Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning unlawful detainment, the school-to-prison pipeline, and Social Security.

The government of South Sudan arrested Peter Biar Ajak in July after he criticized that nation's government, which I'm sure are two completely unrelated events, though South Sudan hasn't exactly been helpful in clearing that up by detaining and utterly failing to charge him with something for six months. Didn't they do the extra reading for Totalitarianism 101? You're supposed to manufacture a bunch of BS charges when you arrest political enemies -- "insulting the leader," "undermining security," like that. Mr. Ajak's life should be a movie -- he came to America as a refugee, one of the "Lost Boys" of South Sudan in 2001; he settled in Philadelphia, attended LaSalle and then Harvard, and was about to finish his Ph.D. in philosophy at Cambridge, but now he's in South Sudan's notorious "Blue House," kept from contact with his lawyers and loved ones (including his wife and children). Sounds like some country's got something to hide, and the Big Stick of Bad PR can beat it out! Change.org helps you demand that South Sudan release Mr. Ajak.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell New York Mayor Bill deBlasio to stop using heavy-handed police tactics in public schools, including arrests and summonses. They must have thought that being "tough" on schoolkids would "scare them straight," but it doesn't -- it actually makes it more likely that those kids will go to jail again and again when they're adults, and surprise, surprise! Black and Latinx kids are the ones more likely to find themselves in the "school-to-prison pipeline." Turns out having a police officer serve a summons to you in school is not the kind of thing that gets young people to trust police officers! You've no doubt seen smartphone-captured video of police bodyslamming students in classrooms, and you may have wondered why that was ever necessary, particularly after learning that most of the time police come to school to settle decidedly minor disputes. If you want school to teach folks to be civilized again, getting police out is one step.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1170/S. 478, the Social Security Expansion Act, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. Our Glorious Elites constantly act like privatization and cutting benefits are the only ways to keep the promise of Social Security -- which is, to review, that all Americans who work their whole lives and pay into the system deserve to enjoy a dignified retirement -- but we know, likely because our livelihood doesn't depend on not knowing, that we could lift the cap on payroll taxes so that income over $132,800 can be taxed into the system, and we also know that we could expand benefits thereafter so we can create, shall we say, a more perfect retirement for Americans. And who would oppose that? Folks who think that only folks with money should continue to have money, that folks with money are somehow better than the rest of us? Well, this is America, and they don't get all the say around here.

Action: concerning expanded democracy and "national emergencies."

First things first. H.R. 1, the For the People Act, would enact a series of reforms in voting rights, redistricting, campaign finance, and ethics. You may know it as "the bill that would make Election Day a national holiday," but H.R. 1 would do a great deal more than that. Among many other things, it would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act by empowering our Judiciary Department to go after states and municipalities when they suppress voting rights. H.R. 1 would also create redistricting commissions for every state, so that state legislators wouldn't be able to gerrymander districts toward the benefit of one party or the other, and H.R. 1 would also create a public campaign finance system and shine sunlight on big campaign donors. All of these things will help good Americans participate more in the democracy that belongs to them and should work on their behalf, so when Mob Boss Mitch or his ilk call it a "power grab," just remember that these folks have spent their lives engaging in actual power grabs. Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to support democracy by passing H.R. 1.

Meanwhile, our President has declared a "national emergency" at the border so he can get the money to build his vanity border wall there, and he has already shot himself in the foot by saying, out loud, to reporters, that he "didn't need" to declare such an emergency but just wanted his little wall "done faster." The courts will probably suspend or strike down his order shortly, but that ain't enough for this loser: the American people should also rise up and squash his "national emergency" like a bug, so Public Citizen, CREDO, and Amnesty International all help you do that. Congress can do that by passing a "resolution of disapproval" which would nullify our President's little Executive Order, but far too many of them are far too cowardly to do it without the people lending steel to their spine. Also, if you want to join a "President's Day Protest" against this "national emergency," then MoveOn, CREDO, and Win Without War help you find one near you; protests will occur at noontime today. This "national emergency" doesn't just insult our democracy, it insults our intelligence, and we should let our President know we won't let his insults stand.

Finally, in a related note, we should also send a message to the corporations thinking of building this vanity border wall for our President that maybe there'll be a PR price to pay if they do that, so Sum of Us helps you tell Nissan to cut ties with contractor W.G. Yates and Sons if the latter won't abandon its efforts to build this vanity wall. You know, it's just occurred to me that if some Nissan spokeshack responds well we can't know what all of our contractors are doing, then maybe the correct response is I just told you! Not even if you can't know things like this about your contractors maybe you're doing business wrong -- just I just told you! Although, truth be known, if they can't keep track of such things, then at the very least they need to hire more people to do that -- or accept that they're just too big to be allowed to survive in a civilized society. How often do you or I get away with "I can't keep track of everything" in our daily lives? Not nearly as often as big corporations do, I can assure you. And we should try to put a stop to that.

Action: concerning Social Security, conservation, and paid family leave.

The Social Security Expansion Act (for which Congress.gov has no entry at this writing) would lift the payroll tax cap so that Social Security can tax income over $132,900 into the system. That would allow Social Security to expand the benefits it pays and meet the budgetary shortfalls that might afflict it decades from now should wages never, ever go up again. If your right-wing uncle bellows about liberals always wanting to spend money and never telling you where it comes from, remind him that lifting the payroll tax cap describes exactly where the money's going to come from. If he then objects that rich folks should therefore get six-digit Social Security checks every month when they retire, remind him that Social Security's objective is to ensure that all Americans can retire with dignity, not so that some retirees can buy a new Rolls Royce every month. Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to help more good Americans retire with dignity by passing the Social Security Expansion Act.

Meanwhile, to my amazement, the Senate has passed S. 47, a giant public lands bill that (among other good works) just so happens to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund forever, by a staggering 92-8 margin. Let's not go praising the Great God of Bipartisanship, though, because I'm pretty sure the fact that we have been agitating for a more permanent Land and Water Conservation Fund for several years (Congress let it lapse in 2015 and then let it lapse again late last year) has a significant amount to do with the Senate's good work here. So now the bill goes to the House, and you might think it's not a big lift to remind your House Reps that the Land and Water Conservation Fund gave us some of our most iconic public landmarks, but you never really know with these politicians, do you? Someone could get a bee in their bonnet that they can hold this popular bill hostage to some obscure lump of poison they've been trying to enact for years, so the Wilderness Society helps you tell your House Reps to pass S. 47 and protect the Land and Water Conservation Fund forever.

Finally, Sen. Gillibrand has reintroduced S. 463, the FAMILY Act, which would create a national paid family leave program in America -- you know, like the ones nearly every other nation on Earth have! Being without a paid family leave program is not something to shout WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!! about, after all. The FAMILY Act would provide for 12 weeks of paid family leave for all Americans -- whether it's because they're sick or they need to care for someone in their family who's sick -- and would pay for it with a minuscule payroll tax of four-tenths of one percent, half paid by the worker and half by the employer, such that a person making $50,000 annually would only pay $100 annually toward the program. And if your right-wing uncle says there won't be enough people working to pay into the system to sustain it, remind him to look at the phrase "12 weeks" again; that leaves 40 weeks (and usually more!) to pay into the system. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support working families by supporting the FAMILY Act.

Action: concerning transparency, drug prices, and the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.

You remember how reporting on the Standing Rock protests exposed police abuses? Well, North Dakota's state legislature is going to fix that! SB 2209 would restrict public access to state records relating to "critical infrastructure," which of course would include the Dakota Access pipeline that prompted all those protests and all that police brutality in the first place; the state Senate has already passed the bill, and now the state House is mulling it. And here you thought these legislators would want their bosses, the good people of North Dakota, to know what's going on with their "critical infrastructure"! A few legislators say it's all about "cybersecurity," but if it were, you have to wonder why so many more legislators aren't running with that; it sure looks like they're just trying to ram a bad bill through without anyone knowing about it. But you can call North Dakota House leadership using this page; just click on a member and get their office phone number. And call legislators from both parties, because this is a bipartisan mess.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1046, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act, would let Medicare negotiate drug prices on behalf of its recipients. You may recall that when Congress created the Medicare Part D drug benefit during Bush the Lesser's first term, they forbade Medicare from negotiating for better drug prices, because BIG GUMMINT!!!!!, and you may also recall how little the Obama Administration talked about Medicare drug price negotiation during the Affordable Care Act process. But if you understand how much negotiating power Medicare would have -- negotiating on behalf of some 44 million Americans, most of whom are seniors, who are (as you might imagine) the biggest consumers of prescription drugs by far in America -- you also see that such power could help bring drug prices down, by almost $85 billion annually, so says even the Koch brothers-funded Mercatus Center. Hence both Social Security Works and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to support Medicare drug negotiation by passing H.R. 1046.

Finally, the Bureau of Land Management (or BLM) plans to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, which of course we've been fighting to prevent for decades, not just because the ANWR is a unique wilderness, but because scientists tell us there won't be that much oil to get out of it to begin with! Luckily for us, the BLM must take public comments on the matter before proceeding, hence Penn Environment helps you tell our BLM to keep oil and gas drilling out of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Is it worth it to try, you may ask? I wouldn't blame you for asking, since this Administration really doesn't seem to care about the people's will at all. The answer is yes, you should try, not just because doing the right thing is always better than doing the wrong thing, but because if enough of us speak out against it and our BLM fails to do our will, we might be able to nail them for law-breaking in court. Indeed, that's all that's stopped this Administration's pro-pollution agenda so far.

Action: concerning war on Yemen, family separation, and clean water.

The House may vote this week on our involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, and Stop the War helps you tell your House Reps to vote to end our involvement in that war. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think we do very much good when we interfere in other nations' affairs, and I would rather we declare wars the Constitutional way than let our Presidents do whatever they like. Too many good Americans are afraid of what'll happen if we don't, but is it really American to make so many decisions based on fear? Particularly when one could more easily argue that those same decisions actually help bring about the terrorist attacks we fear? The history of the world over the last century or so is the history of big nations trying to plunder small nations for their resources, and we've sadly been one of those big nations. But we could be an actual big nation by taking care of business here in America and then dealing with other nations on a more equal footing.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell big banking corporations Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase to stop financing private prisons for detained immigrants. This Administration loves privatizing everything and causing harm to diddle the rage glands of its votaries, so we're putting pressure on big banks to do the right thing. Luckily, big banks could use all the good PR they can get, after all, and refusing to finance our Administration's family separation policy sure would give them some good PR. In signing this petition, you would also be pledging to "break up" with Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase and encourage others to do the same. If you long ago moved your banking to credit unions (and why haven't you done that yet? You won't find the membership requirements as restricting as you might think!), you can still encourage others to do the same. And you can avoid that Chase or Wells Fargo ATM next time you see it.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell our FDA to stop food producing corporations from using contaminated water on their crops. Congress mandated back in 2011 that the FDA set limits on bacterial contamination in irrigation water, but of course they haven't gotten around to actually setting those limits yet, and though this Administration's executive agencies do love to stall, fact is the Obama FDA wasn't any better on this matter. And what happened during all this delay? Two E.coli outbreaks in Romaine lettuce this year alone! They were all over the news! Folks who argue that "this Administration really clamps down on needless regulations" should attend the fact that these are the regulations that keep you from dying of kidney failure from E.coli in your salad. And pro-business "moderates" should attend the fact that a corporation will never save more money by using contaminated water than the rest of us will spend in increased health care costs.

Action: concerning net neutrality, government shutdowns, and William Barr.

First things first. Three fake net neutrality bills just debuted in Congress, these being H.R. 1006, H.R. 1096, and H.R. 1101. Republicans have been pumping out "pro-net neutrality" bills for years, bills that pretend to protect your right to go where you want on the internet without worrying about being herded into junk news ghettoes by big corporations, but their bills are full of loopholes that would let those big corporations throttle traffic and block websites, and their bills also try to reclassify broadband so that our FCC can't ever regulate net neutrality again. So why these bills now? Could Republicans be a bit nervous that our FCC's 2017 net neutrality repeal -- you remember, the one where the FCC came out and said it ignored most of the public comments it got -- is about to die in court? Whatever the reason, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject these fake net neutrality bills and fight only for the real thing.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to insure that federal contract employees, and not just employees who work directly for our government, also get back pay from our most recent government shutdown, then Moms Rising helps you do that. And if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government you don't want either another shutdown or a vanity border wall, then a group of good-government organizations still helps you do that. Our government has already provided for back pay to public employees, but contract employees don't work directly for our government; they work for private corporations that have contracted with our government, so even though taxpayers pay them, their bosses won't -- unless we make them. Of course, if we just stood up to our President every time he had a tantrum over his vanity border wall, we wouldn't have these shutdowns in the first place. See? Fixing one problem fixes the other!

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as Attorney General, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Mr. Barr's career has been one long lesson in believing folks when they tell you who they are -- he has been quite public with his animus toward Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, and the God-given rights of LGBTQ folks in America. And that's in addition to all the other reasons we should oppose him: he thinks the President should have more power than the Constitution grants, he thinks our government should let more contractors rip off the public, he's been far too cagy about whether he'll let the Special Counsel do his work, and he helped President George H.W. Bush pardon a crapload of folks who were neck-deep in Iran-Contra. If that doesn't sound like law-and-order to you, you need to tell your Senators with a quickness.

Action: concerning internet privacy, endangered species, and conservation funding.

You've heard all the news stories about social media corporations failing to protect our private information, and yet so many in politics would prefer that these corporations get to "police themselves"! When people screw up on the level that these corporations have screwed up, do we let them "police themselves"? Of course not! Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass strong legislation protecting our private information online. That might seem like an uphill climb, particularly if you remember that our FCC did enact decent internet privacy regulations toward the end of 2016, only to see our Congress repeal those regulations in a "resolution of disapproval." Surely they've learned their lesson, right? We should never assume that our Congressfolk learn any lessons unless we've taught them those lessons again and again. But that's why we're here.

Meanwhile, Avaaz helps you tell our world leaders, in advance of a global wildlife summit, to add giraffes to the list of animal species the multilateral CITES treaty protects. Almost half a dozen African nations have already proposed adding giraffes to the protected species list, almost certainly because the world's giraffe population has gone down close to 40% over the last 30 years, putting them at risk of extinction. And a big reason their numbers are down? Illegal hunting, of course. Because giraffe steaks make good eatins for folks who might otherwise starve to death? Well, no -- because well-off folks like to hunt animals. Frankly I'm gobsmacked that anyone who's ever seen a giraffe would want to kill it for sport, and I'm even more gobsmacked when I hear testimonials from folks who've worked with giraffes and found them intelligent and gentle. I guess some folks are just that empty inside and need something, anything, to fill the void.

Finally, Congress still hasn't reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which expired last September 30, and no all the shutdown drama is no excuse, not just because reauthorizing a popular conservation fund isn't exactly a heavy lift politically or logistically, but because this program actually pays for itself, via oil and gas drilling royalties. And you like the Delaware Water Gap? The Appalachian Trail? The Flight 93 Memorial? Well, the Land and Water Conservation Fund created all of these, and many more of our most popular and significant monuments. Of course, our current President only cares about the present -- certainly not the past, and certainly not the future. But those of us who do care about the past and the future can let Penn Environment helps is tell our Congressfolk to get off their duffs and reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund already.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons, antibiotic abuse, and the minimum wage.

You've no doubt heard that our President has declared that he'll withdraw the United States from the famous Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (or INF), and we've already advocated against that foolish move. There is some doubt that a President can simply nullify a treaty, since it becomes law upon Senate ratification, but we can fight on other fronts, too, as both Roots Action and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to stand for nuclear disarmament by supporting S. 312, the Prevention of Arms Race Act, which would prohibit funding of nuclear weapons banned by the INF. The bill would only allow funding and development of weapons that would violate the INF if our President jumped through at least seven flaming hoops (for example, he would have to prove that we simply have no INF-compliant weapons that could adequately defend our country); of course, our President's impatience with negotiating the finer points of law has already cost him virtually every significant effort to rewrite our clean air and clean water regulations, so if he interprets it as an outright ban, I wouldn't mind.

Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell pizza chain corporation Domino's to get antibiotic abuse out of its supply chain. Why Domino's? Same reason as "why McDonald's" -- because it's the biggest, and if it sources its meat more responsibly, others will follow. And Domino's has already committed to getting antibiotics out of its chicken supply; now it must follow with the meat we're all more likely to put on pizza, that being beef. In a land where seven out of 10 antibiotics go, not to sick people or animals, but to healthy animals so they can beef up (so to speak) and better endure the squalid conditions of factory farms, we have the right and the duty to attack the problem any way that'll work, and giving Domino's another good PR opportunity is certainly one of those ways. It is sad that we don't have a federal government that'll attack the problem, and that's been true regardless of which party runs things. But we're Americans, which means we're not prisoners of our government's inaction, either. So let's get to work.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 582/S. 150, the Raise the Wage Act, then Progress America still helps you do that. The Raise the Wage Act, as you know, would raise the minimum wage gradually to $15/hour over the next five years -- which right-wingers wailing about the "shock to small businesses" should duly note -- and would also raise the wages of tipped and disabled workers so that they ultimately achieve parity with the minimum wage for everyone else. The bill would also mandate annual increases to the minimum wage in line with increases in national median income, though it wouldn't allow the minimum wage to fall if median income also happens to fall. The current minimum wage of $7.25/hour, as you know, actually represents a wage cut from 50 years ago, when the $2/hour minimum wage actually had over $13.50/hour in contemporary purchasing power, so raising it to $15/hour not only wouldn't wreck our economy, but it would give our working families more of a fighting chance in making better lives -- the kind of fighting chance baby boomers had.

Action: concerning wealth taxes, animal trafficking, and paid family leave.

Sen. Warren (D-MA) has proposed an "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" aiming to tax not merely income but wealth, specifically the wealth of folks who have more than $50 million in net worth. The tax would be small -- a 2% tax on wealth between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 3% tax on wealth over $1 billion. That's two percent and three percent, not "20%" and "30%," "liberal" media! Two University of California economists estimate that the tax would raise $210 billion annually even though it's mere percentage points, and $210 billion every year could do a lot of good. The "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" proposal would also increase the IRS's budget (which should have been done, like, years ago) and would impose a sizable "exit tax" on folks who try to renounce their citizenship so they don't have to pay the wealth tax. Ms. Warren hasn't yet introduced a bill codifying these principles, but why wait? The tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) will help you call your Reps and Senators and tell them to support the Warren proposal to tax wealth.

Meanwhile, H.R. 864, the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act, would turbo-charge wildlife trafficking enforcement in America, by incentivizing whistleblowers worldwide to report animal trafficking crimes, strengthening laws that go after traffickers, and dedicates all financial penalties toward wildlife conservation. Wildlife trafficking actually isn't an easy thing to go after, particularly in poorer areas of the world, so we should absolutely give folks more incentive to report these crimes. So I wonder what the far right in America will have to say about it. Actually, I don't: it'll be MORE TEH FRIVULUZ LAWSUITZ!!!! at one end and GOD GAVEZ UZ TEH ANIMULZ TO DOMINATEZ!!!! on the other, and while I do find Dominionist beliefs noxious, they're certainly not worse than the "frivolous lawsuit" crowd, who might better be described as the "protect unearned corporate CEO salaries" crowd. Anyway, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight animal trafficking by supporting the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to enact paid family leave in America by passing the FAMILY Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. If the FAMILY Act from this Congress is like past iterations from past Congresses, it would fund 12 weeks of paid family leave for all workers (including part-time and self-employed workers) from an 0.4% payroll tax, half borne by the employer and the other half borne by the employee. And again, "liberal" media, that's four-tenths of one percent, not "4%" or "40%." Journalists who get this kind of thing wrong should get fired! It's basic math! And here's some more basic math: if you make $50,000 annually, your contribution to the family medical leave fund, annually, would be $100, or not even two dollars a week. If some right-winger tells you it's too expensive to pay for family medical leave for everyone, just remind them that the cost of one cheap cup of coffee simply isn't a whole lot to ask for everyone to have the same peace of mind that workers in just about every other nation have.

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, voting rights, and government shutdowns.

Perhaps in response to Senate Republicans' latest push to abolish the Estate Tax entirely, Sen. Sanders has introduced S. 309, the For the 99.8% Act, which would actually reform the Estate Tax. S. 309 would subject estates worth over $3.5 million to the tax (the low threshold is currently $11 million thanks to the 2017 tax "reform"), and would not only bring back the 77 percent rate on estates over $1 billion, but would create several new brackets (for example, estates over $50 million would face a 55% tax) that would make the Estate Tax more progressive. These are all marginal tax rates, of course -- an estate worth $50,000,001 would only face the 55% tax on that last dollar, since it's the only dollar over $50 million. And no the Estate Tax doesn't kill family farms! People who tell that lie should be ashamed of themselves! Tools for calling your Reps and Senators are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone).

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, then Common Cause still helps you do that. If you've been hearing that "Mitch McConnell calls a bill proposing to make Election Day a federal holiday a 'political power grab,'" well, that's H.R. 1, and making Election Day a federal holiday is just one thing it would do -- H.R. 1 incorporates excellent (but sadly unpassed) bills like the Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Fair Elections Now Act, and the DISCLOSE Act, all of which have deserved our support in the past. Mr. McConnell should consider whether a federal campaign finance system is really a "power grab," or whether disclosing the names of big campaign donors in ads is a "power grab," or whether patching the hole our Supreme Court blew open in the Voting Rights Act -- a hole that's allowed a lot of vote suppression in America -- is a "power grab." I mean, the man whose entire career represents a power grab from the people really has no room to talk.

Finally, federal funding runs out at the end of next week, with our President threatening to declare a "national emergency" if Democrats won't give him his border wall funding, so Demand Progress (among other good government groups) helps you tell your Congressfolk that you don't want our government shut down over our President's vanity border wall. Our President will yell that he's "keeping a campaign promise" -- and that's the most generous thing I can say about his stubbornness -- but which is more important? Keeping a campaign promise that induced no more than 46% of the electorate to vote for you, or doing the people's will? Polling consistently shows a majority of Americans don't want our government to shut down again and don't want a border wall; it's really as simple as that. Of course, if you watch a lot of cable news, you're likely too conditioned to think in terms of "winners and losers" and "this is my team" to remember that a democracy is supposed to serve the people's will. Still, I'm happy to remind you of that, as often as you need it.

Action: concerning the war in Yemen, tampons in public schools, and tax credits for electric cars.

H.J.Res. 37/S.J.Res. 7 is the new War Powers resolution that would end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen; Reps. Khanna (D-CA) and Jones (R-NC) are the main cosponsors in the House, and Sens. Sanders (I-VT), Murphy (D-CT), and Lee (R-UT) are the main cosponsors in the Senate. The Senate passed a similar resolution late last year by a wide margin, but they did that knowing that the House would put the kibosh on it in their Farm Bill; since then Democrats have retaken the House, but when have you ever known Democrats to be significantly less deferential on foreign policy to our President than Republicans? Really, it is like they've all gotten this Constitution thing exactly backward: Congress is supposed to make war-related policy, while our President is supposed to execute that policy. You know, as the leader of the executive branch? Anyway, H.J.Res. 37/S.J.Res. 7 merits a phone call to your Congressfolk; the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) will help you find your Congressfolk's phone numbers.

Meanwhile, one Matthew Kirby, of Wilmette, IL, has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell our Education Secretary to require all public schools to provide free access to products like tampons and pads. Currently only three states provide that access, in a world where all girls of reproductive age need them, and they need them when they need them, too, and not only when they can get to the store or the house to get them. Don't be the one who says this is a slippery slope to free condoms in our schools! Do you see the words "free condoms" anywhere in that petition? No, you do not. Also don't be the one who says "why should government have to do this for people?," not when state governments are perfectly happy to make it harder to get these products by levying regressive sales taxes on them. And certainly don't be the one who giggles at the mere prospect of free tampons in schools like you're 14 years old or something, not if you don't have the experience of bleeding uncontrollably from your genitals. Seriously, empathy is not a cuss word.

Finally, you may know that our Administration has a hard-on for ending the tax credit for electric cars, because if it might improve our lives but also cost some boss some money, it's evil and must die a humiliating death. Am I not describing our Administration's attitude correctly? Have I failed to be appropriately generous to them? The answers are "yes" and "hell to the no," respectively -- when evil people show you who they are, you'd best believe them, since being all post-modern about it could hurt you and the country you love. Anyway, Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to stop making it harder to get and drive electric cars. A lot of right-wingers will say why should big government make it easier for you to get electric cars? And a reasonable answer to that would be: why the hell not? Folks who respond TEH BIG GUMMINT!!!!! to every mild proposal are really telling you they can't win the argument on the merits. And where are they when big fossil fuel corporations get subsidies they don't need? Nowhere, that's where. So they don't get all the say around here.

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, antibiotic abuse, and William Barr.

It begins again: Senate Republicans have apparently read the mandate handed down by the voters in November to read "let's repeal the Estate Tax!" You'd be tempted to say "they never learn," but of course learning has nothing to do with it: Mob Boss Mitch knows that if you placate every whiny desire of wealthy donors, you'll get more campaign money from them, and thus you'll keep getting elected. To what end? So you can finally get hemp farming legalized after 34 years in the Senate? Not likely -- the only end Estate Tax repeal really serves is the end of democracy. Seriously, you have a better chance of one day paying the Estate Tax if you actually support a robust Estate Tax on estates over $1 million. 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 call your Senators and tell them to reject Estate Tax repeal.

Meanwhile, virtually everyone in America wants to see fewer antibiotics in farming, but of course our Administration knows better than everyone else, as our EPA has recently approved a plan to expand spraying of antibiotics on Floridian citrus trees. Sick trees, healthy trees, how can we tell from up here? One more time: using antibiotics on plants and animals that aren't sick gives bacteria a better shot at adapting to them, and thus renders antibiotics useless a whole lot faster. Who will be sitting around the campfire in a hundred years saying the next cut any of us get could kill us, but at least our government was able to con good Floridians into delivering their electoral votes to the Republican Presidential nominee in 2020? The answer, of course, is "no one." Particularly if we let Penn PIRG help us tell our EPA to help preserve good Americans' health by rejecting its planned expansion of antibiotic spraying.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as Attorney General, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Why? Let us count the reasons: his work helping George H.W. Bush pardon half a dozen participants in the Iran-Contra scandal before Mr. Bush himself could be hauled into court, his belief that Presidents ought to be able to do pretty much what they like without very much constraint from the legislative or judicial branches, his apparent hostility to our Special Counsel's continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election (and Administration culpability therein), his persistence in believing the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional years after our Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they are -- did I miss anything? Oh, right: he's a fellow who thinks incarceration solves every problem.

Action: concerning corruption, pollution, and law and order.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your House Reps to pass the most vigorous version possible of H.R. 1, the For the People Act, then Common Cause still helps you do that. H.R. 1 essentially incorporates (among other goo ideas) the Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Fair Elections Now Act, and the DISCLOSE Act, all worthwhile bills that have merited our support in the past. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would have plugged the giant hole our Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act by establishing a new pre-clearance formula for states with a long history of voting rights violations. The Fair Elections Now Act would have established a public campaign finance system that wouldn't have outlawed massive bajillionaire campaigns but would make them more politically toxic. And the DISCLOSE Act would have forced big campaign donors to disclose their identities. H.R. 1 wouldn't just do these good works -- it would also set up nonpartisan redistricting commissions in the states and enable automatic voter registration at the federal level. These are all good things! So let's do them.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that scientists have linked PFAS chemicals (PFAS basically stands for "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances") to cancer, liver damage, and asthma, which is very unfortunate, since you can find PFAS chemicals basically all over the place -- in non-stick saucepans, food packaging, and firefighting foam, to name three fairly common places, and now in our drinking water as well. Our EPA had apparently planned to release a draft action concerning PFAS, but then the shutdown happened, and seriously do you really expect our EPA, as it's currently constituted, to do the right thing about this matter? This is an EPA, after all, that seems to care only about "liberating" corporate executives from ever having to worry about their products harming people's health. But we don't have to wait for them: we can prod Congress to act, and so the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to help keep our water clean by acting against PFAS chemicals. Don't be the one to tell me about the far worse things PFAS chemicals replaced -- science always advances, and as civilized people we have a duty to keep up.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big tech corporations Amazon, Microsoft, and Google not to sell facial recognition software to any of our federal, state, or local governments, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. You would, I hope, be wary of using any fancypants technology until we're sure it won't hurt us -- I mean, that would be a conservative way to be! -- and of course we can't be sure of that with facial recognition technology, not when the technology seems to work much better with white men than any of the many other demographics in our melting pot, and certainly not when the vast majority of faces law enforcement will have on file are non-white. And law enforcement mostly has photos of suspects, not convicted criminals -- I mean, some 117 million faces appear in law enforcement files, and though we're the most incarcerated nation on Earth, we haven't put more than a third of Americans in jail. We really should take this innocent-until-proven-guilty thing as seriously as our Founders did.

Action: concerning war-making, shutdown worker pay, and pollution.

The Democrats' number two man in the Senate, Richard Durbin of Illinois, has acted like a real number-two man in recent days by expressing support for our President's reported machinations in Venezuela, where he would apparently like to see a military coup. Rep. Gabbard (D-HI) got a zinger off in response -- "(w)e don't want other countries to choose our leaders, so we have to stop trying to choose theirs" -- but Mr. Durbin is part of party leadership, and you know how our politicians and our "liberal" media get when they can sniff out a war coming: they bend to the will of the President, no matter how hated he or she might be, instead of bending to the people's will, as is their job. Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with Change.org to help you tell Mr. Durbin to resist our President's apparent desire to go to war with Venezuela. It's a shame we have to remind Mr. Durbin of his Constitutional duty (i.e., that Congress declares war, not the President), but we do it because we love our country.

Meanwhile, the agreement to end for-now the partial government shutdown guarantees that federal workers will get back pay, but not federal contract workers, who ostensibly work for a private corporation even though taxpayers pay their salaries. And don't be the one who says "well, the law says what it says," not when H.R. 678/S. 162, the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act, would change the law to ensure that we don't leave federal contract workers out in the cold. Federal contract workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in our government, and if we must outsource federal government functions to private contractors, we should at least avoid the appearance of using these workers' employment status to avoid paying them whenever our President decides to have a month-long tantrum over his vanity border wall. Hence UNITE HERE helps you tell your Congressfolk to support all federal workers by passing the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to a full-time gig as EPA Administrator, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Mr. Wheeler is supposed to be a saner, more competent, less greedy version of Scott Pruitt, but I don't want any version of Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, especially when I look at Mr. Wheeler's record so far and see nothing but rolling back of regulations that protect our clean air and clean water. His clean air and clean water, too -- I mean, he doesn't live in a domed city with its own aquifer, much as I'm sure he'd like to. I must say it continually amazes me that today's "conservatives" can look at the Pruitt/Wheeler record at the EPA and see "conservatism." What, exactly, is today's EPA "conserving" besides the "right" of corporate executives to make even more unearned money? How is "increasing executive pay at any cost" a bedrock principle of civilization?

Action: concerning the next government shutdown drama.

Late last week, our Congress reached an agreement with our President to end the partial government shutdown, but that agreement only lasts until mid-February, at which point we will face either another government shutdown or the spectacle of our President declaring a "national emergency" so he can build his vanity border wall. Thus today I urge you 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 viewing it on a smartphone), and tell them, explicitly, to prevent either of these occurrences from happening next month.

Don't believe the hype that Congress is somehow powerless to prevent these things. Congress can vote in favor of their next appropriations bill in numbers that will override a Presidential veto, and they can repeal the National Emergencies Act which gives our President the power to declare a "national emergency" at the border. The first course of action does contain one significant peril: that House Democrats would cave to a Republican-flavored appropriations bill with all sorts of poison pills in it so that they can get the vote numbers past the two-thirds threshold that would override a veto. But this fact doesn't make hostages of us, for we have an absolute, inviolable right to give our honest counsel to our Reps and Senators, and they have an absolute, inviolable duty to do our will. Hence it's not a heavy lift for us to tell our Reps and Senators to stop playing games with appropriations bills and pass a bill that funds those parts of our government at appropriate levels, regardless of whether our Congressfolk act like it's a heavy lift for them.

Generally I encourage you to keep your messages to your Congressfolk short and sweet, but this is one time you may want to game it out for your Congressfolk at some length. I've said on numerous occasions that a government shutdown would be a perfect time for the kind of 9.11-style terrorist attack that "rallies America around our President." While it also seems that our President is too fixated on Venezuela to be hunting bigger game, or that he uses a government shutdown to demonstrate how "unnecessary" we should find our government, these could both be feints, and I certainly do not put it past this Administration to have already discussed the political "opportunities," such as war against Iran or a new wave of anti-free speech legislation, that a terrorist attack could bring. I think you'll want to tell your Congressfolk that if they're gaming it out this way, you're on to them. If enough of us say it, out loud, to our Congressfolk, I believe we'll make a difference. They can't function unless we're as naive as they need us to be, so let's show them we're not.

I suppose I should address the possibility that your Congressperson believes we should build a wall along the Southern border, by any means necessary. You'd be right to argue that a vanity wall would do nothing for border security and that there is no "national emergency" along the Southern border, but you won't win the argument merely by saying that. You will also have to remind your Congressfolk that our President couldn't get his wall out of a Republican-dominated Congress, either -- one that could easily have bypassed a Democratic filibuster by including border wall funding within a budget resolution passed via the reconciliation process -- and that, more to the point, our President is acting like a spoiled brat and that America is sick of all the drama he creates. When our Congressfolk finally get it into their heads that America is sick of the drama, they will bend to our will. But if we don't tell them that, in so many words, they'll pretend it's not happening. And you never give your Congressfolk that kind of opening.

So I guess a good script for your phone call would go something like this: "I'm calling to tell you to fund our government appropriately for the rest of the year, without poison pill amendments and without funding for our President's vanity border wall. I also urge you to repeal the National Emergencies Act which supposedly gives our President the power to build his wall. Like most Americans, I am sick and tired of all the drama our President creates, and it's your job, as a federal elected official, to demand more from our politics than just drama. His vanity border wall will do nothing to secure our borders, and frankly I'm afraid that another partial government shutdown will leave us vulnerable to a 9.11-style terrorist attack. And I'm further afraid that our Administration has already decided that a 9.11-style terrorist attack would be another big drama that would yield immense political benefits for them. So I think you would do well to be able to tell our posterity that you didn't let that happen." Tough toodles if they don't like what they hear; they're Congresspeople, and you're their bosses, so you have an inviolable right and duty to tell them what they don't want to hear.

Good luck and God bless.

Action: concerning family separation at the border and facial recognition software.

You've no doubt heard, by now, that our Department of Health and Human Services's Inspector General has found that our Administration separated "thousands" more migrant children from their families than we had previously known, and that our Administration has done a bad job even keeping track of the families they've separated, likely because they don't care. OK, as far as I know, the Inspector General didn't speculate about whether or not our Administration cares, but obviously they don't. Still, duty is duty, so Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk and Department of Homeland Security Secretary-for-now Kirstjen Nielsen to reunite every last child they've separated with their families. Anything else would be cruel, and it takes rather little moral fiber to notice it's cruel -- which means our Administration has no moral fiber whatsoever. But they're not the boss of us, so we don't have to take it.

Meanwhile, Free Press helps you tell big tech corporation CEOs not to sell facial recognition software to our local, state, and federal governments. Why? Well, for one thing, our governments don't regulate the use of such software to protect our privacy, and for another thing, facial recognition software does a pretty bad job recognizing faces -- which is, you know, its purpose, as evidenced by the moniker "facial recognition software" -- to the point where it confuses members of our Congressional Black Caucus with suspected criminals. Starting to think that racism might be a feature, not a bug? Hey, you'd be naive not to! And, seriously, too many people think machines are the answer to all our problems. Machines are the answer to only one "problem," that of paying human beings to do jobs that human beings do best, and that's a "problem" only CEOs have. And they don't get all the say around here!

Action: concerning H.R. 1, the minimum wage, and drug pricing.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, now has 225 co-sponsors, which means more than half the House has co-sponsored the bill, and I presume the House will begin deliberating the bill soon. I mean, yeah, the shutdown takes the oxygen out of the room, almost like that's the whole idea, but if we speak out enough, we can move the conversation in our direction, so Common Cause still helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the most vigorous reforms in H.R. 1 possible. As you know, H.R. 1 aims to reform voting rights laws, campaign finance laws, and ethics laws, and many of its reforms originally appeared in bills such as the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Fair Elections Now Act, both of which deserved our support. But of course Mob Boss Mitch calls the bill a "power grab," fearing it'll increase Democratic political power. Maybe if he and his kind weren't such elitists, he and his kind would benefit from the bill, too!

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support working families by passing the Raise the Wage Act, then the Economic Policy Institute (among other good government groups) still helps you do that. The Raise the Wage Act (sorry, Congress.gov still doesn't have a bill number at this writing!) would gradually increase our minimum wage to $15/hour by 2024, which is five years from now, so don't believe the hype about the "shock to small businesses" the bill would cause. The bill would also index the wage to inflation, which means it won't be some politician or other's manufactured hostage crisis every year, and it would also phase out the far lower tipped worker minimum wage, and anyone who complains about that very likely has a heart of stone. Seriously, they should go to the doctor and get that checked out. The rest of us will welcome more good Americans being able to make ends meet -- and get ahead.

Finally, the big pharmaceutical corporation Teva has introduced its own generic version of the EpiPen drug -- and, at $300, it just so happens to cost the same as Mylan's generic EpiPen. You remember Mylan? The big pharma corporation that took massive PR hits for jacking up the price of its EpiPen to absurd heights? Achieving parity with Mylan isn't a good look for Teva, but we're here to help, as a Change.org petition helps you tell Teva to make its generic EpiPen more affordable to good Americans. After all, it's not like most folks just have $300 lying around for a life-saving drug. If you want to mention to them that the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act would let our government manufacture generic versions of life-saving drugs whenever big pharma corporations price them too high, well, I won't stop you. Corporations do generally try to avoid governmental involvement in their affairs.

Action: concerning war in Yemen, soldiers' health care, and paycheck fairness.

Remember when the Senate passed a bill aiming to end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen last month -- but then the House promptly added a rider to the Farm Bill (of all things!) preventing a House vote on that matter for the rest of the year? Well, the calendar has turned and the House has changed hands, so why not let Roots Action help you tell your House Reps to vote to end our participation in the war on Yemen? A new year should create new possibilities, after all. Note well that the Senate's anti-war resolution probably got 56 votes last year because the Senate already knew the House wasn't going to pass it, making it a show of courage for a lot of Senate cowards, but Mob Boss Mitch will no doubt come up with a litany of absurd excuses not to even hold a vote on the bill if it passes this House. But that presents us an opportunity to embarrass them for their hypocrisy, and of course as good citizens we should not pass up such opportunities. They're teachable moments, after all.

Meanwhile, H.R. 663/S. 191, the Burn Pits Accountability Act, is back in Congress, with over 100 Congressional co-sponsors, and if the bill resembles past iterations (Congress.gov has neither a summary nor text for either bill at this writing), it would help our soldiers get the health care they need from burn pit exposure. Our military used burn pits to dispose of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those burn pits had all kinds of trash in them -- chemicals, paint, plastic, rubber, human and medical waste, even munitions! -- and burning them does what? Puts all kinds of toxic crap in the air our soldiers breathe, of course! The Burn Pits Accountability Act would require our Department of Defense to ask soldiers whether they've been exposed to burn pits during routine health exams and exit interviews so they can better assist our Veterans Administration maintain its Burn Pit Registry, and that, at least, is a start. Hence the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America help you tell our Congressfolk to help our soldiers by passing the Burn Pits Accountability Act.

Finally, the Paycheck Fairness Act is apparently back, too (Congress.gov doesn't even have a bill number for it at this writing), and if it's like past iterations, it would prevent corporations from prohibiting employees from discussing their pay with their co-workers -- since these are the very discussions that let women know they're being shorted by their employer! -- and would limit the factors employers can use to pay women differently to "bona fide factors" including education, training, and experience. The 79-cents-on-the-dollar figure is the one you're likely most familiar with, but even when you adjust the data for education, training, experience, you still don't get women making a dollar for every dollar a man makes. And that's only fair! If the bill passes the House, Mob Boss Mitch will just say "the bill only helps trial lawyers," though that does tend to be a side effect of injustice. You'd think he'd want to remedy that by fighting injustice or something. Anyway, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fair pay by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Action: concerning the government shutdown and law-and-order issues at the border.

A consortium of good government groups helps you tell our President and our Senate Majority Leader to end the government shutdown now. As I may have said, I don't oppose government shutdowns per se, but I oppose this shutdown, which our President has orchestrated not so he can protect America or end a humanitarian crisis, but so he can keep on diddling the rage glands of his votaries. And our House has passed several bills aiming at funding those areas of our government which are currently shutdown, but Mr. McConnell says no, because our President won't sign them, or because the bills aren't a result of negotiations between our President and the Democrats, or something. Of course, if a bill has 67 Senate votes, it doesn't matter if a President signs it or not. What's he afraid of? He should be afraid of losing re-election in 2020 as more good Kentuckians figure out he thinks he works for Our Glorious Elites and not them.

Meanwhile, Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to investigate our President's deployment of military personnel at the southern border to "assist" with Border Patrol work. Turns out that using soldiers for domestic policing matters is just about always against the law per the famous Posse Comitatus Act, and never mind that Southern states pushed for such a law back in the day to get Reconstruction-era troops out of their hair, because keeping our law enforcement and our military separate is still a good idea, as anyone who thinks about it for a second will see. Our President, unfortunately, cuts the figure of someone who does not think about things even for one second -- he just says do it, and then one day the people who carry out his orders annoy him and he turns on them. You'd think more good Americans would know this by now. We'll just keep having to tell them.

Action: concerning the minimum wage, internet privacy, and the DREAM Act.

With a new Democratic House taking power, the Economic Policy Institute (among other groups) help you tell your Congressfolk to support working families by passing the Raise the Wage Act. (I have no bill numbers for its current iteration at this writing.) Raising the minimum wage to $15/hour would represent a vast change in working families' fortunes -- the current minimum wage of $7.25/hour actually represents a pay cut from the late 1960s, when the $2/hour minimum wage had over $10/hour in contemporary purchasing power -- and no, it wouldn't kill jobs, not just because minimum wage jobs are often the kind you can't kill, but because "the minimum wage vs. jobs" is the wrong focus. A better focus would be "absurd CEO salaries vs. jobs," since those salaries are the real job-killer in America. The Senate won't pass it, etc., but embarrassing them isn't exactly a vain pursuit, particularly if it instructs future Senates about the people's will.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that the big telecom corporations have been selling your location data to other corporations -- some of which will sell that data to just anybody, including bounty hunters. Thing is, your contract with your cellphone provider may prohibit data sales to "disreputable" folks or corporations, and even the big telecoms admit that they sell too much data to too many unsavory actors! Well, they said that out of fear that our government would regulate them -- a vain fear, since our government repealed FCC privacy regulations last year! -- but since the abuse is still happening, Free Press helps you tell our FCC to stop corporate abuse of our private data. Please do not be the fool who says well just stop using a cellphone then! Everyone uses a cellphone now, and everyone deserves privacy -- I mean, Chief Justice Roberts understands this, and crafts excellent jurisprudence based on that understanding.

Finally, you no doubt recall that our President tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) program last year, and though various federal courts have blocked his efforts, now's as good a time as any to let People for the American Way help you tell Congress to pass a DREAM Act, so that immigrants brought here as children can contribute to America's heritage and one day gain citizenship. Sending immigrants back to nations they don't recognize as home, when they literally had no say in emigrating to America, should strike you as the height of cruelty, but of course our Administration cares about nothing but diddling the rage glands of its votaries, and thus still struts around demanding a brand new border wall before our government starts inspecting food and airplanes again. So when I said "now's as good a time as any" just now, perhaps I was being a bit glib -- now's a damn good time to change the conversation about immigration, even if our President doesn't want to.

Action: concerning mercury poisoning, law and order, and William Barr.

Another day, another Administration effort to gut rules that protect good Americans, as now the EPA wants to let power plants put more mercury in our air and water. Because what's healthier than mercury, particularly for growing children? And what's more popular than poisoning our air and water? It wasn't that long ago that most states put out health warnings about eating local fish because of all the mercury in it, but I guess our Administration wants to bring those glory days back. And the 900,000-plus Americans who submitted comments demanding stronger mercury regulations a few years ago? They must just be "little people" to this Administration. You just remember that "little people" made America great, and that a lot of "great men" deserve scorn, shame, and hatred. Penn Environment helps you tell our EPA to scuttle its plans to allow more mercury pollution in the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Meanwhile, the National Police Association is actually trying to get the Massachusetts Bar Association (or MBA) to disbar Suffolk County's incoming District Attorney, Rachael Rollins. Thinking she must have done something to deserve that? Well, no: they want her disbarred because she declared, while running for office, that she'd stop prosecuting all those petty crimes that seem to jail a disproportionate number of black folks. And yet every single DA in America prioritizes certain kinds of cases over certain others! It's called "prosecutorial discretion," and I presume the NPA has heard of it. And Suffolk County police aren't even complaining about Ms. Rollins, possibly because they feel the same way about the work they're being compelled to do, so I feel compelled to regard the NPA's complaint as an attempt at election nullification. So Color of Change helps you tell the MBA to dismiss the complaint against Ms. Rollins.

Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as our new Attorney General. We have so, so many reasons to oppose Mr. Barr, including his support for the noxious notion of the "unitary executive" President who can do pretty much whatever he likes, the likelihood that he'll end or otherwise obstruct the Special Counsel's ongoing investigation into Russian meddling/Administration collusion, and his, ah, peculiar attitude toward the False Claims Act, but we must also recall that Mr. Barr, while he was George H.W. Bush's Attorney General, approved all those pardons Mr. Bush handed out to Iran-Contra figures who were about to go to trial (and possibly expose Mr. Bush's own complicity in those wrongdoings). Sense a pattern? Then tell your Senators to reject the Barr nomination with a quickness. Lawlessness is this President's only remaining defense, and he's better at lawlessness than we are.

Action: concerning the Arctic Refuge, kids' apps, media consolidation, and climate change.

Our Bureau of Land Management (or BLM) has released its proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (also known as ANWR) to oil drilling -- and, naturally, because they don't want to hear what you think about it, they announced their proposal in late December when folks are immersed in the holidays and have given us only a month to leave a public comment about it! So let the Sierra Club help you tell our BLM to keep big oil drilling corporations out of ANWR. You know (better than our BLM does, apparently!) the threat oil drilling poses to caribou within the Reserve and the Gwich'in Native Americans who live there, but don't forget to remind our BLM that just about nobody who's studied the matter thinks there's a whole lot of oil in ANWR to begin with! Is this the lesson we want to teach our descendents -- that when some corporation or other wants to make money, it can destroy whatever's in its way? And that our government should help them do that? Not in my America, it's not. But only if we act.

Meanwhile, you might think the children's apps in the Google Play Store wouldn't illegally collect data or manipulate kids into buying stuff or model harmful behavior, but, sadly, they do, as a Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood complaint to our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) documents. Like the app depicting a kid crying after you don't buy something! That's disgusting! Kids take it seriously when other people cry! And when the big corporations providing these apps say hey, we're just collecting information so we can target ads better -- corporate spokeshacks are not as smart as you think, after all! -- contemplate the horror of a corporation that thinks of children as just another moneyjar. You know, the way they already think about their parents! But at least parents can defend themselves better against such manipulation -- children need their parents' protection for a reason. Hence the CCFC helps you tell Google to adopt more vigorous standards that protect kids from privacy invasion and rampant commercialism.

In other news, one Digital First Media plans to buy Gannett newspapers, the nation's biggest newspaper publisher -- no doubt you've read USA Today and a slew of local and regional newspapers that used to be independent. Yeah, might as well get that out of the way early: having a thing such as Gannett isn't a good thing for America, even if their reporting is competent enough, but having it bought by an even bigger corporation owned by a freaking hedge fund is an even worse thing. What do you think Digital First will do once it gets its grubby hands on Gannett? If the experience of previous Digital First-owned outlets (like, say, the Denver Post) has any predictive power, there'll be censorship of journalists, firing reporters who don't toe the bottom line, and sacrificing anything and everything to the altar of mammon. Hence Free Press helps you tell Gannett's board to protect their newsrooms by refusing to sell to Digital First Media. We've got here the Big Stick of Bad PR here, so let's use it.

Finally, our Supreme Court has lately rejected Exxon's latest attempt to stall or stop Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's investigation into whether it lied to investors and consumers about fossil fuels' role in climate change, so now's as good a time as any to tell your state Attorney General to join the effort against Exxon, as Corporate Accountability helps you do. You probably know the story by now: several media organs reported in 2015 that Exxon's own scientists had warned executives of fossil fuels' role in climate change as early as 1977, but these executives basically pretended that research didn't exist and spent their time stoking doubt in everyone's minds instead. And there you have the real role of money in climate change policy -- scientists don't "make money" from telling everyone climate change is real so much as fossil fuel corporations make money from telling everyone climate change is a hoax. Remember that the next time our President weighs in on the matter.

Action: concerning the government shutdown, high drug prices, and cash bail.

In re our President's stated desire to invoke "emergency powers" to build his stupid border wall, more than a few establishment Republicans have worried out loud that a future Democratic President could use these same emergency powers to do something about climate change or guns without consulting Congress, and several members of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House have expressed similar misgivings. And they're right to do so! Big decisions like these should be made by the people via their elected representatives in Congress. But if our President pulls this stunt, you think any of these Republicans will put their money where their mouth is -- by, say, repealing the law that gives our Presidents powers to declare these "national emergencies"? No, they won't, at least not unless we tell them to, in numbers they can't ignore. So 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 call your Congressfolk and demand they repeal the National Emergencies Act.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, while Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act. The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act would allow our government to manufacture generic versions of drugs that big pharma corporations make too expensive for good Americans to afford, while the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act would mandate that these big pharma corporations price their drugs at or below the median price their drugs fetch in Canada, England, France, Germany, and Japan. Three of these nations have Medicare-for-All-style health insurance systems in place, as you know, so they don't spend a lot on their drugs. How would the big corporations make money? They'd make money because we all get sick sooner or later, despite our best efforts; they just wouldn't be able to take us hostage because we're sick anymore. And that's a thing worth fighting for.

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell the Bexar County, Texas District Attorney-elect to end cash bail there. Said Bexar County District Attorney-elect, Joe Gonzales, has been an outspoken opponent of cash bail -- but you know plenty of politicians who've talked a good game (cough Barack Obama cough) only to disappoint you once they get into office, so Mr. Gonzalez may well need a bit more steel in his spine, and we can give that to him. The immediate news hook is the death of Janice Dotson-Stephens, 61, in custody after spending six months in a Bexar County jail because she couldn't pay a $300 bond (recall that nearly half of all Americans couldn't scare up $400 on a moment's notice if they had to!), but fact is you're not supposed to go to jail when you're accused of a crime; you're only supposed to go to jail when you're convicted of a crime. And it costs the taxpayer money to put folks up in jail while they're awaiting trial; don't we aim to use taxpayer money more judiciously than that? So let's end this bad system.

Action: concerning tax policy, voting rights, pollution, and the government shutdown.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has lately said a 70% income tax on income over $10 million could easily fund the sort of "Green New Deal" that would put us on the path toward a renewable energy grid while creating jobs, and while I of course support both those ends, I'd go rather harder on the tax end than she would. I'd enact a 91% on millionaire income, but since we also need to prevent folks from exploiting our current loophole-ridden system, I'd also bring back the 55% tax rate on corporate profits, stop treating dividends as separate from income for tax purposes, and outlaw stock options. That would make taxes fair again, revitalize our economy, and give us our best chance to kill climate change dead. I think all that merits a phone call to your House Reps, who need to know that calling Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's ideas "radical" is even stupider than our not-that-recent history (we did have a 91% tax bracket and a 55% corporate tax rate during the '50s, after all) would suggest.

I've been looking for the right contact tool to express support for the ideas that H.R. 1, the For the People Act, would codify into law, and Common Cause has it: they help you tell your House Reps to make H.R. 1 as vigorous as possible. You've no doubt heard that H.R. 1 would strengthen voting rights, expose big campaign donors, make Congressional redistricting fairer, and shut the "revolving door" between corporations and our government -- among other worthy aims -- but it's our job, as citizens, to make sure H.R. 1 actually does these things. And Democrats have no excuse to weaken H.R. 1 -- the Republican-held Senate won't pass it anyway, so playing 13-dimensional chess games with this bill in the vain hope that the Senate might pass it is a vain endeavor. You know what isn't a vain endeavor? Humiliating those politicians who refuse to pass legislation that holds our government accountable to its owners, the American people. That includes Republicans -- and it also includes Democrats who'd weaken the bill.

Meanwhile, our President has nominated acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to be his official choice for the job, and if you think Scott "Cone of Silence" Pruitt was bad, you're likely to find Mr. Wheeler to be significantly worse -- Mr. Wheeler worked most recently a coal corporation lobbyist, but before that he was Sen. Inhofe's Chief Counsel for over a decade, and before that he worked at the EPA, so he likely knows better than Mr. Pruitt how to destroy from within our EPA's ability to protect us from polluters. I mean, it could also be that Mr. Wheeler can't pass up wierd freebies any better than Mr. Pruitt could, since we've just learned that Mr. Wheeler has, shall we say, an expensive weakness for a certain kind of hamburger, but that's a hell of a thing to count on. Better to tell our Senators to confirm an EPA Administrator who'll actually protect our clean air and clean water more than he'll protect corporate paymaster profits, as the Environmental Defense Fund helps you do.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell our Congressfolk to end this ludicrous government shutdown. I actually have nothing against government shutdowns per se, but seriously, do we want to force Americans to choose between food inspections and a border wall that won't protect American but will diddle the rage glands of our President's votaries? How about between airline safety inspections and a border wall? Or between EPA clean air monitoring and a border wall? Or between health care for Native Americans and a border wall? Or, come the end of February, between food stamps for the working poor and a border wall? Of course, a lot of good Americans -- like air traffic controllers and TSA workers -- are already working without paychecks, so we're already forcing them to make dreadfully hard choices. But over the last quarter century, politicians have shut down our government for nothing but stupid reasons, and it doesn't matter that this border wall is "totemic" for our President. You know what's totemic for me? A government that does our will.

Action: concerning health care, redistricting, and surveillance.

Sen. Warren (D-MA) has introduced a bill called the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act (Congress.gov has no bill number as of this writing), which would allow our government to manufacture generic versions of any patented drug. If you call that "socialism," please consider that actual socialism would more likely entail our government manufacturing all the drugs, but Ms. Warren's bill would only allow federal manufacture of generics under certain circumstances, such as absurdly high prices, lack of competition, or shortages, and none of these circumstances are shining examples of free market efficiency, are they? People want our government to protect us from the things that hurt and kill us, and the best our opponents can do is squeal SOSHULIZMZ!!!!! whenever we propose making our government do just that? Thus we should call our Reps and Senators and tell them to support better drug policy by passing the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA helps you tell your state Assemblyfolk to reform the rules by which they consider legislation. We know these rules need reform, because House state Government Committee Chair Daryl Metcalfe (E-12) seemed to spend the entire spring gutting actually-bipartisan redistricting reform bills in 2018 once they got to his committee -- why, one of those bills had the support of more than half of the House, meaning that, well, if it'd come to a vote, it would have passed! I know right-wingers think (and might even say, since these are interesting times!) that Committee heads should have the power to gut bills at will, because what do us little people know about governing? But if, like me, you think "little people" is a disgusting epithet, and if, like me, you think us "little people" actually do know a lot, you'll find arguments for reform more convincing.

Finally, Amazon aims to get a contract from our Pentagon to build a "weapon of unprecedented surveillance and power," called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. (Yes, the acronym of that weapon's name is JEDI, which suggests that its namers have literally no idea what Jedis stood for in the Star Wars films.) JEDI would vastly increase our military's ability to share and sift through surveillance information, using "artificial intelligence," which doesn't impress you if you've found, as I have, that autocorrect incorrectly anticipates what you're about to type nearly 100% of the time. And if you're tempted to say if Amazon doesn't build it, someone else will, recall that Amazon has already collected so, so much data on Americans that it could quite easily correlate with DoD surveillance information. Luckily for us, Amazon employees seem to have some sway within their corporation, so Roots Action helps you tell Amazon employees to pressure their management to bow out of the JEDI bidding.

(Posting has been light for a while, and will remain light until the new year. The main reason for that? I'm putting together another Penny Rants volume for release in mid- to late February. I know what you're saying to yourself: self, didn't he just put out a second Penny Rants volume last month? Why, yes, yes I did -- and soon I'll put out a third one, covering the last two very, very interesting years. So be on the lookout for that, and in the meantime, continue to enjoy the holidays and have a safe and happy new year.)

Action: concerning health care, nativism, and pollution.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support real health insurance reform in America by passing legislation expanding Medicare to all Americans. The health insurance industry won't like it, of course, but they've bollocksed up health care so badly in America that tens of millions of Americans still don't have health insurance, meaning they skip visits to the doctor because they can't pay for them, meaning some of them die. And if a single-payer health insurance system brings down health care costs everywhere else in the world, there's no reason it won't do the same here. Oh, I know there are "reasons," but they aren't good reasons -- whining about TEH 34 TRILLYUNZ!!!! a Medicare-for-All system would cost over the next decade, for example, makes no sense in a nation where we're going to spend $49 trillion on health care costs over the next decade. So let's take control of our health care system and get better results for less.

Meanwhile, Win Without War helps you tell your Senators to reject our Administration's nomination of Heather Nauert as U.N. Ambassador. I mean, if we labored to keep John Bolton out of that job, why would we want Heather Nauert? And should a nominee's main qualification be that she makes her predecessor look better? Ms. Nauert used to work for Fox News, where she (surprise!) routinely attacked immigrants and Muslims, and she's spent the last 18 months as a State Department spokeshack. Clearly our President has fast-tracked her because he likes how she talks! But, frankly, we shouldn't be sending nativists or nativist-wannabes to the U.N. I mean, that seems self-evident, doesn't it? Maybe our Senators will grill her and expose her unfitness for the job, but they didn't exactly stop Ms. DeVos's nomination; is it too much to ask that our Senators at least expose their unfitness for their own jobs if they can't stop this nomination?

Finally, with the impending resignation of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Senators to demand a new Interior Secretary who will actually protect public lands and not rush to sell them off to big corporations. As seems to happen a lot with this Administration, Mr. Zinke got a lot of notoriety for his taxpayer-funded trips and his profligate spending (remember the $140,000 door? Good times!), but he also did more palpable harm as Interior Secretary, by scaling back national monuments, auctioning off public lands to corporate polluters, and rolling back protections for threatened species. And his number two man, former fossil fuel lobbyist David Bernhardt, sure as hell won't do any better, even if he doesn't literally ride into his first day on the job on a horse, like Mr. Zinke did. Mr. Bernhardt has never met a regulation he didn't consider a burden, and that's not the attitude that'll protect our public lands.

Action: concerning mandatory minimums, conservation, and William Barr.

Given that Senate Majority Leader McConnell (E-KY) has graciously allowed the Senate to vote on S. 3649, the FIRST STEP Act, now's a very good time to let the Drug Policy Alliance help you tell your Reps and Senators to support criminal justice reform by passing it. S. 3649 isn't everything we want, etc., but it would reduce some mandatory minimums, expand the "safety valve" for judges to grant sentences below mandatory minimums, and prevent prosecutors from heaping on longer sentences for firearm possession during first offenses. All of these things will help us actually rehabilitate prisoners (which is what civilized people do!), rather than simply heap more punishments on people in the vain hope that we'll look tougher. Sen. Cotton (E-AK) will try to sabotage the bill with amendments that would gut the bill, because he's so "tough," I guess. But how about regular Americans have a say here, rather than just law-and-order peacocks?

Meanwhile, Congress has also let the Land and Water Conservation Fund expire, as of September 30, so Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to support conservation efforts by reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Do not brook any absurd complaints from your Congressfolk about "fiscal responsibility" or hysterical hand-wringing about how it'll be "paid for," because it's their job to know that taxes don't actually fund the LWCF; royalties from oil and gas drilling do. They can't believe that "fiscal responsibility" is all about letting oil and gas drilling corporations get away with paying less money in royalties to the American taxpayer, can they? Well, our Congressfolk do believe a lot of strange things -- one of them apparently being that you can just let popular and well-running programs expire without suffering any consequences. They sure are lucky we're here to remind them of the consequences.

Finally, our President has nominated former George H.W. Bush-era Attorney General William Barr to succeed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and if you're thinking a Bush-era Attorney General would be an improvement over Mr. Sessions or Mr. Whittaker, well, William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut reminds you that Mr. Barr did not exactly do yeoman work for the senior Mr. Bush. And he not only comes from an era that prescribed more punishment as the solution to every criminal justice problem, he's never left it! Even worse, he has long been an adherent of the notion that the President Must Always Be Obeyed, just like Supreme Court Justices Alito and Kavanaugh. Gosh, listen to such men and you'd never know our Founders rebelled against exactly the sort of fellow who thought he was right all the time and everyone had to bend to his will! So the Drug Policy Alliance helps youtell your Senators to reject the nomination of Mr. Barr as Attorney General.

Action: concerning factory farm waste and high drug prices.

Factory farms sure do pump out the pollution, as anyone who drives by one with the windows down can tell you, but of course our Administration's EPA would like to exempt factory farms from having to report the toxic emissions from their waste. If you're saying well of course animal poop has toxic emissions!, you'll want to consider that factory farms pack a lot of animals into a very small space, which of course concentrates both animal waste and the toxic emissions therefrom, such that factory farm workers occasionally die if they spend too much time in a confined space with too much manure. Ask yourself: should anyone die from breathing in too much poop smell? And don't the folks who live nearby deserve to know what they're breathing? The Sierra Club helps you tell our EPA to require that factory farms disclose the pollution they pump into our air.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that the price of insulin has gone up about 1,000 percent over the last 25 years, to the point where diabetics are actually rationing their insulin (which, you know, results in death for some diabetics!), so Emily Phelps has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell Novo Nordisk, one of the worst offenders among insulin-selling corporations, lower the price of its insulin. You know the drill: insulin is a life-saving medicine and thus its price absolutely positively shouldn't go up 64% over four years when inflation as a whole has only gone up seven percent during that time. Novo Nordisk has actually pledged to limit their insulin price-inflation to single digits annually, but then they raised the price of insulin six percent in just two months. I guess greed is a hard habit to break. Novo Nordisk sure is lucky to have folks like us around to help them break it.

Action: concerning free speech and pollution.

Google is, as we speak, trying to put together a search engine that'll let China block its citizens from searching for information about human rights abuses! What is the Chinese government afraid of? That their citizens will discover their government throws dissidents in jail on BS charges and detains hundreds of thousands of Muslims in "re-education camps"? I know what Google's afraid of, though: the Big Stick of Bad PR, which you can help wield, as Sum of Us helps you tell Google to abandon its plans to help the Chinese government censor its citizens' web searches. This ain't small potatoes stuff: information now travels faster than it ever has, and though Will Rogers might protest that this only means lies travel faster than they ever have, I prefer a world in which we have more of a fighting chance to learn the truth. And I want good Chinese citizens to have that fighting chance, too.

Meanwhile, our Administration has announced plans to gut Obama-era standards limiting carbon pollution from newly-constructed coal plants, not long after announcing plans to gut Obama-era standards limiting methane emissions from oil and gas drilling corporations. Remember when we fought to get carbon emissions standards applied to already-existing power plants, not just new ones? Well, it's a new day, one where our EPA doesn't care about the air you breathe and the water you drink; they now only care about ensuring that executives of dying industries (and coal surely is dying) keep raking in unearned dough. Hence the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell our EPA to reject its own plans to put polluters first. When will we have a government that values its real bosses, the American people, more than it values corporate bosses? Only when we demand it and fight for it.

Action: concerning free speech and climate change.

It's the holiday season here in America, and what does that mean? It means Congress will try to attach all manner of offensive legislation to must-pass budgeting bills, that's what! And by attaching the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Congress aims to do some truly bipartisan evil! Here as elsewhere, of course, "bipartisan" doesn't mean "broadly popular or useful," but just some fecal slab elites from both parties happen to support. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, as you may recall, would (in its own words!) "prohibit() any U.S. person engaged interstate or foreign commerce" from participating in any foreign- or international organization-led boycott against Israel. That should strike you as unconstitutional, and it should also strike you as unpopular, since they're trying to sneak it through without debate. So the Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject making the Israel Anti-Boycott Act a part of year-end spending legislation.

Meanwhile, our Administration released its National Climate Assessment last Friday, an Assessment which said that doing nothing about climate change would cost good Americans half a trillion dollars annually in health care costs and storm rebuilding costs and the like. And how much coverage did our major news networks give it? Rather little -- but hey, it's not like it related to our survival as a species or anything. It's all about 75-degree Christmases! You can almost sympathize with our major news organs' unwillingness to face something that could cause the annihilation of humanity, except that, well, our major news organs are supposed to lead. And you know, back in the day, we wouldn't be sitting around moping about climate change -- we would be resolving to kick its ass. So Public Citizen helps you tell the big news corporations to cover climate change a whole lot better than they've been doing.

Action: concerning war on Yemen, spoof phone calls, and law and order.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation sponsors a toll-free number, 1.833.STOP.WAR (or 1.833.786.7927), with which you may call your Senators and tell them to pass S.J.Res. 54, which would end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen (and thus also the near-famine conditions therein). CIA chief Gina Haspel did brief a few Senators on the CIA's findings in re the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khasshogi, and, well, let's just say even our Republican Senators were loathe to toe the Administration line that there's no "smoking gun" linking the Saudi crown prince to the murder (Sen. Graham even said there was a "smoking saw," referring to the bone saw that carved up Mr. Khasshogi's body). Still, even the most welcome Republican skepticism doesn't translate into action very often -- Sen. Corker (R-TN) still says he might go for an amendment that would essentially gut the bill and turn it into something else. A phone call to your Senators could help forestall such a catastrophe.

Meanwhile, did you know professional phone spammers are able to "spoof" phone numbers to make it look like your bank or your utility provider is calling you? You can easily imagine the problems that would cause! But this is America, where we find solutions to problems, and thus Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to require phone corporations to implement technology that would confirm a call actually comes from the number it claims to come from. I'm old enough to remember when Michael Powell's FCC loosened media consolidation rules but also let folks move their phone number from one service provider to another for the first time; is it too much to ask that our current FCC also have a vestige of real conservatism left in them? I mean, fighting ripoff artists used to be a conservative cause. Sadly, today's "conservatives" tend to defend the ripoff artists -- and that's why we fight.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Greyhound Buses to stop letting Border Patrol agents to board their buses and search passengers without a warrant, then Color of Change still helps you do that. This is all pretty simple: produce the warrant, and Greyhound should cooperate, but if you can't get a warrant because you're going on a fishing expedition, nobody has the obligation to enable you. When law enforcement says it's too tough to catch criminals, we should remind them that our Founders deliberately created a Constitution that made it tough to catch criminals. Depriving someone of their freedom or their property, after all, is really something we ought to make sure we get right. Of course, folks who live in a state of euphoric rage over TEH ILLEGULZ TAKINGZ TEH JOBZ AND KILLINGZ TEH PEEPULZ!!!! are not necessarily receptive to this message. But our ministry isn't for them -- it's for the reasonable. And the reasonable outnumber the crazy in America.

Action: concerning trade, forced arbitration, and endangered species.

Canada, Mexico, and the United States signed the USMCA trade deal late last week -- but still has to be ratified by our House and Senate to take effect. The USMCA has its good points -- namely it's near-obliteration of the "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) system, which nullifies our laws and bleeds taxpayer money -- but it also has its bad points (namely its corporate welfare for Big Pharma and its weak enforcement mechanisms for labor and environmental standards), so Public Citizen helps you tell your Reps and Senators to demand improvements to the USMCA before approving it. I must say I'm quite pleased to hear no one in Congress demanding a "fast-track" process for trade deals, since "fast-track" processes tend to cut the people out of the process by cutting Congressional debate out of the process. And really, what are "fast-trackers" going to do? Say we need to sign the USMCA now for national security purposes?

Meanwhile, H.R. 7109/S. 3615, the Restoring Justice for Workers Act, would amend both the National Labor Relations Act and the Federal Arbitration Act to prohibit "predispute" forced arbitration agreements between employers and employees -- to which more than half of all employees must now submit! -- as well as class action or collective action bans. The bill would also prohibit retaliation against employees who won't enter into arbitration agreements with their employers. Bosses like to tell you arbitration is better for employees than class action suits (spoiler alert: they're wrong), but then why do they feel they have to force you into arbitration as a condition of employment, or force you to waive your right to a class action lawsuit? I mean, that's awfully suspicious, isn't it? So the Economic Policy Institute helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support the Restoring Justice for Workers Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Reps and Senators not to screw around with the Endangered Species Act, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. Various Congressdolts have proposed "reforms" that would, in essence, gut the Endangered Species Act, "reforms" which have included forcing our government to rescue endangered species in a mere five years (why, it took 40 to save the bald eagle), mandating a full vote of Congress to even designate a species as endangered, and allowing Governors to nullify endangered species designations. But it ain't just Congress: our current Administration wants to introduce more economics into the whole process. Because mammon is everything to our President and his corporate cronies! They should be ashamed of themselves -- and, more to the point, we should shame them, whether we think it'll do any good or not.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons, climate change, and self-driving cars.

Our President has declared he'll withdraw our nation from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (or INF) Treaty, which was one of the signal foreign policy achievements of President Reagan's second term. Observers disagree as to whether our President can actually pull us out; the Senate did ratify the treaty, which makes it American law. But here's one thing we can more easily agree on: whining about other nations getting to "do" weapons is no reason to abandon international treaties that actually help keep us safe. And here's another thing we can more easily agree on: either House of Congress can simply refuse to fund the "doing" of intermediate nukes. Don't get too hopeful now that one of those Houses will be in Democratic hands in January; you know how Democrats like to prove they can be just as "tough" in foreign policy as right-wingers. So Roots Action helps you tell your Reps and Senators to refuse to fund intermediate nukes.

Finally, in the wake of our Administration's National Climate Assessment concluding that, basically, climate change will wipe us out unless we act, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to take serious action on climate change. Their actions could include, but would not be limited to, the OFF Fossil Fuels Act (current bill number: H.R. 3671) or the 100 By 50 Act (S. 987), both of which would begin the work of weaning us off fossil fuels, while helping fossil fuel workers retrain to work on the new power grid. Don't believe our President's various dismissals of his Administration's NCA -- for example, retorting that our water and air are cleaner than ever a) underscores how unsuccessful his efforts to gut clean air and clean water regulations have been and b) actually has nothing to do with climate change! And certainly don't embrace cynicism and fatalism, because these are not the attitudes that ended slavery.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject S. 1885, the AV START Act, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. S. 1885 would let corporations sell self-driving cars without meeting federal safety standards and would prevent states from passing their own laws regulating self-driving cars; given that self-driving cars have killed two people and injured another this year, do either of these things sound like good ideas to you? I'll tell you what they do sound like: they sound like corporate welfare given to self-driving car manufacturers that haven't done the work to ensure their products are safe for people. Why, it's like our government is picking winners and losers with the AV START Act. And the losers? Folks who don't want to get run over by self-driving cars. Seems like our government always wants to make us the losers. And that's why we fight.

Action: concerning the war in Yemen, the war on the popular will in Michigan, and the war on elephants.

The Senate voted 63-37 vote to advance S.J.Res. 54, which aims to get us out of the war on Yemen, but they still must vote to pass the bill, and the sticking point for many Senators seems to be our Administration's apparent refusal to allow CIA chief Gina Haspel to brief them on the CIA's conclusion that Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman did in fact order the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But if our Administration does make her available (which it might, although our President has contradicted the CIA's findings!), those Senators may declare themselves sated and vote the bill down -- unless we remind them that we should get out of Yemen because Congress never authorized our involvement there and because we are helping create a human rights catastrophe there. So let's call our Senators and tell them to pass S.J.Res. 54; the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a smartphone) will help you do that.

Meanwhile, from the "Nobody Could Have Predicted!" file: after passing minimum wage and paid sick leave initiatives so that voters wouldn't get to vote on them in a ballot initiative on Election Day, Michigan's reactionary state legislature has already started gutting the minimum wage and paid sick leave standards they passed! The state Senate has passed legislation accomplishing that aim, and the state House will follow suit very soon, before that pesky incoming Democratic Governor takes office, because, as in Wisconsin, evil sure doesn't have a hard time setting priorities. So, if you want to call Michigan state House leadership (you can find phone numbers for them here) and use the Big Stick of Bad PR on them, hey, I won't stop you. I also won't stop you from telling said state House leaders that the entire country is watching them try to subvert the will of the Michigan people, who are their real bosses. I mean, gosh, we're all about freedom here at Thieves in the Temple.

Finally, fewer than half a million African elephants still roam our planet -- but our Administration wants to make it easier for folks to go off and kill these elephants so they can bring "trophies" home. Why would any reasonable person think they're hot stuff because they killed an animal that hasn't developed firearms of its own? And why should our government encourage such behavior? OK, watch our President for 30 seconds and that question answers itself, but the "freedom" to kill an endangered species and beat your chest about it is not exactly the freedom we're all about here -- surely the elephant should have freedom, too, if it's not hurting anyone? Surely being a hunter and being a civilized person aren't mutually exclusive propositions? Hence Environmental Action helps you tell our Fish and Wildlife Service to curtail granting permits to kill elephants for "trophies." And then maybe we won't see as many elephants wailing over their dead.

Action: concerning taxes and conservation.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell the incoming Congress to repeal the Republican tax-cuts-for-the-rich and advance forward better tax proposals. Our duty is our duty, so it doesn't matter that the Republican-held Senate won't pass them! Or, perhaps, it does matter, in the sense that Republicans will have to explain why they won't close corporate tax loopholes, which are popular with approximately no one outside of corporate board rooms. They'd also have to explain why they don't want to raise income taxes on the super-rich, raise the corporate tax rate, or raise the Estate Tax on millionaires and billionaires, to name three actually-popular initiatives. And remember that Republicans passed a tax cut and still lost the House, which suggests that their tax cut propaganda doesn't sway Americans like it used to. Certainly not when Americans don't even notice a tax cut in their paychecks!

Meanwhile, speaking of taxes, People for the American Way helps you tell Congressional Democrats to investigate allegations of tax-dodging that have plagued our President. I didn't want to make this the new Democrat House majority's primary focus, since our President doesn't deserve to be our primary focus -- no, the Founders would instruct us similarly, and about any President! -- but the allegations against him require our attention as defenders of civilization and lovers of law and order. And this petition would also help you demand that future Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates be legally required to release their tax returns, since custom and tradition weren't enough to persuade this President into doing so. Like conservatives, liberals would prefer that custom and tradition work their will. But when they don't, our laws must step in.

Finally, you know that our Administration is working to loosen up the "Roadless Rule" so that more logging corporations can cut down thousand-year-old trees in places like the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, but S. 3333, the Roadless Area Conservation Act, would stop that effort in its tracks, so to speak. I've long said that a new desk for your office is less valuable to our civilization than a thousand-year-old tree, but I've neglected to mention other good reasons for keeping the Tongass wild -- like the 300 species of birds (including the bald eagle) that fly through the Tongass, or the species of moose, bears, and deer that walk the land or the salmon that swim its rivers. And we'd destroy all that for what? Not even for a new desk or chair, really, but for yet another opportunity for corporate bosses to get richer! So Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to support wild places by passing the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

Action: concerning refugees and the war on Yemen.

In the middle of that fecal storm of bratty behavior he served up last week -- seriously, he should be ashamed of himself! -- our President authorized our troops stationed at the southwest border to use lethal force against anyone who comes over. But just as a man who has to tell you how tough he is all the time is actually weak, and just as a man who has to tell you what a great job he's doing all the time is doing a bad job, a nation that has to shoot refugees without telling which of them have legitimate claims for refugee status and which don't is, frankly, not a great nation. But then our President doesn't care about America actually being a great nation -- he only cares about diddling the rage glands of his most devoted followers, a strategy which has now cost his party the House and (by my count) at least two Senate seats. So Win Without War helps you tell Defense Secretary Mattis to bring our troops home from the border.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that our Senate could vote as early as tomorrow on S.J.Res. 54, which would end American support for the Saudi/UAE war in Yemen. Our President has said he'll end plane refueling support for this war effort -- which has, as you know, left millions of good Yemeni on the brink of famine -- but he has pointedly not said he'll end other American logistical support for the war effort, and he has more pointedly said that we should just live with our alliance with Saudi Arabia because "(t)he world is a dangerous place!" (exclamation point in original because of course it is) and because Iran is worse, neither of which you would recognize as convincing explanations unless you were a professional cynic. Which you're not, if you read this blog. Anyway, Win Without War helps you tell your Senators to support S.J.Res. 54 and end our involvement in the war on Yemen. Mr. Khasshogi's murder may have moved the needle a bit, but that's all the more reason we must move it more.

Action: concerning prison slavery, fraudulent fees, and methane pollution.

Color of Change helps you tell the state of California to stop exploiting prison workers (who make as little as $1/day!) to fight wildfires. I have nothing to say to folks who think of prison workers as a giant pool of people they can use and abuse as they like, but to folks who wonder how California will ever make ends meet if they spend all more money paying prisoners to do the back-breaking work of fighting wildfires, I have this to say: your wonderment is a hostage situation -- don't pay prisoners what their work is actually worth, or we'll all burn up!. Too often we imagine that the world around us is the only world that can be, but we can bring back a world where states tax rich folks hard and stop funneling taxpayer money to crony corporations. At that point we'll actually find it a lot easier to do the right thing, but let's tell California to do the right thing anyway. Doing the right thing builds character, after all.

Meanwhile, Comcast has lately agreed to refund well over half a million dollars to Massachusetts customers who signed long-term cable contracts only to find themselves slammed with fancy-sounding fees that inflated their bills up to 40% above advertised prices. And when they realized they'd been had and tried to cancel their cable, Comcast slammed them again with a $200 "early termination" fee! Nice work if you can get it! And since it's absurd to think Comcast would only try this in Massachusetts, Consumer Reports helps you ask your state Attorney General to investigate whether cable corporations' add-on fees in your state amount to a fraudulent price hike. We imagine America as some kind of "free" market Wild West, but we must insist on laws (and law enforcement) that won't let corporations pull this kind of bait-and-switch on us. Indeed, things like this used to be a law-and-order issues for conservatives. I wonder what changed.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to reject its proposed plan to weaken its own methane emissions standards, then both the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists still help you do that. You probably know the drill by now: oil and gas drilling corporations leak methane the way some folks leak gossip, methane emissions pack a far larger climate change punch than even coal emissions do, and when corporations ventilate methane into our air willy-nilly from drilling projects on public lands, they're also cheating American taxpayers out of royalties (since methane is a usable energy source, and, you know, public lands belong to the public). Always it seems like our Administration's EPA cares more about protecting polluters than protecting good Americans from polluters. But luckily, we are always here to remind them whom they are really pledged to protect.

Action: concerning privacy, clean water, and worker rights.

Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real reforms defending consumer privacy from big tech corporations. Sadly, the reason we need legislation to accomplish this (and I really wish journalists would mention it a bit more!) is that Congress passed one of its notorious "resolutions of disapproval" repealing FCC privacy rules which would have (among other good works!) forced big corporations to allow consumers to opt in to letting corporations sell their data, rather than forcing consumers to opt out. But big tech corporations like Facebook have been earning themselves a lot of bad PR for their inability/unwillingness to protect their customers' private data (and for employing Nixonian tactics against their critics) -- and corporations like Facebook monopolize their fields, so our government has to step in and curb their power, whether they want to or not. Concentrated power: it's evil everywhere!

Meanwhile, as you may know, the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) proposed banning fracking in the basin of the Delaware River earlier this year, which is good, but also proposed letting corporations dump fracking wastewater in the Basin and draw Basin water out to frack with! Welcome to yet another King-Solomon-actually-splitting-the-baby-in-half "compromise"! I mean, the whole point of banning fracking is to keep pollution out of our water, so if you go ahead and allow fracking-based pollution in water nearly 15 million good Americans drink and wash with, you've kinda missed the point. Still, Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf has one of four votes on the DRBC, so Food and Water Watch helps you tell Gov. Wolf to support a fracking ban with considerably more teeth. Remember, folks: the money you make from polluting water quickly goes away, but clean water lasts forever -- if we maintain it.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) not to repeal its "joint-employer standard," then the Economic Policy Institute still helps you do that. Big chain corporations have long claimed that their workers' "real" employer was the particular franchise where they worked; thus workers would have had to redress grievances over pay and scheduling and such with the franchise. Of course any fool can see that's absurd, since franchises obey (or cope with) orders from the top, so the NLRB created a joint-employer standard to help workers redress grievances with their real bosses. Now that Republicans dominate the board, they're trying to scuttle the standard. But don't believe the hype that TEH STANDURDZ HURTZ TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!! Your local McDonald's ain't a "small business." Obviously.

Action: concerning voting rights and food safety.

You've heard that House Democrats plan, as their first act next year, to pass a "magnum opus" bill covering voting rights, campaign finance reform, and ethics reform? And you've also heard me say they'd be much better off trying to pass something more digestible first? That means now is a good time to call Democrat House leadership (here's phone info for Rep. Pelosi, Rep. Hoyer, and Rep. Clyburn) and tell them to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act first. The VRAA would ensure that our Justice Department could act on voting rights violations coming from any state or municipality -- not just the Southern ones, which seems to be the problem the Supreme Court had with the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. We may be done with poll taxes and literacy tests, but you see what's going on in Georgia and Florida -- and you also see states passing Voter ID laws, getting rid of early voting periods, moving voting machines out of low-income neighborhoods into wealthier ones, and using the Interstate Crosscheck database to deregister good Americans on mere "suspicion" of "voter fraud." So let's try to get House Democrats to do something we can all understand and support.

Meanwhile, a drug-resistant Salmonella outbreak has plagued raw turkey for over a year now, so far linked to over 160 illnesses (and one death) in 35 states -- and yet we still don't know which turkey brands are making consumers sick, so Consumer Reports helps you tell our USDA to tell consumers which brands of turkey are part of the outbreak. You might be saying, you really want our government to sound an alarm about turkey a week before Thanksgiving? But which is more important: turkey-producing corporations' business or people's health? I mean, if they didn't want the bad PR and lower sales associated with a year-long food poisoning outbreak, then maybe turkey producers should have fixed it before it came to that! It's sad that we even have to say that out loud. (Oh, and not to pile on, but I did say "drug-resistant" Salmonella; with all the antibiotics we pump into our feed animals, we're going to be hearing that a lot more in the coming years.)

Action: concerning banksters and facial recognition software.

H.R. 7006/S. 3542, the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, would (as its title suggests) break up the biggest banksters in America, by requiring that none of them would be able to control assets representing more than three percent of America's gross domestic product (or GDP); currently a mere six banks control assets that equal half of America's GDP, and that is (as a conservative might say) too much power concentrated in too few hands. All those big name banksters who've been running roughshod over our economy this last decade-plus? Yeah, this bill would smite them all. The bill would also prevent banks from using FDIC-insured deposits to indulge in the kind of hifalutin speculation that crashed our economy in 2008, thus re-erecting a Glass-Steagall-style wall between traditional banking and securities speculation. So CREDO helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act.

Meanwhile, Demand Progress helps you tell our Transportation and Safety Administration (or TSA) to shut down its facial recognition program. The TSA has come out and said it wants domestic travelers to get "mugshots" so they can put this program into action! It's like you're a criminal even before you've committed a crime! And, as you know from other corporate antics, facial recognition software ain't good, particularly at identifying women and folks of color -- surely you've heard about that time Google's facial recognition software mistook a pair of black folks for apes. It gets better: TSA doesn't want to tell us what they'll do with their little "mugshots" -- might they share them with other law enforcement agencies without those agencies getting warrants? So, to sum: the technology isn't good enough, and it's also ripe for abuse. Why, that all sounds like it would do the opposite of keeping us safe!

Around the table: Democrats plan another mistake, plus somewhat better news.

Democrats plan a "magnum opus" of legislative provisions for their first bill, one that would address voting rights, campaign finance reform, and ethics. They've got the right idea, but as usual, they've got the wrong size: these all-encompassing pieces of legislation give Republicans too much space for prevarication (remember "death panels"?), and we can get more done with (and get more public support for) smaller bills. I think making H.R. 1 the Voting Rights Advancement Act would be the better idea, not least because we could put Republicans on the spot with it. After all, why do you oppose expanding voting rights? is a much more difficult question to answer than why do you oppose this big bill with all kinds of stuff in it? (Oh, and I'm also pretty sure they can't just overturn Citizens United with a bill.)

60 Minutes runs a lengthy report showing how European nations are actually doing more for their citizens' internet privacy than we are -- but doesn't mention that the FCC actually enacted privacy regulations in 2016, only to see Congress repeal them with a "resolution of disapproval" the next year. It's not like that was beside the point of the report! Anyway, Max Schrems's point about "forced consent" -- that it's wrong for a corporation to sell you a product and then say give us all your data, or you can't use the product -- should be attended by American jurists, maybe? It's not like there's no precedent in American law.

We could make too much of a U.S. District Court judge blocking further construction on the Keystone XL pipeline until our Administration does the proper reviews (and not just environmentally-related ones) as required by law, since our Administration could just show its work and OK I couldn't get through that sentence without spitting tea all over my keyboard. Also, too, if, per our Supreme Court, an Administration agency "cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past," well, that doesn't bode well for the FCC's net neutrality repeal, does it?

In other good news, our Administration announces that it will stop refueling Saudi planes bombing the bejeesus out of Yemen, though it will still aid the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen with weapons sales and logistical support. This is a good thing, though we'll need to pressure our Administration to do more, and I bet Mr. Khashoggi, now sitting comfortably in the beyond, finds his role in this matter rather amusing. Rep. Royce (R-CA) could use some education, however, lumping the Houthis in with al-Qaeda when the Houthis are some of the world's best fighters against al-Qaeda.

Finally, Axios/SurveyMonkey poll finds that 61% of Democrats think Republicans are "racist/bigoted/sexist," while some 31% of Republicans think the same of Democrats. For the record, I don't believe Republicans are bigots merely due to party affiliation -- in fact, I believe all of us are susceptible to bigotry (calling racism a "virus" that could be "activated" really was the smartest thing Nate Silver ever said), and better public policy, public policy that doesn't merely redistribute worker income upward to executives, would better ensure that fewer folks drink from the cup of bigotry.

Action: concerning trade, clean water, and healthy food.

The governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico plan to sign the new USMCA trade agreement -- the one that would replace NAFTA -- on November 30; after that, the pact will go to Congress for ratification, so now's a good time to tell our Congressfolk to ensure that we get the strongest USMCA possible, as Public Citizen helps us do. The USMCA would eliminate the "investor-state dispute settlement" system with Canada in three years, and drastically curtail ISDS use with Mexico; these are tremendously good things, because we deserve to know that investors won't be able to nullify our laws and exact tribute from us simply because they can convince some tribunal that our clean air and clean water laws "cost them money." But that doesn't mean we shouldn't demand more, such as the elimination of corporate welfare for big pharma and better enforcement of labor and clean air/clean water standards. So let's get cracking.

Meanwhile, our Administration has proposed expanding offshore drilling in almost all of our coastal waters -- except around Florida, of course, because they need Rick Scott in the Senate that badly. I would naturally have said hey, remember how well the Deepwater Horizon spill went?, but it turns out that the Taylor Energy oil spill of 2004 is about to overtake the Deepwater Horizon spill as the worst oil spill in American history. If you're wondering how a 14-year-old oil spill is still spewing hundreds of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day, well, Taylor didn't even tell anyone about the oil leaking for six years and still claims there's "no evidence" the spill is even happening. And this is the kind of thing our Administration apparently wants more of in our great nation! Hence Penn Environment helps you tell our Interior Department to scuttle its plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell your state Governor to follow the lead of Arkansas and ban dicamba usage on your state's farms. Arkansas banned dicamba usage during that state's main growing season after finding that dicamba doesn't stay put once it's sprayed on crops -- it drifts away for up to three full days, leaving a trail of destruction in its path, and if it drifts onto neighboring farms -- which, hello, happens all the time -- then it also damages other folks' crops, and therefore their livelihoods, and also therefore our food. Arkansas also found workers getting sick after working with dicamba, which couldn't possibly happen to consumers, could it? Naturally, Monsanto has a version of dicamba it uses with its proprietary soybean crop which it modified genetically to better withstand its dicamba. But our choice is simple here: we can either stand with farmers or stand with big corporations.

Action: concerning war, media, and immigration.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the war in Afghanistan. Their latest email missive informed me that some folks who were pre-teens when the war began in 2001 just got elected to Congress, which I found a bit sobering, but these new Congressfolk are considerably less emotionally-invested in this war than the folks who started it, and now (at last!) they get a bigger say in whether we keep that war going. Which we shouldn't, not least because we got Mr. bin Laden years ago. The forces of evil will try two tactics: 1) ZOMG TEH TERRURIZTZ WINZ!!!!!, and 2) let's privatize the Afghanistan War. Both arguments are moronic -- respectively, fearmongering is a way of announcing that you can't win the argument on the merits, and if we're going to fight wars, we should fight wars, rather than let mercenaries bleed the taxpayer. And taxpayers will be paying out the wazoo for bad results, if past privatization efforts are any indication.

Meanwhile, Media Matters's latest email missive opens with this blunt and completely accurate statement: "Fox News is a malevolent and destructive force." One almost (I said almost!) longs for the day when Fox's on-air "talent" went to some lengths to hide their racism, but now, with President Bigballs as their Personal Lord and Savior, they don't even have to do that anymore. And since we can't buy cable channels a la carte in America, we can't directly hit Fox News where it hurts (i.e., in their pocketbook). But we can tell Fox's corporate advertisers to stop sponsoring Fox News, which Media Matters helps you do. Do not tolerate any guff that boycott efforts like these "hurt free speech." Fox News punditoids have an inviolable right not to be imprisoned for their speech, but they have no "right" to six- and seven-figure TV jobs. Our First Amendment protects us from our government -- not from advertisers, not from activists, and certainly not from viewers.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Department of Health and Human Services (or HHS) that their proposed expansion of the definition of "public charge" will unfairly punish immigrant families, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. As you may know, we've always kept immigrants out if we can establish that they'll become a "public charge," or someone completely reliant on the taxpayer, but HHS has proposed calling anyone who has ever availed themselves of Medicaid or food stamps a "public charge," which would make a lot of folks who work and contribute to society (not to mention pay taxes!) into "public charges." Our Administration is basically trying to deport as many immigrants as possible, which is a stupid way to make policy. And either "public charge" means something or it doesn't; our Administration obviously prefers meaninglessness and nihilism. But we don't have to put up with any of that.

On Election Day.

Today is Election Day, which means you ought to go out and vote, if you haven't done so already. If you have any trouble voting, of course, you should call 1.866.OUR.VOTE (or if, like me, you hate mnemonic devices for remembering phone numbers, 1.866.687.8683). (You can also text "Our Vote" to 97779, or visit 1.866.OUR.VOTE's website here.)

What would be a good reason to call 1.866.OUR.VOTE? Being told you can't vote if you have unpaid parking tickets or child support, getting challenged by official-looking people (or people with guns, even!) who don't have any actual authority to challenge voters, getting a flyer telling you Election Day is on Wednesday for people like you wink-wink. But what if you show up at the polls and the election worker says they can't find your registration? Well, you might be a victim of lousy recordkeeping, or you might be a victim of the notorious Interstate Crosscheck database, which, as you know, helps nefarious state governments deregister voters with the same name as voters in other states, though most names are, as you know, quite common (and Interstate Crosscheck doesn't check middle names or Social Security numbers!) That'd be a damn good reason to call 1.866.OUR.VOTE.

Note well that if you find yourself deregistered when you know you've done nothing wrong, your disgust will be palpable and righteous, and you may just want to throw up your hands and say to hell with these clowns and then go home. But before you do that, remember that this is exactly what they want you to do. It's the same reason they saturate the airwaves with negative ads the days before Election Day: because they want you to stay home out of disgust, so you won't vote against their cronies. Don't let them manipulate you, and don't let them win. Make the call to 1.866.OUR.VOTE, describe your problem to them, and let them help you take the next step.

Do I have predictions about how today will go? Yes, I have a few: I predict that you, dear reader, are not the kind of person who has been investing their entire identity in a Democrat "blue wave" today. And I also predict that, if Democrats lose Senate seats and only pick up a dozen House seats, you will remember that this is where we were two years ago, and that if the corporatists and the racists and the woman-haters win again, they'll be just as unpopular tomorrow as they were today -- they will have no mandate, and again they will have us to deal with. But here's the most important thing I predict: that you, dear reader, have already spent the last two years calling and writing your Reps and Senators every day -- and perhaps you've even been challenging them at the few townhalls they've held, and bird-dogging them at public events -- and thus you already know that your duty to our country doesn't end today, but begins today. Voting happens one day out of the year, and then Our Glorious Elites want you to sit on your hands the rest of the time. You can confound their expectations, and their nefarious goals, by expressing your will to your representatives every day after today. And this blog will continue to help you do that, as it has done since 2005.

So good luck today, and God bless.

Action: concerning government spying, antibiotic abuse, and cruelty to immigrants.

You may have heard that our military is trying to figure out if they can predict mass protests (i.e., against our President) from social media activity beforehand. Before we get into figuring out exactly which Philip K. Dick short story our government is trying to make into public policy this time, let's step back: why would our government want to know about protests beforehand? I can think of only one reason: because they don't want any good Americans to protest! And I'm sure they felt exactly the same way when Tea Partiers were making asses of themselves in our streets and on our public lands! Hence Free Press helps you tell Congress to pimp-slap any Administration effort to obstruct lawful protest in America using surveillance. Seriously, if they want to figure out when the protests are coming, all they have to do is note when they're about to do something that's going to hurt good Americans. Seems easier to just stop hurting Americans than to do all this hifalutin spying.

Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell Darden Restaurants to get the antibiotics out of the meat it sells at its restaurants. Darden, as you may know, owns Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, LongHorn Steakhouse, and the Capital Grille, among others; in total, Darden runs over 1,700 restaurants serving 400 million guests in North America annually, so it's got reach. And its shareholders have, in each of the last three years, put forward a resolution demanding that Darden meats stop relying on animals pumped full of antibiotics; the most recent iteration of that resolution got 40 percent. Add the Big Stick of Bad PR to shareholder pressure Darden's already getting and we may yet get Darden to rid its supply chain of antibiotic-drenched meat, and thus Darden could help us avert a world where antibiotic abuse in feed animals renders antibiotics useless for medical use, which would also be a world in which the next cut could kill us. So let's get to wielding that Big Stick.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Administration not to distend the definition of "public charge" so it can deport more immigrants later, then the National Women's Law Center and the Union of Concerned Scientists still help you do that. We've always tried to prevent immigrants from coming to America if it seems likely they'll become a "public charge," or someone who'll depend entirely on taxpayer assistance, but our Administration would dramatically expand the definition of "public charge" to include anyone who's ever used food stamps or Medicaid, when a lot of good Americans fall on hard times and need to rely on those services sooner or later. I guess it's asking too much for a President who was literally a millionaire before he was eight years old -- and not through his own hard work, but through his father's sketchy inheritance schemes -- to understand that hard-working people face hard times every once in a while. But we're happy to teach him otherwise.

Action: concerning Administration bullying and campaign finance.

Our Administration's plans to force transgender folks to undergo genetic testing to determine their "true" gender, which presumably will be, by our Administration's definition, the gender they're born with. How does this promote freedom, again? It doesn't -- it promotes the "freedom" of rage- and fear-addled religious bigots to make everyone conform to their vision of how Americans should be. And here you thought being an American was all about everyone's freedom! Luckily, our government contracts out so many of its functions that it'll just about have to depend on various genetic testing corporations, like 23andMe, Ancestry, and LabCorp, and Sum of Us helps you tell those corporations not to cooperate with our Administration's plan to gender-test transgender folks. Transgender folks face enough bulling already; they don't need any more from our Bully-in-Chief.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to ban politicians from using Leadership PACs as their personal slush funds, then Issue One still helps you do that. The FEC prevents candidates from using their own campaign funds on personal expenses -- an offense for which California Rep. Duncan Hunter got indicted in August -- but the FEC does not prevent candidates from using Leadership PACs for limo rides, expensive dinners, and trips to Disneyland, all things I wouldn't imagine even Chief Justice Roberts calling "free speech." Politicians who use Leadership PACs in this manner would likely argue that it's not a "necessity" for "survival" in the mean old political world, but sure ain't the attitude you need to have if you want to bring about a better world.

Action: concerning pollution, lead poisoning, and food safety.

Our President tried to ram through Keystone XL pipeline approval early in his term, but a U.S. District Court judge ruled in April that our State Department had to complete a lawful environmental review before issuing any permits. So now our Administration has apparently issued a draft of said environmental review that fails to fully evaluate the environmental impacts, not least of which is a proposed alternate route through Nebraska. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell our Administration to do a lawful environmental review before committing to build the Keystone XL pipeline. And if doing a lawful review means they can't build the pipeline, well, that's just too bad! Our President doesn't care about climate and clean water; he only cares about swinging his balls in everyone's faces -- which, sadly, resonates strongly among those Americans who blame everyone but themselves for their problems. But they're not a majority, and they don't get all the say about everything.

Meanwhile, as schools are finding lead in their drinking water all the way up and down the state of California -- including half the schools in San Francisco, which really should be collecting enough money in property taxes to fund solutions to this problem -- Cal PIRG helps you tell your local school boards to protect our children from lead in drinking water. The state of California allowed lead in plumbing fixtures until the year 2010, which wasn't that long ago, even if it feels like it. That means a lot of schools there (and plenty of other states!) still have lead in their water pipes, and if you've got lead in your water pipes, you're probably going to have lead in your water sooner or later. And, as you know, any amount of lead in drinking water can cause brain damage in children. And children are literally our future! It wasn't just a Whitney Houston song! So let's tell our school boards to get on the stick with getting the lead out.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big food-producing corporations to get the glyphosate out of their food, then Only Organic still helps you do that. As you may know, the Environmental Working Group found the cancer-linked glyphosate (the main ingredient of Roundup, Monsanto's most famous herbicidal product) in two out of three of the oat-based foods it tested, and at a much higher level than scientists would call safe -- and a lot of our biggest food-producing corporations, like Quaker, Kellogg's, and General Foods, make these foods. And kids eat them in cereal and oatmeal and granola bars! The World Health Organization and the state of California have declared glyphosate a possible carcinogen, and the European Union has banned it from their crops entirely -- and yet our society just chugs along, our leaders in business and government saying their hands are tied. So let's give them some incentive to untie them.

Action: concerning clean water, moral pension investing, and worker rights.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5609, the WATER Act. What would the WATER Act do? The WATER Act would fund improvements in clean water infrastructure with a 3.5 percentage-point increase in the corporate income tax. You and I would probably jack up the corporate tax rate a lot more than 3.5 points, but at least no one could reasonably ask where we're going to get the money. Really, though, no one should be asking that anyway -- clean water is the bedrock upon which a civilized society stays healthy. And that money we'd "save" in (for example) not getting rid of lead pipes and not updating water well systems in rural areas? We'd lose all of that, and more, in rising health care costs when folks can't drink or wash in clean water. And here you thought planning for the future was a conservative value! Sadly, today's "conservatives" only seem to care about what makes some crony unearned cash.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania workers, take note: payday lending is (praise the Lord!) illegal in Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania state pension funds still invest in payday lending operations in other states where it's still legal. Payday lenders, as you know, prey on poor working families in need of a quick influx of cash, trapping them in three-digit loans that all too frequently roll over automatically so that folks can't dig out fast enough. That sure doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd like to make your retirement money off of, does it? Don't fall for fund managers telling you that they just can't make money for you unless they invest in payday lenders, because that's what? A hostage situation, folks -- don't make me invest in people who conduct their business morally, or your retirement gets it! So Penn PIRG helps you tell state pension boards to divest from payday lenders.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our National Labor Relations Board to stop trying to weaken the joint-employer standard, then the National Employment Law Project (among others) still helps you do that. Our NLRB strengthened the joint-employer standard in 2015, quite reasonably surmising that corporations were using franchise arrangements to avoid accountability when they hurt their workers. But it's even worse than that: too many large corporations hire workers through employment agencies, mistreat them, and then try to claim that they need to redress grievances through their employment agencies! Naturally, right-wingers call the strengthened joint-employer standard an "attack on small businesses," though it's obviously aimed at large corporations hiding behind small businesses. If you get as tired of that bald lie as I do, then you know what to do.

Action: concerning political prisoners and war in Yemen.

The government of Iran has imprisoned Atena Daemi for four years now. What did she do? The government says she's guilty of "assembly and collusion against national security," "propaganda against the state," "insulting the Supreme Leader and the sacred," and "concealing crime evidence." OK, so you recognize these as bullshit charges governments come up with when they know they could never rule without fear, so what did she really do? Put social protest songs on her cellphone, make jokes about the Ayatollah on Facebook, express her opposition to the death penalty, and fail to provide a social media password for another friend who's also now in jail. So in the Bizarro World that is Iran, that means six months of detainment followed by a 15-minute trial followed by seven years of prison! What time is it? Time for the Big Stick of Bad PR! Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to free Ms. Daemi.

Meanwhile, you've heard all about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey? The one the Saudis have told a lot of stories about? Well, now's a good time to recall that Saudi Arabia has been leading a war against Yemen which has put over 13 million good Yemeni on the brink of starvation and helped enable al-Qaeda, and that our government has given weapons and logistical support to this effort. Don't protest that we don't have enough allies in the Middle East, not unless you're ready to honestly account for how all our other allies (the Shah, Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu, Hussein) have acted and where that's gotten us. We must stop treating the world's citizens as obstacles to stealing their resources -- and we must also stop treating dictatorial regimes as vehicles with which we can steal those resources more easily. Hence Stop the War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons and immigration.

Our President has announced his intention to withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987. Why? Partly because our NSA chief, John "The Mustache of Evil" Bolton, hates all arms treaties, and also partly because our President hates any and all constraints on what he perceives to be his rightful absolute power as our 46% President. Hence his whining that Russia and China (the latter not even a party to the INF) get to "do weapons" while we don't, though you don't necessarily throw up your hands and build "usable" nuclear weapons just because someone violates a treaty. But luckily for us, our President can't build "usable" nukes without our Congress funding it, and our Congress wouldn't even fund Mr. Bush's bunker-buster nukes in the afterglow of his 2004 election victory, so Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk not to fund our President's latest wet dream of "usable" nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Demand Progress helps you tell Amazon to stop trying to sell its facial recognition software to our Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) agency. ICE's separate-all-the-families-at-the-border approach is notorious enough, but Amazon's Rekognition software, like some white folks, can't even reliably tell folks of color apart from each other; now imagine the two joining forces! Look, reducing illegal immigration to America is actually pretty easy: you make it impossible for big corporations to exploit immigrant labor, you amend the National Labor Relations Act to let farm workers unionize, and you adjust immigration quotas so that they acknowledge the reality that nations closer to us are going to send us more immigrants. But I guess Amazon would rather make money off of immigrant detention camps, and thus (like some Amazon employees have already done, and good for them!) we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR.