Thieves in the Temple.

Action: the Chaco Canyon vs. fracking, health insurance premium disclosure, and the dread AT&T/DirecTV merger.

Both Friends of the Earth and CREDO help youtell Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to protect the Chaco Canyon ruins from fracking. Can you believe that the Bureau of Land Management is actually mulling whether to issue permits to drill for gas near a World Heritage Site? All right, maybe it's not that hard to believe, but under Ken Salazar, Interior actually stood tall against folks who wanted to mine near the Grand Canyon, and if the Chaco Canyon isn't as well-known, the thousand-year-old Anasazi ruins and roadways and rock engravings so revered by Pueblo and Navajo deserve our protection from the dreams of gas drilling moguls and their enabling politicians who want to turn this area of New Mexico into their very own North Dakota. Archaeologists dig here, too, and generally do rather better at leaving historic areas unspoiled than corporate drillers do. Sometimes, it's not just about protecting our air from chemical geysers, or preventing our water from becoming brackish and gelatinous and flammable. It's also about protecting our civilization from those who'd assault it just to get some coin.

Meanwhile, Consumers Union helps you tell the Obama Administration to release the premiums that health insurance corporations are seeking for next year. The Obama Administration hasn't done this since 2012, thus violating the law -- the Affordable Care Act, no less, since the Affordable Care Act not only mandates that our government release proposed insurance rates annually but also make public the reasons health insurance corporations seek rate hikes. The ACA, then, actually puts health insurance corporations on the hot seat -- too often these days you find out how high a health insurance corporation wants to jack up rates almost by accident. You'd think Republicans would be howling to the heavens about the Obama Administration ignoring the law (ignoring its President's signature legislative achievement to boot!), but I've heard nothing from them about this, as if they've decided only to attack the law when it does no good to do so. Might people want to find out if insurance corporations are screwing them? Apparently taking up that cause doesn't get Mitch McConnell re-elected.

Finally, Free Press joins with Roots Action to help you tell our government to block the proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger. By now you know that I'd prefer that no corporation own any other corporation, anywhere, a predicament somehow allowed by the same Constitutional amendments that somehow permit corporations to enjoy the rights of people. And no sentient life forms (except those employed by big telecom corporations, of course!) now think that these mergers "create jobs" or "improve services," and Free Press takes pains to point out that, for the price AT&T plans to pay for DirecTV plus the price Comcast plans to pay for Time-Warner, AT&T and Comcast could put fiber broadband in every single house in America. But why do that? That doesn't redistribute wealth upward to the CEO as efficiently as greedily gobbling up every corporation you can. And did you know AT&T has promised it'll enforce net neutrality on its own networks for three years? How magnificent of them to declare they'll continue to provide the experience every single internet user in America expects as a matter of course! They might as well promise you that you'll get to eat the next dinner you make.

Around the table: old bastards and new bastards.

Pennsylvania state lawmakers introduce SB 1095, which aims to prevent "SLAPP" lawsuits, or lawsuits some people file largely to silence other people and saddle them with huge legal bills. Some of the law's skeptics say they want to be careful not to thwart suits that actually have merit, but given that they don't point out how SB 1095 does that, and that no one actually says they support thwarting lawsuits of merit, I'm going to go ahead and file such objections under "deliberate obfuscation."

PR Watch describes the ongoing battle to strengthen organic food standards. I suppose it's some small comfort to know that the USDA has never been much of a friend of good organic food standards -- in the early '90s, they did their damndest to sabotage the original rule-making process, albeit unsuccessfully. But the nominal Democrat running the USDA these days, Tom Vilsack, has proven a greater enemy of organic food than any of Mr. Bush's three USDA Secretaries. "As only Nixon could go to China..."

Surprise, surprise: Central Florida Commission on Homelessness finds that it costs about three times as much money to provide services to the homeless than it would to simply give them housing. You know the real trouble with people who bash the homeless? That they don't even have the guts to back up their tough words -- hence taxpayers pay out absurd amounts of money toward ever-more Rube Goldbergian service schemes. Why, it's almost like that's the idea.

The Wall Street Journal speculates that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker might cut a deal with the state's special prosecutor to end the present John Doe investigation of possible illegal campaign coordination between Mr. Walker and several right-wing groups. And now other right-wingers in Wisconsin -- perhaps mindful that the last John Doe investigation into Mr. Walker's doings resulted in six convictions -- worry that they'll be tossed under the bus, too. But don't be fooled into thinking the Walker juggernaut will fall apart one day because he'll run out of friends. People like Scott Walker can always buy find new friends.

Dick "Tha Dicksta" Cheney says President Obama is the "weakest President of my lifetime," and maybe even anyone's lifetime -- and he knows this because he's, you know, talked to the same elites he's been talking to for twenty years and they tell him how "alarm(ed)" they are. Gosh, Mr. Obama has already put Mr. bin Laden's head on one pike and Mr. Gadhafi's on another; how many more heads will reassure Mr. Cheney's friends? And why can't the "liberal" media treat Mr. Cheney like he deserves to be treated after all the evil he's done?

Action: savagery toward women, paid sick leave, and Frankenfoods in "natural" products.

First things first. About four weeks ago, a group of eight (seven men and one boy, aged 13) broke into a widow's house in Indonesia, accused her of adultery, and gang-raped her. But they weren't done: they also beat up the man she supposedly had an affair with, soaked them both in sewage, and then marched them over to the local cops -- who promptly protected the woman and her friend and admonished their attackers for being incomprehensible savages and usurping the function of designated law enforcement officers, right? Ah, no: they charged the woman with adultery, the punishment for which is caning, approximately nine strokes' worth, according to the province's Shari'a law. Apparently male vigilante gangs operate with impunity (or tacit encouragement) in some areas of Indonesia, going after women who wear "tight clothing" or ride motorcycles the "wrong" way. It sure sounds to me like we would all be a lot better off if these men spent a few minutes each day with their right hand, but instead they allow their rage to rule in place of a civilized society. But, this is the age of miracle and wonder, and we can embarrass and shame a society that enables such things to happen. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell Indonesian authorities to stop the caning.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers now get five paid sick days annually (in businesses with five or more employees); other municipalities have scrambled to offer some form of paid sick leave for their workers, while big corporate special interest groups have persuaded state legislatures to ban municipalities from doing that, because SOSHULIZM!!!!! But out of all the nations in the developed world, only one doesn't guarantee paid sick leave to workers. Guess who that is? That's right, we're number one! But President Obama, as usual, has the power to at least get the ball rolling; hence Democracy for America and Social Security Works join to help you tell Mr. Obama to issue an executive order mandating that all corporations who contract with our government offer paid sick leave. Mr. Obama did lately issue an executive order mandating that new federal contractors pay at least a $10.10/hour wage to their workers, and while that's no small thing, why do I suspect Mr. Obama will shrink from this task, thinking he can't rock the boat too much before midterms? His opponents never worry about sinking the boat, let alone rocking it, before an election. He ought to just do the right thing, and we ought to tell him to do it.

Finally, did you know Chobani, who makes perhaps the most popular Greek yogurt in America, uses milk from cows that eat GMO grain? How damn disappointing. While Chobani isn't USDA-certified organic, they still plaster their packaging with the word "natural," and if GMO grain finds its way into a product, in however small an amount, then it's not "natural" unless we're using a definition of "natural" so broad as to be useless. And now Chobani has secured a loan of three-quarters of a billion dollars to expand its output -- which means more GMO grain will find its way into the stomachs of the cows who provide Chobani's milk, and thus into your stomach. Chobani has said it just can't produce enough yogurt without the GMO grain in its cows' food, but genetic modification doesn't actually increase yields to any significant degree; all it does is make certain aspects of production cheaper on a large scale, which mainly serves the purpose of delivering more profits into the CEO's wallet. Still, there is-so such a thing as bad PR -- and what law of physics would prevent Chobani from using its leverage to incorporate non-GMO milk, or even organic milk, into its product? Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Chobani to stop using Frankenfoods in its products.

Around the table: how evil gets it done.

While you may know that the "liberal" media has covered the scandals at the Veterans Administration quite extensively, as is their job, you may not know that the three major nightly newscasts and America's paper of record, the New York Times, almost completely ignored a three-month-ago Republican filibuster of a bill that would have expanded health care services at the VA, as is also their job. Ever wonder how the Republicans think they could actually get away with filibustering veterans' benefits without being called "anti-troop"? Now you know. Of course, it also helps that Democrats are "too civil" to run negative ads about it in October and November.

Supreme Court justices frequently edit their opinions without advertising the changes they've made, sometimes substantively so. You don't need to know that Chief Justice Roger Taney added 18 pages to his Dred Scott opinion to know they've always been doing this (after all, how would we have found that out in 1857?), but certainly we-the-people deserve more transparency about this matter than we've been getting. And if all the Supreme Court can say in response is claim some special privilege related to being the Supreme Court -- or, worse, claim they just can't be completely impartial if they can't revise their decisions every so often without any scrutiny from anyone! -- then they'll lose the argument.

The Chamber of Commerce says it would cost too much money to comply with Dodd-Frank rules requiring corporations to reveal the ratio between what their CEOs make and what their lowest-paid workers make. Boo freaking hoo. These are our "best and brightest," right -- the only people who can turn this economy around, as they so often like to tell us? Well, they sound like a bunch of damn whiners. This is a can-do country, after all, and if fulfilling your legal obligation to the citizenry requires a little elbow grease, so be it.

American corporations report to the IRS that (among other things) the money they "earned" in five particularly notorious tax havens somehow outstripped the entire Gross Domestic Product of those nations. In other words, American corporations made more money in these countries than there was money to be made. And instead of insisting that big corporations do right by America just like small businesses and individual taxpayers do, the right-wing will tell us that we have to compete with Luxembourg by having the very same sort of lax tax laws here! And then I guess they'll blame falling bridges and rotting water mains on big government incompetence, or maybe even black people. No, I haven't been listening in on Legion of Doom staff meetings.

Surprise, surprise: when you cut off long-term unemployment benefits, people don't go back to work more quickly -- about the same number of folks are getting jobs now as there were before Congress failed to renew the program, which tends to happen in economies dominated by corporations who would really, really just rather keep all the profits for themselves and not hire anyone. And the program's expiration might actually have caused a slight increase in people who've given up looking for jobs, since being able to demonstrate that you were looking for a job was a requirement of getting the unemployment benefits that ran out. Heckuva job, Congress! Maybe all of you should be unemployed!

Finally, in case you were wondering how the braintrust, as it were, behind Operation American Spring were dealing with their failure to get tens of millions of Americans to the Mall in D.C. to overthrow our center-right President, here's how: a) by lying about the actual attendance (OAS's leader says it was really in the "thousands," not the "hundreds" other sympathetic sources reported) so that you'll forget that he guaranteed a "verified" ten million ralliers, and b) by saying OAS is "now in phase II of exercising our strength and length of phase," whatever the hell that means. I think we can safely never mention this phenomenon again.

Action: Social Security benefits and gay marriage, updating nutrition labels, and preventing the "post-antibiotic age."

Social Security Works joins with CREDO Mobilize to help you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4664/S. 2305, the Social Security and Marriage Equality Act (or SAME Act). What would the SAME Act do? The SAME Act would ensure that legally-married gay folks would be able to pass on their Social Security benefits to their partners, just like partners in straight marriages can do, regardless of where they got married or whether their state of residence recognizes their marriage. I can't wait for the usual suspects to scream ZOMG SPESHUL BENEFITZ FOR TEH GAYZ!!!!!! They're not "special benefits" any more than the right not to get fired for being gay is a "special right." And personal to the "states' rights" crowd: Social Security benefits are a federal benefit, and states should not have the right to interfere with federal law. I swear, some folks only care about "states' rights" when it would give them the power to hurt other people. And, seriously, if states want to secede over things like this, let 'em! Let 'em find out how hard it is to run a country, especially when they don't have all that Big Gummint money flowing in from the Beltway.

Meanwhile, the FDA has proposed the first major updates to its nutrition label regulations in 20 years, and the American Heart Association helps you tell the FDA to give us the most accurate and informative food labels possible. The FDA has proposed foregrounding calorie counts, basing nutrition information on more accurate serving sizes, and noting added sugars, vitamin D, and potassium; I find the "added sugars" part particularly valuable -- some foods (like fruit, milk, and tomato gravy) have sugar in them before anyone adds it in, and most of us aren't going to know how much has been added unless we're told. The FDA does not propose lowering the sodium RDA all that much, but you can ask them to do better at that. Woe betide the fool who claims that making food labels better KILLZ THA JOBZ!!!! -- as if we should allow corporations to kill jobs using any excuse. And woe betide the fool who squeals OBAMA TELLZ THA PEEPULZ WHAT TO EATZ!!!!! Nobody's putting a gun to anyone's head and making them eat more broccoli -- better food labeling just gives you, the consumer, better information as to how to feed yourself and your family.

Finally, you've likely heard that the World Health Organization (or WHO) says we may be entering a "post-antibiotic era" in which the simplest cut could result in a fatal infection. Just like in the good old days! How could this happen? Overprescription of antibiotics just-in-case is one reason, but it's not the most compelling reason -- not when four out of five antibiotics in America go to healthy feed animals, so that these animals can produce more meat and weather lousy living conditions a little better. Jesus Mary and Joseph what on Earth is wrong with just growing feed animals the old-fashioned way? The answer is not "because it's inefficient" or even "because worldwide demand for meat is rising" -- the answer is "because it doesn't redistribute wealth upward to CEOs." The price of giving folks the "freedom" to make astronomical amounts of money is too high for the rest of us to pay -- I don't think too many folks will tell their grandchildren that we killed off most of the human race because we abused antibiotics, but praise the Lord we still have a free market! Hence USPIRG helps you tell the FDA to rein in antibiotic abuse in America.

Around the table: a Governor's "only options," meeting "America," "purifying" the vote, and other stories.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has decided to fill a budget shortfall with, of course, state worker pension money, and David Sirota reminds us that the "liberal" media has pretended that's Mr. Christie's only possible option. Many of the other options require a TARDIS, unfortunately -- like going back in time and not giving $1.5 billion in welfare handouts to corporations, or going back in time and not investing state pension funds in hedge funds, which (surprise!) turned out to pay less than the median pension fund got. But maybe the "liberal" media should pretend there are more options when Governors like Chris Christie do dumb crap to begin with? (And just think of what Scott Walker will take hostage when his half-million-dollar tax cut package blows a hole in Wisconsin's budget.)

NBC starts a series called "Meeting America," and FAIR responds that it must mean "meeting white, Republican America." It is peculiar that NBC has just so happened to find Americans on its travels who just so happen to sound almost exactly like idiotic cable news pundits do -- especially since, as I know from personal experience, you can find plenty of white folks who do not sound anything like Republicans when they talk about politics.

Also, for the umpteenth time, household debt did not cause the Great Recession, any more than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or the Community Reinvestment Act did. Two economists argue not only that privately-backed mortgage securities caused the Great Recession, but that these securities spread the risk of failure mainly to low-income and minority mortgage-payers, and that these same households also cut back their consumer spending, which inflicted even more damage on the economy.

Amazon battles publishing house Hachette (and other houses) by temporarily "disappearing" their books from its website (via delaying shipments) until they cough up more cash. Amazon does this because they can, but also because their own profit margin is, as it often has been, rather smaller than you'd expect from a corporation so powerful. But James Patterson, probably the best-selling novelist of the new millenium, opposes Amazon in this matter, and that's no small thing.

Judge overseeing first John Doe probe into aides of then-Milwaukee County Executive (and now Wisconsin Governor) Scott Walker rules that county public records seized during the probe should be returned to the county, which means that the current Milwaukee County executive can comply with open-records requests, as will undoubtedly be filed by the Journal-Sentinel. Previous releases of John Doe-related records told horrifying stories -- the dead teenager killed by falling parking deck concrete no less so than all the casual racism in Mr. Walker's staff's emails -- but somehow I doubt we'll hear any more in time to deny Mr. Walker his second coronation.

Finally, a sitting Florida Congressman gets caught on tape suggesting that maybe only property owners should vote, just like in the "good old days" when women and blacks couldn't vote, either. If the last six years have taught us anything, it's that the amount of property you have has absolutely no bearing on how smart you are, or how well you can run things. After all, who has more property than the banksters, who screwed everything up?

Action: fracking, airline price "transparency," and "free" trade.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has lifted the moratorium on leasing state parks and forests to frackers, though the order would not allow new leases that "would cause additional surface disturbances." Well, that's a real election-year people-pleasing leftward turn -- this, in a state where a Republican-dominated legislature didn't have the guts to vote on a massive gas driller giveaway for over six months! Those lands are ours -- we camp in them, we fish and hunt in them, and we drink the water that comes from them -- and all that stands between us and more toxic chemical air shots, more blasted landscapes, and more brackish/gelatinous/ flammable drinking, bathing, and washing water is, well, us -- hence Penn Environment helps you tell your state legislators to stop Gov. Corbett from handing over more of our state parks and forests to corporate gas drillers. They can stop him, of course, if they have the will -- but they'll only have the steel in their spine if we put it there.

Meanwhile, Congress appears ready to repeal a law preventing airline corporations from advertising deceptive prices -- naturally, with a bill called the Transparent Airfare Act of 2014. This "transparency" bill will prevent you from knowing the full price of a ticket until you've bought it -- and airline CEOs are apparently calling it a "stimulus"! Of course it's easy to "stimulate" the economy by stealing money from your customers. The other excuse bill supporters have offered -- that the mandatory reporting requirements allow our government to bury higher taxes in ticket prices -- is one of the single stupidest things I've ever read, and I read a lot of stupid things said by a lot of stupid Congressfolk. Why not mandate reporting of government taxes in addition to prices? Because that would be too easy, and wouldn't allow big corporations to steal money. So Travelers United joins with change.org to help you pimp-slap your Congressperson into rejecting this "transparency" bill. The only thing "transparent" about it is the greed of its supporters and their paymasters.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject "investor-state tribunals" rampant in free trade agreements, Public Citizen still helps you do that. The "investor-state tribunal" allows a foreign corporation to sue to overturn our labor and environmental and consumer protection laws (and, of course, allows American corporations to do the same in foreign countries), simply because following our labor and environmental and consumer protection laws costs them money. This notion that folks have a "right," or are "entitled," to as much money as they can imagine is, despite how it may sound to benighted souls, fundamentally anti-freedom -- when someone gets as much money as he wants, he has the power to run roughshod over the rights of other folks to be free, and how do we feel about concentrated power again? And certainly no law-and-order American, liberal or conservative, should embrace the "investor-state tribunal" -- even those who find labor safeguards excessive do not believe corporations should remake our laws through non-democratic processes.

Around the table: populism vs. "populism."

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes perhaps the single most offensive op-ed I've read this year, in which he actually argues that we should borrow the workings of more totalitarian states like China in order to "make democracy dynamic again." The notion of an "unapologetically elitist" "Simpson/Bowles-type commission to push populist reforms" would be merely hilarious if his "populist reforms" weren't the kind of Beltway autofellatio that's actually unpopular with Americans. The best part will be when he complains that we folks just aren't sophisticated enough to understand that when he said we should have less democracy, he wasn't really saying we should have less democracy.

Dick "Tha Dicksta" Cheney suggests that President Obama scrapped missile defense systems just because Vladimir Putin told him so. No word on whether Mr. Putin was shirtless when he gave Mr. Obama the order, but could it be possible that Mr. Obama scrapped missile defense because missile defense doesn't work, and only benefits defense contractors who'd rather not build something useful? And why on Earth is Mr. Cheney walking around in public without a paper bag over his head after everything he's done?

Navy reservist suspended for two weeks after refusing to hide wait times for appointments at the Veterans Administration. You'd think the King of Everyone Getting Along would welcome the testimony of government workers who want government to work better, but Mr. Obama generally treats whistleblowers like they've just leaked wartime troop movements, regardless of what they've actually said. And no, this isn't a mark of George W. Bush's tenure, Bush-league though it may seem.

Three North Carolina Republican state Senators introduce bill making it a felony to disclose fracking chemicals. Because some corporation's "right" to "trade secrets" trumps everyone else's right to drinking water that doesn't catch fire and doesn't turn gelatinous if left out too long! No fracking currently goes on in North Carolina, but that'll change soon -- and we'll see if the Moral Monday folks can counter the will of a reactionary legislature that cares about nothing except money.

Philly.com blogger tells us how "Tom Corbett Just Won Re-election." Sympathetic as I am to how-Democrats-will-screw-it-up-this-time narratives, and noting that Democratic nominee Tom Wolf pounds an I'm-an-outsider-can't-we-all-get-along message that has stranded better candidates at 48 percent, I still think listing Mr. Corbett's leftward moves (or non-moves -- refusing to appeal reversals on Voter ID and gay marriage hardly required him to lift a finger) doesn't prove he's been playing us; it merely proves that he's not completely brain-dead. Plus, dude always looks mad even when he's got nothing to be mad about. People get tired of that.

Jim Hightower delivers the messaging goods when discussing the Koch Brothers' obsession with making solar power users pay a Sun Tax: "Koch Brothers Demand More Government Intervention and Taxes," runs the headline, "they want states to tax homeowners as punishment for becoming innovative energy producers" runs the last line of paragraph five, and here's how the final paragraph begins: "Now we know what the Koch-ALEC complex means by 'free markets' and 'liberty.' They mean that corporate energy interests should be free to stifle our individual liberty." You'd almost wonder why the Crusty Centrists of the Beltway don't find Mr. Hightower's words to be "pitch-perfect populism." OK, not really -- we all know the answer is "money."

Action: citizen power against executions, shareholder power against WalMart, and legislative power against banksters.

First things first: British citizen Emily Clarke has begun a petition on change.org helping you tell the government of Sudan not to execute a woman eight months into her pregnancy for being Christian. How did this happen? The woman in question -- Mariam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, a doctor -- is the daughter of a Christian woman and a Muslim man, which, according to Sudanese law, automatically makes her a Muslim regardless of what she wants for herself; her marriage to another Christian makes her an "adulterer" under Sudanese law -- subject to flogging unless she recants her faith, which, like, no way -- and her refusal to recant her faith makes her an "apostate," which subjects her to the death penalty. That's all pretty disgusting, isn't it? You'd think Sudanese government officials themselves didn't have any faith in Islam at all, if they feel compelled to kill people of differing faiths. But, as you know, there is-so such a thing as bad PR, and speaking out against a government killing people because they have beliefs unsanctioned by the state may save Dr. Ibrahim's life, and may deliver a black eye so painful to the Sudanese government that it begins to change its ways -- and that would save lives.

Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell big mutual fund corporations Vanguard and Fidelity to vote against Rob Walton's re-election to WalMart's board. Mr. Walton -- who, as you might guess, is an heir to WalMart's fortune, and worth over $140 billion himself -- is as responsible as anyone for the WalMart scheme of lowering wages for its workers in order to redistribute wealth to its owners and executives, but we can get after him, and his nefarious works, through the shareholder process, and Vanguard and Fidelity are two fairly big shareholders. Do not be dissuaded by arguments that it's the Walton family's company and they can put whomever they like on the board, when actually it's the shareholders' corporation and they have the most significant say in the matter. And don't be dissuaded by the argument that you're not a shareholder, so you should shut up -- you have First Amendment rights, and thus the right to communicate your will to WalMart shareholders, who presumably will have no problem telling you if they don't care what you think. Besides, whether you're a shareholder or not, you do have a real stake in the matter -- as long as the world's largest employer crushes wages, chances are they'll crushing your wages, too, even if you don't work for them.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you support S. 1282, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. What would the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act do? It would help restore the wall between bankers and investors that served us so well from the original Glass-Steagall Act's enactment in 1932 until its repeal by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 -- S. 1282 would prohibit federally-insured banks from owning or affiliating with securities corporations, would prohibit such banks from engaging in activities such that they essentially become securities corporations, and would prohibit a variety of conflicts-of-interest arising from bank officers' holdings in securities corporations. When banks have a free reign to invest in the casino-economy activities that crashed our economy in 2008, they don't work on our behalf anymore -- they work on their own behalf, when they should be engaging in activities that help local communities, like taking deposits and handing out loans. And I know conservatives believe that all businesses should work toward the greater good of the community they serve. The "conservatives" who think corporations should do whatever makes their CEOs happy and that'll magically help everyone else? They're not conservative.

Around the table: mine safety, climate change, privatization, gay marriage, net neutrality, and turning light into matter.

A May 12 mining accident at a notoriously unsafe West Virginia mine "highlights the need for Congressional action," says the Center for Effective Government. They're right, of course, but n.b. that the Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Protection Act couldn't even get through the House when the Democrats controlled it, which speaks to the difficulty (though not impossibility!) of our task. Getting proper funding the for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (a casualty of sequestration, of course!) should, in theory, be considerably easier -- I mean, what Congressperson would really want to be known as pro-dead miner?

This should be interesting: Farmers Insurance Co. has filed nine class-action lawsuits against over 200 local governments in Chicago and its environs, alleging they know about climate change but are doing nothing about it, thus causing the kind of catastrophes Farmers Insurance has to spend money covering. I'm not sure any of them are going to win -- I presume you can demonstrate that climate change is causing certain events to happen more frequently, but not necessarily that it caused all the specific claims you're trying to redress. Still, the fossil fuel corporations could one day find themselves surrounded on climate change by every other sector of the corporate economy, and that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Dave Johnson promises "Five Government Outsourcing Horror Stories," but actually delivers many more, and not just because number 5 is "Any Government 'Outsourcing' Anything." Read through the Chicago Parking Meters story, the Indiana Toll Road story, the private prisons story, and the "Cost Overruns" story, but attend these four sentences most closely: "But just how do they save money? There are two ways a company can save money over what government spends. The first is to reduce what it pays employees and suppliers. The second is to cut back on the amount or quality of the service the company is taking over."

Far-right radio host/contender for Georgia's 10th Congressional District says having same-sex parents is rather like "los(ing) a mom or dad in a car accident." Plus gay people have the right to marry, just not each other har har har. I guess he's trying to out-Paul Broun Paul Broun, who currently "serves" the 10th District and who just lost the Senate runoff. Mr. Hice, unfortunately, just made the House election runoff, and the winner there will almost certainly win the general election, meaning we could be hearing from Mr. Hice for many, many years. But not here, where we'll never speak of him again.

Yes! Magazine gives us "four signs net neutrality isn't dead yet." You likely already know them -- that the FCC changed its proposal somewhat after popular pressure, that pressuring elected representatives helped that, that public utility reclassification isn't dead and buried, and that some big corporations are now more visibly on our side -- but it's good to be reminded. Why, AT&T has just promised three years of net neutrality if we approve their deal to buy DirecTV, which shouldn't induce us to take the deal, but should alert us that corporations know net neutrality is popular and thus induce us to fight harder for net neutrality.

Finally, scientists at Imperial College London have worked out how to turn light into matter. Note that nobody's actually done that yet, but the physicists think it can be done with "existing technology." Hopefully we won't have to deal with junk patents on light in the meantime.

Action: healthy food for schoolkids, bad nominees for federal judgeships, and too much money for the Boy Scouts of America.

Wasn't it just yesterday that we talked of a House effort to allow financially-strapped school districts to wriggle out from under recently-issued healthy food regulations? Who knew that so many House members were objectively pro-childhood diabetes? Well, the American Heart Association helps you tell your Reps and Senators to oppose any effort to roll back healthy food regulations for public school kids. Do not brook any absurdity about federal mandates, which right-wingers only seem to care about when those mandates do something good, and certainly do not brook any absurdity about school districts needing flexibility, when school districts need money. Kids in America are more likely to be obese and diabetic than ever before, and certainly our public schools should not make that situation worse by offering junk foods dripping in sugar, salt, trans fats, and saturated fats. And personal to those who think making kids eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains equals FASCISM!!!!!: save your tantrums for some actual fascism, like warrantless wiretapping.

Meanwhile, President Obama has, perhaps surprisingly, nominated a far right-wing judge to Georgia's Northern District Court, a former state legislator named Michael Boggs. Mr. Boggs voted for one of those anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments that keep falling these days, and he doesn't get to say that's what I did as a legislator, but as a judge I'll be impartial -- not when he's already run for judge by foregrounding his opposition to gay marriage. He also supported making public data on abortions performed by doctors, a questionable notion in a land where doctors get harassed and killed for the perception that they've performed abortions. Word on the street is that the Boggs nomination is part of a deal Mr. Obama has made with Georgia's two Republican Senators, but the President didn't make a deal with the American people, did he? And we certainly would not trade our right to free speech for a little peace in Congress. So People for the American Way helps you oppose the Michael Boggs nomination.

Finally, gay Eagle Scout Pascal Tessier has begun a petition on change.org, with which you may tell Amazon, a key Boy Scouts of America corporate sponsor, to suspend their financial support of the BSA until the BSA stops firing gay scout troop leaders. It seems the Boy Scouts have decided to tolerate gay scouts but not gay troop leaders, and that's actually a bit patronizing -- does the BSA tolerate gay scouts merely because they think they just don't know better, while continuing to treat gay troop leaders because they do "know better" and still choose to carry Teh Gay Cooties? Of course, while Amazon is no friend of economically liberal causes, it has been a friend of gay rights causes -- which makes its continued funding for the BSA a little puzzling, unless its braintrust has decided that change is slow and the BSA has made progress by allowing gay scouts. But none of that requires any of us to adopt their opinion, let alone stop fighting for justice. No justice happens but that we demand it.

Around the table: a near-truth about the Tea Party, a disappointed mentor, a sad comment on journalistic cowardice, and other items.

House Speaker John Boehner says "there is not that much, not that big a difference between what you call the tea party and your average conservative Republican." Strike the word "conservative" from that statement and I'd totally agree -- the "liberal" media has always overplayed the ideological differences between teabaggers and other Republicans, but we'd be better off describing both groups as "reactionary" rather than "conservative."

Former Republican U.S. Senator Marlow Cook, who first hired Mitch McConnell as a legislative aide, now says Mr. McConnell is "not looking out for his own constituency" by opposing the Affordable Care Act (which has been, after all, wildly effective in Kentucky thanks to the state health exchange, Kynect). Mr. Cook -- who served one term, helping shepherd the Equal Rights Amendment through the Senate, before losing to Wendell Ford in the 1974 anti-Watergate wave -- also says he doesn't understand Mr. McConnell's shift to the right. I'd say money explains it, but I presume Mr. Cook is too polite to say so.

David Sirota asks, "Is Journalism Losing Its Nerve?" Noting that less than six in ten journalists think it's OK to publish "confidential business or government documents without authorization" (n.b. the question does not ask about breaking the law), versus nine of ten just 20 years ago, he concludes they are. Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever read a journalism textbook and learned how much of your job is rewriting PR releases. As with Mitch McConnell's rightward slide, of course, it's also about the money -- if corporations (and the politicians they buy) threaten you or co-opt you, you're much less likely to break the next Pentagon Papers or warrantless wiretapping story.

And another one gone, and another one gone: Pennslvania Middle District Court Judge John E. Jones III strikes down Pennsylvania's gay marriage ban. You may recall Judge Jones as the same judge who struck down the Dover Area School District's "intelligent design" curriculum in 2005. And what dirty hippie flag-burning baby-killing terrorist-loving welfare-handout-grabbing President put him on the federal bench? Hint: Mr. Jones received his appointment in 2002.

Surprise, surprise: A&E's show Duck Dynasty, a show during which the characters refer to themselves as "rednecks" approximately once per breath, is a big recipient of Louisiana state subsidies. I already don't think Phil Robertson's entitled to a high-profile TV job despite spewing his racist and heterosexist filth, but I certainly don't think the good folks of Louisiana should subsidize all of that. (As an aside: I'm old enough to remember when A&E broadcast highbrow stuff.)

Finally, the Richmond, VA Homeschool Prom kicks a 17-year-old girl because the fathers in attendance felt her dress and her dancing was leading the boys to "impure thoughts." I'm no great fan of the increasing sexualization of American culture, but I'm far less a fan of folks blaming it all on women, particularly a girl who actually followed the rules the adults laid down (i.e., the "fingertip" dress-length requirement). I mean, don't these idiots know that teenage boys don't need to be led to impure thoughts?

Action: net neutrality, and better conditions for McDonald's workers.

If you haven't talked to the FCC about their net neutrality proposal, the Consumerist can help you do that. The Consumerist's advice -- tailor your remarks to the specifics of the FCC plan and speak to why net neutrality is important to you -- is good advice. That second part, I'll admit, I've usually skipped over, mainly because I've long considered it more important to speak to why net neutrality is good for everyone. But this blog, for example, is a pretty wonderful thing, though I do say so myself, and under the net neutrality regime, my start-up costs were in the tens of dollars per year, and when I decided to do a better layout job, costs ran into the low hundreds -- again, per year. But an internet "fast lane" would have taken a lot more money than that at the beginning, and probably stopped me from doing it. Let's have people, not corporations, pick the winners and losers on the internet again. (If you're more stuck for time, but still want to craft a decent missive, the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides a fairly handy form for your communication with the FCC.)

Meanwhile, you may have heard of the worldwide strikes by fast-food workers last week, and Adriana Alvarez (a McDonald's worker raising a two-year-old on $9.15/hour) has begun a petition on CREDO with which you may tell McDonald's to pay their workers more and respect their right to organize and bargain collectively. After all, McDonald's makes over $5 billion in profits annually, and our economy can't be all about redistributing workers' earnings upward to CEOs, right? So if you find yourself unsympathetic to the fact that Ms. Alvarez has had to drop out of college and collect food stamps in order to get by, perhaps you should redirect your anger toward the corporate bosses who pay their workers so little that they have no recourse but to rely on taxpayer assistance -- your assistance. And don't fall for the line that a higher minimum wage will raise prices intolerably -- not only does the science tell us otherwise, but, ah, when McDonald's workers have to get food stamps, you're already paying more for that Big Mac.

Around the table: corporate data sharing, big bad college students, the ongoing matter with Kansas, and other topics.

Wondering which of the many corporations you deal with, if any, "have your back" regarding government requests for information about you? The Electronic Frontier Foundation can tell you. Of the 26 listed corporations, the worst seem to be Snapchat and AT&T, which latter corporation we already knew handed over your private info to Tha Bush Mobb faster than Pierre Laval handed over Jews to the Nazis. Comcast ain't too great, either, though their record for defending their users' privacy (from the IRS, anyway) is slightly better than the others'.

There have been plenty of bad op-eds concerning the "chilling effect" of student protests prompting controversial commencement speakers to withdraw voluntarily from their speaking engagements, and FAIR finds one of the worst, in the New York Times, no less. Read the block-quoted paragraph: see how the writer implied that the only choices you might have for your commencement speakers are a) someone who's done very bad things or b) someone who's a "benign mediocrity," like, say, a sitting Supreme Court justice? So you must have a war criminal/other species of jerk at your graduation ceremony, or your graduation ceremony will be dull, and what could possibly be worse than that?

From the "'pro-business' policies kill economies" file: after $1.1 billion in Kansas state tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy and for corporations, the state lags behind national economic growth. And the state Supreme Court has stepped in to halt school budget cuts, but can't fix rising poverty rates by its lonesome. It's enough to make you think that tax-cuts-for-the-rich is just a way of redistributing taxpayer money upward to the rich. Luckily, Gov. Brownback proves he's serious about poverty by ensuring that everyone who wants to get married gets an 8-hour class on how to be married. Unless Paul Davis runs an utterly incompetent campaign, Mr. Brownback will be back in the private sector (finally!) by early next year.

House Republicans have actually proposed allowing public schools to solve their budget crunches by opting out of federally-mandated healthy lunch programs. Because there is no other solution to a budget shortfall than to take good ideas hostage! The House's newest idea will no doubt please the right-wing warriors who think making kids eat healthy food while they're on school grounds is GUMMINT TELLING US WHAT TO DO!!!!! I guess these folks never tell their kids what to do, or maybe they shadow them at school while taking government assistance because they don't work. I mean, those would be the only options that wouldn't make them utter hypocrites. Also, too, we are the government.

Former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam kissed his boyfriend on live TV after the St. Louis Rams drafted him in the 7th round of the NFL draft, but not everyone was happy about that, like this Dallas, TX TV host, who said, more than once, "I don't want to see that." Also THINK UV THA CHILDRENZ!!!!, who presumably will have questions about the kiss you, as a parent, might be able to answer without having a tantrum yourself. Folks who claim that the sight of gay men kissing is somehow "forced" on them might want to ask whether they've ever felt the same about the sight of a man and woman kissing. I mean, you do see a lot more of that, and by God why does no one ever think of the children when they kiss in public?

Finally, the National Labor Relations Board rules that workplace policies mandating "positive and professional behavior" actually violate the National Labor Relations Act. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter: telling people to BE POZITIVE!!!!!! is nowhere near as effective as creating a work environment where people will choose to be positive more often than not, and if managers don't often create that environment, that's no reason to throw up your hands and embrace cynicism. (Full disclosure: there is actually no good reason to embrace cynicism.)

Action: the right to protest, safer laundry detergent, and ending the AUMF.

Word on the street is that the Minerals Council of Australia has actually been mulling whether to outlaw campaigns aimed at persuading folks from divesting in coal corporations! And that could happen here, you know: Stanford's student union has persuaded the University to divest from coal corporations, and Our Glorious Elites can't have that, now, can they? So the moment where Our Glorious Elites start telling us that divestment equals terrorism (or, at least, "dangerous and unlawful civil disobedience") seems, finally, to be here. But you have to wonder how alleged free marketeers can support putting people in jail for trying to get banks and other corporations to divest from fossil fuel producers. These campaigns might fail, or they might succeed, but isn't that "the genius of civilization," as Paul O'Neill might say? Or is freedom only for the people with the most money and to hell the rest of us? The Sierra Club helps you tell Australian Prime Minister Abbott (and other Cabinet minsters) to reject this effort to restrict the right of protest. No reasonable person advocates blowing up coal power plants -- but no reasonable person should equate a divestment campaign with "terrorism," either.

Meanwhile, apparently over 10,000 kids under five last year got sick eating those little pods of laundry detergent you get at laundromat dispensers. (If you're thinking, for some reason, that 10,000 isn't a very big number, here's some statistical perspective: we also suffered approximately 10,000 gun-related homicides in 2011.) The pods look almost exactly like candy -- whose brilliant idea was that? -- and they're sold largely in see-through packages so that kids can see the pods look almost exactly like candy. But they'll do worse to a kid than any candy can do -- outcomes include lethargy, vomiting, internal chemical burns, and loss of breathing to the point where kids need to be put on a respirator. Is that the price kids should pay for mistaking something poisonous for a piece of candy? Need I add that the folks most likely to use laundry pods are poorer folk who can't afford a house with its own washer and dryer? Hence Consumers Union helps you tell detergent-manufacturing corporations to stop making laundry detergent pods look appetizing, put a bittering agent in them so kids spit them out, and to package them more securely. None of that is too much to ask, except of someone with an accountant's mind. But no society would be so foolish as to let accountants run everything, right?

Finally, CREDO helps you tell Congress to pass H.R. 4608 and repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF). Let the record show that Congress passed the original AUMF on September 14, 2001, or a mere three days after 9.11 and well before we knew very much of what had happened on that day; the bill authorizes "the President...to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." "(H)e determines" -- well, that was a big weapon to hand the Executive, wasn't it? And Presidents have used the AUMF to do all manner of evil, including Guantánamo Bay military tribunals (which the U.S. Supreme Court stopped in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) and the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, both unforgivable offenses against our nation, our citizenry, and our heritage. And here we are, thirteen years later, with our government still threatening our freedoms in the name of the "war on terror" even though Mr. bin Laden is dead and we've pulled most of our troops out of Iraq and will do so soon in Afghanistan. But fear must not rule us, or fear will tear us apart. Indeed, it already has torn many of our countryfolk apart.

Around the table: the news you need to know! Plus more right-wing whining.

Did all that Cliven Bundy stuff smell like junk news to you? Fortunately, Jessica Scheider at the Center for Effective Government explains some of the issues surrounding Western land rights. Long story short: the small fees ranchers pay for having their animals graze on public land is around one tenth of the fees they'd pay private land owners, meaning that the grazing fees aren't some don't-tread-on-me travesty but comprise a half-billion dollar annual "public subsidy" of ranchers. And yet the fees don't begin to cover environmental damage the grazing animals do to the land -- or, indeed, administrative costs. You might well think Cliven Bundy was just another whiner the "liberal" media seems to find so fascinating.

Paul Krugman finds Timothy Geithner's account of his time as Obama Administration Treasury Secretary more than a little self-serving. Key findings: Mr. Geithner's claim that he was "not an austerian" runs counter to reporting that he found federal stimulus programs worthless, and his claim that bailing out homeowners rather than banksters (or even alongside banksters!) wouldn't have helped the economy much runs counter to economic research indicating the opposite. Again, the moral thing to do turns out to be the pragmatic thing to do, but our elites somehow never see that. I wonder why.

Meta-analysis of ten studies involving 1.3 million children reveals, again, "no relationship between vaccination and autism." That's "no" as in none, zero, zip, zilch, nada. On one hand, I'm pleased that Forbes does this kind of reporting -- but on the other hand, I'm profoundly annoyed that it's left to Forbes to do this kind of reporting, as our more well-known "liberal" media outlets prefer to treat the science like it's still undecided, lest they look bad for all that free publicity they gave to noted University of Google scholar Jenny McCarthy.

Republican Senate nominee Ben Sasse claims that "(g)overnment cannot force citizens to violate their religious beliefs under any circumstances" -- apparently not even if your "religious beliefs" allow or command you to trample over other people's rights. Let me guess on Mr. Sasse's response: "the media got me all wrong by quoting what I said on my website." And now the bad news: Mr. Sasse will almost certainly win his election, Nebraska not being as moderate, even, as Indiana, where Richard Mourdock fumbled away Mr. Lugar's Senate seat in 2012 with his extremism.

New Hampshire Republican Senatorial candidate (and ex-Massachusetts Senator) Scott Brown actually asked Republican leadership to scuttle a bipartisan energy efficiency bill, because its main Democratic sponsor was his opponent, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. And he wanted to make her look bad. Anyone think he might look bad instead? Apparently he got his wish -- the bill failed to clear a Republican filibuster after Republicans demanded a vote on an amendment on approving the Keystone XL pipeline and another one on blocking the EPA's recent carbon emissions rule. But there has to be a point where fomenting chaos backfires on the fomentors of chaos. Right?

Finally, Operation American Spring, a movement planning to draw tens of millions to D.C. this past Saturday in an apparent effort to overthrow our center-right government for not being far-right enough, wound up drawing "hundreds," not millions. And THAT! Is the MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! Have EVER! HEARD!

Action: all net neutrality, all day.

Today, we're only going to act on one thing: network neutrality, the principle that demands that internet service providers treat all data moving across a network equally. How does this benefit us, as internet consumers? Well, if we make all data move across networks at the same speed, the internet service provider can't favor network traffic it likes better, and that state of affairs leaves you, the internet consumer, in charge of your internet experience. The way things are now, if you can find a website about, say, progressive taxasion, you can get there just as quickly as you can get to some slideshow rating the NFL's best defensive ends. Of course, the big telecom corporations don't like that, because it gets in the way of ensuring they'll always be able to make their unearned billions -- hence their plan to open up new "revenue streams" by making corporations providing internet content pay more for faster service.

But if we allow that, the internet will never be free again. The internet will forever be divided into a "fast lane" and a "slow lane," and the big internet service providers will have no incentive whatsoever to improve service on the "slow lane," which is where all the websites you and I like will be stuck. The only sites that'll get on the fast lane will be big corporate websites because big corporations are the only entities with the money to pay the "fast lane" rates. And that means your internet will be infested with more junk news, more mindless celebrity drama, and more cable news "pundits" screaming at each other like their mamas never taught them any damn manners. The corporate apologists like to say that "paid prioritization" will preserve innovation, but that's precisely the opposite of the truth -- the real innovators on the internet, the Googles and the Daily Koses and the Youtubes and the Facebooks, were not big corporations when they gave their innovations to the world. A big corporation would never have come up with any of those innovative forces, because big corporations -- especially the dinosaurs we contend with in these times! -- care about protecting the status quo, not upsetting it.

The FCC, at least nominally, protected network neutrality until yesterday. Now they plan to allow "paid prioritization" agreements between corporations, though they'll prevent big corporations from actually slowing down or censoring websites -- which, again, means very little when folks won't wait for that better website to load, and thus never discover what it has to offer them. The FCC will also take comments on whether or not they should reclassify broadband providers as public utilities, so they can properly regulate net neutrality, but we've been telling them to do that for years, and I know they're not so stupid they can't hear us. And now would be a good time to make one thing very, very clear: no ordinary American citizens, on either end of the political system, want to lose net neutrality. The only people who want to kill net neutrality are the corporations and their lackey politicians. And their arguments are utter horsecrap. They claim net neutrality is "a solution in search of a problem," when net neutrality's very presence has choked off the very problems they're trying to create! They claim net neutrality equals big government control, when it is not Big Gummint overreach to prevent corporations from controlling your internet experience for their own ends, any more than it's "anti-freedom" to stop people from murdering one another or burglarizing other folks' houses. One absolute gobsmacking idiot, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, actually referred to net neutrality as "socialism" the other day; when you call something "socialism" in these times, you've lost the argument.

But though these fools have lost the debate, they may yet impose their will on the American citizenry, simply because they have money and because the "liberal" media enables their venality and stupidity. That only means we have to speak louder, and a number of organizations will help you do that. Both CREDO and Demand Progress help you tell President Obama to keep his campaign promise to be "second to none" on net neutrality, lest we find net neutrality to be yet another area in which "second to none" means "second to Bush." Free Press helps you tell Mr. Wheeler to throw out his proposal and reclassify internet service providers as a public utility. You can still call Mr. Wheeler's office at 1.202.418.1000, or use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call and/or write your House Reps and Senators. You're not a "slacktivist" if you do any of these things; you are doing your job as a citizen, to convey your will to your elected representatives, which number includes your President and the people he appoints in the Executive branch.

If you despair (because who doesn't?), note well that corporations have wanted to kill net neutrality for well over a decade, and the only thing that's stopped them is us. Only a wall of united citizens can stop evil; we've been stopping evil a long time, and we'll have to stop it a long time still, until we draw our last breath having inspired those who'll carry on after us. But we can do it. We must do it. And we will do it.

Around the table: behold, the power of the italics hammer, which makes words cry in crookedness!

ProPublica describes what the state of Ohio is doing to protect the public from radioactive waste fracking creates. Long story short: they ain't doing much -- rather than have their weak proposals debated in public, Ohio legislators slipped them into a massive 4,000 page-plus budget bill, just like they all do when they want to hide something. The good news is that, after public pressure, they got cold feet and stripped them out -- they put them back in and passed the bill, of course, but that only instructs us that we need to keep the pressure on longer. (As an aside, some of Ohio's gas drillers are real pricks.)

Gordon Lafer instructs us how a private school chain called Rocketship actually hurts the poor children it's supposed to serve. Key quotation: "It appears the question [Rocketship] aims to answer is not simply, 'How can we do better by poor kids?' but rather, 'How can we educate poor kids while generating a 15 percent rate of return for investors?'" And Rocketship fails at even its stripped-down, no-gym-or-art curriculum -- while making its bosses a pile of money, almost like that's the idea.

The Center for Effective Government tells us "What We Could Invest In If We Ended Special Corporate Tax Breaks." Long story short: a lot -- just six of the 55 expired corporate tax breaks total over $300 billion over 10 years, whereas we just cut food stamps by $50 billion over 10 years. Something else you may not know: cutting Meals on Wheels by nearly $40 million added nearly $500 million to Medicaid costs, since those seniors getting Meals on Wheels now needed full nursing home care to get fed. Sounds dumb, doesn't it? But the politicians who come up with this stuff aim for dumb. I'm convinced of it.

Finally, the front-runner but for how long? in Georgia's U.S. Senate Republican primary, David Perdue, suggested to the Macon Telegraph that he would be open to increasing revenue as part of a deficit-reduction plan. Furthermore, he did not deny that "increasing revenue" could include tax hikes (versus, you know, tax hikes disguised as "fees" and whatnot), and even said his business background taught him that "I was never able to turn around a company just by cutting spending. You had to figure out a way to get revenue growing." His spokeshack later tried to walk all that back, but his explanation shouldn't convince anyone who can read. I suppose we'll see about this race, which has approximately ten bazillion candidates, none of whom were exactly running away with it.

Action: net neutrality, and confidentiality for whistleblowers.

Word on the street is that FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has revised somewhat his pay-for-play plan to make the internet more like cable TV -- by "mak(ing) clear that the FCC will scrutinize the deals to make sure that the broadband providers don't unfairly put nonpaying companies' content at a disadvantage," though I don't know how that's different from his original proposal, while also seeking additional comment on whether "paid prioritization" agreements should be banned and on whether the FCC should reclassify broadband as a public utility. He needs additional comment on these matters? We have told him literally millions of times! Plus he would create an ombudsman "to advocate on behalf of startups," because when a situation demands you cut the crap, of course you should really just add more bureaucracy. He really thinks we are stupid. But what he thinks about us is worthless -- we'll just keep telling him and telling him until he sees fit to reveal that he is not, in fact, a potted plant. Free Press helps you call Tom Wheeler at 1.202.418.1000. Seriously, additional comment? How do they always find someone even worse?

Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame joins with Roots Action to help you tell President Obama and Attorney General Holder to stop trying to force New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal a confidential source. In Mr. Risen's 2006 book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, we learned -- among other things! -- that "Operation Merlin," a Bush Mobb plan to undermine Iranian desires to build nuclear weapons, was, to put it kindly, comically incompetent. The identity of Mr. Risen's source for this information has been the subject of at least one court case since then, and now the Obama Administration wants the source's identity; Mr. Risen could face some serious jail time if he doesn't give it up, and to his credit, he says he won't give it up. But think about the prospect of our government forcing a whistleblower out into the open because he or she spoke to a reporter about how badly our government screwed up a foreign policy initiative. Who will ever speak to a reporter about government malfeasance again? It's almost like that's the idea.

Around the table: fast-food workers, tax evaders, and right-wing lunatics.

On tomorrow, May 15, fast-food workers in 30 countries on six continents will walk off the job to protest low wages. Fast-food workers currently make between $7 and $10/hour, on average, and I can't imagine living on that (let alone raising a family on that!) unless the calendar says 1995. And personal to those who find their call for a $15/hour wage unreasonable: first, Seattle is very likely going to enact a minimum wage of $15/hour for all their workers, and second, you have heard of negotiation, have you not?

At least six Democratic Senators won't vote for the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac "overhaul" bill, casting doubt on whether it'll pass the full Senate. The bill will likely clear the Banking Committee with Republican help, but Harry Reid likely won't allow a vote on it as long as his own caucus isn't united. Which is good news, but only for the short term -- n.b. that most Democrats (Ms. Warren included) sound like they'd support a bill with some changes, rather than reject it entirely, which would be (as Dean Baker has instructed us) the right thing to do.

Billionaire creator of "Beanie Babies" gets 500 hours of community service for tax evasion. No, that's not a mistake: for tax evasion. There's no letting Mr. Warner off for his charitable donations, because tax evasion is a crime. And it's not a victimless crime, either, since that money would have gone to pay for services that help all of us. The worst part? Ty Warner isn't even as well-connected as some folks -- the next time some bankster even gets community service will be the first.

Rep. Devin Nunes (E-CA) calls fellow Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan "al-Qaeda's best friend in Congress," ostensibly because Mr. Amash opposes overweening government surveillance, but more likely because Mr. Amash voted against a Nunes-backed water bill, which sounds more like a sin against Mr. Nunes's big donors than anything else. Other Michigan Republican House Reps have either cut checks to his primary opponent or, ah, stayed neutral, but I wouldn't underestimate Mr. Amash if I were them, given that the Michigan state legislature already tried and failed to redistrict him into oblivion.

Fox News "personality" Eric Bolling says "I don't remember any attacks on American soil" between 2000 and 2008. By his calculus, then, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Stonycreek Twp., PA, were all on foreign soil on September 11, 2001. How people like this still have a job when there are so many unemployed folks more deserving of work is beyond me -- though, of course, his fellow panelists were no better, since none of them challenged him. At the risk of beating a dead horse, this is why we need a la carte cable packaging -- so we don't have to pay for stupid-and-arrogant-about-it cable news pundits.

But Eric Bolling is not even the biggest jerk at this morning's table setting: right-wing blogger Jim Hoft is, after actually mocking liberals with the notion that the 300 Nigerian kidnapped girls are already sold into slavery. Because we used social media to help call attention to their plight, instead of talking tough while doing the helicopter dance in front of the mirror, as Mr. Hoft would do. Let's never speak of him again.

Action: corporate tax cuts, Ohio vote suppression, and EPA fracking investigations.

Hot on the heels of the House Ways and Means Committee passing a 10-year, $300 billion package of corporate tax cuts, Senate Democrats have gotten behind a similar bill -- S. 2260, the oddly-named EXPIRE Act -- which would extend all sorts of corporate tax breaks for two years, costing $85 billion (versus the House bill's 10 years and $300 billion). And like the House bill, the EXPIRE Act would extend corporate tax breaks without paying for them. You know how Congress always says unemployment benefits have to be "paid for"? Apparently, corporate tax breaks don't. Of course, corporate lackeys will say that corporate tax breaks "pay for themselves" with all the jobs they create, though that can't be true, or the U-6 unemployment rate wouldn't still sit above 12%. And unemployment benefits actually do pay for themselves -- the unemployed aren't going to sit on that money, they're going to pump it into local economies, because they kinda have to, you know. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell the Senate to reject corporate tax breaks while long-term unemployment insurance remains unrenewed. You'd hope your Senators have a sense of justice, or at least shame. Right?

Meanwhile, Ohio activist Sara Vredevoogd has started a petition on CREDO which helps you demand that the Department of Justice investigate Ohio's apparent attempts to suppress the vote. Ohio has lately acquired quite the reputation for vote suppression, not just from Clear Channel billboards popping up in minority neighborhoods in October of 2012 reminding its residents that "voting fraud is a crime" (why not in white neighborhoods, one wonders?) but with Secretary of State Jon Husted's 2012 efforts to make voting hours "uniform" all across Ohio, which actually restricted the right to vote for people in more populous areas -- or as a fellow Republican put it at the time, areas where the "African-American voter-turnout machine" purportedly operates. The resulting bad PR quashed those efforts in 2012, but earlier this year, Mr. Husted again announced efforts to cut back on voting on Sundays and in early evenings -- you know, times when most people who work day shifts are likely to vote? -- just days after Gov. Kasich signed bills ending same-day registration and cutting early voting days. The good news? Attorney General Eric Holder has shown an acute interest in voting rights' violations in the past.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to reopen investigations into fracking contamination in three locations, then Breast Cancer Action still helps you do that. The EPA closed investigations in Parker County, TX, Dimock, PA, and Pavillion, WY, though it had good reason to keep those investigations going -- as you may recall, preliminary EPA reports in each of these three areas suggested drinking water contamination, but the EPA abruptly called off the investigations with no explanation. And it's not like this is an impossible event: of the 700 fracking chemicals scientists have found (which don't have to be disclosed, thanks to the 2005 Congress), more than a few are known endocrine-disruptors and carcinogens, and they all find their way into our drinking water. And if you don't live near a fracking operation now, as about 1 in 20 Americans do, chances are you will soon, as the industry expands, as the chemicals they use become more common, and (of course!) as President Obama largely ignores the outcry over the brown/gelatinous/flammable water that fracking has brought us. Yeah, yeah, he says he wants to wean us off of foreign oil, and who doesn't? But setting aside the various other ways to do that: if you can't drink the water, what have you won?

Around the table: more notes on taxes, wages, health care, and corruption.

Seattle plans to raise its minimum wage to $15/hour over the next four years, and Harold Meyerson wonders if this event heralds "the future of collective bargaining." Thing is, though the SEIU played a big role -- through its "close ties" with other community groups and also through its willingness to bargain for workers who would likely never join the union -- labor unions didn't actually negotiate contracts for this minimum wage. And Mayor Ed Murray also played a big role, actually threatening his hand-picked task force of labor and business leaders with a more radical plan if they didn't come up with something they could all live with! How the alleged Alinskyite Barack Obama didn't learn that lesson I'll never know.

Uh oh: assistant EPA Inspector General tells Congress that the EPA's "Office of Homeland (sic) Security" essentially serves as a political arm of the Obama Administration, blocking IG inspections wherever it can. Nobody could have predicted that our government would ever use the "homeland security" meme to discourage investigations into corruption! Except sentient people, that is -- and we also worried that Barack Obama would not only take the lessons of George W. Bush to heart, but apply them more thoroughly. Still, for Darrell Issa (R-CA) to find all that "disturbing," well, where the hell was he last decade?

Ho hum, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that higher state taxes don't make people move away all that often. As anyone who has ever moved would be able to tell you (do anti-tax groups really think rich folks think about nothing else when they decide to move?), but it's nice to have some data behind it. Which the other side doesn't have -- the folks claiming that higher tax rates in Oregon and Maryland must have caused millionaires to move away in 2009 and 2010 were not exactly sitting on a huge pile of address change forms.

Also from the "ho-hum" file: three large health insurance corporations tell Congress that over 85% of their health care exchange enrollees have paid the first month of premiums. As Republicans have been squawking about the "gap" between healthcare.gov enrollees and people actually paying premiums, I suppose now comes the right-wing's insistence that health care corporations are shills for Obamacare, as if no one will ever remember that their main objection to the Affordable Care Act in the first place was that it was "socialism."

Finally, Paul Krugman again plumbs the depths of the American oligarchy in a piece provocatively entitled "Now That's Rich." We learn that the top 25 hedge fund managers made $21 billion last year, and we are reminded -- because how often does the "liberal" media remind us of this? -- that hedge fund managers are speculators, and that speculators trashed the economy in 2008. We are also reminded that when right-wingers talk about "protecting job-creators," they're really talking about folks like hedge fund managers, who don't actually create jobs -- who don't create anything, actually, but wealth for themselves.

Action: another "sun tax," a bad chemical safety bill, and toughening up organic standards

They couldn't get the "sun tax" through the Arizona state legislature, so they're trying to get it from the state Executive branch: Arizona's Department of Revenue has apparently decided that folks who lease solar panels on their home should pay more property taxes -- around $150 more annually, which just so happens to wipe out most folks' annual savings on their electric bills, thus conveniently making solar a far less attractive option in a state where the sun seems to shine 678 hours a day. All so coal energy corporations, which are already quite wealthy, can continue to be quite wealthy and continue to pump poisons into our air and water. Great job, Arizona government! But the Sierra Club helps you tell Gov. Brewer to stop the "sun tax" in Arizona. Gov. Brewer has a mixed record on matters she can directly affect -- she didn't stop the "show your papers" bill, but she did stop the "turn away the gay" bill -- but I think if you put the words "sun tax" in your letter enough times without being too obvious, she might be swayed.

Meanwhile, Frank Lautenberg's chemical regulation reform bill from 2012, which would have reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act, sadly seems to have died with him, and the House now pushes something called the Chemicals in Commerce Act, which actually hamstrings the EPA from regulating or requiring testing for new chemicals -- which are being developed all the time, you know, hence the need to update the Toxic Substances Control Act. The bill also limits the amount of information you can get about toxic chemicals, and (in a real "states' rights" move!) even overrides tougher state laws about toxic chemicals. Nice to see the "conservatives" in the House bend over backwards for corporate power, again. Don't conservatives hate concentrated power anywhere? Contemporary "conservatives" only seem to hate power not concentrated in the hands of their paymasters. But Breast Cancer Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Chemicals in Commerce Act, and demand something a lot stronger. Now that I think about it, calling this bill's supporters "objectively pro-breast cancer" might be a good tactic.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the USDA to reverse the National Organic Standards Board (or NOSB) rule that actually weakens organic standards in America, then the Organic Consumers Association still helps you do that. What does this rule do? Organic standards do include inorganic ingredients (necessary for storage, transport, and the like), but it used to be that the approval of those ingredients would only last five years and would have to be reinstated; now the approval of those ingredients lasts forever and we would have to challenge their continued inclusion -- which we'll do, but why make corporations happy at the expense of people? I must admit I am surprised to learn that 71% of Americans think organic food should have as few artificial ingredients as humanly possible. What are the other 29 percent thinking? Apparently, they're thinking that expanding folks' access to organic food requires sacrifices, like making it a lot less organic, which strikes me as an awful lot like not thinking. Still, we can turn them around, just as we can turn the NOSB around.

Around the table: Scott Walker the radical, Rand Paul the squish, and points in between.

"Surprise! 'Pro-Business' Policies Hurt States' Economic Growth," says the headline of this Michael Hiltzik article at the Los Angeles Times. Long story short: states more likely to have low top tax rates, low/no estate taxes, fewer public employees, and "right-to-work" laws actually lag behind other states in job growth. Nice to see a major newspaper refer to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as a "radical," too, since that's what he actually is, no matter how soft-spoken he might be on the TV.

Good news, then bad news: Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signs legislature's genetically-modified food labeling bill into law, and big food corporations promptly threaten lawsuits. The Grocery Manufacturers Association says that "government has no compelling interest in warning consumers about GMO foods." Why not? Apparently, because they think they're completely safe -- and why wouldn't you trust what food corporations say about the foods that make them their money?

A report from Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy tells us that charter schools have wasted at least $136 million over the last two decades in just 15 states, largely thanks to lax state oversight. And when I say "wasted," I mostly mean "stolen" -- the charter school isn't just a way to bust teachers' unions and make public schools poorer, it's also a way for certain charter school officials to buy goodies for themselves. The report echoes concerns expressed by the federal Department of Education's Inspector General in 2010. Is Congress listening? Not unless we put the word "Benghazi" in the report, I suspect.

ABC reports on a Massachusetts couple who claim not only that a wind turbine operating a quarter-mile from their house made them sicker, but that it caused them to take a loss when they sold their home. But not only did Mrs. Hobart later admit that she'd had the ringing in her ears before the turbine went in, ABC also missed the Falmouth Zoning Board's determination that the loss the Hobarts took on their home was also due to mold and radon found on the property, which -- as anyone who's ever bought or sold a house will tell you -- is a big deal. And personal to people who think wind turbines are too loud: try living in New Jersey. Then you'll know what noise is.

Finally, Rand Paul says the Republican party should "lay off" voter ID laws because they're "offending people." Which stance should please none of his die-hard supporters ("you're going to stop supporting something just because it offends people?") nor earn him new ones in minority communities (since he still hasn't come out against photo IDs, nor has he come around to the idea that voter fraud really doesn't happen in noticeable numbers). As a Gourdian-knot slicer, Rand Paul is no Alexander the Great. And it's nice that he wants to restore voting rights to felons, but let's see action.

Penny rants: public prayer, "too big to jail" banksters, and the true colors of an extremist.

U.S. Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4 decision, allows New York town to open public legislative meetings with Christian prayers. Justice Kennedy again writes the majority opinion, showcasing his habit of thinking with his heart that we've found both refreshing and infuriating over the years -- discarding the precedent set by Justice O'Connor that asked whether similar practices constituted an "endorsement" of one religion or another, he writes a paean to the power of prayer and reminds us that the assembled don't have to pray, but can just leave the room if they're so offended, and as we know no legislature in history has ever tried to ram through unpopular legislation by clearing the room first, right? Worse than that is his assertion that Greece, NY didn't discriminate in favor of Christianity because the township "limited its list of clergy almost exclusively to representatives of houses of worship situated within Greece’s town limits," which, we assume, are generally Christian. He is aware that local zoning ordinances can prevent churches from being built within a town's limits, isn't he?

Jesse Eisenger at ProPublica explains why the Justice Department's recent announcement that "the era of 'too big to jail' is over" might merely be bluster. I mean, of course I like to believe the best of people, but the evidence of recent years is hard to ignore: when a Justice Department prosecutor gets a corporation to agree to "change its culture" instead of face formal charges, but then doesn't actually enforce the agreement, you have to wonder if incompetence or malice is at work. And when the money for fines doesn't come from the CEO's pocket but from those of their shareholders', certainly the banksters who authorized/ignored bad conduct have no incentive to change. Federal prosecutors can also charge corporations and their employees at the same time -- but, strangely, they have a habit of throwing up their hands and walking away from the whole thing when they can't get employees to cooperate; again, you have to wonder if incompetence or malice is at work. I'd disagree, though, that it's merely "prudent" to "minimize the damage any charges against companies might inflict on the larger economy" -- if we continue to think that way, we'll be the banksters' hostages forever.

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis gets caught on film (from 2011) telling folks that we have to "divide and conquer the people who are on the (government) systems," to make the "woman who has cerebal palsy" who had "no choice" but to take Big Gummint help "look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government." In case you're wondering whom he means by "these people," he means women who have babies, not the men who help make them, and certainly not the big corporations soaking up money in undeserved tax breaks so they can redistribute their workers' wealth upward to their CEOs while not creating jobs. He's already said he regrets using the phrase "divide and conquer" in that context, but I think you're going to see it in a million Kay Hagan ads anyway come October -- hopefully, after the ads reminding North Carolina that Mr. Tillis is Speaker of the House in the most radical state legislator in recent state history, a legislature whose reign of horror has inspired the Moral Monday demonstrations.

Action: net neutrality, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The FCC will formally unveil their new net neutrality rules on May 15, and with FCC Chair Tom Wheeler so far unwilling to listen to the public on his proposal, so Sum of Us helps you urge the relevant House and Senate subcommittees to intervene, and keep big corporations from controlling our internet experience with their "fast lanes" and "tiered service." I've said it before and I'll say it again: just about everyone, from left to right on the political spectrum, prefers an internet where service providers have to treat all information equally, without them getting to "pick winners." When corporations get to pick winners (who have not really "won" anything so much as they've just shoveled bucketfuls of money toward Comcast and Verizon and the like), then wonderful things like blogs and Facebook and YouTube don't happen, because a corporation could never have come up with that stuff. Only people could. The FCC would essentially turn the internet into cable TV, when cable TV is a wasteland of "reality" TV stars who make money hand over fist acting in ways that would shame their parents, and cable news pundits who make money hand over fist acting in ways that would shame their parents. America doesn't need any more of that.

Meanwhile, the Senate passed the Employee Non-Discrimination Act back in November, but the House still hasn't taken it up nearly six months later. At the time of the Senate bill's passage, House Speaker John Boehner said he wouldn't take it up because he feared it would cause "frivolous lawsuits." In a land where corporations, not people, file four out of five lawsuits, I wonder where he finds "frivolity" in the lawsuits gay folks might file after being terminated due to their boss's irrational fear of Getting Teh Gay Cooties. But Mr. Boehner is always pretty ready with the excuses -- this is, after all, the guy who wouldn't pass an unemployment extension first because it wasn't "paid for," then because it was too hard, then because he wanted some goodies. To be fair, I guess there is a remote possibility I could be selling the man short -- perhaps he didn't mean "frivolous lawsuits" so much as he meant fabulous lawsuits. In any case, People for the American Way helps you tell the House to pass ENDA already. It might take even longer than it already has, but the House folded over the Violence Against Women reauthorization last year, so they can certainly fold over this -- with enough pressure.

Action: getting the Nigerian girls back safely, reining in for-profit colleges, and cutting carbon emissions.

Three weeks ago, the extremist group Boko Haram -- which has waged an insurgency campaign in Nigeria since 2009, resulting in at least 2,300 deaths -- kidnapped 300 Nigerian girls from their schools in the dead of night; Boko Haram's leader has since threatened to sell the girls into slavery or forcibly marry them off. If you're scratching your head wondering why an extremist group would take 300 girls hostage, you might want to know that Boko Haram's name means "Western education is sinful," as in "sending girls to school so they can make their own way in the world, rather than forcing them into a life of servitude, is sinful." Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Nigerian government to get the girls back safely, bring their kidnappers to justice, and "ensure that all children are able to access their right to education in safety, and to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of all Nigerians without discrimination." Many engaged and informed observers tell us that the Nigerian government has had problems getting the girls back because good Nigerian folks don't trust their government enough to give out info. Ensuring basic human rights for the people might be go some way toward regaining that trust.

Meanwhile, CREDO activist Mike DiGiacomo helps you tell the Obama Administration to stop for-profit colleges from preying on students. You may recall telling the Obama Administration back in 2010 to rein in the predatory practices of for-profit schools, which include trapping veterans and disadvantaged folk in student loans that spiral out of control while not delivering very much in the way of a marketable skill -- and you may also recall, sadly, that the Obama Administration punted on this issue, even though our government shovels a lot of taxpayer money toward for-profit schools. And for what? Though only around 13 percent of college students attend a for-profit school, these schools account for nearly half of all the students who default on their loans. Some folks might say why should I care when folks get bamboozled by schools that look shady? You should care at least to the degree that your government enables the problem by pouring money on it. Surely no one thinks schools should taxpayer money to do bad things, right? And personal to those who invoke the "free" market: predatory schools make the people who attend them less free.

Finally, the deadline for comments on the EPA's carbon emission limits on new power plants is tomorrow, and the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell the EPA to stand strong in cutting carbon emissions, if you haven't done so already. (The EPA plans to issue proposed regulations for cutting carbon emissions in existing power plants next month, apparently.) The League of Conservation Voters has, by its lonesome, helped over 250,000 commenters talk to the EPA about this matter, suggesting that the EPA must have received a great many more comments than that with the help of all the other organizations helping good folks send public comments on this matter. Yet the coal corporations, and their enablers in Congress, stand ready to oppose the EPA's efforts, because THEY WOULD KILLZ THA JOBZ!!!!. And maybe also BENGHAZI!!!! But (sigh) regulations don't kill jobs, they create jobs, for the people who have to interpret and implement the regulations -- they just don't enable corporate CEOs to redistribute more wealth upward from their workers to themselves. And, hello! The weather out there is crazy! And it's going to get crazier unless we do something about it.

Action: corporate tax cuts vs. unemployment insurance, and antibiotic abuse on factory farms vs. everyone's health.

Remember when Citizens for Tax Justice noted the hypocrisy of a Congress that cuts corporate taxes without paying for them, but won't extend long-term unemployment benefits unless they're "paid for"? Well, NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, is on the case: they provide one action alert helping you tell your Congressfolk to reject the $300-billion-over-10-years corporate tax cut package passed out of Ways and Means, and another action alert helping you tell Congress to extend unemployment insurance already. Republicans will tell you that corporate tax cuts pay for themselves because they stimulate the economy, thus bringing in more tax revenue. The problem with that (as any close observation of Tha Bush Mobb years will demonstrate) is that it's a load of bollocks -- generally, higher taxes bring in more tax revenue. You know what might stimulate the economy? Extending unemployment insurance! Giving money to people who will spend it and will stimulate local economies, no, not as a "reward" for "being lazy," but as a simple act of kindness to folks trying to get a job in an economy that still has three unemployed folk for every job opening.

Meanwhile, the Pew Charitable Trusts will sponsor a "Supermoms Against Superbugs" day of advocacy today, in which several dozen parents will descend upon Capitol Hill to demand that our government stop antibiotic abuse, and you can support this effort, by telling Congress to end antibiotic abuse on factory farms. By now you know the drill: about four out of five antibiotics wind up in, no, not sick humans or sick animals, but nominally healthy feed animals, partly so as to make these animals meatier, and partly to compensate for the squalid conditions in which these animals live. And what does this do? It makes bacteria a lot more resistant to antibiotics -- to the point where the World Health Organization warns that we may enter a "post-antibiotic era" by the end of this century, where simple cuts and infections can be fatal, just like in the old days. Please do not be the fool who shrugs and says I'll be dead by then, lest I make you sit in the corner with the Koch brothers, who no doubt content themselves with the notion that they'll be dead by the time everyone figures out their "climate change is a hoax" meme is itself a hoax.

Around the table: the President criticizes people for not knowing what's happening in secret negotiations, and other stories.

Get a load of the cojones on this guy: President Obama suggests criticism of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade agreement "reflects lack of knowledge of what is going on in the negotiations." The secret negotiations, you mean? Mr. Obama's own trade representative told us that if Americans knew what was in the TPP, they'd hate it, which lends credence to everything we've learned from leaks about "investor-state tribunals" and websites getting shut down on suspicion of copyright violation. Perhaps even worse? He wants us to "wait and see what's in the agreement," when he's pushing hard for the ability to pass it without amendment and with minimal debate.

McClatchy DC headline blares: "How’s this for counterintuitive? Pentagon hails jump in reported sexual assault cases." The Pentagon reported a 50% increase in sexual assault accusations over the past year, but Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that was mainly because our troops are more comfortable with coming forward. That all seems likely, if (like me) you didn't think rising hate crimes rates in the '90s reflected an actual rise in hate crimes, but more assiduous reporting of hate crimes by police departments that hadn't been doing it.

Paul Buchheit opines on "Why the Super-Rich Should Pay Super Taxes." If you think you already know why, you may find some things here you didn't know -- or, at least, had forgotten, since no one keeps a list of reasons the rich should pay more in taxes at the forefront of all their thinking. You'll also be reminded that Paul Ryan got plenty of hands up from Big Gummint on his way to becoming the would-be architect of despair for American working families.

Tennessee state legislator says that "Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign-ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory (sic) sign-ups for 'train ride' for Jews in the '40s." First it's being forced to participate in the private health insurance market, and before you know it it's camps, gassing, and being turned into soap. And then he tries to talk his way out of it! I think I've heard of Stacey Campfield before, but we're never going to speak of him again.

Finally, Bush Mobb NSA Advisor/Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice decides to pull the plug on her planned commencement speech at Rutgers University later this month, after pressure from both students and faculty. Is it too much to ask that none of the Bush Mobb luminaries ever be asked to speak anywhere, ever again? Can we not live in a society where people who do such wrongs as they did are too ashamed to show their faces in public? I know such a society is unlikely, especially in the Jersey Shore age, but it would be a society worth fighting for.

Action: corporate taxes, and food labeling.

Sum of Us helps you support Google shareholders who have urged the corporation to pay its fair share of taxes. You know, so we can pay cops and firefighters, so we can build and maintain roads and bridges and schools, so we can actually create jobs in America. Leave job-creation up to the corporations and, well, you see what you get -- minimal and erratic job creation during Tha Bush Mobb years, and steady but weak job creation during the slightly-less Mobby Obama years. And Google has been using shell corporations abroad to keep at least $24 billion in profits from being taxed in America. If we keep letting corporations move money around in a global shell game, then the burden of paying for cops and firefighters and roads and bridges and schools will fall to small businesses and good folks like you and I. We should pay our share, obviously, but corporations should pay their share, too, and stop hiding behind the "jobs" they don't create when we let them do what they like.

Meanwhile, I have two action alerts relating to labeling of genetically-modified food. The first hits close to home: Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to support SB 653, which would mandate labeling of genetically-modified foods. Nine of ten Americans support labeling genetically-modified foods -- labeling, that is! Not "banning"! Also, Take Part helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose Rep. Pompeo's disastrous food "labeling" bill, H.R. 4432, and support Rep. DeFazio's actual food labeling bill, H.R. 1699. H.R. 1699 would mandate labeling of GMO foods (though it would have overly broad exemptions, in my opinion), and would exempt from punishment folks who can demonstrate they accidentally raised GMO crops thinking they were non-GMO crops as well as folks whose crops get contaminated by GMO seeds. But H.R. 4432 would (among other things!) prevent states like Pennsylvania from passing bills like SB 653. It's like a Goofus and Gallant strip here.

Action: fighting the "sun tax," ending corporate "personhood," and restraining banksters.

The forces of evil (no, I do not exaggerate) are working hard to convince Americans, or at least their easily-fooled representatives in state legislatures, that solar power users are "free riders," that they do irreparable harm to the commonwealth by producing power independently and selling the excess back to utilities, which can presumably sell it to other users who do not produce their own power. And this Clown Car could be coming to your state soon, so the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Governor and state legislators to reject any bill that would assess a "sun tax" on good citizens for producing their own power. When I contemplate the notion that good Americans who have taken out five-figure home equity loans to solarize their house and do their part to reduce the ill effects of pollution and climate change are somehow freeloaders, and when I recall that alleged small-government "conservatives" are behind these attacks on common sense and good works, I ask myself: how much longer must I suffer such stupidity? Happily, we can decide how much longer that's going to be, by attacking legislative efforts like these en masse.

Meanwhile, in an extremely unexpected and welcome development, Democratic Senate leaders have said they will hold a vote this year on S.J.Res. 19, which would amend our Constitution to permit our federal and state governments to regulate campaign financing, since recent Supreme Court decisions, as you know, have opened the floodgates on that spending. S.J.Res. 19 has 38 sponsors as of this writing, and I don't necessarily expect that it will get that much more than 38 votes, but I wholeheartedly approve of getting Senators on the record. Many Senators will try to evade this responsibility, calling a vote on S.J.Res. 19 a "political stunt." They should reconsider that stance, given that polls tell us that close to 70% of Republicans think the Supreme Court got Citizens United v. FEC wrong. S.J.Res. 19 is, in short, a vote on a matter very close not only to the interests of the American people, but also our hearts, and so filibustering S.J.Res. 19 in the name of "exposing a political stunt" would be even worse than ludicrous arguments equating money with speech. So People for the American Way, the People's Email Network, and Free Speech for People all help you tell your Senators to help get money out of politics, and people back in.

Finally, S. 1282, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, would prevent FDIC-insured banks from becoming affiliated with, or owned by, securities corporations. S. 1282 would also prevent bank officers from simultaneously serving as securities corporation officers, and it would forbid banks from investing in the kind of "synthetic securities" that helped crash the economy in 2008, or even investing in any security merely for its own good, rather than for the good of its customers. For too long now we've let banksters do whatever they like whenever they like in the name of free markets -- as if a market could ever be "free" once its largest players got big enough! Now we demand that the banks act like banks -- that they hold accounts, hand out loans, and the like, and stop muddying the waters with hifalutin financial "instruments." What's the worst that could happen? Are the banks, once shackled in this manner, going to crash the economy? Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to support S. 1282, and thus support protecting banking customers from losing their shirts because the banks that are supposed to be serving them are actually serving themselves.

Around the table: "when did our team stop being America?" and other observations.

"Liberal" media, again "asks" if "economic populism" of the kind espoused by the likes of Sen. Warren and Rep. Grayson is an electoral "dead end." Gosh, is that why they call it "populism"? Because it's unpopular? If so, you'd have to ask "with whom?" You could be excused for answering "with Our Glorious Elites who have very few arguments with which to befuddle the masses anymore." And, last I looked, we outnumber them.

Texas judge sentences rapist to light jail time and, oddly, 250 hours of community service at a rape crisis center. Equally oddly, the judge clearly used circumstantial evidence to justify the lighter sentence, like that the victim had other sex partners, had a baby, and had contacted the defendant first, none of which actually helps answer the question "was this person raped at this point in time by this other person?" As for the community service, the road to hell is paved with the skulls of people who think they're geniuses because they've looked at everyone else's bad idea and somehow seen a good idea.

Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring the President to disclose how many people (including civilians) drone strikes kill. But that could work in our favor, since, as you know, Reps. Schiff (D-CA) and Jones (R-NC) have offered H.R. 4372, which would do the same thing as the stripped-out provision, and surely it's better to have these debates out in the open, right?

Citizens for Tax Justice reports on a corporation, Pfizer, that actually wants to "renounce its citizenship" and reincorporate in the U.K. so it can merge more easily with a British corporation, and thus evade taxes further here in the U.S. Sadly, "evade taxes further" doesn't quite describe the depths to which Pfizer has sunk in order to evade its responsibilities to the American taxpayer -- not just shifting its profits abroad, not just spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying, but being the biggest "winner" in the 2004 tax amnesty and gobbling up over $4 billion in Big Gummint contracts just since 2010. It's actually an even longer trail of slime than that to which we've sadly become accustomed.

U.S. Supreme Court upholds Kansas Supreme Court's 2013 disbarment of former state AG Phill Kline, after the Kansas court found Mr. Kline had repeatedly misled (or permitted his subordinates to mislead) judges and grand juries (among others) in order to further his anti-abortion crusade. The U.S. Supreme Court is not known for being pro-choice, but no doubt they could not justify Mr. Kline's repeated violations of professional ethics codes -- and certainly they could justify staying out of a state's affairs with some ease.

Finally, David Sirota uses one Politico article, peripherally concerned with fracking in Colorado, to indict our entire horse race-obsessed political culture. Choice cut: Colorado Democratic Gov. Hickenlooper's spokeshack says a ballot initiative giving municipalities the ability to ban fracking is "like setting off a grenade in a closet -- you never know if someone's going to get killed," and by "someone" he means some politicians' careers, not the someones who have to drink or wash with the brackish, gelatinous, flammable water that fracking chemicals leave behind. Why should any readers care about any politician's chances for election anywhere? Because we've been trained to "root" for them if they're on our "team"? When did our team stop being America?

Penny rants: more anti-minimum wage BS, more "free market" BS, and more food stamps BS.

The noted non-liberals at factcheck.org find an anti-minimum wage hike ad's claims of job loss misleading. It's an entertaining and informative article -- I did not know the origin of the phrase "weasel words" until today! -- and lays out the parts of the CBO report the ad somehow didn't include, such as the part where almost a million families escape poverty, and the part where everyone who currently makes up to six times the poverty level makes more money. But the ONE MILLYUN JOBZ GONE FOREVAH!!!! number is also a scare number, simple and plain. The CBO report stated that a $10.10/hour minimum wage might cause job losses ranging from "very slight" to 1,000,000 jobs over 10 years. But even if we take the high number, one million jobs lost over 10 years equals 100,000 per year, or around 8,333 jobs per month, and even during this rather weak recovery, the economy has added over 185,000 per month since October 2010. So I presume that, unless some utter idiot/asshole/both becomes President in 2016, people making at least $10.10/hour will not break our economy. I mean, people do remember that banks broke the economy in 2008, right?

Speaking of which, Dean Baker asks "What Problem is Privatizing Fannie and Freddie Supposed to Solve?" I guess if you're one of the benighted souls who still think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and not the banksters) crashed the economy in 2008, you of course would rather see Big Gummint functions handled by private corporations, although, as Mr. Baker points out, no law prevents private corporations from issuing mortgage-backed securities. So along comes a "bipartisan" Senate bill aiming not only to disband Fannie and Freddie, but to guarantee 90 percent of any investment in a mortgage-backed security issued by a bankster. Will the banksters will pack their securities with utter crap, knowing that they won't lose more than 10 percent of their money if they fail? You don't need a Magic 8-ball to answer that one, especially if you can remember how much they gamed the system when investors could in theory lose 100 percent of their money. Conservatives might also like to explain how government covering investors' bad bets -- or indeed, government encouraging those bets -- exemplifies "free market" principles.

Finally, South Dakota Republican Senate candidate Annette Bosworth -- currently an underdog to former two-term Governor Mike Rounds in the June 3 Republican primary -- suggests that we should treat food stamp recipients like the animals the National Park Service tells us not to feed, because they become "dependent" on the "handouts." We could give her a few "lessons in irony" ourselves, starting with her apparent support of (or, at least, abject failure to condemn) a Big Gummint Park Service ensuring that animals have a habitat in which they're able to feed themselves. But doesn't she know that handing out red meat to primary voters means they'll grow "dependent on the handouts" and might "never learn to take care of themselves"? Of course she does -- this is her significance move, after all, how she serves notice to knuckle-draggers that she's one of them, and also how she serves notice to the Republican establishment that she's willing to beat up on the helpless. But I wonder how many supporters of Rick Weiland, who would be her Democratic opponent if she triumphs in the primary, are contributing to Dr. Bosworth right now.

Action: mass executions in Egypt, fairness for pregnant workers, and fracking in Pennsylvania.

Egypt not only plans to execute the 528 folks it sentenced to death back in March for their alleged role in a protest-turned-riot last July (including more than 400 in absentia), but has lately sentenced almost 200 more folks to death since then on similar charges. I'll say it again: if a country has to kill over 700 people at once, then something's horribly wrong. You don't even have to know that the court convicting and sentencing these folks barred defense lawyers from the trial on its second day to know that. And can you say killing all your political opponents at once, kids? Seriously, if Russia or China pulled this crap, we'd see through it right away. Still, there is-so such a thing as bad PR, especially since the world is not only watching Egypt, but I dare say pulling for Egypt to do the right thing, given the optimism we had when the good people of Egypt threw Mr. Mubarak out of office. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Egyptian authorities to overturn the death sentences.

Meanwhile, the National Women's Law Center has a novel idea to promote S. 942, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: they're planning to deliver "the largest Mother's Day card ever" to Congress on Mother's Day with signatures supporting the bill. (At approximately eight feet tall, it's certainly much larger than what any company would be willing to manufacture in any volume.) The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would force corporations to make reasonable accommodations to their pregnant workers, which may include more frequent bathroom breaks and less lifting and sitting for long periods. Woe unto the corporations who say they simply cannot let their cashiers go to the bathroom more frequently when they're pregnant, for these managers will mark themselves as extremely incapable people, who could not be counted on in a real crisis! S. 942 would, not incidentally, also prevent corporations from discriminating against job applicants just because they're pregnant. So the National Women's Law Center helps you tell Congress to support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett not to overturn a moratorium on gas drilling in state parks, as he obviously has a jones to do, the Sierra Club still helps you do that. We know he has a serious jones for gas drilling on public lands because he's tolerated the nearly 600 wells that are already on or right up next to public lands and because he seems sanguine toward gas drilling corporations' plans to add 3,000 more, but, as a famous philosopher once said, this livin' with the joneses just ain't where it's at. Here's where it's at: these lands belong to us, the citizens of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania; they're the lands where we hike and camp and hunt and fish, the lands that wildlife and the scientists who study them call home, the lands that hold the air we breathe and the water we drink, and all the Governor's talk about "non-surface disturbance" drilling which makes him sound so smart! doesn't change the fact that gas drilling, as currently practiced, puts all of the common wealth at risk. So don't put up with it; fight it instead.

Around the table: a federal judge strikes down Wisconsin's Voter ID law, and other stories.

Good news, everyone: a U.S. District Judge strikes down Wisconsin's voter ID law, saying that the law hit poor and minority folks the hardest and that the state didn't demonstrate a compelling reason to pass the law. All of which would come as no surprise to a sentient life form. Gov. Walker said he would convene a special legislative session if the ruling didn't go his way. Gov. Walker is a smart politician, but does he really want to focus that much attention on Voter ID right before trying to convince the good people of Wisconsin to re-elect him?

Citizens for Tax Justice describes a House vote rubber-stamping corporate tax breaks thusly: "It is plainly hypocritical for Congress to provide hundreds of billions in deficit-financed tax breaks for corporations while refusing to help the long-term unemployed, ostensibly because of the impact it would have on the federal budget." Further down, we learn that Congress insists that unemployment insurance has to be "paid for" with spending cuts, but never insists that corporate tax break bills be "paid for." No, that's not because they give "benefits" to the economy, because they only give benefits to their CEOs.

Daily Kos diarist provides a fairly thorough demolition of the "war on solar." Solar power now provides over 1% of all American electricity, and its capacity has increased more than fourfold since 2010, which has prompted the fossil fuel-dependent utilities to, in the author's words, try to "tax the sun." That's a good meme, though I might adapt it a bit, so that it's personal -- like, utilities want to make solar power users pay a sun tax.

More good news! The Department of Labor revises coal dust standards for the first time in 40 years, reducing concentration limits for breathable coal dust and mandating more frequent measurements of that dust. Next up on Fox News: how saving more workers from the specter of black lung disease KILLZ THA JOBZ!!!!

Finally, Senate Republicans (except for Tennessee's Bob Corker, for some reason) filibuster the Fair Minimum Wage Act, and Texas Republican John Cornyn demonstrates he really needs some cheese with his whine: "This is all about politics. This is all about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hardhearted." Ah, fellows? If you don't want to look "bad and hardhearted," maybe you want to act, oh, I don't know, less bad and less hardhearted?