Thieves in the Temple.

Action: fuel economy standards, plus light posting notice.

The deadline is tomorrow to tell the EPA to lock in its auto fuel efficiency standards, which the Environmental Defense Fund helps you do. As you may recall, the EPA recently completed a legally-mandated review of the standards it issued a few years ago, and we feared the EPA might loosen the fuel standards, even though they save good Americans money at the gas pump and save good Americans from breathing so much dirty air, but the EPA has determined that it would prefer to keep the standards where they are. Still, they're taking public comments on the matter, and we'd do best to assert our will here, again, because you know the objectively pro-pollution forces on the right will be asserting their will. Sane and reasonable people would, of course, never put some oil corporation CEO's "right" to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home above our right to breathe clean air and pay less money for gasoline, nor would sane and reasonable people accept the absurd notion that all government regulations are bad and corporations are better left to regulate their own behavior. Sadly, we are entering yet another era where sane and reasonable people will have to speak out louder to even be heard, and so we better get some practice in.

I think this will be the last action alert of 2016. Thieves in the Temple will be back to kick 2017's ass early next week, very likely with some action alerts about Social Security and Medicare, since Republicans seem so hot to destroy both of these -- but also with some advice that I think will help focus your mind and heart when you contemplate how to handle the coming horror of the Trump Administration. In the meantime, thanks, as always, for reading -- and thanks for doing something, too.

Action: fighting government spying on Muslims and Donald Trump's Cabinet of Horrors.

Demand Progress helps you tell Congress to reject any attempt by our government to monitor Muslim-American citizens in violation of our Constitution. Apparently, Rep. King (R-NY) has pushed for just such a program, based on the New York city Police Department's "Demographics Unit," which was so wildly unsuccessful and unpopular (setting up cameras outside Muslim-owned stores and community centers, putting spies in Muslim communities) that they called it a "demographics unit." Monitoring Americans once you get a warrant from a judge is perfectly lawful and constitutional, but monitoring good Americans merely on the basis of their religious beliefs certainly violates the First Amendment, which protects folks from oppression by their government merely for their speech or religious beliefs. Of course, when Republicans bring up their so-called First Amendment Defense Act early next year, we'll have to remind them that the First Amendment only protects your right to speech and belief, not your right to deny other people their rights because of your beliefs. But we'll get there, too.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject all of Donald Trump's reactionary Cabinet nominees, then the appropriately-named Block Trump's Cabinet still helps you do that. You remember Barack Obama's first slate of appointees? Some of them were pretty good (though Lisa Jackson at EPA is the only one that springs to mind presently) while some others (Timothy Geithner, Tom Vilsack, and Tom Daschle are, sadly, easier to remember!) were pretty awful. Not so with Donald Trump's first slate of appointees, who are all awful -- the objectively pro-racist Attorney General nominee, the objectively pro-pollution Secretary of State and EPA Administrator nominees, the objectively pro-bankster Commerce and Treasury nominees, and the objectively pro-government spying CIA nominee (you remember, the one who thinks people who use encryption are probably guilty of something?). Please remember that, thanks to short-sighted Democrats in the Senate majority back in 2013, that Presidential appointees (outside of the Supreme Court) can no longer be filibustered -- which means you have to contact your Republican Senators, too.

Action: Social Security, and Presidential tax returns.

The Economic Policy Institute has looked at the so-called Social Security Reform Act a bit further, and still finds it will deliver a world of hurt to Social Security recipients -- which number will one day include you, of course. A little more than a quarter of recipients at the low end will get some benefit increases, it's true, but I'm pretty sure that's just so Republicans can run ads accusing Democrats of voting against benefit increases, when they vote against a bill that would cut the benefits of more than two-thirds of Social Security recipients! The bill would raise the retirement age to 69 -- which will of course cut everyone's benefits from 65 to 68! -- and use the hated "Chained CPI" method of calculating cost-of-living increases, when "Chained CPI," as we've discussed before, undermeasures inflation by assuming folks will simply buy different stuff when prices go up, which folks on a fixed income with fairly high health care costs simply cannot do. Oh, and if you were a mom or dad who spent years raising children instead of working a job? Yeah, this bill would cut your benefits, too. Hence the EPI helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the the so-called Social Security Reform Act. If any of them are so impertinent as to ask what your better idea is, you could simply tell them to remove the cap on payroll taxes so income over $117,000 can be taxed into the system. Like so many things our politicians somehow can't do, it ain't that tough.

Meanwhile, New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-27) plans to introduce a bill provocatively entitled the TRUMP Act, where TRUMP stands for "tax returns uniformly made public." Sen. Hoylman's bill would mandate that Presidential candidates release at least five years' worth of tax returns at least 50 days before a Presidential election -- or else the state would keep their names off the ballot and prohibit the state's electors from voting for them even if they won. Our Constitution basically lets states instruct their electors on how to vote, so it'd be difficult to claim this bill would be unconstitutional, though I know right-wingers will try. Of course, right-wingers only care about winning, whereas actual conservatives care about preserving our traditions -- and the tradition of releasing your tax returns when you run for President seems to be worth preserving, if only because what little we learned from Mr. Trump's tax returns may have helped him lose the popular vote by nearly three million votes. So Change.org helps you tell the New York state legislature to pass the TRUMP Act. (Oh, and personal to those whining that New York and California really won the popular vote for Mrs. Clinton and "they don't want California picking their President": you do realize we could say "we don't want the old Confederate states picking our President" just about every time a Republican wins, don't you?)

Around the table: celebrity kills community, and other lessons.

You've no doubt long suspected that the rise of celebrity culture has something to do with the decay of community culture (and the ascension of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency), but George Monbiot at The Guardian shows how strong the link between all these phenomena really is. "The more distant and impersonal corporations become," he writes, "the more they rely on other people’s faces to connect them to their customers," and though that's been true at least since the rise of Madison Ave. almost a century ago, it's still rather dispiriting to see kids less involved in community (and more involved in aping celebrities) than they were even 20 years ago. And so you see how "(a)n obsession with celebrity does not lie quietly beside the other things we value" but rather "takes their place," and "virtual neighbours replace real ones."

Michael Corcoran at TruthOut explains how the repeal Affordable Care Act might happen. His hope, and mine, is that we use the opportunity afforded us by rage-filled Republicans to press for a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health insurance system that poll which finds majority support in poll after poll after poll. This article, by the way, has the best explanation of why "health savings accounts" are such a bad idea: aside from giving the rich (the only people who can set aside money for a "health savings account"!) yet another unearned tax cut, rich folks' HSAs would reduce the amount of money available to poor folks when their money runs out -- a problem you wouldn't have if they were all paying into the same insurance plan.

Caroline Poplin at MedPage Today also describes how ACA repeal might go down, how inadequate right-wing proposals to replace it are, and why we desperately need "social insurance." I guess she doesn't just say "Medicare-for-All" or "single-payer" because some folks might recoil, but if you're praising Social Security and Medicare as government programs that do good work and hold down costs, then that's what you're talking about. She also describes one of the more intractable problems with health care costs today -- "(b)ecause of the amazing success of modern medicine, many illnesses that used to kill -- cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, even HIV -- are now chronic. And very expensive." Nothing we can't handle as a national community, of course, even with our representatives in both parties determined to oppose us.

As the Electoral Integrity Project finds North Carolina to be "no longer a fully-functioning democracy" but more closely resembles an authoritarian state, one of the EIP's founders, Andrew Reynolds, describes what must be done. Admitting you have a problem, of course, is always the first step, a step that's often as hard for proud Americans as it is for their ragehead neighbors, but creating independent redistricting commissions ("no democracy in the world outside of the U.S. allows the elected politicians to draw the lines") would be the best second step, one that would make all the necessary future steps (like, stop having "Voter Integrity Projects" question black folks' right to vote!) much easier.

Finally, we learn that Donald Trump would really like to put all his businesses in a "half-blind trust" so he can continue to make money off them while not actually violating the Constitution's various prohibitions against Presidential conflicts of interest. It might work according to the letter of the law (I said might!), but certainly not according to its spirit, which is at least as important, and Mr. Trump is a "law and order" guy, is he not? Seriously, this "half-blind trust" idea is so stupid even Evil Joe Walsh gets off a zinger at its expense. (Though if Bob Novak were still with us, he might describe the "half-blind trust" in terms of Solomon actually cutting the baby in half.)

Action: fighting child labor, slave trafficking, and racist and sexist media.

You like your Nutella, right? I mean, really, it is impossibly good-tasting stuff. Well, brace yourself: the corporation that makes Nutella uses child labor in Africa to make their chocolate confections. That's right, the Italian food corporation Ferrero (which also makes Kinder Eggs) exploits child labor and slave trafficking to the tune of two million kids in Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana harvesting cocoa, work which requires the use of toxic chemicals. Oh, the kids also get to use machetes, but only to harvest the cocoa, not to retaliate against their captors. Ferrero is the world's third-largest chocolatier, behind only Mars and Nestlé, and Ferrero's gaining on them, having doubled its revenue over the last decade to over $9 billion in fiscal 2015. You know what that means: Ferrero has the money to end its exploitation of child labor and pay adult workers a decent wage. Ferrero's dirty little secret is out now, though, and no corporation likes to feel the impact of the Big Stick of Bad PR, so Sum of Us helps you tell Ferrero to root evil child labor and child slavery out of its supply chain.

Speaking of the Big Stick of Bad PR, over 200 corporations have pulled advertising from Breitbart "News," which aims to export its brand of sexist, racist "straight talk" overseas early next year, so that sad-hearted racists all over the world can "find one another." But this boycott is actually hitting Breitbart where it hurts -- in the pocketbook. Breitbart no doubt wears this boycott as a badge of honor, and fancies itself a site that "fights corporatism," though gosh, that's a laugh, given their outspoken support for the biggest, shallowest corporatist in human history, Donald Trump. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Amazon -- which, as we covered earlier today, is probably the most powerful corporation on Earth, one perhaps rivaling the old Dutch East India Company from time immemorial -- to stop advertising on Breitbart. No use them arguing that eyeballs are there and they gotta go get 'em, because you can get racist eyeballs in plenty of places without lending financial support to the corporation that would give them a "safe space" to be bad human beings. Besides, they're Amazon! They don't need Breitbart's help!

Around the table: monopolies, the minimum wage, conflict of interest disclosure, bad technology, "history's biggest obstructionists," and Joe Manchin's all-new "war on drugs."

Mario Vasquez at TruthOut informs us that one out of every two dollars spent online goes to Amazon, and asks what we might do about that. No one should have half the market of anything, and Mr. Vasquez does a good job listing all the problems the Amazon monopoly causes -- from killing retail jobs in communities, depriving those communities of property taxes, and stunting the growth of community itself by putting brick-and-mortar stores out of business, all the way to its "management by stress" at its warehouses and its dragging down of good wages at the USPS and UPS through their "partnerships." All is not lost, though, as Teamster pilots at an Amazon subsidiary went on strike (only to be forced to return to work by a judge who actually referred to the "irreparable harm" that "Christmas without Amazon" would do to consumers! What a whiner!)

For those of you who've been thinking of Ohio Gov. John Kasich as a "moderate," note well that he just signed a bill prohibiting Ohio's municipalities from raising the minimum wage on their own. Because conservative! Of course, actual conservatives believe in the smallest possible community making the most important decisions affecting that community, even if today's nominal "conservatives" only believe in whatever makes their biggest donors richer. Good citizens of Ohio, it's time for another veto referendum, like the one that took down Ohio's attempt at limiting collective bargaining rights in 2011.

Adam Johnson at FAIR describes the multitudinous conflicts of interest Vox doesn't disclose. These might seem harmless -- Snap (née Snapchat) getting gushing press for its apps and hardware when both Snap and Vox share a common (and huge) investor, Hulu getting plugs from Vox when both Hulu and Vox share a common (and huge) investor -- and I'm sure someone's going to say lighten up, PR's older than Jesus, but being older than Jesus doesn't automatically make it right, and hiding the big corporations you're getting money from when you just so happen to be plugging their products isn't right, either.

Add this to the list of problems with Apple's new wireless earbuds: per Wired's Kyle Wiens, they're virtually impossible to take apart and therefore virtually impossible to recycle. The major problem is that you can't remove the battery, which is pretty essential to the recycling process (since a battery put through a machine shredder, which separates reusable parts from disposable ones, will very likely blow it up). How proud Apple must be -- they've designed ear buds that will very likely fall out of your ears if you get too much into your music, they've replaced the standard earphone jack with their own proprietary jack, and now we learn their earbuds don't even adhere to Apple's own recycling ethic! It sure seems like Apple would force you to be their kind of consumer, rather than be the consumer you are -- and that, good folks, is exactly what conservatives hate about liberals. No, really -- that's the steak; the rest is sizzle.

Sen. Ted Cruz (E-TX) says Democrats will be "history's biggest obstructionists." A few thoughts: one, we can only hope! Two, if Democrats do the people's will, which is their job, then of course they will obstruct a Republican-run government that only does the will of its biggest donors and its loudest rageheads. Three, Republicans obstructed the entire Obama Administration; weakling Democrats always wanting to reach out and find common ground surely enabled them, but Democrats have a high bar to clear before they'll ever become "history's biggest obstructionists." Four, the "liberal" media covered Republican obstructionism as if it were just part of the landscape, but I doubt they'll give Democrats the same treatment -- especially if we can all see pretty clearly that the Democrats are obstructing on the people's behalf.

Finally, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), in a moment of extreme tone-deafness, calls for a "war on drugs" to deal with the opioid addiction that's ravaging his state in particular and America generally. Does he not know that the original "war on drugs" was, by John Ehrlichmann's own admission, purposely designed to discredit anti-war and civil rights protestors? Does he not know that his own daughter runs a drug corporation that pumps out opioids? Ah, it doesn't matter -- Joe Manchin is going to lose his re-election battle in 2018 by 20 points. And if he loses to David McKinley, that'll be an improvement, not a tragedy.

Action: "Muslim registries," and wastewater dumping.

You may have heard that The Intercept asked nine big tech corporations whether it would help a Trump Administration build a "Muslim registry" of American citizens who practice Islam (or who come from Islamic nations), and only Twitter, at first, said no. After some public pressure, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook also said they'd have nothing to do with such a thing, and you could either bemoan the cowardice of big corporations in the face of evil or find it reassuring that public pressure about standing up to evil still works -- or both! In any case, several big tech corporations still remain silent about the matter; of course, Tha Bush Mobb already tried a Muslim registry (albeit of foreign men who traveled to and from the United States), and that didn't result in even one terror-related conviction -- but it did disrupt Muslim communities with the threat of detainment and deportation, which is exactly the kind of thing that leads other sympathetic Muslims to become terrorists. Why, it's almost like that's the whole idea. Hence both Color of Change and CREDO help you tell big tech corporations to refuse to help build a "Muslim registry."

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration to ban corporate dumping of fracking wastewater into our oceans, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. Yes, frackers can dump their wastewater into our oceans! And I guess they think that's OK since no one's drinking the ocean water -- except that, well, one day, if San Diego and Israel (among others) can continue their good work in ocean water desalination, we may in fact be drinking ocean water one day, and in the meantime, plenty of marine species are completely defenseless against the poison coming into their habitat. If you find that last item too tree-huggy for your taste, consider that among those completely defenseless marine species are plenty of species that human beings eat, and a lot of those species (particularly shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico) still haven't recovered from various other ecological disasters. Also, too, people like to go to the ocean to swim in it, like we've been doing since time immemorial, and why would nominal conservatives sacrifice our ancient impulses to ephemeral corporate profit?

Around the table: more follies about health care, pensions, cancer research, and pollution -- plus bonus *It's a Wonderful Life* backstory.

Michael Corcoran at FAIR catches the New York Times calling the Republicans' health care plan, such as it is, a "universal" health care plan. Republicans have not actually offered anything that would approach "universal" coverage, other than the "opportunity" to buy health care coverage. But this "opportunity" has always existed -- yes, even in the days when 50 million people, not 30 million, had no health insurance -- and good luck getting decent coverage if you're not part of a pool, as employees of a corporation offering health insurance would be, or, indeed, as all Americans would be under a Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care plan, a plan which gets majority American support in poll after poll after poll, but can't even be mentioned in the "liberal" media articles about health care which all pretend the Affordable Care Act is TEH MOST LIBRULZ PLANZ POSSIBLEZ!!!!!

Institute for Policy Studies report finds that 100 American CEOs have, by themselves, more retirement security than 116 million Americans. Progressive Insurance's CEO, for example, can count on collecting over $1 million every month when he retires -- and he probably thinks it's not enough! Those who bellow that TEH CEOZ EARNED TEH RICHEZ!!!!! might want to describe how, exactly, they earned them, and will want to consider if "buying off politicians to get preferential tax treatment" is really "earning" anything. And those who go all Henny-Penny before corporate scare numbers about pension fund insolvency might want to consider whether these 100 CEOs could maybe do a little more about that than they're doing.

Matt Richtel and Andrew Pollack at the New York Times dive deep into taxpayer-funded cancer research and wonder, rightly, whether private corporations profit too much from that research, and at taxpayer expense. The corporate arguments in favor of feeding at the taxpayer trough (and, naturally, against any attempt by our government to hold prices down for consumers/taxpayers) are all typical rhetorical hostage-taking: our government can't do it alone (though we could if we brought back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income!), and private involvement ensures needed treatments get to the public, because there's just no other way. But sure, right-wingers, tell me again how gluttonous corporate executives "earn" their money, particularly when (in one hospital administrator's testimony) "(t)he market is so reliant on the knowledge and know-how that comes out of the government and academic labs."

A Daily Caller investigation finds that the EPA has failed to clean up over 300 Superfund sites, many with "unknown dangers." I wouldn't interpret this information (which describes foot-dragging from both polluters and the EPA) as a call to abandon all efforts at pollution regulation, as so many right-wingers would like us to do -- I'd more easily interpret it as a call to fund EPA efforts properly, which Congresses have generally refused to do for one reason or another, and to force polluters to cooperate with such efforts. Don't worry, though: when Donald Trump "drains the swamp," the EPA will do its job and polluters will finally meet justice! I kid, of course.

President Obama plans to withdraw most of the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic Oceans from consideration for new offshore drilling sales, using authority derived from the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. He won't be the first President to invoke this authority, though right-wingers will act like he is, and it would actually be rather difficult for a President Trump to undo what he does here, though a Republican Congress could go ahead and change the law. For "energy security," of course, which for Republicans never seems to mean developing energy from the wind and the sun.

Finally, we learn from Nina Metz at the Chicago Tribune "How Jimmy Stewart's War Service Affected 'It's a Wonderful Life.'" Not many folks know this -- and certainly no one would have spoken of it to the public then! -- but Mr. Stewart suffered from PTSD after 15 months of air combat in WWII, and his first film afterward was "It's a Wonderful Life," a role he took reluctantly, as he'd hoped to do a comedy after what he'd experienced. If you've seen the film -- particularly that last scene with his family before he takes off in his car, where he's dripping with desperation and rage -- you can see the echoes of his war experiences. Given the extreme reluctance of most returning WWII American soldiers to talk about their experiences (Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five wouldn't arrive until the '60s), it's almost the only contemporary echo of that experience you can get.

Action: fighting discrimination and pollution.

The nefarious Russell Amendment, which would have reversed Mr. Obama's Executive Order preventing federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity, didn't make it into the Defense Authorization bill, but word on the street is that was only because Mr. Trump had already promised to reverse the Order himself. Our government is a pretty big employer, so Mr. Obama's Order ensures some protection from discrimination for over one out of every five American workers. And though Donald Trump doesn't care what you think just like George W. Bush didn't care what you thought, his duty as President is to execute the people's will, not coddle the most reactionary elements in his own caucus, and our duty as Americans is to remind him to do his duty. And the people's will is to be fair to all Americans, regardless of the kind of "religious convictions" people have used as an excuse to discriminate for centuries now. Hence Freedom for All Americans helps you tell President-elect Trump to ensure that federal contractors aren't allowed to discriminate against gay and transgendered folk.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell 17 big banks to cut off their financial support for the building of the Dakota Access pipeline, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has lately refused to grant certain critical building permits until a proper environmental review can be done, but you know Mr. Trump plans to reverse that decision, too, because he seems to think all regulations are bad and all energy development is good, apparently. Of course, regulations that actually protect our air and water aren't bad, and doubling down on pollution-belching energy production isn't always good, either, particularly when renewable energy development is doing pretty well, no thanks to big energy corporations. But if Donald Trump isn't going to work with America, then America has to work around him, and ensure that Energy Transfer Partners doesn't get the funding from banks to complete the job. Banks don't like bad publicity, you know, and water cannons on peaceful protestors isn't the kind of thing banks want to be associated with. But they may need to be reminded of that.

Action: the Senate torture report, and Presidential conflicts of interest.

You've likely heard by now that -- in yet another apparent attempt to adhere to the letter of King Solomon's solution in 1 Kings 3:16-28, rather than its spirit -- President Obama won't make the Senate torture report public, but he will include it among his Presidential papers. That will no doubt protect the torture report from a more reactionary Senate bent on destroying it and covering up our shame as a nation, but it will also prevent the report from being released to the public for another dozen years -- by which time our incoming President (who may be out of office by then!) will have directed enough torture to provoke a new torture report from a new Senate, one which will also demonstrate that torture is (besides being wrong!) a terrible way to fight terrorism or get actionable intelligence from suspects, and those of us who would be looking toward retirement at that time will certainly wonder if our lives accomplished nothing. So let's try and head off all that madness, shall we? Roots Action helps you tell President Obama to make the Senate's torture report public. So far a heavily-censored 500-page executive summary is all the public knows about, and while it's made its point, the full 7,000-page horror would make an even better point. Hell, even some of our "liberal" media journalists might read it (or part of it, let's be realistic!), and be horrified at what it contains.

Meanwhile, a few Democratic Senators (including Sens. Warren and Merkley) will introduce a bill in January requiring the President and Vice President to divest from any entities that might pose a conflict of interest. You may have heard that our next President, Donald Trump, faces numerous conflicts of interest in which he may be directly able to influence policy affecting his business holdings. Think America's dealings with, say, Germany might be warped a bit by the fact that the Trump Organization owes so much money to Deutsche Bank? Think his IRS audits might come to a more rapid and favorable conclusion than he deserves because now the IRS will answer to him? There is also the Emolument Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids American office-holders from receiving "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State" without Congress's consent; we could easily imagine certain policy decisions of a Trump Administration leading to "presents" or "emoluments" ("emolument" being roughly equivalent to a salary or fee) for the President. We would be better describe this phenomenon, of course, as corruption. So People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to support the Warren/Merkley bill that would require Presidents and Vice Presidents to divest from their business and corporate holdings before taking office.

Around the table: racists are the whiniest cowards, and other truths.

U.S. intelligence agencies will comply with a request from 11 bipartisan House Judiciary Committee members to disclose how many Americans have been caught up in our government's online surveillance of foreigners. This would amount to warrantless wiretapping, which violates our Constitution even if doesn't violate some of our laws. I'm not expecting the number of Americans spied upon to be particularly small (though I am expecting our government to lowball it). Would it be too much to ask for President Obama to give us an actual legacy, rather than the one he keeps nattering on about?

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, summarizes his findings after investigating recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin. Long story short: uncounted ballots in both states just-so-happened to be concentrated in black areas; Michigan's "emergency managers" failed to fund better optical scanners in those areas; Michigan actively interfered with the recount in fairly obvious and suspicious ways; Wisconsin's recount consisted of feeding ballots back through the same machines that may have missed votes the first time. Another dose of Interstate Crosscheck provided at no extra charge, making this Mr. Palast's most comprehensive report on the matter yet.

Josmar Trujillo at TruthOut asks if "community groups" can properly "replace police." Most folks who want to get rid of police (because of racist brutality) don't have an answer when you ask what they'll replace them with; at least Mr. Trujillo has that, and the violence-intervention and de-escalation groups he mentions have done some good work and promise to do more. Still, once the law gets broken, you're going to need police to enforce it. And Umi Selah deserves the last word here that he got after confronting Spike Lee over Chiraq: "How many lives you gon' save without creating jobs for those people in Chicago?"

Louisiana state legislature candidate says he'll boycott any business that employs Muslims, and also says that Muslims don't "deserve peace of our culture or the continued fruits of our society while following this religion." He can shop where he likes, I suppose, but he can't close down businesses just because they employ Muslims, which is what he's calling for without having the guts to spell it out, because that's discrimination. And I'm tired of people whining about "PC culture" while arguing for their "right" to discriminate. So I'm gonna "call it the way I see it": this guy's an asshole.

Finally, speaking of assholes, a white supremacist website publishes contact information for Jews in the small Montana town where infamous racist Richard Spencer's mother lives, because she's suffering "backlash" for her son's views. What whiny cowardice, and how unexpected! Racist demand to be called "alt-right" and want "safe spaces" for their racism, and then tell you where Jews live in the sincere hope you'll do something about it, so they don't have to. All racists are, fundamentally, cowards and whiners. I'll say it again: all racists are, fundamentally, cowards and whiners. Or is it not politically correct to say so?

Action: opposing the Trump agenda -- and proposing our own.

The incoming Trump Administration has planned a litany of attacks on working families -- but its one neat-sounding idea is its infrastructure plan. When you look at his infrastructure plan and realize it's full of soup -- that it's a Rube Goldbergian contraption of a plan in which corporate tax breaks magically "attract" investment in infrastructure, and that the end result will be either boutique infrastructure projects in wealthy areas that don't need them or the privatization of projects in areas that do -- you'll no doubt say so to your Reps and Senators. And then they, or their "liberal" media lackeys, will demand that you "come up with a better idea." Of course, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably already know a dozen better ideas off the top of your head, but in case you're new to this blog, Sign for Good presents this petition laying out a Real Agenda for Working People. The petition calls for (among other things) a real public works program that goes beyond infrastructure, a $15/hour minimum wage, ending forced arbitration in consumer contracts, fighting "free" trade deals that hurt workers and further enrich the already too-rich, institute a financial transaction tax (or Robin Hood Tax, or Wall Street Sales Tax), and raise the top income tax rate. All of these will do better than another round of crippling deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. So let's have at it!

Meanwhile, I've been passing along action alerts opposing various Trump Administration cabinet picks, but truth is they're all terrible, so Block Trump's Cabinet helps you tell your Senators to oppose all of Mr. Trump's Cabinet nominees. From the greedhead banksters at Treasury and Commerce to the practicing racist at Justice to the would-be Medicare destroyer at HHS to the would-be public school destroyer at Education (and here's a separate petition from MoveOn opposing Ms. DeVos, if you're so inclined) to the objectively pro-pollution politicians at State, Interior, and the EPA, it sure looks like Mr. Trump is actively trying to find the worst possible person for every single job -- even his most inoffensive nominee, Elaine Chao for Transportation Secretary, spent much of her tenure as Tha Bush Mobb's Labor Secretary trying to gut overtime and family leave rules. Of course, his nominees do face significant conflict of interest-related hurdles before they can take office, but the Office of Government Ethics has to enforce the relevant laws, and Congress could pull all kinds of shenanigans up to and including repealing the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that created OGE. In the meantime, I suppose, Mr. Trump could try to intimidate OGE employees (all career civil servants except the Director, whose term doesn't end until January 2018) into leaving and packing OGE with his lackeys. In other words, sooner or later we're going to have to rely on ourselves.

Around the table: for whom are "free" markets free? And other matters.

Republican-dominated North Carolina state legislature suddenly calls emergency session and strips the incoming Democratic Governor of many powers. Give the good folks of North Carolina credit, though -- they were out protesting in enough force, on very short notice, that they made their will known (and a few got arrested). This is the kind of power grab a political party executes when it can't win arguments anymore. And we'll be seeing a lot of this kind of crap at the federal level fairly soon.

Ho hum, another election setback, another "liberal" media "analysis" suggesting Democrats should move to the right -- this time by giving up on black folks to win white folks back. Instead of, you know, getting white voters to turn their anger away from folks of color and toward their real enemies, the corporatists and their lackeys in politics and media -- which, to be frank, doesn't seem that big a chore to me. Also, too, what was Mr. Trump's "winning" percentage of the popular vote? 46 percent, a smaller percentage than three of the last four Republican Presidential nominees (and he barely outpaced the fourth, John McCain in 2008), which means his "ideas" on appealing to white voters aren't that persuasive.

Dean Baker, in an excerpt from his new book provocatively entitled Rigged, reminds us that "free" markets are really only free for the folks making the most money. He also punctures the repugnant argument advanced by wealthy "free" marketeeers and "free" traders, that folks who want to hold on to their manufacturing jobs "don't care" about alleviating poverty in the rest of the world. As if those are the only two choices! The folks making these arguments could pay themselves less, or corporations could stop meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world and thus allow the world's workers more say in their lives. That's at least two more choices. (Kudos, again, to Mr. Baker for referring to "income redistribution" as it actually happens in the world -- that is, upward, from workers to Our Glorious Elites.)

At long last, a coalition of good Kansans has come together to vigorously oppose the mindless tax-cutting program of Gov. Sam Brownback. But I'd sure go a lot harder than they do! That top income bracket shouldn't start at $40,000 a year, even if that's what it used to be -- it should start at a considerably higher income and be at a considerably higher rate. And sales taxes, frankly, shouldn't even exist -- taxing consumption always hurts the people who have to consume (i.e., the poor) more than the people who don't (i.e., the rich). Still, it's always good to see people coming together to make taxes fairer.

20 state Attorneys General file a lawsuit against six pharmaceutical corporations for price-fixing. The suit centers mainly around two generic drugs, one antibiotic and one anti-diabetic, with prices for the former drug over 90 times higher in April of 2014 than they were just six months earlier. Prices don't go up like that because of "free" markets, despite the "free" marketeers crowd telling us that giving corporations whatever they want keeps prices down, when five seconds of thought would tell you it doesn't. The even better news? This particular lawsuit might only be the first price-fixing lawsuit over generic drugs. I wish them the best.

Finally, Liza Bayless at Yes! magazine describes the efforts of Lankenau Hospital in southeastern Pennsylvania to feed its patients with food grown on an on-campus organic farm. Lankenau sits in Montgomery County, but gets a lot of patients from Philadelphia County, ranked dead last in good health outcomes among 67 Pennsylvania counties in 2011 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, so clearly they saw the need for a more preventive approach. Lankenau has provided food for 400 patients so far, often giving food to patients as they're waiting for appointments and leading in-services on preparing it. Seems to me they're planting a seed, as it were, from which future food-education efforts will sprout forth.

Around the table: the suspicious end of the Michigan recount, and other tales.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, informs us that the state of Michigan shut down its Presidential recount without counting over 75,000 ballots, mostly from Flint and Detroit. Mr. Trump's margin of victory there, naturally, was under 11,000 votes, and though poor optical scanners seem to be a major culprit, the state still wants you to believe that tens of thousands of folks waited in line all day to vote for everyone but President -- particularly in a year without a gubernatorial or Senatorial race in Michigan! This is what we get when we only get a choice between rabid Republicans and weak Democrats. It's well past time to make this choice moot, of course, by incessantly communicating our will to our Representatives regardless of their party (and this document, which we'll discuss further in the near future, provides some good advice on how to do that).

President Obama informs Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Feinstein that he'll include the Senate torture report among his Presidential records, but won't declassify it so the public can see it. Thus it'll take a dozen more years for the report to become public, though the pro-torture Donald Trump becomes President in a little over a month, and will, we presume, be out of office by the time this torture report becomes public, at which point the Senate may have done an entirely new investigation into torture committed by a Trump Administration. Don't worry, though: by that time, Senate Democrats, however many of them are left, will still be preaching caution and patience.

Lisa Graves at PR Watch informs us that Exxon CEO/Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson has been actively engaged in misleading the public about the ill effects of climate change. None of it will surprise you, and if you're hoping against hope that the incoming administration will embrace an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, note well that Mr. Tillerson blocked a shareholder resolution expressing a desire to expand Exxon's investment in alternative energy sources. You'd think a big corporation like Exxon could help us move toward a renewable energy grid a lot faster, given all its money. I guess they don't because solar and wind power don't translate as easily to absurdly high executive pay as oil and coal do.

Uh oh: a 2010 military investigation found that then-Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump's nominee for National Security Advisor, "inappropriately shared" classified info with foreign military personnel in Afghanistan -- after telling the world at the Republican convention that if he did "a tenth" of what Hillary Clinton did, he'd be "in jail." He appears to have done at least a tenth of it, but with the Fuck-You-I-Won Administration about to take power, even those Republicans inclined to complain about Mr. Flynn's mistakes will likely be silent.

The Hill notes the many relatively inflexible deadlines Republicans will face as they take complete control of our federal government early next year. All of which will be, for Republicans, "opportunities" to ram through their extraordinarily backward and unpopular agenda -- starting with the national debt limit on March 16. And it's absurd to think "Republicans having to negotiate with Donald Trump this time" will be a factor, since they're not going to be negotiating so much as they're collaborating. Still, go ahead and read the article; just don't be tempted to try to game everything out -- CHIP reauthorization, for example, should happen because it's a good program that does good things and because good Americans demand it, not because it fits neatly into someone's 13-dimensional chess game.

Finally, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas advises us to "Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance" because "That's Exactly What They Voted For." This is cruel for many, many reasons, which Jim Naureckas at FAIR dutifully tabulates, but there's one other thing: voting is not the end-all-be-all of democracy -- in a democracy, those who voted for Mr. Trump are perfectly free to call and write their Reps and express their will that their health care not get cut off, and they are also free to organize and agitate toward ensuring their representatives (and their President) do their will. That Mr. Moulitsas doesn't think of it that way makes me think he's become part of the "liberal" media establishment or something.

Action: drug sentencing, water pollution, and the Grand Canyon.

The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell President Obama to release thousands of low-risk prisoners who committed non-violence offenses in time for the holidays. Hopefully, folks released would include folks still serving crack cocaine sentences under the sentencing regime before it was reformed in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The Fair Sentencing Act reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine minimum sentences from a ratio of 500 to 1 to a ratio of 17 to 1, but quite a few folks are still serving time under the old ratio, and why do that? The newly emboldened racist right will squeal about TEH THOUSANDZ OF PREDATURZ ON TEH STREETZ!!!! -- and they may not even hide behind coded language anymore! -- but good Americans don't gin up drama like that, only bad ones do. Speaking of which, we sure ain't getting any clemency under a President Trump, who declares his Presidency will be a "law and order" Presidency. Of course, Mr. Trump only thinks of black people when he thinks of "law and order," not the corporate criminals he's putting on his cabinet. But we'll still be around to remind everyone of what mercy really means.

Meanwhile, investigators have found lead and copper in the water at the Eastham Unit Prison in Lovelady, Texas, and prisoners there have testified to the water's "sulfur-like smell," "offensive taste," and "gritty residue." The prison administration apparently knows about the problem, as it has provided its guards with clean water, but not their prisoners. I can already hear the Trump votaries rolling their eyes and saying so what? They're prisoners! But as civilized people, we keep the water clean for prisoners as much we do as for everyone else -- I mean, how can you rehabilitate prisoners if you're poisoning them at the same time? And why do we heap punishment after punishment upon prisoners when their sentences and prison rules (which surely do not say "poison the prisoners' water") already detail their punishment? Also, too, consider the quality of mercy, a matter Jesus said more about than he ever said about gay marriage. Roots Action helps you tell the U.S. Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control to investigate the water pollution at the Eastham Unit Prison.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to declare a national monument around the Grand Canyon National Park and thus protect it for future generations, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. You know why this is particularly urgent: partly because corporations want to get their grubby mitts on the uranium in the area, and they don't care if it pollutes the Colorado River or not, though the river provides drinking water to seven states -- but mainly because the Grand Canyon is a national treasure, part of that great American heritage we ought to be passing on to future generations, rather than digging into so we can get a little energy today for nuclear power plants that can hardly sustain themselves without massive welfare handouts from our government in the first place! No, really, they can't -- and we can't compare their reliance on government handouts to wind power tax credits, since a) wind power is a lot younger and b) fossil fuel corporations spend all their time trying to crush wind power, instead of embrace it.

Around the table: more follies about job creation, cabinet appointments, and the "liberal" media.

Frank Clemente at the New York Times explains why "Corporate Welfare Won't Create Jobs." Nice to have figures -- 90% of the repatriated profits from the 2004 corporate tax amnesty went not to new workers but to shareholders, cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% would result in virtually zero wage hikes or production increases, the effective tax rate for corporations in America is less than half of the statutory 35% rate so stop whining! -- but also nice to note that Donald Trump's favorite corporation, United Technologies, has committed to spending some $16 billion on stock buybacks, which not only don't create jobs, but concentrate corporate power in ever-fewer hands, which is why our government frowned upon it until the early '80s.

Doktor Zoom at Wonkette reminds us that Mr. Trump's pick for Interior Secretary, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, not only wants to drill everywhere but is a master of diverting good Americans' campaign contributions to mysterious sources. Also, too, anyone else think he looks like Negan from Walking Dead? He's as terrible as all the other Trump nominees; I only bring him up because he sets up a false dichotomy between clean air and clean water regulations and "energy independence." We could have both, if we'd build out a renewable energy power grid, which clearly isn't the sort of "independence" Mr. Zinke likes. (As an aside, Sen. Tester may well be breathing a sigh of relief, knowing he's now far less likely to face Mr. Zinke in his 2018 re-election bid. It'll be a short-lived sigh of relief, though, because Mr. Tester will lose regardless of his opponent.)

And speaking of Mr. Trump's terrible nominees, the incomparable David Dayen at The Nation tells us that Mr. Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, has been under investigation by the SEC since August for inaccurately valuing Exxon's oil reserves, so that shareholders don't know how well Exxon is really doing financially. Suggesting your reserves are worth more than they really are (particularly in this climate change-era, when all oil reserves may be worth a lot less!) is a pretty good way of committing fraud against your shareholders -- and becoming Secretary of State is a pretty good way of heading off any further SEC scrutiny (though, admittedly, remaking the SEC, as Mr. Trump plans to do, is another pretty good way of heading off further scrutiny). Once again, folks, it's up to us.

NPR's Morning Edition has former Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on to discuss the Trump nomination for his old job, and the conversation veers into how you should have more immigrants working farms or else you'll have $16 apples. I'm sure he wasn't being literal, but a UC/Davis researcher just so happened to find in 2011 that a 40 percent increase in farm worker wages would result in a mere 4% increase in apple prices. That's a price I'd pay, if I knew the workers were doing that much better! (I'd also prefer that the National Labor Relations Act allowed farm workers to organize, so that they could be making more money now, and corporations couldn't use the threat of immigrant workers to slash wages.)

Finally, with "fake news" being all in the news lately, Alicia Shepard at the Moyers and Company blog provides "A Savvy News Consumer’s Guide" on "How Not To Get Duped" when you read the news. The section entitled "Consider the Source" has a lot of good advice, such as avoiding sites that end in ".co" (like abcnews.com.co, not at all an ABC news site) and checking for a site's editorial standards (not everyone has them!). You may be pleased to be reminded that the very thing that makes this such a treacherous time for consuming news (that, because of the internet, lies can spread faster than ever before) is also the thing that can make it navigable (that, because of the internet, you can prove lies untrue faster than ever before).

Action: internet freedom, water pollution, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Mr. Trump has professed to "drain the swamp," meaning getting rid of the influence of the corporate special interests that warp our democracy -- but he's stacked his tech transition team with corporate lobbyists who hate net neutrality and love corporate money, which sure seems like an odd way to drain the swamp. Mr. Trump has characterized net neutrality as yet another Big Gummint program run amok, but it's nothing of the kind -- the FCC's net neutrality rules protect us from corporations that would tell us where to go and what to do on the internet. People who assume that all government intervention is evil tend not to understand that government regulations can actually promote freedom, but I'm starting to think that talking to such people is a waste of my time. Anyway, Free Press helps you tell the Trump transition team to get rid of the corporate lobbyists who oppose the internet freedoms for which we've fought. Mr. Trump promotes the "freedom" of corporate executives to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes, but I think by now we all know that's not really freedom. Net neutrality is.

Meanwhile, the EPA infamously concluded not too long ago that hydraulic fracturing (more commonly known as "fracking," which must be a source of endless amusement to fans of the 2002-era Battlestar Galactica series) has "no widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States." The gas drillers of course did a Jeff George victory lap about the report, but failed to note that the report did tabulate numerous examples of water contamination from fracking, and couldn't tabulate more such examples only because gas drillers enjoy special exemptions from chemical disclosure rules in the Clean Water Act! If you'll forgive another sports metaphor, that's a little like watching only 76ers basketball when Joel Embiid has the night off and concluding from these that he's had no impact on the team. The EPA's report (which, to be fair, does represent a small step forward from previous EPA reports on the matter) has met with fairly relentless and trenchant criticism, including criticism from its own Science Advisory Board. Hence CREDO helps you tell the EPA to retract its fracking report.

Finally, the Australian government may be shorn of that utter embarrassment of a Prime Minster, Tony Abbott, but still plans (despite many reversals) to fund a massive coal-digging complex right next to the Great Barrier Reef, to the tune of $680,000 for each new job created, and that sure doesn't mean each coal worker will make $680,000, no, sir! It means, by the sound of it, that it's just another attempt to shovel taxpayer money into some cronies' pockets. Australia gets a lot of sunshine; think maybe it could spend a bit more taxpayer money on solar power, which good Australians would almost certainly prefer? In the meantime, digging for coal mostly means more pollution of the Great Barrier Reef, already cooking too hot due to climate change, and more pollution means losing the biological diversity that makes the Reef unique. So Avaaz helps you tell the Australian government to abandon plans to mine for coal near the Great Barrier Reef. Protecting what's unique about past and present from industrial development that will provide only ephemeral benefits -- why, that sounds awfully conservative.

Action: "heartbeat bills," Standing Rock, and fuel economy.

The Ohio state legislature, perhaps emboldened by the Presidential victory of the 46% Man, has sent not-one-but-two anti-abortion bills to Gov. Kasich's desk -- one that would outlaw abortion after 20 weeks, which we've seen before, but another so-called "heartbeat bill" which would outlaw abortion after a mere six weeks, or well before most women even know they're pregnant. Both bills contain no exceptions for incest, rape, or the life or health of the mother; remember back in the day when these exceptions were considered sane anti-abortion policy? Those days are gone, and right-wingers put these bills forward not to actually reduce abortions (since they're generally against the kind of birth control that would actually reduce abortions) but to engage in ever-more-rage addled swordfighting over Who's More Conservative. (Spoiler alert: no one in a swordfight is conservative.) Both Pro-Choice America and the ACLU help you tell Gov. Kasich to veto both these bills. These 20-week bans typically don't get past federal courts, but that should change with a President Trump appointing judges everywhere, so the time to speak out, as usual, is now.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers has denied (for now) the final easement that would enable the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline, but make no mistake, they're still building out there, still planning to despoil sacred Sioux land and put good folks' drinking water at risk of pollution. One thing we can build on is that the PR hit delivered by the Standing Rock Sioux has been quite impressive -- and yet one gets the feeling that Dakota Access's funders are merely waiting for the PR storm to blow over, that even the memory of peaceful Sioux protestors getting pelted with rubber bullets and water from cannons will fade from our minds. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell big banks to divest and stop lending money to the builders of the Dakota Access pipeline. They may also be waiting for a President Trump (who's got money tied up in the Dakota Pipeline, because of course he does!) to swoop in and grant the permits they need. They should be wary of that, since Mr. Trump is not exactly known for his even temperament, and is as likely as not to leave dead Sioux protestors in his wake.

Finally, Mr. Trump has signaled that he even plans to leave his fingerprints, or whatever they are, all over the EPA's Clean Car Standards, which have upped fuel economy standards for American cars. For the moment, the EPA has signaled that it'll leave the standards where they are, having completed a legally-mandated review of the standards, but the EPA hasn't finalized that decision, so both the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club help you tell the EPA to keep fuel economy standards strong. Why does Donald Trump want to lower the standards? Because he believes all regulations are evil. Why does he believe all regulations are evil? Because they keep him and his kind from making all the money they can, as if money is the only damn thing of consequence on this Earth. But these standards save money for car drivers at the pump -- and by "car drivers," I mean, of course, all Americans -- and they also reduce pollution in reducing the amount of oil we dig up to make gasoline. So why does our next American President want people to pay more money for gas and suffer more health care issues from pollution? It's a question worth asking!

Around the table: tales of rage and hubris -- and hope.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election is really quite scant at present -- amounting to nothing more than anonymous leaks to the "liberal" media. That's not to say that we won't find out more, or even that we won't find out we were totally played by Russia's government, but we've had many, many years to learn to be more skeptical (remember when George Tenet said the WMD case against Iraq was a "slam dunk"? Good times!), and calling anyone who disagrees with you a "Russian stooge" is really not how civilized people act.

In a related note, former U.N. Ambassador/complete asshole John Bolton insinuates that this whole Russians-hacking-the-election-thing might be a "false flag" operation coming from the Obama Administration. I was going to say, "imagine what a right-winger would say if you called 9.11 a 'false flag' operation," but I don't have to -- any deviation from Dear Leader Bush's vision was a treasonable offense to his votaries back in the day. And that's some cojones Mr. Bolton's got there, saying the Obama Administration has "politicized" the CIA, after Tha Bush Mobb purged all those CIA personnel at the beginning of his second term.

From the "Don't Look Now, But" file: Emma Grey Ellis at Wired tells us that "Thousands of Invisible Oil Spills Are Destroying The Gulf." The big spills (like Deepwater Horizon) get all the ink, but actually we suffer around 30,000 oil leaks annually (that we know of, that is -- our Coast Guard kind of relies on an honor system for oil leak reporting), and that means less clean air, less clean water, and more health problems. (By the way, after you read this article, you'll know what to say when some right-wing gaslighter comes along and says oil leaks are natural and have been occurring forever -- that those leaks are so slow that nearby life forms have evolved to adapt to it, and anyway, that's no damn excuse for the far more massive pollution perpetrated out of greed.)

James Fallows at The Atlantic reminds us that Donald Trump's victory in the Presidential race is not, as his spokeshack put it, a "historic" "landslide" or "blowout." Mr. Trump's electoral vote margin ranks a mere 46th out of our 58 Presidential elections, and his popular vote share -- 46%, in case you missed it the first 221 times I said it -- outpaces only two elected Presidents. I recall Rutherford Hayes being called "Old 8-7" by contemporaries, because of the narrow vote on the Commission that awarded him 20 contested electoral votes; why not constantly call Donald Trump "The 46% Man"? He'll get angry, but everything gets him angry. And this is one hornet's nest I think we should prod, over and over again, because we're stronger than he is.

Finally, Zenobia Jeffries at Yes! magazine profiles a Detroit woman who's trying to turn her block into a "solar-powered ecovillage." One that provides important resources for her community, too, like after-school meals and homework help for local kids. I'll admit that buying up distressed properties and turning the area into a renewable-energy hub has long been quite attractive to me, and I wish Ms. Harris the best in her endeavors. After all, who's going to do it if we don't? Big corporations ain't gonna do it, and big government ain't gonna do it, either, until we make it impossible for them not to.

Action: Social Security "reform," and two proposed mergers.

As you know, Rep. Johnson (R-TX) has introduced H.R. 6489, the so-called Social Security Reform Act, which would cut Social Security benefits for future retirees, mainly by upping the retirement age and by using the "Chained CPI" method of calculating cost-of-living increases which (as we said often when President Obama was trying to push this method) doesn't accurately capture the growth in a senior's cost-of-living. Making Social Security stronger (as Michael Hiltzik reminds us in his analysis of the Johnson plan) would involve lifting the cap on taxable income, so that income over $118,500 can be taxed into the program, or by assessing payroll taxes on capital gains and dividends. Why not get a leg up on the Trump Administration by calling your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page) and telling them to reject this so-called Social Security "reform" and tell them how we should make Social Security stronger? The people trying to destroy Social Security have had all the say about it for years now; it's well past time we had our say about it, since we fought for it, worked for it, and paid into it.

Meanwhile, the CEOs of AT&T and Time-Warner testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel last week, spewing the same blah-blah-blah about how great their proposed merger would be for consumers, and for once the zinger of the day came from a Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who said, "(c)onsumer welfare is maximized by protecting competition, not necessarily by protecting competitors." And even our President-elect, Donald Trump, has opposed the merger, though I bet he's lying about that -- I mean, I'd be happy to be wrong, but I'd also be stupid to take a snake-oil salesman at his word, particularly one whose media policy transition team is top-heavy with big telecom lobbyists. So Free Press helps you tell your government to reject the proposed AT&T/Time-Warner merger. And please don't let your Reps and Senators push that false dichotomy between the market and government action. If our government does nothing, the biggest actors will become even bigger and squash all other competition; if our government enforces (and strengthens!) antitrust law, it will promote competition. Sometimes our government has to act, on our behalf, to promote freedom. And only corporatists and their lackeys in Congress would want you to think otherwise.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell American and European regulators to stop the proposed Bayer/Monsanto merger, then Sum of Us still helps you do that. Mr. Trump's statements regarding AT&T and Time-Warner aside, I don't expect American regulators would do very much to stop a merger that would rid the resulting behemoth of that albatross of a name Monsanto and give said behemoth even more corporate control over seeds and chemicals -- but European regulators might, and they get a say because Bayer is a German corporation. And control over seeds and pesticides is something we should worry about, because a) it's our food supply and b) the more control big corporations have over these things, the less control farmers have, and we've long seen the result of farmers losing control over their seed in India, where farmer suicides have been endemic for years. Monsanto has been notorious for patenting seeds and even suing organic farmers for "intellectual property theft" when wind carries Monsanto's GMO seed onto organic farms and renders their organic crops totally non-organic. There's no reason to think Bayer won't be as oppressive in this manner -- especially, as I've said, once they're shorn of that PR nightmare of a name, Monsanto.

Around the table: Social Security, racism, banksters, corporate welfare, and Republican excuses.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) releases a bill that would cut Social Security benefits without raising revenues. So, I came up with an ad that would oppose that bill, and here's how it would look: a senior sits down to eat, until a Republican politician comes along and snatches a fifth of what's on her plate; then she goes food-shopping, and the politician takes out a fifth of what's in her cart; then she goes on a plane to visit her grandkids, and the politician tries to throw her out of the plane in mid-air, since she's only got enough money to make four-fifths of the trip! Ah, why do I bother? No weakling Democrat's going to run that ad. (BTW, when I get action alerts about what I think would aptly be called the Johnson bill, you'll get action alerts.)

Adam Serwer analyzes the evidence that Jeff Sessions fought desegregation while Alabama's U.S. Attorney, and finds it wanting. Mr. Sessions's "20 or 30" desegregation filings have become "10," and that's the first bad sign. The second? Mr. Sessions didn't bring any of this up when he was up for the federal bench in 1986, though that would certainly have been a good time to do it! The third? Lawyers and officials who actually worked on these cases hardly remember Mr. Sessions being all that involved with any of them. So now you know what to say when Trumpoids proclaim that TEH SESSIONZ IS NOT TEH RACISTZ!!!!! -- you know, besides all the racist stuff he's done and said.

Peter Dreier at The American Prospect digs deep into possible new Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's nefarious past as a serial forecloser and corporate welfare-hoarder. You heard about the former last week, but the latter -- where he got the FDIC to assume all the risks for all the bad mortgages he took on when he bought IndyMac and renamed it OneWest -- you may not have known about. Anyway, by the end, you'll think Donald Trump had it right the first time, when he said hedge-fund managers like Mr. Mnuchin "are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky," though of course he only ever said that to get people to vote for him.

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times tells us how "Trump's Carrier Jobs Triumph Looks More Like a Sham Every Day." The hostage-taking aspect ("give us more tax cuts, or these jobs get it!") and the corporate welfare aspect (the aforementioned tax cuts, some coming right away from Indiana, the state the incoming Vice President runs) you already knew about, but you may not know it didn't save 1,100 jobs (actually 730), or that Carrier is still cutting over 1,200 jobs by moving them to Mexico or shutting down another Indiana plant. You may also not know that the aforementioned Indiana Governor who's going to be Vice President soon has handed out some $24 million in welfare handouts to corporations that then shipped nearly 4,000 jobs overseas. Again: you don't give your kids cookies as an "incentive" to do their homework, and these "incentives" don't work any better.

Finally, Jonathan Chait at New York magazine summarizes the excuses Republicans make to justify Donald Trump's apparent zeal to use the office of the President to further enrich himself. You'll read a lot of come-on-he's-not-even-in-office-yet (when Mr. Trump's conflicts of interest are obvious now, and when Rep. Chaffetz said, months ago, that they were going to investigate Hillary Clinton hard!) and from Newt Gingrich, of course, you'll get the-American-people-voted-for-this (well, 46% of them did, anyway!). Really, from Republicans, it's a whole lot of fuck-you-we-won these days. If this is going to be their attitude toward the American people, then their only hope to avoid punishment at the ballot box is another 9.11-sized terrorist attack. Think that hasn't come up in transition-team meetings?

Action: protecting our environment, Electoral College reform, and the torture report.

And the hits just keep on coming! Donald Trump has nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Name ring a bell? It should: Mr. Pruitt has, since taking office in 2011, sued the EPA over cross-state air pollution rules, mercury and arsenic pollution rules, and air quality rules for public lands -- not to mention, of course, his ongoing involvement in the lawsuit against the EPA's clean power plan. Remember when George W. Bush tapped the environmentally-ambiguous Christie Todd Whitman as EPA administrator in 2000? Donald Trump isn't even trying to disguise his agenda, which is, in case you didn't know, to steal whatever's left that belongs to the people, and that includes the power to keep filth out of our air and water, and thus keep ourselves and our posterity healthy. Hence the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Senators to oppose Mr. Pruitt's nomination to the EPA. The man can't even bring himself to admit climate change is actually happening! Couldn't be because of the $300,000-plus he's received from fossil fuel corporations since 2002, can it?

Meanwhile, Fix the Electoral College helps you tell your state legislators to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. What would this compact do? Well, once states comprising 270 electoral votes or more agree to it (currently 10 states, comprising 165 electoral votes, have passed it), those states will assign their electoral votes to the winner of the Presidential popular vote. Which makes perfect sense to me -- the President would be in charge of the Executive branch for an entire country, and if you protest that the Electoral College helps make states more important than they'd otherwise be, I'd simply respond that we've got Senators for that. Our Founders created an Electoral College partly so that the Electors could reject someone plainly unfit for office; these days, the Electoral College does not defy the popular will in this manner, and I wouldn't argue that it should. But no law or Constitutional article prevents states from telling their electors to vote according to the popular will. Indeed, it's kinda what we expect -- and haven't gotten in two of the last five Presidential elections.

Finally, Roots Action helps you tell President Obama to declassify the Senate torture report. Even Sen. Feinstein (D-CA), who too often poses as a "tough on terror" politician, called the report "a total exposé of the ineffectiveness of torture," but thus far only a redacted 500-page Executive Summary has seen the light of day, leaving at least 6,500 more pages that might never see the light of day if Mr. Obama doesn't do something. (You think a President Trump would release it? Not when he's trying to get us to torture more!) This isn't a big ask for him, especially considering he did absolutely nothing-zero-zip-zilch-bupkus to bring our government's torturers to justice in eight years as President. And given that his successor, as I've said, would like nothing more than to let torturers run rampant in our government -- though torture doesn't stop terrorist attacks in real life like it does in the movies, and, BTW, is also wrong -- maybe Mr. Obama would like to protect some part of that "legacy" we're always hearing about.

Around the table: stories about fraud, spy toys, the minimum wage, health care, and renewable power.

You've heard Wells Fargo say they're trying to make things right after getting caught conducting widespread fraud against its customers by opening fake accounts in their name? Well, scratch that, as Wells Fargo is using forced arbitration clauses in its customer contracts to keep lawsuits over that fraud out of the courts. Forced arbitration, as you know, takes away your right to a day in court and pushes your lawsuit to an arbitrator the offending corporation can be reasonably sure will rule their way. Banksters don't really care how they look to the rest of society, do they? And I'm not sure Wells Fargo could easily prove that they can use customer contracts to shield themselves from the consequences of their own lawbreaking -- especially considering that the "contracts" were based, in large part, upon fiction.

Complaint filed with FTC alleges that a corporation manufacturing two "smart" toys violate U.S. law by recording voice data from the children who play with them and sending them off (via a rather insecure connection, no less!) to a third-party defense contracting corporation -- which could be using it for other purposes. The defense contractor, for its part, says in its own privacy policy that you really shouldn't share any information with it if you're under 18, but clearly they're "not responsible" for the actions of the toy's manufacturer which feeds them that info! A manufacturer which made a toy! For children! Which just so happens to suck up anything it hears from anyone around that toy while it's on! But I see something even worse behind the impulse to collect ever-more personal data from ever-more people -- I see a desire to replace human beings with dolls who make a show of "relating" to their owners. It's like none of these people ever watched The Twilight Zone as a kid.

Ho hum, fast-food corporations raise the spectre of automation to argue against $15/hour wages for its workers. It's a hostage situation: don't make me give my workers a better life, or their jobs get it! It's also utter rubbish, not just because fast-food corporations have been talking about automating for-freaking-ever, but also because, well, you've used the automated checkout line at your supermarket, and you know it sucks. Besides which, corporations will use any excuse to get rid of jobs! After all, people are so unpredictable, what with having families and lives outside of work and so forth.

You may have read many reports about exactly how Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act now that President Obama's about to leave office, but you won't be surprised to learn that Republicans are basically planning to repeal the law without replacing it with anything that might actually work. Health savings accounts are, guess what, biased toward the rich, and high-risk pools, as you know, are very expensive because everyone in them is either sick or very sick. But save the best for last: letting insurance corporations sell across state lines would not only cripple states' ability to protect consumers, but would siphon off most of the healthier folks to the out-of-state insurers, leaving, again, what's essentially a high-risk pool for the in-state insurers to deal with. An insurance pool only works if it has sick and healthy people together -- which is why a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system would work best, since everyone would be in that pool.

Finally, Heather Smith at Grist lists "Five Lessons Activists Can Learn from Florida's Successful Ballot Fight to Defend Solar." Read the whole thing, because it's quite educational, but lesson number one is actually quite close to my heart, believe it or not: "(c)onservatives can be big clean energy boosters -- if you sell it right." Clean energy fits in very nicely with actual conservative thought -- for what conservative wouldn't want the opportunity to be left alone to make their own renewable power that doesn't hurt anyone? It helps, of course, to remember that the "conservatives" who care about nothing but fossil fuel corporation profits aren't conservative, but reactionary.

Action: living in a bankster paradise!

The Chinese government has sentenced Ilham Tohti to life in prison, officially for "separatism" -- didn't know "separatism" could get you life in jail somewhere on Earth, did you? -- but basically for his lifelong activism in support of the Uyghur population, one of some 55 ethnic minorities officially recognized by the Chinese government. Mr. Tohti, an economist by training, has long agitated for greater regional autonomy for the Uyghurs, who mainly live in southwestern China -- and who wouldn't, if they lived in a country that blends the worst aspects of Communism and capitalism?. But I guess "official recognition" comes with "great responsibilities," like toeing the Chinese government's line. Nobody who speaks their mind and peacefully tries to get a better life for their people should be imprisoned for life, and when even our current Secretary of State has called for Mr. Tohti's release, you begin to suspect Mr. Tohti might really be the "Uyghur Mandela," as he's been called. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Chinese government to free Mr. Tohti.

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has tapped yet another Goldman-Sachs bankster (you know, besides Steve "Don't Call Me Racist" Bannon) for his brain trust, this time nominating hedge fund manager Steve Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury. Remember when Donald Trump said hedge fund managers "get away with murder"? I guess that was for us "little people." So how did Mr. Mnuchin make his money? Oh, the same way any average hard-working salt-of-the-earth does -- by foreclosing on homeowners in ways that one federal judge called "harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive," including (but not limited to!) foreclosing on an elderly homeowner after she made a payment error of 27 cents. 27 cents! And naturally, Mr. Mnuchin wants to take down the modest Dodd-Frank reforms once he takes control of Treasury, reforms which have prevented banksters from sending our economy into freefall again. This is not someone we want in our government -- a person whose life work is hurting other people for personal gain. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to block Mr. Mnuchin from becoming Secretary of the Treasury.

Finally, though it's hard to keep up with all the awful characters Donald Trump is trying to put in charge of our government (why, it's almost like that's the idea!), the National Womens' Law Center helps you tell your Senators to oppose the nomination of Rep. Tom Price of Georgia as Health and Human Services Secretary. Mr. Price's opposition to abortion doesn't annoy me so much as does his opposition to birth control -- I mean, where does he think you begin to reduce abortions? With chastity belts? Mr. Price also took gleeful part in that Planned Parenthood witch-hunt, and is also a steadfast votary of privatizing Medicare. It boggles the mind that anyone still thinks Mr. Trump will actually stop other Republicans from privatizing Medicare -- if you're planning to do that, you don't put a staunch Medicare-privatizer in charge of HHS, which, guess what, oversees the administration of Medicare! Mr. Price's notions aren't "fresh" or "new" or "innovative," and "draining the swamp" doesn't mean putting even bigger assholes in charge of stuff.

Action: witch-hunts, Muslim registries, and animal abuse.

Hot on the heels of a Washington Post "investigation" alleging that some 200 independent news organizations peddled "Russian propaganda," the U.S. House has passed an intelligence authorization bill that would create a committee ostensibly to "counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments" -- but you know where such things wind up! They wind up going on witch hunts against media organs that won't kowtow to the Establishment, particularly when the committee has an overly broad mandate, and if you're thinking this'll go nowhere under a President Trump, who has often been accused of being too cozy with Russia, remember that "other duties as the President may designate" could include going after news organs that criticize him. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Senators to oppose the "Russian propaganda" rider in the House's intelligence appropriations bill. And Democratic politicians who have their shorts in a bunch about Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election should try putting up candidates who inspire people to vote for them, rather than attack independent media organs for not going along.

Meanwhile, the President-elect has made much noise about creating a Muslim "registry," but you may not know that Tha Bush Mobb had a program called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (or NSEERS), which targeted foreign Muslim men traveling to and from 25 countries (24 of which were Muslim-majority countries, of course), whereas Mr. Trump's ambitions in this regard are, ah, a bit broader -- he'd like to make every Muslim register, including those who are American citizens, thus contravening our First Amendment and, well, pretty much every basic notion of civilization. But our current President can do something about this (and indeed, already has, in emptying the NSEERS program of all of the countries Tha Bush Mobb had listed!), by simply scrapping the regulatory framework that established NSEERS (which, hate to pile on, never caught a single terrorist ever), and he won't even need to go to Real American President By God Mitch McConnell for permission to do it. Hence both CREDO and Moms Rising help you tell President Obama to dismantle the NSEERS registry before leaving office, thus making it harder for the Trump Administration to restart it. "Harder" is all we're getting out of this -- but we can make that count when Mr. Trump starts up his little registry.

Finally, Crate Free Illinois has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell The Maschhoffs, America's third-largest pork producer, to end practices that result in the abuse of hogs. Warning: you will not enjoy the video (total run time: four minutes, 38 seconds) of footage taken surreptitiously by the Animal Legal Defense Fund at a Maschhoffs production facility -- video that shows pigs suffering immensely in absolutely horrid living conditions, and also shows workers literally bashing "sickly" pigs' heads against the ground to kill them (which, as you might expect, doesn't always work the way it's supposed to, leaving those poor animals conscious of the damage done to them as they die). We also learn that pigs can starve "when the automatic electronic feeder malfunctions" -- in an economy where, you know, lots of people perfectly capable of feeding pigs still don't have enough work! We don't have to be vegetarians or vegans to understand that civilized people simply don't treat feed animals like this -- people who only care about profit treat animals like this. And I'll brook no guff about "keeping food prices low" -- these practices don't keep food prices low so much as they keep factory farm CEOs rich.

Around the table: Standing Rock, millennial voters, affordable housing, defense spending waste, and the Governor's race in North Carolina.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' has delayed the easement permit that would enable the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, pending an environmental study, but Kelly Hayes at TruthOut reminds us that this fight is far from over. "(W)hile it's true that environmental impact statements can in fact take years to complete," she says, "no attention to detail -- either legal or environmental -- should be expected under a president-elect who has promised to govern in the style of an autocrat." But Republicans typically overestimate the public's impatience with environmental regulations, and so we have another opening.

Another day, another "liberal" media article blaming young folks for Donald Trump's win. Mr. Obama may have done better, but folks 18-29 went for Mrs. Clinton by a 19-point margin, whereas folks over 45 went for Mr. Trump by at least 7 points, and of course the "liberal" media won't blame seniors voting against their own interests. Frankly, though, in an election where the "winning" candidate only got 46% (his total seems to be going down all the time!) and lost the popular vote by 2.5 million votes, you could argue almost anything was the deciding factor -- maybe, even, that Bernie Sanders (or someone else at least as inspiring) wasn't the Democratic nominee.

Buried somewhat in this news item about Ben Carson's nomination as Housing and Urban Development Secretary is Mr. Carson's opposition to putting affordable housing in "wealthier neighborhoods." He's upset with that, and not redlining? Also, n.b. his general opposition to government programs for the poor: "(w)e the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent...it's not the government's job." Always they pretend our government is some alien thing that couldn't possibly derive its power and authority from us and couldn't possibly belong to us -- certainly it couldn't work on our behalf! Why would they want us to think that way, I wonder?

Department of Defense buries internal study finding at least $125 billion in "administrative waste," thinking, apparently, that Congress would use their findings to cut their overall budget. But it seems to me the Pentagon worried over nothing! Democrats are so weak they won't do anything that could be seen as being "weak on defense," and Republicans are no doubt already drafting their statements that the Pentagon understands the problem and should be allowed to fix it on their own. (Oh, and don't wait for Sen. McCain to do something about it. He'll condemn it, and that'll be far from worthless, but he won't do anything else.)

Finally, and I do mean finally, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory concedes his race to Roy Cooper, and Tom Jensen at PPP reminds us that sustained and organized liberal opposition to Mr. McCrory's reactionary policies may have done the most to finally bring him down. Mr. Jensen cites the state's Moral Monday movement in particular for keeping these issues out front, and while their work is obviously very important, I wish it had more effect down-ballot, as Republicans still enjoy huge majorites in the state legislature. I doubt 2018 will present very much opportunity to change that in North Carolina -- but I'd be pleased to have Moral Monday prove me wrong.

Action: protecting pensions and fighting stupid "liberal" media tricks.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called "composite bill," which would let pension trustees slash workers' benefits even at healthy pension funds, then the Pension Rights Center still helps you do that. As you may know, Congress has only funded our government through this coming Friday, and you know what that means: they'll use that artificial deadline to take all kinds of things hostage so they can get even more unearned money for their big donors, and their big donors have their sights on pension funds all over America, because that's about all that's left for them to raid. Of course, calling it the "composite" bill is a bit of a stroke of genius, I suppose -- it sounds obtuse, and would fly under the radar even better than a bill they actually called a "pension reform" bill or (God forbid!) a "jobs" bill. Still, if it didn't fly under your radar (and now it hasn't!), you need to talk to your Congressfolk with a quickness. And don't believe the hype about "underfunded pensions," not just because it's built on scare numbers, but because we've heard it for decades and it's starting to sound like crying wolf.

Meanwhile, I suppose the "liberal" media has been starting to catch on that calling dung "alt-meatloaf" doesn't make it not dung, but still, Free Press helps you tell our media outlets to stop calling racists, sexists, and homophobes "alt-right." Aside from the simple fact that civilized people do not coddle racists, sexists, and homophobes, aside from the simple fact that calling them "alt-right" makes them seem warmer and fuzzier than they really are, it's not at all like these racists, sexists, and homophobes are actually doing anything new -- "heiling" Donald Trump isn't even new in a nation where the neo-Nazi movement was already well-known enough by the late '70s that it was a major part of the plot of The Blues Brothers -- and thus they certainly don't deserve a term like "alt" to describe what they're doing. Oh, I know Steve "Don't Call Me Racist" Bannon wants you to think it's all about economics, but it's not -- it's all about getting racists a "safe space" (that's one of them talking, not me! Really!) to "be themselves." But you can't just "be yourself" when "being yourself" means trampling all over other people's rights. Civilized people understand that.

Finally, Roots Action helps you tell the Washington Post to retract its recent and not-very-well-sourced article alleging that about 200 news websites across the ideological spectrum are "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda." Of course, this is the Age of Trump, which (like the Age of Bush!) means never having to say you're sorry even when you really should, but we can still pressure the Post to retract its "reporting," much of which, apparently, depended on a website named PropOrNot, whose executive director wouldn't allow himself to be quoted by name for the article. That's never a good sign, nor is it a good sign that several individuals associated with the groups PropOrNot lately called "allies" stepped forward to wonder how they became "allies." As with all we've been hearing about "news bubbles," you have to wonder if the Post's real problem isn't "fake news," but their ever-loosening control over all news. And of course the "liberal" media cares little about actual propaganda outlets like Fox News, but about sites like Counterpunch, Naked Capitalism and the Ron Paul Institute. Sad!

Action: fighting for voting rights, Medicare, and clean water.

First things first: Eclectablog reports that the Michigan legislature is trying to ram through three-count-'em-three vote suppression bills during their lame duck session. The state House Elections Committee quickly passed all three bills last week, and now the entire Michigan House could vote on them any day. HB 6066 would make people who don't have Voter ID fill out a provisional ballot, and then makes a voter jump through bureaucratic hoops to get their vote counted. HB 6067 and HB 6068 permit the state to conduct records checks on behalf of poor voters, but good luck with that if you were born out of state, because the bills won't mandate that the state assist poor voters with more expensive out-of-state record checks. These bills aren't about "securing the vote" from phantom vote fraud artists; they create fraud, simple and plain, by restricting poor folks' access to the polls. And since, in America, being poor frequently also means being a person of color -- a fact I'm sure is not lost on the Michigan legislature -- these bills are also racist bills. You can contact members of the Michigan House here and members of the Michigan Senate here. Don't worry that you're not a constituent -- this could happen in your state any day now, and a soon-to-be-reinvigorated 5-4 right-wing Supreme Court majority surely won't rescue you.

Meanwhile, if you thought Donald Trump was going to protect Medicare from the privatize-everything-and-make-it-suck crowd, guess again: his nomination of Georgia House Rep. Tom Price as the next Department of Health and Human Services Secretary pretty much says it all, as Mr. Price has salivated over the prospect of destroying Medicare perhaps since he was in the crib. Mr. Trump just couldn't find anyone else to take over HHS? Were none of the nation's 254 Republican Governors available? This is why you don't "give him a chance" -- he's already telling you what he wants to do. But it doesn't matter what he wants: it matters what we want, and thus Social Security Works and CREDO help you tell Congress and the President-elect that "no one voted to destroy Medicare" and that they should expand, not destroy, programs like Medicare and Social Security. If you're still not convinced that Donald Trump will destroy Medicare, remember that he said during the campaign that he didn't want to cut Medicare benefits. He could easily let Congress turn Medicare into a voucher program -- with our government cutting checks to seniors so they can buy more expensive private health care -- and say I kept my promise: we're giving you the same benefits!

Finally, the good residents of Flint, MI still don't have consistent access to clean water after their "emergency manager" caused all that lead pollution -- but a mere two hours' drive away, Nestlé plans to siphon off 100 million gallons of groundwater annually so they can sell it, all for the promise of creating some 20 jobs. How many times must I tell these pimps! Never give away what belongs to the public for the promise of a few jobs, when you could embark on a real job creation program not by giving away more goodies to corporations, but by closing all the tax loopholes they enjoy now so they'll choose to create jobs as an alternative to having all their profits taxed! And certainly never give away clean water, when clean water is the foundation of all good health care in America! Nestlé, by the way, will pay about $200 a year to (almost literally!) suck at the public teat, so the government of Michigan can't even claim they're getting a massive amount of money to spend for the public good. So Sum of Us helps you tell the Michigan Department of Environmental Protection to protect clean public water and block the Nestlé deal. Would it be piling on to mention that a Nestlé spokeshack happens to be married to Gov. Snyder's former Chief of Staff? No, it would not.

Around the table: Mr. Trump games the system, and other hard truths.

Dave Lindorff says that "Donald Trump's cabinet choices are suggesting a governing philosophy along the lines of a corrupt municipal police force relying on gangsters to help it keep street crime in check." Putting banksters in charge of Commerce and Treasury is the most egregious sin -- of course the last two Democratic Presidents also put banksters in charge of regulating banksters, but Donald Trump was supposed to be different, wasn't he? Anyway, Mr. Lindorff allows himself a moment of misplaced optimism -- that the Administration will be "so infected with the greed bug" that they might "spare the world the murderous policies of their predecessors." No: their attempts to plunder America will be so unpopular they'll have to resort to murderous policies -- possibly after another 9.11-sized terrorist attack, which matter I'm sure has already come up in transition meetings.

Steve Horn at In These Times says "Carrier is 'Gaming the System' and Trump Just Played Into Its Hands." It's a good article, but I think it's the other way around, actually -- Mr. Trump is gaming the system to get his votaries to applaud to accept ever-more corporate welfare handouts (which his votaries hate) under the guise of "saving jobs." One could very easily save (and even create!) jobs by taxing millionaire income at 91% and closing corporate tax loopholes, so that executives would have no choice but to create jobs -- only then, when their choice is spending money or letting it get taxed away, will they spend it on work and on workers. In the meantime, Mr. Trump is running this game, just like Mr. Bush ran his game, and the sooner we stop suggesting he's dumb or out of his depth, the better.

If you were wondering if maybe Mr. Trump's absurd allegation that "millions of people...voted illegally" came from anywhere in particular, Sue Sturgis at Facing South tells you where: from a Texas right-wing activist who says he's "verified," via "analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations," that the "(n)umber of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Of course he hasn't shown his work, despite doing the analysis very, very quickly, and of course he has some corruption-related skeletons in his closet dating at least as far back as his work privatizing Texas state government functions (and continuing through his work with the Tea Party actually disrupting elections).

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar suggests we fight Donald Trump, and all the corrosion of values his Administration will bring, through "a new civil disobedience" and "laser-aimed boycotts" of any business associated with Mr. Trump. Mr. Abdul-Jabbar is only the latest to reminds us that "just give him a chance" is bunk, and it sure is helpful to hear Dr. King's voice reminding us that "(t)his 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'" (And if I get any action alerts telling businesses to stop advertising on Breitbart -- as several big names have already done -- you'll get them, too.)

Finally, Adam Lynch at Yes! magazine describes three recent victories at the state level by pro-solar power forces over pro-corporate energy utility forces. First up (even before the defeat of anti-solar power ballot initiatives in Nevada and Florida) is a net-metering agreement in Mississippi which will enable solar-powered homes to sell some of their energy back to the utilities -- and this only happened after Mississippi voters replaced two of three state public service commissioners. I hate how often it seems to take utter disasters to get bad people out of office -- but I'm always glad to see good Americans transmute misery into good works.

Around the table: how the Trump/Carrier "deal" is really just more corporate welfare, and other unpleasant truths.

Matt Gardner at the Tax Justice blog hits the nail on the head when discussing the Trump "deal" with the Carrier Corporation: "giving these tax breaks to bad actors such as United Technologies should be seen as an outright capitulation by the incoming Trump administration, rather than as a savvy deal." "For decades, footloose corporations have used the threat of moving jobs to different cities, states or even countries to extract special tax incentives from state and local governments, despite the lack of evidence that these strategies create jobs," he also says. "Company-specific tax breaks reward companies for what they likely would have done anyway." It is rather like handing out cookies for your kids as an "incentive" to do your homework -- rather than handing out the cookies after they get their homework done. And if you wouldn't do that, why would you treat corporations the same way?

Noah Smith at Bloomberg says we should "give the President-elect a chance" on his infrastructure plans before criticizing them. Sorry, but if it looks like dung, why would I "give it a chance" to become meatloaf? Mr. Smith is pointing to the wrong critics, too -- I already said why Ms. Yellen's criticisms are irrelevant; why doesn't Mr. Smith take on David Dayen, for example? And arguing about the benefits of infrastructure spending generally don't justify supporting a particular infrastructure spending plan, particularly Mr. Trump's boutique infrastructure plan. It's enough to make me doubt Mr. Smith's honesty.

Mike Ludwig at TruthOut asks if Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions will "Revamp the War on Drugs to Preserve White Power." Mr. Ludwig's article is an excellent reminder that the "War on Drugs" has always been about race and activism -- you couldn't "make it illegal to be either against the war or black," as Mr. Ehrlichman infamously put it not too long before his death, but you could "get()the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin," and ramp up prosecution of both. Just as we were starting to make some headway against "tough-on-crime" swordfighting, here comes the king of all swordfighters.

Right-wing Civitas Institute lawsuit aims to challenge 90,000 votes cast by North Carolinians who took part in same-day registration in 2016. How do we know this is bullshit? Because Civitas says it thinks its lawsuit will get 3,000 votes thrown out -- and Democrat Roy Cooper currently leads incumbent Governor Pat McCrory by 10,000 votes. And we don't know those 3,000 votes are all Cooper votes, since a disproportionate number of same-day registrants this year were Republicans. I'm OK with calling this a frivolous lawsuit.

Finally, the incomparable Gar Alperovitz describes the necessity of "Building a System-Changing Response to Trump and Trumpism at All Levels." From paragraph two's tabulation of no less than eight sources of intense populist energy, through to paragraph 13's five local movements for "democratized economic institutions," to the final paragraph's reminder that civil rights organizing in Mississippi in the '30s and '40s was "a time of acute brutality and danger," it's clear that few folks see more clearly, or have more good ideas, than Gar Alperovitz.

Action: fighting the oppression of journalists, the sale of private data, and the abuse of animals.

First things first. You may have seen the work of Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, better known as Shawkan, in such outlets as Time and BBC.com, but the Egyptian government has held him in detention for over three years now, torturing him the whole time. Holding a prisoner that long without charges is itself illegal in Egypt, but no matter -- the government finally filed half a dozen charges against him, including possession of a weapon, illegal assembly, murder, and attempted murder, but you could be excused for thinking his real "crime" was documenting the Rabaa massacre, where Egyptian government forces killed at least 800 protestors. Of course, protesting doesn't merit the death penalty, anywhere, at any time -- I wonder how many good Americans will remember that in the coming months and years -- and documenting government oppression doesn't merit criminal charges of any kind, particularly the trumped-up kind. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the Egyptian government to free Shawkan. Not incidentally, Shawkan has contracted Hepatitis C -- for which he's had a hard time getting medical treatment! -- but the Egyptian government has freed other political prisoners suffering from Hep C. Egypt can't even be consistent in how it oppresses its people! It's hard out there for a pimp.

Meanwhile, closer to home, big telecom corporation AT&T has been selling its analyses of your private call data to law enforcement agencies via its Hemisphere project -- and this is true whether you're an AT&T customer or not! (The chances are pretty good that you call AT&T customers or make calls on AT&T-built infrastructure on occasion.) Naturally AT&T hid what it was doing from, because this is immoral coming and going -- a corporation selling your private data and taxpayer money going to buy it! AT&T adds close to four billion records to its database every day, and no use hoping that law enforcement is taking on much more data than it can handle, because searching for data isn't anywhere near as hard as people might think, and desperate states will go a long way to hurt people (just like Egypt has, above). Hence Access Now helps you tell AT&T to stop selling your private information to law enforcement. No use trying to tell me that we need these kinds of tools to foil terrorists now-more-than-ever. You know what kind of tools foil terrorists? The kind of tools that promote real independence for Americans -- higher-paying jobs, good homes with less debt -- which are exactly the kinds of tools corporations are constantly trying to destroy, because then you'll be less dependent on them.

Finally, Dan McKernan of Chelsea, MI has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell Michigan state Sen. Joe Hune (R-22) and state Rep. Gretchen Driskell (D-52) to fight the continuing abuse of animals at factory farms by opposing HB 5987. HB 5987 would extend the phase-out of battery cages in Michigan by five years, but this phase-out is already a 10-year process, passed by the state legislature seven years ago, and Michigan is the first state in the nation to mandate that factory farms phase out the kinds of cages that force animals into confined spaces for their entire lives -- not so food prices can be lower, mind you, but so factory farm executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Of course HB 5987 has a lot of industry support, and as long as big ag corporations can hold the threat of "less food" or "higher prices" over our heads, bills like HB 5987 will have a good chance of passing. The only things we have going for us, I guess, are our voices, and our tradition as civilized people who hate being needlessly cruel to animals for profit. But I'll take that -- big ag corporations are prisoners of their hunger for money, but we're free people.

Around the table: more tales about hate, recounts, media, and taxes, plus bonus good news.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has now tabulated over 860 incidents of hateful harassment from the 10 days after Mr. Trump's election. Almost a third targeted immigrants (or perceived immigrants!) and another one-fifth targeted black folks, but women, Jews, Muslims, and gays also got targeted. You'd think the racists who love Donald Trump would show a little dignity in victory, instead of run rampant like it was the day after 9.11 or something. Gosh, maybe they have something to hide.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, updates us on the state of the Presidential race recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Forget about finding evidence of Russian hacking -- these recounts hope to establish that votes were rejected for ridiculous reasons -- like, that the machine reading the votes simply misread them, because (most likely) it's a bad machine that a poor district could afford. Also, provisional ballots often don't get counted, but not necessarily because the voter did anything wrong. The recount still won't address all the vote suppression that went on before Election Day, nor will it address Democrat refusal to inspire more voters to come out and thus "play above the referees," as Phil Jackson might say.

Jim Naureckas at FAIR notes that "liberal" media coverage of the "deal" Donald Trump made to allow Carrier to outsource only 1,000 (rather than 2,000) jobs to Mexico seems to posit the only two job creation choices as corporate welfare or nothing. Bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income and closing tax loopholes will force corporations to spend money on job creation, but for the "liberal" media that never seems to come up, though it worked pretty well in the '40s and '50s, a.k.a. "the country I grew up in" according to most Tea Partiers. Technology doesn't kill jobs, either, or else (and I did not know this!) manufacturing jobs wouldn't have doubled between 1939 and 1979, held mostly steady until 2000, and then took a precipitous fall, which makes it unlikely, as Mr. Naureckas says, that "American business had suddenly discovered technology."

Ho hum, a Tax Policy Center analysis finds that nearly eight million middle-class families would actually pay more under Mr. Trump's tax plan. Not a surprise, if you noticed his proposed two-percentage point hike for incomes between $0 and $9,275 and the proposed five-percentage point hike for income between $112,500 and $190,150, but the Trump tax plan would end personal exemptions (even as it doubles the standard deduction), which would make things worse for working families with children. We do want more working families to have children, do we not?

In a related note, Trump Treasury Secretary nominee Steve "I'm So Not a Hedge Fund Manager Who Gets Away with Murder" Mnuchin says the rich won't pay less under the Trump tax plan. That beggars belief, if you just do the math (the top tax bracket would come down seven percentage points!), but Mr. Mnuchin assures us that the rich will have "less (sic) deductions," without saying what they'll be, of course. But this is all theatre, so that Mr. Trump's votaries can later claim his tax cut didn't cut taxes massively for the rich when those of us who did the math know they did.

Finally, because it can't all be bad news, Congress passes the Consumer Review Freedom Act, which would prevent corporations from using "non-disparagement" clauses (a.k.a. "gag" clauses) in consumer contracts. The idea that a corporation would have the "right" to prevent people from exercising their own First Amendment rights in reviewing products negatively online is noxious, apparently, even to Congress. And any corporate hack tempted to whine about all the trouble freedom causes them should view the exceptions in Sec. 2(b)(2) and (3) before commencing with said whining.

Action: battling lead poisoning, undeclared wars, and racism.

Flint, MI isn't the only city suffering from lead in its drinking water -- Philadelphia suffers from it, too, at twice the national average according to recent reporting from our two local newspapers. Thus the Philadelphia City Council is this week contemplating legislation that would reduce the lead in our water, and PennEnvironment helps you tell the City Council to support these bills and thus protect our clean drinking water. These bills would, if passed, improve testing and (of course!) remediation of lead problems at Philadelphia's public schools, and would require that day care centers get lead-free certification before licensing; they would dramatically improve matters for Philadelphia's children, who stand to lose the most from lead poisoning, because their brains are still developing. Our federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has, of course, been finalizing regulations that would help fight lead poisoning nationally, but the incoming President has an avowed hostility to federal regulations, particularly the ones that protect our air and water, it seems. The good news? Donald Trump ain't the boss of us, particularly at the local level, and we can still do a lot to make things better.

Speaking of The Donald, he and his foreign policy advisors have said they want to avoid wars that don't actually advance the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda, and though I'd respond that no war advances that fight -- that, in fact, the wars initiated by George W. Bush that empowered al-Qaeda and created ISIS -- I'm not averse to seizing an opportunity to stop another war. Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to oppose our continued involvement in Saudi Arabia's bombing of Yemen. Bombing Yemen has stoked the growth of al-Qaeda and ISIS there, mainly by bombing the crap out of the Houthi rebels who despise al-Qaeda and ISIS. And, of course, our involvement in assisting Saudi Arabia's little Yemen adventure (which includes our drone fighters, naturally) has not been approved by Congress, unless you read the 2001 AUMF a lot more liberally than it's intended to be read -- and, of course, if you regard the AUMF as a legal document granting the President actual authority to make war, which I don't. No, I'm such a stickler I want Congress to declare war, per our Constitution, and the Founders wanted it that way precisely so we'd fight fewer wars and get less entangled in foreign affairs.

Finally, both CREDO and People for the American Way help you tell Senate Democrats (there are still 48 of them!) to block Sen. Jeff Sessions's confirmation as Attorney General. If Donald Trump was trying to convince you he deserved a "chance" to prove he wasn't the virulent racist he was when he ran for President, tapping Mr. Sessions to be our next Attorney General was the wrong move. We could tabulate the many, many issues that came up back in the mid-1980s when President Reagan nominated him to a federal judgeship -- issues including his "joke" about thinking the KKK were OKK until he learned they smoked pot or his statement that the NAACP were "Communist" and "un-American," statements with which he "meant no harm" -- but he's also established a record, as both U.S. Attorney and Senator, of anti-immigrant extremism, harassment of black activists, and (lest we forget!) selling out to big banksters and corporate power (with the exception of his opposition to the 2008 bailout). All of these are, frankly, more pertinent to his nomination as Attorney General, really. To think we were all fretting that Chris Christie or Rudy Giuliani would get the job! Not that either man is a peach, but Jeff Sessions would put civil rights law enforcement in for a world of hurt. Unless we stand up, that is.

Around the table: of leadership and weakness.

Richard Eskow at the OurFuture blog asks, "Who Will Lead the Anti-Trump Resistance"? We go through a few unlikely names and then a few more likely names, but the true answer is in the next-to-last paragraph: "An anti-Trump movement may appear in the streets first, as a spontaneous response to Republican incompetence and plutocratic greed. That’s where its real leaders may be found." In other words, the answer is you.

The incomparable Thomas Frank tells us "How the Democrats Could Win Again, If They Wanted." "If they wanted," of course, is the key phrase. The only way to make them want it? Tell them what we want, and tell them so loud and so often that they can't ignore it.

But here's what our Democrats are doing instead: trying to get the Republican-held Congress to actually fund a hike in transportation spending that they've already agreed to, where the times demand that Democrats put up an alternative plan to Mr. Trump's boutique infrastructure plan. And maybe Democrats could, you know, acknowledge that you can't work with Republicans? You can work around them, though -- by actually listening to the American people when they talk to you.

Just in time for the holidays, Mary Beth Quirk tells us about "Four Scams to Avoid" when shopping online. Work-from-home scams you already know about, but free apps, unrealistic discount offers, and voucher/gift card offers on social media all could just be someone's nefarious plan to steal your personal info. (Just like that IRS scam you've heard about, one that gets pranked pretty spectacularly in this NSFW video.)

A Fark.com user describes "The Dawn of a Glorious New Era, the Era of Crybaby Conservatism." He's right to note that this was a pretty good election for Republicans yet they still can't stop whining about it, but, ah, the "dawn"? If you recall all the cries of you're either with us or you're with the terrorists or you hate America or you want America to fail, you know we're well into mid-day here. Also, too, Republicans aren't "conservative" anymore, they're reactionaries.

Finally, speaking of right-wing whining, our President-elect thinks we should put people who burn flags in jail, or strip them of their citizenship. What a weakling! Does the sight of dissent -- especially completely ineffective dissent, as flag-burning most assurely is -- really frighten him that much? It really is impressive how much weakness there is in rage. Of course Mr. Trump says these things to stoke this weakness and rage in his votaries; they're not a majority in America, but too many good Americans are in "give the guy a chance" mode right now, though "give the guy a chance" runs completely counter to our heritage as Americans -- we're not supposed to "give the President a chance," we're supposed to hold him accountable to the people's will from day one. That's what the Founders wanted us to do, and that's what I'll do.