Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning free speech, voting rights, the wealth tax, and discrimination.

Kentucky's state legislature aims to take up SB 211, which would, dig this, hand out a jail sentence of up to three months for anyone who "accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words," or indulges in "gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person." Gosh, you'd never know there were assault laws on the books! Also, what a bunch of snowflakes, the people who wrote this bill. They are Sen. Danny Carroll (R-2), whom you may reach at 502.564.8100, ext. 712, and Sen. Michael J. Nemes (R-38), whom you may reach at the same phone number, ext. 662. For a retired police officer, Sen. Carroll sure seems to have quite a thin skin -- apparently he can't spell "your" correctly when under pressure. Maybe he learned that at Donald Trump's knee! Anyway, I'm sick and tired of people who try to turn all free speech they don't like into "violence" and everyone who protests racism into a criminal. I'm so old-fashioned I think we should only treat protestors as criminals if they, you know, do something criminal. Like try to stage a coup to nullify the results of the 2020 election! And Danny Carroll sounds like the kind of guy who'd make excuses for those folks.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, whenever that gets introduced again. Yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the day Mr. Lewis nearly got himself beaten to death leading civil rights marchers across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama; not too long thereafter, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which our Supreme Court blew a hole in with its Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which asserted, essentially, that the Voting Rights Act discriminated against certain Southern states by pre-clearing voting law changes from those states. The Voting Rights Advancement Act named for Mr. Lewis would address that assertion by letting our Justice Department pre-clear voting law changes from any state or locality that has demonstrated a record of suppressing votes. And I've listed most of the good things about the For the People Act many times, but the bill would also mandate paper ballots and institute such conditions on "interstate crosscheck"-type systems -- i.e., actually making states match full names and Social Security numbers -- that no enterprising vote suppressor will bother with them. So give your Congressfolk what-for, and don't brook any stupidity.

In other news, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1459/S. 510, the Ultra-millionaire Tax Act. The bill would impose what's commonly knowns as a "wealth tax" by imposing a 2% annual tax on net wealth over $50 million, and that rate would go up to 3% on wealth over $1 billion. (Folks with, say, $1.5 billion in net worth would pay 2% on net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and 3% on that $500 million of wealth over $1 billion. Too many politicians and "liberal" media members pretend not to understand how tax brackets work, which is why I feel compelled to explain it all the time.) The wealth tax could raise as much as $300 billion annually, which in the context of a $4 trillion annual budget is not exactly chump change. And the bill would also invest $100 billion to hire and train IRS workers -- who, as you know, tend to go after little tax avoiders rather than big ones because they don't have the resources to go after the big ones! -- and impose a 40% "exit tax" on rich folks who renounce their citizenship so they can avoid paying taxes here. These would all be good works, but our Congressfolk won't do them, unless we make it impossible for them not to do them. Like civilized people -- not like Trumpholes who think violence is OK if it feels right.

Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to pass the H.R. 5, the Equality Act, which our House passed last week. Unlike the COVID relief bill and the For the People Act, the Equality Act actually got three Republican votes! Why, it's a veritable explosion of bipartisanship! Of course, when Republicans refuse to do anything but stoke rage and give corporate welfare to their big donors, no "bipartisanship" is possible, a fact I presume makes Joe Biden sadder than it does me. In any case, don't believe the rubbish about the bill "attacking religious freedoms," because you do not have a "religious" freedom to fire someone because they're gay, or deny a transgender person a loan. Even Justice Gorsuch said the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination of gay and transgender folks because, hey, discriminating against them is obviously discriminating against them "on the basis of sex"! So, yeah, don't believe that, and also don't believe the rubbish that passing the Equality Act would "injure women's sports." Anyone who thinks a boy would change into a girl just to get an athletic advantage doesn't know the first thing about boys. Or life.

Action: concerning "free" trade, worker rights, corporate spying, and criminal investigations.

You've heard me say "free" trade deals are bad for people? Well, dig this: big fossil fuel corporations have been using something called the Energy Charter Treaty -- signed in 1994, and now law in over 50 nations -- to sue governments for shutting down oil rigs and coal plants, using, you guessed it, the notorious "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" (or ISDS) system, as nefarious a corporate welfare system as has ever been devised. Big corporations have deprived world taxpayers of over $50 billion so far using the Energy Charter Treaty, but it's not all bad news: Italy has withdrawn from the pact, and several other European nations (including France) are mulling doing the same. Hence Avaaz helps you tell world governments to pull out of the Energy Charter Treaty and do their level best to stop the Treaty's spread to other nations. And why should we compensate big corporations for their fossil fuel investments as we transition to more sustainable energy? I mean, they all knew that churning the ground for oil and coal isn't sustainable, and yet they kept doing it. Doesn't the word "consequences" mean anything to anyone anymore?

Meanwhile, H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act, is back; the bill would, as the title suggests, protect workers' right to organize and bargain collectively for better pay and working conditions. A mere 40 years ago, one in three American workers belonged to a union; now, thanks to a succession of alternating hostile and weak governments, that number's more like one in eight, even though unionized workers generally get better pay and a bigger voice at work, and even though polling has told us for many, many years that more than half of American workers would like to join a union. The PRO Act would give workers a lot of tools to fight for a better worklife, by stiffening penalties for employers who try to bust unions, closing loopholes in our labor laws, and allowing workers to file civil lawsuits against employers, so there's be no more reclassifying workers as "independent contractors" or "supervisors," to name two nefarious tools bosses use. So the Economic Policy Institute helps you tell your Congressfolk to support workers by passing the PRO Act.

In other news, fast food corporation McDonald's has apparently been spying on its workers in an attempt to get "strategic intelligence" on those workers who advocate for a $15/hour minimum wage. You have to wonder what they think they're going to learn! That people hate being paid in dung pellets and they're willing to organize to change that state of affairs? That folks working three jobs just to meet the bills will advocate for a position that's popular even among Republican voters? That's a whole suitcase full of no shit, Sherlock! right there -- I mean, if you need "strategic intelligence" about that, you shouldn't run a franchise, let alone a multinational corporation. Nonetheless, their efforts (which include social media surveillance, so for the 400th time don't make your posts "public," OK?) may well be breaking the law, since our laws do actually frown upon harassing workers, and if McDonald's would just pay a living wage, they wouldn't have to play Amateur Pinkerton. Hence Fight for the Future helps you wield the Big Stick of Bad PR and tell McDonald's to stop spying on its workers.

Finally, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee helps you tell incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate former President Trump and his cronies. For what, your Trump votary uncle asks? Well, for perjury, bribery, obstruction of justice, violating the Hatch Act, violating campaign finance laws, and violating the emoluments clause of our Constitution, for starters -- and that's before we get to the little matter of the attempted coup he incited on January 6. Now, your more liberal uncle might well express fatigue at all of this (which no doubt comes, in part, from his sincere relief that Mr. Trump isn't President anymore) and might be willing to, as Mr. Obama used to say, look forward, not backward. But then anyone can leave a trail of slime anywhere they like and get away with it! And we need only remember how much evil crap George W. Bush got away with (like, you know, torture) while he was President to know that if we don't hold the lawless accountable, we'll have a hundred more Donald Trumps in our future. Is that the future America deserves?

Action: concerning a wealth tax, student loan debt, birth control, and the minimum wage.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax. Sen. Warren (D-MA) has proposed a tax on wealth -- a two percent tax on wealth over $50 million, which would escalate to three percent on wealth over $1 billion. Two percent, three percent -- doesn't sound very onerous, does it? But it would raise a lot of money -- $275 billion annually, so says research out of UCal-Berkeley -- and you may have noticed that our billionaire class has done quite well during this pandemic, particularly those billionaires who run Amazon. You'll recall that Donald Trump's objection to the Warren wealth tax during the campaign was that it would be 100%! That's the kind of absurd rubbish we can count on hearing from Republicans this time, too. But, for real, don't listen to their objections, because they're the party that can't win without suppressing the vote or staging a coup. And for too long we've claimed to be a healthy just because one person can make enough money to build a giant atomic clock in a cave as a comment on the nature of time, but I hope, one day, we claim we're a healthy civilization because we take care of everyone.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard that President Biden only wants to forgive around $10,000 in student loan debt per person, even though he can by law forgive up to $50,000. Why so parsimonious? Possibly because Mr. Biden is unusually attuned to the kinds of things even mostly-decent people say about it! "Why should they get all the breaks?" they say. Well, there's a good reason they should get "all the breaks": college costs a lot more than it used to -- we of a certain age and older (cough President Biden cough) can hardly comprehend six-figure student loan debt, let alone some $1.6 trillion in student loan debt held by over 40 million Americans (that's roughly one out of every five American 18 and older). But I'm happy to bestow upon the less-fortunate a boon I never had, not least because it's a boon I didn't need! So Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to stretch his mind a bit and forgive $50,000 of student debt per borrower. Not for nothing, but that'll free up a lot of cash to stimulate the economy. Some folks might even buy homes one day.

In other news, the EACH Woman Act (no bill number at Congress.gov at this writing) would ensure that folks on Medicaid have access to legal abortions, which means it would repeal the 44-year-old Hyde Amendment which prevents federal funding for abortions. Perhaps that seemed like a reasonable compromise to some folks once, but not now -- used to be when abortions were illegal that folks of means could get them and poor folks couldn't, but under the regime established by the Hyde Amendment it's totally different: now folks of means can get them and poor folks can't. Just like everyone else I shudder at the idea of a fetus being aborted, but the alternative to legal abortions is making women second-class citizens again, and I certainly won't do that. The bill would also prevent our government from interfering with private health insurers that cover abortion, which is what conservatives want, right? Our government out of what's between doctor and patient? Barry Goldwater would've said so. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support women's health care rights by passing the EACH Woman Act.

Finally, just because Senate Democrats won't fight for the $15/hour minimum wage in the COVID relief bill anymore doesn't mean we won't, so go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to pass one anyway. It doesn't matter that they won't; they need to know where we stand, because, apparently, telling them a hundred times doesn't get it through their thick skulls. So let's consider, for a moment, that polling finds 63% of West Virginians support a $15/hour minimum wage. Hey, that's Joe Manchin's state, a state so allegedly full of "conservatives" that he just can't support the $15/hour minimum wage. Even though they're telling him to support it! And given that other polling finds clear majorities of Republicans favor the $15/hour minimum wage, I bet the polling would be no less embarrassing for Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. It's a shame I still have to say this to my fellow liberals, but your job isn't to coddle people like Messrs. Manchin and Sinema, it's to tell them to listen to their own constituents! Right-wingers say we coddle people too much, so let's maybe stop coddling "moderates" who contort themselves into absurd arguments when their constituents' will is plain.

Oh, and before I go, don't forget to catch One True Real and Awesome Great American President Donald Trump's Totally True and Real Second Inauguration today. I hear it'll be quite the drama, and I'm sure FNC, Newsmax, and OANN will carry it live. I kid, of course.

Action: concerning clean water, Muslim bans, law and order, and racism.

H.R. 1352, the WATER Act, is back; the bill would free up $35 billion annually -- not a whole lot in the context of a $4 trillion-plus federal budget, I feel compelled to point out -- for water improvement and infrastructure projects. Infrastructure projects create jobs, after all; why, they even create jobs for Trump votaries! None of whom will ever vote for Joe Biden if this bill passes, since wrath is a hell of a drug. But $35 billion annually will get a lot of lead pipes replaced, a lot of sewer lines refitted, and a lot of forever-chemicals out of our drinking water, plus it'll target poorer communities in urban and rural areas. This is infrastructure spending you can count on! The WATER Act first came about after the government of Michigan, via an unelected and dictatorial "emergency manager," put lead in Flint's drinking water; now we all know how badly Texas is doing with its recent winter storms, not just in terms of electricity but also in terms of the clean water that's been slower to return to good Texans. Hence Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to support jobs and clean water by passing the WATER Act.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gone, and so is his notorious Muslim ban, dead at the hands of Joe Biden -- but future Presidents might decide to do as Mr. Trump did, particularly since our Supreme Court, in a shameful ruling, gave it their blessing! Hence H.R. 1333, the NO BAN Act, is back -- it's yet another bill Mitch McConnell wouldn't let our Senators vote on during 2019 and 2020, lest we all find out they're just as obnoxiously racist as their Personal Lord and Savior. The NO BAN Act would, as you may recall, prevent our President from issuing travel restrictions based strictly on religion or race -- rather than, you know, a person's actual propensity to commit violence once he's here! -- and the Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to support reasonable immigration restrictions by passing the NO BAN Act. That's for everyone who responds to "I support the NO BAN Act" with ZOMG WOULDZ YOUZ LETZ INZ ALLZ TEH IMMIGRASHUNZ!!!!! I'm sick and tired of people who respond to specific policy prescriptions with slippery-slope hysteria. No one says "let all immigrants in," but right-wingers can't beat anyone but a straw man in an argument.

In other news, Daily Kos helps you tell our Justice Department to investigate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. For what, this time? For only letting vaccines go to two lily-white zip codes with low COVID transmission rates in one Florida county where a lot of his big donors live, that's what! We're not the only ones who raised eyebrows -- the Manatee County Commission, where the vaccines went, raised questions over who was getting them and why, and so did Rep. Charlie Crist, who once upon a time was That Republican You Liked until he became a Democrat. Mr. DeSantis, for his part, reminded everyone why he came up as part of the Tea Party flatugasm of 2010 and why Donald Trump loves him so -- he responded to criticism of his actions by threatening to take the vaccines elsewhere if the county didn't want them! Of course the county did want them -- it just didn't want to be unfair to its constituents, a lesson Mr. DeSantis could maybe one day learn. If he has to learn it from jail or from ignominious defeat in 2022, well, who am I to dictate the circumstances of how character gets built?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1370, the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act, then the Daily Kos Liberation League still helps you do that. Folks who say accusations of racism are "overblown" ought to tell us how black folks get more diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension than other folks, and while they're at it, they might also tell us how black kids die five times more from asthma than white kids do. And I would regard "because black folks don't take care of themselves as well as white folks" as not just a racist answer, but one that ignores the landfills that governments deposit near communities of color, the supermarkets big corporations don't build in communities of color, and, yes, the police who'll shoot a black man for brandishing a cellphone but take an actual white terrorist to McDonald's while arresting him. It really is OK to say racism is real; it's not a judgment on your life that it persists despite your efforts, but a call to keep fighting for justice, a fight that never ends until you draw your last breath.

OK, for-real finally this time: our House may be voting on H.R. 1, the For the People Act, today, so give them a call and tell them to vote for it.

Action: concerning voting rights, the Equality Act, social media, and the filibuster.

Happy Tuesday, good folks! Now it's time to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. (If you're pressed for time, People for the American Way helps you with the For the People Act, while the ACLU helps you with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.) The 2020 elections taught us two things: 1) when people are super-organized, they can win elections even in places like Georgia, and 2) Republicans will use their power to prevent people from voting any way they can. As they're trying to do in states like Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Georgia as we speak! These bills would strengthen the Voting Rights Act, force campaigns to disclose their big donors, enact automatic and same-day voter registration across the land, mandate states to use redistricting commissions instead of self-interested legislators, and prevent states from using "address verification forms" to suppress voters of color -- among many other things! The only folks who'd oppose these things are folks afraid of losing a fair fight, and they certainly shouldn't get all the say about everything in America.

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. The Equality Act would prohibit discrimination on the basis of "sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity" in public places, as well as in the spheres of education, housing, and credit. You may reasonably ask why we need an Equality Act, given Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch's 2020 opinion ruling that Title VII of our Civil Rights Act covers gay and transgender folks. Well, Title VII only concerns employment discrimination -- Justice Gorsuch would be the first to tell you that, despite appearances, you can't just apply it in another area -- and the Equality Act, as I've suggested, covers just about everything else. If you peruse right-wing objections to the Equality Act, you'll find they don't argue against the idea that we should extend civil rights to gay or transgender folks -- they concoct the most absurd stories they can think of, as if the law can predict every conceivable future event, or as if judges don't rule on precisely those matters. Don't brook any of that silliness. Rights are more important than hysterical what-ifs.

Meanwhile, you know about all that land in the Amazon rain forest currently home to indigenous folks? And you know how the Brazilian government (whose President, Jair Bolsonaro, is now the biggest asshole in any government now that Donald Trump is no longer American President) has been seizing their land illegally to sell it off to developers? Now dig this: you can buy these plots of stolen land on Facebook's Marketplace. Because freedom! Naturally Facebook says it's up to the sellers to comply with the law, though one could certainly argue that Facebook is an accomplice to the crime. Interesting, isn't it, how Facebook is never responsible for the evil that happens on its platform? And please understand that by "interesting" I mean "galling." They have just as much right to keep actual criminal activity from happening on their platform as they do to keep Nazis from recruiting angry high school kids on their platform, but they won't, so it's time to wave the Big Stick of Bad PR in their faces again. Sum of Us helps you tell Facebook to get its act together and stop letting criminals sell land they don't own on their platform.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Democratic Senators to end the filibuster, Demand Progress still helps you do that. The best argument for keeping the filibuster is the one I used to deploy: the filibuster also saves us from the worst Republicans can do. But that is becoming less and less true! Did the filibuster save us from Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Comey Barrett? No, it did not, because Republicans got rid of it for that purpose, as they will whenever they want to get something even more extreme done! We might as well get rid of it first, and get some good done in the meantime. Yeah, Republicans will one day take complete control of our government again, and we might wish to have the filibuster back, but you know what beat back health care "reform" in 2017? We did, and if we stay in that frame of mind, then we'll win the battles we're supposed to win. And remember: nobody's getting into the voting booth in 2022 saying thank God the Democrats preserved the sanctity of Senate procedure, no matter what the cost to front-line pandemic workers who should be making more than $7.25/hour!

Action: concerning COVID relief, saving our Post Office, private prisons, and Iran.

The House passed a COVID relief bill on Saturday morning; now it's time to tell your Senators to do the same. Tell them they must include the $15/hour minimum wage in the bill, even if it means overruling the Senate Parliamentarian. I don't particularly want to do that, but let's be realistic: Republicans will do it next chance they get, and blame Democrats for it. And we should still work on Sens. Manchin (D?-WV) and Sinema (D?-AZ) about their particular unwillingness to pass the $15/hour minimum wage; their phone numbers are 202.224.3954 and 202.224.4521, respectively. Most Americans want this minimum wage hike, and more than half of Republicans want it, and ain't no way all the Republicans who don't want it all live in Arizona and West Virginia. Sens. Manchin and Sinema should stop adhering to the conventional wisdom on "how to represent a conservative state." You represent a conservative state the same way you represent the will of any other state: by doing the will of its people. And again, ain't no one in America going into the voting booth in 2022 saying thank God Democrats preserved the sanctity of Senate procedure at great cost to all of us!)

While you've got your Senators on the phone, you'll want to tell them to confirm President Biden's three new nominees to the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors. President Biden nominated them not too long after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told a House Committee to "get used to me," so maybe now we won't have to get "used" to the big-time Republican donor who tried to foul up voting-by-mail and whose solution to all the problems Congress has created for our Post Office over the years is to cut back on delivering mail by air, which will make every day like the most recent holiday season, when packages took as long as a month and a half to get where they were supposed to go. Seriously, saying you can't serve the public because you don't have the money is un-American -- we can stop forcing our Post Office to pre-pay pension and health benefits at a scale we demand of literally no other government agency or corporation, or we can let our Post Office offer banking services again (which Daily Kos helps you do), and people like Louis DeJoy won't have their excuses anymore.

Meanwhile, President Biden has ordered our Justice Department to stop using private prisons, but hasn't ordered our Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) to do so, and our Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) operates under the auspices of DHS, hence Amnesty International helps you tell DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to release all detained immigrants and stop ICE from using private prisons to detain folks. Private prisons obey the profit motive, after all, and if abusing prisoners makes them more profits, they'll do it! Doesn't matter, necessarily, that private prisons also have to obey government regulations concerning the safety and health of detainees -- private prisons can ignore those regulations and dare our government to stop them, and if someone dies in neglect, well, a government fining a private prison won't bring that person back to life. That person is someone's mother, father, sister, brother, son or daughter, too -- not a faceless warrior in a "caravan." Generally, these folks run from oppression, and we're Americans, so we need to live up to our heritage, not cut it down out of wrath and sloth.

Finally, you've no doubt heard that President Biden proved he's just like all the other Presidents by ordering air strikes against Syria, presumably against Iran-supported militias -- so Win Without War reminds us that, hey, we can avoid firing missiles by rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, which they help you tell Mr. Biden to do! President Biden was Vice President when the Obama Administration negotiated that deal, after all, and it worked -- until President Trump, determined to piss on anything with the Obama name on it, withdrew America from the pact for no good reason. (And then put John Bolton in charge of our NSA, which, in retrospect, may not have been the best way to cure Mr. Trump's jones for war with Iran, since it clearly didn't get us there.) Seriously, war with Iran won't be as easy as war with Iraq was -- Iran has a lot more people to control! -- and war with Iraq, as it turned out, wasn't that easy and gave us ISIS, almost like that was the whole idea. We can avoid such miserable foreign policy choices by going with the diplomacy that's proven to keep Iran from developing nukes, and that's the Iran nuclear deal.

Action: concerning COVID relief, higher taxes on the rich, and *a la carte* cable packaging.

Our House votes on the COVID relief bill as early as today, so get on the horn with your House Reps and tell them to pass it. You can find your Reps' phone numbers, as always, by using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're viewing this page on a cellphone, the bottom of this page). I've gone over all the good things this bill would do if passed, and I'm not going to give too much space to Republican plaints that they weren't consulted enough on it ("you say that like it's a bad thing!"), or that it's "too big" ("you don't pull a baby out of a fire gradually!") or that it consists of a "progressive wish list" (again, "you say that like it's a bad thing!"). Instead, I'll note that the bill is extremely popular, with a Morning Consult/Politico poll finding that 76% of Americans support it, and -- are you listening, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? -- 60% of Republicans support it. There's that bipartisanship everyone in Washington says they're looking for! And Congress should follow our lead. (Don't be dispirited by the Senate parliamentarian's ruling against the inclusion of the $15/hour minimum wage hike in the budget reconciliation process. Your will is still your will, and your Reps need to hear from you that you, like most Americans, want that minimum wage hike.)

While you have your House Reps on the phone, you can tell them to stop being "hesitant" about raising taxes on the rich or rolling back the more nefarious parts of the Trump tax "reform." Then call your Senators and tell them the same thing. Seriously, in the article to which I've linked above, Democrats recycle all the stupid and offensive arguments for not raising taxes on the rich and on corporations -- Joe Manchin said it'd be "ridiculous" to raise taxes during a pandemic (though, to be fair, he walked that back somewhat later on), while Jon Tester said it'd be dangerous to do while unemployment is so high -- this just three years after complaining that the Trump tax "reform" would put us in the hole for decades! When is the right time to do the right thing, Sen. Tester? If these clowns don't raise taxes on corporations and the rich, they're going to lose their slim majorities in 2022, end of story. People generally don't love paying taxes, of course, but they also don't love folks who don't pay their fair share.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk you don't want to pay for evil cable channels like Fox News just so you can watch cable channels you like, like the Food Network. Those of you who've attended this blog for the last 16 years know what we're talking about, even if Free Press, for whatever reason, won't spell it out: we're talking about a la carte cable packaging, where you can pay for the channels you like and you don't have to subsidize the channels you don't like. As you know, folks pay about $2 a month for Fox News, which is actually a fairly high monthly price; now imagine what would happen if, say, 10 million Americans decided not to pay for Fox News. There goes Tucker Carlson's and Sean Hannity's annual salaries in a mere two and a half months! Yeah, Fox would fire all their straight news reporters first (however many of those are left!), but the only language evil news corporations understand is the language of money, and hey, I'm all about talking to people in the language they understand. So let's get to it.

Action: concerning "free" trade, voting rights, and pot legalization.

Yesterday we called our Reps and Senators to demand that they keep us out of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" which Barack Obama supported but which Donald Trump helped make toxic; today we tackle existing "free" trade dogma, as Rethink Trade helps you tell President Biden to stop blocking an emergency rules waiver that would otherwise allow COVID-19 vaccines and treatments to proliferate. Intellectual property is the issue here, as it often is, but in the middle of a pandemic, which is more important? That corporations maximize the profits they make from their "property," or that sick people get the treatment that'll make them well again? I would think you would say the latter is more important, if you're a decent human being. That must explain why the otherwise anti-"free" trade President Trump helped block the waiver in the first place, money being more important to him than anything else, except maybe drama. But he's gone, and we have no reason to keep his nefarious works going.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: our U.S. Supreme Court may have refused to hear several more cases in which our state Supreme Court ruled in favor of voting rights, but that doesn't mean our reactionary state legislature won't try to impose as many new voting restrictions as they can! We have a Democratic Governor for two more years who'll likely veto at least the worst of what they try to do, but why use him as a crutch? We can stop this ourselves if we speak out enough! Indeed, that's really the only thing that's ever worked. Hence common Cause helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject any bills that would restrict voting rights in the Commonwealth. You want some weapons-grade PR here? Call any Republican bill that restricts early voting or absentee voting or mail-in voting a "sore loser" bill. They're only trying to pass them because their guy lost Pennsylvania, and they also know the more folks vote, the more folks who'll likely vote against them. We don't have to take that.

Finally, our House passed a sweeping marijuana policy reform bill last Congress -- but Mitch McConnell sat on it, because he's Mob Boss Mitch. Mob Boss Mitch no longer controls the Senate, however, which means bills like last session's MORE Act (which would have legalized pot and commuted sentences and expunged records for some folks imprisoned on pot-related charges) might actually get a vote in the Senate this time! They wouldn't get around a filibuster, in theory, but we could speak out en masse and make it more difficult for Republicans to oppose it. And I bet fewer of them want to oppose it than they'd like us to think! More than half of America's states have either legalized it or reduced criminal penalties for possessing it, which means the legalization movement is much bigger than even the most insecure politician's jones for looking "tough on crime." So Watchdog.net helps you tell your Congressfolk to legalize pot and grant some criminal justice mercy to low-level pot offenders.

Action: concerning "free" trade, immigration, law and order, and corporate taxes.

Sam Knight at TruthOut suggests that President Biden could get us back into the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade agreement, and that his nominee for Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, could "lead the way." You have no need to consider exactly how Mr. Vilsack would get us to re-enter the TPP -- not when you could be calling your Reps and Senators and say no to re-entering the TPP. The TPP would not only have outsourced our jobs -- as even "free" trade supporters like Larry Summers ultimately admitted "free" trades do! -- but it would have nullified our laws, by expanding the "investor-state dispute settlement" system so that foreign investors could sue the taxpayer whenever we so much as passed an anti-pollution law that "cost" them money. The best thing Donald Trump ever did was withdraw our nation from the TPP; the second-best thing he ever did was negotiate a replacement for NAFTA that drastically curtailed the use of ISDS systems with Canada and Mexico. They think (or wish!) we've forgotten about all of that, so we've got to remind them.

Meanwhile, President Biden may have ended the "national emergency" Donald Trump used to fund his vanity border wall, but somehow we still have over 3,000 soldiers at the border. You could ask "if it's not a national emergency, why do we need troops there?," but we're not supposed to put soldiers at the border in the first place unless we're actually repelling an invasion. Which we're not! An invasion would consist of actual soldiers, not people fleeing oppressive governments, or even people just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Hence Win Without War helps you tell Defense Secretary Austin to withdraw soldiers from our Southern border. And again, don't brook any silliness from right-wingers about how some "caravan" of immigrants is coming here to "change who we are." Folks have been settling in other lands since time immemorial, and most of the folks who complain about immigrants today had ancestors who were once Those People, too. Now, of course, they say their ancestors were of course "the good ones"! But no matter how much they twist the facts, the facts will snap back. And it'll hurt when they do.

In other news, the New York Police Department plans to finalize its policy on the use of facial recognition technology, i.e., the technology worse at telling black folks apart than even your Trump-loving uncle. Fortunately, they're accepting comments on their proposed policy (which would, guess what, use facial recognition technology) until tomorrow, so Amnesty International helps you tell the NYPD to reject the use of facial recognition technology. As I've said, facial recognition technology isn't just an invasion of your privacy -- I mean, should police harassment be the result of literally any time you venture out into the public? Because that's what facial recognition technology allows them to do! It's also a bad system that just so happens to lead, far too often, to police harassing innocent black folks. And Amnesty International also reminds us that if you decide to visit New York as a tourist, your face will be in their database, too -- which will be a boon to the tourist industry in cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Boston, which have all banned facial recognition technology. You may want to remind the NYPD of that.

Finally, you've heard that big pharmaceutical corporations are paying billions of dollars in settlements over their role in addicting people to opioids -- but you may not know that those corporations can deduct the cost of settlements from their taxes! Nice work if you can get it! And, surprise, surprise, the Trump tax "reform" of 2017 and the tax-cuts-for-the-rich in the CARES Act from last year made this situation a whole lot worse. I'd ask "what good is it punishing corporations when they can just deduct the punishment from their taxes?," except I also know that, for some people, not punishing corporations for their obvious wrongdoing is a feature, not a bug. Hence Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to close the loopholes that enable these corporations to deduct their settlements from their taxes. If you or I mess up as badly as they have, we don't get a tax break. Maybe we should all become corporations, then! Yeah, they love it when we think like that, as recent events surrounding GameStop may have reminded you.

Action: concerning voting rights, Ted Cruz, our Post Office, and the filibuster.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today would be a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The For the People Act, as you know, contains a lot of goodies -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. I would be hard-pressed to think of good reasons to oppose any of those things, though I know right-wingers will keep yammering on about them. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression over the last 25 years to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. This bill still doesn't have a bill number at this writing, but go ahead and say you want it anyway -- the more of us who say we want it, the more likely it'll get introduced, and passed, and become law.

Meanwhile, both Daily Kos and MoveOn (wow, sounds like a fresh breath of 2004!) help you tell Sen. Ted Cruz to resign from our Senate. We don't even need to go back to his enabling of the January 6 attempted coup; all we need do is recount his sins from the past week! As millions of his constituents were left without electricity, water, or heat from an uncharacteristically bad winter storm, he flew with his family to Cancún, only returning several days early once news of his flight became known; he even requested that beleaguered Houston police (big storm, remember?) escort him through the airport before flying to Cancún and upon returning. Would it be piling on to mention that he's taunted other politicians for pulling similar stunts? No, it would not. And don't brook any gaslighting from right-wingers about how little Sen. Cruz could have done. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who does not exactly hail from a neighboring state, has raised close to $5 million for Texas food banks, while Beto O'Rourke, who almost beat Mr. Cruz in 2018, organized nearly a million wellness calls and delivered food and water to good Texans. Seems they're better Senators for Texas than Mr. Cruz is.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to appoint four decent human beings to our U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. And make no mistake about the end goal: the end goal is to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, because that's what a decent human being would do. A decent human being would not sit there and let himself be gaslit by Mr. DeJoy's "big plans" for our Post Office. The only big plan he has for our Post Office is to make it run so badly we'll be "forced" to use private (and more expensive) mail carriers for everything. Our Post Office is a jewel, its workers some of the most diligent I've ever seen, and don't let anyone tell you differently. And if we want real reforms for our Post Office, we should stop making it pre-pay decades of benefit funds in advance (the source of most of its money problems) and we should allow it to offer basic banking services again. Like so many other things, this just ain't that damn deep.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to eliminate the filibuster, then Common Cause still helps you do that. I know, I know, I used to say my fellow liberals were dumb for wanting to do that, but you know what? I was wrong; they weren't dumb, and since our Senate hasn't listened to any of my principled calls for making the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, I say take their damn toy away. Republicans filibustered even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama, and they should have suffered for them! I mean, filibustering legislation that would stop tax breaks from going to corporations that outsource their jobs? Everyone who filibustered that should have lost their next election! But it ain't just Democrat weakness (I mean, did they ever run ads about that?) to blame; it's also a system that lets them obstruct in the dark, without their nefarious deeds ever being brought to the light. And if you believe in accountability, you know it's got to stop.

Action: concerning COVID relief, the minimum wage, judicial gerrymandering, and right-wing Constitutional conventions.

Happy Monday, good peoples! Today's a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Vox has a pretty good summary of what's presently in the bill our House is writing, which includes $1400 checks for folks making under $75,000, $400 in weekly expanded unemployment benefits through August 29, and a $15/hour minimum wage. And in addition to funding more testing and tracing and funding the states, localities, public transportation, and other entities that have suffered from reduced tax revenues during this pandemic, the bill would also expand COBRA subsidies through September, expand Affordable Care Act subsidies, and expand working-family tax credits like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And say only two things to folks who worry that a $15/hour minimum wage would "shock the economy": one, the bill gradually increases the minimum wage and won't reach $15/hour for several years, and two, we've spent so much time talking about essential workers during a pandemic that we ought to start paying them like they're essential.

Speaking of the minimum wage, you might also want to call Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) and tell them to support the $15/hour minimum wage. (Phone numbers are 202.224.3954 and 202.224.4521, respectively.) Yeah, they "represent conservative states," but if they actually talked to the people they represent, as is their job; Sens. Manchin and Sinema might find a lot more support for the higher minimum wage than the phrase "conservative state" suggests. After all, polls tell us a majority of Republican voters want both the $15/hour minimum wage and the COVID bill passed via budget reconciliation, so it ain't us who are "out of touch." And too many of my fellow liberals keep misreading the politics, too! We can't coddle these Senators "to keep the majority." No one's going to vote Democrat in 2022 because "they sacrificed doing the right thing to doing it the right way." But a whole lot of people will vote Republican in 2022 because "Democrats had all the power and didn't do anything." We've seen this time and time again; how many more times must we see it?

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your PA state legislators to reject the "sore loser" judicial gerrymandering bill, HB 38, then Common Cause still helps you do that. Why "sore loser"? Because PA Republicans are mad that our state Supreme Court has mostly Democrats on it, and want to create "judicial districts" so they can get more Republicans on the Court. Period. If they wanted them on the Court so badly, they should have won all those 2015 Court elections they and their paymasters spent so damn much money on! Our activism against HB 38 has had positive effects: the House Judiciary Committee passed it, but narrowly, and now the state Senate Majority Leader says HB 38 won't pass the full legislature soon enough to get on the ballot by the May primary election. (HB 38, if it passes, would put the question of amending our state Constitution to mandate the creation of "judicial districts" on the ballot.) But HB 38 might make it through the legislature in time for the November election, and this is (to quote a phrase right-wingers love!) one baby we should strangle in its crib.

Finally, right-wing special interest groups (like ALEC!) want to stage an Article V Constitutional convention, which two-thirds of state legislatures could call and then use to pass a slew of anti-freedom constitutional amendments as soon as three-quarters of state legislatures ratify them. 34 state legislatures would have to call the convention; now guess how many state legislatures Republicans currently hold? That's right, 31, which is three states short, but with Republicans controlling the gerrymandering, ahem, redistricting process for the next decade, they may have their 34 with a quickness. They'd need 38 to enact the proposed amendments, but Article V gives no guidance as to how to conduct this convention, so you can only imagine how bad it'd get -- they'd make it "unconstitutional" to stop corporations from polluting, or stop vote suppression, or raise taxes on the rich, or even have Medicare or Social Security. Hence Common Cause helps you tell state legislators you oppose an Article V convention. They'll try to do this while no one's looking, so let's let them know we see them.

Action: concerning Guantánamo Bay, internet freedom, and pollution.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center and send its detainees to nations that respect human rights, then Amnesty International still helps you do that. Guantánamo has been a stain on our national soul for some 19 years now -- yes, a baby born just after we started sending "dangerous" "terror" "suspects" there would now be old enough to vote! And like the worst stains on our soul, it's a stain built on lies -- lies that these clowns "return" to "terrorism," lies that we ever got any actionable intelligence from torturing them, lies, even, that they were ever "terrorists," for if you can't charge someone with something after a decade, how was he a "terrorist"? More likely he was just an excuse to "look tough." But the road to hell is paved with the skulls of politicians who tried to "look tough." So let's help Joe Biden not be one of those. At least this decade, amirite?

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) that our internet should be a public utility and that they should reclaim it for us. In the old days, we called that "nationalizing," and during the era of actual Communists it had a bad name, but ain't nobody in contemporary America singing the praises of Comcast and Verizon, and besides, without UNIX and TCP-IP -- both Big Gummint creations! -- we wouldn't even have the internet we've got, so, by my lights, it's already ours. Making the internet a public utility would not only allow our FCC to bring back the net neutrality principles we all deserve as consumers, it'll help our FCC bring internet access to the 40 million Americans who still don't have broadband access (or any access!). 40 million underserved Americans in the COVID era, no less! But if we make our internet public again, then we should be able to serve all good Americans.

Finally, the Sierra Club helps you tell President Biden to enact strong auto fuel emission standards. Our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) does that, after all, and the Clean Car Standards were one of Barack Obama's signature achievements as President -- until Donald Trump took a big dump all over them, of course! Really, though, air pollution and its resulting health issues are not popular, nor are gas-guzzling cars that cost more to fill up at the pump. These are fairly easy things for intelligent people to grasp, yet our enemies still talk of the "higher sticker price" of cars that pollute less, as if you wouldn't recoup that cost through lower gas prices, as if the only thing that matters is how much money you have or spend right now. Frankly, that was never very conservative of the Trump Administration. But thrift remains a value that sustains us, and cleaner cars will help us sustain our values -- and ourselves.

Action: concerning the 14th Amendment, police brutality, student loan debt, and social media.

James Wagstaffe at Real Security writes that it's "Time to Reconsider the 14th Amendment for Trump's Role in the Insurrection," and he's right. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution states that no one who has "taken an oath...to support the Constitution of the United States" but who has then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" our nation, "or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof" can hold office in state or federal government again. Surely Mr. Trump took that oath in January of 2017, and just as surely he "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" over a 2020 election result he didn't like and gave "aid and comfort" to those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 -- and all Congress would have to do is pass, via majority vote, a resolution affirming all of that. Maybe Senate Republicans can filibuster that resolution -- but maybe we should make them do that! Hence you may want to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to support barring Donald Trump from future office using the 14th Amendment.

Meanwhile, President Biden announced weeks ago that it would release an Executive Order concerning our police departments getting surplus weapons from the military, but, strangely, hasn't released the Order. Was he trying to get some unearned good will? Possibly. Did someone get to him and tell him you can't do that when we just had an insurrection at the Capitol? Possibly, but that someone would be an idiot, since we've already witnessed police use military weapons on protestors of color, and they sure didn't do that at the Capitol on January 6. Maybe it was just me, but they didn't even seem all that enthused about using pepper spray. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk and your President that it's time for action to keep military weapons out of the hands of police. If you want police to respond to situations more appropriately, you don't give them grenade launchers -- and grenade launchers don't help you find drug dealers, nor do they help you find financial predators.

In other news, Roots Action helps you helps you tell President Biden to cancel all federally-held student loan debt in America. Objections to this action that go I paid my student loan debt, why can't they? should be met with jealousy is not a good foundation for public policy. I mean, yeah, I'd rather I had the sense to consider this years ago, too, but the best time to do the right thing is always now, and cancelling federally-held student loan debt (which is most of it) is the right thing to do, and not just because it'll stimulate the economy like gangbusters. Basically, we sold Americans a bill of goods when we signed them up for these giant student loans! We, as a nation, told them a college degree is the only way to enter the middle class (a claim our grandparents would have dismissed!), and then we extorted them for considerably more than that education is worth, and certainly more than anyone should pay. College was affordable only a few generations ago, and we'll have to work to make it that way again, but a jubilee in the meantime is a good first step.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell Facebook to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Congressional and campaign pages permanently. You need not agree or disagree with her politics to sign this petition -- Ms. Greene has undeniably violated Facebook's terms of service with her various social media actions supporting violence and absurd conspiracy theories, and that's that. Ms. Greene herself would warn that booting her off Facebook would just make her stronger, but I doubt that, and even so, it should be hard to find right-wing nutjobs, just as it used to be hard to find pornography. I'm sure some folks will say this makes it harder for her to communicate with your constituents, but Facebook sure ain't the only way to do that -- what's wrong with having townhalls and meeting with constituents (which you can do even during a pandemic)? I suspect what's "wrong" with them is that politicians don't like facing accountability. But we need to make an America where accountability is what politicians should expect from Americans.

Action: concerning voting rights, new domestic terror legislation, the COUP Act, and saving our Post Office.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today would be a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). (If you're pressed for time, the Sierra Club also helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass the For the People Act.) The For the People Act contains a lot of goodies -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered -- and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression over the last 25 years to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. If your friends and neighbors complain, as Mitch McConnell did, that these are "Democrat power grabs," ask them why Republicans should lose if we do better at protecting the vote. If their answers mention "dead voters" or "suitcases in Georgia," remind them not to be so gullible.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the January 6 attempted coup, politicians have said they need new "domestic terror" legislation to help prevent such things from happening again -- but that's the way of the politicians, isn't it? They fuck up, so you have to give up more of your rights. Besides, there'd be a lot less domestic terrorism in America if folks could make ends meet and save some money and build a future and not get slammed by surprise medical bills, but no, the "free market" is "more important" than that. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Reps and Senators that "more domestic terrorism legislation" is not the answer. You may want to avoid saying things like "start using the tools you've got!", because, frankly, I think law enforcement has too many tools with which to "fight terrorism" already -- I would hate to see new legislation make the USA PATRIOT Act seem "not so bad after all." The best way to fight terrorism? Politicians should do their constituents' will rather than try to pull the wool over their eyes all the time. It's not so much to ask, really.

In other news, H.R. 276, the Congressional Oversight of Unjust Policing (or COUP) Act, would establish a Congressional commission and charge it with investigating exactly how Y'all-Qaeda were able to breach our Capitol on January 6. If you're sitting at home snorting that of course they didn't see it coming because the protestors were white! Duh!, rest assured that the COUP Act specifically mandates "an assessment on whether conscious and unconscious bias was a factor in the gross miscalculation of the risk posed by protestors to Members of Congress and staff on that date." If you're sitting at home squealing ANUTHUR BUREAUCRACIEZ!!!!, then ask yourself how you felt about all those Benghazi hearings Republican House Reps held back in the day, and if "that was different," be prepared to explain how. No, wait, I'll explain it: the Benghazi hearings were all about drumming up drama and enraging weak voters. Putting in writing our failures as a nation on January 6, on the other hand, might actually help us do better in advance of the next coup attempt. So People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolks to pass the COUP Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to replace our USPS's Board of Governors with folks who'll actually get our Post Office working the way it should, then MoveOn still helps you do that. "Getting our Post Office working the way it should" includes our USPS Board of Governors firing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's sorry ass, since he's the one trying to implement all the "innovations" that slow down our mail and make us pay more for it. We deserve a Post Office that runs as well as our postal workers do; indeed, our Constitution actually enumerates this task to our federal government. I still worry that Joe Biden agrees with Mr. DeJoy that we should privatize our Post Office, because "all it does is deliver junk mail" and "people don't write letters anymore, they write emails" or some such. If so, Mr. Biden should be more conscious of the fact that the Post Office literally delivered his 2020 victory, and it did so because we fought Mr. DeJoy tooth and nail to get that done. I wouldn't say it's "uncivil" to remind him of that.

UPDATE. I inadvertently identified the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act with its bill number from last session, and have thus corrected that error in the first paragraph above.

Action: concerning COVID relief, the minimum wage, the right to organize, and social media.

Happy Monday, good Americans! Today's as good a day as any to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass a vigorous COVID relief package. You may want to inform them, if they're of the Republican persuasion, that a recent The Hill/Harris X poll finds a sizable majority of Republicans support the notion of Democrats passing a bill through budget reconciliation without Republican votes. So when national Republicans whine about being "left out" of the deliberation process -- which is to laugh, of course, given how often Republicans do that to Democrats, the Trump tax "reform" being only the most recent obvious example -- remind them that most of their own right-leaning constituents don't agree with them. And when Republicans whine about the deficit -- which is also to laugh, since they clearly don't care about it when they're in power -- remind them that their constituents don't care about that, either. Funny how easily you can find actual bipartisanship among the people but only the fake kind among politicians.

And if you're from West Virginia or Arizona, you may also want to mention to Sens. Manchin (D?-WV) and Sinema (D?-AZ) that you support the $15/hour minimum wage. Already I've heard liberals saying that we have to cut these two some slack because they come from conservative states, but that gives them veto power over all legislation! Do you remember voting for the Manchin/Sinema ticket in 2020? No, you do not. These two won't lose their jobs in 2024 for "being too liberal," but they will lose their jobs for doing too little, and the sooner they learn that, the better for them and for us. At least Sen. Manchin says he'd support an $11/hour minimum wage; Sen. Sinema says we shouldn't raise the wage through budget reconciliation at all. But we just almost lost our damn government to violent assholes and we are thus, ah, not particularly obsessed with "the sanctity of Senate procedure" at this point in time. Besides, she's just going to vote against the hike if we do it the "right" way. Unless we flood her phone lines, of course.

Meanwhile, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act (which has no bill number at this writing) would, as its title suggests, better protect workers when they try to organize for better wages and working conditions. Bosses herding their workers into anti-union meetings, or firing organizers, or sending them endless text messages, or flat-out bullying them on the floor? All that could become a thing of the past if the PRO Act passes, since the bill would not only strengthen penalties corporations face and empower our National Labor Relations Board to force corporations to bargain with employees when they commit these transgressions, but it'd also empower workers to file civil lawsuits against them, too. Does your Tea Party uncle want to call all that "frivolous lawsuits"? But who files the most frivolous lawsuits again? Corporations and Donald Trump, by the evidence. So the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Reps and Senators to protect American workers by passing the PRO Act.

Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk and our President to enact legislation that would hold big tech corporations accountable for their misdeeds. And by "misdeeds" I mainly mean "allowing lies and extremist content to spread across our internet with no attempt to moderate the flow." Social media CEOs twiddled their thumbs for years, responding to any attempt to get them to do better by shrieking TEH FREE SPEECHEZ!!!!, but Facebook and Twitter aren't public utilities, they're private corporations -- best characterized as publishing houses even if our laws won't do that. Hence People for the American Way helps you call for these sites to actively moderate content. And I doubt "using algorithms" qualifies as "active moderation" -- I would call it passive moderation, in fact, and would it be piling on to note that the algorithms these best-and-brightest tech honchos develop too often spew out racist content? And that's just another reason why people, not algorithms, need to do our most important work.

Action: concerning the attempted coup, MyPillow products, Amazon surveillance, and postal banking.

Despite the compelling case for conviction of Donald Trump our House has made all week, we have every reason to believe our Senators will fail to do their duty and convict our former President. At least, that's the way to bet -- though I'm starting to suspect that the way to bet is actually the opposite of how everyone else bets! In any case, Amnesty International helps you tell Acting Attorney General Wilkinson to investigate the events of January 6. If that seems like an "obsession" to you, quietly navigate away from this page, and go read something on Newsmax or OANN or whatever diddles your rage gland. I'm serious. If Donald Trump's months-long attempt to overturn the 2020 election doesn't obsess you, there's something deeply wrong with you as a citizen. And I suspect a DOJ investigation would turn up more useful information than even the House's impeachment case has done. After all, the House put its case together rather quickly, and I suspect we can learn a lot more by completing a more thorough investigation.

In a peripherally-related note, MoveOn helps you tell big warehouse corporation Costco to get MyPillow products out of its stores. MyPillow's CEO, after all, is Mike Lindell, who has trafficked in absurd "election fraud" theories and tried to goad Donald Trump into declaring martial law so he could overturn the election he lost by seven million votes, the election our cybersecurity chief said was the most secure in American history when he had every motivation to say the opposite. No, Mike Lindell does not have a "First Amendment right" to have his products at Costco locations. Our First Amendment protects him from going to jail merely for his bloviating (though for incitement to violence or terrorist threats, not so much). Our First Amendment does not grant a "right" to be free from the consequences of his actions. And to those who would be "wary" at the "chilling" effect of a Costco ban: you can navigate the fuck away from this page, too. You should be more scared to live in a society where no one pays for the evil they've done.

Meanwhile, Amazon is apparently installing surveillance cameras on their delivery vehicles, ostensibly to watch the drivers, I suppose, but how much surveillance does a corporation need to do on its employees? You don't need a proctoscope to know when a driver's slacking. And I'm old enough to remember when boosting workers' morale solved most workplace problems, but when you treat your workers as moneyjars, I guess morale matters little. And naturally, Amazon's surveillance won't just be on the drivers, it'll be on everything around them, and their recent history suggests they'd just be happy to share whatever their watchful eyes find with police, warrant or not. And if you're tempted to say if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, consider that an Amazon surveillance camera is also just another thing crooks can hack; how many strangers do you want observing your habits? Hence Fight for the Future helps you tell Amazon to stop making their delivery vehicles into Big Brother.

Finally, as part of our efforts to save our Post Office, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Postal Banking Act (no bill number at this writing), which would allow our U.S. Postal Service to offer basic banking services to good Americans. What's that I hear? Why don't they just go to the bank? Because banks don't like to serve a lot of urban and rural poor areas of America, that's why, which leaves a lot of good Americans with very few options -- like payday lenders! Should anyone have to put up with the choice of 300% death spiral loans or no loans just because they live where banks don't want to go? The Postal Banking Act (which various Congressfolk have introduced in previous Congresses) would offer savings and checking accounts, but would also offer small loans, which might well make payday lenders completely unnecessary. And our Postal Service used to offer these services until the late '60s, and there's no good reason they can't again.

Action: concerning Wall Street taxes, COVID vaccines, judicial gerrymandering, and the Dakota Access pipeline.

Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 328, the Wall Street Tax Act of 2021, which would impose a 0.1% tax on Wall Street trading. That's one-tenth of one percent, "liberal" media -- not "one percent," not "10 percent," and not "100 percent." I've watched "liberal" media morons get all those mixed up; certainly none of them should ever be in charge of my morphine drip if I'm ever in a serious accident. 2.5 milligrams or 25 milligrams, what's the difference? Folks will tell you that taxing Wall Street trades will hurt your pensions, but don't you believe it -- if your pension fund has really invested in all that lightning-fast trading banksters seem to prefer, your pension needs to do differently. And don't let folks say we shouldn't do it because banksters will trade less, either -- so much Wall Street trading does nothing for our economy anyway, so that's not exactly a reason not to do it. Whether we collect a lot of tax revenue, or banksters act more responsible to avoid paying those taxes, it's a win-win, really.

Meanwhile, Rethink Trade helps you tell the Biden Administration to join a 100-nation effort to waive certain intellectual property rules during this ongoing pandemic. Here's what's happening: World Trade Organization rules allow corporations that make COVID-related vaccines and treatments to set onerous terms for their production and pricing, and the 100-nation coalition led by India and South Africa seeks waivers from these rules, so other corporations can ramp up production, so we can get this pandemic under control. You may well be asking yourself: self, don't these corporations deserve to make money from the fruits of their labors? I can answer that objection in at least two ways: 1) no, because there's a pandemic on, and our health is more important than their money, 2) still no, because the "fruits of their labors" also likely came from the fruits of taxpayer funding, and if our taxes funded the vaccines and the treatments, then we should get a considerable amount of say in how they're used.

In other news, Pennsylvania state legislators still aim to "gerrymander" state courts with HB 38, which would amend the state Constitution to insure that only citizens of certain "districts" can elect statewide judges, HB 38 passed out of the state House Judiciary Committee by an admittedly narrow 13-12 vote, one which has, apparently, given Republican legislators pause, but I wouldn't count on them staying "paused" if I were you! They waited until no one was looking in January for the Committee vote, so why wouldn't they try that again for the full House vote? Particularly since everyone who hears about the bill has a hard time getting their head around the notion that judges who serve the law have to come from particular areas. Remember that five of seven state Supreme Court Justices are Democrats and you'll understand the "reasoning," such as it is: HB 38 is a sore loser bill. Hence Fair Districts PA helps you call your PA state reps and tell them to reject the Sore Loser Bill, HB 38.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell President Biden to tell our Army Corps of Engineers to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. Yes, he shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, and good for him, but that ain't the only dangerous pipeline in America: the Dakota Access pipeline also runs through water tables providing clean water to millions of heartland Americans -- a fact the Lakota nation tried to tell us about in late 2016! -- and Dakota Access leaked upwards of five times its first year, including a notorious 200,000-gallon spill in November of 2017. But wait, there's more! The Dakota Access pipeline has taken a thumping in our courts, most recently late last month, as our D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an April 2020 ruling requiring a more thorough environmental impact statement from our Army Corps of Engineers. And since Dakota likely won't pass muster once our Corps completes that impact statement, maybe we can save them some embarrassment. It'd be the nice thing to do.

Action: concerning public lands, right-wing media, racism in health care, and saving our Post Office.

Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell President Biden to stop leasing and permitting for coal operations on our public lands. President Biden has lately put a stop to oil and gas drilling on public lands, but he's strangely left coal out, possibly calculating that he can't lose a single vote in a state like Pennsylvania in 2024, but possibly also calculating that coal, as an industry, is going south and doesn't need another punch in the face right now. But I would say building out renewable energy operations on public lands would be a smarter political move, as well as a smarter move generally. If coal corporations are crashing one by one, they hardly represent a threat to the political order, though their displaced workers might. But we can retrain them to rebuild a renewable energy infrastructure a whole lot more easily than we can "teach them to code." Construction and coding are different skills, after all. And if you really want to "build back better," you also have to build back smarter.

Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell big corporations to stop advertising on Fox News. I'd tell them to stop advertising on Newsmax and OANN, too, but Sum of Us must smell blood in the water. Fox News, as you know, faces a $2.7 billion defamation/disparagement lawsuit from Smartmatic over some of their nefarious "election fraud" claims, a lawsuit that seems to have made right-wing news organs a little less obnoxious generally. Now you may be tempted to say haven't they suffered enough? But the answer is no, they have not suffered enough. From calling Iraq War opponents traitors to fearmongering over immigrants to whining about the deficit to whining about regulations to demanding jackboot lockstep support for police who kill black folks without a trial or even a charge to carrying Donald Trump's water for four years, Fox News has done incalculable damage to our civilization, and the only just punishment for their evil works is annihilation. Advertisers finally pulling out in large numbers might, at last, help us begin that necessary work.

In other news, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 666, the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act. The bill would create a National Center for Racism and a Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program at our Centers for Disease Control; the latter program would operate within our CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. If your right-wing friends and neighbors protest ZOMG TEH BUREAUCRACIEZ MULTIPLIEZ!!!!!, remind them that corporations have bureaucracies, too, and maybe a bureaucracy dedicated to researching (and ultimately helping to prevent) the health care burdens we all know folks of color bear in America, and the unique amount of violence done to folks of color by our police isn't such a bad bureaucracy after all. Folks of color are less likely to be paid well, less likely to have health insurance, and more likely to live near a landfill, so we ought to do something about that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to appoint four decent human beings to our United States Postal Service's Board of Governors -- four decent human beings who might then decide to do the only decent thing and fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy -- then MoveOn still helps you do that. Just about every American who gets mail (i.e., every American) can testify, using only their own recent experiences, that he's not doing a good job, but I expect the right-wing media will whine that he's being "targeted" (or "hunted"!) by nefarious forces like us, even though we're really not "nefarious" -- we just want our Post Office to run well, as our Constitution guarantees. If I had a dollar for every lousy boss I've ever had I might not have to work another day, and I suspect most Americans (again, from sad experience) are at least as good at telling a good boss from a bad one as I am. But we certainly shouldn't tolerate bad leadership from our Post Office.

Action: concerning voting rights, Guantánamo Bay, and voting security.

Happy Tuesday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). H.R. 1 would enact sweeping voting rights reforms, including campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. Neither of these bills are budget-related, so Republicans will be able to filibuster them (unless Senate Democrats get rid of the filibuster, or force Republicans to talk through a filibuster), but I say let them say they're against helping more people vote. That won't go down too well with folks of color, and I dare say it won't go down too well with independents, either.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to close our detention center at the Guantánamo Bay once and for all. You'll remember that President Obama tried to close it, only to hear a bunch of not-in-my-backyard whining from Congressfolk of both parties (ain't bipartisanship grand?). ZOMG what if one of those terrorists had to be detained in my state? Those would be the "terrorists" our government literally couldn't charge with a crime after 10 years; if you can't charge someone with a crime after detaining them for 10 years, you're either incompetent or a fascist -- or, more likely, a fascist pretending to be incompetent. And don't brook any stupidity about folks we can't even call "terrorists" "returning" to terrorism, for Guantánamo Bay remains a stain on our collective soul as Americans, and we should scrub that stain right out. But remember: we don't locate America's greatness in our "infallibility," for only a coward or a fascist does that. We locate America's greatness in our struggle to right our wrongs. This is more our heritage than whatever OANN teaches is our heritage.

Meanwhile, our U.S. Election Assistance Commission (or EAC) plans to vote soon on the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0, which would ostensibly enhance election security -- if it didn't plan on allowing voting machines to have wireless devices in them! The standard actually says a voting machine can have a wireless device in it if the voting machine doesn't actually use it, but then why have it? So hackers can exploit the very presence of a wireless device and manipulate elections from afar? Somebody didn't think this through -- or, possibly, someone did. And funny thing, we actually convinced the EAC to include a strong wireless ban in its standards last year -- but now they want to water that standard down so that it's useless! I wonder who got to them. In any event, Public Citizen helps you tell our EAC to reject voting machines with wireless devices in them. Remember: if you don't trust wireless systems to handle your banking (and you shouldn't!), then you certainly can't trust wireless systems with your vote. And yes, elections were pretty secure in 2020, but that doesn't mean we sit back, it means we keep working.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and keeping big tech out of our government.

Happy Monday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them, once again, to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Ignore the pablum from the chattering class about how the Biden plan isn't "bipartisan" enough! As far as I'm concerned, Republicans sacrificed their "right" to "bipartisan" consideration once they spent two months trying to overturn an election and then enabled a coup, and in any case they should listen more closely to their actual constituents, who support a $15/hour minimum wage and $2,000 monthly checks and funding for states and localities more than those who "represent" them want us to think. And if you're anxious about funding the bill, we could tax millionaire income at 91%, tax capital gains and corporate profits over $1 million at 55%, and tax million-dollar estates at 55%. We could also tax billionaire wealth, as Sen. Warren (D-MA) proposed even before billionaires made out like bandits in this pandemic! (Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, regardless of whether it's part of a pandemic package or not.)

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of his impeachment charge, and prevent him from ever running for or holding office in America again. We all saw what happened on TV in real time, but nonetheless I'd like to note that two far-right former Congressfolk have made an excellent case for Mr. Trump's conviction. In a Roll Call op-ed provocatively titled "Republicans, If This Isn't Impeachable, What Is?", former Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Charles Boustany of Louisiana cite (among other things) the numerous actual threats Mr. Trump, his son, and his supporters made on January 6, plus they directly address the cowardly argument that it'd be "divisive" to convict him: "Some say we must move on. But it is clear that Trump and his mob still aren’t moving on. Trump, his family and supporters continue to threaten political revenge and have shown no remorse for their actions. Angry Trump supporters continue to make dangerous threats." See, it can't just be us who act civilized all the time -- it's a burden all civilized folks must bear.

Hate to make this phone call to your Senators extra long, but go ahead and tell them to end the filibuster, too. I know, I'd also prefer to make the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, and if that's what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema really have in mind I'll give them all the credit in the world, but I doubt they're that slick, and I've been advocating the talking filibuster for over a decade now, and I know I'm not the only one, and I know all the alleged parliamentary geniuses in Congress can see the problem just as well as I can, and yet they do nothing about it, so we might as well speak the language that they understand. Don't brook any silliness about the "sanctity of the institution." What, exactly, is sacred about the filibuster? Sorry, Russell Kirk acolytes, but just because we've been doing it a certain way forever doesn't make it "sacred." The best the filibuster does for us is make it easy for Democrats to oppose bad bills when they're in the minority. That's not playing to win, though -- that's playing not to lose. And you don't value "the sanctity of the institution" over, you know, justice.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), No Big Tech helps you tell President Biden to reject putting big tech corporation lobbyists into positions in our government. Folks all over America are done worshiping CEOs, and even the politicians are starting to catch on, yet big tech CEOs still seem to wow politicians with their alleged smarts. But what have these Big Brains at Big Tech have gotten us? Easier ways to consume more art, and what else? Do we have a cure for cancer? No. Do we have a renewable energy grid? No. Do we have research bases on the moon and Mars? No -- though we do have "space tourism" for the wealthy. Do we have a cure for poverty? No -- though we do have big tech CEOs claiming we can retrain coal miners to write code like people can be so easily contorted. Even Tesla's electric cars sure are taking their sweet time coming down to the price a working family can afford. So how we get people in government who know what they're doing?

Action: concerning tax-cuts-for-the-rich and saving our Postal Service.

Some 120 Congressional Democrats (out of 271, so it's not as many as it seems!) have written a letter demanding the repeal of the "net operating loss" tax break from the CARES Act, which we've been calling the hedge fund tax cut, since that's basically what it is. The hedge fund tax cut delivers an extra $1.6 million, on average, to just 43,000 Americans, and you ain't one of these 43,000 Americans, because they're all millionaires. You may want to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to repeal the hedge fund tax cut from the CARES Act; repealing this particular slab of corporate welfare would save us $25 billion annually, which could help pay for whatever COVID relief bill that comes out of this Congress. You know what'd help pay for that bill even more? Raising taxes on millionaire income and corporate profits. Go ahead and remind your Reps and Senators of that; the evidence suggests that they can never hear it enough.

While you have your Reps and Senators on the phone, go ahead and tell them to support H.R. 2382/S. 2965, the USPS Fairness Act, which would simply repeal the law mandating that our Post Office prepay decades' worth of pension funding in advance. That may sound like a fiscally-responsible move, but it's almost crippled our Post Office's ability to operate in the present day! Which means it's not, in fact, a "fiscally-responsible" move. In fact, one could excuse you for thinking it's actually a cynical and evil move, one designed to make the Post Office collapse in the present under the weight of its future obligations! And that's the way of the cynical and the evil, isn't it, as far as our government is concerned? They deliberately run some popular government agency into the ground, and then claim that the only solution is to sell it off to their cronies! We need to fight such cynicism and evil wherever we see it, so let's fight it here.

Action: concerning government spying, the war on Yemen, and big ag monopolies.

Today's a good day to tell your Congressfolk, once again, that they should not use the January 6 attempted coup as a pretext to pass all sorts of draconian "anti-terror" laws that do nothing but clamp down on good Americans' free speech. After all, we all know that's exactly how that's going to work! Our government will more likely use new anti-terror laws against liberals and folks of color than against the right-wing assholes whose seditious behavior presumably spurred the laws, and how come our government doesn't have enough tools to foil these plots already? They have warrantless wiretapping and NSA data-vacuuming, and they were still helpless against an attempted coup plotted virtually out in the open on social media? Why, it's enough to make you think our government simply doesn't have the will to stop these clowns. That's why we're here: to lend the steel in their spine so they can go after them, but only with the tools our Constitution allows.

Meanwhile, I have two action alerts relating to our ongoing (and unconstitutional) involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen: in one, from World Beyond War, you would tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the war on Yemen via the War Powers Act, and in the other, from Win Without War, you would tell Secretary of State Antony Blinken to end all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Congress tried a War Powers resolution in 2019, only to see former President Trump veto it, and President Biden has lately frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is good, but we need to make that a permanent freeze. Folks who wring their hands over what will become of the Middle East if we stop arming Saudi Arabia need to consider three things: 1) that Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian government, and we shouldn't sell weapons to authoritarians, 2) that the Middle East is always in chaos because governments like ours meddle in their affairs, and 3) why would we worry about intricate power struggles when we have more weapons than anyone else? If we're a strong nation, we should act like it. And strong nations act with brains and heart more than firepower.

Finally, Food and Water Action helps you tell President Biden to issue an Executive Order freezing big agribusiness mergers and investigating the monopoly practices of the industry. Even those of us who have generally approved of his Executive Orders thus far must ask: what would be the legal authority of such an order? Well, our Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission already have the legal authority to approve and disapprove corporate mergers, and our President can instruct them how to approach these matters -- you know, just like the last President did, by instructing his Justice Department to disapprove mergers involving his supposed enemies! And even though judges have ignored it in recent years, ample legal precedent establishes our government's authority to stop mergers for the public good. And proving that big ag mergers injure the public good ain't a big lift -- when a few actors control a market, they get to dictate terms to everyone else in the market, and we're talking the food we eat here, so let's get cracking.

Action: concerning COVID relief, police in schools, and corporate donations to sore losers.

So President Biden met with the 10 Republican "moderates" who proposed a COVID relief package less than one third the size of his proposal, and so we ask: these are the moderates of the party lowballing Mr. Biden? (One might also wonder how Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas can be a "moderate" and a co-founder of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, but I digress.) So go ahead and call your Reps and Senators and tell them what you want from a COVID relief package: more funding for testing and tracing, $2,000 checks every month (versus one $1,000 check from the moderates), funding for states and localities (versus nothing), a $15/hour minimum wage (ditto), paid family leave (ditto), and higher enhanced unemployment benefits (you get the picture). You might also mention rolling back the CARES Act's hedge fund tax cut and raising taxes on corporations and millionaire income. Remember: people want good government more than "bipartisan" government, and nobody wants to "unify" with people who hurt them.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Counseling Not Criminalization Act. This bill (which has no House or Senate bill numbers as of this writing) came up in the last Congress, too; it would replace police officers (who too often attack school children) with counselors and nurses (who can deal with a child's problems more appropriately). I mean none of that to slight police officers; I often say that we shouldn't use cops as the Swiss Army knives of our civilization, and that we shouldn't run to them with every conceivable request for assistance from the state -- and we certainly shouldn't do that after we've trained them to be ready to be violent at a moment's notice! Cops patrol schools for only two reasons: 1) someone well-meaning sees them as a natural solution to a discipline problem, and 2) someone cynical sees them as a way to prove a fake toughness. So let's get police out of schools, and let's get people in there who we've actually trained to help kids do better.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big corporations to stop financing the political campaigns of the politicians who tried to overturn the 2020 election, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. Big corporate campaign donations are already unpopular, so big corporate donations to politicians who tried to overturn the election because they're a bunch of big whiny babies should be even more unpopular -- but only if we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR. 147 Congressional Republicans aided and abetted the attempted coup on our Capitol, and it doesn't matter how many of them voted the way they did because they were afraid not to -- if they can be threatened into submission that easily, they shouldn't be in Congress to begin with. And no, wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR isn't "the same" as threatening Congressfolk with violence. The former is civilized behavior, but threats aren't. It's shameful we even have to explain that.

Action: concerning voting rights, insurance redlining, and saving our Post Office.

Today's a good day to call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to pass both H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (which has no bill numbers at this writing). The For the People Act has almost everything -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and no more "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act by requiring pre-clearance from our Justice Department for voting law changes in any area of our nation with a record of vote suppression, not just areas in the South. Who could be against more good Americans voting? Oh, right -- people who can't get majorities in elections. Well, they don't deserve more say than us.

Meanwhile, we learn from Consumer Reports that some big car insurance corporations will ask some people their job title and education level and use that info to set a rate quotation. And please understand that by "some people" I mean people of color. What does education level have to do with your driving record, you ask? Nothing -- some of the most educated people are the absolute worst drivers, and other folks with a high school diploma drive very well. I could make a similar notation about salary, and that's without noting that folks with higher salaries can obviously afford higher insurance rates, so why do they need a handout? No, these questions sound an awful like redlining to me. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell big car insurance corporations Progressive and GEICO to stop using irrelevant information in a clandestine effort to charge folks of color more for their car insurance. Brothers and sisters already have enough trouble getting better pay and more education in our society, so let's not heap more trouble on them.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to do all he can to save our Post Office, then Progress America still helps you do that. Specifically, Progress America will help you tell Mr. Biden to appoint four decent, hard-working Americans to our USPS Board of Governors (the Board has six Governors total), so that they can fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and institute some actual reforms, versus the DeJoy "reforms" that have led to longer wait times for mail. (As an aside, you've heard that Mr. DeJoy was a logistics executive, but don't assume that means he knows anything about logistics. Executives don't know anything about anything but redistributing income upward from their workers to themselves.) We don't need Post Office privatization, so that big corporations can give us far worse service while bleeding us for more money. We need a Post Office that serves good Americans, and Mr. Biden can begin to achieve that goal by appointing decent human beings to our USPS Board of Governors. So let's get to it.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and another polluting pipeline.

The Biden Administration apparently wants to get the American Rescue Plan through Congress badly enough that they put Vice President Harris on TV in Arizona and West Virginia (from which recalcitrant "moderate" Senators Sinema and Manchin hail) to plug the plan. Hence you may want to call your Reps and Senators (you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page -- or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone -- to find their phone numbers) and tell them how you feel about the plan. You may want to tell them that you want to keep the American Rescue Plan's $15/hour minimum wage, paid family leave, expanded funding for testing and vaccination, and expanded funding to states and localities, plus you'd add $2,000 checks every month and higher enhanced unemployment benefits, and you'd pay for it by repealing the CARES Act's massive hedge fund tax cut, plus a 55% tax on corporate profits and capital gains over $1 million and a 91% tax on income over $1 million. Hey, they're only supposed to negotiate with us!

While you've got your Senators on the phone, go ahead and tell them to convict Donald Trump of the incitement impeachment charge, and punish him by barring him from ever running for office again. Hey, actions have consequences! Or were conservatives lying every time they ever told us that? We're told we won't get very many Republican votes to convict, but duty is duty, and I don't just mean our duty to express our will, I mean the Senators' duty to do their job! You may be thinking that the failure of President Andrew Johnson's impeachment in the 1860s was "not that big a deal," but nothing could be further from the truth! When the Senate failed (by one vote!) to remove President Johnson, they signaled that America was done working to heal the damage caused by slavery; not long thereafter, Jim Crow flourished in the South, which meant another hundred years of direct damage to black folks in America. Surely our Senators don't want to be on the wrong side of history yet again.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster now. As you know, I've said for many years that we need to reform the filibuster, by making Senators actually hold the floor and talk for 30 hours like Jimmy Stewart does in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, rather than simply signal their intention not to cut off debate and promptly go out to dinner or the theater. I don't regret saying that -- I was telling the truth as best I understood it at the time. But Republicans have abused the filibuster over the last dozen years or so, such that even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama as President couldn't pass simply because Republicans still had 47 or 45 or 41 Senators, and (this is important!) because Republicans acted as a body in doing so, and because our "liberal" media did such a bad job covering these matters, no Republican Senator ever suffered for their obstruction. Actions have consequences, after all -- but Republican Senators won't suffer them unless we abolish the filibuster.

Finally, President Biden reversed former President Trump's Executive Order allowing further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which effectively killed it, and no, I will not entertain yowling about TEH NINETIEZ THOUSANDZ OFZ TEH JOBZ LOSTZ!!!!!, because building pipelines that pollute our water table is not the only way to create jobs. Why, building out a national renewable energy grid would create a lot of jobs! But I digress, perhaps. The Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota would, if completed, spur many similar concerns about clean water and pipeline safety -- why, it was a mere 10 years ago that an Enbridge pipeline ruptured and caused the largest inland oil spill ever in America, ensuring that 40 square miles of the Kalamazoo watershed would be, ah, flavored with oil. Hence both Daily Kos and 350 Local Group Network help you tell President Biden to put an end to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline as well. Hate to pile on, but Native American groups also oppose Line 3; maybe they get a say, too?

Action: concerning voting rights, banksters, and our Postal Service.

Hard to believe, Harry, but Georgia state legislators want to require their bosses, the voters, to submit two copies of a photo ID in order to vote absentee. So what's wrong with signature matching, then? Signature matching didn't prevent Joe Biden from winning Georgia and Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff from winning the Senate runoffs, that's what. Georgia legislators can talk all they want about how "their constituents feel" that last election wasn't "secure," but, ah, I'll just say it: fuck your feelings. Apparently a state audit finding zero instances of fraud in Georgia absentee ballots just can't stack up next to some weakling's "feelings." So: Gov. Kemp's phone number is 404.656.1776, while Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan's number is 404.463.2478 and House Speaker David Ralston's number is 404.656.5020. Go ahead and call them and tell them to reject the sore loser bill, SB 29. Really! Feel absolutely free to call it that!

Meanwhile, a bankster hedge fund named Melvin Capital Management started short-selling GameStop stock, figuring that the mall-based electronics retailer was a one-handed push away from falling off a cliff -- but then Reddit users started buying up the stock, which drove up the price, which left the hedge fund holding the bag. In other words, regular folks pulled off a glorious piece of resistance against Wall Street hegemony, although you just know banksters will look to stop any future such actions in the next domestic terrorism bill. Strange how they feel "terrorized" by any attempt to keep them from sucking billions of dollars out of corporations like the vampires they are. So now's a good time to call your Reps and Senators (you can find their phone numbers using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page -- or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) and tell them one simple message: no bailouts for Melvin Capital. Because you know their hands are out!

Finally, Change.org helps you tell our Congressfolk to save our U.S. Postal Service. And of course Change.org allows you to write a short message along with signing the petition, and that's an opportunity you shouldn't waste, since so many evil people (cough most of the USPS Board of Governors and the Postmaster General cough) think "saving our Post Office" means privatizing it so some crony or other can get even richer. What should we do to help save our Post Office? Kill all the changes Postmaster General DeJoy proposed; repeal the law requiring our Post Office to prepay an absurd amount of money annually into its pension fund; allow our Post Office to offer basic banking services like check-cashing, bill payment, ATMs, and electronic money transfers. Particularly since in those urban and rural areas where the banksters won't go, good Americans too often find themselves at the mercy of payday lenders. Only a Scrooge McSmallgovernment could oppose any of these things! Which reminds me, someone go ask Rand Paul about them. I'm sure that'll be a laugh.

Action: concerning COVID relief and concentration camps.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a "robust" COVID-19 relief bill. You may want to edit their email, given that our more cowardly Congressfolk are whining about the deficit, which they never do when contemplating corporate welfare handouts, but always do when contemplating serving actual bosses, the American people. But hey, we're all about solutions, too. So you can go ahead and tell them that you want $2,000 checks every month until the pandemic's been over for three months, plus enhanced unemployment benefits, plus a $15/hour minimum wage -- and that you would help pay for it by repealing the CARES Act's massive hedge fund tax cut, plus a 55% tax on corporate profits and capital gains over $1 million and a 91% tax on income over $1 million. They say liberals never ask how we're going to pay for things, so go ahead and prove them wrong.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden's been very, very busy issuing Executive Orders just to undo the damage of all of Donald Trump's Executive Orders -- but he has thus far failed to get rid of the Trumpian concentration camps full of asylum-seekers and other immigrant families. You may well find yourself hesitating at the thought, not because you want people in concentration camps, but because it takes time to fix things right. But even if we set aside our conviction that justice must be done now, I think such concerns would be misplaced -- these concentration camps are dirty and overcrowded, and that's before we get to the fact that we're still in the middle of a pandemic that shows no signs of abating; you might well conclude, then, that releasing the folks in ICE camps isn't just the right thing to do, but the pragmatic thing to do. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell President Biden to release families from ICE concentration camps immediately.

Action: concerning the filibuster, impeachment, and Fox News.

In light of the news that Senate Democrats won't get rid of the filibuster right away, you may want to call your Senators and tell them how you feel about that. Leave it to Mob Boss Mitch himself to accidentally tell us why we should get rid of the filibuster, in saying that getting rid of it would "destroy() the Senate as we know it" and turn it into a "scorched-earth Senate." You mean a "scorched-earth Senate" like the ones we had from 2008 to 2020, where no policy initiative that smelled of liberal cooties could pass because Mitch McConnell and Republicans would either filibuster it or refuse to give it a hearing? That sounds like a "Senate as we know it" we must "destroy." Yes, we could keep the filibuster if we made Senators actually speak until they're blue in the face, like we did in the old days. But I've said that a hundred times if I've said it once, and like most Americans, I'm so, so done with politicians who don't listen.

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of our House's impeachment charge and ban him from ever running for office in America again. The trial doesn't start for another week and a half or so, but it's never too early, and for once we've seen all the evidence of our President's criminal behavior we need to see on TV! Many Trumpholes will tell you that the attempted coup of January 6 "wasn't such a big deal," but just because this particular group of seditionists bollocksed it up so badly (taking selfies, posting to social media, etc.), that doesn't mean the next group of seditionists won't do a whole lot better, and frankly we've got to strangle this particular baby in its crib before it grows into an obese, rage-filled manchild. Some of the folks voting on this matter probably remember that fairly acutely -- or would, if they weren't so terrified of a primary challenge. Well, no one said being a Senator was easy. I mean, leadership roles never are, nor should be.

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell a bunch of corporations to stop advertising with Fox News already. Fox News's decades-long trail of slime surely requires no summary, but certainly their recent actions -- advertising stupid "election fraud" theories, claiming that the January 6 attempted coup was somehow the work of antifa and not the right-wingers everyone could see doing it -- should spur big corporations to fear the Big Stick of Bad PR, as wielded by their customers. No, big corporations shouldn't "reach out" to the Fox News audience. The name of the game now isn't "reaching out" to right-wingers; the name of the game now is isolating them, until they finally feel the shame they've so richly earned. Then we can be all Parable of the Prodigal Son with them. Until then? Not so much as a Subaru ad on Fox News.

Action: concerning D.C. statehood and the filibuster.

You haven't forgotten about that little attempted coup from almost three weeks ago, have you? Well, as many observers have pointed out, if Washington, D.C. were a state, it'd have its own National Guard and wouldn't have had so much trouble repelling Y'all Qaeda from our Capitol. Republicans despise the idea of D.C. becoming a state, even though it has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming and almost as many as North Dakota or Alaska. Of course, Sen. Cotton (A-AK) thinks D.C. is entirely composed of lobbyists, which will surprise the hundreds of thousands of good citizens who've been living and working there all their lives, and Sen. Daines (R-MT) seems to think they're not "real people." Hate to pile on, but D.C. doesn't just suffer under "taxation without representation," as their license plates say -- they suffer under higher taxation than nearly half our states. Hence Free DC and Demand Progress help you tell your Reps and Senators to make Washington, D.C. our 51st state.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell Democratic Senate Majority Leader Schumer to reject Minority Leader McConnell's demand that Democrats preserve the filibuster during this session. I've long been against getting rid of the filibuster, and I could just restate my case again now off the top of my head, but fuck it -- 14 years is a long time to watch Republicans nullify the popular will again and again by stamping their feet and refusing to help pass even the mildest reforms. More than one observer has said that it's be a meaningless pledge anyway, since Democrats could still change the rules mid-session, but Democrats are also exactly the kind of politicians to "take the pledge seriously" so they'll have an excuse for not getting anything done, and then when they get buried by QAnon candidates in the 2022 midterms, they'll blame the liberals again. So lets do our best to deprive them of this stratagem.

UPDATE. Late last night, Sen. McConnell dropped his demand for a Democratic pledge to keep the filibuster -- because Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) have publicly expressed their opposition to the idea. In a completely unrelated note, Sen. Manchin's D.C. phone number is 202.224.3954, and Sen. Sinema's is 202.224.4521. If you agreed with them once, as I did, you may want to describe why you changed your mind. You don't have to say "fuck it," like I did above.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, voting rights, and gerrymandering.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass President Biden's COVID relief plan, which he's dubbed the "American Rescue Plan." You can edit the Coalition's sample email to say the following things: one, that the stimulus payment should be $2,000, not $1,400, because that's what Democrats promised and you need to keep your promises. Two, the plan should include massive tax hikes on corporate profits and millionaire income. Three, your Reps and Senators should pass the American Rescue Plan via budget reconciliation -- literally no one in America cares more about "working with Republicans" than doing good works, and Republicans didn't care about the deficit when they gave the rich yet another tax cut and dumped $500 billion in corporate welfare on bankster cronies in the CARES Act; now that we're spending money to help people get well and get back to work, why should we care what they say?

Meanwhile, now's as good a time as any to tell your Senators to convict Donald Trump on the impeachment charge the House will transmit today. Mitch McConnell, ever the dogged obstructor, got an extra two-week delay out of Democrats to consider this charge, and surely they hope they can count on people just not being as mad that our President instigated a riot for the express purpose of overturning the election he lost by seven million votes. But seriously, if we're going to call that "just politics," then maybe this particular democratic experiment has failed -- when you do something that disgusting an awful, you should pay for it, at the very least by being barred from running for any kind of elective office again. And don't let right-wingers gaslight you about "the left's obsession with Donald Trump." How strange that we can't just let sedition go! And how "law and order" of Republicans to insist that we do!

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. The For the People Act, as you know, would mandate campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, and automatic voter registration, plus it would prohibit states from using those stupid junk-mail-looking "address verification forms" that they only ever seem to use to de-register folks of color. The bill would also mandate 15 days of early voting for federal elections and make states use independent commissions to redraw districts. Remember: if your friend or neighbor calls this a "Democrat power grab," he has no claim to "being independent" or "hating both sides." And he should, at least, wonder why Democrats would benefit from making voting easier. It couldn't be that Republicans benefit bigly from vote suppression, could it?

Finally, the Pennsylvania state legislature is still mulling HB 38, which would turn statewide judicial elections into regional ones, and thus elect judges from regions of the state -- as if judges represent districts the way legislators do. Judges represent the law, period. You may wonder why the legislature wants to do something so inside-baseball to judicial elections. The reason is simple: Democrats have five out of seven seats on the state Supreme Court, and Republicans don't like it, because that Supreme Court threw out the Republican gerrymander of the last decade (just so happens Democrats and Republicans now hold an equal number of Pennsylvania's U.S. House seats!) and also ruled that Rep. Kelly's lawsuit over the 2020 election was bunkum. So you could call HB 38 a "judicial gerrymandering" bill, or you could call it a sore loser bill. Either way, the ACLU helps you tell your PA House Reps to reject HB 38.

Action: concerning voting rights and sore losers.

The Voting Rights Advancement Act would fill the hole in the Voting Rights Act gouged out by our Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. The Voting Rights Act gave our Justice Department the ability to reject discriminatory voting law changes in several Southern states; our Supreme Court found that discriminatory against Southern states, many of which rushed to change voting rights laws after the ruling, but the Voting Rights Advancement Act would give our Justice Department the ability to reject discriminatory voting law changes in any state or locality that's demonstrated a hostility to voting rights, no matter where in the country they are. The only folks who would object to that are folks who want Republicans to suppress the vote and thus win elections -- Republicans won't win very many more fair elections, given how much they've thrown in with the folks who tried to destroy our country earlier this month. So go ahead and call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass the VRAA.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state House plans to vote on HB 38, the "sore loser" bill, next week. Why do I call it the "sore loser" bill? Because the bill aims to gerrymander the state judiciary, which our legislature finds insufficiently Republican, due to Republicans not winning judiciary elections. And how would it accomplish that? By changing the state constitution so that judges "represent" regions of the state, even state Supreme Court judges who are the last court of appeals for all Pennsylvania residents. And then the Republican-dominated legislature would carve out judicial "districts" that would more reliably return Republicans to the state bench, just as they carved out judicial districts that reliably returned Republicans to U.S. House seats -- until 2018, when our state Supreme Court stepped in and remade those districts so they better-respected town and county lines and didn't resemble Rorschach blots. Fair Districts PA helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject the "sore loser" bill, HB 38.

Action: concerning COVID relief, accountability, and pollution.

So, Joe Biden gets inaugurated President today, and he's released a broad outline of a COVID-related stimulus plan, which has much to recommend it, and much that needs improvement. So go ahead and read all about it, and then use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and call your Reps and Senators and tell them what you think. On the plus side: a $15/hour minimum wage, expanded tax credits for working families, 14 weeks of paid family leave for folks dealing with closed schools, $160 billion for expanded testing and vaccination, and $350 billion for states and localities (that's in addition to education funding). On the minus side: stimulus checks need to be $2,000, not $1,400; enhanced unemployment insurance needs to be $600 monthly, not $400; and money earmarked for small businesses had better not turn into corporate welfare this time. I don't know how they'll fund it, but go ahead and tell them to fund it by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy (while keeping tax cuts for working folks, since those are the ones that'll expire soon!).

Meanwhile, you can tell your Senators (while you have them on the phone about the Biden stimulus plan) to convict Donald Trump on our House's impeachment charges and ensure he'll never able to run for any kind of elective office again. Mitch McConnell has said lately that his Republican colleagues' vote will be a "vote of conscience," but really they should convict on the strength of the case against him, and that crime did go down in broad daylight, after all. Now, quite a few Republican Senators may vote to acquit because (as some of their House colleagues told reporters last week) they're literally afraid Mr. Trump's followers will kill them and/or their families. Now, anyone who'd kill or threaten a Senator or their family members should be locked up, obviously, but if you want to be a legislator, you have to do the right thing, and doing the right thing takes guts. Your job title is "Senator," not "Senator except for impeachment votes against politicians with insane followers." You don't see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez run for the hills after all the death threats and rape threats she gets, do you?

I really hope to wind down with coup-related action alerts soon, but here's one more: both Free Press and Daily Kos help you tell big corporations to stop donating to the 147 Congressfolk who voted to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results. This Gang of 147 didn't vote to overturn their own election results, you may have noticed! As it happens, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, and Google all decided to "pause" their campaign contributions in the wake of the January 6 attempted coup, but we need a little bit more from them than that: we need them to stop contributing to them, and we need to wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against them, a stick which we know well will hurt. Do you worry that Republicans will just find someone worse, and big corporations will just give money to them? Then you turn the Big Stick of Bad PR on them again until they relent. Besides, Republicans are going to have a hard time recovering from the PR black eye they've deservedly gotten over this coup attempt. And ain't no Nelson Rockefellers coming to rescue them.

Finally, Data for Progress helps you tell soon-to-be-President Biden to issue an Executive Order mandating that our federal government buy more sustainable and made-in-America goods. He can do this without having to run to The One American Super-President Mitch McConnell or The One Great Hope for Moderation and Unity Joe Manchin, and most people will appreciate it. Government's going to buy American? About time! And only rageheads don't like the idea of sustainable production. Now, Data for Progress sells this initiative as a way to fight climate change, which it is (no, really, buying American means less energy expended to send goods across the globe), but frankly it's a good initiative for other reasons, too. For example, buying more American goods helps save American jobs, and buying more sustainable goods means less pollution. And our government's going to have its work cut out for it, as you know, so the more American jobs we save, and the less we pollute in getting America restarted, the better.

Action: concerning sedition and war on Yemen.

H.Res. 25 would command our House Ethics Committee to investigate any sitting Congressperson who might have aided and abetted the January 6 attempted coup. Just so happens that one of the coup's organizers -- one Ali Alexander, apparently a star of social media who will not otherwise be remembered in a hundred years -- now says he "schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting" with three U.S. House Reps: Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Mo Brooks of Alabama, while one witness has accused Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) of giving Capitol tours to rioters in the days before the attempted coup. "Investigating whether the coup was an inside job" sure does sound like a job for our Congressfolk! Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your House Reps to hold seditionists accountable by passing H.Res. 25. Don't brook any silliness about "unity" and "healing" and "looking forward" -- if no one pays for this, they'll just do it again and again.

Speaking of "looking forward," you may be exhausted enough from this Administration that you'll just be happy when they're gone, but fact is our President is on tape asking why Georgia's Secretary of State couldn't just find him 11,000-plus votes, and when you break the law, you should be punished. At least, that's what all his votaries say when black people break the law (and also when they don't!), but we've documented their blind spot pretty well over the years. Hence Daily Kos also helps you tell our government to investigate and charge our soon-to-be-ex-President for soliciting election fraud. Again, his votaries will tell you only "those people" commit election fraud, though the data tells us otherwise. Perhaps they'll also tell you he was "just joking," though "just joking" is how boys, not men, hide behind their wrongdoing, and if everyone was in on the joke, how come Georgia Republicans decided to tape the call? Soon they'll blame this on antifa, too.

In other news, Color of Change helps you tell the Chicago Police Board to fire Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara for his recent remarks supporting the January 6 seditionists. Just so happens the Board is already investigating Mr. Catanzara for various posts on Facebook, including one in which he said Muslims were "savages they all deserve a bullet" (sic), but last week he said he "get(s)" and "share(s)" the seditionists' "frustration," and he also suggested that "the worst crime here is trespassing," which is kind of like having it both ways. Pretty much anyone still not in thrall to this President (as Mr. Catanzaro apparently is) disagrees with all of those assessments, and really, more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that too many of our law enforcement officers will side with racists and seditionists when the heat is on. That means it's well past time to start rooting out the rot.

Finally, Win Without War helps you tell President-elect Biden to reverse our government's recent labeling of the Yemeni Houthis a terrorist organization. Our current President seems desperate to screw up as much as possible on the way out the door -- I half-expect toilets removed and kitchen cabinets pulled down -- and so it goes with this designation, which could choke off humanitarian aid to some 20 million good Yemenis regardless of whatever the Houthis have done. One could interpret this designation as a sop to Saudi Arabia, which really doesn't need any more sugar than we already give them, and a way of putting pressure on Iran, which wouldn't be necessary without the stupid Iraq War and which in any case the nuclear deal was already doing until this President pulled out of it for no damn good reason. I know Mr. Biden will have a lot on his plate (though, really, he's not going to be doing it alone!), but stupid people should not get all the say about everything, and shouldn't get to cause people to die, either.

Action: concerning government spying and gerrymandering.

Assholes-with-guns took over our Capitol last week, aiming to nullify the will of the voters -- and you know what that means: it means more government spying legislation! After all, when has "anti-terror" legislation ever gone wrong? Besides always, I mean. Has the USA PATRIOT Act made us safer? Has the FISA Amendments Act made us safer? How about NSA data-vacuuming? And, more to the point, did any of those things prevent a bunch of Nazi wannabes from plotting a coup on social media in broad daylight? No, of course not -- our government is more preoccupied with abusing its powers against Black Lives Matter protestors. Never does a catastrophe happen without our government demanding more power to spy on innocent Americans. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any broad new government spying authority. The Capitol coup is not a clarion call for more spying powers and more of our tax dollars.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature is actually trying to gerrymander judicial seats! HB 38 aims to create "districts" that particular state judges (including state Supreme Court judges) would "represent." Why? Simple: because five of seven judges on our state Supreme Court are Democrats, who've made a lot of trouble for Republicans by un-gerrymandering U.S. House districts and slapping down frivolous election lawsuits, to name just two good works, so our legislators want to retaliate by creating more Rorschach-blot districts that'll reliably pump out Republican judges. HB 38's pretty damn convoluted (it'd ultimately put a Constitutional amendment before the voters), but the machinations aren't as important as the simple fact that this is a sore loser bill. Maybe Republicans should try winning some elections, amirite? Hence Common Cause helps you write a letter-to-the-editor of your local paper opposing HB 38. And remember: in your letter, make sure you call it a "sore loser" bill.

Action: concerning impeachment.

So our House has impeached our President, again; the first thing that comes to mind is only 10 Republicans? and the second is only twice? And now I think you should call Speaker Pelosi, at 202.225.4965 and tell her to transmit the impeachment charges to the Senate immediately -- and then call Senate Majority Leader McConnell, at 202.224.2541, and tell him to reconvene the Senate immediately so they can try the charges immediately. Then call your two Senators and tell them to convict and remove this President.

I know the reasons folks argue for delay, chief among them that the impeachment would more likely succeed once the two Georgia Senators get sworn in, that Joe Biden needs Cabinet appointees installed, and, well, that our current President left a hell of a mess and broke all the shovels. But the time to do justice is always now. And it doesn't seem to me all that difficult for Senators to do more than one thing at a time; being a Senator is actually supposed to be work, you know. And we all saw what happened; it shouldn't be that tough to conclude that a sitting President instigating a riot in order to overturn an election he lost fits the definition of "high crime" like a glove. And if he could pull that shit two weeks before his term ends, what can he pull in the handful of days remaining to him?

And, lastly, do not brook any silliness about the need for "healing" and "unity," particularly when it comes from folks like Ted Cruz, who spend all their time hurting and dividing good Americans.

Good luck, and God bless.

UPDATE. Sen. McConnell's phone number isn't working. How strange. Go to his Senate website and you can find other (though local to Kentucky) phone numbers.

Action: concerning voting rights and accountability.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, is back, and you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're viewing it on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Reps' and Senators' phone numbers so you can call them and tell them to pass it. The For the People Act would (among many other things!) institute same-day and automatic voter registration nationally, prohibit states from using returned and non-forwardable mailings (or failure to vote in previous elections) to deregister voters, curtail (though not end) the practice of using felony convictions to disenfranchise good Americans, require states to use voter-verifiable paper ballots, require 15 days of early voting for all federal elections, let voters file affidavits in lieu of voter ID, make states use independent commissions to redraw their legislative districts, and require disclosure of campaign contributions over $10,000. So let's patiently review Republican objections to this bill -- nah, just kidding; their objections will be TEH SOSHULIZM!!!! and TEH POWER GRABZ!!!!!, just like they were last time. Republicans might try doing good works on behalf of their constituents if they're so afraid the For the People Act will take their power away.

Also, the House will vote on impeaching our soon-to-be-ex-President today, so while you have your Reps on the phone about H.R. 1, you might want to remind them to impeach him. Our President incited those morons who tried to take over our country last week, and he did it because he lost an election by seven million votes and because almost every single one of his 60-plus frivolous lawsuits died in court, many of these before right-wing judges. Inciting a riot is a crime, and inciting a riot to overturn an election you lost is about as precise a definition of "high crime" as I can imagine. Now, Republicans have been talking a lot about unity lately -- these are the same clowns who constantly hurt us and then constantly point to those other people as the reason we're hurt! They say we shouldn't impeach this President because we have to hold the country together. One more time: we do not "unify" with evil. Here's how "unity" works: sane people realize we have more in common with each other than we thought, and then we unify to keep stupid batshit whiners from destroying our civilization with another well-armed tantrum. And getting rid of the ringleader of the stupid batshit whiners is where we start.

Action: concerning voting rights in Georgia.

Now that Democrats have won the Presidential election and both Senate runoff elections in Georgia, Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp wants to add a photo ID requirement for absentee ballots, knowing full well that folks without said photo ID (or the money to get photo ID) will more likely be the seniors and folks of color who vote against his party. Signature matching for absentee ballots (and for regular ballots) works fine everywhere in America, but still, some unnamed whiny diaper-loaded right-wing brats have "concerns," and if we know anything about conservatism, it's all about giving juice boxes to folks with bruised egos after rejections they obviously deserved. Anyway, the logic of Mr. Kemp's position is nonexistent -- on one hand, the Georgia election ran great, but on the other hand, we need photo IDs for absentee ballots because fraud. (Mr. Kemp also says he's "reserving judgement" on a bunch of other proposed voting restrictions, which means he absolutely favors them but doesn't have the guts to say so because he knows it'll make him even more unpopular.)

So y'all know what that means! Gov. Kemp's phone number is 404.656.1776 (1776? Really? Look at me, I'm so much more patriotic than you!), while Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan's number is 404.463.2478 and House Speaker David Ralston's number is 404.656.5020. In your call, you might say the following: "I oppose getting rid of signature matching for absentee ballots, which until today, apparently, everyone in Georgia said worked well in this past election. I also oppose proposals that would restrict at-will absentee balloting and eliminate ballot drop boxes. You should be aware that adopting these proposals, in the name of so-called 'reform,' would make you look exactly like the kind of sore losers right-wingers always say their opponents are, and I would think you'd want to avoid that look." Seriously, we have no need to be civil with these folks, since they only love democracy when it gives them the results they want.

I'm going to continue to minimize the commentary for a while, but I haven't been this angry about politics since Mr. Bush's first term; every day brings some fresh new humiliation from the people who only want to injure the country we love, and injure us. And it won't be over when Mr. Biden finally becomes President; his own nose for the "middle ground" between moderates and right-wing extremists is well-known, but I think we're going to face a lot more right-wing domestic terror attacks in the coming years, and politicians aren't known for their courage to begin with, so they'll legitimize the attacks (they'll say the "feelings" behind the attacks, but that's a meaningless distinction), a courtesy they only ever extend to white people. One thing is for sure: as far as legislation's concerned, Republicans get nothing. I don't care if they have 50 Senators; we treat them like they have zero, and we swamp their phone lines until they can't ignore us. I'm tired of stupid people getting all the say about everything -- much more tired than I was the last time I said it.

Action: concerning accountability.

Another day, another reminder to call your House Reps and tell them to impeach our soon-to-be-ex-President, and then call your Senators and tell them to convict him. I've already said that incitement to riot is a crime, and incitement to riot so you can overturn the election you lost and thus tell 81 million Americans they don't mean a damn is a "high crime." Some folks ask why do it, then, if he'll be out of office in less than 10 days. "He could pull something even worse in less than 10 days" is certainly one answer. Here's another one: convicting him of a high crime -- which doesn't necessarily have to happen before January 20 -- would mean he could never hold public office in America again. Now that sure is worth the effort! Otherwise, let's crystal-ball 2024: he runs, Republicans are powerless to stop him from winning the primary, and depending on how things are going, he could win the general election again. And then the repugnant becomes "cool" again. Let's avoid that.

Speaking of repugnant, why not also call Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) at 202.224.6154 and Ted Cruz (R-TX) at 202.224.5922 and tell them to resign immediately? I don't think you have any need to explain yourself -- you can just say, "resign. You know why." Maybe we could successfully jail either one for sedition, I don't know, though I sure wouldn't go destroying any emails or phone records if I were them! And maybe we can get the Senate to expel them on the "disorderly behavior" standard; censure sure as hell ain't worth a damn. But a crap-ton of phone calls to their offices demanding their resignation will bring shame upon them they can't ignore. They've already gotten some of that: two major Missouri newspapers have called for Mr. Hawley's resignation, and Mr. Cruz has been so shaken that he's now all kumbaya about "unity" and "healing." But they should resign in shame, and if they don't (and if we can't get them out another way), we should never mention them again without also calling them objectively anti-democracy. (Change.org also provides a petition calling for Mr. Cruz's resignation.)

Finally, speaking of resignations, Media Justice helps you demand that Mark Zuckerberg resign as Facebook's CEO. This dude did nothing to stop the spread of Nazism and propaganda on social media in America -- OK, actually, he did worse than nothing, by allowing Facebook algorithms to automatically help white nationalist assholes find each other and plan mayhem. Plus dig his offensive invocation of TEH FREEZ SPEECHEZ!!!! to defend his inaction. True, he's lately banned QAnon-types from Facebook, but (to quote an obscure philosopher) that's a little like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children. And, again for the back row, racist algorithms! To be honest, I'd be OK with Facebook allowing its users to post racist filth privately, i.e., by users only to friends, or certain groups of friends; let those friends check them, as they would in real life! But Facebook allows all manner of racist filth to be posted publicly, and in the absence of laws that would hold them accountable, we need to hold the boss accountable. Hey, it comes with being the boss.

UPDATE. And Change.org also provides a petition which helps you call for Sen. Hawley's resignation.

Action: shame, impeach, convict, remove.

I'd figured that yesterday would be annoying and irritating because a bunch of Republican Congressfolk staged a big drama about the Electoral Vote certification. But like most people I'm at a bit of a loss to imagine the machinations of the insane, so I was of course surprised that the day was much worse than that, even though, in retrospect, it shouldn't have been that surprising. At least Congress -- clearly embarrassed and perhaps even terrified by the rage many of them have spent their entire careers stoking -- didn't have the heart to drag the certification out longer than a calendar day. But we have important business to conduct. First, call your Reps and demand they impeach our soon-to-be-ex-President, then call your Senators and demand that they convict and remove him from office. Incitement to riot is a crime, after all, and I would think our Founders would agree that when you've incited a riot in an effort to overturn an election you lost, you've certainly committed a "high crime" as described by our Constitution. Second, Sum of Us helps you tell big corporations including Microsoft, Capitol One, and AT&T to stop bankrolling the Republican politicians who have stoked the rage that boiled over yesterday. If these clowns didn't get their money from big corporations, they'd have a lot more trouble winning elections, after all. And, really, what's the upside for corporations? Is that big corporate tax cut they got out of this President worth what happened yesterday?

I wish I'd done more to make our country the kind of country where this couldn't happen, but first and foremost I blame the people who burst into the Capitol building. They will very likely learn, one day, that they have wasted their precious lives, and I expect they won't learn it in time to do anything about it. I sincerely hope this thought gives me less pleasure as time goes on.

Action: concerning COVID relief and corruption.

You've no doubt heard by now that the "stimulus" bill Congress has agreed to pass includes the return of the 100% three-martini lunch tax break. These are truly irredeemable people "representing" us in Congress -- who looks at millions of jobs lost and millions of folks without health insurance and millions of folks about to get evicted and says hey, I know what'll fix this: let's max out the three-martini lunch tax break? Actually, we do know one person who says that: our soon-to-be-ex-President; it sure is nice to see him locking in on the important things as 300,000-plus Americans lay dead. I say call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to reject this "stimulus" bill until the three-martini lunch tax break is removed like the cancer on our society it is. Don't worry that "people will get hurt." The only people who'll get hurt by such a rejection will be the Reps and Senators who'll have to stick around until they get this bill right -- which they could do, as I've said more than once over the last seven months, simply by passing the HEROES Act.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt also heard that almost half of the more than $1.25 billion raised by our soon-to-be-ex-President's re-election campaign somehow got diverted to a shell corporation run by our soon-to-be-ex-President's daughter-in-law and Vice President Pence's nephew. This diversion just so happened to help the campaign dodge campaign finance disclosure rules, which is a shame, since the few individuals who know where the money all went sure are tight-lipped about it. You'd be tempted to think this is the thing that finally weans his supporters from him, but of course you'd be wrong again, not that I'd blame you for hoping. No, nothing, not even him stealing their own damn money, will ever prompt our soon-to-be-ex-President's votaries to reject him; he makes them feel so good about the pain they inflict on others, after all. But Public Citizen helps you tell the campaign to reveal exactly where that money's going. They don't care, especially now, but when we confront people over their wrongdoing, we always win, at the very least by exposing their evil to the light.

I expect I'll be posting much less until the new year, and so I wish all my readers a happy, prosperous, and peaceful holiday season. I'm grateful to you for reading, but I'm more grateful to you for being the best Americans you can be; keep it up, because your country will need you more than ever in 2021.

UPDATE. I wrote this post before both Houses of Congress rammed through the stimulus bill mentioned in the first paragraph, but go ahead and call them and tell them to strike the offending provision anyway. It never hurts to let them know how you feel.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, Administration incompetence, and our "liberal" media.

You've heard, perhaps, that Congress is thisclose to passing a COVID relief deal -- and you've likely also heard that this "deal" will contain no money for states and localities and stimulus and unemployment relief amounting to half of what we got under the CARES Act, while bringing back all of the CARES Act's corporate welfare. Here's what we should do in response: call our Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act! Now that was a stimulus bill, and our House passed it seven months ago (remember that the next time you hear your right-wing uncle cry that TEH DIMOCRATZ AREZ HOLDINGZ UPZ TEH BILLZ!!!!), and the HEROES Act would fund states and localities, fund COVID testing and tracing, fund unemployment benefits at the level of the CARES Act, repeal the big hedge fund manager tax cut given out by the CARES Act, and give working Americans bigger stimulus checks than the CARES Act. Bigger than whatever this Congress tries to pass this week, too! So don't think you just have to take whatever Congress dishes out, and certainly don't act like you do.

Meanwhile, you've likely also heard that states are getting many, many fewer doses of the Pfizer vaccine than they thought they were getting, and our Administration, being the very embodiment of leadership and accountability, apologized for getting that wrong. Nah, I kid -- this Administration has not accounted for itself to the states, but our HHS Secretary has blamed Pfizer for the foul-up, which naturally they deny, saying they have millions of doses ready to go but have heard nothing from our Administration, whose nominal head seems to spend most of his time on Twitter savaging fellow Republicans and spreading even more lies about "voter fraud." This, as more Americans die from COVID each day than died from the 9/11 attacks, which were, as I recall, a Damascus moment for a whole generation of right-wingers! Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our Administration to get its act together and get folks the vaccines they need. Yeah, I know, this Administration doesn't ever seem to listen when we tell them to do their damn job, but they ignore us in the hope we'll go away. But after they're gone, we'll still be here.

Finally, you may have heard, from our "liberal" media, that Venezuela has fallen upon economic hard times -- but you may not have heard, from our "liberal" media, that one of the main reasons good Venezuelans have it so bad is that our government has imposed sanctions upon them for years! One of FAIR's recent email missives catches the New York Times doing this very thing earlier this month, describing how Venezuela's midterm elections went yet again for the United Socialist Party to which Messrs. Chavez and Maduro belong (again, after opposition parties boycotted the election; maybe our Republican party will start getting similar ideas in America?) and describing the "deep economic challenges" Venezuela faces without mentioning American sanctions as one of them. Make no mistake: just as our "liberal" media seemed sanguine toward Brazil's irredeemable asshole of a President because he'd be "good for business," they hate folks like Mr. Maduro because they won't turn over their economies to multinational corporations. The link above helps you encourage the Times to correct the record.

Action: concerning government spying and bird-killing.

Reps. Gabbard (D-HI) and Massie (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 8970, the Protect Our Civil Liberties Act, which would repeal both the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, two laws which dishonor us and injure our civilization every day they're left on the books. H.R. 8970 would also ban retaliation against whistleblowers who expose government spying and ban the kind of "back doors" our government is always pressuring software developers to build into their privacy software. Getting a warrant from a judge was good enough for over 200 years, but then an incompetent Administration (George W. Bush's, this time) took over and failed dismally in its duty to protect good Americans from terrorist attacks; their attempts to "fix" their mistakes haven't just made us less safe, they've made us less free, and Osama bin Laden laughs at us from beyond the grave. So call your Reps and Senators and tell them to undo these injuries and pass this bill; they'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, our soon-to-be-departed Administration has proposed gutting the long-standing Migratory Bird Treaty Act by letting corporations off the hook whenever they "incidentally" kill birds with their drilling and construction practices. If you've ever seen birds get electrocuted by high wires or trapped under fishing nets, you know this is a real thing, and if you question whether big corporations should really be punished for killing birds when they don't actually intend to kill birds, note well that involuntary manslaughter is a crime in America and that polluters who don't "intend" to befoul our air and water still face punishment. And, you know, this Administration wasn't very good at changing the rules when they had all the time in the world; what's the chance they'll be good at it now that they're rushing? Environmental Action helps you tell our Fish and Wildlife Service to reject its own proposal to let big corporations off the hook yet again for their unlawful damage to birds.

Action: concerning political appointees and poll worker safety.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell President-elect Biden to fire all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's right-wing appointees to federal positions, then Progress America still helps you do that. Too harsh? Not "bipartisan" enough? Not "helping America heal" enough? How can America heal if all the people in our government who live to destroy our government are still there? How can our Post Office get back on its feet if Louis DeJoy still runs it? How can Social Security serve seniors and disabled Americans if Andrew Saul gums up the works? How can our CFPB protect good Americans from financial predators if Kathy Kraninger won't even let our CFPB issue regulations? How can our IRS catch tax cheats if Charles Rettig acts so obviously like a Presidential crony? How can we root out government wrongdoing if our Inspectors General are all Presidential loyalists? If President Biden can't root out this evil in our government, we're going to have a long four or eight years, folks. But my Spider-sense tells me he won't even try unless he hears from us, in numbers that cannot be mistaken.

Meanwhile, early voting on the two Senate runoffs in Georgia began this week, and Georgia poll workers, naturally, face increasing online threats -- some find their addresses published online (for informational purposes only, and certainly not so anyone can beat them up or kill them wink-wink), while others find nooses with their names on them outside of their houses. Nobody serving our democracy should have to put up with that crap, so Color of Change helps you tell Facebook to ban poll worker harassment. Why Facebook? Because everyone's on Facebook, and bad actors use the info they get from Facebook to harass poll workers! And Facebook knows online harassment is a problem, otherwise they wouldn't protect politicians and journalists more than they protect regular folks. Facebook, of course, also lets its algorithms help Nazi wannabes find each other, which greatly increases the possibility that good Americans get beaten up merely for exercising their actual First Amendment rights. So, stop me if you've heard this before, but Facebook needs to do better by us.

Action: concerning various forms of racial and religious oppression.

H.R. 6210, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, passed the House by an impressive 406-3 margin; the bill would impose sanctions on China for its government's human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (or XUAR), and would prevent that government from exporting goods made from Uyghur slavery to the United States. China's repression of nearly 2 million Uyghur Muslims into slavery camps is well-known by now, as is the complicity of American corporations (cough Amazon Apple cough) in that repression, and not coincidentally, the bill would also require big corporations to tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) if they've taken any sort of part in this noxiousness. 406-3 is a pretty nice margin, but not too many years ago, our Senate couldn't even pass a bill passed unanimously in the House (that would be the Email Privacy Act), so we shouldn't get complacent about this bill, either. Hence Rethink Trade helps you tell your Senators to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act -- without the kind of poison-pill amendments some Senators used to sink the Email Privacy Act.

Meanwhile, Charleston (SC) Councilmember Harry Griffin held a rally with the so-called Proud Boys last week; the Proud Boys are a notorious group of Nazi wannabes, though of course they prefer the term "Western chauvinist" like they're post-modern or something. Our FBI, excuse me, even this FBI has designated the Proud Boys an "extremist hate group," and good Americans have captured their violent doings on camera, so there's little wiggle room for on-the-other-hand silliness when discussing them. (Yes, their current Chair is a person of color, and their founder married a person of color, but such phenomena, to be frank, aren't as uncommon as people think.) Anyway, Change.org helps you demand that Councilmember Griffin resign his job. Are we really going to demand his resignation over one mistake? Of course we are! Murderers commit "one mistake," and we don't blink at putting them in jail; we're not even putting Mr. Griffin in jail for associating with known racists, and a career in politics isn't a Constitutionally-protected right. Actually, it's the very definition of a privilege.

Finally, our soon-to-be-ex-President is rushing to do many favors for his corporate cronies before he leaves office, and one of these favors is a mining contract in the Oak Flat district of Arizona, which is also home to lands sacred to several Native American nations. Do you recall Arizona's two then-Republican Senators ensuring that the 2015 defense appropriations bill rolled back a prohibition on mining in those areas declared by none other than President Eisenhower? Do you recall that one of those Senators (Jeff Flake, far too well-congratulated for his opposition to our soon-to-be-ex-President) used to work for the corporation that would mine Oak Flat? Do you recall Apaches travelling 2,000 miles from Arizona to Washington, D.C. in 2016 to protest the taking of their sacred lands? And it's not just about not screwing Indians even further, or protecting actual religious freedom -- it's also about the pollution mining would unleash upon the region's land, air, and water. And for what? For more gilded plumbing in some mining executive's 19th vacation home? Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to save the Oak Flat region of Arizona.

Action: concerning the minimum wage, car safety, and corporate donations.

Fight for $15 helps you demand that Congress enact a $15/hour minimum wage in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. When they tell you that a $15/hour minimum wage causes unemployment or destroys the economy, demand proof. Demand the scientific studies that "prove" that higher minimum wages kill jobs or jack up prices (they almost all say the opposite!). No, it's not "common sense" that higher wages "kill jobs" or "jack up prices"; it's actually more common-sensical to say that higher incomes for lower-wage earners actually stimulate economies (low-wage earners pretty much have to spend their money, after all) or that higher minimum wages actually create jobs in local economies (since that money's more likely to be spent locally). If you do describe studies that refute their fears, don't be surprised if they talk over you like they're Sean Hannity or if they go on about $40/hour minimum wages no one has proposed or how they're not actually conservative like anyone gives a damn. Just declare the argument won and walk away. Right-wingers don't learn until we set boundaries.

Meanwhile, Consumer Reports helps you tell your Senators to pass good auto safety legislation. A number of good bills in our Senate would do that, and the House-passed H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act, includes automatic braking and blind-spot warning devices on automobiles among its multitudinous reforms, and, you know, it's not like safer cars is unpopular or something. You may be old enough to remember how much like pulling teeth it was to make cars put seat belts in! As a youth, I was in the front seat, unbelted, of a car that got into a fender-bender going no more than 10 MPH, and my head hit the windshield; that was all the instruction I needed to belt up every time I got in a car afterward, but a lot of folks have died before learning such a lesson, and why should we allow that? If we can cut car crashes in half now, then why wouldn't we do it? Because it'd "kill jobs"? People will be working jobs redesigning and rebuilding the safer cars, right? Too often right-wingers say it'll "kill jobs" when they actually mean "it'll cost executives money." Put that in the front of your mind, and you'll see things a lot more clearly.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President-elect Biden to reject big corporate contributions toward his inauguration, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. This shouldn't be that tough a lift, given how thoroughly corporate inaugural contributions appear to have compromised our current President, and also given how scaled-down the Biden inauguration would have to be, given the pandemic, but if we say nothing and "trust" them to do the right thing, they'll take that as approval of doing the wrong thing. I'll admit it is a bit unnerving, I'll admit, to be reminded that Barack Obama rejected big corporate contributions to his 2009 inaugural, given how corporatist his Administration proved to be, but that only means we must apply pressure at all points in time. I know people are tired of fighting, more so now than in 2008, even, but I think we have to consider a bit more carefully whether our politicians are so terrible to us precisely because it leaves us too tired to fight them. I've thought about that a lot, and I'm pretty sure it's the truth. And I don't know about you, but contemplating that truth only makes me fight harder.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, COVID vaccines, and pollution.

You've been hearing for weeks now that our Congressfolk are "negotiating" a COVID stimulus bill, that some want to include stimulus checks and some don't, that some want to get it done before the end of 2020 and some don't, but, really, all they have to do to get good Americans the relief we deserve is pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act, so go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to do that. The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, states and localities suffering from lost tax revenues, and our Post Office, plus it would repeal that notorious tax-cut-for-the-rich they snuck into the CARES Act and would cut working Americans another stimulus check (a bigger one than the CARES Act did). Really, if you want your Senators to pass the HEROES Act, best thing to do is to say the HEROES Act will cut us bigger checks than anything you're proposing now. And don't get caught up in thinking we have to do something now, because that's how they get you to settle for less than you deserve. You deserve the HEROES Act -- at the very least!

Meanwhile, Pfizer's new COVID vaccine stands to make them a crap-ton of money, but a big reason for that is it's damn expensive -- it sold 100 million doses (which would inoculate 50 million people) to our government at $20/dose, and maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, but let's see what it charges retail, and remember that in a lot of the world, folks don't make $20 a day, and they do have other things to buy besides a COVID vaccine. Like, you know, food and shelter. Astra-Zeneca, which is a bit behind Pfizer and Moderna in putting a decent COVID vaccine together, has already pledged to sell its vaccine in lower-income nations at a massive discount. You'd think Pfizer would do the same, having just raked in $2 billion from our government and more from others, but apparently not, hence Sum of Us helps you tell Pfizer to (guess what) put people over profits and supply their vaccine to lower-income countries for less money. It's really for all of us -- if richer nations get everyone vaccinated but poorer nations don't, then we haven't really beaten COVID, have we?

Finally, the big banks say they won't fund oil or gas drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, but our Office of the Comptroller of the Currency aims to put a stop to that: they've proposed a rule that would force banks to fund customers (like fossil fuel drilling corporations) solely on the basis of those customer's "individual risk," and not some "categorical exclusion," like, you know, whether the project will promote pollution. Some folks have called banks' refusal to fund fossil fuel drilling "discrimination," and others have even compared it to redlining. Compare, if you can, "refusing to fund a big fossil fuel project" with "not letting black folks move into your neighborhood." You can't. Our politicians love "free" markets right up to the point it stops working to their liking -- or, more precisely, their big donors' liking. And they also think good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR is "terrorism." Hence Environmental Action helps you tell our Office of the Comptroller to reject this wrong-headed plan to force banks to fund fossil fuel projects.

Action: concerning human rights in Iran, COVID vaccines, and media consolidation.

Iran released reknowned human rights lawyer/activist Nasrin Sotoudeh for three weeks due to her serious COVID-19 infection -- but now they've put her back in prison, even though she still has it and is still contagious! For a 38-year sentence, for the crimes of, let's see, "encouraging corruption and debauchery and providing the means," "propaganda against the system," "disrupting public order," and gosh let's stop, because we all know why she's really in prison: she's represented, among other folks Iran's government consider "undesirable," like women who won't wear a hijab in public, protestors against the obviously-stolen election of 2009, and folks facing a death sentence for they crimes committed while they were minors. In short: a snowflake government imprisons a fighter for justice on trumped-up charges. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to drop charges against Ms. Sotoudeh and release her immediately. Time is short here -- and not just for her sake.

Meanwhile, we're going to have a hard time getting everyone a COVID vaccine (and not just because our current Administration decided not to get enough, amirite?), but we certainly don't need the World Trade Organization (or WTO) making it even harder. Some countries have proposed temporarily waiving WTO rules that give corporations monopoly protections for their putative intellectual property, but our Administration, naturally, opposes such a waiver. Big corporations make COVID vaccines with massive public investment, so we should get a say in this, and the families of the dead do not give one rat's hind quarter about intellectual property rights in the middle of a pandemic. And why should they? Our job on Earth is to help each other, not hide behind rules designed to help already-rich big pharma corporations maintain their unearned monopolies. Hence Rethink Trade helps you tell your House Reps to urge our outgoing President to reverse course on this matter and save a lot more lives.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) not to permanently waive media ownership restrictions in the New York market, then Free Press still helps you do that. I'm of the mind that no corporation should own any other corporation, let alone three media outlets in one market, but (guess who?) Fox owns WWOR, WNYW, and the New York Post, and if the FCC goes through with its plan, Fox gets to own them not on a "temporary" basis, but a permanent one, and I don't know about you, but I've sure had enough of Rupert Murdoch-created drama, even if his right-wing cable news channel is on the outs with our soon-to-be-ex-President and his votaries. Seriously, local news media is dying all over America, and media consolidation is the main reason why -- one corporate owner makes three or 10 or 300 news media outlets into cookie-cutter outlets, none of which reflect the diversity and uniqueness of the people they serve. As Americans, we deserve better -- and we must demand better.

Action: concerning the right to repair, pollution, and Arctic drilling.

You've seen COVID cases skyrocket lately, right? And you've heard that hospitals are starting to burst under the strain? And you remember the, ah, difficulties this Administration had in ensuring hospitals even had enough ventilators? One must wonder, then, why it should be so hard to fix a ventilator when it breaks down. And yet it is, as manufacturers put up roadblocks so that competent repair techs can't fix a machine (or, more precisely, so that the manufacturers' preferred techs can fix a machine). They hide behind "intellectual property" considerations, of course, but "intellectual property" doesn't mean a thing to a COVID patient who feels like she's breathing through a stirring straw; hence H.R. 7956/S. 4473, the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act, would remove a lot of these manufacturer-placed roadblocks so that good repair techs could fix critical machines. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your Senators to pass the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act.

Meanwhile, Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell President-elect Biden to undo all the damage our current Administration has done to the National Environmental Policy Act. What has this Administration done? Mainly, they've reduced public commenting on decision-making processes and prevented government agencies from taking climate change into account when issuing rules; I, for one, am deeply offended that our government would want less public input, not more, and I am also offended that some people are so sensitive to being told that we are polluting our planet to death that our government agencies would not be allowed to hurt their fee-fees. Our current Administration did these things not to "create jobs," or even to "streamline processes" -- they did them to make executives richer, and nothing else. It'd be nice to get a President in who doesn't suck up to bosses all the time -- but we should assume that Joe Biden will only be that President if we make him.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to leave a public comment opposing our current Administration's plan to lease the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) to oil and gas drillers, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. Again, we confront a plan that doesn't create jobs or promote energy independence, but just gives oil and gas executives even more unearned money. Some folks would look at that italicized phrase and feel exactly zero shame -- you want to punish success, they'd say, and though of course we aim to punish greed and gluttony rather than success, the real question is this: why should we measure success exclusively by how much money you make? Why not measure success by, gosh, I don't know, how much good you do, for society and not yourself? Did you heal the sick, feed the hungry, clean the air and water? When we measure success by how many gold-plated plumbing fixtures you own, we don't just cast aside wilderness areas; we cast aside civilization.

Action: concerning lead in water, big inauguration donations, and war on Yemen.

A Virginia Tech-led study found that nearly 80 percent of homes across America have detectable levels of lead in their water, with 40% surpassing the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended limit, and 15% with enough lead to cause brain damage in bottle-fed babies. This is five years after the problems suffered by Flint, MI residents made national news. And lead accumulates in your body, so any amount of lead can cause you serious harm regardless of your age. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your U.S. House Reps to pass legislation that would fund the replacement of lead service pipes, which still serve at least nine million homes in America, even though they've been outlawed since 1986. It takes time and money to replace these things, it turns out, but not necessarily 34 years, and the money we'd spend on replacing them would create jobs for a lot of good Americans. Funny how often doing the right thing creates jobs, while the schemes of the politicians don't. So let's get to it.

Meanwhile, President-elect Biden's inaugural committee plans to accept donations of up to a million bucks from corporations and about half that from individuals -- this, even though we hardly expect the usual inaugural spectacle in the face of a pandemic. Need I mention that our soon-to-be-ex-President faced quite a bit of scrutiny over the $100 million-plus in donations his inaugural committee received? People don't give money to an inaugural committee out of the goodness of their heart; they give it so that our President will give them something back. No donation needs arrive with a specific quid pro quo attached; everyone knows how this works, and it leads to corruption. Perhaps more importantly, any big donation, of any kind, tends to drown out the real grievances of real Americans who deserve a hearing just as much as any rich person does. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our President-elect to reverse course and refuse to accept this absurdly large donations.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject our Administration's proposed $23 billion sale of weapons to the United Arab Emirates, then the Friends Committee on National Legislation still helps you do that. Why? Because the UAE will use them in its war on Yemen, that's why, and we've gone into why that's a terrible idea more times than I can count -- it commits America to an unconstitutional war, Yemen is already on the point of famine, and the Houthi rebels targeted by the Saudi/UAE coalition are some of the best fighters against al-Qaeda in the world. Odd how we don't protect those folks, and I'm sure the Turkish Kurds, however many of them remain, will agree. You'll no doubt have picked up that our Administration isn't selling these weapons to Saudi Arabia; why, it's almost like they know that's a toxic PR move or something. But, hey, we're not stupid -- we know who'd benefit from this proposed arms sale, and it sure ain't the good citizens of Yemen. And it also sure ain't us.

Action: concerning COVID-19 relief, voting rights, and Social Security.

I've avoided passing along "please pass COVID relief now" action alerts, since settling for any COVID relief just about guarantees bad COVID relief -- like Mitch McConnell's "skinny"-ish "relief" proposal, which again includes three-martini lunch tax breaks and blanket immunity for corporations that let you get sick from COVID. And I wouldn't propose getting something done now so we can "go big" once Joe Biden takes over, either, because "going big" will be much harder if either Democratic candidate in the two Georgia Senate runoffs lose in January. But there's a simple solution to all the drama and chaos -- just call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act! The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, fund states and localities (and a lot of the struggling ones are in red states now, right, Mr. McConnell?), and a bigger, better stimulus check for Americans who need it. So don't game out their "negotiations" -- just demand they negotiate with us.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: over 50 Republican state legislators have demanded that Pennsylvania's U.S. House Reps and Senators challenge that state's Electoral Votes later on this month. Why? Because (according to their complaint) Gov. Wolf and Secretary of State Boockvar "undermin(ed) the many protections provided under" the election reform law the state passed in 2019. But read their complaint and you will find that a) they don't say Messrs. Wolf or Boockvar broke the law; b) our state Supreme Court has already rejected at least one of their grievances; c) a government going above-and-beyond to resolve "deficient" ballots is quite a thing to complain about; and d) resolving these legislators' grievances the way they'd want would change only a few thousand votes, and last I looked conservatism was most pointedly not about applying extreme solutions to relatively small problems. So call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject this desperate attempt to overturn the will of the people of the Commonwealth.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the incoming Biden Administration to reverse all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's attacks on our Social Security, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. You would specifically ask for the Biden Administration to a) fire all recent political appointees to the Social Security Administration and b) undo all of this Administration's rule changes and proposals that would take Social Security benefits away from us -- like making recipients re-establish their eligibility for Social Security Disability benefits every six months, which isn't "fighting corruption" but simple harassment. And don't put too much stock into stories about someone faking a disability to get benefits. Even before you verify such stories, you must ask: do individual stories mean we deny everyone the benefits they need to survive? As a civilized person -- hell, as a mature person! -- you would answer no, it does not.