the care economy should at least get that much done. This time.

Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Originally President Biden wanted 13 weeks of paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act (currently Americans get 13 weeks of unpaid leave); now it looks like we'll get four. Four is fewer than most other civilized nations (and some not-so-civilized ones!), but four is also more than zero, which is where we are now. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for more! Why, it doesn't even mean we should shut up now! We are not hostages to Democratic "moderates," no matter how much other Democrats give themselves over as hostages to Democratic "moderates." And they're really supposed to negotiate with us. They didn't do that. So we need to ensure they do that from now on.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make large investments in climate change action. That would include investing in solar and wind power, and also a methane emissions tax, which would slash carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Yeah, Joe Manchin put the kibosh on big climate change action because West Virginia is a coal state, but do we really think good West Virginians are that emotionally-invested in coal? I think they'd throw coal overboard in a minute! Of course, Joe Manchin is, ah, personally invested in keeping coal around, and that's just one reason he'll lose re-election by 20 points in 2024 no matter what he thinks. Still and all, communicate your will now, and we can win the future.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act, while Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Kyrsten Sinema (again) and Bob Menendez killed Medicare drug price negotiation this round, but 80% of Americans want it, so we ought to have it, and we certainly ought to keep fighting for it until we do have it. And Democratic "moderates" have just about succeeded in gutting the expanding-Medicare plank, so we have to tell our Congressfolk that $800 vouchers for dental care (and $0 for vision care, apparently) ain't enough for our seniors.

Finally, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Moms Rising, and the Juggernaut Project all help you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent in the Build Back Better Act. Again, because of Mr. Means Tester, Joe Manchin, the Build Back Better Act will only extend the Child Tax Credit expansion for a year, but again, $250 and $300 checks in your bank accounts every month is actually quite popular with working families, who sure could use all the breathing room they can get. You'll want to demand that they don't cap CTC expansion eligibility at $60,000 annually -- another brilliant Joe Manchin idea! -- because that ain't much. Should we expect Millionaire Joe to understand that? Doesn't matter! We should expect him to listen to his constituents who make him understand that.

In case I haven't been obvious enough about it: the fact that the Build Back Better Act will not meet our expectations doesn't mean we should stop fighting for the things we wanted to have in it. Joe Biden will, God willing, have at least another three years in office, and though the punditoids are all saying Republicans will take back the House and maybe the Senate too in 2022, we have something to say about that. No one should ever vote for a Republican again, for any office -- particularly after the January 6 near-coup! -- and we should also demand far better Democrats than party leadership would want to give us. And more than that, whenever they say it's hopeless, we should act like they're disrespecting us -- not least because they are. They want us to throw up our hands and treat politics like a big sporting event. Don't ever do that. This is our America -- but only if we speak out.

Around the table: from the Buffalo mayoral race to an unwelcome plea to "move on" from January 6.

When I hear from Buffalo Democratic Mayoral candidate India Walton that "Democrats have gotten very comfortable doing nothing," I'm reminded of all the six-figure consultants who've urged caution and moderation to hundreds of losing candidates all over America, and I'm also reminded that the Democratic hold on power in American cities is also a right-wing complaint, though Republicans surely would run our cities far worse. Hopefully you'll read the article and find Ms. Walton a fairly incisive and eclectic analyst of current events, and you'll think more people like that should be running things. Even Chuck Schumer has gotten on the bandwagon (though he might merely have been trying to outpace Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, for whatever reason).

Kyrsten Sinema loses five members of her Veterans Advisory Council, all of whom slam the Arizona Senator for "answering to big donors rather than your own people," which is exactly how we should frame all discussions of all our representatives in Congress. I'm beyond tired of hearing about how Ms. Sinema's been "up front" with her fellow Senators during Build Back Better negotiations, when she obviously hasn't been up front with the good citizens of Arizona who are her bossese. Naturally she responds to her advisors' resignation by implying they should stick to military matters.

Arkansas hospital decides it'll grant religious exemptions to folks who don't want to take the vaccine -- if they also swear off Tylenol, Sudafed, Benadryl, Tums, and a host of other famous medicines! There's a point in there: folks who shun the vaccine because of its testing on decades-old fetal issue (not cells from last week's abortions, as they claim) must also in good conscience reject the aforementioned medicines because testing on fetal tissue figured in their development as well! Not that today's rage will matter to right-wingers after they get a load of tomorrow's rage.

In a related note, James Colgrove at The Conversation takes us through the history of vaccines and vaccine mandates in America -- and sees today's parents as less accepting of such mandates. A lot has happened in recent years, of course -- Andrew Wheeler and Jenny McCarthy made us all scared we'd have autistic kids if we vaccinated them, and then social media let us all pretend we're celebrities and pundits and its algorithms relentlessly amplified the right-wing content that results in more enragement, er, engagement. And not for nothing, but all these ask-your-doctor-about-this-drug ads on TV -- which didn't exist in the '70s -- are also helping to make people a bit too cocksure about their "knowledge." I think some humility about what you don't know is a good thing, though most Americans don't seem to agree anymore.

When I hear that a couple of pro-Josh Mandel super PACs are running ads appearing to slam fellow Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance as insufficiently pro-Trump based on what he said in 2016, I'm reminded that these ads could ultimately help Mr. Vance, if Republican voters become convinced over the next six months that Donald Trump is actually an albatross on their fortunes -- or if Republican poobahs merely decide that they've milked Mr. Trump all they can and are ready to move on. I also wonder why anyone, anywhere, let alone a super PAC, would favor Josh Mandel's election to any office. I hear even Donald Trump finds him a bit of a brown-noser.

Finally, dig the chutzpah from Condoleeza Rice, telling us that though January 6 was "wrong" (like that's some big gift to us!), we need to "move on" as a nation. First off, I read her plea ultimately as a thinly-disguised plea to "move on" from all of her sins as a member of the George W. Bush Administration; she can barely show herself in public after all of that, which is how it should be. Second off, I can't shake the feeling that when she says "what's happening to kids in school," she means we're forcing them to wear masks to keep from spreading COVID, which isn't an injury done to them no matter how many right-wing assholes think so.

Action: concerning workers, pollution, broadband, social media, immigration, and postal banking.

Long story short: tell John Deere to treat its workers right, tell our EPA to regulate PFAS chemicals as vigorously as possible, tell our FCC to expand broadband access, tell our government to break up Facebook already, tell our President to end the notorious Title 42 deportation policy, and tell our U.S. Postal Service to expand its pilot program offering postal banking. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

More Perfect Union helps you tell big farm manufacturing corporation John Deere to treat its workers better. Ten thousand heartland workers are striking as we speak, and when your right-wing neighbor tells you that the UAW negotiated a contract with John Deere on their behalf, tell them it must have been a pretty crappy contract if over 80 percent of the workers voted it down. Remind him, also, that John Deere's CEO gave himself a 160% raise in 2020 and ask him when the last time he got a raise that big. And no, CEOs don't deserve that kind of raise because they "take risks" -- like the "risk" they'll only get tens of millions to go away if they crash and burn the company? And certainly not for "good performance," for that's only possible with workers. Who deserve better.

Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous PFAS rules possible. They don't call PFAS "forever chemicals" for nothing -- they're in virtually everything, they never break down, they get into your body, and they cause all sorts of health problems. Our EPA will take public comments on exactly how to regulate PFAS, and of course the big plastic corporations will fill their ears with well-spoken nonsense, so we've got to get in our EPA's ears right quick. And don't brook any silliness from your right-wing uncle about how "this is a job for Congress," not when a) Congress has already authorized the EPA to regulate pollutants through legislation and b) Republicans in Congress will block any legislation that does actual good for the American people.

Civic Shout helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to expand Americans' access to broadband. How can a federal agency do that? Again, "with the authority Congress has already invested in it via law" is the short answer to the sniveling of right-wingers, but to get to brass tacks, our FCC could expand the Emergency Broadband Benefit to folks making 200% of the federal poverty line; currently that number is 135% (it's not 100%, as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has reminded us, is that the federal poverty line has always been laughably low). Our FCC could also reinstate the net neutrality order from 2016, and thus reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service rather than an information service. We've all learned how much of our lives we need to conduct over the internet, so leaving low-income folks out is a recipe for disaster.

Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to end the cruel Title 42 immigration policy that supposedly turns back immigrants because they're a pandemic risk, but you know that's absolute rubbish if you've witnessed all these Americans reboot the pandemic in recent months! Dr. Fauci has said much the same thing lately -- that immigrants are obviously not causing the spike in cases since the beginning of July -- and yes, I'll take the word of the trained epidemiologist about that over the guy who drives a Hummer with a blacked-out American flag on the back and wears "Fuck Your Feelings" T-shirts to the Home Depot, no matter how much "research" he's "done." You just wish Democrats would stop embracing right-wing policy prescriptions. It sure doesn't get them any right-wing votes!

Demand Progress helps you tell our government to break up Facebook already. Even if Facebook weren't going out of its way to help Nazi wannabes find each other, even if it did nothing to stop Donald Trump's lyin'-ass lies, even if it did nothing about Instagram's toxic effect on young girls, even if it weren't complicit in the genocide of Myanmar's Muslim population, one would still want to ask why Facebook needs to own WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Because that right there is evidence that Facebook is a monopoly we need to break up. Today's judges tend to ask whether the monopoly raises prices for consumers and nothing else, but this blind mammon-worship is yet another feature of the Reagan Revolution that we need to obliterate if we want to remain civilized people. We can start this work by breaking up Facebook.

Finally, Black Lives Matter helps you tell our U.S. Postal Service to expand its pilot postal banking program beyond the four states in which it's currently operating. While Postmaster General DeJoy thinks the way to Postal Service solvency is through making good Americans pay more for worse service, folks who are less evil know that allowing our Postal Service to offer the basic banking services it offered up until the late '60s, in areas of America where banksters don't like to go because they can't make stupid money there, is a far better way to help our Postal Service get on a better financial footing. Getting rid of the absurd pre-fund-benefits-85-years-in-advance mandate would do even more, of course, but Jesus Mary and Joseph is it so much to ask that good ideas succeed in America?

Action: concerning Medicare drug price negotiation, climate change, Medicaid, the filibuster, and federal corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, fight climate change, plug gaps in Medicaid coverage, end the Senate filibuster, and protect Inspectors General as they expose government corruption. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Daily Kos and Drug Prices Are Too High help you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. The latter action alert starts off saying "Shame on you, Senators Menendez and Sinema!" And that's entirely appropriate -- Sen. Menendez botches the art of argument in trying to avoid saying big pharma corporations control his actions, and Sen. Sinema creates chaos by opposing something 80% of Americans want. Newt Gingrich used to say if 70% of Americans want something, they should get it. I'm sure he has excuses ready for why Americans shouldn't get this thing they want, but doing their constituents' will is a Congressional representative's job. So let's do our job, and communicate our will to those representatives, as often as we need to.

Daily Kos helps you demand that the Build Back Better Act make the historic climate change-fighting investments we need to make. Because as much as we need health care and higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, we also need a planet to live on, and pretty much everyone who doesn't imbibe rage-addled masturbatoria from right-wing news channels wants solar power and wind power to be a big part of our future. And don't fear Joe Manchin suggesting he'll leave the Democratic Party if he doesn't get his way (which is no climate change-fighting legislation). If he leaves the party over this, he becomes the villain -- not to our "liberal" media, which loves drama more than truth, but to anyone who's actually watching. And that's more people than it used to be.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to plug the "Medicaid gap" between states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and states that haven't. No reason why poor folks in 12 American states should be left out, after all, except that the Affordable Care Act left that loophole open for our Supreme Court to notice, which is a stupid reason to let people get sick and die. Thanks to certain drama- and chaos-addicted Senators, the Build Back Better Act stands poised to do a whole lot less about health care than we have demanded (which is, now that I think of it, the reason Democrats haven't been pushing what's in it -- they'd rather run on what they pass than what they promise!). But plugging the Medicaid gap would help a lot of good Americans in states with reactionary legislatures who don't listen to them.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Republicans filibustered that bill yesterday, because chaos, but we still must do our duty to communicate our will to our Senators, and, if need be, tell them how to do our will. Making the filibuster a talking filibuster -- i.e., one that Senators would have to keep going by actually talking for 12 or 24 or 48 hours straight, rather than just signaling that they don't want to end debate and then going out to the dinner or the theatre, which action ends debate -- remains my preference. But you know what? If Senators don't want to work for their chaos and obstruction, then I say take their toys away from them. Because I think I speak for most of America when I say we're done.

Finally, the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Senators to do more to fight federal corruption. You go to swing states and you don't find millions of people committed to "bipartisanship" or "right-sizing regulations" or whatever -- you find people who hate government corruption and hate that politicians don't do enough about it. But if we give our Inspectors General the tools they need to investigate and expose government corruption, then they'll be able to expose a lot more of it. Hey, it's not for nothing Donald Trump tried to replace them all when he became President! If they were bad at exposing corruption, after all, he would have let them hang around. And indeed, in 2020, he did replace a bunch of them with "acting" IGs he hoped would do his will, and not the American people's. So let's put a stop to all of that.

Around the table: 13-dimensional chess sucks, part 838.

Why are so many workers quitting their jobs and going on strike these days, per Sonali Kolhatkar? Because folks are fed up with being used and abused, say many reputable sources, which likely include your friends and neighbors who couldn't work during the early days of COVID (and maybe still can't!) and have found no small value in the peace and quiet. You'll probably giggle at the corporate suggestions for how they can improve matters -- all the "gratitude sharing" in the world doesn't matter if they run their business badly and take out their incompetence on the good Americans who work for them. (It should go without saying that people run corporations badly not to make money but to make stupid money.)

Uh oh: Fed Chair Jerome Powell apparently sold between $1 million and $5 million in stocks on the first day of October 2020 right before the stock market took a significant dive. Apparently he called Treasury Secretary Mnuchin four times that day, purportedly about the need for more stimulus legislation, and he made three of those calls after that infamous twittering at 2.48 pm from former President Trump that there'd be no stimulus legislation until after the election. At that point the stock market tanked, and Mr. Powell called Mr. Mnuchin at 2.55p and then went on a half-hour conference call with Mr. Mnuchin and House Speaker Pelosi at 3 pm. The article doesn't tell us at exactly what time that day Mr. Powell conducted his fire sale, but this sure ain't a good look, and you won't be surprised to learn that our laws are surprisingly lenient when it comes to the stock trades our most powerful Fed officials can make. If we get an actual liberal as Fed Chair after this, I sure won't cry about it.

When I hear that a Brazilian Senate probe has recommended that President Jair Bolsonaro be indicted on nine charges relating to his utter mishandling of the COVID pandemic there, all I can say is it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! This was the guy who told his people to stop whining about dying from COVID, after all, an act I'm sure made Donald Trump quite jealous. And when I hear that his government bought an unproven Indian vaccine when proven American ones were available, I am reminded that maybe the old saw that the love of money is the root of all evil needs to be updated for modern times -- as in, "the love of stupid money is the root of all evil."

Color me skeptical that more than half of Americans really now think our government is "trying to do too many things," as reported by Gallup. Yes, that number's much higher than it's been in either of the last two years, but thanks to Gallup's helpful graph, we see that Americans have thought this for virtually all of the last 30 years, which comprises most of that period of our history when both political parties continually gaslighted us about how much government "could" do. One can explain the surge the other way after 9.11 and during the COVID pandemic, but how to explain why a clear majority thought government wasn't doing enough in 2019? (Also, I'm not impressed with their decades-long finding that Americans prefer fewer services and taxes -- just ask them what exactly they can do without, and see that number fall!)

Finally, here is, quite possibly, the worst thing I've read in 2021: Michelle Cottle argues, in the New York Times, that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona actually does have a guiding principle: "She holds fast to an abhorrence of the toxicity and dysfunction of the hyper-polarized political system, brandishing a potent combination of disgust, frustration and moderation that could, come to think of it, put her in sync with a big slice of Americans." While I'd caution against relying so heavily on Ms. Sinema's autobiography in trying to "understand" her, the article sounds reasonable until you realize what it omits -- not once does it mention Medicare drug price negotiation or tax hikes on the rich and corporations, because if it did, Ms. Cottle would have had to consider whether Ms. Sinema is personally fomenting this "toxicity and dysfunction" by opposing initiatives that are hugely popular, not just across America, but in her home state. If she had to consider that, Ms. Cottle might conclude that Ms. Sinema is actually trying to create a problem so she can create a need for her to solve it. And while independent voters may be less tolerant of chaos than the rest of us, why would they warm to the person who causes the chaos? Especially after all the chaos they've seen in recent years? (Hate to pile on, but mastery of 13-dimensional chess is a hell of a thing to take to the Pearly Gates.)

Action: concerning our Post Office, offshore drilling, "Instagram for kids," fossil fuel drilling, and right-wing news.

Long story short: tell President Biden to reform our Postal Service and end offshore drilling, tell Facebook to abandon its plans to let children use Instagram, tell AXA's CEO to stop insuring fossil fuel projects, and tell AT&T to abandon One America News Network. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to fire USPS Board of Governors member Ron Bloom and USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy already. He should have already fired Mr. DeJoy merely for slowing down the mail and charging more for it, because why should we tolerate paying more to get our medicine and ballots and Social Security checks slower? I'm old enough to remember when merely proposing such a thing would get you laughed out of the room. But apparently Mr. Bloom stands in the way of our USPS Board of Governors firing Mr. DeJoy, and even better, Mr. DeJoy has invested with a fund Mr. Bloom runs, which sure smells of corruption even if we never put either man in jail for it. If Mr. Biden replaces Mr. Bloom, we're all one step closer to replacing Mr. DeJoy, at which point hallelujah!

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell President Biden to end offshore drilling. You don't need to stop with the recent spill of the Southern California coast -- you need only remember the Exxon Valdez spill and the BP Spillageddon in the Gulf of Mexico, both of which were avoidable and took forever to clean up because corporations don't like paying to clean up their messes. President Biden wouldn't just be fulfilling a campaign promise by ending offshore drilling -- he'd also open up space for the wind farms he wants to line America's coasts, as I imagine it would be difficult to do both things in the same spot. And if I had to pick, I'd rather have the turbines out there -- no, they won't kill all the birds, and no, they won't make you sick, and no, they won't be so noisy you can't function. And we might get to keep our planet.

The Juggernaut Project helps you tell Facebook to abandon its ill-conceived (and ill-concealed!) plans to hook children on Instagram. You no doubt know from multitudinous news reports that Facebook knew that young girls who used Instagram had much worse body images than girls who didn't, and it was still like pulling teeth to get them to "suspend" their plans for an Instagram for Kids app. And don't let anyone justify Instagram-for-Kids by saying "they're just going to find a way to get it anyway," not just because defeatism is unworthy of a civilized people, but because our job, as adults, isn't necessarily to play catch-up with social media so much as to give our kids spiritual nourishment so they don't run to social media for it. Old-fashioned of me, I know.

Sum of Us helps you tell AXA CEO Thomas Buberl to stop insuring new gas and oil projects. He's supposedly going to decide on that matter this week, and AXA (which operates mainly in Europe and the Middle East) was the first big insurance corporation to refuse to insure new coal projects, but we still need to let AXA know we're watching, not least because we also know big oil and gas drilling corporations are also watching, and preparing to drown out our voices with the power of big money. Oh, and also their "expertise," which is mainly expertise in BSing and gaslighting. When that's all they got, we need to oppose them, in numbers they cannot mistake. The only way to beat big money is to fight big money, after all -- and our victories today guarantee more victories in the future, as long as we keep working.

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell AT&T to end financial support for the One America News Network. Just because AT&T might have wanted "its own conservative (sic) news network" years ago doesn't mean we have to put up with all the rage-inducing crap on TV news today -- and since AT&T is apparently OAN's sole funder, the first blow we strike might be the decisive one. OAN are the people who tell you lies about the 2020 election, lies about COVID vaccines, lies about the January 6 attempted coup, lies about Black civil rights activists, and lies about how "oppressed" white folks are. They're also the folks who think that people who "believe" Joe Biden won the 2020 election should be executed for treason. I want the assholes who say such things to get the oblivion they deserve. They sure don't deserve more corporate money.

Action: concerning monopolies, voting rights, data privacy, law and order, and fossil fuel subsidies.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to strike a blow against meat packer monopolies, pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis voting Rights Advancement Act, pass data privacy legislation and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and end fossil fuel subsidies. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First off, this'll seem a bit inside-baseball, but Matt Stoller writes about monopoly meat-packers causing higher meat prices, and notes that Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and Tester (D-MT) have written a bill with actual bipartisan support, called the 50-14 or "spot market" bill. This bill would require big meat packing corporations to buy half of their meat on the open market -- rather than force all cattle ranchers into contracts that may give ranchers assurance they'll be able to sell their cattle, but also makes it far too easy for meat packers to fix prices. It won't actually break up the monopolies, but it'll give ranchers a lot more breathing space. This bill merits a supportive call to your Congressfolk, and don't be swayed by the arguments against the bill -- as Mr. Stoller demonstrates, they rely on bad arguments and manipulated data.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Never mind that Joe Manchin prefers this bill to the For the People Act, because it's not so different that it doesn't deserve our support. The Freedom to Vote Act would expand your access to the voting booth, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering and dark money, restore voting rights to ex-felons, provide 15 days of early voting across America, enact same-day voter registration, and make Election Day a national holiday, plus it'll clamp down on states' recent attempts to gain the power to overrule the will of the voters in their elections. All of this would better secure voting rights in America, and thus merits our work on its behalf. (Also, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you write a letter to the editor supporting the Freedom to Vote Act.)

Both Daily Kos and People for the American Way help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This bill would amend the Voting Rights Act so that our Justice Department could clamp down on voting law changes from states and localities that have demonstrated a clear record of vote suppression -- and not just states and localities from the South, which was our Supreme Court's objection in Shelby County v. Holder. And since a lot of the states that have changed their voting laws lately just so happen to have a vote suppression record, one would think our Justice Department could and would do something about them. We'll likely have to nix the filibuster to get any voting rights bills passed -- but first, let's demonstrate, unmistakably, that the people want voting rights reform in America.

How to Stop Facebook helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real data privacy legislation in America. Our Federal Communications Commission enacted pretty good regulations protecting data privacy, but that was back in 2016 -- and our Congress promptly repealed them, via the notorious resolution of disapproval process. But now, with approximately zero Americans left who think data breaches and targeted ads and enabling Nazi wannabes is just the price you pay for staying in touch with those people you had a few laughs with freshman year, Congress should be more amenable to protecting your data, and protecting you from corporate surveillance. But we still have to tell them. (Oh, and don't fall for the calls for a new bureaucracy just to regulate Facebook; that'll just have our government rubber-stamping what Facebook does, and we've already got that.)

In a peripherally-related matter, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. This bill would close a Mack truck-sized loophole in the law, which currently prevents your internet service-providing corporation from selling your personal data to law enforcement -- but which does not prevent the third-party data gobblers that buy your data from your ISPs from re-selling it to law enforcement! And you deserve better than that, even if you have committed a crime that law enforcement should be able to discover. We don't have a Fourth Amendment for nothing, after all -- we have it so that we don't send innocent people to jail by accident, and so we don't create a police state that sends its enemies to jail at will. And we're not as far from that as we'd like to think.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to end fossil fuel subsidies forever. That'll be tough, since the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" includes even more fossil fuel subsidies, but we should still communicate our will. And though the recent California oil spill instructs us as to why we might not want to funnel taxpayer money toward corporations that pollute, you can of course make a more conservative argument against fossil fuel subsidies. Not ALL GUBMINT SPENDINGZ BADZ!!!!!, because that's a reactionary argument -- you can merely argue that the fossil fuels are an entrenched technology and hardly need taxpayer help to survive. Yes, they talk about "facing crises" all the time, but they're BSing you. They don't need your money.

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

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations (including enacting a Billionaire's Tax and a stock buyback tax) to pay for the Build Back Better Act, and make sure the Build Back Better Act invests in our care economy, funds paid family/medical leave, lets Medicare negotiate drug prices, expands Medicare, expands our fight against climate change, and permanently expands the Child Tax Credit. 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 raise the full $3.5 trillion for the Build Back Better Act by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. Americans for Tax Fairness also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include the Billionaire's Income Tax in the Build Back Better Act and assess a 2% tax on corporate stock buybacks. Remember when they said the 2017 tax "reform" would put thousands of dollars in everyone's pockets? What it actually did was let big corporate CEOs buy back stock, so that shareholder power is even more concentrated in executive hands. That used to be illegal, by the way! And it should be again. In the meantime, we should discourage it with taxation, and then use that money to do good works, which we will describe below.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in the care economy in the Build Back Better Act. What do we know about child care and elder care? That we'll all need one or the other one day, and they could both be a damn sight cheaper. And none of that is about "creating an entitlement society," but about relieving real burdens on working families that cripple their ability to contribute more to our society -- burdens that only exist to make corporate executives rich. Yes, that's your bootstrap society for you -- this civilization, such as it is, redistributes our income upward to the undeserving rich, and then harangues us to "just work harder." I want this income-redistribution-upward scheme dead before I leave this Earth. Supporting the care economy is just one way to do that.

Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Every other wealthy nation on Earth does it, but our leaders would apparently prefer to churn out corporate executives who buy 18 homes and a hundred classic cars, fly to the edge of our atmosphere and call it "space travel," and build atomic clocks in mountains. You can have one or the other, not both, and I know which one I'll take -- I'll take the society that gives everyone a chance to succeed, rather than worship the folks who've already "succeeded" and indulge their lust for mammon even more. And paid family/medical leave would cost so little! And don't tolerate any whining about "workers abusing the program" -- just catch and punish the ones who do. This ain't rocket science.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make large investments in climate change action. That would include investing in solar and wind power, and it'd also include a methane emissions tax, which would slash carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Yeah, you heard Joe Manchin doesn't want to do this in the Build Back Better Act, either! But he already got his corporate welfare for fossil fuel corporations in that "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" he insisted on having, so where does his greed end? I say "his greed" because of his own large investments in the coal industry, of course. I mean, you'd have to explain his ignorance of his constituents' will somehow! And I think they ought to be heard, for once.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act, while Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Medicare drug price negotiation (which Bob Menendez still opposes, can't someone in New Jersey primary his sorry ass in 2024?) would save tens of billions of dollars annually, and remember what Bernie Sanders said: dental care for seniors isn't an "entitlement." It's more than Medicare covers now, and that has to change.

Finally, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Moms Rising, and the Juggernaut Project all help you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent in the Build Back Better Act. Working families in America have been getting $250 or $300 checks every month since mid-July, but those will end at the end of this calendar year -- yes, for 2022, working families will still get the expansion in the form of one lump sum at tax time, but why not keep doing it monthly? Families stimulate the economy better with smaller sums of money than they do with large windfalls. And, yeah, it'll be like a political ad every time the check arrives; why on Earth would Democrats refuse such a gift? Oh, right, because they're geniuses at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And that's why we offer our counsel to them at critical moments like these, when they're about to let big donors crash their entire agenda.

Around the table: from "voter fraud" to voting aginst fascism.

Now this is interesting: four North Carolinians are suing for libel after former Governor Pat McCrory's defense fund accused them of voting illegally in the 2016 gubernatorial election (an election Mr. McCrory lost to Roy Cooper). That should teach right-wingers who lose elections to accuse specific people of "voter fraud," but then, if we keep demanding proof of right-wing "voter fraud" accusations, they'll have to get down to names eventually. And yes, North Carolina was using the notorious Interstate Crosscheck database at the time, so I bet that's how the McCrory group got its names. I sincerely hope the plaintiffs prevail.

Here's some more good news: Dollar General workers at a Barkhamstead, Connecticut store are aiming to unionize. Did we not just discuss how unions should have been going after retail workers all this time? Well, these six workers contacted the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in mid-September, filed for an election just a few days later, and will vote on the matter on October 22. In the meantime Dollar General corporate flacks have descended upon them with anti-union propaganda, and one of the six workers got fired, I wonder why? I wish them the best, and I hope I can continue to believe that the Biden NLRB is way, way better than the Trump NLRB.

Jennifer Rubin wonders why Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema seem to be trying to kill the Build Back Better Act when it would benefit their home states greatly. Pedants would argue that Joe Manchin actually has supported Medicare drug price negotiation, but he sure ain't "out front pushing for this item," as Ms. Rubin says, and (as I've said) maybe he only came out for it because he knew Ms. Sinema would oppose it anyway. He has also favored rolling back the Trump tax-cuts-for-the-rich, but again, he ain't out front on that, and again, he also knows Ms. Sinema opposes that rollback. Ms. Rubin's many other points -- not very many rich folks in West Virginia, big solar job growth in Arizona, lots of Medicare recipients in both states -- withstand more serious scrutiny.

You know I have little patience for folks who say "you can make polls say anything you want"? Well, that doesn't apply to cherry-picking poll data, like the kind David Moore describes at FAIR. In buttressing his absurd claim that Joe Manchin totally gets his constituents, a Washington Post columnist reports that 49% of independents, in one mid-August poll, and not just in West Virginia, think the Build Back Better Act aims to spend too much, which is a little like saying the 1974-75 Washington Capitals were a pretty good team because Tommy Williams scored 22 goals that year. (That team won eight games and had one other 20-goal scorer.) Think the actual West Virginia polling referenced herein occurred to that Post writer?

As Republicans "ramp() up" attacks on giving our IRS more enforcement power, dig Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) saying "I can’t ever recall anyone saying that they want the IRS to poke into their business more on a day-to-day basis." But has anyone told him I wish the IRS could catch tax cheats who break our laws and make the rest of us pay more? Because I'm pretty sure that's what this is really all about.

Finally, noted conservative Max Boot reiterates that he's going to keep voting for Democrats"until the GOP ceases to pose an existential threat to our freedom," and of course I sympathize, but again -- as with George Will, who has made very similar noises -- I wonder how much sway Mr. Boot has with his brethren on the right. I'd say he has sway with no more than 3% of the electorate -- judging by how well Michael Wood did in the Texas's 6th special, when he leaned hard (and effectively, I thought) into never-Trumpism -- and while 3% ain't nothing, I'd caution against thinking very many of the folks you disagreed with back in the day have now come to their senses, even after the events of January 6.

Action: concerning health care, working families, slaughterhouse emissions, FDA regulation, Israeli occupation, and right-wing news.

Long story short: tell big pharma CEOs to stop putting their own needs ahead of the world's needs, tell Hello Fresh you support its workers' unionization efforts, tell our EPA to issue strong slaughterhouse emissions standards, tell President Biden not to appoint a big pharma CEO and lobbyist to head up our FDA, tell Amazon and Google to end their support for Israel's occupation of Palestine, and tell AT&T to cut all ties with One America News. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Amnesty International helps you tell big pharma CEOs to put people, not their own profits, first, and ensure everyone has access to COVID vaccines. No sense arguing that's not their job or they're only accountable to their shareholders, not when COVID could come back to bite us again and again and again, and overwhelm hospitals again and again and again, because vaccines aren't available in some part of the world. Oh, and putting profits above everyone and everything? Not civilized behavior. Seriously, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The First Epistle to Timothy instructs us that "the love of money is the root of all evil." Big pharma CEOs putting their own profits above the health of the planet? That certainly qualifies as "the love of money."

Public Citizen helps you tell HelloFresh you support their workers' attempts to unionize and collectively bargain for better pay and better working conditions. HelloFresh has made over $2 billion in profits in the burgeoning meal kit business, but their workers put up with COVID outbreaks in cramped working areas, have their bathroom breaks times, can't hardly get a damn glass of water, and face anti-union propaganda at the workplace disrupting their work because of course they do. The PRO Act would clamp down on all of these things, but until our Senate deigns to pass it, we'll just have to get the Big Stick of Bad PR out for HelloFresh. They ain't been around so long they can just ignore it -- or us.

Penn Environment helps you tell our EPA to enact the most vigorous slaughterhouse pollution regulations possible. Our EPA is mulling these rules as we speak, so if we speak out, we leave a paper trail that the courts can't ignore, if it comes to that. It should come to that less now that Joe Biden is President! Presidential elections do matter for some things, after all. Don't let anyone gaslight you about FOODZ PRICEZ GOINGZ THROUGHZ TEH ROOFZ!!!! if we demand that factory farms pollute less. No one will be sitting around a campfire in a hundred years saying yeah, sure, toxic farm pollution killed off all the fish and made our water undrinkable, but at least food was a little cheaper for a while!

Public Citizen helps you tell President Biden not to appoint a big pharma CEO/lobbyist to run our Food and Drug Administration. We have just seen what happens when our FDA does the bidding of big pharma corporations, in their hasty approval of aducanumab for treating Alzheimer's disease, even though our FDA's own advisory board reviewed the scant evidence of its efficacy and recommended against approval; I would prefer not to have more of that. The particular executive/lobbyist on Mr. Biden's short list, Michelle McMurry-Heath, just so happens to oppose lowering drug prices. We've got enough of those people in our Senate; let's not have them in our FDA as well.

No Tech For Apartheid helps you tell Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus, which would provide cloud computing services for the Israeli government and military, and thus make them a vital part of occupying and oppressing Palestinians. Almost 800 workers at both corporations have already leveled this demand at their bosses, and their courage demands we join them. And remember: you don't have to unwind the entire history of the region until you figure out who committed the first injury before you decide what you do today. You need only remember that Israel is way, way more powerful than Palestine, and still treats every living Palestinian like a convicted terrorist. And all those nations that hate Israel sure ain't going out of their way to stop them.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell AT&T to cut ties with the fascist news network One America News, which is still pounding the absurd notion that Donald Trump won an election he lost by seven million votes, and whose on-air "personalities" tell us that we who recognize that fact should all be executed for treason. Like any of them have the guts! If AT&T were to withdraw financial backing from OAN, OAN would probably flounder, but hey, that's the genius of capitalism, is it not? If OAN is so great, and the demand for its "news" so undeniable, they ought to be able to survive without a big corporate sugar daddy! And if not, then we wouldn't have to put up with their drama anymore.

UPDATE. Now President Biden is reportedly leaning toward former FDA Administrator Robert Califf as his choice; I remember that being a bad idea at the end of the Obama years, and I can't imagine it's suddenly become a better idea now. Public Citizen has this alert as well.

Action: concerning methane emissions, Oak Flat, war in Yemen, the Hyde Amendment, and the Equality Act.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to keep the methane emissions tax in the Build Back Better Act, pass the Save Oak Flat Act, end our involvement in the war on Yemen, and repeal the Hyde Amendment, and tell your Senators to pass the Equality 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Did you know there was a methane emissions tax in the Build Back Better Act? I didn't! So you may want to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to tax methane emissions in the Build Back Better Act. They'll never see it coming! This would be a tax corporations pay, not people, no matter how much corporate cronies tell you "people will just wind up paying for it." Sure, if corporations want to be even less popular than they are now! And seriously, why would civilized people tolerate "just passing on the cost to the consumer"? Possibly because corporatists have gaslit us into believing we can't do any better than letting corporations have whatever they want! But methane emissions pack a massive climate change punch, and it's well past time for us to punch back -- and taxing methane emissions could end methane leaks, which would leave climate change with fewer teeth.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1884/S. 915, the Save Oak Flat Act. Oak Flat is an area within the Tonto National Forest in Arizona that just so happens to be sacred to several Native American nations -- but also the site of a planned copper mining project. The two former Arizona Senators Jeff Flake and the late John McCain snuck the Oak Flat copper mine authorization into a 2014 defense authorization bill, since it would never have survived as a stand-alone bill, not least because the corporation operating the project, Resolution Copper, is owned by Rio Tinto, which used to employ Mr. Flake as a lobbyist. If we pass this bill, we can begin to make amends for treating sacred lands like a used dishrag -- unless we're only going to let white people have religion in America, I guess. That seems to be the Republican preference! But they don't get all the say around here.

Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to end our complicity as a nation in the killing of Yemeni civilians. We've been trying, and jackboot lockstep agreement with Saudi Arabia's aims ain't pervasive in Congress anymore -- as evidenced by the Biden Administration's proposed $500 million sale of "arms maintenance," which is further from "arms" than we used to be -- but when you've got the advantage, you don't sit back, you press it. People who try to argue with you about this try to tell you BUT IRANZ IZ TEH WORSEZ!!!!, which sure ain't a way of saying "Saudi Arabia is awesome!" or even "what we're doing in Yemen is sad, but it has to be done." They may be handing us victory with their bad arguments, but we still have to take victory.

The Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the notorious Hyde Amendment, which prevents any taxpayer money from funding abortion. Yeah, I would never want an abortion to happen either if I could help it, but I'm not about to tell someone carrying a fetus with no organs, or a fetus that could kill or maim her once delivered, to stand on principle. Hell, I'm not about to tell someone with one more uterus than I have to stand on such principles! When men can give birth, we'll reopen that conversation. And I know, Joe Manchin actually insisted the Build Back Better Act include the Hyde Amendment, probably just so he could do the helicopter dance in front of us yet again. Nyah nyah I'm the 50th vote! Suck on this, liberals! But he doesn't get all the say around here; we do. And all we have to do is act like it.

Finally, since Monday was Coming Out Day, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. This bill represents a major civil rights boon for gay and transgender folk -- no longer could banks, employers, and landlords discriminate against gay and transgender folk merely because they're gay and transgender, and no longer could states pass "bathroom bills" that do nothing but enrage the easily-enraged and hurt transgender folk. And right-wingers call all that discrimination "religious freedom"! But one more time: you do not have a "religious" right to abridge other folks' rights. Some people act like citing one's "religious" "conscience" is a get-out-of-being-civilized card, but it ain't. A lot folks claiming religious exemptions because they don't want to get a vaccine are about to find this out.

Action: concerning labor, pollution, immigration, law and order, and campaign finance.

Long story short: tell Kellogg's CEO to treat his workers right, tell our EPA to ban corporate PFAS dumping, tell the Biden Administration to stop all deportations to Haiti, tell our Justice Department to stop Minnesota police form torturing Line 3 protestors, and tell big corporations to stop donating to January 6 coup enablers in Congress. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell Kellogg CEO Steven Cahillane to treat Kellogg's workers right and give them the contract they deserve. That would be a contract which doesn't mandate 12-hour days seven days a week -- if someone made you work that schedule, you'd go on strike, too. Nabisco and Frito-Lay workers have also gone on strike this year, with varying results, but if we make enough noise in the direction of Kellogg's CEO, their workers will more likely get a better contract out of it. It's not like Kellogg's doesn't have the money, either -- like most big corporations (and, ah, almost no small businesses!), Kellogg has cleaned up during the pandemic; maybe its executives ought to reward the folks most responsible for their success, i.e., their workers?

Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to ban corporate dumping of PFAS chemicals into our air and water. We call PFAS chemicals "forever chemicals" for good reason -- they don't break down and they get into everything, not just our air and water but also our bodies. What happens to them once they get in our bodies? Please refer to the phrase "they don't break down." And scientists link PFAS exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, and liver damage, among other things. Our EPA hasn't yet created any standards for restricting PFAS dumping by big corporations, but they are taking public comments about the matter; now's the time for us to tell our EPA what to do. Remember: if we say nothing, our EPA can ignore us, but if we all speak out, we'll create a paper trail our EPA won't be able to ignore without getting their asses handed to them in court.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell the Biden Administration to stop deporting Haitian immigrants. You no doubt think of Border Patrol agents in cowboy hats on horseback corralling Haitian refugees with whips when you contemplate this matter; why, even Joe Biden denounced it! Yet he continues the same policies that caused that mess -- namely, the Title 42 policy allowing our President to deport pretty much anyone for pandemic-related reasons, though we all know the real threat to our health has lately come from tantrum-throwers in red states. Jesus Mary and Joseph we were down to 9,000 cases a day in June! And immigrants have been coming the whole time, as Fox News will happily tell you, so it ain't them. Not for nothing, but Haitians have just had a Presidential assassination and an earthquake, so mercy ain't weakness here.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our President to nix the notorious Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, and tell our Justice Department to stop police torture of protestors at the pipeline. You should know it's torture just from the phrase police use to describe what they're doing to protestors -- "pain compliance." What, they thought more syllables would disguise their intent? You know the story with Line 3 -- another oil pipeline run by a corporation with a bad pipeline safety record, which means that pipe will eventually crack and contaminate a water table upon which good Americans depend. "Good Americans" here includes the indigenous folks who put their bodies on the line against the pipeline. Hey, the Lakota sure were right about Dakota Access; why do we fail to listen?

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell big corporations like GM and UPS to stop giving campaign donations to the 147 Congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election and thus helped enable the January 6 attempted coup. Remember when big corporations said they were done giving money to politicians like that? That sure didn't last! Corporations act like they have no choice, when having billions of dollars means nothing but choices. And their campaign largesse could have far more dire consequences this time, as the Republicans who retake Congress in 2022 will learn that trying to overthrow a duly-elected government is no impediment to victory! Corporations have a moderate Democrat as President, and Democratic Congressional majorities are too slim to really rock the corporate boat -- but no, that's not enough for them. It's well past enough for me, I tell you what.

Action: concerning water privatization, voting rights, debt drama, law and order, and credit reports.

Long story short: tell PA state legislators to block Aqua Pennsylvania's attempts to take over the Chester Water Authority, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, get rid of the stupid debt ceiling forever, pass the Counseling Not Criminalization Act, get rid of qualified immunity for police officers, and ensure good Americans can get credit reports easily and for free. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first. Aqua Pennsylvania, the private water service corporation, wants to take over the publicly-held Chester Water Authority; if they succeed, they'll likely go after the public water services of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh next, which will give them pretty near complete control of Pennsylvania's water. They're basically a monopoly in every municipality they operate, which means what, class? Higher prices for you, that's what! (No, public water isn't a "monopoly," because it belongs to you and thus you have much more control over it.) Pennsylvania's legislature is mulling HB 1936, which would prevent private corporations from buying public water systems unless those systems are in financial distress; I'd prevent it under those circumstances, too, but HB 1936 will improve matters. Thus Sum of Us helps you tell your PA state legislators to support public water.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Ignore right-wing rubbish about "letting states run elections," because too many states have recently revealed they want to "run" elections that only Republicans can win. The Freedom to Vote Act would expand your access to the voting booth, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering where politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around, and end states' efforts to meddle in their own elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the Voting Rights Act so our Justice Department can step in and stop states and localities -- and not just Southern ones -- from suppressing the vote. America needs these bills to become law; I'm not sure I can put it any more simply than that.

Democracy for America helps you tell our government to end the absurd debt ceiling threat once and for all. Politicians only ever complain about our national debt when the other party runs things, and so it goes with today's Republicans, who let Donald Trump run up our national debt by nearly $8 trillion (comprising a nearly 40 percent increase) in just four years, but who now imagine we'll buy their gaslighting about how they're the "fiscally responsible" party. They may also imagine they'll be able to extort concessions (privatizing Social Security, cutting Medicare, etc.) in exchange for graciously raising the debt limit, though they haven't actually mentioned any concessions lately. So we need to neutralize the threat, and end the endless hostage-taking. And no, I don't care if President Biden does it on his own. I think most folks would call that leadership, which is a thing we haven't seen from very many Presidents lately.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4011/S. 2125, the Counseling Not Criminalization Act, which would mean fewer police officers and more counselors and nurses in our public schools. Because police officers don't have the skills to stop kids from acting out! And we shouldn't expect that of them! And a couple classes in conflict resolution can't match the abilities of folks who have spent years doing exactly that! Police officers are not Swiss Army knives, after all. If that sounds like "defunding the police" to your right-wing neighbors, then I would have to ask if maybe they care a lot more for "funding the police" than, you know, actually reducing crime. Yesterday's conservatives always said you can't just throw money at a problem; today's "conservatives" yell I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! every time you try to solve a problem. And boy do I hate yellers.

In a related note, Black Lives Matter helps you tell your Congressfolk to end "qualified immunity" for police officers, so that good Americans can finally get justice for the wrongs police have done to them. And police have done wrongs to them! No amount of I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! will bring back the Black kids killed for having a toy gun or the Black men killed for pulling out their cellphone. And ending "qualified immunity" won't automatically send police officers to jail, it'll just take away the tool that gives them near-absolute protection from accountability; plaintiffs will still have to prove their case, as they always do. And if your right-wing neighbors tell you "cops can't do their job" without having accountability for the wrong they do, well, ask them how that's conservative. I mean, conservatives always said they were all about accountability.

Finally, Consumer Reports helps you tell Congress to ensure you can get your credit reports easily and for free. Yes, our government already does provide free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com, but doesn't that website name strike you as a nefarious compromise? As if they went out of their way to let corporations trick you with websites with the word "free" in them? It's always seemed that way to me, that's for sure. So, yeah, we should publicized the fact that annualcreditreport.com is where you go for free credit reports, but we shouldn't let corporations charge you hundreds of dollars or siphon away your private info so they can resell it, either. That's not "the free market" in action; that's corruption in action, and for too long our politicians have just shrugged at corruption and called it "freedom." But if it makes folks less free, how is it freedom?

Around the table: and now for another exciting chapter of "weak Democrats, insane Republicans."

When I hear that a majority of Americans don't know exactly what's in the Build Back Better plan, I'm inclined to say, no shit, Sherlock! The fact that Democrats allow the discussion to be all about "how much money we're going to spend" leads me to think they're all trying to tank it, not just the Manchin/Sinema/Gottheimer/Cuellar axis. I mean, if they told media outlets and their constituents "we want to lower drug prices, get everyone paid family leave, and cut taxes for working families, and we're going to pay for all of that by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations," people like Joe Manchin and Henry Cuellar would be irrelevant, because their own constituents would be raising hell with them in a way they couldn't avoid. It's sad that Democrats have forgotten how this works -- or, perhaps more precisely, "forgotten."

In a related development, four Senate Democrats say they won't back the Build Back Better Act if Joe Manchin guts all the climate change provisions in the bill. That's as it should be! Of course, no good deed goes unpunished in America, so liberals will get all the blame if this all fails, despite the fact that, again, it's been the Manchin/Sinema/Gottheimer/Cuellar axis saying "no" to things most American people want this whole time. (Also, the gas drilling corporations say we shouldn't enact a methane emissions tax because the cost "would be felt by consumers," as if said corporations have literally nothing to do with passing on that cost, and as if we should merely tolerate corporations doing immoral crap.)

Here's some good news: 20 state Attorneys General have sued to stop the DeJoy plan to cripple our Post Office, and oh boy the suit claims that Mr. DeJoy didn't follow the law in making changes to services and prices. Sound familiar? Of course it does -- it's the thing that tripped up every Trump Administration rule that died in court, which was a lot of them. You can't just do whatever you want in the Executive branch, and our Founders would spin in their graves to observe that, even if none of them could have foreseen a phenomenon such as the Administrative Procedure Act.

When I hear that Terry McAuliffe is hopping mad that the House didn't pass the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal," I feel compelled to wonder why he thinks this is the hill to die on. He knows full well why it didn't pass -- because actual liberals knew if it passed, right-wing Democrats in the Senate would kill the larger Build Back Better Act -- so he indulges in hippie-punching like it's 1993. He deserves to lose -- but more to the point, Democrats deserve to lose as long as they act like cowards. (I say "act like," of course, because, as I've suggested, I think they are acting -- they want to keep things the way they are, and losing their Congressional majorities in 2022 to fascists is part of the plan.)

Lawrence Torcello at The Conversation tells us "How Columbus Day Contributes to the Cultural Erasure of Italian-Americans." You may find that counter-intuitive, particularly if you're sensitive to how badly America's treated Italian immigrants over the years (and if you know that Columbus Day observances began as a sop to ill-treated Italian-Americans), but I'm an Italian-American myself and I'd much rather celebrate Chef Boyardee Day. I'm not kidding -- everyone eats spaghetti now, only because Ettore Boiardi made it seem less foreign to large numbers of Americans. Or how about a day for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ida Lupino, or Alan Alda?

Finally, Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post wonders "How Dumb Can a Nation Get and Still Survive?" Sympathetic as I am to his frustration over lies about masks and vaccines, I've long said it's not stupidity per se that afflicts us, but rage -- Fox News has been enraging folks en masse since at least 2002, and now they have a lot of imitators, both in media and in politics. Hate to sound like a broken record, but it'd help if Democrats would do good works with their power when they have it, lest we all witness the spectacle of a decisive number of voters actually preferring fascists to weaklings.

Action: concerning, once again, the Build Back Better Act.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations (including enacting a Billionaire's Tax) to pay for the Build Back Better Act, and make sure the Build Back Better Act lets Medicare negotiate drug prices, expands Medicare, funds paid family/medical leave, expands good Americans' access to clean water, and permanently expands the Child Tax Credit. 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 pay for all of the Build Back Better Act by making the rich and corporations pay more taxes and include the "Billionaire's Tax" in the Build Back Better Act. These are not contradictory aims, unless we no longer include billionaires in the "rich," which is a day I hope I never see. Billionaires have made almost $2 trillion more during this pandemic, so while "moderate" Democrats whine about how much to cut the Build Back Better Act, billionaires sit back and laugh. We don't have a merit-based society anymore, not when a catastrophic pandemic actually makes the ultra-rich richer. The first step to rebuilding that merit-based society is restraining the power of the rich, because they run roughshod over our freedoms.

Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. Brook no more excuses or bad arguments from your Congressfolk! No more rubbish about "killing jobs" (don't make me do the right thing, or I'll fire all my workers!) or "price controls are bad" (like people would hate paying less for drugs!) or "it won't do any good" (even a blind infant could see that it will, which is why 80-90% of Americans want it!) or "it's not fiscally responsible" (ah, to let government to pay less taxpayer money for Medicare drugs?). And brook no more silence from certain Congressfolk, either (cough Kyrsten Sinema cough). If they're going to screw us over, we should at least make them explain themselves.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep the Medicare expansion in the Build Back Better Act. I know, it ain't Medicare-for-All, but I don't let the perfect murder the good, and lowering the Medicare age to 60 (which will bring more healthy people into the Medicare pool, and thus save Medicare money!) and giving seniors dental/vision/hearing care are both good works. And let Bernie Sanders teach you how to respond to the Joe Manchins of the world who complain about "everything being an entitlement": "does Senator Manchin really believe that seniors are not entitled to...hear and see properly?" And don't let the Joe Manchins pearl-clutch about "getting Medicare solvent first." Tax the rich harder and we can pay for it. Let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices and we can pay for it. This ain't rocket science.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. I'm gobsmacked that Democrats want to do this but don't want to advertise that they're doing it! How afraid can they really be that Republicans will whine WHEREZ TEH MONEYZ COMINGZ FROMZ!!!!! Jesus Mary and Joseph Republicans have been whining that for longer than I've been alive; you have to prepare for those arguments. Paid family/medical leave will help everyone in America, and even big corporate CEOs know that, and have come around to supporting it in recent years, just like most other Americans do. And there are a million ways to pay for it (Sen. Gillibrand's bill originally would have levied a tiny payroll tax amounting to $8 a month for someone making $50,000 a year), but Republicans act like not wanting to do it means it doesn't exist. We need to stop letting them gaslight us.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1352/S. 916, the WATER Act. Just so happens the best way to do that right now is to get a strong Build Back Better Act passed (which means the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" also passes); the email tool in the link above reflects this reality. Currently the two bills would spend over $30 billion to replace lead water pipes, which is about the amount the WATER Act would require to get the job done. Any amount of lead causes brain damage in children -- it may not be an accident that crime rates have risen and fell with the rise and fall of lead emissions from cars! -- so we can't have lead pipes anywhere in America. Remember what Alexander Cockburn used to say: without clean water, you don't have health in America.

Finally, both the Friends Committee on National Legislation and Moms Rising help you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent in the Build Back Better Act. Just as we demand more from our coddled billionaires, we demand more relief for those of us who work hard at real jobs, raise families, and still have trouble making ends meet. Through no fault of our own, I should add -- what, we should all just become hedge fund managers? It seems like a no-brainer to make the CTC expansion permanent, not least because it's put $250 and $300 checks in good Americans' pockets every month since July of this year, yet some "moderate" Democrats oppose the expansion. Because doing so makes them look "tough"? Yeah, snatching a check out of some overworked, underpaid worker sure is tough. I will work to make such "toughness" dead and dishonored before I leave this world.

Around the table: from bad news about unions to good news about Utah monuments.

Hamilton Nolan at In These Times writes that "In Middle America, Unions and Democrats Are Sleepwalking Into the Grave." At least the latest report finding Democrats losing votes in manufacturing towns, etc., because unions are declining there, etc., comes from Democratic consultants, not in spite of them. Key insight from Mr. Nolan: "the story here is that as traditionally unionized manufacturing jobs disappeared, unions failed to organize the next set of (worse) jobs that rose up to take their place...If the factories leave, and people go work at the Dollar General, then unions need to unionize the Dollar General." Have unions done that? No, they have not. I hope that's not because unions look down on retail workers, but we can't discount the possibility.

William C. Anderson at TruthOut reminds us that "Liberal Pleas for 'Unity' Legitimize the Virulent Politics of the Far Right." "The problem, however, as is always the problem with calls for unity," he writes, "is that unity with white supremacists means death." You no doubt recall all the right-wing cries for "unity" aimed to paper over their role in the January 6 attempted coup? It is funny (and by "funny" I mean "not at all funny") how often calls for "unity" seem to benefit right-wingers. You might go so far as to say you should not trust anyone who calls for "unity," since so many of our fellow Americans really deserve isolation and ostracization more than anything else.

Social scientists find, not surprisingly, that in the wake of Facebook's "mysterious" outage last week, that its users have a love-hate relationship with it -- and reminds us that it was not always this way. Sure was fun in 2008 and 2009 to find all sorts of folks I thought I'd never see or speak to again, but even in the wake of Ms. Haugen's recent testimony, Facebook seems well-nigh essential, particularly to those of us who promote blogs or books against all hope. But I felt like the Golden Age of Connection came well before Facebook -- remember LiveJournal, Tribe, Friendster, Meetup, or, gosh, blogs? -- and quite frankly I wouldn't mind rolling back the clock.

Speaking of Frances Haugen, Matt Stoller reminds us that Ms. Haugen, despite her many good works, doesn't want to break up Facebook, but create a whole new regulatory agency just to handle it, and staff that agency with Silicon Valley types that "know" the industry, which I hope sounds like a terrible idea to you. We need to break up Facebook because, as Mr. Stoller says, "the concentration of power in the hands of a small group is the fundamental political and economic problem with Facebook," and if you're at all familiar with the sites I mentioned in the previous paragraph, then you also know that they only came about because of the "decentralized" internet Facebook has wiped out with its monopoly power. And if a new regulatory agency sounds like "more bureaucracy" to your right-wing friends, know that it also sounds like more bureaucracy to this irredeemable liberal, too. We already have agencies and courts that can slap down monopolies; we don't need to create a whole new agency in order to preserve a monopoly that's hurting our civilization.

You may be surprised to learn that the Pandora Papers have revealed South Dakota as a major tax haven for the "international rich," rivaling places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Why? Because the state has gone way out of its way to shield trust funds from scrutiny by almost anyone, from regulators and foreign governments and even former spouses. You have to wonder where a lot of South Dakota politicians' campaign funding comes from, then! In a sane, moral, and decent society, South Dakota voters would punish their government at the next election, but I suspect they won't, and you know what that means.

Finally, President Biden restores the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments to their original size, i.e., before Donald Trump cut big swaths of them off so he could hand them to developers. You undoubtedly advocated for the return of these monuments to their original sizes, so good for you. Lawsuits will follow, but as much as I doubted Mr. Trump's authority to make those cuts in the first place, I'm even more skeptical that the state of Utah will succeed in any of its lawsuits to claw them back. And, like the Ute Indian Tribal chair quoted extensively in the article, I'm pretty sure the only "peaceful resolution" Utah wants is the one that gives them everything they want.

Action: concerning COVID relief, drug price negotiation, abusive phone rates, abuses of power, and right-wing news.

Long story short: tell the Biden Administration to stop Alabama from building prisons with COVID relief funds, tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, protect prisoners from abusive phone rates, and has the Protecting Our Democracy Act, and tell AT&T to drop OAN from the DirecTV network. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first. Presente helps you tell the Biden Administration to stop Alabama from using COVID relief funds to build new prisons. Yes, you read that right: Alabama actually used $400 million in money for COVID relief to build two megaprisons. Does building a prison sound like "COVID relief" to you? Only if you believe the absurd lie that TEH IMMIGRANTZ AREZ BRINGINGZ TEH COVIDZ!!!! and believe all immigrants should be thrown in prison. And, ah, Alabama has been rocked pretty hard by the Delta wave; maybe some hospitals could use it more than prisons? It's a question worth asking! Anyway, the Biden Administration should get all law-and-order on this effort post-haste -- but they won't, unless we demand it.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. Tired of hearing about this? Blame New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who says he can't support Medicare drug price negotiation, not at all because New Jersey politicians have been in the death-grip of big pharma corporations forever, no, sir! In his view, the plan "does not guarantee...that the government’s going to save money, doesn’t guarantee that the consumer saves any money." But then he whines that "(w)e’re going to take anywhere between $3 and $400 billion from the industry," which is, basically, a guarantee that "the government" and "the consumer" will, in fact, save money; he's just trying to confuse you by phrasing it differently. Which is the devil's art, and we should never let the devil get all the say.

Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would end abusive prison phone rates. When families go into debt just trying to stay in touch with their loved ones in prison, then big telecom corporations are charging too much! It's that damn simple! It's cruel to them, and it's cruel to prisoners! If your right-wing nephew says then they shouldn't have raised a criminal ha ha ha snort, please tell him to do two things: 1) slap himself, and 2) consider that civilized people use prisons to rehabilitate prisoners, and all the science tells us that prisoners who can talk to their families while they're imprisoned are a lot less likely to go back to prison. If the little turd then tells you that scientists are all corrupt, ask him exactly how a scientist makes money arguing that people should spend less time in prison. Or tell him to go play with himself; I can't ask you to have too much patience.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would rein in the Presidential behavior no one expected from a President until Donald Trump came along. Among the things this bill would do: it would limit a President's ability to declare national emergencies so they can build vanity border walls that can't stand up to a stiff wind, it would prevent Presidents from profiting from their office, and would require candidates to release 10 years of tax returns. The insane, tyrannical behavior of King George III prompted our Founders to create a state that restricts Presidential power; we're all too young to remember King George III, but hopefully we haven't forgotten King George W. Bush or King Donald Trump, both of whom laughed as they hurt hundreds of millions of good Americans.

Finally, MoveOn helps you tell big telecom corporation AT&T to drop the right-wing extremist news network One America News (or OAN) from the DirecTV lineup. We only learned this week that AT&T basically created and funded OAN, a network which has lately suggested that folks who maintain that Joe Biden won the 2020 election by seven million votes should be executed as traitors. Remember opposing the AT&T/DirecTV merger from 2015? Well, this is why -- now AT&T funds OAN and carries it on the TV provider in which it still holds a 70% stake, exactly the kind of "synergy" and "partnership" that has turned those two words into near-cuss words. Apparently AT&T wanted another right-wing news network back in the day! Because who hasn't had enough not just of those, but of the "liberal" media outlets that ape them? Thus it's time for us to brandish the Big Stick of Bad PR.

Around the table: confronting social media culpability and Fox News culpability in our poisonous national discourse.

I'm old enough to remember a time when I would have found Nick Clegg's argument that you should blame Donald Trump and the actual insurrectionists, and not Facebook, for January 6 a lot more sympathetic, but in the old days, you actually had to work to make connections over the internet, and sites like Meetup most pointedly did not use algorithms for the express purpose of stirring up shit. Also, too, Facebook knew it was stirring up shit and did next to nothing about it. (As an aside, I would be amused to learn that Facebook didn't even do the due diligence Parler did before January 6.)

Before we congratulate Merck on that COVID pill, let us recall that the pill cost $17.74 per pill to produce (much of that from the taxpayer!) and now Merck charges our government a staggering $712 to use it. One might call that extortion, and no I don't think the urgency of the task (i.e., beating COVID) justifies handing out taxpayer money to help make a pill and then getting charged 40 times as much for said pill when it's done. When your right-wing nephew says "well, Merck did the work," point him to a) 40 times as much, b) the taxpayers helped fund it, and c) Merck bought the rights to the pill in May of 2020 and thus had less to do with its research and development than their price would suggest.

Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) also doesn't support Medicare drug price negotiation. His rubbish arguments defending his position are just as irrelevant as the cynical observation that WELL NEW JERSEY HAS A LOT OF DRUG COMPANIES HA HA HA SNORT -- he's supposed to do the will of his constituents, i.e., the living, breathing ones, and if New Jersey is like the rest of America, somewhere between 80% and 90% of his constituents want Medicare drug price negotiation. If you live in New Jersey, first off, lucky you! And second off, you may want to call Sen. Menendez and give him what for; here's his contact info.

Zeke Faux at Bloomberg describes the "wild search for the U.S. dollars supposedly backing the stablecoin at the center of the global cryptocurrency trade," and if you read the article and conclude "it's all a scam," I sure wouldn't blame you. Naturally, Tether's first CEO invented pop-up ads and its current lawyer claims all its critics are "jihadists." And dig the, ah, *surreality* of this sentence from paragraph 3: "But in the crypto world, where joke coins with pictures of dogs can be worth billions of dollars and scammers periodically make fortunes with preposterous-sounding schemes, Tether seemed like just another curiosity." "Curiosity" indeed.

Bernie Sanders appears to have had it up to here with Joe Manchin, and confronting Mr. Manchin's nattering about "entitlements" with "does Senator Manchin really believe that seniors are not entitled to digest their food, and that they’re not entitled to (care that could enable them to) hear and see properly?" is exactly how you are supposed to talk about this crap -- turn the word "entitlement" back on its users, like the depleted uranium weapon it is. Sadly, you won't see our "liberal" media do very much of that, so jealous are they of their "access" to people like Joe Manchin, when there are literally hundreds of millions of Americans who are just as good at making their views known as he is, and the enterprising media outlet could have "access" to any of them.

Finally, Fox News celebrates its 25th anniversary, and Melanie McFarland at Salon tabluates a good deal of the damage. You could really do a number on Fox News, more so than, say, Robert Greenwald did with OutFoxed(which I found oddly tame in 2004!), and more so, even, than Ms. McFarland does here, though she's laboring under a word limit. Anyway, the most urgent observation comes late: "How do we move forward from this? Every answer is insufficient and exhausting. Fox News management isn't interested in reining in its prime time hosts because they're the channel's main ratings magnets. De-programming experts have all sorts of suggestions on how to save the rabid Fox addicts in your life, but once again that places the burden on reasonable people to wade into a reservoir of hatred that's been steadily filling for two and a half decades." But only "reasonable people" can do the hard work of maintaining a civilization; we just have to contain the unreasonable people.

Action: concerning taxes, social media, Saudi Arabia, and various forms of pollution.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, tell our government to regulate Facebook more vigorously, tell your Congressfolk to void President Biden's proposed $500 million deal with Saudi Arabia, pass the Preventing Harmful Exposure to Phthalates Act, and ban cyanide bombs from the wild, and tell our Department of Energy to reject uranium mining. 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 raise all Build Back Better Act funding by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. If you're an Arizona resident, you'll definitely want to call Sen. Sinema, since she seems to be the one Senate Democrat who opposes raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. Stop me if you've heard this before, but over two-thirds of Arizonans support raising taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for the Build Back Better Act. As usual, the "inscrutable" "iconoclastic" "maverick" "earns" her reputation by simply defying the will of her own constituents, in favor of the big corporate donors she seems to hobnob with every weekend. That's not very mavericky, frankly! And we shouldn't let her get away with it.

Free Press helps you tell our government to regulate Facebook a lot more vigorously than we currently do. Specifically, you'd urge Congress to pass data privacy and algorithmic abuse laws and tax social media advertising, and you'd ask various Executive branch agencies to crack down on abusive data practices. I've thought a lot lately about what the internet was like before Facebook; I visited at least four different social networks regularly in the mid-2000s, and visited half a dozen blogs and websites regularly for my news, but now we go to Facebook for all of that (and more -- remember Flickr?), and why should we? And why should they get to do whatever they like with our data, and why should they get to use algorithms to mindlessly ensure white supremacists feel less alone in the world? They've become a monopoly, and we know what to do with monopolies. Even if our politicians have forgotten.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to block President Biden's proposed $500 million weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I know, the money is supposedly for helicopter maintenance, but the Saudis ain't using those helicopters for humanitarian airdrops! The ongoing war on Yemen is just one reason to starve this particular beast, and using Saudi Arabia as a "hedge" against Iranian power in the region is not only a dumb idea but an immoral one, since the Saudis don't exactly use their power for good. Besides, if we didn't invade Iraq in 2003 for no damn good reason, we wouldn't need such a hedge against Iranian power! You look back over the last 20 years in particular and you begin to think we really have been conducting foreign policy for the express purpose of making the world worse. But we don't have to put up with what they do in our name.

Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4963/S. 2669, the Preventing Harmful Exposure to Phthalates Act. Much like the "forever chemical" PFAS, scientists have long linked phthalates to cancer, brain damage, and birth defects, plus they're everywhere in our plastic products and they get into our bodies to wreak havoc there. Our Consumer Product Safety Commission banned phthalates from children's toys back in 2017, which will protect kids a bit, but we all need that kind of protection. Hence the Preventing Harmful Exposure to Phthalates Act would ban phthalates in food packaging products outright and instruct our Food and Drug Administration (or FDA) to review the products our FDA typically regulates to see where else we can ban them. If you're worried that we won't have as many food prep gloves after this, remember that this is America, the can-do country, and we've adapted to worse.

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell Congress to ban our use of cyanide bombs in the wild. You think it's inhumane when land mines planted 50 years ago in a foreign country blow somebody's arm or leg off decades after the war is over? Now consider that cyanide bombs kill pretty indiscriminately as well -- the bombs don't exactly wait until their target animal is near! In fact, the bombs lure animals in with a sweet scent, so they're actually worse than landmines, which don't exactly lure people to them with hundred-dollar bills or promises of free broadband. How we treat animals tells the world what kind of civilization we are. Yes, even if we raise animals for food, we can still treat them in a civilized manner. We should be able to report to future civilizations that we did a pretty good job at it, and getting rid of cyanide bombs is just one way to do that.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our Department of Energy not to fund uranium mining. Uranium is, as you know, a radioactive element that too easily finds its way into our drinking water and into the bodies of wildlife. And of course we haven't figured out a way to store the waste yet. These days you'll mostly find uranium in nuclear weapons, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear power plants, and depleted uranium weapons; stop me if you hear anything you like in that list! Yeah, you'll also find it (in much, much smaller amounts) in wool, silk, stage lighting, photo chemicals, and even more rarely in glass, but ain't no mining corporation looking to make a killing in these markets -- they're looking for the big weapon money! And for these reasons we say no to uranium mining.