Action: preserving overtime pay rules, and capping prisoner phone rates.

Right-wingers hate the Obama Administration's new overtime rules, which more than double the salary threshold under which employers must pay time and a half for overtime. But H.R. 5813, the so-called Overtime Reform and Enhancement Act, emanates from four nominal Democrats, including Kurt Schrader of Oregon; H.R. 5813 would implement the new overtime protections gradually over a period of three years -- which means, just so we're clear, food out of your mouth and out of your family's mouths -- and would prevent the new threshold from automatically rising as inflation rises, even though, you know, stuff costs more as time goes on. Naturally these Democrats "worry" about "implementing the increase overnight," but they're missing the point -- overtime protections prevent corporations from working their employees to death and force them to hire more employees, which they'd rather not ever do. And corporations already persuaded the Department of Labor to set the threshold lower; must it always be working people who compromise? Not in my America. The EPI Policy Center helps you pimp-slap H.R. 5813 into the oblivion it deserves.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FCC to reverse its recent decision to allow phone corporations to charge prisoners more for phone calls, then Demand Progress helps you do that. In October, the FCC capped phone rates for prisoners at between 11 and 22 cents per minute, but now that cap's up to 13 to 31 cents a minute (the rate varies depending on the size of the prison's population and whether federal or state governments run it), and naturally big telecom corporations are still whining they can't make any money. But I think there are more important things in life than ensuring corporate CEOs can gild the plumbing in their 23rd vacation home -- namely, that if you are already serving a sentence given to you by a judge so you can repay your debt to society, you do not deserve additional penalties heaped upon you merely because you can't fight them. Whenever I say things like this, people tell me I must "want prisoners to live coddled lives at taxpayer's expense" or some other species of horsedoodle. If you're tempted to follow suit, please read this entire paragraph again -- out loud, if you have to.