Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, health care, discrimination, corporate spying, and antibiotic abuse.

Long story short: tell your state legislators to draw fair, ungerrymandered districts; tell our FDA to revoke its approval of a dangerous drug, tell Michigan state legislators to reject yet another anti-trans bill, tell Amazon to stop spying on good Americans, and tell our FDA to restrict antibiotic abuse on factory farms. 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 and/or state legislators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting, and have a happy and safe weekend!

Common Cause helps you tell your state legislators draw fair and transparent legislative districts. Which is to say, not the kind of Rorschach-blot legislative districts, the kind that exclude sides of streets and even individual houses, that tend to keep individual legislators in power when they haven't earned it either through good works or superior persuasion. This is one of the things that sucks about the future: given the choice between doing the hard work of earning power or using the computer software that can gerrymander a tailor-made district that'll return you to power without very much effort, legislators typically choose the latter. And we all hate that. But we have to tell them that, and we have to tell them that often.

Public Citizen helps you tell our FDA to revoke its approval of aducanumab, a drug that ostensibly treats Alzheimer's disease. Too many good Americans would quickly respond how dare we hurt the effort to stop Alzheimer's, but we have to consider whether approving a drug that caused brain bleeding and swelling in 40% of clinical trial participants, a drug our FDA's own independent advisory committee told them not to approve, a drug that will cost patients over $50,000 a year to take, might actually hurt the effort to defeat Alzheimer's Disease. Before you do the right thing, you have to get the right thing right.

Change.org helps you tell the Michigan state legislature to reject yet another bill that would mandate that transgender students only play sports in their birth gender. Why do boys become girls again? It sure ain't so they can dominate girls' sports and then hang out with their crew and talk about girls, but that's what right-wingers apparently want you to believe. When transgender folks come out, they risk getting harassed, getting the crap kicked out of them, even getting killed; maybe our politicians should focus a little more on that, and not so much on absurd fantasies about competitiveness in sports.

Media Justice helps you tell Amazon to permanently stop using its power to spy on people. Yeah, Amazon has responded to the Big Stick of Bad PR, but only conditionally: it has renewed a ban on selling facial recognition technology, the kind that can't tell black folks apart any better than your Trumphole uncle can, to law enforcement, but that ban ain't permanent, and even as they announced that ban, it rolled out Sidewalk, a network that would run all manner of data from your Amazon devices into one big spying network. So, clearly, we need to keep at them. Jeff Bezos may be so rich he can blast off into space, but the Big Stick of Bad PR can still bring him back to Earth.

Penn PIRG helps you tell our FDA to set more stringent standards for antibiotic use on factory farms. Specifically, you'd ask our FDA to limit all medically-important antibiotic use on factory farms to 21 days; currently our FDA allows factory farms to use about a third of these antibiotics indefinitely, so Penn PIRG's proposal represents an improvement. Some three million Americans get sick from an antibiotic-resistant superbug every year, and that represents a little less than one in every hundred Americans, and I know you know at least a hundred people, right? So hopefully that drives the point home -- you know, in addition to the prospect that one day the next cut could kill us and all we'll have to show for it is richer corporate executives.

Around the table: having letters after your name doesn't make you smart! And other reminders.

Good news, everyone: TC Energy has scuttled the Keystone XL pipeline. So the next time someone says speaking out doesn't work, and organizing doesn't work, and activism doesn't work, you tell them that the Keystone XL pipeline died not because the politicians killed it, but because the people killed it. And note well that TC Energy used to call itself TransCanada, which means that the Keystone XL pipeline also sullied their name so badly they had to change it -- which, again, is our work.

Steve Wamhoff, writing in Fortune, reminds us that President Biden's proposal to tax "unrealized capital" would go a long way toward ensuring that the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk actually pay some damn taxes. And note well that when Republicans say they don't support tax hikes, what they really say is they want billionaires to go on paying no taxes while you try to decide which bill you can get away with not paying this month because you don't make enough money.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) points to "dark money" influencing Sen. Manchin of West Virginia, and notes that the For the People Act, which he famously opposes, would curtail the power of dark money. Good for her for pouncing on this, and let me say for the record that folks who find her "shrill" are either just repeating what they've heard or pretending to be "independent" thinkers. Independence isn't about deploying tired arguments in unexpected places, after all, but about transcending those arguments.

A cavalcade of charlatans testify to all sorts of nonexistent side effects to vaccines at an Ohio House committee meeting, and tempting as it is to joke about all the quarters and hammers and airplanes that have slammed into my shoulder since I got vaccinated, I feel compelled to point out that some of the folks who spewed at the hearing have advanced degrees, which should remind us, if anything does, to attend what folks say and do more than the letters after their names. This is a world, after all, where Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D.

When I read that "The Future of Elder Care is Here – and It’s Artificial Intelligence," I hasten to say AI is a tool, and nothing more, and don't imagine it won't occasionally give you useless info. But you know our stupid elites will use AI to replace actual people so they don't have to pay their salaries and benefits, at which point nursing homes all over the world will be little more than death camps. Wanna stop that from happening? Fight for good folks to make a decent wage to do good jobs. You know, like President Biden's original American Jobs Plan might have done.

Finally, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, now running for state Attorney General, defends his support for our recently-defeated ex-President, going so far as to say "Trump is the center of the Republican Party." You mean the American people aren't the center of the Republican Party? I'm old enough to remember when a politician would say that even (especially!) if he didn't mean it! I guess winning office in a Republican-dominated state sure makes some people soft after a while. And so does blind devotion to an irredeemable asshole. But sooner or later, Trump votaries will know when they're being pandered to. Won't they?

Action: concerning gerrymandering, whistleblowing, drug costs, abortion, and discrimination.

Long story short: tell your PA state legislators to pass anti-gerrymandering legislation, and tell your Congressfolk to add strong whistleblower protections to the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, and pass the For the People Act, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, the Women's Health Protection Act, and 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 Congressfolk's and/or state legislators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA helps you tell your state legislators to pass SB 222, which would establish a redistricting commission with some teeth in Pennsylvania so that legislators can't gerrymander themselves into unearned power. Two-thirds of good Pennsylvanians support a redistricting commission taking the power to gerrymander away from state legislators, and their number also includes a majority of Republican voters, so I say the voters have spoken here and the legislators should do our will, period, end of. And, while I'm thinking about it, Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act -- which would force every state to use a redistricting commission to redraw districts, rather than let legislators carve out their own personal fiefdoms with Rorschach-shaped districts that exclude single houses from districts. Might as well fight on every front, that's what I say.

The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to add strong whistleblower protections to H.R. 2570/S. 1217, the Climate Risk Disclosure Act. Big corporations love bragging about how green they are, but the Climate Risk Disclosure Act would actually force those corporations to disclose their investments in fossil fuels to their shareholders -- but without whistleblower protections, corporations will more easily hide such investments, because those who would expose them could be intimidated, fired, or otherwise abused. Whistleblowing is not for the faint of heart; folks who do it resign themselves to years of being unemployed and unemployable until they finally win their case and get some reward for their good works. So we ought to protect them wherever we can.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act. Republicans will whine that it's not "bipartisan," nor does it represent an effort to "compromise," but, as usual with Democratic bills, it is a compromise -- the bill would phase in Medicare drug price negotiation, as a sop to big pharma corporations, I'm sure, and would only require negotiation on 50 such drugs by 2024, and the "negotiated maximum price" might not be that much lower than it is now, at least in the short term. So, if you want H.R. 3 to be better, there's space in the comment block of the petition tool for that. But certainly don't let your loved ones think this is some radical, unrealistic bill. It's certainly much kinder to big pharma than I would be.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3755, the Women's Health Protection Act. Republicans legislators all over America are passing anti-abortion laws as quickly as they can -- because dealing with the real problems facing their constituents isn't as easy as strutting before the cameras! -- but the WHPA would stop states from outlawing abortion or enacting restrictions on abortion that wind up making abortions nearly impossible to get. Why? Because allowing the continued assaults on abortion rights in America will force women back into being valued as breeders, and nothing else. Anyway, don't want an abortion? Then don't get one. Strange that I have to explain that.

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. One more time: the Equality Act would prevent landlords, banks, and employers from discriminating against gay and transgender folk merely on the basis of being gay or transgender. It would do so by adding gay and transgender folks to the protected classes in the Civil Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act already has a broad exemption for religious freedom, so don't believe right-wingers when they tell you it's an "unprecedented assault on religious freedom," because it's not. Don't believe right-wingers when they say "well, we should do something about discrimination against gay and transgender folks," either, because they never tell you what that is, and because what we should do about discrimination is already in the Equality Act. If I sound like I have no patience with stupidity, that's because I have no patience with stupidity. So I won't get started about fever dreams of boys becoming girls just so they can dominate in field hockey.

Around the table: featuring the usual gang of tax avoiders, bad leaders, and empty suits.

I don't have much to say about the ProPublica report revealing tax evasion by famous high-income folk. We learn that Jeff Bezos paid zero dollars in income tax in 2007 and 2011, and that Warren Buffett, despite talking a good game about taxing the rich harder, hardly pays any income tax generally. Right-wingers will no doubt have a circle jerk over George Soros's tax-avoiding ways, though right-wingers talk about George Soros much, much more than we liberals ever do. And to those who'd say well, they pay themselves in property that doesn't get taxed until they sell it, what did you expect, we can only say that doesn't make it right. And, you know, imagining a better world is a worthwhile endeavor, even if it's hard.

We learn from Sharon Zhang at TruthOut that the nefarious Koch network and the nefarious Heritage Foundation have been influencing putative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, mainly by organizing his more right-wing constituents. We all breathed a sigh of relief when Republicans seemed unable to articulate a reason to oppose the American Rescue Plan, but that's apparently because they were organizing around influencing Mr. Manchin better than we were. Some liberals are starting to organize around influencing Mr. Manchin, as in yesterday's rally in D.C. supporting the For the People Act and the Common Cause effort to rally his constituents around same, and that's a good thing, because in America, having the better argument only takes you so far.

Republicans filibuster the Paycheck Fairness Act, and, as usual, their counterarguments are weak. I've given "frivolous lawsuits" so many headshots already I'm annoyed it's still coming, and you could also have predicted "a boon to trial lawyers," though it's telling that Mob Boss Mitch had to utter it, rather than farm it out to some eager young'un in his caucus. And "we've got three laws on the books, why do we need four?" is profoundly illogical; the number of laws doesn't matter so much as their quality, or, more specifically, how well they anticipate the ways corporations will try to work around them. Why don't they just admit that they'd rather have bosses fire workers for talking about their pay with their co-workers?

Siyanda Mohutsiwa at FAIR writes about the New York Times's reflexively grim coverage of COVID in Africa even though infection rates are actually fairly low there. We Westerners have, for decades, reflexively thought of African nations as "corrupt" and "miserable," perhaps even "ungovernable," and even when we assume 150 years of Western interference has made it so, we still fail to imagine Africans as the protagonists of their own nations -- in this case, we fail to imagine them as "epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists," "academics," or "journalists" -- and that failure is also pretty racist. Read the entire article, though, because I can't list all the persuasive (and damning!) arguments in one paragraph, and also because it'll lead you to Binyavanga Wainaina's "How to Write About Africa," one of the most devastating satires ever written.

Georgia's state Board of Education not only approves a measure aiming to restrict teaching of American racism in public schools, but shuts off comments on the live YouTube feed of the meeting in which they did that nefarious deed, and that sure ain't a good look. Right-wingers have been strutting about their "toughness" for decades, but can't even hear an opposing argument? Why can't such basic failures of leadership be a Democrat attack point? I mean, we just got a four-year seminar in Why Republicans Can't Lead, not too long after George W. Bush's double seminar in that same subject. Maybe Democratic politicians don't do that because they're evil. "Gosh, win an argument, instead of stand around while Republicans lose them? Then we'll have to do things with our power!"

Finally, as Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) declares her candidacy to oppose Sen. Marco Rubio in 2022, Mr. Rubio himself opines that "(n)one of them (i.e., Democratic politicians) will admit to being a socialist. She probably won’t. But she certainly has voted for socialist things." So, Sen. Rubio, ever driven a car on a road? Ever taken out a book from the public library? Ever called a cop? If your answer to any of these questions is "yes," then congratulations, Sen. Rubio! You're a socialist, too.

Action: concerning Social Security, social media, saving our Post Office, fuel efficiency standards, and pollution.

Long story short: tell President Biden to fire two Social Security Administrators, tell Facebook to permanently ban Donald Trump, tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General DeJoy, tell our EPA to enact more vigorous fuel efficiency standards, and tell President Biden to block the proposed Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. You can call President Biden at 202.456.1111 or use the White House contact form, or use the email/petition/comment tools in the following paragraphs. And good hunting!

Social Security Works helps you tell President Biden to fire two Social Security Administrators Andrew Saul and David Black, and fix the Supplemental Security Income (or SSI) program. Messrs. Saul and Black have done their damnedest to set fire to as much of our Social Security programs as they can, making it unnecessarily harder to apply for SSI benefits and "forgetting" to send info to our IRS so seniors could get their stimulus checks. You'd also ask our President to increase benefits so they at least meet the federal poverty level -- contrary to what Rand Paul might thnk, $794 a month ain't inducing anyone to fake back pain -- and raise asset limits, which are stuck at 1989 levels. Among other things! Making programs work better and firing bad workers ain't "socialism." Actually, it's what we expect and deserve from our government.

Left Action helps you tell Facebook to make its ban of Donald Trump permanent. Yeah, Facebook extended his suspension for two years, but if you lose an election and then whine about it being "stolen" without any damn evidence and then incite an attempted coup at our Capitol, then Facebook can err on the side of caution and just wash its hands of Donald Trump. Folks who still think this is about "free speech" -- as if anyone's put him in jail for spewing his filth! -- need to remember that this is 2021, where virtually anyone can publish their rants, however good or bad, on the internet. Why, Donald Trump just started writing a blog not even a month ago! And then, not even a week ago, he stopped. So he certainly has little standing to complain about "free speech."

People for the American Way helps you tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who tried to throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump by gumming up the works at our Postal Service and is trying to raise prices and cut services as we speak. Of course, the news that our FBI is investigating him for illegal campaign finance is just icing on the cake -- and could this be the thing that finally spurs our USPS Board of Governors to move? I kid, of course -- the only thing that should spur them to move is our will, communicated vigorously. And we'll keep communicating it until we get the Post Office we deserve, again.

The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to overturn the notorious "clean car" "standards" issued by the Trump EPA, and then set more vigorous ones. Because saving money on gas and polluting less are actually very popular with the American people! You can only get them to go along with less fuel-efficient cars by lying to them ("it'll reduce car prices," as if you won't lose that sticker price discount over the years you're paying more for gas) or demoralizing them ("accept the results," "then win more elections," etc.). Neither of those is a lasting strategy for governing, or, indeed, for preserving and perfecting a civilization. So, yeah, let's fight that.

Finally, Presente helps you tell President Biden to halt construction on Enbridge's notorious Line 3 pipeline. As we speak, over a thousand activists have blocked further construction of Line 3, and they're calling attention not merely to Line 3's path through Ojibwe holy lands but to Enbridge's, ah, not-so-steller pipe safety record. Remember when an Enbridge line ruptured and created the biggest inland oil spill in American history? It was only a decade ago, and you can bet the good folks of Kalamazoo, MI remember, since that spill dumped oil into 40 square miles of the watershed there. President Biden can stop this pipeline, ignore the right-wing wailing about TEH JOBZ!!!! -- and then stop negotiating with Republicans so he can actually help create jobs. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Action: concerning endless war, public trans, government spying, corruption, voting rights, and polluter welfare.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Iraq war AUMF, create zero-emission public trans, release COINTELPRO files to the public, and pass the IG Independence and Empowerment Act, the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the End Polluter Welfare 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 and/or state legislators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that "authorized" war with Iraq and which all subsequent Presidents have used to fight unconstitutional wars all over the world. I put "authorized" in quotation marks because only Congress can authorize war, and they have to go through the trouble to declare war, not "give the President power to fight wherever he pleases." This is one of the reasons we broke off from England, folks! And Presidents have been abusing the AUMF for over 18 years now. Which means this mistake's old enough to vote, and it's damn near old enough to drink! So let's kill it already.

The National Campaign for Transit Justice helps you demand that Congress pass legislation creating a zero-emission public transportation system. Yeah, we keep telling our Congressfolk what we want from this jobs bill, but they keep ignoring us -- so perhaps we should change tactics and demonstrate that the people want public transportation that doesn't choke the world with pollution. It's not so much to ask, right? Right-wingers act like people who like electric buses are weak. Of course, they then go around whining endlessly about how everyone thinks they're racist, but that's beside the point. The point is, having a livable planet in 30 years isn't "weak." Even if a few oil and gas executives don't get to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Which is what right-wingers really favor, whether they'll admit it or not.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2998, which would release all of our FBI's COINTELPRO files to the general public. I guess this bill's opponents will argue "bygones!" and "look forward" and "saying any part of our past wasn't absolutely perfect is treason!" But COINTELPRO went after protestors and activists ranging from anti-war and civil rights organizers to the Ku Klux Klan. Hey, maybe that's how you get right-wingers to support H.R. 2998! I kid, of course -- today's racists know well enough to disavow any love for the Klan. And yet our most recent departed President's campaign slogan was a Klan slogan from the '70s! So, again, learn about the past, and we can make a more perfect union in the future.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2662, the IG Independence and Empowerment Act. "IG" stands for "Inspector General," and you may recall, particularly during 2020, how much maneuvering that irredeemably corrupt President did just to avoid the scrutiny of Inspectors General, who spend all their time investigating waste and fraud and abuse of power. You may even remember that Mr. Trump had to be talked out of firing all of them at the beginning of his term! Well, the IG Independence and Empowerment Act would place more limits on a President's ability to fire IGs and allow IGs to subpoena folks who've left our government if they can shed light on wrongdoing. It's bad if all that stands between us and oblivion is an Inspector General. But, ah, it's a lot worse if they're not there, or if they're a Presidential lackey.

Finally, Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Public Citizen helps you tell them to do both. I know, I know, One True Real and Great American President Joe Manchin has expressed a preference, but he ain't the boss of us. And, toward that end, Daily Kos helps you sign up and call West Virginians and urge them to urge their Senator to vote for the For the People Act. 79% of them support the For the People Act, after all! And if he's going to write 299 stupid paragraphs about why he won't, at least we can get his constituents to embarrass him.

Finally, both the Sierra Club and Food and Water Action help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2102/S. 1167, the End Polluter Welfare Act. Our government shovels $15 billion annually toward oil and gas drilling corporations that don't need it; how would you feel about that if it were your money? Oh, right: it is your money. The bill would also prohibit federal funding (which is, again, your money) toward fossil fuel R&D and/or international fossil fuel projects. Solar and wind power aren't pie-in-the-sky technologies anymore -- walk around your neighborhood and count the roofs with solar panels if you're unconvinced. Also attend the ridiculous stories you hear about wind turbines; if wind really didn't work, wouldn't they just tell you that?

Around the table: machinations of evil, part 293.

I won't go into every disagreement I have with Sen. Manchin's explanation of why he'll vote against the For the People Act when it comes up, since my disagreements number approximately one per point made, but let's just focus on his statement that the For the People Act is a "partisan" bill. How do we know it's a "partisan" bill? Not from him describing any parts of it, that's for sure, because he doesn't! No, we "know" it's "partisan" because no Republicans support it, and for no other reason. Hasn't he figured out after 11 years that Republicans don't support anything that might actually help people? Here's the punchline, though: an actual bipartisan majority of voters support the For the People Act in poll after poll! (Also, the bill earns 79% support in Mr. Manchin's state, West Virginia. You'd think that'd matter to him.) Yes, it turns out that ending gerrymandering and disclosing big campaign contributors and prohibiting racist de-registrations (to name three more things in the For the People Act than Mr. Manchin did!) are all actual bipartisan concerns!. Lesson: the actual bipartisanship of the American people should matter more than the drama-infused "bipartisanship" of politicians.

Janine Jackson at FAIR notices the Washington Post putting up a "native" ad (i.e., an ad that sure looks like news!) about Amazon's support for a higher minimum wage, though Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Post. This was just a few short hours after the Washington, D.C. Attorney General announced an antitrust suit against Amazon. Anyway, Jeff Bezos's support for the federal minimum wage doesn't emanate from the goodness of his heart -- it emanates from the activism of good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR, and their number may have included you. There's another name for ads that look like news, as Ms. Jackson suggests: fake news. I know, a certain former President has abused that term, but it does refer to actual phenomena.

Ho hum, the Proud Boys are trying to take over the Multnomah (OR) Republican Party, and they sure do some dick-swinging in their emails. I remember my heart being this full of hate once, but you know what happened? Several decades passed, and I became a man and put away childish things. Then again, what grown man calls himself a "boy," let alone a "proud" one? (Also, how amazing is it that the Oregon Republican Party of Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Vic Atiyeh has come to this?)

I should have realized that Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, one of the biggest supporters of that ridiculous "audit" of Maricopa County votes, belongs to the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), notorious pusher of right-wing legislative initiatives for over three decades -- but I didn't know she was actually their second highest-ranking board member! This is another good time to remind everyone that ALEC said it was getting out of the vote-suppression game after taking all that flack for all those Voter ID laws -- but clearly they didn't mean that.

Finally, Donald Trump has apparently warmed to the idea of running for a U.S. House seat in the hopes that Republicans will take back the House and he can then be Speaker, and thus third-in-line for the Presidency, but I find it extremely unlikely that he's only now thought of this -- I thought of it months ago, and I'm not a thug like he is. The district in which Mr. Trump currently lives is quite Democratic -- Rep. Frankel won by 18 points in 2020 -- but maybe Florida Republicans, who control all the branches of government, can "fix" that via redistricting. I kid, of course -- I'd be shocked if they didn't.

Action: concerning jobs, voting rights, net neutrality, the filibuster, arms sales to Israel, and vaccine waivers.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the Biden/Manchin capitulation on the American Jobs Plan, tell PA state legislators to reject another absurd election "audit," tell our FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules, tell President Biden to support ending the Senate filibuster, tell our government to stop funding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and tell President Biden to support COVID vaccine waivers at the WTO. 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 and/or state legislators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

In light of the Senate parliamentarian's ruling that Democrats can use reconciliation once more this year, not twice, and Joe Biden's utter capitulation to Republicans on corporate taxes, and Joe Manchin's announcement that he won't support a jobs bill done through reconciliation, and general Democratic "anxiety" about raising taxes, it's time, once again, to call your Congressfolk and make demands for a real jobs plan. These demands would include: a 55% corporate tax bracket on profits over $1 million, the creation of a public broadband network, the creation of public electricity utilities that run entirely on renewable energy, and every last lead pipe and tottering bridge and broken road in America fixed. Seriously, we must not be held hostage to "the best they could do." Democrats deserve to lose their majorities after this debacle, but I suppose there's time to change their minds, if we do it loudly enough. But we'd better step up, because we're not going to have a country anymore if we don't.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Common Cause helps you tell your state legislators to reject any effort at a 2020 election "audit," particularly one spurred by Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-33). It's not enough to say "you want another stupid "audit" by people who can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground?" It's not even enough to say "You lost! Get over it! Accept the results!" It's not even enough to point out that Sen. Mastriano was there on January 6. No, these "audits" are part of an attempted coup by Donald Trump, who swears he'll be "reinstated" as President in or around August. So you can go ahead and tell your PA legislators they will be accessories to this attempted coup if they allow this "audit" to happen. Only weak people think Donald Trump won that election. And weak people shouldn't get all the damn say about every damn thing.

In the wake of the news that nearly four out of every five comments filed on our FCC's net neutrality repeal in 2017 were faked by big telecom corporations, Daily Kos helps you tell our FCC to reverse said repeal and reinstate the 2016 Open Internet Order that made net neutrality the law of the land. Net neutrality, as you know, forces internet service providing corporations to serve up all files with the same urgency, which means you, not some corporation, get to determine what your internet experience is like. We don't have a fifth FCC Commissioner yet, and that doesn't help us get net neutrality back, but if we establish our will now, our FCC will have a harder time defying it later.

Daily Kos also helps you tell President Biden to support ending the filibuster. Earlier he said he'd support making Senators work a lot harder for it, and that's far from worthless, but our Senators pooh-poohed that, since it involved doing actual work for your obstruction, so it's time for President Biden to put the squeeze on them. Maybe he thinks calling out Sens. Manchin and Sinema while commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre was squeeze enough -- and, again, that was no small thing -- but they didn't seem to get the message. And if they won't listen to him, we should make them pay the price of not listening to us.

Both Freedom Forward and Daily Kos help you tell your government to stop funding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can get bogged down in all the who-started-it if you like, but you cannot deny these two things: 1) Israel has way, way, way more firepower than Palestine and with great firepower comes great responsibility, and 2) all those nations that supposedly want Israel "wiped off the map" or whatever ain't exactly rushing to Palestine's aid. We don't need to give Israel any more weapons; they seem to have plenty of ability to defend themselves - and do indefensible things to others. It's not for nothing that I hear, unprompted, from co-workers, that Israel is becoming what they most hate.

Finally, Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell President Biden to follow through on his support for a World Trade Organization (or WTO)-sanctioned COVID-19 vaccine waiver, which (contrary to the absurd proclamations of big pharma corporations) would help more folks all over the world get the vaccines they need. Don't get complacent about the dropping infection and death numbers in the United States (which are still only a little lower than they were this time last year!), because the rest of the world needs help, too, and every day we prioritize intellectual property rights over human life, not only do people die, but the COVID virus gets a little more time to mutate into something that'll bite us in the ass again. Once again, the compassionate is also the pragmatic.

Around the table: the harder they come.

Good news, everyone! our Consumer Product Safety Commission (or CPSC) has enacted a rule outlawing the inclined baby sleepers that have killed at least 50 babies. That we know of, that is! These sleepers defy American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for baby sleepers (i.e., that babies should sleep on a firm, flat, stable surface without restraints or soft bedding), though I suppose if Donald Trump had gotten wind of it, and saw an advantage, he'd be doing to the AAP what he's trying to do to Dr. Fauci. Anyway, if you agitated against the proliferation of inclined sleepers, you deserve a big fat Buffalo chicken cheese steak, or whatever it is you give yourself after a job well done.

What's "The Secret Behind Amazon's Domination in Cloud Computing" per Politico? Amazon hires former government officials to show them the ropes, that's how, which (as we remember from healthcare.gov's bumpy rollout) has more to do with how you fill out forms than how good your product is. So, for one thing, that's not very bootstrappy of Amazon, is it? And, for another, maybe we could imagine a much better world of cloud computing except that monopolists like Amazon game the system and impose their will on the rest of us. Anyway, add this to the reasons we try to stop the revolving door between government and industry.

Ho hum, NYC police seemed far more eager to crack down on protestors than to crack down on looters, and if you stand ready to say well, that makes sense, looters are dangerous, try and remember that being a police officer is supposed to be dangerous -- if you're working for the police and expect every day to be donuts and coffee, you're more than a bit deluded -- and think a bit more carefully about the politics of letting looters run relatively rampant. I mean, if they put down looting, where would Fox News get all its footage? Certainly you'll want to fully confront the notion that protestors are actually more dangerous -- to powerful people -- than actual criminals.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the man who gives the Citizen Legislator a bad name, says he's still undecided on whether he'll run for a third term in 2022 -- but also says he's "more panicked today" about the state of the nation than he was when he first ran in 2010. Uh, that means he's running, folks. He has until June 1 to file -- and what a shame we couldn't get that info from the Journal Sentinel! It does seem newsworthy! Instead, we got another list of things Ron Johnson is wrong about; I guess I shouldn't be too mad about that, since it's a pretty long list, and thus a decent reference.

Our FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for campaign finance associations. If Donald Trump were still blogging, I guess he'd squeal TEH WITCH HUNTZ!!!!!, but setting the aside the profound insult to those who died at Salem, one must ask oneself whether maybe our government is investigating Mr. DeJoy because his actions merit it. In other words, maybe our government's working for us, for once! And if this is the thing that finally gets that one fellow on our USPS Board of Governors to cut bait on Mr. DeJoy, well, who am I to complain?

Upon hearing that Israeli finally-soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fears that his "overthrow()" "will cause a collapse of the global right-wing," all I can say is we can only hope! But, in my experience, right-wingers always find someone worse -- plenty of sympathetic folks think that, in soon-to-be-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, they already have. And really, right-wingers will be strong everywhere for as long as we liberals let them walk all over us. I think there's a solution in there, somewhere.

Action: concerning abortion, protecting wildlife, the Estate Tax, polluter welfare, government spying, and Medicare for All.

Long story short: tell PA state legislators to reject anti-abortion bills, and tell your Congressfolk to pass wildlife corridor legislation, the For the 99.5% Act, the End Polluter Welfare Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the Medicare for All 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 (or state legislators') phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the ACLU helps you tell your state legislators to reject the noxious anti-abortion bills HB 904, HB 1500, and HB 118. HB 904 is one of them-there "fetal heartbeat" bills which are essentially backdoor abortion bans, HB 1500 bans abortion after a Downs Syndrome diagnosis which will only prevent the diagnosis from being made in the first place, and HB 118 would require women who have miscarriages to fill out death certificates and pay to cremate their remains, which is straight-up cruel to grieving women who most certainly didn't "fake" a miscarriage just to have an abortion. Seriously, that last item goes into the pile with "border crisis" and "crime wave" as things that are just bullshit. Anyway, abortion is a right, and one that most Pennsylvanians support, so maybe preening before the extreme right isn't what we pay legislators to do.

Environmental Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to introduce and pass legislation creating more wildlife corridors, or overpasses above highways that prevent senseless wildlife deaths. I guess right-wingers will try to make "wildlife corridor" a cuss phrase, like they did with "secular humanism" back in the day and "chain migration" a couple of years ago, but there's no good reason for that. And wildlife corridors don't just save animal lives, they also save human lives, because we have fewer car collisions when animals get their own lane reconnecting their habitats. How about that: what benefits them also benefits us, plus it creates jobs for the folks who build the corridors. Makes you wonder about big-development-über-alles, doesn't it?

Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2576/S. 994, the For the 99.5 Percent Act. The For the 99.5% Act would hike Estate Taxes on the wealthy when they die, and when I say "the wealthy" I mean "maybe two out of every thousand Americans," i.e., almost certainly not you or I or almost anyone you know. Do you have less than $3.5 million to your name? Then you will not get hit with the Estate Tax. And don't believe the tall tales about how the Estate Tax ruins family farms, either! Not even when they come from the Governor of South Dakota.

The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2102/S. 1167, the End Polluter Welfare Act. Because big oil and gas drilling operations don't need the money, that's why! Gas is the last cheap fossil fuel, and will probably persist as an industry for at least another generation despite its polluting effects, and oil corporations have made $2 trillion in profits over the last 30 years, so they don't need the money, certainly not more so than the more nascent renewable energy technologies. Certainly don't believe the hype that "oil corporations only make 12 cents a gallon" or whatever -- it's like saying CEOs are underpaid because they only make $3 every time they draw breath. Which is stupid.

The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. What if we polled good Americans on the question "do you want law enforcement to get your private data when you haven't committed a crime?" I bet most Americans say hell no! to that! Well, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act would prevent private data-collection corporations from selling your data to law enforcement willy-nilly; law enforcement should have to get a warrant if they suspect you of a crime. And yes, our Fourth Amendment is supposed to guarantee that they have to do that, but our "law and order" politicians have been chipping away at that right for years. So let's make them stop.

Finally, Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. I was just talking about polling, wasn't I? Well, actual polls have found, for three decades, that most Americans want Medicare to cover everyone in America! And these polls come from big corporations that you would think would have a vested interest in extracting exactly the opposite result! So I think we can trust their reading of the popular will in this instance. It's true that support falls when you start asking about how we'll pay for it. But ask folks if they support Medicare-for-All if we pay for it by capturing the money corporations already pay private insurers and converting that money into an employer-side payroll tax, and I bet support stays the same.

Around the table: the politicians deserve defeat! And other truisms.

Lake Highlands High School (TX) valedictorian replaces her school-approved graduation speech with one slamming Texas's new anti-abortion law. And Paxton Smith thus reminds us that the only alternative to legal abortion is the state turning women into breeders. Her immediate future, unfortunately, consists of death threats from cowards who can't do anything about the problems in their own lives, brainless mockery from right-wing punditoids, and a conspicuous silence from people who should know better. If she asked me for advice, I'd say she should just remember that her opponents are wrong, and that they will prove their wrong with their words and deeds. It's not always easy to remember, but it can be quite sustaining in times of doubt.

Alice Speri at The Intercept describes how Charlotte, NC police trapped peaceful protestors and then tear-gassed them during the George Floyd protests a year ago. Oh, and if you tried to break through the trap, you got the pepper bullet treatment, and if you stayed put, you also got the pepper bullet treatment. Apparently they call this "kettling," "corralling," or "bottlenecking," and my guess is nobody saw reports about this on Fox News -- not when they Fox can just show the same footage of the same violence over and over again without any context and without even having anything to do with whatever perceived outrage the Fox News prettyheads are screaming about that day.

Gov. Steve Sisolak (D-NV) says he'll sign a "public option" health care bill, but the bill in question, SB 420, doesn't really offer good Nevadans a "public" health care option so much as it offers yet another layer of privatized health care that'll supposedly offer comparable plans for a little less money, and that sure as hell ain't getting us any closer to Medicare for All. My 30-years-younger self might have said that at least the politicians know what people really want and are at least selling their swill accordingly, but really, there's more to the world than just words.

When I hear that folks watching the "audit" of Maricopa County (AZ) ballots find that the folks doing the audit are doing a lot of things wrong, all I can say is of course they are, because the whole point of this clown car "audit" is to come up with a different result than the state did -- a result the state came up with three times, I feel compelled to add -- so that Republicans can say AHA!, and the easiest way to come up with a different result is to screw up. And since most folks won't easily parse all the inside-baseball about blue pens and ballot security, they could get away with it, just as they've been getting away with deliberately crashing-and-burning our government so they can then say see? Government doesn't work!

Ho hum, now Rep. John Katko (R-NY) wants $50 billion more in assistance for restaurants after voting against the restaurant assistance offered by the American Rescue Plan. My guess is he'll find a reason not to vote for that, too. Those nasty Democrats wouldn't talk to us, he'll say again, in a world where no one should be talking to Republicans. Actually, his list of excuses for not voting for the American Rescue Plan (I count five in this article) is pretty wide-ranging, making it more likely he's just full of soup. I don't care if he's supposedly one of the "good ones" -- for his hypocrisy, he deserves defeat.

Finally, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ) says she still doesn't support filibuster reform or repeal, opining thusly: "The reality is that when you have a system that is not working effectively — and I would think that most would agree that the Senate is not a particularly well-oiled machine, right? The way to fix that is to fix your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change the behavior." Actually, that's utter horsedoodle. When you have a "system" that doesn't work, you change the system -- you certainly don't keep haranguing the workers who have to work within the system about their "behavior." Only bad bosses do that, which makes me wonder how her staff feels about working for her. Besides which, all the "behavior" that actually does need changing comes from Republicans, and you just know she didn't mean they had to change their behavior.

Action: concerning privacy, transparency, and pollution.

Long story short: keep Amazon from connecting your smart devices to a larger network, tell our SEC to mandate more transparency for shareholders, tell New York state legislators to ban facial recognition technology, tell our EPA to enact vigorous clean car standards, tell insurance corporations to cut ties with coal, and tell federal regulators to keep corporations from siphoning public water. The following paragraphs contain email/petition tools for each of these alerts. Good hunting!

First things first: The Guardian reports that Amazon customers have less than a week now to opt out of its plan to turn all the "smart" devices in your house into a giant "mesh network" called Amazon Sidewalk, which, as you might imagine, would raise significant privacy and spying concerns. Maybe you don't want your Alexa to be on the same network as your neighbor's Ring, amirite? Per the article, if you have an Alexa or Ring app, you need to disable Sidewalk in that app's settings, but you only have until June 8 (that's this coming Tuesday) to do so, so you might as well get to it.

Public Citizen helps you tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to tell corporations to be honest with their shareholders, especially in re its actions (or lack thereof) on climate change and workers' rights. Shareholders care about that stuff, after all, and how do I know? Because if you have a pension plan through your employer, you may well be a shareholder! And you have opinions on how you want your money invested. I mean, not everyone's all "just make me the most money"; even those of us who fear poverty in our old age still don't want to destroy the planet or hurt people just to avoid it. And our SEC does work for shareholders, who are also taxpayers, so let's tell them to do the right thing.

Sum of Us helps you tell New York state legislators to ban facial recognition technology there. Because it's bad at its job and can't tell Black people apart any more than your Trumphole uncle can -- and also the state of New York has nearly 20 million residents, making it the third most-populous state after California and Texas, so if New York bans it, facial recognition corporations will have a tougher time working around it, and thus you'll see less of it elsewhere as well. Which is a good thing! The last thing you want in your life is to be hauled away to jail because some POS software thinks you committed a crime. Just ask Nijeer Parks.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous clean car standards possible. The Obama EPA enacted fairly strong standards that helped good Americans spend less on gas and pollute less, but the Trump EPA couldn't wait to undo them, because Obama. Now the Biden EPA gets its chance to undo the Trump EPA's actions, but they'll still need to hear from us, in numbers that can't be denied. I mean that: government agencies can't simply ignore public comments, and where they defy the public, they have to come up with good reasons, lest they get smacked down in court. Hey, it happened routinely to the Trump Administration.

Public Citizen helps you tell big insurance corporations like Lloyds of London, AIG, and Tokio Marine to stop insuring and investing in coal plants. Two dozen other big insurance corporations have washed their hands of coal recently, and for good reason: why insure an industry that's dying, that is actually more expensive, over the life of their plants, than solar and wind are now? I guess Lloyds et al think energy's more reliable if you can churn the ground to get it -- like they've never heard of, you know, battery storage! That means we got to bring out the Big Stick of Bad PR, which makes all corporations run in fear. (Of course, we have to keep wielding it, or they'll come out of hiding and do the wrong thing again.)

Finally, Sum of Us helps you tell our U.S. Forest Service to stop BlueTriton from siphoning water out of the San Bernardino National Forest in California. Since California is in a drought, as it often is in summertime, and drought doesn't just mean thirst and agricultural hell, but also wildfires all over the state -- so letting private corporations take water that belongs to the people isn't the smartest idea, is it? Just so happens BlueTriton -- apparently aspiring to be the "new Nestlé," in Sum of Us's words -- has already ignored water regulators' efforts to stop them. It's like they don't understand that those regulators work for us. Thus it's time to flex our power.

Around the table: concerning right-wingers and how to convert them.

Since our "liberal" media organs don't seem to know what to do when right-wingers practice cancel culture on folks like AP reporter-for-12-minutes Emily Wilder, Dan Froomkin at Salon provides a helpful form letter these news organs can use when confronted by such campaigns. Money paragraph: "When (reporters) join our organization, we make it very clear that they need to adhere to the highest professional standards in journalism. That doesn't mean renouncing their opinions, or never having had any. It means not allowing their opinions to get in the way of fairly gathering, assessing and presenting facts." That doesn't seem hard to understand, but then right-wingers have, for decades, squealed TEH BIASEZ!!!!! whenever a media report disagrees with their strongly-held opinions. Time we stop giving such opinions legitimacy, maybe?

Rebecca Watson at Skepchick tells us about a(nother) study finding it's actually not terribly helpful to directly debunk the obvious rubbish you see on Twitter -- and, in fact, folks who've passed on such rubbish tended to double down on it in the 24 hours immediately thereafter. But Ms. Watson reminds us that "this is only an immediate reaction to correction" that "doesn’t account for the possibility that (the debunking) planted a seed in those subjects’ minds." Toward that end, I'm reminded of this account from an ex-right-winger about how she changed her mind, an article that suggested (among other things) that we tend to change our worldview out of everyone's sight, that conversations we overhear will more likely change us than the pitched battles we're in, and that we more likely change after conversations we have with people who are more or less like us, which in turn suggests that former right-wingers are the best candidates to reach current ones.

The Project on Government Oversight presents "The F-35 in Two Minutes." OK, with intro and outro it's actually two minutes, 37 seconds, but it's still a terrific summary of a "the most expensive weapons program in history," one that's hemorrhaged taxpayer money (which is to say your money) for two decades. Long story short: the F-35 is a fighter jet that can't fight and can't fly, which means, at the very least, that we could have spent that money on something that actually can fight and can fly. How do the fiscal hawks in Congress allow this to continue? I kid, of course -- the "fiscal hawks" only care about the "expense" of programs that actually help good Americans, and then they make up hysterical arguments about "national security" if we don't keep throwing money away on things like the F-35.

In a related note, William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut reminds us, in re yet debt limit threat, that Republicans only care about the debt limit, and debt generally, when a Democrat's President. If you're thinking "this can't work again" -- a reasonable thought, if the debt limit battles of 2011 and 2013 are as fresh in your mind as they are in mine -- consider that every time Republicans foment drama and chaos and Democrats try to reason with them, Republicans win, as in they win the House (in 2010), the Senate (in 2014) and the Presidency (in 2016). I hope President Biden has figured out the same thing, especially considering he had a front-row seat to all of it. If not, we'll just have to remind him.

Look out, midterm wave-riders: Democrat Melanie Stansbury buries her Republican opponent in New Mexico's 1st House district special by over 24 points, larger than now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's margins in both 2018 and 2020, and the second-largest margin of victory since Democrats started routinely winning this seat in 2008. (Before that, Republicans had won this seat for 40 years. Things sure have changed.) Note well that Ms. Stansbury supports Medicare-for-All health insurance and the $15/hour minimum wage, when there's not exactly a shortage of Democratic consultants who would have told her to take the opposite position on both those issues so she could "better protect herself against right-wing attacks," attacks that would always come even if Jesus H. Christ himself were the nominee.

Finally, Donald Trump appears to have ended his experiment with blogging, which sure seems premature to me -- I thought his natterings were starting to get him back into the news, where he obviously hungers to be, and I thought reports of his "low" metrics (I should have such "low" metrics!) were largely meaningless. I guess he didn't think those reports were that meaningless, though, or he'd still be spewing his spew.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, defense spending, gouging of prisoners, drug policy, discrimination, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell your state legislatures and redistricting commissions to cut out all the partisan gerrymandering, and tell your Congressfolk to cut defense spending and to pass the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, the MORE Act, the Equality Act, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement 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 Common Cause and Demand Progress help you tell your state officials to reject any and all partisan gerrymandering this term. Are state legislators and redistricting commissioners used to this sort of attention? No, they are not! Many of them will no doubt profess to a complete and utter surprise that so many of their constituents care about this! At which point they'll think they've put us off our guard and then go back to doing whatever nefarious works they planned to do anyway. Which is why we'll stay on them. Gerrymandering is the last refuge of politicians who can't win arguments on the merits, and why should they continue to win when they haven't earned it?

Both Daily Kos and Win Without War tell our Congressfolk to cut defense spending already. Because we are number one in military spending on Earth, and we spend more than numbers two through twelve combined. And has that made us more secure? Apparently not, since we still go bananas about nonexistent "border crises" and "crime waves." Yet President Biden, apparently having forgotten that right-wing media gave Barack Obama precisely zero plaudits for increasing defense spending, has just asked for $13 billion more than even Donald Trump got last year. I mean, you want to do better than Trump, but not in that way, certainly not when we have so, so many other needs as a nation.

Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which would prevent big telecom corporations from gouging prisoners and their families when they try to make phone calls. See, this is simple: there's rehabilitating prisoners, there's punishing prisoners, and then there's gouging prisoners, and why should a civilized nation tolerate the last item? Particularly since making it prohibitively difficult to pay for contact with loved ones makes rehabilitation a lot harder? Prisoners need to talk to their loved ones while they're paying for their crimes, and it's not "coddling" to, you know, not gouge them. Some kid at some big telecom corporation came up with the idea of overcharging prisoners and their families, and probably even called it a "captive market," ha ha ha snort. I wonder how he'll do at the Pearly Gates.

Both the Drug Policy Alliance and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE) Act, which would take pot off Schedule I (where it's never belonged), invest in communities most harmed by the "war on drugs" (which was always putting down protestors and Black folks), and expunge pot convictions from a lot of folks' criminal records (pot convictions help prevent them from getting jobs, and therefore puts them back on track to commit crimes to make ends meet). Why did we fall for things like Reefer Madness again? Because the cotton industry didn't want hemp as a competitor, basically. Think of all the pain we've caused because one group wanted to keep their advantages unfairly; it doesn't reflect well on us. Ending that pain does reflect well on us, though, so let's do that.

The Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. The Equality Act, contrary to what you've heard from right-wingers, would add gay and transgender folk to the protected classes in the Civil Rights Act. Also contrary to what you've heard from right-wingers, the Civil Rights Act already has a fairly broad exemption for religious organizations, so there is literally no truth to all the right-wing whining about how the Equality Act is TEH BIGGESTZEZ INJURIEZ TO TEH RELIGUZ FREEDUMZ EVAHZ!!!!! No, the bill is mainly about preventing banks, doctors, and landlords from discriminating against gay and transgender folks. Most people are actually against that sort of discrimination now. (And if you're about to whine about transgender boys playing girls' sports, read almost any of my other paragraphs about this topic. I don't reinvent the wheel for anyone's amusement.)

Finally, Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Hey, weren't we just talking about gerrymandering? The For the People Act would fix that (among other things) by making states use redistricting commissions, rather than self-interested legislators. And the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew out of the Voting Rights Act with Shelby County v. Holder -- and make it better! Republicans in the Senate won't vote for any of that, etc., but it's still our duty to communicate our will -- and to communicate that our will hasn't changed.

Around the table: why Republicans suck and why Democrats lose, part 328.

When I hear that a not-insignificant number of Americans aren't getting a COVID vaccine because they're afraid they'll get a surprise bill for it -- even though Congress has actually passed legislation making the vaccines free and few folks have reported getting such bills -- my first thought is why haven't Republicans exploited this fear? I mean, it's one of the more reasonable fears one encounters when trying to get wary folks vaccinated. But the question may answer itself: Republican politicians are a lot more comfortable exploiting completely absurd fears.

Our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) mulls enacting a rule (authorized by the Dodd-Frank Act, so why has it taken so long?) that would give banking customers more access to their own financial data -- which could help those customers migrate to smaller, more local banks. Where they still exist, that is, though you've probably got some credit unions near you and their membership requirements probably aren't as onerous as you've heard. Naturally a poll finds that 75% of Americans would support a rule that'd make "switch(ing) between banks and other financial institutions" easier, which of course they do if you put it that way. So why don't Democratic politicians generally put it that way? We know it's not because they're stupid.

When I hear that rural Californians still await access to clean water after almost a decade of promises from the state, all I can say is that this is the reason Republicans continue to win in rural areas. They won't build out clean water infrastructure up better than Democrats do, obviously -- in fact, I'd say it's not at all going out on a limb to say they'll do it much worse -- but at least Republicans offer rage and fear, which always gives them the advantage whenever Democrats offer nothing, which is, sadly, all too often.

Former National Security Advisor/admitted felon Michael Flynn says America should have a coup just like Myanmar did. And you can see why: Myanmar's military is a bunch of diaper-loaded brats with guns, and they deposed the just-democratically-elected government there after claiming "election fraud" with no evidence whatsoever; why, I bet Mr. Flynn's Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump watched that unfold with considerable jealousy. Anyway, Mr. Flynn tried to walk it back in truly comic fashion -- well, it would be comic if I found irredeemable assholes funny.

Speaking of which, a Nashville hat shop has been offering a Star-of-David patch that says "not vaccinated" on it, and all I can say is waaaaaaaaaah. Being persuaded to get a vaccine, or being shamed into getting a vaccine, is nothing like having your home and business burned down, being banned from entire towns, being herded into concentration camps, being executed via gas chamber, or being turned into soap. How disgusting, that I still have to explain that to anyone.

Finally, when I hear that almost two out of every three Americans don't want Donald Trump to run for President in 2024, I feel the need to caution everyone that this means more than one out of every three Americans does, even after all the drama and incompetence he put on display for four years, and that it's far too easy to imagine at least one in eight Americans "holding their nose" and voting for him again, even though they're all perfectly capable of sending a message to their party to fucking do better. So let's file that under "Don't Get Complacent."

Action: concerning jobs, taxes, unemployment, our Post Office, immigration, and the filibuster.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to divert the Child Tax Credit expansion to fund the American Jobs Plan and to prevent state Governors from prematurely ending extended unemployment benefits, tell our Post Office to reject Postmaster General DeJoy's plan to cut services and raise prices, tell President Biden to end yet another racist Trump-era immigration practice, and tell Senate Democrats, again, to 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 Congressfolk's phone numbers, and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

You know the latest Republican "counter-proposal" on the American Jobs Plan aims to repurpose unspent American Rescue Plan money -- but what you may not have realized is that "including unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan in the American Jobs Plan would repeal the Child Tax Credit Expansion that delivers $250 or $300 checks to working families every month for the next year. The fact they even proposed that shows how tone-deaf they are -- and how much confidence they have that it'll ultimately mean nothing in 2022. They might be right about 2022; these are Democrats we're talking about, after all, the same ones who are strangely not bringing up Republican involvement in January 6 every single day. So, yeah, repealing the CTC expansion should be an easy campaign ad for Democrats -- just show one hand passing a $250 check to another hand twelve times, and then show a Republican politician intercepting them all -- but, again, these are Democrats we're talking about. Which is why we need to get on the phone with our Reps and Senators and tell them no to repealing the CTC expansion. If Democrats allow that to happen, they deserve to lose their majorities in 2022. And the American democratic experiment will likely be dead at that point.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop Governors in nearly half of American states from ending expanded unemployment benefits prematurely. Those expanded benefits expire at the end of September anyway; what's the hurry? Especially considering we still have over 6% official unemployment (the more telling U6 figure, which counts folks who've given up looking for work and folks who want to work more hours, stands at 9.9%)? The "hurry" is that Republican politicians want to look like they're "doing something," and as we should know from decades of watching this happen, politicians who look like they're "doing something," even something abominable, always have the political advantage. This is why we constantly tell Democrats to actually do something. Will they listen? If enough of us speak out, they'll have to.

Progress America helps you tell our Postal Regulatory Commission to reject Postmaster General DeJoy's proposal to raise prices and cut services. I keep putting it like that because it should be obvious what a bad idea that is. Do you remember being dissatisfied with our Post Office's performance before the pandemic? I don't, and I used it all the time! They did extremely well considering all the pressure our government puts on them -- taxes haven't funded our Post Office since the early '80s, and our laws mandate that our Post Office prefund its employee benefit plans over 80 years in advance, which no other entity has to do. But, sure, let's believe the Trumphole who came in and said he had to "get tough." "We have to raise prices and cut services"? How un-American is that?

Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to end the Trump-era policy that used COVID as a pretext to expel asylum seekers without due process. "Always the wrong solution for the wrong reason" should have been Donald Trump's campaign slogan. Why is it wrong to kick asylum seekers out because they might have COVID? Because you can treat COVID, that's why! At least, you can if you have the slightest amount of competence; of course, when Mike "Let's Start an HIV Mini-epidemic in Rural Indiana Counties" Pence as your COVID policy leader, you don't have competence. It's also wrong because if someone really has COVID, you're sending them back to a country that probably can't treat COVID as well as we can, where they'll infect a lot more of their fellow citizens -- which also makes it more likely COVID will survive and mutate into versions that'll infect us again. Of course, for Stephen Miller, all that was probably a feature, not a bug. But if racism and bad leadership makes all your policy for you, then you're doing policy wrong.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your Democratic Senators, once again, to end the Senate filibuster. Because they say it actually impedes bipartisanship, and they're right! Back when the Senate filibuster wasn't so easily invoked -- Senators used to have to talk for 48 or 72 hours to stop a bill, but now Senators just say they're not going to end debate, and then they go off to dinner or the theater or wherever, which actually ends debate! -- Senators would more likely support bills, knowing that'd give them a chance to shape it more like they wanted it. Now Senators filibuster bills that require campaign finance disclosure and prevent big corporations from taking tax breaks after they outsource jobs. You'd think, given how popular both those things are, Senators would risk losing elections doing that. But they don't, because the filibuster is too painless and too easy to use, so much so that Sen. Manchin (D?-WV) won't consider ending it even though his friends on the other side of the aisle just humiliated him by filibustering the January 6 commission bill. But that's why we remind them of our will.

Around the table: private corporations hunting citizens, and other horrors.

Tens of thousands of good Brazilians take to the streets to protest President Bolsonaro's continuing inability/unwillingness to handle the COVID pandemic and to demand his removal from office. I sure wish we'd done that in America -- and given that protesting in America can get you ridiculed but protesting in Brazil can get you shot, I applaud the courage of good Brazilians, and wish them the best in getting that irredeemable asshole out of office. (People say I'm not kind to call him that. Believe me, I am kind to call him that.)

From the "Dystopia Is Here" file: Joseph Cox and Jason Roebler at Vice describe how the creator of an app called Citizen -- which purports to alert its users to crimes in progress, thus "enabling" them to stop them -- stalked an innocent man all night, purportedly for arson, even putting a five-digit bounty on him. Citizen sounds like Nextdoor on meth -- one former employee calls it an "anxiety sweatshop" -- and hopefully you can see how Citizen employees working undercover in major cities can turn into a corporation's private dictatorship. Which, I maintain, would be even worse than a government dictatorship, particularly since it would have the volunteer "assistance" of large numbers of folks who think every suspect is a perp and every perp must be Black.

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo tells the story of a man detained at a private prison, in solitary confinement, for almost a year, without having his day in court, until the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finally set him free. He must have been some kind of super-villain, right? You already know the answer to that, I trust: police originally arrested him on "marijuana-related charges." And we all know that in our sick, immoral, and decadent society, the real super-villains always get off scot-free. Sometimes they even get elected President.

Not too many years ago, my great-uncle asked why colleges charged so much; I responded, "because they can." But Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns, and Money gives us a much more exhaustive explanation. Preceded, of course, with a refutation of all the wrong reasons: that public investment in colleges has gone down (it hasn't), that faculty salaries have gone up dramatically (that is to laugh), that the monetary "value" of a college degree has gone up dramatically (that is also to laugh). Which mainly leaves, you guessed it, administrative expenses, which not only include more (and more highly-paid) administrators, but an administrator "class" that moves around from college to college and mainly concerns itself with, you guessed it, making more money. I'm old enough to remember when an education had intrinsic value.

Right-wing garbage merchants claim that Moderna's COVID vaccine has a "secret ingredient," and then try to "prove" their assertion with a safety data sheet that describes the ill effects of chloroform, not the "secret ingredient" in question. It's a little like trying to prove eating beef is dangerous by describing all the ill effects of eating cow dung. And if you decided that this wasn't a mistake but malicious evil -- that there is no way someone promotes this garbage by accident -- well, how could I blame you?

Tierney Sneed at Talking Points Memo catalogues, at great expense to her well-being I would think, the right-wing's mania for election "audits" they all think will return Donald Trump to office. What part of "accept the results" and "get over it" did they not hear? And note well that when even the most sympathetic auditors don't deliver the results right-wingers want, right-wingers just turn on them. Remember when Rush Limbaugh used to say liberalism was easy? He was wrong about that, too: being a right-winger is easy, because you never need to accept something you don't want to.

Around the table: in which we confront even more right-wing and corporate stupidity.

The government of Texas --lately very busy passing bills injuring women, folks of color, and transgender folks -- hopes you've forgotten about their utter incompetence during the February winter storm and resulting power grid failure, so I'm just gonna leave this report alleging that the death toll during that crisis was even worse than Texas said it was right here. Long story short: less like 151 deaths and more like 700 deaths. Long story somewhat longer: right-wingers will claim the state count's accurate because "these people had so many other things wrong with them," to which I'll say the same thing I always say: if you have diabetes and someone shoots you in the head, nobody will say you died of diabetes.

Amazon rolls out a "wellness chamber" (pretentiously called an "AmaZen" booth) for stressed-out employees, a very small, windowless booth in which you can sit and watch mindfulness videos and the like. Corporations always want plaudits for putting band-aids on gaping wounds! Maybe the solution to your employees' stress is, you know, not to stress them out by working them like robots? And I just know people will get fired for not meeting their quotas because they're in the meditation booth. Yes, even after their bosses let them. Did I mention no windows? (And hate to pile on, but we long ago discussed how the whole "mindfulness" movement might well be a distraction to keep workers in jobs they hate, and hate for good reason.)

When I hear that nearly three out of four Republicans think liberals staged the whole January 6 coup just to make Trumpholes look bad, I wonder if I may have to revise my belief that 25% of the electorate is batshit insane. I bet perhaps a third of these Republicans know the truth and are just showing loyalty to their party, but it is insane, frankly, to let your loyalty actually revise the facts for you. And not just facts, but logic: nearly every Republican politician opposes an independent commission to look into January 6; if antifa and BLM really caused it, which is to laugh, you'd think they'd want to prove that.

The incomparable Rebecca Solnit reminds us that centrism itself is a bias, and one that favors "an insidious and unjust status quo." Go ahead and read the whole thing; the onslaught of examples will, I trust, impress you. You know, I tried being a centrist once, and I'm sure I said at the time that it was because I hated extremists on both sides, but I was only doing it because I didn't want to sort out the truth for myself. And then I became a man, and put away childish things. (I also realized, as Ms. Solnit says, that extremism comes exclusively from the right. What, you think Rachel Maddow is comparable to Tucker Carlson? As if.)

When I hear that the Orlando Sentinel has finally given up on Sen. Marco Rubio ever doing the right thing, I'm tempted to respond: they ever had hope? I mean, Marco Rubio is the man who gives empty suits a bad name, the man who, quite recently, supported Amazon workers' fight to unionize only because Amazon refused to sell a few of his favorite right-wing books. And of course he was going to outline what he wanted from an independent January 6 commission and then find a reason not to support whatever came before him. Some of the Sentinel's writing is quite inspired, though.

Finally, in a related note, Senate Republicans filibustered the January 6 commission bill which gave them everything they asked for in negotiations with Democrats. Again: Democrats need to shame and shun Republicans; it's what any civilized person would do to someone who injured their community, as Republicans do every day with every breath. I wouldn't mess with Gladys Sicknick if I were these Republicans, though -- she could be this decade's Cindy Sheehan. And if Democrats don't make "a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day" into campaign ads, then they deserve to lose their majorities.

Action: concerning corporate taxes, our Post Office, nursing home neglect, paid family leave, oil drilling in the Everglades, and fairness for pregnant workers.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise corporate taxes to pay for the American Jobs Plan, tell our Post Office to reject Postmaster General DeJoy's plan to cut services and raise prices, tell President Biden to help hold nursing homes accountable for neglect, tell your Congressfolk to enact paid family and medical leave, tell our Interior Department to reject oil drilling in the Everglades, and tell your Senators to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting, and have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend!

Another day, another Republican "counter-offer" on the American Jobs Plan that ain't as large as it looks, plus they want to fund it with unspent American Rescue Plan money! So the Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to fund the American Jobs Plan with corporate tax hikes, not stupid tricks. "User fees" count as a stupid trick; like sales taxes, these always hit lower-income working families the hardest, and we can't just blame Republicans for it, either -- some of our Democratic Senators (cough Mark Warner cough) favor "user fees," too. So we need to disabuse them of that thinking. If you can fund good works by raising taxes on the corporations that constantly use their power against us, you do it. This shouldn't be hard to understand.

Our Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, is as we speak finalizing his plan to gut Post Office services and charge you more for whatever he's generous enough to keep doing, so Progress America helps you leave a public comment smacking it down. If right-wingers get in your grills demanding that you come up with a better solution, well, you can always say "repeal the mandate that our Postal Service pre-fund employee benefits for an absurd length of time," since Congress designed that mandate specifically to cause our Postal Service problems later on (even Mr. DeJoy wants to end this mandate, because stopped clock rule, I guess), or "allow our Postal Service to offer basic banking services to folks in rural and urban areas banks won't touch," which our Postal Service could do until the late 1960s. Right-wingers won't be listening, but it won't matter, because our government has to listen to our public comments. Seriously, there could be legal ramifications if they don't.

Public Citizen helps you tell our President to reject the Trump Administration "advisory opinion" that nursing homes should be immune from COVID-related lawsuits alleging neglect. Let them fight it out in court, obviously! Too many corporations think they have a "right" not to have to go through the trouble of defending themselves, but if they've done good Americans wrong, then good Americans have an actual right to force them to make it right. Again, I shake my head at the fact that I still have to explain things like this. I know most people get it, but the people who don't -- or, more likely, pretend not to -- seem to have too much say about everything. That only means we need to be louder.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass paid family and medical leave. That supposedly will be the one of the main aims of the American Families Plan when President Biden puts it out later on this year, but best to tell your Congressfolk now that we want paid family and medical leave. Seriously, they need to know right now that this is a priority with us. We're basically the only wealthy nation on the planet that doesn't have it, and only a Scrooge McSmallgovernment says look how well we're doing without it! Because we'd do a whole lot better with it if we didn't have to worry about getting time off whenever the baby gets a 104-degree fever or grandmom falls in her bathtub.

Sum of Us helps you tell our Interior Department to reject Burnett Oil's application to drill in the Everglades. Not just because it'll pollute our air and water and disturb unique ecosystems -- and these are both good reasons not to drill there, and maybe do some solar and wind infrastructure elsewhere! -- but because Burnett already has two drilling sites in the Everglades and hasn't cleaned up their messes there, though they've committed to doing so. When someone doesn't do what they say they're going to do, they murder a part of the world. Oh, and the area they want to drill this time? Just so happens to be Seminole holy land, which suggests, again, that politicians only care about the religions of white people.

Finally, the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1065, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The bill would force corporations to make "reasonable accommodations" to pregnant workers, and would prevent corporations from refusing to hire someone just because they're pregnant. You'll notice that each of those phrases preemptively refutes right-wing whining -- no, pregnant workers wouldn't be able to force their bosses to set up workstations in the bathroom, and no, corporations wouldn't be forced to hire pregnant workers just because they're pregnant. Right-wingers are formulating these "objections" as we speak, not to spark debate but to destroy it. Let's not have any of that.

Around the table: how *not* to treat Republicans, part 438.

Big pharma corporations have started running ads blasting efforts to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and boy oh boy are they stinking pieces of dung. Letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would "stifle innovation," "keep you from getting the COVID vaccine," "kill jobs," and "institute government price controls." The first three are just stupid, but the fourth is old stupid -- think anyone under 30 seriously gets wigged out by "price controls"? Actually, when people hear "government price controls" today, particularly in the context of absurdly expensive drugs, they're more likely to say at last!

From the "So Much for the Tolerant Left" file: the New York Times scolds gay pride activists for refusing to let police officers march with them this year, by and large ignoring the fact that police have a long history of beating up gay folks. They don't seem to understand that the abused have had enough of being told to reach out to their abusers. And gay folks aren't the only ones who feel that way these days. January 6 broke a lot of us.

Study finds strong correlation between stimulus payments over the last year and a sharp rise in business start-ups -- particularly in the Black community. And the fact is you could cover most business startup costs with any one of these three stimulus checks and still have a lot of cash left over. Enhanced unemployment benefits no doubt also played a role. But at least one economist cautions against thinking the sharp rise in Black start-ups is a good thing, finding that businesses started up out of necessity (i.e., strictly because of lost employment) rose sharply in the Black community in 2020.

This has been a slow-motion train wreck for a while now: Kansas state Rep. Mark Samsel got caught on video preaching to students about (among other topics) God, masturbation, and suicide while substitute teaching, on the same day police say he physically abused at least one student. We've all had bad days at work, I suppose, but maybe not so bad we shoved one kid against the wall and kicked another one in the crotch, all while threatening "the wrath of God." Your Republican party, ladies and gentlemen! The party of patience, prudence, civility, and order!

When I hear that Sens. Manchin (D?-WV) and Sinema (D?-AZ) actually "pleaded" with Republicans to drop their opposition to the January 6 commission bill in which they got almost every silly thing they asked for in negotiations with Democrats, I can't help but hope they've decided to do this so visibly in order to give them cover for getting rid of the filibuster later. See? We tried to work with these guys, but you just can't!. But then Mr. Manchin said later he wouldn't get rid of the filibuster over the January 6 commission, and anyway, "pleading" with the Party of Sedition is always a bad look.

Finally, speaking of January 6, Gladys Sicknick -- mother of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the line of duty during the January 6 attempted coup -- wants to meet with all 50 Republican Senators to convince them to support the aforementioned commission bill, though so far only 14 have expressed interest in meeting with her (or have met with her). I doubt even she will convince them to do the right thing -- and I also think that in the coming months she will be the target of right-wing hatred she never dreamed of before -- but she might shame them in the eyes of even more Americans, and we should all be shaming Republicans as much as possible.

Action: concerning antibiotic abuse, recycling, labor, privacy, equality, and Medicare for All.

Long story short: tell our FDA to fight antibiotic abuse on factory farms, tell Pennsylvania legislators to stop defunding recycling programs, tell your U.S. Senators to pass the PRO Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, the Equality Act, and the Medicare for All Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to find your legislators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell our FDA to do a better job restricting antibiotic abuse on factory farms. You don't want to live in a world where the next cut could kill you -- I have three cuts on my fingers as we speak -- so you don't want seven of every 10 antibiotics go to, no, not sick people or animals, but nominally healthy animals, and antibiotics all stop working as a result. And our FDA needs to do more than they've thus far proposed -- we clearly can't rely on factory farm veterinarians to voluntarily stand up to their factory farm bosses, for example. Sometimes you have to make people do the right thing.

Penn Environment helps you tell Pennsylvania state legislators not to slash funding for the Commonwealth's Recycling Fund. Hard to believe we have to tell them that, isn't it? But we do -- after all, they've done it four times over the last 12 years, and now some recycling centers won't collect plastic, glass, or paper, even. As a citizen, you do the hard work of separating your refuse so we're not completely surrounded by trash, but PA state legislators can't be bothered to do their part. That's why we get in their grills so they have no choice but to do their part.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. Your right-wing Congressfolk will no doubt respond that of course they believe in protecting workers' rights, but the PRO Act "goes too far." That's BS. How is preventing corporations from forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings "going too far"? How is preventing corporations from retaliating against organizers and whistleblowers "going too far"? How is giving workers (versus their employers) the choice of voting via card check or internet "going too far"? They're not, that's how. So don't believe the hype.

The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Because we shouldn't let third-party data harvesting corporations sell your private info to law enforcement! Law enforcement is supposed to get warrants to look at that, not just buy it from some corporation! And don't brook any silliness about how "there's no privacy on the internet," because that's loser talk -- we should be able to enjoy the internet and feel safe. That's what America's all about, isn't it?

The Daily Kos Liberation League and People for the American Way both help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. When they say "this bill is an unprecedented assault on religious freedom," ask yourself how denying gays and transgender folks loans and jobs and apartments fulfills anyone's "religious freedom." Here I thought religious freedom was about worshiping (or not!) at the church of your choice, not about forcing your beliefs down other folks' throats. In my experience, religion is a lot more than who you hurt.

Finally, Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. And don't brook any silliness about how "it's too hard" and "it can't be done." You know what was too hard and couldn't be done once? Ending slavery, getting women the vote, raising taxes on the rich, and enacting a minimum wage, among many other things we've done as Americans. And I'm pretty sure that good Americans who get slammed with surprise medical bills don't want to hear about what's too hard and what can't be done. And anyway, the only things worth doing are tough.

Action: concerning drug prices, voting rights, public investment, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, tell Pennsylvania state legislators to let election officials count early-arriving votes before Election Day, and tell your Congressfolk to fund overdue public transportation repairs and pass the MEAL Act, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement 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 PA state legislators' and Congressfolk's phone numbers (where applicable), or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices. Which virtually everyone supports! Except big pharma CEOs, of course, and we shouldn't let them have all the say about everything. The news hook, here, of course, is Rep. Porter (D-CA) embarrassing yet another CEO who deserved it, in unleashing her whiteboard to show how AbbVie has jacked up the price of Humira (the world's best-selling drug presently, treating arthritis and psoriasis, among other illnesses) 144% over the last nine years. You'd think high demand would result in lower prices! But you'd be wrong; if you really, really need a medicine, you're less likely to haggle over the price. Which is why we should let Medicare use the power of a 60-million-plus pool to bring drug prices down for everyone.

Common Cause helps you tell Pennsylvania's state legislature to let vote-counters actually count the votes they receive early before Election Day, instead of forcing them to wait until Election Day proper. Why did they do that? So they could make it seem like Donald Trump won the morning after the election, of course, and thus plant the seed of all his WAAAAAAH THEYZ STOLEZ TEH ELEKSHUNZ!!!! lies thereafter! No, I'm pretty sure that's the reason. It's not like we're asking election officials to put themselves out; ensuring a correct vote count is their job, after all. And we make that job harder by creating the illusion that the votes cast on Election Day somehow count more than the votes cast beforehand. (No, I'll not brook any hard-guys-vote-in-person silliness. Aren't we all too old to be swinging our penises around?)

The National Campaign for Transit Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to fund long-overdue repairs to public transit. How long overdue? The NCTJ estimates that dedicating $20 billion annually for the next 12 years would eliminate the backlog. And that's not something we need to do instead of the American Jobs Plan, either, $240 billion over a dozen years not being a very large slice of the federal spending pie. No, I think calling attention to the public trans repair backlog -- and to the many, many jobs attacking that backlog would create! -- only brings more positive attention to the American Jobs Plan. Maybe the backlog will get incorporated into it! And billionaires made over a trillion bucks since the pandemic's start, so it's not like we just can't find the money.

The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2387, the Making Essentials Affordable and Lawful (or MEAL) Act. The MEAL Act would end the nefarious practice of keeping felony drug convicts from getting food stamps and other federal assistance, a practice which, if you think about it, defies all logic and common sense. Do convicts not need food if they can't get a job (which, thanks to the notorious "box" on most job applications, they often can't)? And how does denying them the federal assistance they need help them reintegrate into society? Again, too many politicians (including, sadly, our current President!) have made too much of a name for themselves calling cruelty and stupidity "tough love." This country is still young, but it shouldn't be that immature.

Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Because it'll fight gerrymandering, absurdly expensive campaigns, and all kinds of (frequently racist) vote suppression, of course! Also, if you've got a few hours, Daily Kos and Common Cause have teamed up to help you call West Virginia residents and ask them to call their state's senior U.S. Senator, Joe Manchin, and tell him to change his mind about supporting the For the People Act. The For the People Act enjoys supermajority support in polls there, just like everywhere else, and we at least need to deny him the excuse that his own constituents didn't call him. (He'll likely ignore us if we call from out of state -- a truism I've long heard but admittedly found hard to accept.)

Common Cause, People for the American Way, the Daily Kos Liberation League, and the League of Conservation Voters all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore that part of the Voting Rights Act that our Supreme Court killed in Shelby County v. Holder -- the part that allows our government to pre-approve voting rights changes in states and localities that have historically suppressed the vote. After this year, that's going to be a lot of states and localities! So we'd better get that done, and done quickly -- with or without the Republicans' blessing (though Lisa Murkowski has signaled her support for the bill; now we only need nine more to avoid a filibuster! Or, you know, fewer, if we just get rid of the filibuster).

Around the table: I'm not even sure I can call it *good* news, part 677.

Restaurant workers across America go on a wage strike and say they won't go back to work until they get paid a living wage, and I say good for them! Everyone in America wants to go back to eating in a restaurant again, so workers might as well use their leverage! Note well that if unemployment really pays better than restaurant work, maybe instead of demanding our government stop making unemployment benefits better or imagining workers are "lazy" for not wanting to work their asses off for dung pellets, we should demand that restaurant work pay more. It's what a free market would demand, is it not?

Just when I thought I'd permanently soured on social media, along comes Payal Dhar at Yes! magazine to remind us that "Social Media (Has) Become() a Lifeline During India’s COVID Crisis." In a sane, moral, and decent society, you shouldn't have to take to Twitter just to find an oxygen cylinder, but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, well, at least you can actually do that and find someone who gives a crap. Hopefully these horror stories remind us that social media is actually pretty good at connecting people, although the corporations running them would prefer that we spend all our time distracting people.

Actual election observer informs us that some 75,000 Republican voters in Maricopa and Pima counties in Arizona did not vote for Donald Trump in 2020, even though they voted mostly Republican in other races. The big story, I guess, is that Joe Biden won Arizona largely because Donald Trump lost it -- recall that Mr. Biden's margin of victory there was around 10,000 votes -- but the data also suggests that a little over 6% of Republican voters wouldn't vote for Mr. Trump, meaning roughly 3% of the electorate in Arizona could have voted for some other Republican for President. Perhaps not coincidentally, anti-Trump Republican Michael Wood, despite his best efforts, got 3% of the vote in Texas's 6th House district. Now I wouldn't call my thesis scientific fact, but I'd say it's strong enough to advise Democrats, yet again, to stop fantasizing about getting large numbers of Republicans to vote for them, and instead inspire, with good works, liberals and independents who'd otherwise stay home.

When I hear that our "liberal" media is also bad at covering border issues, if not quite as bad as right-wing news organs hyping a "border crisis," I stand ready with a proposal: next time we hear of a "border crisis," or a "caravan," or whatever, we should ignore it, because it's utter bullshit. In America, we do actually have the armed forces to respond to an actual ground invasion, not to mention the intelligence personnel to discover it's coming before it gets here. But what's actually happening at the border ain't that, so let's refuse to feed the right-wing drama machine.

I did not know that former Trump spokeshack Jason Miller had been accused not merely of cheating on his wife, but of slipping an abortion pill to his mistress, which nearly caused her death. I guess he thinks, like his former boss, that "rules are for little people." And I bet no cable news "personality" will ask him about it, because then he'll throw a fit and never go on their show again, like losing "access" to that particular "source" of "news" would be such a bad thing. Oh, no, no more Jason Miller on the TVzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Finally, alleged "libertarian" Charles Koch has funded efforts to clamp down on protests -- not just the ones that'd criminalize protests around "critical infrastructure," which you'd figure he'd support, but also the bills that let you off scot-free if you run over a protestor. Thus does a decade of talk about the importance of criminal justice reform prove utterly meaningless. Remember: never listen to a guy who has always acted like "rules are for little people."

Action: concerning unemployment, taxes, police brutality, Arctic drilling, and the minimum wage.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to save unemployment benefits, make the CTC expansion permanent, pass police reform legislation, end "qualified immunity" for police officers, ban Arctic drilling, and raise the minimum wage. 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 (where applicable), or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to save unemployment benefits from the 20-plus state Governors who are trying to end it. Because the "generous" benefits are "keeping people from looking for work"! They hope you don't think that if jobs aren't paying more than unemployment benefits -- on which no one lives like a corporate CEO! -- then maybe the jobs should just pay more. You know, like they would in a free market! The economy's not "roaring back," either -- perhaps, as Atrios suggested a few weeks ago, Our Glorious Elites thought the April job figures would be a lot better than they were and just plunged ahead with the story they wanted to tell anyway! But we're past the point where we have patience with stupidity, right?

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the American Rescue Plan's Child Tax Credit expansion permanent. That may be a lot of capitalized words all at once, so I'll put it more plainly: the expansion means anyone with children under 6 gets a $300 check every month, and anyone with children between 6 and 17 gets $250. Monthly three-digit checks for folks with kids -- what an idea! And one that got by me in all the coverage of the American Rescue Plan, which suggests maybe Democrats should, you know, run on that in 2022. Though they barely mentioned it in 2021! It's like they're ashamed of their good works! But we're not -- and we're going to keep on them to do more good works.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Specifically, you'll demand that your Senators pass a bill that would cut off the flow of military weapons to police departments, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, raise use of force standards in police departments, and reform the "qualified immunity" doctrine (which see next paragraph). Maybe Republicans can attack "that Democrat special interest bill" that bears George Floyd's name, but see if they'll defend chokeholds, or tear gas for protestors, or no-knock warrants, or police getting off scot-free for killing people. I would imagine that these would be tougher to defend.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to end "qualified immunity" for police officers. As I said last week, it should be hard to convict someone of a crime -- even someone who pisses you off! -- but the "qualified immunity" doctrine, in practice, is a "get out of jail free" card for police officers who commit evil deeds. Folks who tell me how can they do their jobs with all of this pressure? need to ask themselves one question: should a person who commits a crime like murder get off just because they're a police officer? It's not "all this pressure" to hold people accountable for their wrongdoing. And, sadly, police officers need to be perfect. It's one reason why I think they should have less to do.

Environmental Action helps you tell your Senators to permanently protect the ANWR (or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) from fossil fuel drilling. The 2017 tax "reform" included a provision opening up ANWR for drilling (indeed, it may have been the only reason Lisa Murkowski voted for it), but the 2021 lease sale didn't produce very many bidders, which means that our decades-long agitation has made big corporations loathe to go into ANWR, but I'd much prefer that the force of law kept them out. Scientists have been saying for decades that we're just not going to get very much oil out of ANWR, which would make it unnecessary to list all the other reasons (stopping pollution, preserving Native American culture, protecting endangered species) we'd have to stop drilling in a freaking national wildlife refuge. I mean, what else do they need "refuge" from? Aliens?

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass a bill raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. You've no doubt heard some of our older morons in politics and media say things like I only made $2/hour; what's wrong with that? Generally they made $2/hour 50 years ago; $2 in 1971 dollars is $13.19 today, thanks to a little thing called inflation that apparently only exists when right-wingers want to fear-monger about federal spending. Raising the minimum wage won't cause runaway inflation, or else a Big Mac in Denmark, where McDonald's workers make more than $22/hour, wouldn't cost roughly the same as it does here. And you know what else? Big restaurant corporations have already told investors that a $15/hour minimum wage won't hurt their business -- and if they were simply lying to their investors, there'd be consequences.

Around the table: and now, more journeys into Crazytown.

When I hear that over a dozen very large and very famous corporations have avoided over $1 billion in taxes just by taking, ah, questionable tax breaks they figured our IRS wouldn't bother going after, all I can say is: nice work if you can get it! $1.3 billion ain't much in the context of $1 trillion our IRS says it can't collect every year because it doesn't have enough money, but $1.3 billion would still pay the 2019 average American salary around 25,000 times. Maybe that statement finally makes the more thick-headed among us see that letting corporations get away with tax avoidance costs jobs. I mean, give corporations a pile of money, and they'll hoard it, but tax it and they'll spend it paying people to make stuff.

And now for another reason Republicans might win back Congress in 2022 even though they're the Party of Sedition: Republican-held state legislatures are rushing to pass bills that would make "small, unintentional errors of process that could occur at the polls or in the distribution of ballots" into felonies. That's just one reason we're now experiencing a "brain drain" of experienced election officials (another reason, of course, is that Trumpholes spent election season threatening them). All that could result in Republicans winning races in 2022, this time with candidates who are actual rabid raccoons. We can still organize and outvote them, but in America, it seems that only takes you so far.

When I hear that the AP has fired a reporter after less than two weeks after right-wing trolls put up her social media posts, all I can say is lookee here: actual cancel culture! Of course the AP can fire her for violating her employment contract if she even did that, but my point is that the people who think Harvey Weinstein got a raw deal won't call this "cancel culture," just as the people who constantly whined about being told they weren't anti-racist enough never called Jesse Helms "politically correct," even though he was exactly the kind of person who'd tell everyone what they should say and think and was prepared to retaliate against anyone who deviated from his will. A man does get tired of history repeating itself -- and of folks who never learn from it.

You've heard of the "Trump defense" for January 6 seditionists? Now some of them are also trying out the "mob defense," as in "I didn't mean to riot, but I got swept up by the mob." Teenagers have more of a case to cite "peer pressure" as a reason they did something stupid, but that's only because they're not adults, and when even a criminal defense attorney calls the "mob defense" a "desperation move," well, hopefully that brings the point home. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, let's give a warm welcome to the party of personal responsibility!

When I hear that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (E-GA) compared the prospect of House Reps having to wear masks on the House floor to Jews wearing a "gold star" under Hitler, my first impulse is to ask: hasn't she heard of Godwin's Law? And then I remembered that the sheer number of actual Nazi wannabes who have emerged from the muck in Donald Trump's wake -- too many of them enabled by our "liberal" media's attempts to "understand" them -- means there is no Godwin's Law anymore. Why, it's almost like that was the whole idea!

Finally, the prison guards on duty when notorious child molestor Jeffery Epstein killed himself (or, possibly, "killed himself") in his cell have admitted falsifying records of what they did that night. My first reaction to this news was "why, that is the MOST! SUPRISING! THING! I! Have EVER! HEARD!" My second reaction was annoyance that these clowns, whose admission will help keep them out of jail, made Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) sound like an actual human being, to wit: "One hundred hours of community service is a joke -- this isn’t traffic court...The leader of an international child sex trafficking ring escaped justice, his co-conspirators had their secrets go to the grave with him, and these guards are going to be picking up trash on the side of the road."

Action: concerning taxes, vaccines, occupations, detentions, and our Post Office.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pay for the American Jobs Plan with corporate tax hikes and not "user fees," tell your Congressfolk to beef up IRS enforcement so we can catch more tax cheats, and tell our President to fund world vaccine efforts, stop funding Israel's occupation of Palestine, close the Guantánamo Bay detention center, and replace one more member of our USPS Board of Governors. 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 (where applicable), or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pay for the American Jobs Plan by taxing corporations, not working people. Because that's what "user fees" are -- they're basically a damn sales tax, and we should outlaw all sales taxes anyway, because they always hit working people harder than wealthy people, and taxes should hit wealthy people harder, not so much because there's more money there as because wealthy people will take away all your rights if they become too powerful. You know, like they're doing now! And definitely don't tolerate any Republicans who say "only the people who use the roads should pay for the roads," as if corporations don't use roads.

Daily Kos also helps you tell your Congressfolk they need to fund our IRS properly so they can catch more wealthy tax cheats. This is basic law and order stuff here -- imagine your government saying we can't pay for cops, so we're just going to let the burglaries keep on happening. You wouldn't tolerate that, would you? Well, why would we tolerate the loss of $1 trillion annually simply because Congress has starved it of money the last decade? That's $1 trillion that rich folks and corporations have essentially burgled from us! We shouldn't have to! Congress should do their damn jobs! And now I'm over my exclamation point quota for this paragraph.

Public Citizen helps you tell the Biden Administration to invest $25 billion in vaccine development around the world. Because you can kill it here, but if you don't kill it there, too, it's gonna come back here and kill you, and very likely in mutated form. Hopefully we don't need the argument put any more pragmatically than that! And $25 billion out of over $4 trillion in annual federal spending not only isn't a lot, but would get you a lot more than you paid for it. Unlike, say, defense spending, where outspending the next eight highest-spending countries combined actually hasn't brought us any more security. Odd how little real security actually costs.

Speaking of which, MoveOn helps you tell the Biden Administration to stop funding Israel's continued oppression of Palestine. How often to I hear Israel is becoming that which it came into existence to fight these days? Quite often! And I'd probably think differently about Israel's actions in Palestine if I were convinced they really were alone against an entire world, but which of their Middle Eastern neighbors is standing with Palestine right now? Judging by the imbalance in the death tolls, I'd say none of them. And that means Israel has been captured by the folly that any fight is a good fight, and all fights must be fought to the death. It's always sad to see folks become what they most hate. And true friends don't enable it, as we have for decades.

Daily Kos helps you tell the Biden Administration to close the Guantánamo detention center already. Guantánamo remains a stain on our national soul, and if you're not getting the stains out of your soul, you're not living a moral life. And no, it's rubbish that Guantánamo's detainees will all "return to terrorism." Most of them never were terrorists to begin with! How do I know? Because if they were, our government would have convicted them of something over the last 20 years, that's why! "Too difficult to prosecute, but too dangerous to release" was a particularly noxious Obama-era fecal blast. We would laugh at Vladimir Putin saying that -- but we tolerate it here, too. And we shouldn't.

Finally, Daily Kos also helps you tell President Biden to oust another USPS Board of Governors member, Ron Bloom, and replace him with someone qualified and more likely to fire Louis DeJoy. But I repeat myself! President Biden can replace Mr. Bloom because he's already served on the Board past his term, and Mr. Bloom has incomprehensibly endorsed Mr. DeJoy, when Mr. DeJoy deserves only shame and shunning for the "work" he's done. He tried to steal the election for Donald Trump! You don't just "get along" with people who do that! And now he's about to take a Post Office that was running pretty well and ensure that it runs badly, for "cost-cutting" reasons, of course. If that's what our "best and brightest" entrepreneurial minds do, well, then, they're not our "best," are they? They're more likely grifters, in fact. And we deserve better.

Around the table: featuring mostly dispiriting Democrat weakness.

Chris Walker at TruthOut suggests that if Democrats run away from the "defund the police" movement, it could actually hurt them at the polls in 2022. You remember how well Jon Ossoff did in the 2017 Georgia 6th special? He lost. And you remember what happened when a Black Lives Matter activist ran for the same seat in the 2018 general? She won. Voters like it when you stand for something! And if you stand for something and you're not an idiot, all the better! This is why Republicans keep winning when they don't deserve to win! Not to mention that when ask folks if they want to "defund the police," they say no, but when you ask them if they want to "reallocat(e) portions of police budgets to create a new agency of first-responders...to deal with issues related to addiction or mental illness," they say yes, even though it's the same damn thing. (And, hate to pile on, but Rep. Maloney needs to understand that Republicans call Democrats "socialists" whenever Democrats take a breath, so maybe predicating your strategy on "making sure they don't call us socialists" is weakness.)

When I hear that two corporations control most of the podcasts in America, I immediately think that sounds like a job for our antitrust laws! Even though we've had a few generations of right-wing judges who will interpret antitrust law, how shall we put it, rather loosely. I'll admit I never got too much into podcasts, so it's a shame the podcast landscape will be fully-corporatized (and therefore lame!) before I ever do. And yes, I, too, remember when YouTube was good (i.e., before Google got its grubby mitts on it). We need to retrain our minds away from Facebook and Google and YouTube and toward, you know, the vast social network the internet could be.

When Jon Schwarz says "The Idea That Deficit Spending Is a Burden on Our Children Is the Dumbest Propaganda," he specifically means that "(e)very time the federal government sells a bond, it creates a liability for the government. But it also creates an asset for those who bought the bond, in exactly the same amount." Bonds can, of course, be inherited by children, more directly than the public debt can. Trouble is, naturally, that rich folks own most government bonds -- and every time our government cuts taxes for the rich, it issues more bonds to make up for the lost revenue, which means (as Al Franken told us many years ago in Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them) rich folks benefit from tax cuts coming and going, as they get lower taxes and the opportunity to buy more bonds.

When I hear that the nefarious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) is behind a lot of state-level bills aiming to "empower" poll watchers to keep folks of color from voting, I'm reminded that ALEC pushed Voter ID bills in the early 2010s, and then, when activists prodded corporations to end their membership in ALEC, ALEC said they wouldn't do stuff like that anymore and would just concentrate on economic issues. So, they lied about that, too. Not that I'm terribly surprised, but someone's gotta note it. (Also, let us remember that a lot of the same corporations that have spoken in favor of voting rights generally still bankroll the same right-wing politicians trying to suppress the vote.)

Robert Reich explains "Why Strongmen Are Losing the Fight Against Covid." Long story short: they all suck at governing, which you'd expect, since they're all good at whining. They're also good at drama and doing Jeff George victory laps, too. Note well that at least 40 percent of Republican voters still won't get the vaccine because their Personal Lord and Savior and his media minions can't do their job right. The good news? "40 percent of Republicans" maps out pretty well on my "25% of the electorate is batshit insane" notion, and we should be used to them by now. The bad news? These fools will keep COVID going long after we should have stamped it out, which I'm sure Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are counting on to bring them back to power.

Finally, I must admit that I found Friday's news dump was especially dispiriting, as President Biden dropped over half a trillion dollars from his American Jobs Plan proposal just to appease Republicans (who were, predictably, not appeased), while his Administration has also apparently abandoned plans to increase access to health care via a public health care option and/or letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, both of which are popular and seem ideal for the American Families Plan. I swear, Democrats are like a football team that goes into prevent defense at the end of the first quarter. If they lose the House and Senate next year, mark Friday, May 21, 2021 as the reason why.

Action: concerning January 6, the Estate Tax, unemployment, pollution, and vote suppression.

Long story short: tell Democrats to hold January 6 hearings without Republican help or support, tell your Congressfolk to pass the For the 99.5% Act, tell states to stop using facial recognition software in unemployment applications, tell our EPA to roll back the Trump-era rule forbidding states from setting stricter car emissions standards, and tell Pepsi to stop funneling money to vote suppressors. 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 (where applicable), or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting, and have a happy weekend!

Consumers United for Fairness helps you tell Democrats to go ahead and hold hearings on the January 6 attempted coup without Republicans. 35 Republican House Reps actually voted for the independent commission legislation, but if we don't get 10 Republican votes in the Senate for it (hey, go ahead and call them, what could it hurt?), then Democrats should just move ahead. Are they afraid of being called "partisan" for it? Then they should all lose their next elections! Because they don't have the courage to do the job! Do the right thing, then worry about Republican hurt fee-fees. Bunch of damn brats, Republicans are. And it's about time Democrats stopped acting afraid of them. (I'm aware that the word "acting" implies this might all be one big drama. The only way to counter that is to be real with your Reps and Senators.)

Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2576/S. 994, the For the 99.5 Percent Act. What would the For the 99.5% Act do? It would institute five Estate Tax brackets, ranging from 39% at the low end ($750,000 to $3.5 million) to 65% at the high end (over $1 billion). We all just witnessed billionaire wealth increase over $1 trillion during this pandemic, so it ain't like they ain't got the money. And one more time: this bill will kill exactly zero family farms! Too many good liberals still let this zombie lie live in their head, but even the organizations plugging this lie can't find a single example of a family farm lost to the Estate Tax! Next time you're in a room with 200 people, please understand that the For the 99.5% Act would only ever tax approximately one of them.

Fight for the Future helps you tell states to stop using facial recognition software on good Americans trying to file for unemployment. Because facial recognition sucks! It can't tell Black folks apart any better than your Trumphole uncle can! And just as higher walls tend to be confounded by taller ladders, some scam artists have, no joke, resorted to 3D-printed face masks in order to confound the software, meaning the supposed fraud prevention measure has actually become a fraud creation measure. And, you know, submitting to software that makes everything worse also makes your wait for unemployment benefits longer! Just at the moment you really can't have any of that! So go ahead and deploy the winning argument against the officials trying to hurt you.

The Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to reverse the Trump Administration's rule preventing states from setting stricter auto emissions standards than our federal government does. If you're the kind of person who says f'ing California and their f'ing emissions standards making me work harder, then you're not the kind of person who says f'ing car manufacturers and their f'ing inefficient cars making me pay more for f'ing gas, and not just because the latter describes a real problem real Americans face. Seriously, we have to stop putting corporate executive whining on the same level as actual problems. No one says they don't have a right to complain, but they also don't have a "right" to get their way whenever they complain. No amount of money can buy you a right.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell PepsiCo to stop donating to organizations and candidates who help suppress votes. Corporations can talk all they want about how "the right to vote is a cornerstone of American democracy," as a Pepsi spokeshack has said, but actually putting your money where your mouth is? That's another thing entirely. Pepsi gave half a mil to the reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2020, and said Chamber is leading the charge against H.R. 1, the For the People Act, a bill some two-thirds of Americans actually support in numerous polls. Their spokeshacks will say they only give to the Chamber for economic reasons, which is to laugh -- not just because it's actually kind of insulting to think we'll like the reactionary Chamber's economic agenda, but because the Chamber can spend its donations how it likes, and Pepsi knows that. So enough stupid crap from corporations.

Around the table: Republicans gonna Republican, part 845.

From ProPublica we learn that some $7 million in Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) loans went, via online lending corporation Kabbage, to obviously absurdly-named fake farms like the one in Minnesota that supposedly grew oranges or the cattle ranch put in the name of the Mayor of Long Beach Township, NJ. Clearly there was a lot of identity theft here, and just as clearly there was not a whole lot of oversight, either from Kabbage or from our government. If you're tempted to say $7 million out of some $350 billion ain't a big deal, please do three things: 1) slap yourself, 2) consider how much good $7 million in loans might do for people who need it, and 3) remind yourself that corruption anywhere hurts our civilization everywhere. Also, consider all the steps Kabbage clearly took (like partnering with that bank in Utah to avoid interest rate caps!) to avoid scrutiny in the most general sense. Then, maybe, slap yourself again.

Sonali Kohatkar describes "Why Big Pharma's Arguments Against Patent Waivers," like the one we're trying to get so that poorer nations can have COVID vaccines too, "Don't Add Up." "It'll stifle innovation" you probably already saw through, since they trot that out when they oppose every good thing our government tries to do, but you might not have remembered that world taxpayers funded the COVID vaccines to the tune of billions of dollars, and big pharma corporations prefer to spend their largesse on marketing and overpaying their executives. But you may not have understood that calling generic vaccines from another country "fake" is sort of like saying we're the only civilized nation on the planet, which sure isn't the case -- every nation has a process for approving drugs. Some countries even have a better one!

Ho hum, we learn, once again, that there's no "exodus" from blue states to red states over TEH TAXEZ!!!!!, because too many people wind up paying higher taxes where they wind up -- like, say, in Texas, where taxes are actually a tick higher than they are in California. You'll remember studies demonstrating that high marginal tax rates in New Jersey explained very little about why people (ahem!) moved to other states. Which means I think the article does give too much credence to taxes as a reason rich folks move -- when your choice in life is either to be rich or to be rich, I don't think numbers that seem big to middle-class folks make a whole lot of difference.

Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams reminds us that although Amazon has extended its moratorium on law enforcement's use of its facial recognition technology, really, the credit belongs to activists (including you!) for wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR against them. We are also reminded that Amazon still hasn't ended its Ring-police partnerships, that our government still hasn't acted to ban facial recognition technology, and that "Rekognition" is a hopelessly pretentious name for a piece of software.

Jesus Mary and Joseph where does one begin with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) blaming House Speaker Pelosi for causing the failure of the January 6 commission by "not consult(ing) in advance" with House Minority Leader McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader McConnell? With her almost mansplaining-level condescension, which we might almost call woman-on-woman crime? With the absurdity of demanding she "consult" with the party that egged on January 6 and is now gaslighting about January 6 about an investigation into January 6? With the sneaking suspicion that, just like with all Republicans, "consultation" really means capitulation? I know where we end: with the hope that that investigation into Sen. Collins's campaign finances has legs.

Finally, Alex Samuels at FiveThirtyEight describes "How The Republican Party Could Splinter (Or Stay The Same) After Liz Cheney’s Ousting." My money's on "stay the same." The Texas 6th House special showed us the ceiling of "Republican voters who absolutely won't vote for Trump or one of his Trumpholes," and that number is about 3 percent of the electorate. The remaining Republicans are a) Trumpholes, b) people who've been Republican all their lives and can't imagine being anything else, or c) people who will talk themselves back into the fold with fever dreams of SOSHULIZM!!!!! or -- far worse -- with "disgust" over "the people who hate Donald Trump" "going too far." That last item, seriously, is the soul of desperation.

Action: concerning the Child Tax Credit, paid family and medical leave, internet freedom, public transportation, and corporate welfare.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, pass paid family and medical leave, and pass the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act, the Freedom to Move Act, and the End Polluter Welfare 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, or use the email/petition tools on the bottom of this page.

The Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent. This summer, that expansion will deliver an extra $300 monthly to folks with children under 6, and an extra $250 to folks with children between 6 and 17. I've given this matter a lot of thought lately, and it sure seems to me that an extra $250 or so monthly will give parents a lot of breathing room, which will help them be the best parents they can be. Already our everything-for-the-rich-and-screw-everyone-else economy makes it hard for them to be their best; the CTC expansion is a rare government policy that actually does that. So we really ought to keep it around.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact a paid family and medical leave plan. Paid family and medical leave will be a focus of President Biden's American Families Plan, but it might be better in the short run to tell them we support paid family and medical leave in the abstract, and then hold them accountable for the details later; at that point, they won't be able to say their constituents didn't talk about paid family and medical leave. We're the only big nation on Earth that doesn't have it, and no it wouldn't be particularly onerous to fund. You've heard that America's billionaires have made over $1 trillion more since the pandemic's beginning, right? Well, that'd be a good place to start.

Both Consumer Reports and the ACLU help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1783/S. 745, the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. Again, though President Biden's American Jobs Plan would nominally include more broadband, our Congressfolk still need to hear from us about it, not least because too many of them (cough Republicans cough) have been banging their saucepans telling everyone that broadband isn't "really infrastructure." All you need to do to prove them wrong is go through a pandemic! Now kids go to school over the internet, adults go to work over the internet, folks see a doctor and buy groceries over the internet -- yeah, it's obviously infrastructure. Why do we listen to Republicans again?

The National Campaign for Transit Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2287/S. 1172, the Freedom to Move Act. Since at least the beginning of the Reagan years, we've been caught up in the idea that we should each have our own cars and rely less on trains and buses to get us around. But I think we're seeing the folly of that idea -- not just that it's selfish, but that it'll also help destroy our planet a lot faster. And you know, not everyone can have a car -- some people just don't make enough money, and they need public transportation as a result. Hence the Freedom to Move Act would issue grants to help make fare-free public trans a reality; after all, why shouldn't we spend our money on things we might all use? (And, not for nothing, but yeah, this bill or something like it could also get folded into the American Jobs Plan, so best to let our Congressfolk know we want better public transportation.)

Finally, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2102/S. 1167, the End Polluter Welfare Act, which would end some $15 billion of corporate welfare for big fossil fuel drillers. I have to say I find far too many fiscal hawks will go after social spending with almost absurd ease, but will never say anything about corporate welfare -- which is far larger, and which represents a far greater immorality -- unless you provoke them, and why should I have to provoke people to do the right thing? Can't people do the right thing on their own? Can't they follow their own philosophy consistently and fight all big government handouts? If they can't, you have to wonder who might be lining their pocketbooks.

Around the table: in which, again, we grapple with various law-and-order matters.

When I hear that our Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that police need a warrant to enter someone's home, I first imagine that unanimous must mean narrow, and that turns out to be the case, as our Court actually ruled that the "community care-taker" exception carved out in Cady v. Dombroski doesn't apply to searches police conduct within a home -- Cady concerned a car search, after all. It's still a good ruling, not least because I'd prefer that police didn't have as broad a "community caretaker" role as they currently have.

C. Michael White at The Conversation wonders "Why Is the FDA Funded in Part by the Companies It Regulates?" It is an excellent question! And I'm not satisfied with the given answer (that the AIDS epidemic prompted the passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, ostensibly so that AIDS patients could get medication faster). I mean, was the time it took to get a drug right really the problem there? And if so, how did "funding with user fees" solve it? Are we sure small-government ideologues didn't have more to do with it? I guess it's good that this topic can bring up more excellent questions.

This Tucson Weekly article asks, "Police Keep Tabs on Social Media, But Who Keeps Tabs on Cops?" That is another excellent question! Sadly, the answer is "politicians who don't know how to do it, don't want to do it, or are afraid to do it." Also sadly, the right-wing activist from AZ Patriots says she knows police monitor her, too -- but this knowledge clearly hasn't helped her grow as a person, since she says "sometimes, you know, we feel like we’re being targets ourselves," as if it's OK to target other people, or as if it's utterly incomprehensible police would target her.

Steven Rosenfeld runs down the nuts-and-bolts problems with the Arizona "audit" of Maricopa County votes. That the "auditors" are Trumpholes you already knew, and you probably also knew about the blue pens and the UV lights -- but you may not have known that they're not following basic auditing procedures, like reviewing poll tape voting totals or setting aside problematic ballots after you've figured out the voter's intent. Thus they're virtually assured of coming up with vote totals "in conflict" with the final tally. Why, it's almost like that's the whole idea!

When I hear that Sen. Graham (E-SC) has said that he "accept(s) the results" of the 2020 election, all I can say is wow, only four months after January 6 and six months after the election, Sen. Graham acts like admitting water is wet is some great gift to the American people. Remember when they wanted us all to "accept the results" the day after Election Day 2016? Why is anyone a Republican again? After all, I would think, if you're conservative, you would not want to be associated with sore losers and reality-deniers.

Finally, let's again dismiss the idea that a "Trump defense" should get January 6 defendants off the hook for what they did that day. Mr. Trump can face charges of incitement to riot, but it takes two to tango here. And I really wish they wouldn't bring up a defendant's "Asperger's Syndrome" -- I put it in quotation marks because those are the lawyers' words, where everyone else's word would be "autism." As folks who watched last week's SNL have likely already said, just because you're autistic, it doesn't mean you're not also an asshole.

Action: concerning big pharma, transgender kids, the "citizen's arrest," social media, birth control, and Rahmbo.

Long story short: demand more affordable EpiPens, protect transgender kids in North Carolina, help end the concept of the "citizen's arrest," tell Facebook to keep Donald Trump off its platform, tell President Biden to roll back the Title X "gag rule," and tell your Senators to reject Rahm Emanuel as the next Ambassador to Japan. You'll find email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

Change.org helps you tell Viatris to make EpiPen more affordable. Sound familiar? A few years ago, when Mylan owned EpiPen (Mylan merged with Upjohn in 2020 to create Viatris), it got in hot water for pricing it at $700 for two doses; the drug being delivered costs about a buck, and in 2009, two EpiPen doses cost "only" $100. But $700 for a life-saving drug that monopolizes the market? That's uncivilized, particularly coming from the richest civilization on the planet. In Europe they pay a whole lot less, despite the spectre of socialized medicine. Or do I mean because? In fairness, EpiPen also has competition over there, which our notorious "free" market somehow hasn't delivered. That means we're left with embarrassing EpiPen's owner into submission.

Change.org also helps you beat back yet another anti-transgender bill, this time SB 514 in North Carolina, which would (stop me if you've heard this one before) ban transgender surgeries and treatments in the Tar Heel state. The bill's authors appear to think trans kids are faking it, but if so, they don't understand children, like, at all -- the most important thing to a kid is approval, and coming out as trans risks that approval, whether from family or peers; who does that just for attention? When the "attention" you get is getting kicked out of your house or beaten up in science hall, the answer is "nobody." And it's not like there aren't ten thousand other ways to get attention that don't involve announcing you're really a different sex than you look like you are. Hell, for me it was aggressive sarcasm. You may be surprised to learn that people still remember me for it.

Progress America helps you tell New York state to outlaw "citizen's arrest" laws. Maybe you think of the "citizen's arrest" as something you saw on The Andy Griffith Show, though the "citizen's arrest" is as old as the hills -- or, at least, medieval England. But encouraging citizens to arrest other citizens doesn't befit a civilization that has police officers, and encourages far too many folks to do things they shouldn't do. Case in point: George Zimmerman, who was not a police officer but who took it upon himself to apprehend Trayvon Martin because he looked "out of place" or whatever. And you can all too easily imagine Trump-soaked citizens taking it upon themselves to "right" "wrongs" with powers they haven't earned and don't deserve.

Speaking of which, Free Press helps you tell Facebook to permanently ban Donald Trump from its platform. Because Donald Trump does not have a First Amendment right to a Facebook platform, that's why! He only has a First Amendment right not to be put in jail for his speech -- unless, of course, he makes terroristic threats, commits libel or slander, or (pretends to rack brain) incites folks to riot. Facebook is a private corporation, and though it too often acts like it just can't do anything about user content, we would best regard Facebook, both conceptually and legally, as a publishing house. And we don't demand that publishing houses accept every single manuscript, do we?

Daily Kos helps you tell the Biden Administration to repeal the Trump Administration's Title X "gag rule," which keeps health providers from discussing abortion with their patients while receiving Title X grants. You've heard me say take government money, play by government rules enough times to think I might support the Trump-era "gag rule," but I've always said that when discussing employers taking our taxpayer money and then discriminating against employees. That's just wrong. Preventing health providers from discussing legal options for women's health care as a condition for getting federal grants? That's also wrong -- abortion is a legal procedure and a legal right.

Finally, Roots Action helps you tell your Senators to reject Rahm Emanuel's nomination as Ambassador to Japan. Because he's got a long rap sheet: as Barack Obama's first Chief of Staff, he was also the chief architect of capitulation in 2009 and 2010 -- calling liberals "retards" at one point for the heinous crime of wanting more out of a Democratic President than warmed-over Clintonism -- and from there he went on to serve two terms as Mayor of Chicago, overseeing systemic police brutality and privatizing as much of the city's public services as he could get his mitts on. And no, he gets no credit for Democrats retaking the House in 2006; if any one person gets credit for that, it's Howard Dean. We can't let the worst Democrats continue to fail upward.

Action: concerning jobs, law and order, pregnant workers, privacy, and Medicare for All.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk about your "red line" for the American Jobs Plan, tell your Congressfolk to oppose military weapons and "qualified immunity" for police officers, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the Medicare for All Act. You can 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 Congressfolks' phone numbers, or use the links in the following paragraphs.

Tired of hearing how "bleak" the prospects are for a "bipartisan" American Jobs Plan? It's bleak enough that we're even negotiating with the supporters of the January 6 insurrection! The Republicans' "red line" is, of course, NO NEW TAXUZ!!!! -- although "use fees" somehow don't count as taxes to them, at least at this moment -- and President Biden's "red line," unfortunately, does not appear to include "the bill must raise taxes on corporations." Want a better red line? The American Jobs Plan must include a 55% tax rate for corporate profits over $1 million, must invest substantially in clean water, renewable energy, and the care economy, and must not include "use fees," which always hit working people harder than they hit rich people. Our red line matter more than their red lines -- if we speak out. (Daily Kos helps you communicate your will in re corporate taxes and renewable energy and the care economy.)

Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3227, the Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement Act, which would end the notorious 1033 program which funnels surplus military weapons to local police departments. Seriously, if you heard "police get military weapons" in nations like Iran or Russia, you'd find that alarming, wouldn't you? Don't let "but police have it hard" get in the way of you finding that alarming here in America, too, because these weapons don't help police deal with criminals -- they help police put down peaceful protests against their brutality! And don't put the phrase "defund the police" in your counterarguments, either. This is literally not "defunding the police," and attaching any concept that makes you mad to any other concept that makes you mad is not argument worthy of civilized people.

Further along these lines, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to end "qualified immunity" for police officers in America. "Qualified immunity" is the legal doctrine, promulgated by our Supreme Court in Pierson v. Ray, that protects government officials (including police officers) from civil suits over their discretionary actions (i.e., actions not mandated by law), unless the plaintiff can prove those actions violated "clearly-established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." But in practice, folks trying to get relief from police brutality have to prove something almost exactly the same happened to someone else, and that they got relief, in order to get relief themselves. And judges have used the narrowest excuses to throw cases out -- "your example was about police siccing a dog on a suspect lying down with their hands to the side, but you were sitting down with your hands up, so it's not the same! Too bad!" No, I didn't make that up. We should make it hard to convict people of crimes in America, but we shouldn't make it damn near impossible. "Qualified immunity" does that, and Congress should end it.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1065, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Too many women in America have to choose between having a baby and having a job, and why should it be like that? If men could get pregnant, you'd best believe bosses would make every conceivable accommodation at the workplace, like assignments with less lifting and more tolerance of bathroom breaks. But too often we assume women have "ulterior motives" for getting pregnant, when, hey, who would get pregnant just to get light duty? Don't believe the hype that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would "make it impossible for bosses to do their jobs." The bill pointedly does not force bosses to make unreasonable accommodations. When you read bills, you learn things.

The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Our laws already prevent most corporations (including the big telecoms and social media corporations) from selling your information to law enforcement -- but our laws don't prevent the third-party data collecting corporations that buy that data from selling it to law enforcement! Which they do, so if you're a Muslim looking up which direction Mecca's in on your phone, now our government can find out about it, and harass you if they want. There's a reason we demand that law enforcement get warrants to investigate you -- it's for your protection! And we deserve that protection even when big corporations figure out how to work around it. And that's why we have lawmakers.

Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. The Medicare for All Act would ensure that all Americans have health insurance, including the 30 million or so who can't get health insurance now, and we could deliver better care more cheaply. How? Well, for one thing, Medicare-for-All won't have a slew of million-dollar executives who need to be paid first. Also, Medicare-for-All will bargain with doctors and hospitals and big pharma corporations with the strength of a 330-million-person-plus pool, and in insurance bargaining, there's always strength in numbers. Don't worry that doctors won't be able to "make money"; doctors still make plenty of money everywhere that governments guarantee that everyone gets health care. So, really, there are no counter-arguments. (Cost isn't one, either; I've shot that zombie in the head many times, most recently last week.)

Around the table: why is anyone a Republican? And other mysteries.

Big corporations think they can pressure "moderate" Democrats into voting against any corporate tax hikes in the American Jobs Plan, a reasonable play on their part, but they also think Democratic Congressfolk will campaign on higher corporate taxes, which is quite an interesting take -- it wasn't that long ago folks said Barack Obama was dumb to declare he would raise taxes on the rich while running for re-election. Of course we're much better off not counting on Democrats running on corporate tax hikes, not just because, hey, these are Democrats we're talking about, but also because these corporations could be floating that whole idea just to induce liberals to accept a worse bill and count on the "fight another day" that never, ever comes with Democrats. Anyway, it doesn't matter what they want: it matters what we want. Be sure to note the first paragraph of our action alert today.

Remember that Republican House Rep who said the January 6 attempted coup wasn't an attempted coup so much as a "normal tourist visit"? Turns out the guy who said it, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia's 9th, helped barricade the House chamber doors from the seditionists on that very day, and there's a photo. In case you were wondering, Republicans have a 31 point registration advantage in Georgia's 9th district, and Mr. Clyde won in 2020 with 78 percent of the vote, so though hope springs eternal and one should really compete in every district no matter how dire the circumstances, I wouldn't count on him going down due to his abject stupidity, as would happen in a sane, decent, and moral society.

Ari Paul at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media might have a better handle on the most recent unexpectedly-low jobs report if they'd actually talked to more than a handful of workers. They might have found out many workers aren't rushing to go back to work not just because employers still want to pay them in dung pellets, but because, well, a lot of jobs ain't worth risking your life (or the life of someone you love, who might be elderly or infirm). But then journalism textbooks have told you, straight out, for at least the last 30 years, that you can crib a lot of your work from corporate PR releases, and today's "liberal" media journalists sure seem to have taken that lesson to heart.

North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (R) says he'll run for Governor of Nevada in 2022, and here's the rub: he switched parties, from Democratic to Republican, just this past April. Question: how can you make this switch after January 6? I mean, sure, he has answered that question by whining about TEH SOSHULIZM!!!!!, as if he's never driven a road or gone to the library, but frankly nobody should be a Republican, anywhere, after what happened on January 6.

Elie Mystal at The Nation reminds us that "There's Only 1 Reason" "Marjorie Taylor Greene is Gunning for AOC" -- and spoiler alert! It's racism. But I regret to inform my readers that I find too many intelligent folks, probably aiming to prove they're "not that liberal," equating the two, which is to laugh! I mean, one is intelligent, has good policy ideas, and doesn't raise her voice anywhere near the level our "liberal" media would like you to think she does -- and the other is Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Personal to the "why won't she debate us?" crowd: because nobody owes you a debate. Why, that would be like saying women owe you sex!)

Finally, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) went on Hannity the other night and of course he used the word "energy" to describe something President Biden supposedly doesn't have enough of and former President Trump supposedly has a lot of. We could chide him for being a naked propagandist for the former President, but let's instead be reminded that most Americans are sick and tired of Donald Trump's "energy," which we would better describe as "drama." And again, how does this Trumpian "energy" embody conservative values, such as prudence, or thrift, or a love of order and tradition?

Action: concerning Israel and Palestine, voting rights, the filibuster, public lands, and student loan debt.

Long story short: tell our government to do the right thing about the Israel/Palestine conflict, tell your Congressfolk to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, write a letter to the editor advocating that we end the Senate filibuster, and tell President Biden to reverse Trump-era land grabs at several national monuments and forgive student loan debt. You can 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 Congressfolks' phone numbers and/or use the links in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

First things first. MoveOn helps you tell President Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel/Palestine conflict and an end to Israeli evictions of Palestinians, while Demand Progress helps you tell our government to stop funding Israeli occupation of Palestine and Avaaz helps you tell world governments to sanction Israel for its actions. You don't need to know "who started it" to support these petitions; you only need to know how it is -- one nation is way more powerful than another, and brutalizes the other. And of course you should also be suspicious when you notice that the violence has buoyed the electoral fortunes of the Israeli Prime Minister who can't win an election outright but somehow stays in power.

Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. You've no doubt heard that New Great and Bounteous One True American President Joe Manchin likes the latter bill but not the former, but who cares? We want both! We want both the bill that would help us end partisan gerrymandering and force big campaign donors out into the light and the bill that would restore the Voting Rights Act! Why should we have to settle just because Joe Manchin's the 50th vote?

Speaking of all of that, Common Cause helps you write a letter to the editor of your local paper advocating that we end the Senate filibuster. I used to advocate for fixing the filibuster, so that the Senators who would use it would actually have to work for it by explaining, at considerable length, why they oppose campaign finance disclosure or ending tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs overseas (to name just two popular initiatives they've filibustered over the years), but fuck that: Senators have abused this power, so they get nothing from now on, and Mitch McConnell's threats to slow down Senate business to a crawl if they get rid of the filibuster are irrelevant. Remember when Sen. Bunning (R-KY) singlehandedly stopped any further unemployment insurance considerations in 2010? Yeah, he wasn't running for re-election. Anyone who stops a popular bill because he wants a proper quorum to turn on the lights in the Senate building won't get re-elected, either. If we have anything to say about it, that is.

The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell President Biden to roll back Trump-era land grabs at several national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. When Trump votaries contemplated the phrase "drain the swamp," do you think the phrase "by chipping away at national monuments so that gas and oil drillers could pollute it" followed naturally in their minds? I would say not! Folks love their national monuments a lot more than Our Glorious Elites would like you to think, and they're actually not all that emotionally invested in big corporate CEOs making even more money from gas and oil drilling. Tell them "it's for the jobs" and you may get most of them to pause -- but tell them "that's what they want you to think," and then explaining exactly why that's what they want you to think that (i.e., as in the previous sentence above), will win most of them right back. Too bad our "liberal" media never thinks to do that. Hey, we can't do everything. That's why we live in a civilization.

Finally, both the ACLU and Daily Kos help you tell President Biden to cancel at least $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower. You've heard folks say they can't retire because they still have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt? Well, it's not actually the kind of thing that deserves the response well you should have thought of that before taking on all that debt ha ha ha snort, because our society has been telling everyone for years they have to get a college degree if they want to survive, and when you go telling people that, you either have to deliver on that or make it right if you don't. And forgiving $50,000 in student loan debt will make that right for a lot of people. Personal to those who'd be jealous: go gripe with God about when you were born, and God will you the same thing I will, that every damn thing in the world ain't about you.

Around the table: attempted coup as "normal tourist visit."

Food tech corporation develops method to store perishable food for up to 90 days without refrigeration -- essentially, they pasteurize the food with carbon dioxide rather than heat or steam, as it's typically done. Farther Farms, of Rochester, NY, might well revolutionize the processed food industry, which relies heavily on refrigerated transportation for a lot of perishable goods, and might well help save a lot of food that gets thrown out. But I am a little perturbed that they're focusing mainly on preserving processed foods, rather than just-picked fruits and vegetables.

Ho hum, Congressional Republicans are claiming that the January 6 insurrection was like a "normal tourist visit" and/or that it was really the fault of antifa and/or Black Lives Matter. They don't give out awards for gaslighting, fellas. Do they not remember that we saw everything?

Michelle Nickerson at the Washington Post says the rise of the alleged moderate Rep. Stefanik to GOP House leadership "manages to mark the decline of conservatism’s ideological grip on the GOP, while simultaneously marking the growing visibility of old-fashioned American racism and voter suppression." If you're seeing an opportunity for Democrats to take advantage by a) doing good works and b) repeating that vote suppressors are sore losers, well, all this apparently contradictory messaging might keep "untraditional partisans" (i.e., those who don't much care about traditional "pro-family" issues but don't like immigrants, for example) in the fold. Also, these are Democrats we're talking about. Read the whole article, as it reminds us that anti-feminism has been a core Republican principle for a long time, and will remain one even as they put more women like Ms. Stefanik out front.

Again I read that a slew of former Republican elected officials want to start a third party of "rational" conservatives, and again I wonder how many right-wing parties America needs. And again I note that being a never-Trumper sure as hell doesn't make you a "conservative." Did Tha Bush Mobb value tradition, prudence, order? I do not think you could reasonably conclude that they did -- unless you confuse conservatism with reactionary stupidity.

The Vatican warns U.S. bishops against denying folks communion if they happen to support abortion rights or euthanasia, and I have to say that sure seems like a good policy, perhaps even a Christian policy, if you understand the Parable of the Prodigal Son to mean the world is full of people who might one day come home. The Vatican even reminds us that abortion and euthanasia aren't the only issues in the world, a reminder that apparently bears repeating, since our politicians never seem to hear it.

Finally, our "liberal" media needs to stop doing Jeff George victory laps about the "low engagement numbers" at Donald Trump's new blog, and not just because most people would hear you say "low engagement numbers" and think you were trying to hoodwink them. I don't think he's dumb to write a blog at all, and I don't say that because I'd love to have these allegedly lackluster numbers myself; I say it because sometimes going backward is the best way to go forward. I mean, if you don't have big social media in your corner anymore, you have to use "old" social media. Certainly media criticisms will continue to fall flat as long as they cling to "the numbers."

Action: concerning jobs, war, debt, pollution, and law and order.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk that you want a jobs bill that invests in the care economy and invests in renewable energy, tell President Biden to end all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, tell our CFPB to protect us from debt collector harassment, tell Pennsylvania state legislators to reject yet another pro-pollution bill, and tell Louisiana state legislators to ban the "panic defense." 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 phone numbers for your various state and federal legislators, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in the care economy as part of the American Jobs Plan and invest in renewable energy as part of the American Jobs Plan. We're all going to need more care someday, and our seniors need more care now, so investing in the "care economy," as they call it, is as much an investment in our future as investing in roads and bridges. And n.b. "investing in our future" when considering whether we should build out more solar and wind in an infrastructure bill. Investing merely in more gas drilling and more oil drilling is going to give us an uninhabitable planet one day; investing in renewable energy will give us, as Millie Jackson would say, a fighting chance. Politicians need to start putting our needs above their rich cronies' "needs."

Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to end all arms sales to the Saudi/UAE coalition currently raining death and misery upon Yemen. He has ended "logistical and military support" for the coalition, and has frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and these ain't nothing, but people are still dying in Yemen -- the U.N. estimates that 400,000 kids under 5 could die this year from hunger -- and we're still following through with all of Donald Trump's midnight arms sales to the Saudi/UAE coalition, so we need to communicate our will again. Remember that the big arms manufacturing corporations don't really want this war to end, because that'll be less money for them. You'd think some of our big "free" marketeers would just respond that those corporations ought to be able to adjust if they want to survive, but as usual, you can't count on them. But we can count on us.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to roll back its proposed rule that would allow debt collectors to deluge you with unlimited emails, text messages, and direct messages on social media platforms. Plus the rule would let them call you every day if they want, and the rule would let them harass you without even determining if you owe them any money! Which latter item you could very well construe as an attempt to defraud you! This rule was, of course, a Trump-era CFPB rule, since Donald Trump only lived to serve other bosses; the Biden-era CFPB may yet approach the level of the Obama CFPB, which was one of that Administration's best Executive branch agencies -- but only if we make our voices heard.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn Environment helps you tell your state legislators to reject yet another pro-pollution bill, SB 275. SB 275 would prevent any PA municipality from "(a)dopt(ing) a policy that restricts or prohibits, or has the effect of restricting or prohibiting, the connection or reconnection of a utility service based upon the type of source of energy to be delivered to an individual consumer within the municipality." Sounds wordy and harmless, right? Wordy is never harmless! The bill wants to prevent municipalities from making their utilities more renewable; the only "restricting or prohibiting" the bill cares about is ""restricting or prohibiting" oil and gas. It's corporate welfare, in other words. And how conservative, to want to prevent smaller governments from having more say in the decisions that affect them! Let's deliver this bill to the oblivion it most richly deserves.

Finally, Change.org helps you tell Louisiana state legislators to outlaw the "panic defense" tactic in murders of LGBTQ+ folks. Yes, Louisiana is one of 38 states that doesn't explicitly prevent lawyers from deploying the "panic defense," but from whence does this "panic" supposedly issue? Oh, from the "panic" a defendant feels when propositioned by someone gay or transgender or otherwise not prototypically "straight." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that almost every man in America has gotten hit on by a dude without murdering him. Murder equals unlawful death plus malicious premeditation, without the absurd excuse that he just couldn't cope with the guy who hit on him! So I would say folks who deploy the "panic defense" are anti-law and order.

Action: concerning taxes, voting rights, food safety, polluter welfare, law and order, and Medicare for All.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk not to be cowardly about raising taxes on the rich, tell your Senators to pass the For the People Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Baby Food Safety Act, the End Polluter Welfare Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the Medicare for All 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, or use the email/petition links (where applicable) in the following paragraphs.

First things first. Dan Pfeiffer, clearly one of the better political thinkers to emerge from the Obama Administration, argues that Democrats ought to "lean into" tax hikes on corporations, because, and I quote, "(t)he idea that Biden’s proposals to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy are a political liability flies in the face of all of the polling as well as basic common sense." Hear, hear! Voters reward courage; they don't reward "this is the best we could do" or "Republicans wouldn't let us do more," and they sure as hell don't reward "I couldn't do the right thing because I'm in a swing district." You know what "swing" voters crave most from their reps? That they do the right thing! And they'll settle for the "courageous" thing, so you want to do an actual courageous thing before Republicans do the fake courageous thing. So go ahead and call your (Democratic) Reps and Senators and tell them they'll only get to keep their majorities if they do the right thing and raise corporate taxes. You can also tell them, if you're feeling ornery, that you wouldn't want to suspect that they're pretending not to understand this very basic calculus so that they don't offend their big donors. Votes win elections, not cash.

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to pass H.R. 1/S. 1, the For the People Act. The Senate Rules Committee deadlocked on the bill on Tuesday, but Sen. Schumer used his power as Senate Majority Leader to advance the bill to the full Senate anyway, so now's the time to put the pressure on your Senators. They're no doubt hearing from the other side, though I'm not sure what arguments the other side could reasonably advance -- how can they say it's "a solution in search of a problem" when numerous state legislatures have repeatedly demonstrated the problem? How can they argue "record turnout in 2020" when states scurry to pass laws to ensure that turnout doesn't happen again? How can they say "bills like this should be passed in a bipartisan manner" when Republicans have acted in an entirely partisan manner for over a dozen years? Seriously, their arguments are dung. They need to hear that killing gerrymandering dead, disclosing big campaign donors, and ensuring same-day and automatic voter registration are actually pretty popular.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1019, the Baby Food Safety Act. Because baby food sure as hell shouldn't have high levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in it! And the Baby Food Safety Act would actually set maximum levels for these toxins' presence in baby food, and establish mechanisms for lowering those levels as advancing scientific research would require. Why would we give babies food that might expose them to cancer and brain damage? The more pertinent question might be "why did big food manufacturing corporations do nothing about these things even when they knew about them?" Because a President Trump would let them get away with it no matter what we said, that's why. We have a better chance of influencing a President Biden in our direction, and that's why we need to tell our Congressfolk to pass this bill.

The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2102/S. 1167, the End Polluter Welfare Act. The bill would, as its title suggests, cut some $15 billion annually in subsidies to big polluting corporations (like oil and gas drilling corporations) who hardly need the taxpayer help. And yet they'll fight to the death to keep them! Even as they admit to each other that tax breaks hardly matter in the decisions they make! (Hey, don't take my word for that -- take former Bush Mobb Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's word for it!) And, ah, why are we giving these handouts to polluters when we could be giving more of a hand up to solar and wind and geothermal? These things don't pollute anywhere near as much as fossil fuels do, and it ain't like the sun and the wind and the ground are going anywhere. Unless we destroy them all! How about we do the hard work of not doing that?

The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Big telecom corporations can't sell your personal data to law enforcement -- but they can sell them to private data broker corporations, which can sell your data to law enforcement! The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act would close that loophole right quick, which would not only protect your right to privacy on the internet (I never agreed with folks who throw up their hands and say you just don't have any privacy on the internet; it's a species of cynicism), but would also save the taxpayer money! Yes, it would, since it's easier to just buy up a bunch of data ("WE NEEDZ IT TEH NOWZ, SO PAYZ UPZ!!!!!!") than it is to get warrants. Which is why we make law enforcement get warrants.

Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. Which would expand Medicare to everyone and (by almost everyone's estimation, though they often don't put it quite like this!) cost less than funneling trillions of dollars into our current health insurance system, the system that slams you with surprise thousand-dollar medical bills all the time and moves doctors in and out of networks all the time. With Medicare for All, we'd have one network, and we'd have the bargaining power with private hospitals and doctors that a 330-million-strong pool would have! Plus we could fund it merely by capturing the money big corporations already pay private health insurers in an employer-side payroll tax (and please note that "employer-side" means "employees don't pay one penny more"). Sounds like a win for the American people all the way around.

Around the table: in which Mob Boss Mitch reminds us why he didn't speak up very often until recently.

Delivery drivers at Imperfect Foods successfully unionize, despite suffering weeks of anti-union intimidation by their employer. And Imperfect Foods is one of them-there "good" corporations, seeking, as it does, to use the approximately one in six pieces of food that simply gets thrown out because it doesn't "look" good enough. But that only tells you that we have to fight all the bosses, all the time, even the ones supposedly or actually trying to make the world a better place, because most of them still see workers as an impediment to their vision, rather than a part of it.

I said yesterday that Mitt Romney was wrong to suggest that Liz Cheney's ouster from GOP House leadership would cost Republicans votes in 2022, but an Axios-led focus group of swing voters suggests I'm wrong, as nine of 14 respondents said they could vote Republican in 2022, but eight of these said they wouldn't vote for an election-denier, and almost all of them said removing Ms. Cheney was a mistake. It's a small sample, of course, and the Axios group didn't appear to ask if Ms. Cheney's removal would itself affect their decisions. Also, too, how many of these swing voters will "get used" to an election-denier? I mean, I know what they're saying now, but let's see how the passage of time operates here.

When I hear that Republicans have apparently learned so little about "controlling" extremist movements from their inability to "control" the Tea Party that they have no chance at "controlling" the Trumpist movement, I feel compelled to respond: they have no damn choice! Either they can pander to the Trumpholes or they can persuade large numbers of people that they have real policies and a real vision, an undertaking they haven't attempted since the reign of George W. Bush. But let's not call either the Tea Party or the Trumpholes a "grass-roots movement" -- they're both big money-driven movements.

Ho hum, ex-FCC Chair Ajit Pai promised that deregulation would mean lower internet prices, but internet prices rose considerably faster over the last four years than inflation. He also promised that getting rid of net neutrality would spur internet infrastructure investment, and oh I don't even need to finish that story. Mr. Pai's response? Well, if you just count it differently you'll see prices actually went down, which should impress no one who pays an actual cable bill. Why do they charge whatever they want? Because everyone needs it, that's why! Seems to me our FCC dealt with the "everyone needs it" part covered when they classified broadband as a utility in their net neutrality order from 2015; then, of course, Mr. Pai's FCC repealed it. Let me know if I'm belaboring the point here.

Glenn Youngkin wins Republican nomination for Virginia Governor. The biggest Trumphole in the race finished third, but of course Mr. Youngkin isn't some "moderate," and he's certainly no "outsider," not if he worked for the Carlyle Group. And Mr. Trump has endorsed him, probably enjoying his refusal to even say "Joe Biden won the election" out loud. Can he win in a state getting bluer as we speak? Of course he can! His likely opponent will be former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a man almost tailor-made to depress turnout in these times, and remember that he barely beat Ken Cuccinelli in 2013, at a time when it seemed there couldn't be a more obnoxious right-winger than Ken Cuccinelli.

Finally, you may have missed this dung nugget from Sen. Mitch McConnell (E-KY), regarding his opposition to the For the People Act: "(t)hat is precisely what this is about: quiet the voices of citizens, particularly who gather together in 501(c)4s in order to express their views." Gosh, does he know how that sounds? I guarantee you that every swing voter who heard the phrase "501(c)4s" either promptly fell asleep or decided Mr. McConnell was a pretentious elitist. They might even have decided that he -- and not the ones relating tales of folks of color still having their vote suppressed -- was being the "hysterical" one!

Action: concerning law and order, immigration, antibiotic abuse, food safety, marketing to children, and dog-fighting.

Long story short: tell California judges to stop setting absurdly-high bail that no one can afford to pay, tell President Biden to reunite the rest of the families torn apart by President Trump's family separation policy, tell McDonald's to stop enabling antibiotic abuse on factory farm, tell Pepsi to get glyphosate out of its food products, tell YouTube to stop using autoplay and recommendation features on its Kids channel, and tell Russia to ban dog-fighting. You can find email/petition links for each of these action alerts in the following paragraphs. Good hunting!

Color of Change helps you tell the California Judicial Council to stop setting bail higher than defendants can reasonably pay. Some folks will react HOWZ CANZ TEH COPZ DOZ THEIRZ JOBZ!!!!!, but note well the words "defendant" and "reasonably pay" in the previous sentence -- if we're putting people in jail indefinitely before convicting them of a crime, we're not being a law-and-order nation; we're being a dick-swinging nation, and we should stop doing that. Furthermore, the California Supreme Court has lately ruled, in In re Humphrey, that "conditioning freedom solely on whether an arrestee can afford bail is unconstitutional," so the Judicial Council would be following the law in issuing a new guidance that conforms with the law. We want judges to follow the law, don't we?

The ACLU helps you tell the Biden Administration to keep reuniting families separated by the Trump Administration's evil border policy. Yeah, they've begun that process, but they've got at least a thousand families to go. And you'll specifically ask them to reunify families, bring them to America, protect them from deportation, provide support for them, and stop separating them to begin with. Some folks will bristle at the prospect that having your family carved up would gain you immediate, if not permanent, entry into the United States. But, really, it's the least we could do for them after putting them through everything we've put them through. And the likelihood they'll turn out to be (fill in name of whomever Republicans are drumming up hate against this week) is really very small. Most immigrants are running from far more serious trouble than what we imagine they'll create here!

Avaaz helps you tell big fast food chain corporation McDonald's to stop sourcing its meat from farms that abuse antibiotics. If we must have big corporations, we might as well leverage them toward our ends -- a big customer like McDonald's can change farming practices all over if we can use the Big Stick of Bad PR to make them stop getting their beef and chicken from farms that pump their animals full of antibiotics. This will be a life-and-death matter at some point in the future, because using seven out of every 10 antibiotics on nominally healthy feed animals sure is a great way of creating superbugs that can't be put down with antibiotics. It could take us back to the 18th century, a time when your next cut could kill you. Must that be the price we pay so we can have absurdly rich big ag executives?

In a similar vein, the Environmental Working Group helps you tell Pepsi to get glyphosate out of its food products. I don't just mean the infamous soda pop, I mean Quaker Oats, Lays, Tostitos, Doritos, Rold Gold, Life, and Rice-a-Roni, among others, and Pepsi owns all of these! Scientists have linked glyphosate to cancer for many years now, and Pepsi has done considerably less about glyphosate in their food than other big food manufacturing corporations, to the point where some Pepsi foods have nearly five times as much glyphosate in them as scientists consider safe. Again, Pepsi owns a lot of foods, and they don't like the Big Stick of Bad PR any more than anyone else, so if they do the right thing here, they can effect a lot of positive change in America. Just as their executives imagined they'd do, I'm sure, the day they set out to be rich!

Fight for the Future helps you tell YouTube to stop offering autoplay and recommendations features on its YouTube Kids channel. Because then the kids just watch videos all damn day! And they watch videos that are bad for them all damn day! You don't trust YouTube to give you good suggestions about anything but music videos, do you? I have friends who watch a lot of YouTube videos -- good YouTube videos about politics and science, they do exist! -- and then get recommendations to watch Jordan Peterson videos. Their algorithms don't serve your interests, after all, they serve YouTube's interests, and YouTube's interest is in keeping you watching videos, and shoving rage-inducing videos in your face is the easiest way to keep you watching. Why would we imagine they'd run a kids' channel any better than that?

Finally, Care2 helps you tell the Russian government to ban dog-fighting. You'd prefer the Russian government ban Vladimir Putin, perhaps, but just consider how awful dog-fighting is from the dog's point of view. Would you enjoy the humans you trust forcing you to fight another dog for several hours until one of you dies? Would you enjoy being the "bait dog" who has all his teeth removed and his mouth sealed shut so other dogs can practice their killing skills? How would you bright-side your way out of these scenarios? Yeah, dog-fighting is as old as the hills in Russia, but just because it's "history" doesn't mean we need to keep doing it, or tolerating it. See "statues, Confederate" for more information on that topic.

Around the table: in which several "establishment" Republicans misread the pulse of the party.

As Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) could be expelled from GOP House leadership today, Mitt Romney argues that such an expulsion will cost Republicans votes in 2022, but I doubt he's right about that. I'm sure he wishes that were the case, but Republican voters don't listen to Mitt Romney or his kind anymore -- half of them only listen to their Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump now, and the other half go along with them, whether out of misguided loyalty or a sincere desire to hurt Democrats. What's good or right sure as hell won't enter into this nefarious calculus.

ProPublica describes what happened after an out-of-work event planner bought emergency health insurance in 2019, after substantial changes to health insurance regulation, and then got slammed with over $33,000 in surprise bills! You can read the article and say well, he should have read the fine print, but only if you read all the fine print you come across, which you don't, and anyway why would a $2,500 limit on surgical costs be in the fine print? Because anyone who's ever had surgery knows that every surgery costs a lot more than that, that's why? Folks, this is Trumpcare.

You won't be surprised to learn that the Trump Administration spied on three journalists who reported on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, but you may be surprised to learn that the Biden Administration defended that spying in court. Oh but we were investigating leaks, not reporters sounds like BS to most of America by now, hopefully, though I can see why this Justice Department only just notified the relevant news organizations of something that happened three years ago -- I mean, you didn't think the last Justice Department cared about following the law, did you? Still, remember that Joe Biden was Barack Obama's Vice President, and that Barack Obama was no friend to journalists, either.

As a federal panel stands ready to rename a bunch of racist place names in Texas, let's see how many rageheads defend them as a "vital" part of "history." But where were they when Candlestick Park became 3Com Park? Doesn't matter that 3Com bought it and thus "earned" the "right" to rename it -- Candlestick Park is a part of history! That's the argument! Seriously, if you had nothing to say about the renaming of Candlestick Park, you have no standing to oppose the re-naming of Negrohead Lake, let alone the long-overdue dismantling of Confederate hero statues.

When you read that "Election Researchers Reveal That Flexible Voting Options Boosted 2020 Turnout," you are reminded, I would hope, that even 2020 Presidential loser Donald Trump got 74 million votes, nearly five million more than the previous all-time Presidential vote getter (Barack Obama in 2008). I shouldn't have to remind you that Joe Biden got 81 million votes, of course, and I would advise that you ostracize anyone who gets triggered by these numbers.

Noted right-wing consultant Frank Luntz thinks Donald Trump's constantly whining about how he "won" the 2020 election will actually depress right-wing turnout in 2022. He's right that Donald Trump absolutely will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants to be, but he's wrong about his main point. Trumpholes won't read TEH 2020 ELECSHUNZ WAZ TEH STOLENZ!!!! as "it's no use voting" but as "let's all vote so they can't steal it this time." Why doesn't he see that? Maybe he does, and he's just trying to lull people into a false sense of security! Hey, I wouldn't put it past him. And he can always prove me wrong.

Action: concerning taxes, health care, chemical safety, public transportation, and pollution.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to make the American Rescue Plan's Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, fight big pharma price gouging, pass the PFAS Action Act and the Freedom to Move Act, and keep bigger, heavier trucks off our roads. 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 -- or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit (or CTC) expansion from the American Rescue Plan permanent. The CTC expansion provides an extra $300/month to parents of children under 6 and $250/month to parents of children between 6 and 17, and I can tell you from experience that an extra $250 a month goes a long way. I guess all the Republicans who voted against it but will still try to take credit for it will argue that it was only supposed to last a year anyway, but, ah, are children going to stop having needs after this pandemic is over? The CTC expansion is good policy that'll cut child poverty in half in America, and would cost a mere $109 billion (out of some $4 trillion-plus in federal expenditures) in 2021, and when was the last time our government spent $109 billion to do people some good, instead of just throwing it away on corporate welfare? That would be a habit we would want to help them cultivate.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight big pharma corporation price gouging. Surely our Congressfolk know we all hate big pharma price gouging -- diabetics who spend more on insulin than they do on their rent or mortgage certainly know it more acutely! -- but we still have to tell them we expect them to do something about it, and even though the Social Security Works petition doesn't get into many specifics, there's still space in the comments for you to get into specifics. Like, say, allowing Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices, which even the right-wing Mercatus Center says would save over $80 billion annually. And $80 billion in lower costs for the taxpayer could help pay for a lot of better things -- like expanding Medicare.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the PFAS Action Act. The House passed the PFAS Action Act last term, and even though that bill attracted two dozen Republican votes in the House, Mob Boss Mitch wanted no part of it in the Senate, which meant two more years of "forever chemicals" that never break down and which scientists have linked to cancer and reproductive issues in our water. The PFAS Action Act would require PFAS manufacturers to clean up their own messes -- which seems as unprecedented in our politics as it doesn't in our parenting! -- and would require our EPA to limit the amount of PFAS chemicals that can appear in our water. That would cause a lot of non-stick pan makers and firefighting foam makers to make their products differently, but c'mon! This is a can-do nation!

The National Campaign for Transit Justice helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Move Act. What would the Freedom to Move Act do? It would offer grants to states and localities so they can offer fare-free public transportation -- it is public transportation, after all! -- and also so they can build out more public transportation to underserved urban and rural areas. The bill would authorize $5 billion in grants annually, which one could fund almost entirely by repealing oil and gas drilling subsidies! Those are big, big private industries that don't need taxpayer help, after all, but public transportation by definition belongs to us, and everyone who wants to use public trans should be able to. I am irritated to find any of these are controversial matters.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep bigger, heavier trucks off our highways. But bigger, heavier trucks can haul more, says the tiny little Satan sitting on my right shoulder, and thus save money! Yeah, Satan always loses me at "save money." Bigger, heavier trucks can haul more, that's true, but bigger, heavier trucks can also overturn more easily and they can also use more gas and pollute more easily and they also damage our roads and bridges more easily, so there has to be a point where having the biggest, heaviest truck actually costs us all more money, even if it allows some trucking executive to gild the plumbing in his 14th vacation home. And no one's advocating hauling goods in Geo Smart cars. Satan was just about to tell me they were. But I'm so on to Satan.

Around the table: in which we find politicians cynical and weak *but I repeat myself*.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy evaluates the tax hikes in President Biden's American Families Plan, and finds that they only affect the very richest taxpayers. When you hear that dividends and capital gains taxes would go up, and the hedge fund manager loophole would be closed, you would kind of suspect that. But why do we never dream of bringing the top income tax rate above where we put it in 1993? I've said it should be in the 90s for at least 15 years, and gosh, even Steve Bannon dreamed of a top tax bracket in the 40s, and he's a total asshole.

Surprise, surprise, big telecom corporations spent over $4 million generating fake anti-net neutrality comments during our FCC's 2017 effort to repeal the 2015 Open Internet order enshrining net neutrality principles in law. Our FCC did repeal that order, as we knew it would whether or not it could claim a massive grassroots upswell of anti-net neutrality sentiment that had never before reared its head. Maybe now our FCC can get it right again? Once we get a fifth FCC Commissioner in there, I mean.

As our Justice Department starts scrutinizing the Cyber Ninja's "audit" of votes in Maricopa County, AZ, we are reminded that Arizona has already conducted two statewide audits and that Cyber Ninjas aren't exactly very concerned with chain-of-custody issues. That's in addition to Cyber Ninjas's obvious pro-Trump bias, of course. The Daily Show, by the way, has probably produced the best summary of the Arizona "audit" (start about 2:54 into the clip).

In a related note, Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey starts providing state Department of Public Safety protection for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs after she receives death threats from folks ginned up by the "audit" of Maricopa County votes. Newt Gingrich might call that an "unintended consequence," except he only says that about liberal stuff, and anyway it's probably not unintended, strictly speaking. Anyway, what says "I know I'm right and I'm deeply secure about it" more than threatening a political opponent's life?

If you're as tired of hearing How Great Liz Cheney Is as I am, you'll enjoy John Nichols's lengthy examination of Ms. Cheney's House career at The Nation, in which she stands on just about the wrong side of every issue and is a prick about it, and Adam Serwer's piece at The Atlantic, which concentrates mostly on Ms. Cheney's devotion to authoritarianism. Gosh, at least John McCain took an unorthodox position on campaign finance and for a time stood to his party's left on taxes, but Liz Cheney, like Adam Kitzinger, gives us nothing similar for us to hang on to.

Finally, Mob Boss Mitch wants to call a Waaaambulance over teaching of actual racism in public schools, but 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones has the right response: "He's saying that the truth is too difficult for apparently our nation to bear and that we're far too fragile to be able to withstand the scrutiny of the truth." Yes, it is always important to remember that the American people are tough even when our leaders are weaklings. And I do get tired of hearing all this whining about "divisiveness" from folks who are themselves the great practitioners of the unholy art of division.

Action: concerning abortion, voting rights, discrimination, and "bipartisanship."

Long story short: tell the Texas state legislature to reject an anti-abortion, anti-law and order bill; tell your Congressfolk to pass the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Equality Act; and tell your Congressfolk that you want results, not "bipartisanship." 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, or use the email/petition links in the following paragraphs. And good hunting!

First things first. The Texas state legislature, not satisfied with suppressing voting rights and injuring trans children, continues its reign of terror with HB 1515, the so-called Texas Heartbeat Act, which is not only one of those bills that would make abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat can be detected -- i.e., before most women even know they're pregnant! -- but would also allow anyone in Texas to sue any abortion provider for violating any of HB 1515's provisions. The bill's authors sell that as a way of keeping state law enforcement out of, well, enforcing this particular law like that's some kind of "compromise" or something, but we have a thing called "standing" in lawsuits for a reason -- to prevent precisely this kind of chaos where anyone who "feels" aggrieved by anything, ever, can sue anyone they like over anything they feel aggrieves them. Standing typically requires a) evidence of direct injury and b) some degree of certainty that a court can actually redress it. But once again, the party that constantly whines about "frivolous lawsuits" seems determined to create more of them with this anti-law and order bill. Progress American helps you oppose it.

Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Mob Boss Mitch McConnell (E-KY) says "100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration" -- again, apparently zero percent of his focus is on serving the good people of Kentucky! -- so let's contemplate what that "100% focus" would mean with regard to his plans to stonewall the For the People Act: it would mean state legislatures could keep drawing Rorschach-looking legislative districts that exclude individual houses on individual streets just so undeserving incumbents can be easily re-elected; it would mean states could continue to use bogus "databases" to pretend that citizens with common first and last names are voting in several states at once; it would mean state legislatures could continue to restrict early voting, mail-in voting, and automatic and same-day voting registration at their own whim; and it would mean no campaign finance disclosure of big donors even though virtually everyone in America wants that and such disclosure doesn't actually violate big donors' rights. So let's end the Age of McConnell by telling our Senators what they should really do.

Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. What would the continuing Age of McConnell mean for this bill? It would mean our Justice Department could do next-to-nothing about states that continue to suppress votes. It's no accident that, after our Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision -- which eviscerated this power granted to our Justice Department by the Voting Rights Act -- that those very same Southern states our Court felt the Voting Rights Act now "unfairly" targeted made a slew of changes to their voting rights laws! These changes just so happened to cement Republicans' unearned advantage in those states. So if Mitch McConnell gets his way here, Republicans will eventually make it so that no non-white person anywhere can vote, not that they'd ever put it like that, of course.

The Daily Kos Liberation League and People for the American Way both help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. What will Mob Boss Mitch's "100% focus" on stopping this new Administration" mean here? It will mean that landlords can continue to refuse to rent to gay and transgender folks merely because they're gay or transgender, that banks can continue to refuse to serve gay and transgender folks merely because they're gay or transgender, and that states and localities can continue to keep transgender folks out of public restrooms merely because they find them icky. That may not mean much to you if you're not gay or transgender, but it would mean a lot to those who are, because they would continue to get pushed around by the law instead of be protected by it, as we all deserve. Ignore all that crap about boys playing girls' sports. I've gone into why it's crap a bunch of times already, and I won't go into it anymore. At some point, bad ideas have to die if they've lost the argument. And the folks who keep repeating them should be treated as whiners.

Finally, because they need to be told at least a million times before they get it, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk that you do not want bipartisanship if it means good legislation can't pass or only bad legislation can pass. Seems commonsensical, until you listen to Joe Manchin say the same stupid crap over and over again like he has no idea which political party just tried to overturn the election on January 6. Was he even in the building? Anyway, when did we hear about "the importance of bipartisanship" in 2017, when Republicans controlled every branch of government? Approximately never. We only hear about it when Democrats control every branch of government! Because Democrats might actually do something good for people! I'm sick and tired of living in the Age of McConnell, where "bipartisanship" means "Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want." The American people matter, too. And we need to step up and remind them of that, every damn day for the rest of our lives if necessary.

Around the table: cryptocurrency and other mysteries explained!

Robert Verbruggen at the National Review compares the trend of Republican-run states refusing enhanced unemployment benefits to those years Republican-run states refused the Medicaid expansion. In that they're both unpopular? Why, no! He thinks refusing enhanced unemployment benefits is an "opportunity" for Republicans! That's cynical horserace-speak, of course, but it also ignores the plain reality that folks notice when they're making less money. He can't even bring himself to evaluate the possibility that employers can't find workers because they won't pay more, and says on two occasions that he wished the research was better, which does beg the question then why even write the article? Almost refreshing, it is, to find so-smart-they're-dumb types somewhere other than the Democratic Party.

Ho hum, Republican Congressdolts are still promoting the Big Gummint relief they all voted against. This ain't a matter of simply informing your constituents what help our government offers, as one spokeshack hilariously tries to spin it, but a matter of bragging about it like you didn't do your damnedest to kill it, as Rep. Malliotakis (R-NY) does in calling one slice of that bill an "achievement()" of hers even though she, like every other Republican in Congress, voted "nay." Just wait until they run re-election ads talking about the things the American Rescue Plan did (and, if we're lucky, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan) like they voted for any of them! I hope Democrats have the minimal courage to point that out; otherwise, they may find a Republican House that refuses to certify a 2024 Biden landslide.

President Biden announces he'll support waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents so more people can get vaccinated, and the big pharma corporations respond with their usual assholery, with one CEO saying the move will "disadvantage patients by undermining existing incentives to develop vaccines and therapeutics for future pandemics," by which I guess she means she's smarter than you because she knows more big words than you and can string together endless prepositional phrases. I kid, of course -- the waiver really won't "undermine existing incentives," not just because it'd be an emergency waiver that would end when the pandemic ends, but also because the primary "existing incentive" -- dead people don't spend money on health care -- ain't going away.

Julie Hollar at FAIR instructs us that "In Media Framing, Trans Kids Are Problems to Be Solved -- Not People With Rights." Which means a) not letting very many trans people speak, even in stories that purport to be about them, and b) swamping trans people beneath a "debate" that's all about the drama. When I read that our "liberal" media finds trans issues "vexing," I'm reminded how often they used to present AIDS as an issue that mainly affected heteros struggling with how to feel about it, rather than the folks suffering and dying from it.

Bank of England Governor says that cryptocurrency has "no intrinsic value" and that folks who invest it in should be "prepared to lose all (their) money." Don't understand cryptocurrency? That's because they don't want you to understand it! In a world where we can use an ATM almost anywhere on Earth and can pay bills without writing and mailing checks, it's hard to see why a thing like cryptocurrency needs to exist. Except, of course, so some people can con other people out of their real money.

Finally, the lawyer for one of the January 6 seditionists has advanced the argument that his role in the attempted coup was really kinda Fox News's fault, because his client did almost nothing but watch Fox News for the previous six months. I actually don't think "watching Fox News non-stop" is an addiction, certainly not the way, say, alcoholism is, so my response to all that would be ah, no, asshole, you're on your own. I mean, we can't just stop blaming people who do evil merely because Satan whispered repeatedly in their ear.

Action: concerning jobs, pollution, Guantánamo, our Post Office, and un-Foxing your cable box.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk that yes home and community care service spending absolutely belongs in the American Jobs Plan and to pass the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act; tell President Biden to close Guantánamo Bay already; tell your Senators to confirm USPS Board of Governors nominees so they can fire Postmaster General DeJoy; and tell your local cable provider to "un-Fox your cable box." 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 get your Reps' and Senators' phone numbers, or use the email/petition links in the paragraphs below. And good hunting! It's almost the weekend!

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk that we should absolutely invest in home care and community care services. The Republicans are all up on the TV telling us that anything other than roads and bridges isn't "real infrastructure" (which they're won't vote to fund either, by the way), but actually, home and community care are real infrastructure -- if you think, you know, that civilization consists of people, rather than things. And if you've ever done home and community care (ahem!), then you know it's absolutely essential work that, frankly, we're going to need more of as the years go by. So don't let Republicans tell you your work isn't essential, or "real." And, ah, why do we let seditionists tell us what's essential or real again?

Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 984, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. S. 984 would make plastics corporations responsible for single-use plastic waste, by forcing them to contribute financially to the collection and processing of all that waste; that would be quite the welcome change from having everyone else clean up all of their mess. And then we'd see all that trash disappear right quick! Because they'd then make recyclable and reusable plastics, of course. Corporations don't like losing money, as you know. Don't worry that this change will be "too much" for them or that it'll "kill jobs." Corporations always complain about change -- but they can adjust more easily than us, because they have more money.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell President Biden to close the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention center. Guantánamo has been a stain on our nation for almost 20 years now, a place supposedly for detaining "the worst of the worst" terrorists, but when they hold you there for five or 10 or 14 years (like Mansoor Adayfi, whose book Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo comes out soon), they're all but announcing you're not a terrorist. Remember the Obama-era formulation "too difficult to prosecute, but too dangerous to release"? No one is "too dangerous" to charge, convict, and sentence. If you think so, go live in a dictatorship already, because you're not tough enough for civilization.

Common Cause helps you tell your Senators to confirm President Biden's three USPS Board of Governors nominees -- so they can then fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whose service-cutting and price-hiking ways make a mockery not just of our Post Office but of America. Where's the can-do spirit, Mr. DeJoy? Saying "we've got to raise prices and cut services" when our Post Office was running a crap-ton better before he got there sure ain't the can-do spirit I grew up with. You've heard that the reconstituted USPS Board of Governors might not fire Mr. DeJoy after all? We'll address that with the Board of Governors shortly. But your Senators should still know that you want him fired.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to "un-Fox your cable box" -- that is, get your cable corporation to dump Fox News -- here's the link. Now, perhaps you're saying to yourself, self, what about all the other far right news channels like OAN and Newsmax? Are we going to boot them off our cable box too? And the answer would be: sure, if we've got to! But this is mainly about Starving the Beast that is Fox News of all the user fees they collect from big cable corporations, which stick those fees in their prices for your basic cable package. OAN and Newsmax will surely become Beasts in due time, but in the meantime, let's teach our cable providers that there'll be a price for carrying noxious news channels full of drama and junk news.

Around the table: drama and not even *good* drama, part 876.

When I hear that the state of Montana will no longer offer the enhanced unemployment benefits after June 27 because "(n)early every sector in our economy faces a labor shortage," per Gov. Gianforte, I feel compelled to ask: is no one considering the possibility that folks won't get jobs because the jobs don't pay enough? You don't live like a king on unemployment benefits, but trying to pay people in dung pellets ain't gonna move a lot of behinds. And gosh, can our "liberal" media maybe consider this in their reporting? It wasn't that long ago that "offer workers more money" was a strategy corporations would moot out loud.

Right-wing organization continues its "audit" of Maricopa County (AZ) 2020 election votes, applying some very strange practices that could well be part of an effort to lie that the Democrats somehow stole the election. Earlier an Arizona Republic reporter caught them with blue pens (which can change ballots) in the auditorium where they're conducting the "audit," and the UV rays they're casting on ballots could erase marks as well; in any case, maybe we should look for fraud on the other side, since the worst President in American history somehow finished within half a percentage point of Mr. Biden in Arizona. (We have since learned that they're using UV rays to find bamboo in mail-in ballots. Get it, bamboo? Because China? People who would yell at you for calling them "racist" are yukking it up at that one.)

From Judd Legum at Popular Information we learn that even without Donald Trump, right-wing news sites (or perhaps "news" sites!) are absolutely crushing on Facebook. By my count, a mere six of the top 15 news sites getting the most Facebook "engagements" (clicks, likes, shares, etc.) are either center or center-left; the rest are hard right, and if you've never heard of The Daily Wire or Western Journal or Rumble, I wouldn't blame you. I provide this public service announcement in case anyone you know still thinks Facebook is actually censoring right-wingers.

Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch says "Britain Risks Cementing in Power a Corrupt and Incompetent Government (i.e., Boris Johnson's) in Undeserved Gratitude for the Vaccine." And if you're thinking "no one's thanking Donald Trump for the vaccine in America," remember also that he's out of office; Mr. Johnson's term doesn't end until 2024, which, sadly, leaves plenty of time for good Britons to get used to him, particularly since Labour has replaced Mr. Corbyn with yet another moderate. (If Scotland gains independence before then -- not probable, admittedly -- Labour will be even deeper in the muck.)

Finally, in yet another reminder that if you've come to today's conservative movement for calm, sober, adult thought, you've come to the wrong place, Tucker Carlson slammed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for failing to disclose a living arrangement with noted right-wing consultant Frank Luntz -- without mentioning that Mr. Luntz once employed Mr. Carlson's brother Buckley, and their working relationship apparently did not end well. So, he sucks up to Donald Trump by slamming Kevin McCarthy and settles a personal score with Frank Luntz? Sounds like a win-win! For Tucker Carlson, of course; not for anyone else. No truth to the rumor, by the way, that he has four other brothers named Chumley, Badges, Charles Maurras, and Taz.

Action: concerning jobs, taxes, broadband, the Middle East, and pollution.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk that "going big" on the infrastructure/jobs bill is more important than "going bipartisan"; tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, make broadband internet more accessible to all, and stop Israel from oppressing Palestinian children; and tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject a slew of pro-pollution bills. Use the tools in the upper-right corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's (and PA state legislators') phone numbers, or use the email/petition links in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the American Jobs Plan "big, bold, and green" -- and reject weakening it just to get Republicans on board. Not just because Republicans tried to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, either. Fact is, we've got a lot of problems in America that we can address by a) raising corporate taxes and then b) spending that money on projects -- like rebuilding sewer lines and building out renewable energy -- that'll make this nation greater. When everyone has clean water, we'll be greater. When everyone uses energy that doesn't kill the planet, we'll be greater. And when everyone has a job helping accomplish these things, well, you get the idea. Even if Republicans don't.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax. It's a piddling little tax, frankly -- two percent on assets over $50 million, and then three percent on assets over $1 billion -- but it'd raise a lot of money (upwards of $250 billion annually), and frankly these billionaires made out like bandits during this pandemic. Naturally, with all their money, they can buy more time with folks like Joe Manchin and tell tall tales about how "dangerous" it would be to raise taxes on the rich right now. But according to them, there'll never be a good time to do that. Can't raise taxes on the rich because the economy's bad! Can't raise taxes on the rich because the economy's good! All we have is our voices, so we'd better use them.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1783/S. 745, the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All (or AAIA) Act. We've all seen, I would hope, how integral broadband has become over the last year, thanks to the pandemic, but if you live in a rural or urban area or a reservation, you don't have the access the rest of us have, thanks to big telecom corporations refusing to build out into areas where they can't make money hand over fist! The AAIA would, among other good works, better-fund the FCC's Emergency Broadband Benefit program and pre-empt state laws that forbid municipalities from offering their own broadband services. Which are excellent wherever they're tried; just ask the good residents of Chattanooga, TN.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2590, the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. The bill would keep our government from spending taxpayer money on Israeli oppression of Palestinians, including putting kids in military detention, demolishing homes, and grabbing more Palestinian territory. We're already violating international law by doing all of that! And most Americans would prefer we didn't enable their behavior. And no, you're not an "anti-Semite" for not wanting your taxpayer money to hurt other people. Even American Jews have been hearing that for years! Best to define "anti-Semitism" as, you know, things that hurt Jews, not things that merely interfere with Israel's political aims.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: the Sierra Club helps you tell your PA state Senators to reject five objectively pro-pollution bills. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but these bills (HB 72, 139, 288, 939, and 950) would hamstring our Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) from issuing clean air and clean water regulations, mainly by granting the legislature additional powers to stonewall those regulations. All for the greater glory of gas and oil drilling corporations! The law already grants our DEP the power to issue regulations; if you don't like the regulations they issue, you leave public comments, which our DEP has to take into account in making a final decision. You don't demand tenth, eleventh, and twelfth innings in a game you lost in the standard nine.

UPDATE. The Sierra Club link in the final paragraph above no longer directs you to the five-bill action alert, possibly because the state House has now passed all those bills; calling your state Senators about the five bills would be the only option left, and the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page would help with that.

Around the table: in which we find the American people courageous, and the politicians cowardly and the media personalities decadent, as usual.

Surprise, surprise: a Politico/Morning Consult poll finds support for the American Jobs Plan actually ticks up when you mention the price tag. So if Americans aren't scared of spending a lot of money to make America greater, why are the politicians? Because the big corporations get in their ear all the time and drown us out, that's why. We just have to be louder. We'll do that shortly.

Facebook keeps Donald Trump banned from its platform -- but says the ban should never have been permanent and will revisit the matter in six months. Naturally right-wingers who don't read are whining about it, and if Facebook were a public utility, they might have a point. Of course I said might, and of course they'd never support actually making Facebook a public utility, and in any case Facebook is really a publishing house, even if loopholes in the law permit them to evade the responsibility publishing houses have. And publishing houses don't have to publish you! Otherwise they could never reject a manuscript, no matter how awful! Anyway, Donald Trump just started a blog, so nobody's trampling his rights.

President Biden rescinds Trump-era rule that would have allowed big corporations to classify more of their gig workers as "independent contractors." We should treat gig workers as employees, so they can earn a decent wage and enjoy overtime and worker safety protections; no 11th Commandment mandates otherwise. And if the stocks of pseudo-corporations like Uber and Lyft take a bit of a tumble, who cares? No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to be a shareholder. And no one has a "right" to get rich quick in the stock market. Gosh, I'm old enough to remember when "get rich quick" was something nasty you'd say.

A Public Integrity/AP/Univision report reveals that employers who steal your wages rarely get punished. And repeat offenders don't get punished that often, either, though, you know, you'd think they would. No, a prosecutor shouldn't use past offenses to mislead juries into convicting people of current crimes, but Jesus Mary and Joseph if you've been told not to steal your employee's wages, then you should be punished harder for doing it again and again. Biggest total non-surprise: if you're Black or Brown, you're more likely to get shafted.

When I read that "The Real History of Anglo-Saxons Undermines Racists’ Theories," I say well, of course history undermines racist theory, not just because the Anglo-Saxons were actually quite diverse, but because history always undermines ideology, and "racist theory" isn't theory per se, but merely the articulation of rage. I also say, gosh, what an understated headline, and not in a good way -- strikes me as a way of being "fair" to racist rageheads, not a way of saying you won't let them get under your skin. If you got all the facts, go ahead and flaunt them, that's what I say.

Finally, Tucker Carlson says that if colleges require their students to get the COVID vaccine, that means (due to some not-fully-articulated slippery-slope reasoning, I have to assume) that "(t)hey will have total power over your body and your mind forever." "(T)otal power," "forever," achieved through a single vaccine? Gosh, dramatic much? Right-wingers really have completely morphed into their worst stereotypes of liberals.

Action: concerning anti-transgender bills, racist media coverage, big tech monopolies, law and order in Oregon, and "forever chemicals."

Long story short: tell Texas state legislators to reject a slate of anti-transgender bills, tell our "liberal" media to stop exhibiting bias against folks of color, tell our federal government to break up big tech corporations, tell the state of Oregon to stop using non-unanimous juries, and tell our EPA to keep PFAS chemicals out of our clean air and clean water. You will find email/petition tools for each of these actions in the paragraphs below. Good hunting!

Change.org helps you tell Texas state legislators to reject no less than 10 anti-transgender bills they're currently mulling. And one of them is an objectively pro-child molestation genital-inspection bill, just like the one in Florida (while I'm thinking about it, here's that petition), plus a trio of bills that would call transgender operations and hormone treatments "child abuse." In other words, these bills want to force schools to actually commit child abuse, while calling things that aren't child abuse "child abuse"! And this is exactly the kind of absurdity to which you must resort when all you can do is diddle other people's rage glands. (I noticed, incidentally, that one of the candidates who made the Texas 6th runoff, state Rep. Jake Ellzey, co-sponsored HB 68. Did no one think to put that in a campaign ad? Or were they all too scared of who they'd offend?)

Free Press helps you tell our "liberal" media outlets to dismantle any anti-Black racism still in their newsrooms. Folks who think racism died in 1965 won't understand, but every time you hear that a Black man shot by cops for brandishing a cellphone was "no angel," every time you hear a Black shooting victim was "arrested 67 times," and every time you read a newspaper report parroting police reports as irrefutable truth, you are still witnessing racism in action in America today. Of course, once these newsrooms make the pledge, we'll hold them to it. In the meantime, there is some benefit to exerting popular pressure, and then measuring how much of that pressure will make media outlets respond. Another way of putting it would be "the Big Stick of Bad PR works."

Demand Progress helps you tell your President and Congressfolk to break up big tech corporations like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. There are all kinds of reasons to break up monopoly corporations in any field, but here's one relating to big tech corporations: surveillance. All these corporations Hoover up all kinds of data on you, and they also manufacture surveillance technology (like Amazon's Ring and Alexa) that your government can use against you when you haven't done a damn thing wrong. When big corporations decide you're a "terrorist" for patronizing one of their competitors, or leaving a bad review of their products, or for not buying any products at all, you'll see exactly what I mean.

Color of Change helps you tell Oregon's Attorney General to stop jailing people when they're convicted by non-unanimous juries, and to release and retry all those who went to prison without a jury unanimously convicting them. Finding the whole concept of a unanimous jury makes justice just too hard in America? It's supposed to be hard! Go live in an actual police state if you want it to be easy! And the states that used non-unanimous juries to convict criminals, guess what, used it disproportionately against non-whites. Most states stopped doing that a long time ago; now only Oregon remains, which would be a surprise to people who've only gone through Portland, but not to folks who know that Oregon put a whites-only clause in its original state constitution. So lets encourage them to start making up for all that now.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our EPA to limit PFAS dumping in our waterways. They call PFAS a "forever chemical" because even our formidable immune systems can't break it down, and scientists have linked PFAS chemicals to cancer, thyroid disease, and liver damage, among other ill effects. And you can find PFAS in just about everything -- firefighting foam, non-stick pans, stain-resistant fabrics, foam food packaging -- and now we learn that you can find it not only in your shampoo and your seafood but at the top of Mount Everest. How did that happen? Hey, it's everywhere and it hardly ever breaks down, so you don't need to be a quantum physicist to predict it'll turn up at the world's roof. So what we do now matters.