Thieves in the Temple.

Action: "free" trade, and clean streams in Pennsylvania.

16 years ago this month, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected "fast-track" authority for the President to negotiate "free" trade deals. That's right, 171 Democrats and 71 Republicans joined together to prevent the President from abrogating Congress's Constitutional duty to debate and approve trade agreements with foreign nations, and to prevent him from allowing corporations both American and foreign break American labor laws and American environmental laws with impunity. But now President Obama, who once said trade deals should respect American laws, is now attempting to negotiate multiple trade deals that would do the opposite, and Speaker Boehner leads a House majority that can't extend unemployment benefits, can't do anything about the influx of refugee children at the border, and can't be bothered to even debate Mr. Obama's air strikes in Iraq and Syria, but is all too eager to let the President ram yet more nefarious "free" "trade" "deals" down our collective throat. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject "fast-tracking" of unlawful "free" trade pacts.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to preserve proven methods for protecting our streams, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. Long story short: Pennsylvania has long required riparian buffers -- or sizable forested areas built around the borders of streams -- to keep pollutants out of our streams, but the state legislature wants to make using those buffers optional. Why? Well, if the buffer's not there, then developers can build there a lot more easily -- which greatly increases the possibility that the nearby waterway will be polluted. As with most political matters, you have to follow the money. (And n.b. you may be thrown by the two edits in the latest version of HB 1565, but don't be. Saying that riparian buffers "may be used" in clean water management is exactly the same as saying the state won't be required to use them, regardless of the fact that the bill actually struck the word "required." And the second edit actually weakens the buffers that "may be used." This is not exactly the spirit of compromise, let alone the letter.)

Around the table: starring misclassified workers, corrupt cops, and foolish legislators.

Department of Labor finds oil and gas corporations frequently cheat their workers out of wages and benefits. You'll recognize their main tactic -- "misclassification" of full-time workers as contractors -- from reading about Newt Gingrich's favorite corporation, FedEx, doing the same thing. The good news? The Department of Labor has, over the last few years, gotten a budget hike and has hired 300 more inspectors as a result. I wish there were more, as I'm sure more working families in the oil and gas industries are suffering than we now know.

Daily Kos claims that "Citizens United is Killing Republicans" because rich Republican donors have "quit their parties and put their money into vanity projects like Americans for Prosperity." Both the DSCC and Democratic Senate campaigns have outraised their Republican counterparts, but Americans for Prosperity isn't the only "vanity project" out there, and in any case we shouldn't celebrate Democrats collecting more money than Republicans. We should be celebrating one party collecting more votes than the other through its good works on behalf of the American people.

Sorrento (LA) police chief gets two years probation for lying to an FBI officer -- about the FBI's investigation into his own sexual assault of a drunken woman. Apparently he kept her, handcuffed and belt-tied, under his desk for several hours and had her perform oral sex on him at least twice, and the tale actually gets more bizarre from there. But since he's also apparently helping the FBI with another investigation, he didn't get jail time. I understand that people in power have more to bargain with, but I do wonder what right-wing "law and order" types have to say about all of this.

Dean Baker explains how the "Mysteries of Inequality are Only Mysterious to Elites." Of course I suspect Our Glorious Elites only want us to think they're "mysterious" to them, incompetence being easier to explain than malice. But when folks talk of the rising stock market as a "leading indicator" of economic growth, I guess they want us to think it's our fault if our incomes never follow that "lead."

The Tennessee state government, already saddled with one of the most regressive state tax systems in America, has been contemplating making it even worse, with a constitutional amendment banning an income tax and legislation repealing the state's taxes on dividends and capital gains. I guess Messrs. Laffer, Norquist, et al were caught a bit unawares by the spectacular failure of Kansas's "experiment" with stupid right-wing economics, and want to demonstrate that they can get some good excuses ready when they make the same thing happen in Tennessee.

Finally, The Nation marks the impending resignation of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by noting how much he's fallen down on prosecuting banksters. Record multi-billion dollar settlements don't erase the fact that the folks who crashed our economy in 2008 are still walking free and still making money, and these facts aren't due to the free market working its will, but to Justice failing to enforce the laws already on the books. None of this is a surprise, of course, when you remember that Mr. Holder worked for banksters before taking the AG job.

Action: stopping war in the Middle East, regulating payday lenders, and prompting corporations to cut ties with ALEC.

I've received notices asking for support for the Congressional Progressive Caucus's plan to "limit" President Obama's current war in the Middle East, but I haven't passed any of them along, because I'd rather stop war in the Middle East. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to vote on approving Mr. Obama's war, and also vote "no" on approving his war. Just as the 2001 AUMF is no excuse for claiming the authority to bomb anyone you like anywhere you like, the upcoming election is no excuse for inaction on Congress's part. It's like they've all completely forgotten that doing the right thing actually very closely resembles doing the politically-smart thing. And it certainly would not be untoward of us to turn out any Congressfolk who blithely tells us that the reason they're not carrying out their Constitutionally-mandated duty is the election. Our political class has become so sick, immoral, and decadent that they no longer hesitate to say such things out loud. But we can do something about that.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) is mulling new rules that would crack down on the havoc wrought by payday lenders -- including limiting the number of roll-overs for a single loan and curtailing lenders' ability to reach into your bank account -- and Americans for Payday Lending Reform (a project of National People's Action) helps you tell the CFPB to keep as many good Americans as possible out of the payday loan cycle of debt. "Cycle of debt" is an accurate term for a process where eight in 10 payday loans don't get paid off in two weeks and more than half of payday loans get rolled over ten times. That's not "a way for folks who can't get credit to get credit," as payday loan industry defenders claim -- it's a way for another group of non-workers to redistribute worker wealth upward to themselves. I suppose it's a small comfort that no matter how rich a payday loan CEO gets, the real banksters will never see him as One of the Boys -- but only a small comfort.

Finally, internet giants like Google, Yelp, Yahoo!, and Facebook executives have all announced their intention to cut ties with ALEC, but eBay stands out as a a major internet corporation that hasn't done so yet, hence the Sierra Club helps you tell eBay to end its association with the American Legislative Exchange Council. Why the Sierra Club, you ask? While the Sierra Club has expanded its portfolio a bit lately, but ALEC's stance on climate change (they say it's a fraud) and renewable energy (they're big-time sun-taxers) relate directly to the Sierra Club's familiar mission -- as does ALEC's past stances on "ag-gag" bills (they just hate investigations of animal abuse on factory farms) and disclosure of fracking chemicals (spoiler alert: they're against that, too). If eBay looks a little Republican to you (their founder, Meg Whitman, was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Governor of California in 2010), remember that they're just as susceptible to bad PR as the next corporation.

Around the table: mostly sad tales about pride and greed.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) describes how to beat ISIS militarily. The plan? Give Iraq six months to "take back Western Iraq under international air cover," and if/when that fails, "assemble an international Sunni fighting force and deploy it against ISIS." This plan would a) put Arabic soldiers on the ground, not U.S. soldiers and b) work a whole lot better than air strikes. Of course Our Glorious Elites won't use it, because they're not interested in solving problems so much as letting problems fester so they can keep running political campaigns on them.

"Here Come the Grainy Images of Terrorists" in campaign ads "Because the Republicans Have Nothing Left," announces Daily Kos diarist Hunter. Of course Republicans have nothing left, but they always have nothing left -- would you want to run on voting to turn Medicare into a voucher program? -- and the vote-for-us-if-you-want-to-live line worked in 2002 and 2004, and damn near worked again in 2006 until the Mark Foley scandal came along.

Paul Krugman writes about "The Show-Off Society," noting that criticism of rich folks' ostentatious lifestyles now emanates even from the right. He concludes that slamming the rich for their lifestyles is just as "futile" as slamming the poor for their alleged bad habits, but though I agree that bringing back the 91% tax bracket will change things far more effectively, I will not accept that shaming people is a worthless act, not in my America.

David Dayen describes the current state of our "gimmick" economy. Choice quotation: "Companies now spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out not how to beat their competition, but how to prosper from tricks and loopholes their accountants find buried in the law. Every corporation has become, at the root, a financial company, adept at moving money around on paper and little else." So when the politicians tell you TEH FREE MARKETZ MUST BE FREE!!!!, you can say, "free to completely destroy the relationship between work and money?"

Along those lines, CNBC reports that "Billionaires are Hoarding Piles of Cash" -- some $600 million of it, on average. CNBC spends an awful lot of time pretending they're doing this because they're "afraid," and there's no need, even, to retort that they're sitting on that money because they don't want to help the economy get better as long as that Socialist Communist Nazi Kenyan Anti-Colonialist is in office, although that's true. All you need say the next time someone tells you Our Glorious Elites are the Boldest Brightest People Evah is that these Boldest and Brightest are afraid of what might happen to a pile of $600 million.

Finally, the Obama Administration expands the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, quadrupling the marine boundary around three of the five reserves within the monument. This will protect more of our ocean waters (and ocean plant and animal species) from development, and thus from pollution and climate change as well. Those right-wingers about to squeal BIG GUMMINT KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!! might want to look at the name of the President who actually designated the Pacific monument in the first place. Hint: he did it in 2009, right before leaving office.

Action: patenting genes, rewriting textbooks, and associating with ALEC.

The Federal Court of Australia -- which sits just under that nation's High Court -- ruled last month that corporations can patent breast cancer genes, on the grounds that isolating genetic material from the human body essentially created something new. Our own Supreme Court ruled quite differently, you may recall -- that corporations can't patent genes, since genes occur in nature, but could patent artificially-manufactured genes. What's the trouble with giving corporations patents over human genes, besides its utter absurdity? Those corporations could monopolize cancer treatments and dictate the terms upon which people live or die, much like the fabled "death panels" the Affordable Care Act did not create. The decision's supporters tout the new business the Court's decision will supposedly bring to Australia, which sure will make all those people affected by cancer feel a lot better. Well, my mom died in horrible pain and suffering, but at least the economy got a little boost! You know what comes next: the big stick of bad PR, which has prompted other Australian corporations to drop their patent applications. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Myriad Genetics to drop its application for a patent on the BRC1 gene.

Meanwhile, the Texas state Board of Education is, again, considering rewriting all their textbooks so that whiny, cowardly, diaper-loaded right-wingers never suffer an emotional boo-boo from anyone's hard truths ever again. This time they're considering a social studies text that would describe Moses's "direct influence" on the Constitution -- you know, 10 Commandments, 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights? For when have we ever had ten of anything else? The text would also "inform" us that "states' rights," not slavery, caused the Civil War, and would claim that scientists disagree a lot on climate change, which they don't. We might just ignore Texas in these matters and let them go their own disastrous way, except that Texas, as you might expect, buys a lot of textbooks, and thus has far more influence on how textbooks get written than, say, Wyoming -- I mean, why else would the far right make Texas an educational battleground, as they have for more than three decades? Hence People for the American Way help you tell the Texas Board of Education to stop injecting religious ideology into their books. Note well that I said "religious ideology" and not "God" -- God is not nearly as weak as some of His most annoying votaries would have you believe.

Finally, you've surely heard by now that Google has announced it will quit ALEC; you may not have heard that Facebook has announced same, and these corporations would follow in Microsoft's footsteps. But some internet titans still associate with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has lately abandoned promoting Voter ID and "Stand Your Ground" laws (after getting those laws passed in as many legislatures as they could, naturally) and now traffics in corporate welfare handouts and climate change denialism, which latter item (I'm still sore it's not the former, but I guess I shouldn't expect too much from a big corporation) has prompted much of the recent exodus. So Common Cause helps you tell AOL to cut its ties with ALEC. (Common Cause originally aimed their action tool at both AOL and Yahoo!, but Yahoo! has since cut ties with ALEC as well.) And Public Citizen helps you tell Google to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as ALEC. State and local Chambers of Commerce still fulfill important functions in America, but the national organization suffers from some serious Obama Derangement Syndrome, and is now no better than a national ALEC. Climate change denialism is but one of their symptoms.

Around the table: what Americans *really* think about the ratio between CEO and worker pay, and other items of interest.

Three big soda corporations pledge to slash calories in their soft drinks 20 percent by 2025. I think their methods (as outlined in paragraphs four and five) stand a good chance of actually accomplishing that goal, and I'm no fan of soda taxes or serving-size limits either, but 20-percent-by-2025 is still a better slogan than a program, and when are we going after the real problem, which is the massive corn industry subsidy program that keeps high-fructose corn syrup (and soda) cheap?

The Harvard Business Review tells us what folks all over the world think of the CEO-unskilled worker pay gap. Incredibly, Americans think the ratio is around 31:1 (which is around what it was back in the late 1970s), and would prefer that the ratio be more like 7:1 -- and that ratio is apparently the same across the ideological spectrum. The real ratio in America, of course? 354:1. I'd have loved to see the respondents' reactions to that bit of news.

ProPublica checks claims that the long-expired assault weapons ban cut down on gun crime and/or deaths from gun crime -- and finds them wanting. The author suggests that future assault weapons bans might work better, but from here, banning assault weapons looks like another policy prescription that sounds like it should work, but doesn't. (For the record, I still think the return of the 91% tax bracket, and all the infrastructure building/refitting and actual job creation that would accompany it, would do more to decrease gun violence than any gun ban.)

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) says Congress should actually debate the Obama Administration's attacks on ISIS, and that failing to do so would "create() a horrible precedent, or maybe further a horrible precedent." I'd have dropped the word "maybe." Anyway, I sure hope that he doesn't really mean that Congress better authorize these air strikes before ISIS comes and kills us all in our beds. I'd rather he means we should actually debate whether more violence will fix all the violence that came before.

Finally, Daniel Larison at The American Conservative writes that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is "the worst of both worlds" when it comes to foreign policy "in that he wants to intervene in the affairs of other countries while remaining oblivious and indifferent to their political realities." Of course Mr. Larison would have been just as dead-on if he'd substituted the word "Bush" for "Cruz," which he's probably done in his heart if not on paper, but when he talks of a "middle ground" between "McCain and Paul," I hope he means Ron Paul, who is the real deal, and not Rand Paul, who is a fraud of elephantine proportions.

Action: war in the Middle East, and protecting bees.

With the first air strikes visiting Iraq and Syria earlier this week -- one of them finding a city of 200,000 people, which, just off the top of my head, must have killed civilians, since ISIS has but 30,000 soldiers presently -- both the Friends Committee on National Legislation and Peace Action West help you tell your Congressfolk to stop this war. Congress has been extraordinarily cowardly in heading off an impeachable offense by this President, but nothing stops them from coming back from campaigning vacationing working in their districts and holding a special session, since the Founders had good reasons for trying to stop Presidents from going off to war all the time. And to head off another line of reasoning: we can't take a TARDIS back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and dissuade all the Western powers from meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, but there must be a point where "someone else broke it and we have to fix it" is no longer an excuse to keep breaking it -- and I, of course, say that moment is always now. Treating the nations of the Middle East with a little more respect in diplomacy might be a good start.

Meanwhile, Swiss corporation Syngenta has petitioned the EPA to dramatically increase allowable thresholds of neonicotinoid pesticides on corn, wheat, alfalfa, and barley -- in the case of wheat hay, to 400 times the current limit. As you know, scientists have told us that neonicotinoids (or "neonics") depress bees' immune systems, contributing mightily to the collapse of half of America's honeybee colonies over the last decade. Syngenta made $14 billion last year, so clearly they have the money to do things the right way. They would tell us they are doing things the right way -- that they're using the neonics in a leaf spray, so the neonics don't penetrate the entire plant, and that alfalfa (for example) gets cut before it blooms, when bees are, as you'd imagine, most interested in them. But having witnessed, in the last few years, incidents of wind carrying GMO seeds over to farms where they ruin organic seeds, you can also easily imagine the bad neonics getting spread around to other blooms the bees might use -- and then it's still game over for many of our food crops. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to reject Syngenta's petition, and thus reject more poison in our crops.

Around the table: ladies and gentlemen, the smartest man in the Republican Party! And other follies.

In the middle of explaining how he'd replace the Affordable Care Act with a "free-market system" with vouchers and risk pools, Rep. Paul Ryan unfurls this gem: "Whether they choose to do that or not (that is, whether good citizens actually buy health insurance with the voucher he'd give them or not) is not really something you can necessarily actually capture in scoring." In other words, he can't prove his plan works -- which is understandable, because you can't score bullshit. He also doesn't explain why the Affordable Care Act is "so fundamentally flawed in its architecture," though I guess he figures if he uses the word "architecture" you'll just take his word for it. He really is, as someone once said, the dumb person's vision of a smart person.

Joe Conason says Americans appear to have amnesia about national security issues, as they seem to prefer Republicans to handle foreign affairs right now. Of course we'd be fools to discount the possibility that Mr. Bush knew his little Iraq adventure would blow up in someone else's face and that Republicans might benefit from that, but it'd also help to explain why this appears to be "amnesia" -- it'd help to explain, for example, that our "liberal" media has virtually no attention span, and carried water for the Bush war in Iraq while helping to demonize those of us who opposed the war from the beginning.

Remember that bankster CEO who complained that most folks who hate banks just don't have enough "skin in the game"? Robert Reich reminds us that ordinary folks already have too much "skin in the game," in that we suffer from Wall Street disasters while banksters don't. Fun fact: even gamblers can get their gambling debts forgiven more easily than regular folks can get their student loans forgiven. And if a Senator were to introduce a bill correcting that obviously absurd state of affairs, the banksters would strangle it in its crib.

Another year, another putatively pro-business association claiming that federal regulations are much more expensive to businesses than they really are. Long story short: like previous reports, they brandish scare numbers (ZOMG $1.7 TRILLYUNZ!!!!!) without telling you that their big, bad numbers accumulate over decades, that they count penalties for breaking the rules that most businesses don't break as "costs," and that they don't count the health benefits resulting from following the rules against the "cost." After all, hours (and therefore work) not lost due to illnesses from dirty and air and water don't help the CEO buy his 19th vacation home.

It's not just local police departments that get killing gadgets from our military -- school districts get them, too. School districts! That's not a comment on Kids Today, since every generation has complained about Kids Today. That's a comment on how little faith our educational system has in its ability to manage our children, who surely cannot be that threatening to adults. The good news? Most school districts are sending them back. And that's a comment on the awesome power of bad PR.

Finally, after much public pressure, Google executive Eric Schmidt has said Google will end its association with ALEC, the state legislative affairs group responsible for so much right-wing legislation at the state level over the years. I'm such a stubborn bastard that I still wish ALEC's regressive views on economics, rather than their regressive views on climate change, prompted Google's executives to quit -- but I'm not so stubborn that I won't take it. Next up on Fox News: Google joins the lynch mob against ALEC!

Action: genetically-modified food labeling, and climate change coverage in the "liberal" media.

Monsanto produced a GMO sweet corn in 2011, one upon which the USDA hasn't required independent safety testing, one that actually produces pesticides that kill bugs who eat the corn. I wonder what those pesticides will do to the humans who eat the corn! And, sadly, we have to wonder, because our government won't force food labeling in grocery stores -- this, even though candidate Barack Obama said he favored GMO food-labeling, even though nine of 10 Americans want their GMO food labeled. Hence a passel of organizations including Friends of the Earth and Food and Water Watch helps you tell the big grocery corporations to label the GMO foods they sell. WalMart (the country's biggest grocer, sigh) wouldn't commit to doing such a thing last year, but certainly we can ask them again and again until they do so. The petition referenced above will also ask Kroger's and Safeway to label their GMO foods, which over 60 nations across the planet already require, but which President Super-Happy Bipartisan Fun Time Land couldn't get done in America even when he had that 70-seat majority in the House and that filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But when they don't listen the first time, or the 101st time, we just keep telling them.

Meanwhile, you may have heard about the massive climate change rally in New York City over the weekend, one that drew at least 300,000 attendees -- but if you did hear about it, you almost certainly didn't hear it on the Sunday morning chat shows, unless you tuned into ABC's This Week, where Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation went rather far out of her way to mention it in a panel discussion. Hence Fairness and Accuracy in Media helps you tell the big "liberal" media corporations to start covering climate change with a modicum of seriousness. You may recall that the massive anti-war rallies of October 2002 weren't worth very much coverage, either, nor were the massive protests outside the Republican National Convention in New York nearly two years later -- but that the so-called "liberal" media slobbered all over Glenn Beck's somewhat-less-massive 2010 rally about whatever it was supposed to be about. You may also recall pro-war rallies attended by dozens of people somehow getting "equal time" with the anti-war rallies prior to our 2003 invasion of Iraq. It really is like the "liberal" media has something to hide. But we're not going to let them hide it.

Around the table: starring lazy Republicans and lazy lit-crits.

Allie Yee at the Institute for Southern Studies asks, "How Will Newcomers Affect Tight Senate Races in the South?" Judging by the chart, the short answer would be that newcomers give the Democratic incumbent a better chance in North Carolina (and, to a lesser extent, in Georgia) than in Arkansas or Louisiana -- but that's if we accept that emigration from the West Coast and the Northeast automatically means a liberal influx, which would fit existing patterns in Virginia and Florida but which would not, alone, establish a causal relationship. Arizona enjoys a lot of emigration from the West Coast and the Northeast, too, but it didn't put Richard Carmona over the top in the 2012 U.S. Senate race.

Ho hum, Crossroads GPS-affiliated (and thus Karl Rove-affiliated) group attacks Kentucky Senate Democratic candidate for a stance on immigration that Crossroads GPS itself supported in ads just a year earlier. Perhaps Crossroads will say they're not really responsible for what the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition does, but you and I typically don't tell other people to do things we don't want them to do. Hypocrisy is all in a day's work for folks like Karl Rove, for whom winning is all that matters, good ideas or good policy be damned.

Kate Aronoff dispatches a couple of left-wing critics who claim that teen Dystopian novels like The Hunger Games "promote capitalism." Positing the existence of a society so screwed up that it needs a Katniss Everdeen to "save" it, according to these critics, amounts to little more than "propaganda for the ethos of individualism," which is the "the central ideology of consumer capitalism." And here you thought Ms. Everdeen inspired others to act! Anyway, it's a damn long walk from Dystopia to consumer-capitalism, particularly when most of the folks you meet in that Dystopia don't have a pot to piss in. Some of our liberal brethren need to leave their ivory towers and breathe real-people air.

House Speaker John Boehner (E-OH) suggests to a right-wing audience that the unemployed would "rather just sit around." He helpfully adds that this idea has been "born" "out of the economy over the last couple years," even though his kind have been whining about imaginary lazy people for much, much longer than that. Anyway, we demolished this myth here just last week -- Ms. Clawson helpfully adds that we still have more than two unemployed folks for every job opening. But the facts find John Boehner's mind an impenetrable fortress.

Finally, President Obama announces 14 Executive Orders that aim to promote solar power and reduce carbon emissions. Those who would squeal AMURKIAN CAESAR!!!!! are welcome to point out a) how this is more egregious than the NSA spying and warrantless wiretapping they largely ignored when Mr. Bush did it and b) exactly where Mr. Obama has abused his authority in these orders -- I can't imagine, for example, that he has to run to Congress to get more permission to promote energy efficiency in HUD projects. They are also welcome to advocate for expanded Congressional involvement when a President Scott Walker issues Executive Orders in the face of a Democratic Congress.

Around the table: more tales of elite folly.

Wondering how corporations have "the rights of personhood" but don't ever, you know, go to prison? Kate Cox at The Consumerist will explain it to you. The first part takes a historical perspective; the second part discusses the landmark (and nefarious) Citizens United and Hobby Lobby cases; and the third part instructs us about the conditions under which a corporation can be prosecuted for individual actions. From there we tabulate the deleterious effects of corporate "personhood" with which we are so familiar.

In a related note, David Sirota catches the Obama Administration trying to waive some of the criminal sanctions against Credit Suisse, a corporation actually convicted of a felony. So much for law and order! Three salient facts: one, contemplating the "collateral damage" of punishment (i.e., that it might affect the economy negatively) is a terrible excuse for failing to do the moral thing; two, precisely 27 of 27 corporations that have applied for such waivers have received them; three, Credit Suisse just so happens to have contributed over $350,000 to Mr. Obama's various campaigns. I'd be a schmuck to decide that was all just coincidence.

Neshaminy (PA) High School suspends the student editor (along with the faculty advisor) of the school's paper, the Playwickian, because the paper refuses to print the name of the school's sports teams, which is "Redskins," an epithet for which a certain Washington, D.C. NFL team has also caught a lot of flack lately. Schools have a long-established right to censor student paper content if they find it to be inappropriately disruptive, but all they're teaching by suspending this editor is how to be an asshole, and kids get that lesson often enough from adults.

Charlie Savage at the New York Times suggests that Congress's inaction over President Obama's airstrikes in Iraq could "create a precedent leaving the executive branch with greater war-making powers." But that requires us to believe that Constitutional tools rust from inaction, or that Congressional inaction itself confers "Constitutionality" on unconstitutional acts. I mean, we don't assume burglary is actually legal now if your local police were to develop a habit of looking the other way.

Finally, the execrable Tony Perkins instructs us that Muslim-Americans shouldn't have the same religious freedoms as the rest of us. Why? Because, according to Mr. Perkins, folks like the members of ISIS are the "real" Muslims, and their violence demonstrates that Islam "tears at the fabric of society," and thus your "unreal" Muslim friends and neighbors don't deserve the same right to religious freedom as the rest of us. Like how he wants you to think of your Muslim friends and neighbors as both "fake" and dangerous? Boy would he get his shorts in a bunch right quick if we all decided Christians don't deserve Constitutional protections because the Ku Klux Klan are the "real" Christians.

Action: renewable energy, "free" trade, and campaign finance disclosure.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the EPA's carbon emissions plan actually gives states a considerable amount of leeway to meet the EPA's standards; President Obama perhaps imagined that would satisfy folks who purport to be concerned about "states' rights," but they seem to have been rather mute in their admiration. Nonetheless, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) gets to draw up its own climate change plan, and the Sierra Club helps you tell Pennsylvania's DEP to adopt a vigorous plan that puts renewable energy at its center. Pennsylvania's a big coal state, as you know, and it's now a big natural gas state, too, thanks to Gov. Corbett's willingness to let gas drillers do whatever they like, clean drinking water be damned. But Pennsylvania also has pretty solid solar and wind sectors, and so may well lead the way for other states to transform their energy grids. Pennsylvania's dirty energy interests will no doubt stand in the way. But why should they get all the say around here? They'll only get all the say around here if we let it happen.

Word on the street is that House Speaker Boehner (E-OH) wants to force the nefarious "fast-track" plan down our throats after the elections. You all remember what "fast-track" is, right? It's the only way our government can force "free" trade on an unwilling electorate -- by forcing our Representatives in the House and Senate to vote on a "free" trade treaty in a largely debate-free, amendment-free manner that obviously leaves little time for sober consideration. Wasn't Mr. Boehner just saying he has "knuckleheads" in his caucus? Would some of said "knuckleheads" buck the Speaker's will and oppose "free" trade? Just kidding -- the supposed "craziness" of the Knucklehead Caucus is just an act; they'll all buckle down and do their corporate paymasters' bidding when it comes to "free" trade, though their constituents across the political spectrum oppose "free" trade deals that give away American jobs and American clean water protections and American clean air protections. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose "fast-track" and bad "free" trade deals.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the SEC to mandate that publicly-held corporations disclose their campaign spending to their shareholders, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. You know the story -- the SEC mulled such a rule for several years, received a record million-plus comments (most in support), and then promptly removed the rule from its 2014 agenda, because it needed a nap or something. But don't shareholders deserve to know how corporate CEOs are spending their money? What are corporations afraid of -- backlash from shareholders who don't like that CEOs are spending their money trying to elect complete knuckle-draggers like Josh Mandel? Mr. Mandel rode some $40 million in spending on his behalf to get within striking distance of incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2012. In a mid-term year, when Democratic turnout tends to be lower, Mr. Mandel might have won with all that dirty money behind him. And that would have been a tragedy, since Mr. Brown is a good man, while Mr. Mandel shouldn't be dogcatcher, let alone Ohio's state Treasurer.

Around the table: in which we learn that Barack Obama is just as overrated as Ronald Reagan! Plus other things.

Forbes magazine announces that "Obama Outperforms Reagan on Jobs, Growth, and Investing." Mr. Obama started from further back, too, but he'd have done a lot better if he reversed Mr. Reagan's massive tax cuts on millionaire income and, you know, actually spent money on projects that employed people. Even Mr. Obama claims his stimulus plan didn't actually make things better, but prevented things from being much worse, which is a hell of a thing to hang your hat on.

An AFP report asserts that support for ISIS has increased since the U.S. began airstrikes in Iraq. The only evidence the article present, though, is the word of the FBI Director, which ain't enough -- and the number of ISIS soldiers the article reports is the same number as the last number I saw. Lesson: it's always better to have evidence than hysteria, especially for a reasonable-enough assertion.

U.S. District Court judge in Utah rules that a Mormon man doesn't have to name church leaders in a federal child-labor investigation involving his church, because it violates his "religious beliefs." Judge Sam even goes so far as to say the court has no business "inquir(ing) into the theological merit of the belief in question." But if, say, a Sojourner or Quaker refused to name leaders because of religious beliefs during a frivolous "national security" investigation under a President Scott Walker, I bet judges would suddenly find ways to test the "merit" of religious beliefs.

Rep. Larry Buchson (R-IN) suggests we shouldn't believe climate scientists when they put out research supporting climate change because their "careers depends (sic) on the climate changing to keep themselves publishing articles." If you're tempted to believe this malarkey, ask yourself how much more money climate scientists would make if they worked for the oil corporations "debunking" climate change. Better yet, ask the ones who do.

David Brooks bemoans that we are "particularly slow to build institutions to combat long-running problems." You may be tempted to think wow! He's actually making sense for once! If so, note how carefully he avoids the word "government." "Governance" doesn't count, not if "big organizations," for you, are "the army, corporations and agencies," and not, you know, your government -- or if the "long-running problems" you list don't include pollution or poverty.

Finally, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke (D) has fired a campaign consultant who lifted big slabs of Ms. Burke's policy platforms from other candidates. It makes little difference that this consultant mostly plagiarized himself by lifting from his own writings for those other candidates -- Gov. Walker will too easily be able to make this about Mary Burke and plagiarism, because it looks like plagiarism and is insignificantly different from plagiarism. So, buh-bye, Mary Burke -- and everybody, say hello to President Scott Walker in 2016.

Action: consumer financial protection, and *a la carte* cable.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking public comments on its plan to let consumers publicize their stories about how various financial institutions have wronged them, and Public Citizen helps you leave a public comment supporting this plan. Banksters hate it, but what are they afraid of? Sounds like the CFPB is trying to perform a service for the American people, like the Better Business Bureau used to do, and like Angie's List does now -- hell, like almost any website that sells stuff does now! -- except that CFPB's service would be for folks wronged by banks, credit card corporations, and similar entities. And banksters have the resources to gain redress on actual incidents of libel in the CFPB database. More likely they just think they shouldn't have to go through the trouble of filing a lawsuit, even one they're going to win. Or perhaps they think they have the "right" to insert gag clauses into standard customer contracts, like some small-time crooks have done. Or maybe they even think criticism equals "terrorism." Don't laugh -- the last two Administrations have really opened a Pandora's Box there, you know.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support S. 912, the Television Consumer Freedom Act, which would induce cable corporations to offer their channels a la carte, then both the Parents Television Council and Free Press still help you do that. Just because it's cheaper for the cable corporations to offer cable channels in big packages doesn't make it right. There is no reason on Earth you should have to pay for Fox News or MTV just to get the channels you do want. I mean, you don't surf the internet that way, do you? So why should you have to pay for cable channels that profoundly offend your sense of decency, of morality, of civilization? Because you are paying for them -- maybe you're only paying 75¢ a month for Fox News, but multiply that by all the households in America and you see the problem. And the solution -- if a relatively small number of Americans can withhold payment from Fox News, it'll change its behavior with a quickness. No, it will -- big players always overreact to a slight dip in the market. And therein lies some hope for us.

Around the table: shenanigans at home and work, and a ray of hope from Apple (of all places).

How is WalMart forcing its workers to buy their own uniforms? Bryce Covert at Think Progress explains how: by adopting a "dress code" instead of a proper uniform requirement, WalMart can force employees to buy new clothes that comply with the dress code. Because providing uniforms (and health care, and decent wages, et cetera) costs money. This is how Our Glorious Elites redistribute workers' wealth upward to themselves, and I bet WalMart's brain trust all think they're the smartest people on Earth.

Speaking of shifting costs, ProPublica explains how some health insurance corporations are shifting costs to the sick -- they're now charging as much for some generic drugs as for name-brand drugs. Warning: the health insurer rationale for this practice uses the odious phrase "skin in the game," as if life were a game and we don't all have too much "skin" in it already. The trouble with the health insurers' "game"? A court might find that charging more money for HIV drugs discriminates against folks with HIV. By "court," of course, I don't mean our Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice did once write the phrase "what more can a corporation do?" in an opinion.

The Guardian asks whether states should invest pension funds with Wall Street hedge funds -- noting that one of the biggest proponents of such investments, Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo, captured the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year. The main problem the Guardian finds is that hedge funds take lots of money in commissions and fees. The main problem I find is that hedge funds make the most money when things go horribly wrong, which isn't exactly a moral way to run an economy.

Apple declares that it won't comply with law enforcement requests for private data on its iOS8 devices, because it can't -- that is to say, Apple has engineered iOS8 devices so that only the end-user (and not the corporation) can retrieve data from it. Which is wonderful news, if true (we really only have their word!), and the courts might not actually be able to do anything about it, since the compulsive literalist who presently heads up the Supreme Court might well rule that it's Apple's inalienable right to design a product protected from Apple. Besides, law enforcement can always just come after the person who owns the phone, which is how I'd rather have it -- forces them to do work, and work builds character.

Finally, Sean Hannity goes easy on Vikings running back Adrian Peterson after the latter beats his child repeatedly with a tree branch. We could debate whether or not Mr. Hannity really turned out OK after his father hit him with a "strap" some indeterminate number of times, but Mr. Peterson's child suffered bruises and cuts on his legs, his back, and his scrotum -- and had defensive wounds on his hands. Worse than that: Mr. Hannity goes off on Big Gummint interfering with child-rearing when it's clearly civilization "interfering" with child-rearing he really has a problem with. Even worse than that: he doesn't get that a parent who does what Mr. Peterson did isn't being tough -- he's being desperate.

Action: starring an anti-gay bill in Gambia and 13 pro-pollution bills in Congress.

Gambia passed one of those bills making "aggravated homosexuality" a "crime" punishable by life in prison, and of course (like the Uganda bill, overturned by that country's constitutional court in August, albeit on a more-or-less technicality) this bill is poorly-worded enough that folks with HIV or AIDS who are not gay could also be technically guilty of "aggravated homosexuality," giving Gambian police another tool to abuse. Jesus Mary and Joseph are legislators everywhere on Earth complete morons? Amnesty International helps you tell Gambian President Jammeh to reject the law, which he has until tomorrow to do. Mr. Jammeh has never sounded like someone who'd reject the law -- in February he called gays "vermin" and said he would "fight" them "the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes," and back in 2008 he said he would "behead" gays if they didn't leave the country. But the Gambian bill just so happens to contravene international human rights law; perhaps, having as he does an inflated sense of self, Mr. Jammeh will play at being a leader and do the right thing.

Meanwhile, closer to home, House Republicans plan to vote on more than a dozen pro-pollution bills today, including H.R. 3826, which would not only block EPA efforts to implement its carbon emissions rules for new power plants, but would also force the EPA to come to Congress again for authority to make rules affecting power plant air pollution. Congress long ago granted the EPA that power in the Clean Air Act, but why should Congress care about the rule of law? It's not like it's their job or anything. No, clearly their job is to please their biggest donors in the coal industry, so the campaign cash keeps flowing -- to hell with the will of their constituents, that the air they breathe not choke them to an early death! And though the bills might comprise one massive dead letter upon arrival in the Senate, we can't count on that, not least because the Democrats may not still hold the Senate after Election Day -- and some of those Democrats still standing will take such a loss as their cue to start voting with Republicans again. So the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Dirty Baker's Dozen pro-pollution bills offered up by the Republican leadership.

Finally, Consumers Union helps you tell Education Secretary Duncan to prevent federal student loan contractors from trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt. Mr. Duncan can do this, without permission from co-Presidents Boehner and McConnell, because Congress has granted the Executive branch the power to dictate the behavior of corporations that contract with our government -- hence actual President Obama's earlier Executive orders mandating a higher minimum wage, fair pay across gender lines, and benefits for gay couples. And we're not asking that Mr. Duncan allow borrowers to refinance at negative one gazillion percent or something; we're merely asking that he extend the same protections all Americans enjoy from predatory credit card corporations to those who get their student loans serviced by federal contractors -- namely, that borrowers can actually pay down their principals in a reasonable amount of time, can have any extra payments applied toward the highest interest rate on their loan, and can have one point of contact with their loan service provider. Seems reasonable -- unless you think corporations are always right and customers are always wrong.

Around the table: a brief lecture on the quality of mercy, and other items.

Surprise, surprise: Senate Republicans filibuster the Paycheck Fairness Act, effectively killing the legislation for the fourth time. Republicans claim it would just discourage employers from hiring women out of fear of a lawsuit, which means they think very little of employers -- seriously, to think employers will automatically do something both morally outrageous and illegal in order to avoid the mere threat of a lawsuit that should only succeed if said employers do something else morally outrageous and illegal! And here I thought Republicans trusted people.

These fast-food worker wildcat strikes must be getting somewhere, because a major corporate lobby flew franchise owners into its headquarters at our nation's capital on Tuesday, to protest a recent NLRB decision that could hold corporations accountable for what its franchises do to its employees. But this is their position: a corporation that forces its franchises to treat its employees badly should not be held responsible for any wrongdoing, because they're franchises ha ha giggle snort. But franchise owners stand to lose the most from a reversal of the NLRB decision, so why on Earth are they on board?

ProPublica reports again on how wage garnishment hits poor folks the hardest, partly via the story of a Nebraska couple who get a quarter of their paychecks taken away because of an unpaid loan dating back 10 years and $20,000 in medical bills. Federal law allows collectors to take up to a quarter of paychecks, unless you're making about $11,000 or less annually, but they can take everything in your savings account, which sure does discourage savings, doesn't it? Again, no one advocates walking away from your debts, but a little breathing space would show the quality of mercy, which is important to a civilization (and a quality we've all but forgotten in our efforts to prove how tough we are).

In California, cars now have to give bicycles a three-foot buffer zone or face fines. I only hesitate to call this an unwarranted governmental intrusion because I know how awful California drivers are. But I'm a city bicyclist and, at least in my neck of the woods, my fellow city bicyclists all too frequently act like there are no laws on the road -- and, perhaps not coincidentally, the cars are, if anything, a bit timid around us. And while no car should hit a bicyclist, we don't pay enough attention to bicyclists hitting pedestrians, either.

Finally, Jim Hightower discourses on populism, reminding us that "Our nation's true political spectrum is not right to left, but top to bottom." If you find yourself without hope for the future because "(m)ost Congress critters are not even trying anymore," Mr. Hightower reminds us that such times are the best times for populist movements to flourish. And if they ain't flourishing the way we'd like, well, we can do something about that.

Action: the Pebble Mine problem, and fracking chemical disclosure.

Here's a conundrum for an Alaska politician: the proposed Pebble Mine project in Alaska would mine gold and copper, theoretically providing work for Alaskans, but it would also pollute wetlands and streams in the Bristol Bay area, which is home to the world's largest sockeye salmon population, producing nearly half of the sockeye salmon the world consumes and employing 14,000 good Alaskans. What do you do? I kid, of course, because it's not really that hard: the EPA is taking public comments on Pebble Mine, and Sum of Us helps you tell the EPA to reject the Pebble Mine project. The EPA previously took public comments on the project (before the mining corporation Rio Tinto, facing popular pressure, divested from the project) and nearly three-quarters of Americans supported the EPA's proposal to protect Bristol Bay. How did Alaskans feel? 85% of them supported protections for Bristol Bay. And how do right-wingers squeal BUT WHATZ ABOUTZ TEH JOBZ!!!!!! when the salmon industry already provides thousands of jobs? Of course, when the right talks about jobs, they're really talking about some mining industry CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his seventh vacation home. Keep that in mind whenever you hear them say it.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to force gas drilling corporations to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. Why do you suppose the 2005 energy bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Mr. Bush specifically exempts practicers of hydrofracturing from Clean Water Act mandates? And why do you suppose gas drilling corporations are in a huff declaring that the chemicals they use in fracking are a "trade secret"? You could be excused for thinking that these corporations simply don't want you to know that they're injecting poison into our drinking water. And nobody's "trade secret" trumps our right to clean water -- when we have clean water, we have a level of health our ancestors from 150 years ago could only dream of, and when our water becomes brackish, or gelatinous, or flammable, we don't. As with antibiotic abuse, greed threatens to send health care back several centuries. We can't let that happen -- we should ban fracking outright, but since our all-of-the-above energy-policy President has no stomach for that, we should demand disclosure, because gas drillers won't be able to frack once everyone knows the truth about what they're doing.

Around the table: sage advice from Juan Cole, plus other items.

Finally, someone says it: Juan Cole says the "liberal" media should stop "playing" ISIS's game by going mad over ISIS beheadings. I wouldn't go so far as to call it an "artificial phenomenon," since folks are actually losing their heads, but no way should we be giving them this much attention. Now more Americans think ISIS is right around the corner from attacking us, when they're not even close. Why, it's almost like that's the idea.

Another day, another right-wing "truth" losing an ugly fight with the facts. Republicans love telling us that long-term unemployment benefits keep people from looking for work; it's one thing to see how little unemployment benefits pay (or how bad corporations suck at creating jobs) to conclude that's bunkum, but it's another thing entirely to have some numbers behind it.

ProPublica finds that one in 10 employees have their wages garnished because of past debts. These often include child support, but may also include credit cards, medical bills, and student debt. No one says you shouldn't pay your debts, but plenty of folks might question whether garnishing a quarter of someone's check is a good way to help folks get back on their feet when they've been blindsided by catastrophe. Debtors can help themselves, of course, by lawyering up when their lenders take them to court.

The Center for Public Integrity found that the Koch Foundation (run by, of course, the infamous Koch brothers) tied a number of interesting demands to their 2007 offer to fund Florida State's economic department -- namely, that the University teach the Koch brand of "free" market economics, that the Kochs have some control over hiring faculty, and that the department retain a right-wing dead-ender as its chair. The deal cut a year later ratcheted back Koch interference a bit, but still attracted controversy. Hey, colleges looking to get more funding? Caveat emptor, lie down with dogs, et cetera.

A Wisconsin utility has decided -- all on its own, apparently, without any prodding from the professional Sun Taxers -- to raise prices on all its customers and raise prices even more on solar users who sell electricity back to the grid. I see what they did there: a little divide and conquer action, where the utility says see? You people are paying more because of these solar free-riders! But when Tea Party Patriots and liberals see through that equally well, you can bet customers do too, and so the corporation damn well better not win. Of course, in Scott Walker's Wisconsin, the corporation always wins.

Finally, the incomparable David Sirota reminds us that forcing publicly-held corporations to disclose their campaign spending is something shareholders have wanted for years. Before I get too hopeful, though, I would like to know what the Center for Public Accountability means by "the top echelons of the S&P 500," where voluntary campaign finance disclosure is apparently taking root. Get your surprised face ready: the big corporations opposing the rule claim First Amendment grounds, which is bunkum, because even if money were speech, it's the shareholders' money.

Action: prisoner transfers, clean water, and militarized police.

Firedoglake helps you tell American Governors to stop sending their states' prisoners to out-of-state private prisons. I presume Governors do this because of overcrowding, but we can deal with overcrowding in other ways. We could, for example, focus on rehabilitating drug addicts rather than merely imprisoning them; certainly we could stop locking up small-time non-violent drug users on absurd mandatory minimum sentences. Shipping prisoners to private prisons could be a worthwhile option in isolated instances -- if our state governments were ensuring private prisons delivered good service to begin with. They're not, or else private prisons wouldn't charge exorbitant rates for prisoner phone calls, for example. That's exactly the kind of thing a corporation does when no one's fulfilling their oversight duty. And note that I said "in isolated instances" -- shipping prisoners across the country keeps them away from their loved ones, which hurts their chances at rehabilitation. Yes, I still believe in rehabilitation. A certain Someone may have taught me a little about that.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's HB 1565 would amend the state's 1937 Clean Streams Law to read that "(t)he use or installation of riparian buffers and riparian forest buffers shall not be required." Required for what, you ask? Well, first, what's a riparian buffer? A riparian buffer is, essentially, a strip of forest planted around a stream to protect it from pollution -- whether that pollution comes from development or agriculture. These buffers do wind up filtering out many of the pesticides and sentiments that threaten the health of streams and the wildlife living in those streams; they also require rather little maintenance after they're put in, and they also shade the water, reduce flood damage, produce alternative crops, and increase the value of the land. So why would anyone want to make such buffers "optional"? What superior water management method has eclipsed it? The answers are, respectively, "because developers want the land" and "none." Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state Rep to reject HB 1565, and keep our streams clean.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop the flow of military weapons to local police forces, then Roots Action still helps you do that. We haven't forgotten, I trust, the show of excessive force from the Ferguson (MO) police department against those peacefully protesting the shooting of Michael Brown, but we also don't presume that police officers really want to hide behind all that Transformerama -- we imagine most police want to do a good job, and that they must earn the trust of the communities they serve to do so. But if the Pentagon keeps handing out billions of dollars in war weapons to local police departments, then our police departments will slip back into old habits, just like you or I would in similar circumstances. Thankfully, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) has introduced the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which would slow the flow of heavy artillery like armored vehicles, high-calibre automatic weapons, and armed drones to our police departments. How will police protect themselves, you ask? By getting to know the communities they serve, just like in the old days.

Around the table: the future of the American economy revealed! And other stories.

FAIR tackles "Four Myths About Obama's War on ISIS." These are: that ISIS is anywhere near attacking the U.S., that Mr. Obama is a "reluctant warrior," that Congress's Constitutional authority to declare war "gets in the way" of good policy, and that we stood and watched while Syria deteriorated and could have prevented all of this if we'd just gotten in earlier. That last item is a particularly pungent slab of hot-and-steaming -- like the CIA wasn't already arming Syrian rebels, like our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have "prevented" bad things from happening.

Nate Cohn tells us "Why Democrats Can't Win the House." Long story short: when Democrats win urban districts by super-duper-majorities, that doesn't help them win other districts -- hence Mr. Obama won 54% of Michigan's votes while Democrats carried barely over a third of Michigan's House districts. Mr. Cohn doesn't give us the main reason Democrats can't retake the House, though: because they will not embrace economic populism, which can more easily retake now-red areas of the country more surely than "acting red."

Chris Morran at The Consumerist points out that Facebook now labels Onion "news stories" as "satire," but doesn't label "news stories" that are basically big advertisements as such. This is an problem at the big news channels, too; at least, if you're looking at your Facebook newsfeed on Firefox or Chrome, you may be able to avail yourself of a plug-in that can mark off certain "news stories" as advertisements.

America's last journalist, Greg Palast, catches British Petroleum using "the Three Stooges defense" in its civil trial. The "Three Stooges defense" essentially amounts to "we were so incompetent you can't find us guilty of anything actually malicious." And someone probably ordered someone else to run the "negative pressure test" on the wrong piece of equipment (as Mr. Palast first describes in paragraph 4), but CEOs generally aren't dumb enough to get caught giving that order, which may be what you'd need to assess a fine big enough to actually deter bad behavior.

Matthew Harwood at al Jazeera says worker-owned co-ops are "the future of the American economy." It's a pretty comprehensive and engaging article, one that explains why worker-owned co-ops should appeal to conservatives as well as liberals. Of course the profoundly undemocratic and anti-family big corporations won't relinquish their stranglehold over our government easily, but we might have something to say about that, being, you know, the owners of government.

Action: war in the Middle East, and network neutrality.

Remember when President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, mainly because he wasn't George W. Bush? Well, he's still not George W. Bush, because he's begun a campaign against ISIS without even seeking Congressional approval, which latter item the Constitution requires (and which even Mr. Bush, no diligent student of the Constitution, sought). Hence Peace Action West helps you tell your Congressfolk to get off their collective duff and do their Constitutional duty, and CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose both more war in Syria and Iraq and arming and training the next generation of Middle East terrorists. Knowing, as you do, that drone strikes are a very imprecise way of battling terrorists, you know also that airstrikes are similarly imprecise. You'd think boots on the ground would be more precise, but over a decade of evidence from Iraq and Afghanistan says otherwise -- soldiers do well against soldiers, but not terrorists. But nearby nations (particularly Iran, whose Islamic police state seems the model of moderation next to ISIS) presumably want to defend against the danger ISIS represents. We're not great at diplomacy with those nations, either, but we'll have to do better in that area if we want a solution to this mess.

Meanwhile, the FCC will take comments on net neutrality through the end of today; they proposed allowing "tiered service" where big telecom corporations could charge other corporations for faster service, which would essentially crush the small businesses that actually enrich our internet experience -- that's right, Daily Kos, YouTube, and Facebook were all small once, and no big corporation would ever have created them, precisely because they were so disruptive of the status quo. "Tiered service" would also mean a lot more corporate crap content -- more political pundits shouting, more shallow coverage of issues, more oohing and aahing over celebrity misbehavior, since that's the stuff corporations will pay extra to deliver faster, and then they'll let the slow lane rot, where the rest of us will be. Hence CALPIRG helps you tell the FCC, one more time, to preserve net neutrality as we have always understood it to be, and thus let the consumer, not the corporation, pick internet winners and losers. Also, Consumers Union will be rallying today at 12.30 pm EST in Philadelphia (outside Comcast's offices) and New York City (outside Time-Warner's offices); you can find more information about these rallies here.

Around the table: a victory for fair use -- and various losses for freedom and civilized discourse.

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux at The Intercept find that the Obama Administration has, ah, loosened the criteria for being put on our government's terrorist watch-list -- you no longer need to be "watched" based on "concrete facts" or "irrefutable evidence" that you've committed terrorism or anything close to it; a single uttering on Facebook or Twitter will do. And when I hear that our government defines terrorism, in The Intercept's words, as "any action...intended to influence government policy through intimidation," why do I get the feeling their definition of "intimidation" could include constituents calling their Congressfolk?

But you know what's worse than Barack Obama? His haters, who all got their shorts in a bunch over Mr. Obama's insistence, during his big let's-all-kill-ISIS speech, that ISIS is "not Islamic." What a bunch of whiners! The way they argue over words, you'd think they were p.c. college kids who never had to support themselves. And George Will doesn't prove anything by saying "ISIS says it's Islamic" -- after all, George Will says he's a conservative, too. Strangely, Rand Paul agrees with Mr. Obama that ISIS aren't real Muslims, and thus performs a public service, for once.

ProPublica finds that nearly half of the $6 billion in tobacco settlement money due to states this year will actually go to bankster bondholders instead. That's because states borrowed against future settlements, and now, of course, have to pay more, because they didn't borrow without interest, you know? And borrowing against future settlement money generally means less money for smoking prevention programs, which was a big reason for the tobacco settlement in the first place.

LAPD mistakes black actress for hooker after she kisses her white husband on the street. Luckily for the LAPD, they have no record of the incident, since they released her as soon as they realized how badly they fucked up. Franz Boas, the famous early 20th century anthropologist, always said that racism would disappear when interracial marriages became common -- but when they do, I suspect the LAPD will still be behind the curve.

Factcheck describes how Georgia U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue distorted his opponent's statements in an ad -- he took phrases from a Michele Nunn campaign memo describing how Republicans might attack her and presented them as phrases she used to describe herself. As if anyone would say "I'm too liberal!" Though such tricks debase our political discourse, I think it's going to work for Mr. Perdue, even though the charity Ms. Nunn heads, the one that did not "give money to organizations linked to terrorists," is George H.W. Bush's own Points of Light. Then again, to Mr. Perdue's supporters, Bush the Better probably isn't a real Republican anyway.

Finally, some good news: the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York stops Fox News's effort to take down TVEyes, a subscription service which complies TV and radio broadcast clips into a searchable database. Fox seems to think there's no such thing as "fair use" when it comes to copyright -- witness not just this, but their laughable suit against Al Franken all those years ago when he used their "Fair and Balanced" slogan ironically in a book subtitle. One might even call such suits frivolous lawsuits.

Action: paycheck fairness, and war in the Middle East.

The Senate voted 73-25 to start debate on S. 2199, the Paycheck Fairness Act; this is very likely mere prelude to another filibuster, as with S.J.Res. 19, but we might as well tell our Senators to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, as the National Women's Law Center helps you do. Wasn't Marco Rubio (E-FL) telling us last year that passing the Paycheck Fairness Act wouldn't help anyone but trial lawyers? Well, that's sort of the price we pay for having a law-and-order society -- when good Americans seek redress for crimes inflicted upon them, trial lawyers tend to be nearby, and complaining about that is a little like complaining that the sun is hot. And I can imagine, with ridiculous ease, people other than trial lawyers benefiting from the Paycheck Fairness Act: when corporations can't pay women less than men except based on "bona fide" factors like education and experience, when corporations can't retaliate against folks who ask their co-workers about their pay rate, when victims can band together in class action lawsuits, it seems to me like everyone benefits, except, you know, wrong-doers.

Meanwhile, President Obama addressed the nation last night about his plans to bomb Syria and Iraq, and apparently he's only going to ask Congress for authorization to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. Boy, it sure is a good thing that has never blown up in our faces before. (COUGH! Osama bin Laden COUGH!) Anyway, Mr. Obama seems determined to be outclassed by Mr. Bush yet again -- Mr. Bush and his cronies may have warmongered the American people mercilessly in the winter of 2002 into 2003, but at least he asked for Congressional authorization for his Iraq adventure; Mr. Obama, it seems, can't be bothered with the drama of all that. But it's not up to him -- it's up to Congress, hence the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject more war in Iraq and Syria. Bombing the crap out of everything got us into this mess; it's absurd to think bombing the crap out of everything again is going to get us out. Diplomacy, which must necessarily involve the other nations of the region stepping up, might just get us out. If we're strong enough, that is.

Around the table: filibuster city.

Senate votes against cloture on S.J.Res. 19 on an entirely party-line vote, effectively killing the bill, which would have amended the U.S. Constitution to strike a blow against corporate "personhood" and allow state and federal governments to make campaign finance laws again. Note well that John McCain, he of McCain/Feingold fame, voted nay, just like the rest of his kind -- but also that Harry Reid didn't switch his vote to nay at the end, thus relinquishing his option to bring the bill up again if Republicans filibustered, almost like that was the plan or something.

"Guantánamo a 'Living Grave' for Dozens Cleared to Leave," says this AFP article -- as a mere one of the nearly 80 detainees cleared for transfer has actually been moved, and we're in September already. We know how too many detainees came to Guantánamo merely on the say-so of a fellow national or a bounty hunter; we know how after six or eight or twelve years it shouldn't be that damn hard to charge a man with something; we know that reports of detainees "returning" to terrorism are exaggerated -- but still, it's good to have all this info in one place.

The Center for Effective Government informs us that the 32 corporations that have both renounced their American citizenship (that is, have reincorporated in a foreign country to lessen their tax burden) and still report executive pay paid their CEOs an average of nearly $14 million in 2013. So when they say they're "moving" so they can "deliver more value to shareholders," just replace "shareholders" with "the boss," who, after all, is the Greatest Person Who Ever Lived and deserves all the money he can redistribute upwards from his workers.

Normally I'd say the news that Wisconsin faces a projected two-year, $1.8 billion budget shortfall would be toxic to Scott Walker's re-election chances, except that the two-year budget shortfall projected in 2010 was about twice the size. I doubt it'll get through the noise that the 2010 projected shortfall (though Gov. Doyle did, as you might recall, actually leave Mr. Walker a slight surplus) was mostly due to the lousy economy, while Mr. Walker's is mostly due to his own tax-cuts-for-the-rich policy.

Speaking of 2016 Republican Presidential hopefuls, Fitch Ratings has downgraded the state of New Jersey's credit for the second time this year, claiming that Mr. Christie's broken promises in re funding the state pension. Fitch also notes that New Jersey has lagged behind other states in this economic recovery, such as it is, but does not note (as commenter Ed the Independent does) that Mr. Christie also screwed up the pensions by putting them in the hands of banksters, who tend to care more about their managing fees than the health of pensions in their charge.

Finally, Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) suggests that firing or not hiring folks just because they're gay is "one of the freedoms we enjoy." Your "enjoyment" may vary, obviously -- especially if you're one of the folks who loses a job you like just because your boss found out you were gay and finds that icky. And strange how you would have fewer "freedoms" to "enjoy" after that. Comparing it to smoking bans is, if anything, even worse -- second-hand smoke actually makes other people sick, but you can't even get gay cooties from gay folks. It's a shame so many "conservatives" can't think straight about this anymore -- if you really get more rights because you own property, then they're not really rights, are they?

Action: refugee children, equal pay, and climate change.

Congress is back to work, such as they do, this week, but apparently has no plans to do anything about the mass of refugee children at our border, since that was so July already, I guess. Hence the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass supplemental funding to address the issue properly. Your demands will be specific: at least $2.7 billion, with $1.2 billion of that going to housing and services for refugee children. Funding these services properly will not guarantee that every single child at the border gets in safely; it will only guarantee that every single child has a fighting chance of getting it. Certainly it would guarantee a better chance of getting in than the piddling $694 million House bill, or Sen. Johnson (E-WI)'s notion of buying them all tickets on Orbitz and send them back (which could, you know, involve sending them back to this). And to those who would squeal WHEREZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! Well, what about all those corporate tax cuts the House has been handing out like candy? No outrage over that? Quelle surprise.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 1890/SB 1212 would help eliminate the gap between men's wages and women's wages. The bill would mandate equal pay for equal work, except where factors such as seniority or superior education would permit unequal pay, and would specifically prohibit employers from lowering wages in order to maintain such pay scales. The bill would also put the burden of proof upon the employer that factors like seniority and education cause pay disparities, rather than the sex of the employee, and would further prevent employers or labor organizations from retaliating against workers who initiate pay-discrimination complaints. Finally, the bill would also prohibit employers from making gag rules about pay -- where they prohibit you from talking about your pay rate to your co-workers -- a condition of employment. The bill really ought to prohibit employers from instituting such gag rules after hiring you, too, but HB 1890/SB 1212 will still do a lot of good. Keystone Progress helps you tell your state legislator to support equal pay for equal work.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to pass the most vigorous rules possible to lower carbon emissions at existing power plants, then Public Citizen helps you do that. Public Citizen specifically helps you advocate for stricter limits on the carbon emissions from gas plants (the fracking apologists have long told us that fracking is friendlier to climate change than coal, which, ah, isn't really true) and avoid spending taxpayer money on carbon capture technologies, which are rather like putting a giant bomb under the earth. The big coal corporations threw a massive tantrum at the EPA's rule restricting carbon emissions at new power plants; how will they respond, do you think, to being told they have to reduce emissions at their old power plants? Not with restraint, I presume, but we have the better arguments; all they have is their greed. And to those who say the new rules would kill jobs: rules create jobs, for the people who figure out how to comply with the rules and for people who have to rebuild plants. I say this a lot, but I'll keep saying it until even the politicians get it.

Around the table: the empty promise of Republican anti-poverty programs, and other stories.

Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert at The Nation instruct us how Paul Ryan's New Big Idea -- replacing federal poverty programs with "block grants" to states -- is the same old Republican hogwash. If you think about it for a minute -- that giving states a pile of money to use as they please isn't a good way of replacing a federal program addressing very specific needs that may rise or fall over time -- you see through it. Why our "liberal" media doesn't see through it is, of course, a matter open to speculation.

William Finnegan at the New Yorker writes a magnificent profile of activist workers at a McDonalds in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. It's a lengthy read, but worth your time. My perhaps idiosyncratic list of highlights: McDonald's absurd scheduling system made manifest in a strip of paper in paragraph 5; McDonald's well-publicized "advice" to its employees ("Fresh fruit and vegetables are good for you"!) in paragraph 17; the sudden appearance of the Washington Heights franchise owner when TV cameras come to investigate a worker's collapse in paragraph 26. Also, don't miss the William S. Burroughs reference.

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress says "You Shouldn't Ask Why Janae Rice Stayed." Many folks wonder why Ms. Rice -- now married to former Ravens running back Ray Rice, who beat her unconscious in a casino elevator in Atlantic City in July -- "didn't just leave him." Anyone who's ever been in love knows half the answer to that, and here's the other half: a) you could die, b) you could lose your family, c) you may be financially dependent on your partner, and d) if your partner is black, it's more likely the cops will beat him/her up. And asking "why don't you leave?" is also, of course, a way of avoiding the more pertinent question of "why doesn't your partner stop being an asshole?" We do believe in blaming the right people, don't we?

Last week, I nominated Thom Tillis's "the process worked" blunder -- uttered during his North Carolina U.S. Senate debate with incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan -- as the campaign-killing blunder of this election cycle, but many other observers seem more concerned with Mr. Tillis's apparent condescension toward Ms. Hagan -- told her she was bad at math, repeatedly called her "Kay" instead of "Sen. Hagan," like that. I don't think all that's so big a deal, possibly because I rarely pay the proper respect to a U.S. Senator myself, but I also don't live in North Carolina, and I also thought Mr. McCain's obvious disrespect for Mr. Obama in the first 2008 debate wouldn't amount to a hill of beans, either, until it was all the talk at the water cooler at work the next day. So I could well be wrong about this, too.

Finally, European researchers suggest that babies who sleep on animal fur may be less likely to experience asthma and allergies as they grow older. Babies would have to receive a great deal of exposure to animal fur -- through a sheepskin blanket or rug, say -- in order to receive the beneficial effects. But then, this may be why our housecats keep shedding on our clothes -- so that we may benefit from it later. Cats are wise, you know.

Action: war, climate change, and pregnancy discrimination.

Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn still help you tell President Obama and Congress to work through the U.S. Constitution when contemplating war -- meaning that the President must come to Congress for approval, not the other way around. Absolutely Executive branch diplomacy should insure that regional powers get a say in the result (I do wish the petition were more explicit about that), and absolutely Congress should be putting a time limit on war-making and setting geographic limits so that this President (or the next one!) doesn't interpret it as a mandate to make war wherever he or she likes. No, setting time limits doesn't encourage terrorists to hide out until the time limit's up. We're the most heavily-armed nation on the planet; if we can't achieve relatively simple military objectives within a short time frame, then we're a bunch of idiots. And let's not also have the argument that if we don't dictate terms to the Middle East diplomatically, we're just setting ourselves up for more terrorist attacks. News flash: we've been dictating terms to the Middle East for decades now. How's that working out?

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth helps you tell the EPA to mandate reduced hydrofluorocarbons (or HFCs) from common household appliances. A lot of appliances, like refrigerators and air conditioners, replaced chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) with HFCs back in the day because CFCs depleted the ozone layer, but now we know that HFCs cause about a thousand times more climate warming than carbon dioxide does, and maybe that is David Koch's real objection to having his coal plants regulated -- that HFCs are so much worse! I kid, of course. But we might have three times as many HFCs in our atmosphere in 2030 as we have now, and we can replace HFCs with better technologies that don't contribute nearly as much to climate change or ozone depletion -- like propane and isobutane, which do contribute more to climate change than carbon dioxide, but substantially less than HFCs. Guess who doesn't like proposed EPA rules limiting HFCs? The chemical corporations that make HFCs, of course. But they don't get all the say about everything that happens in America any more than David Koch does.

Meanwhile, Florence, KY police officer Lyndi Trischler has become pregnant, which isn't ordinarily news, particularly since Ms. Trischler herself has been pregnant before. So why is it news now? Because unlike her last pregnancy, Ms. Trischler's bosses won't give her light-duty work this time, citing new city policy that doesn't allow such work for any city employees unless a work injury created the need for it. It's safe to say that her pregnancy isn't a "work injury," though it now makes her unable to wear the body armor her patrol work requires. I've seen workers manipulate the system enough to understand where the city's coming from, but pregnancy is a pretty hard thing to fake, and you really don't want to discourage your officers from having families. Besides which, their policy just so happens to violate the law -- not only the Pregnancy Discrimination Act but the Americans with Disabilities Act, which doesn't cover pregnancy, but does cover health conditions caused by pregnancy. Hence Moms Rising helps you tell the city of Florence to make their policy less hostile to pregnant mothers.

Around the table: tales of cowardice, free speech, winning hearts and minds, and waking up speaking Mandarin.

Blogging corporation LiveJournal has apparently been blocking a Putin critic's blog from Russian readers, though not readers abroad. LiveJournal has changed a bit over the last decade: while still based in San Francisco, it's now owned by a Russian corporation, and is actually Russia's main blogging platform now. The price they might pay for showing the blog? Russia might censor the whole service. But would Russia's citizens stand for that? Please don't laugh -- remember that a million Iranians took to the streets after Mr. Ahmadinejad's "re-election," in a country where you stand a damn good chance of getting shot if you do that.

The Rutherford Institute asks the Supreme Court to overturn the conviction of a Pennsylvania man who routinely posted violent rap lyrics/comedy sketch lines to his Facebook page. The man, Anthony Elonis, got 44 months in jail for posting said lyrics/lines while alluding to his anger over reversals in his life, including his wife leaving him and taking their two children. The First Amendment doesn't protect terroristic threats, but these have to be pretty obvious threats. And why put Mr. Elonis in jail when he more likely just needs someone to slap him in the face and tell him to grow up? These tasks, of course, are more appropriately the province of Mr. Elonis's friends and family than they are of government.

Zoe Carpenter at The Nation wonders if the SEC will add a corporate disclosure rule to its 2015 agenda; the SEC famously took that item off its 2014 agenda, citing pressures writing Dodd-Frank rules, rather than the more likely reason, cowardice. Why would the SEC reconsider? Because the one million comments they received on the rule is ten times as many as they've received on any other rule; commenters likely included you and I, but also included 15 U.S. Senators and 70 U.S. House Reps.

Former L.A. Times reporter Ken Dilanian has apparently broken the law (and, you know, violated journalistic ethics) by allowing the CIA to edit his articles before publication. And the CIA's editing included changing facts to make themselves look better. Mr. Dilanian now works the the AP (I bet they're glad to have him now!), and I don't buy his two-phrase attempt at introspection -- more likely he sits at home, no, not wondering where he went wrong, but wondering why he, out of all his worthless colleagues, got caught.

Nick Turse at Tomdispatch tells us how our military's "winning hearts and minds" efforts are also failing in Africa. Long story short: you can build all the clean water cisterns you want, but people still hate you if you constantly blow things up -- and they also hate you if you build them incompetently or don't teach the folks how to maintain it themselves. Maybe best to build schools and improve access to clean water without wanting something in return, as Jesus would have us do -- we really can't do very much about foreign dictators sabotaging projects because they fear a happier populace.

Finally, an Australian man gets into a car crash, stays in a coma for more than a week -- and wakes up speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese, which he had studied in school, though he had not achieved fluency. His English didn't come back to him for a few days, and the Mandarin's here to stay, so he attends school in Shanghai now. I'm tempted to say so there's hope for my French! But of course we know little about the human brain as it is, certainly not enough to simulate near-death comas -- and anyway, there is no hope for my French.

Action: the John Crawford shooting, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Fair Minimum Wage Act.

First things first: John Crawford III was shot to death by police in an Ohio WalMart in early August, after another shopper called 911 about a "Black male about 6 feet tall" who was "walking around in the store with a gun" and "pointing it at people." Mr. Crawford actually had a BB air rifle; the man who called 911 now says Mr. Crawford did not "shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody," though he insists Mr. Crawford was "waving it around." Ohio state Attorney General Mike DeWine says he won't make WalMart release security footage of the incident, saying it would be "playing with dynamite," but assuming that releasing the footage will automatically cause race riots is a bit presumptuous to say the least, and he's been selectively releasing footage of the incident anyway. Hence Color of Change helps you tell WalMart to release the relevant footage. The Crawford family's attorneys claim to have seen the footage and say it will demonstrate that Mr. Crawford's shooting was an "execution." Whether that's true or not, I'm pretty certain that hiding the truth comes with more dire consequences than exposing it.

Meanwhile, you may know that the Equal Rights Amendment passed both House and Senate in 1972, and subsequently passed 35 of the 38 state legislatures it would need to pass to become a Constitutional amendment, but you may not know that the original legislation slapped on seven-year deadline, meaning it had to pass 38 state legislatures by 1979. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.J.Res. 43/S.J.Res. 15, which would remove the deadline for passage from the original Equal Rights Amendment legislation. Are you saying can they really do that? Yes they can really do that -- they did it in 1978 to extend the deadline to 1982. And looking at a map of states that haven't passed the amendment, I can't imagine we can't find three out of 12 that would pass it -- Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia seem the most obvious candidates. And if we count the four states that successfully "rescinded" their original resolutions passing the ERA (I don't count Nebraska, since it passed two ERA resolutions and only rescinded the first), I'm sure we can apply more popular pressure, even in this ALEC-dominated era of state legislative flatugasma.

Finally, the House and Senate are back this week, so the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell Congress to enact H.R. 3746/S. 460, the Fair Minimum Wage Act. The Fair Minimum Wage Act would hike the federal minimum wage to $10.10/hour, index that wage to inflation, and raise the tipped minimum wage to 70% of the actual minimum wage and index that to inflation as well. Seems fairly non-controversial, not just to me, but to most people -- Pew found 73% of Americans support the policies the Fair Minimum Wage Act would enact, while Half in Ten found a higher percentage (84%) supporting a higher minimum wage and indexing to inflation generally. But Congress seems to think its job is to promulgate scare numbers from the CBO report predicting a loss of 500,000 jobs over 10 years (or a little over 4,000 jobs monthly, in an economy creating about 200,000 jobs monthly), while ignoring that other part of that same CBO report predicting that the hike would lift twice that many folks out of poverty -- while also ignoring that it could, you know, lift a finger to help create jobs, instead of hurrying to give away more tax cuts to corporations. But that's why we're here -- to make Congress do its actual job of representing the people's will.

Around the table: featuring two equally useless Republican phenomena, "iconoclasts" and "moderates."

A bit of a shocker: the Senate voted to proceed to debate on S.J.Res. 19 yesterday by a 78-19 margin. That's not the actual vote, of course -- that was just a vote to start debate, so this could go on for a while, and so would require repeated phone calls to your Senators. Your nay votes include the usual dead-enders (Barrasso, Crapo, Enzi, Johnson, Toomey), plus a cabal of Republican "iconoclasts" (Coburn, Cruz, Lee, Paul), demonstrating the utter uselessness of the latter.

Another inevitable criticism pertaining to the hacked nude celebrity photos, this time from Juan Cole: all that NSA spying on good Americans' phone and email accounts, and yet our government was completely floored by the emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Perhaps NSA snoopers were too busy pilfering nude photos and spying on ex-girlfriends to notice -- and certainly the more information you Hoover up, the more you have to sift through, which takes time, which in turn diverts time from pre-empting actual terrorism before it starts. Am I beating a dead horse? In these times, beating a dead horse is an act of courage.

Perdue claims to be ending antibiotic abuse in its chickens, such that 19 out of every 20 chickens never receive antibiotics and the rest only receive them when ill. That's good news, if it's true, and if it takes voluntary corporate action to get the ball rolling after four decades of FDA inaction, remember that the arc of justice is long, not quick. But Perdue doesn't have anywhere near the market share of, say, Tyson Foods these days, and Perdue would also have to radically revamp its factory-farm practices in order for their initiative to work. My guess is the wealthier shareholders put a stop to it once profits go down.

Wonders never cease: FCC Chair Tom Wheeler says there's not enough broadband competition in most areas of the country. He gets down to details, too -- who in Congress would have the courage to take on "early-termination fees and equipment rental fees," never mind that it would make them a hero to the people? -- but I can't help but wonder how he sounded when he was a corporate lobbyist.

Speaking of broadband competition, AT&T has commented upon certain localities' petition to the FCC to pre-empt state laws so that it may promote community broadband efforts, and you won't like it. In short, AT&T thinks community broadband is a terrible idea in areas where AT&T would like to build, and in areas where AT&T would not like to build, it should get tax breaks to build, rather than have to compete with community broadband initiatives, and also what do you expect from us? We're scorpions! Seriously, if you're getting the message that AT&T is afraid of community broadband, you're not the only one.

Finally, from "the useless of Republican moderates" file: Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has introduced a bill that would essentially extend the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force's mandate to include basically anyone, ever. Now that's a power that couldn't possibly be abused! Oh, but I just remembered: Frank Wolf can't possibly be characterized as a moderate, since he voted to destroy Medicare in 2011 and 2012.

Action: campaign finance, voting rights, and oil transportation.

The Senate votes today on S.J.Res. 19, the constitutional amendment that will reverse the effects of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and allow our state and federal governments to make campaign finance laws again. So I have a number of action alerts with which you may tell your Senator to support it -- from the Peace Team, CREDO, and the League of Conservation Voters. But the best thing to do, at this late juncture, is call your Senators; you can find contact information for your Senators, as always, by using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page. If your Senator holds a ludicrous position on S.J.Res. 19 (as one of mine does), you do not have to jaw with his phone aides about why his position is ludicrous; you need merely communicate your will. Chances are you do not have millions of dollars free that you could either wipe your butt with or give to a U.S. Senator's re-election campaign depending on your mood; our leaders will only change their opinions when they discover that no one outside of the corporate mediadome opposes this bill -- and when we the people remember, every moment of every day, that we are the ones who can put them out of a job. I sure hope saying so doesn't get me convicted for "terrorism" one day.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3899/S. 1945, the Voting Rights Amendment Act, then Common Cause still helps you do that. As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance formula -- by which our federal government can determine where to stop anti-voting laws before they start -- on the grounds that the formula unfairly discriminated against Southern states, where the percentage of Black voters had generally shot up since the 1960s. But the Court never said Congress couldn't instill a different pre-clearance formula that wouldn't (in the Court's view) discriminate against states and localities unfairly; hence the Voting Rights Amendment Act, which would subject states and localities to pre-clearance if they had demonstrated a consistent pattern of voting rights violations over the past 15 years. And if those states just so happen to be Southern states, well, tough toodles for those who make their living trying to prevent other good Americans from voting. I'm a little disturbed that, even with this bill's considerable bipartisan support, this Congress won't move on it, probably because Obama. But that's nothing a little people power can't solve.

Finally, an oil corporation named Enbridge wants to move tar sands crude through its pipes; in doing so would they'd double the amount of tar sands oil going through the Great Lakes area, which provides drinking water to millions of good folks in eight U.S. states. Just so happens a broken Enbridge oil pipe caused the most massive inland oil spill in American history, in Kalamazoo, MI in 2010. And Enbridge only has a permit to move some 450,000 barrels daily through its Alberta Clipper line, and as their attempts to get the U.S. State Department to change that permit have been unsuccessful, they want to divert tar sands oil to a nearby pipeline which goes into Minnesota and then back to the Clipper -- though this second pipeline isn't designed to carry the considerably more corrosive and toxic tar sands oil. Anyone see a disaster in the making? Shockingly, the State Department doesn't, as they've apparently decided to allow Enbridge to proceed, without public notice or a chance for public review, or even a "national interest" determination. The law requires all three of these things to happen, but I guess law and order is only for little people like us. So CREDO helps you tell President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to halt the Enbridge pipeline scheme.

Around the table: working folks struggle, while the "liberal" media wants to send us back to war.

How soon we forget: USA Today finds Americans more inclined to "flex muscle" in world affairs. A recent Pew poll found that 31% of Americans think we're doing "too little" about various world conflagrations, up from 17% just nine months ago, but that finding doesn't endorse the minority getting all the say about everything. And statements like "(i)f we pull back, someone worse takes over" aren't a vigorous endorsement of bombing whomever for the greater glory of President Walker's corporate cronies -- which is surely where our "liberal" media elites hope to guide us, just as they did during Tha Bush Mobb's years.

Paul Krugman discusses some not-well-reported health care spending findings, including that health care spending growth has slowed noticeably and that Medicare will be spending $1,000 less per recipient in 2014 than the CBO predicted it would back in 2010. But Drew Altman at the Kaiser Foundation points out that folks may be thinking health care costs are going up because they're paying more out of pocket, via larger deductibles -- which, well, seems like another problem a Medicare-for-all program might have forestalled.

Joelle Gamble at the Roosevelt Institute argues that making the tax code more progressive won't solve all the problems people of color face when they try to advance in the economy. She reminds us that during the 1950s, tax rates were high and the social safety net more effective and people of color didn't benefit very much from it, but governments openly promoted or tolerated "socially racist institutions" like segregation and Jim Crow laws back then -- in the same manner they now covertly tolerate socially racist institutions like redlining -- so I suspect progressive tax policy would do more for people of color now than they did then. Of course redlining will require additional work, though I'd prefer to cap the mortgage interest deduction than eliminate it, and I'd also like states and localities to assess property taxes more by square footage than by location.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead notes the introduction of the Modern Slavery Bill in the British Parliament to note how much slavery occurs in supply chains all around the world. 11% of British business leaders think there's some slavery in their supply chains, while, perhaps coincidentally, 11% of those same leaders say they've actually looked at their supply chain very closely. More trenchant is this quotation from a Telegraph article: "lengthy business supply chains are corruptible and can hide a multitude of crimes." Well, gosh, it's almost like that's the idea! Anyway, the more of our own stuff we make, the shorter (and less evil) the supply chain will be.

Over 160 protestors (including a dozen sit-in protestors) decried Apple's use of a private, non-unionized firm for its security workers last week at the Apple store in San Francisco. Just about the only non-unionized security firm around, too, lest you're thinking of cutting Apple some slack. As one report said, “(i)f tech companies are serious about building a pipeline from K-12 schools for a more diverse tech workforce, it starts with paying their parents a livable wage” -- particularly in San Francisco, which is becoming as expensive as New York or London these days.

Finally, Josh Israel at Think Progress reminds us that Joan Rivers, who died on Thursday after complications from surgery, was not just a gay icon but a long-time supporter of gay rights. I have to admit I'd forgotten that, just as I'd never known she'd played one half of a gay couple (opposite Barbra Streisand, no less) in Greenwich Village in the '60s or that she was an ordained minister officiating at least two gay weddings in the state of New York (which must have been a hoot) -- or that she used that awful reality show to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a New York charity that delivers meals to very ill home-bound folks (including AIDS patients). Good work, Ms. Rivers.

Around the table: we have little privacy and we work too much, but we have hope.

It was only a matter of time before someone outside the "liberal" media connected the hacking of hundreds of celebrity nude photos to the NSA/government spying debate. Storing your private info somewhere-out-there seems pretty foolish to me -- anyone could take it, including our government, which is why I plan to run hard drives until the day I die. The only question is whether the government will call me "terrorist" for doing so, since I'd be "depriving" all those deserving corporations of their "right" to access my personal information as easily as they want to do.

Gallup finds that the American 40-hour work week actually lasts around 47 hours. One in five American workers work 60 hours or more each week; salaried workers work 49 hourly-paid workers (who can more easily get paid overtime) work 44; and full-time workers with one job work 46, lest you think workers with second and third jobs are muddying up the data. Gallup doesn't ask why we all work so hard, but that's basically because we all feel like we're not making enough to meet our needs, which is how our elites want us to feel.

The World Health Organization says governments need to regulate e-cigarettes and their associated health risks. Remember that regulate doesn't mean outlaw -- though we really shouldn't be blowing formaldehyde into the air we all have to breathe. Thankfully the FDA is mulling banning the sale of e-cigs to anyone under 18, as well as a few other rules; given that corporate e-cig backers are all from the hated-anyway tobacco industry, the FDA might actually get this one right (though we'll be there if they don't).

"Want Better, Smaller Government?" John DiIulio asks. "Hire Another Million Federal Bureaucrats." That's not as paradoxical as it sounds when you consider how much of our government's work gets outsourced and privatized, all at a higher cost to the taxpayer than if our government did the work itself. Bureaucrats may be unpopular, but they're not as unpopular as wasting taxpayer money -- and, frankly, people who constantly complain about bureaucrats kind of date themselves anyway.

Finally, North Carolina Republican U.S. Senate nominee Thom Tillis, noting the release of two wrongfully-convicted brothers who've spent decades on death row, said that "(a)t least the process worked, it just took too long." I believe the logicians call that survival bias -- if a man spent decades on death row for a crime he didn't commit and then got executed, the "process" could hardly be said to have "worked." But not only might "the process worked" be 2014's "it is something that God intended to happen" moment, it gets worse for Thom Tillis -- years ago he used an image of one of the two freed brothers as campaign mailer booga-booga.

Action: nuclear non-proliferation, and getting Barbie out of the Girl Scouts.

The Council for a Livable World helps you tell President Obama to provide more funding for nuclear security and nonproliferation programs. Why? Because his last three budgets have cut funding for these programs that (among other things) help collect loose nuclear materials so that terrorists and rogue states don't get it first. And unlike a lot of defense spending, these programs don't actually cost a lot -- which you already figured out, right? A new weapon or weapon delivery system costs lots more money than paying people to make sure the world is safe from loose nukes. The latter item doesn't make big defense contractor CEOs rich, but it does make the world a safer place. And, until lately, nonproliferation was a fairly bipartisan cause -- but of 26 Senators who lately signed a letter urging Mr. Obama to restore these funding cuts, only two, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were Republicans, and maybe Mr. Graham only signed it to be ornery. But the widespread abandonment of reason in this hyperpartisan age is no reason to stop doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, I passed along an action alert a while back asking the Girl Scouts to stop partnering with Mattel, the makers of the ubiquitous Barbie doll, since Barbie dolls, as you know, seem a bit incongruous with the Girl Scouts' stated goal of "build(ing) girls of courage, confidence, and character," but unfortunately the "synergy" between them continues, as Daisies and Brownies can now get a Barbie patch (how's that for branding?), and Girl Scouts can now visit at least two GSUSA web pages and be further branded. If this seems like nitpicking, remember: courage, confidence, and character. Barbie was just in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and British researchers found in 2005 that young girls exposed to Barbie dolls had a worse body images than young girls who didn't. That's character and confidence, respectively; now how about promoting the courage to be who you really want to be, rather than letting corporate advertising set false limits? The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell the Girl Scouts of America to disassociate themselves from Mattel and Barbie.

Around the table: "extraordinary access to the Member," and other horrors.

California state legislature passes plastic bag ban. I've opposed plastic bag taxes in the past, on the grounds that it would hurt lower-income folks harder, but a ban is easier to support: though I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse their plastic bags, I see where the trash problem could become (or perhaps already is) intractable. The bill now goes to Governor Brown's desk; I have no idea whether he'll sign it or not, because when you look up the word "enigma" in the dictionary, it has a picture of Jerry Brown.

The Center for Public Integrity looks at "How Big Telecom Smothers City-Run Broadband." Long story short: it's the money -- from those same big telecoms that won't build out into cities that want the city-run broadband! Don't get discouraged when you read all of the flatugasms coming from the mouth of AT&T's CEO (including his extremely unlikely claim that he "just" didn't know his corporation spent millions lobbying for bills that would strangle community broadband) -- at the end, we learn that there may be judicial precedent for pre-emption of state anti-broadband laws (from a Reagan-appointed judge, no less!) and that plenty of Republican-led legislatures have tried to pass similar bills in recent years and failed.

Wired! profiles Biomeme, a startup that aims to mass-produce a diagnostic tool that would be easy to use and snap on to your smartphone. Biomeme faces a number of challenges -- some related to regulatory hurdles, some related to the enormity of the task, as other companies have found success in this field rather more elusive than expected -- but if you could have a relatively-inexpensive device that could tell you if you've got the flu or not, why wouldn't you want it? I hope they succeed -- and I also hope the FDA applies the proper amount of skepticism.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), whose term in Congress is over in just a few months, apparently is looking for unpaid interns who are not "vapid granolas who fear guns, hate babies, are ashamed of America, and think Islamic terrorists and illegal aliens are just misunderstood." I'm as liberal as they come, and I've never actually met anyone like that; certainly I can't understand why such a person would try to get a job with Steve Stockman. Click through (twice) to see the job listing itself, and learn with a shudder that if you get hired, "you will have extraordinary access to the Member."

Uh oh: Wisconsin's tax collection revenues fell $281 million short of the Walker Administration's projections last year. This could actually be a big deal in Scott Walker's impending re-election fight -- right-wingers like Gov. Walker insist that letting corporations do their thing actually increases tax revenue, when clearly the opposite is happening -- and his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, seems willing to pound him for it. But when will Ms. Burke hammer Mr. Walker's infamous "budget repair" law essentially outlawing public unions in Wisconsin -- which, as you may recall, Mr. Walker "had" to do because the state was "broke"?

Finally, another day, another Barack Obama quotation alleging that Republicans are held "captive" by their far right wing, and I wish he'd just stop saying that stuff. Perhaps he aims to intimate that the Republican leadership isn't worthy of the people's support if they can't tell the Tea Party to go scratch, but most people will think Mr. Obama is saying the Republican leadership is reasonable and moderate, when they're not -- Newt Gingrich was reasonable and moderate compared to Messrs. Boehner, Ryan, and McConnell, and back in the day Gerald Ford and Bob Dole were reasonable and moderate compared to Newt Gingrich. Seeing a trend? Of course you are -- you're seeing the "center" move ever further right, and Barack Obama is making it worse.

Action: corporate settlements, food labeling, and campaign finance reform.

You've no doubt noticed a trend in our government's huge settlements with corporate bad actors: that the settlements tend not to prevent said corporate bad actors from writing off their fines on their taxes. Your right-wing friends will say this makes sense: Bank of America, for example, had $16.6 billion the day before their settlement and didn't have it the day after, hence their profits fell by $16.6 billion, hence they pay fewer taxes. But why do you get a tax break for doing wrong? And where is the incentive for a corporation to do right, if its decision-makers know that if they can wrangle their way to a fine instead of actual jail time, they can simply write that fine off their taxes and, in effect, lose nothing? Hence PennPIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4324/S. 1898, the Truth in Settlements Act, which would mandate public disclosure of the tax breaks our government gives and corporations take. Yeah, I'd also prefer a law simply mandating that such settlements can't be deducted, but shining the bright light of bad PR on our government and on corporations will do a considerable amount of good, even if Mitch McConnell will call it "bullying."

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth helps you tell the USDA to ensure that food labels are honest and transparent. What's that, you say? They're not now? No, they're not -- aside from the USDA's unwillingness to force corporations to label the food they make from genetically-modified organisms, which some 9 of 10 Americans want, the USDA also isn't particularly stringent about labels saying "humanely raised" or "sustainably farmed," both of which may cover animals raised rather inhumanely and rather unsustainably in factory farms. After all, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, words mean things. If you're an animal raised in a pen little bigger than you are, and pumped full of antibiotics so that you can tolerate your unsanitary living conditions a little better, you weren't raised "humanely" or "sustainably." It looks like factory farms write all the policy at the USDA, which, given USDA Secretary Vilsack's background, isn't any kind of surprise, but why should factory farms get all the say about everything? And no, the answer is not because America will starve without factory farms. That answer would make the future a hostage to the present, and I don't put up with that in my America.

Finally, the Senate plans to vote on S.J.Res. 19 -- the Constitutional amendment which would allow state and federal governments to make campaign finance laws again -- on Monday, September 8, and CREDO helps you tell your Senators to support it. As you know, in a nation where even two-thirds of Republican voters think the Supreme Court got Citizens United v. FEC wrong, where most folks already hate campaign ads on TV and radio, where folks do not do a V8 head-slap when confronted with the notion that "money equals speech," the opponents of S.J.Res. 19 have been, shall we say, creative in their objections, claiming that S.J.Res. 19 would end free speech, harm pastors, allow incumbents to forbid challengers from running campaign ads, and many, many other things that never happened under the McCain/Feingold campaign finance regime. So why would they happen now, exactly? The answer is they won't -- but a good chunk of our politicians want to depend on massive corporate campaign donations, which is, after all, easier than divining your constituents' will and doing it. But the First Amendment doesn't say people with more money get more freedom of speech.

Around the table: a completely unsurprising campaign finance finding! And other stories.

Researchers find that the Citizens United decision gave Republicans a "significant" boost on Election Day 2010 in state legislative races. Which won't surprise you, nor will their finding that Citizens United, long advertised by the "liberal" media as a decision that benefited both corporations and unions, actually boosted corporations' electioneering power rather more than it did that of unions. So next time someone says Citizens United isn't so bad, "because look how badly all the big money picks did in 2012," remind them that the big money picks did quite well in 2010.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finds that Newt Gingrich's favorite company, FedEx, knowingly and unlawfully misclassified truck-driving employees as "independent contractors" so they could avoid paying benefits. And also so they could avoid paying for uniforms, insurance, fuel, maintenance, workers' comp, and trucks. Yes, you read that right -- trucks. FedEx also made their drivers pay the workers who took over their shifts if they went on vacation or took a sick day. FedEx's decision-makers obviously possess no morals or ethics whatsoever -- and one day, some judge will call me a terrorist for saying such a thing.

Obama Administration leases more than 430,000 acres of Gulf of Mexico waters to gas drillers so they can frack in the water. And which corporation got more lots than anyone else? BP, naturally, a little over four years after they took a massive dump in the Gulf. And dig the Halliburton engineer calling the deep Gulf waters "the most challenging, harshest environment we'll be working in. You can't have hiccups." I guess he would know from hiccups, amirite?

Alex Kotch at the Institute for Southern Studies tells us where the big money comes from in the North Carolina school vouchers battle, temporarily won by the side of good earlier this month when a state judge ruled the state's voucher program unconstitutional. The anti-voucher money tends to come from the NEA, but much of the pro-voucher money comes from the so-called American Federation for Children; two-thirds of the $300,000 it gave to North Carolina groups in 2013 went to three organizations with the same mailing address.

Finally, the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader tells the story of the downfall of former South Dakota Sen. Karl Mundt, once one of the most powerful men in South Dakota and national politics. Long story short: after decades as a state stumper and appropriations power-broker, he suffered a massive stroke in 1969 which left him basically unable to serve -- but either he wouldn't resign, or wouldn't resign without a condition attached (apparently that South Dakota's outgoing Governor wouldn't appoint himself to Mr. Mundt's Senate seat). It's a fascinating read, one that suggests that Mr. Mundt's wife may have been unfairly maligned all these years. (Coen Brothers fans will of course remember another Karl Mundt: John Goodman's villain from Barton Fink.)

Action: corporate taxes, nuclear power, and corporate accountability.

You may have heard that Burger King plans to "move" to Canada -- in the sense that they'll merge with Canadian donut/coffee chain Tim Hortons and reincorporate in Canada -- so they can evade American taxes. Hence The Other 98% joins with MoveOn to help you tell Burger King not to go through with, in the petition's words, "This Whopper of a Tax Dodge." Why are Burger King's majority owners at 3G Capital contemplating this move, when both President Obama and Treasury Secretary Lew have both not only spoken out against such corporate inversions but have openly contemplated action against them? And when just about zero American citizens really, really appreciate it when an American corporation moves somewhere else to avoid paying taxes -- taxes that pay for things, after all, things like police and firefighters and libraries and roads and bridges? Perhaps 3G Capital's decision-makers think Mr. Obama will really do something soon (which is a bet I'd never take!), and so they're trying to get it done before he does; possibly they also think most folks don't really understand what a "corporate inversion" is. But I suspect most folks understand it perfectly well.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth helps you tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shutter the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California until it can prove the reactor can operate safety. Sitting as it does on not-one-not-two-but-three faults in a fairly earthquake-prone state, you might see where the Diablo Canyon plant might be in some danger of causing some serious harm to nearby citizens on the central coast of California. And the NRC's own inspector at Diablo Canyon testified to the NRC a year ago that he thought the plant should have been shuttered, an action that by law should have prompted a response from the NRC within 120 days, which (get your surprised face ready) never arrived. Those who argue that we should encourage nuclear power so as to wean ourselves from foreign oil should contemplate two matters: one, whether our need to wean ourselves from foreign oil demands that we break our own laws in order to do it, and two, how it will feel if we're a little freer of foreign oil but several thousand good citizens die in a Fukushima-style accident. I imagine it'll feel rather Pyrrhic, to say the least.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to support S. 2615, the Hide No Harm Act, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. Currently corporations hide behind confidentiality agreements in lawsuits, which is why GM didn't have to say anything about the faulty ignition switches in their cars that may have already claimed a dozen lives, though a lot of GM owners might have wanted to know about that. But S. 2615 would mandate disclosure of such "serious dangers" to federal agencies, and would also mandate jail time for CEOs if they fail to comply. Some folks would argue that breaching such confidentiality agreements would put us on a "slippery slope" that would ultimately threaten all privacy everywhere. But it's not enough to retort that you'd feel differently if it were your kid. Fact is, a civilization constantly weighs the balance between privacy and disclosure, between the individual good and the greater good, and folks who resort to such slippery slope arguments (arguments that conveniently benefit corporations at the expense of actual people, I feel compelled to add) essentially announce their abdication of that duty. And I don't want folks like that in my foxhole.

Around the table: tiny homes for the homeless, some protections for temp workers in California, and other items.

Portland, OR plans to build tiny houses for homeless folks on government-owned land. Perhaps they, too, have read studies finding it cheaper to put the homeless in homes than to provide services on a continual-emergency basis. In any case, the 16-by-12 homes would cost about $20,000 and serve two homeless folks each, and Portland's efforts follow in the footsteps of the cities of Austin, TX and Charlotte, NC, as well as the state of Utah.

Online retailer Accessory Outlet apparently charges customers $250 if they complain or even threaten to complain about the service they receive. Read the article to see how much worse it gets; their terms of service, naturally, also provide (if that's the word) for forced arbitration of disputes. In an economy that no longer rewards work, I can see how the provide-bad-service-then-collect-fees-for-breach-of-terms-of-sale model would have struck someone as a winning idea. Someone utterly without morals or ethics, that is.

FAIR asks the right question when you read about how social media "silence" debate boo hoo: "if social media silence debate, what do corporate media do?" And yes, MSNBC firing Phil Donahue over his anti-Iraq war views does considerably more to "silence debate" than liberals deciding not to talk to their right-wing friends about politics anymore, which latter item is what the "liberal" media means, apparently, by "silencing debate." And gosh, how did people of opposing political views ever negotiate their differences before Facebook came along?

Australian model Meaghan Kausman lashes out at "crazy" modeling industry after discovering one of her employers had photoshopped an image of her in a swimsuit to make her look a lot thinner. "Crazy" is the right word for how it looks to reasonable people, at least, people who are acquainted with how women's bodies actually look. But I shudder to think what the haters are writing about Ms. Kausman.

California state legislature passes bill giving temporary workers some protections from injuries and lost wages. The California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, of course, saying it would "discourage further growth" yadda yadda yadda, but the bill has a slew of exclusions, not just for businesses with fewer than 25 employees, but also for "trucking and cable companies in most circumstances," per ProPublica. For big corporate lobbies, one must ask: how much is enough?

Finally, Thom Hartmann asks how BMW and Mercedes could be doing so well if paying workers more will destroy all businesses, as right-wingers are constantly saying. German autoworkers, it turns out, are all unionized -- there's no "right-to-work" state within Germany to which big auto corporations might retreat -- and the German constitution also mandates worker participation in a corporation's operations via works councils. And how has Germany's economy weathered Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon again?