Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: CEO pay, the minimum wage, labor relations, and why gay marriage isn't a slippery slope one more time.

Dean Baker fingers a culprit behind absurdly overpaid CEOs: "corporate cronyism," as in "(t)he corporate directors who are supposed to be holding down CEO pay for the benefit of the shareholders are generally buddies of the CEOs," often picked by the CEOs themselves! Remember this the next time someone tells you CEOs deserve all those millions because they "take risks." The biggest risk they take is that one of their cronies on the board might turn on them, which, given the evidence, isn't a very big risk.

Ralph Nader tells us why the Congressional Budget Office's report that a $10.10/hour minimum wage would cost the economy 500,000 jobs during the last six months of 2016 isn't the whole story. You'll be reminded that Ron Unz, editor of The American Conservative, supports a $12/hour minimum wage. Meanwhile, Mike Konczal suggests that the CBO's science isn't exactly the consensus among economists, and some of it isn't even well-tested. The CBO report also said, by the way, that a minimum wage hike would lift 900,000 people out of poverty over that same period. What, the "liberal" media didn't foreground that?

The Gap announces it will hike its minimum wage to $10/hour by June of 2015 -- which, admittedly, puts them in a better light than does their refusal to support better safety for Bangladeshi garment workers. Meanwhile, WalMart also says they'll "look at" supporting a minimum wage hike, but WalMart supported the 2007 hike, and has made positive noises about further hikes, so this feels like they're going backward. Still, if Congressional Republicans plan to keep doing nothing, we're fortunate to find corporations volunteering to hike wages.

Volkswagen labor official suggests that the German automaker doesn't have to put any more factories in the South if workers can't unionize there. Well, Tennessee Republicans, it looks like you're not the only ones who can issue threats.

Finally, Mitch McConnell's primary challenger, Matt Bevin, says that gay marriages could lead to parent-child marriages -- "because at the end of the day a lot of this ends up being taxes and who can visit who in the hospital and there’s other repressions and things that come with it -- so a person may want to define themselves as being married to one of their children so that they can then in fact pass on certain things to that child financially and otherwise." "Where do you draw the line?" he demands. Right here: gay marriages will not lead to parent-child marriages, because children cannot consent to a relationship with an adult, and parents can already pass "certain things" on to their children. (Yes, I, too, wonder what Mr. Bevin means by "repressions.")

Around the table: the usual catalogue of contemporary hypocrisy and venality, plus bonus *Star Trek* reference.

American officials say that the NSA is actually only vacuuming up about 30% of all American telephone metadata, at least in part because of the explosive proliferation of cell phones over the last decade. Whenever I hear stuff like this, I think of the Star Trek episode "Charlie X," in which the Enterprise crew foil a godlike adolescent by overwhelming him with stuff to control. I also remind myself that these American officials could be fibbing.

New York police department tests the notorious Google Glass as a surveillance tool. I'd say it's fine, as long as you get a warrant, which law enforcement doesn't like doing anymore now that Messrs. Bush and Obama made that OK. But there's hope: Google will start selling the glasses to the public later this year, which means we'll be able to spy on the spies.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says the FCC can't save net neutrality. Why? Their argument essentially boils down to "the FCC stinks at its job" and "government overreach is also bad," but our duty as citizens is to make our government do its job correctly, not throw up our hands at the difficulty of that task and hope for a series of solutions that won't even happen without our government doing our will.

Speaking of bad government, John Boehner says he can't push immigration reform because of the "widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws." You mean the administration that's deporting more immigrants more quickly than any other in history? And where does he get off complaining about this administration's "untrustworthiness" when the last one acted as if enforcing the law wasn't even part of its job?

Wellesley College students protest the placement, outside, of a statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear -- part of an art exhibit, but not a part installed inside the museum. I don't think the whole inside-outside art-life thing is bunkum, nor do I think consumers of art should only get the art they want or expect, but I get tired of being told "it was meant to evoke response," because any idiot can provoke a "response" these days, and too many idiots do just that. I just hope this thing doesn't cause an accident.

Finally, former Navy chaplain and anti-gay activist says that folks who are "not going to get eternal benefits in Heaven" don't deserve any "government rewards here on this Earth." What provoked that? Oh, he's mad about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, because he thinks it'll let men use women's bathrooms, though he doesn't cite any language from the bill that would support that claim, possibly because doing so would require reading and reflecting. I'd never heard of Gordon Klingenschmitt before, though given the circumstances of his Naval discharge perhaps I should have; still, let's never speak of him again.

Action: smarter sentencing, robocalls, and paycheck fairness.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee passed S 1410, the Smarter Sentencing Act, by a surprising 13-5 vote late last week; the bill still needs to get through the full Senate and the full House, but that 13-5 is encouraging, as is the bill's list of sponsors (4 of 10, including Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, are Republicans). S 1410 would halve most mandatory sentences and widen "safety valve" exceptions for federal drug offenders, and would apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively for federal crack offenders -- but it would also establish new mandatory minimums for federal cases involving terrorism, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. I see why they've added the new mandatories -- domestic violence offenders, in particular, rarely get the jail time other offenders do -- but I still think we ought to let judges judge. The House bill is HR 3382, introduced by Rep. Scott (D-VA) and Labrador (R-ID); it's more a start than an end product, but Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Congressfolk to support it.

Meanwhile, the FCC issued regulations in mid-October mandating that telemarketers should only call you if you agreed in advance, in writing, that you'd like to hear from them -- they still have to get your written consent even if they claim an "established business relationship" with you. Sounds common-sensical, right? But apparently corporations are still placing robocalls without so much as a text message from their targets indicating consent. And that's something the FCC ought to know about, regardless of whether corporations are pressuring them to be lax in enforcing this regulation. So Consumers Union helps you tell the FCC to better enforce its rules preventing robocallers from pestering you, if in fact robocallers are pestering you. What could be more inviolable in America, after all, than a contract between two parties? And why do our elites always seem to argue that the larger individual parties need to be "free" to run roughshod over the rights of other parties to be left the hell alone?

Finally, President Obama did bring up paycheck fairness in his State of the Union address -- even dropped in a Mad Men reference. Women still make about 77 cents for every dollar a man earns; if you adjust strictly for similar qualifications and experience, that figure would rise a bit, but it still wouldn't be a dollar for every dollar a man earns, and you'd hesitate, I'd think, to adjust for similar qualifications and experience when you consider that women face pressures men don't face that result in dissimilar qualifications and experience to begin with. S 84/HR 377, the Paycheck Fairness Act, still sits out there waiting for Congressional action; the bill would bolster the Equal Pay Act by (among other things) preventing employers from retaliating against workers who talk about their wages with their co-workers, since that's often the only way women find out their employers are discriminating against them. The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act already.

Around the table: right-wing values, our values, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

Richard Kirsch reminds us that when Republicans vote to cut food stamps and Medicare and such, those are "statements of values." He also reminds us that right-wingers believe "it’s an infringement on a person’s freedom to be taxed to take care of someone else" -- but actual conservatives (versus the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative") don't necessarily believe that, since they also know how (for example) the interstate highway system works. (As an aside, boy am I sick of knuckledraggers calling it "free health care." Even single-payer wouldn't be free -- you'd pay for it, as a taxpayer. Is that why it's free? Because you pay for it?)

Time magazine "helps" you "understand" our ongoing cold war with Iran with a helpful graphic -- that begins in 1979. Because, of course, if it didn't directly affect us in the form of (to think of a hypothetical situation) hostage-taking at an embassy, it didn't really happen. Remember this timeline from CNN from a few years ago, which also started in 1979? It's like the "liberal" media never, ever learns. More likely, that's just what they want us to think.

Kentucky's "KYnect" health exchange -- entirely state-run, but set up with funding from, and under the authority of, the Affordable Care Act -- has a great first day, enrolling almost 3,000 individuals and families in health care coverage. Sadly, not everyone in Kentucky proves well-informed about KYnect -- one thinks it was "defunded," while another "hope(s)" "it beats Obamacare." They probably want government to keep its hands off Medicare, too.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (S-PA) thinks it was "inappropriate" for his Administration's lawyers to compare gay marriage with children marrying -- but then remarks that "a much better analogy would have been brother and sister." I've got a "much better analogy" for Tom Corbett: he's a lot like that ancient, bitter uncle who has a few too many and then thinks everything he says is funny and brilliant.

And finally, some good news: remember that 15-year-old rape victim whom the Maldives government was preparing to flog in public in March? Well, the Maldives High Court overturned the sentence last month. Note well that a global shame campaign conducted by Avaaz (in which you might have participated) just so happened to precede the High Court's decision. We might have helped save only one person, but often that's where the arc of justice starts.

The BBC's Jane Wakefield wonders if the next industrial revolution will be a "makers" revolution. Don't anyone go thinking this is about Ayn Rand -- it's just about folks being able to use 3-D printers, along with crowdsourcing and internet research, to be able to manufacture, at least on a small scale, things that could change how we view the world. Could be exciting, and I'm pleased that big corporations are pooping themselves at the thought, but call me when 3-D printers are able to make washable underwear or oven-safe plates.

Not that you didn't already suspect this, but a number of reputable sources find our Ongoing Economic Armageddon at least partly behind increases in suicide rates for Americans aged 35 to 64. I don't know that putting banksters in jail would lower the rate all that much, not that we shouldn't do that for other reasons. (The question of why baby boomers have a higher suicide rate generally is worth pursuing separately. I won't admit because they're spoiled as an answer.)

Reuters informs us that one reason garment industry tycoons in Bangladesh, the world's number two garment exporter, can treat their workers so badly is that these tycoons make up about ten percent of that nation's Parliament. One activist suggests that well over half of Parliament has some kind of tie to the garment industry. Remember all that bulldada last year about how we should have a President with "business experience"? Well, this is kinda the dark side of that.

Harold Meyerson (writing at The American Prospect) notes that one provision of the Affordable Care Act -- making employers of more than 50 pay for health insurance for any employee working 30 hours or more per week -- has already induced some employers (which include state and local governments) to cut their workers' hours to around 29 per week. There'll be a safety net of sorts (state or federal health care exchanges) for those folks, but still, lost hours means lost money. We should have a single-payer health care system to get around this problem, maybe? (Mr. Meyerson gets there, of course, noting that it's rather "arbitrary" to have a system where you almost have to get health care through your job.)

Ohio Tea Party leaders say they're so disgusted with Republicans that they might start fielding candidates of their own. "It remains uncertain," the Dispatch tells us, "just how much the Ohio GOP and its candidates could be hurt by an insurrection because it is difficult to assess the true strength of tea party groups." Well, of course it's "difficult to assess" the strength of groups called into being by corporate money and made up largely of folks who can barely articulate a coherent thought.

Finally, dig the pissing match Catholic League President Bill Donohue starts on Larry King Live over whether the boys molested by Catholic priests were "prepubescent" or not. Remember, gang: no ground is too small to claim, and no pitched battle too petty to fight, when you're always wrong about everything. And those kids were too young to consent to sex, regardless of what exact point oh, forget it, it's Bill Donohue.

Monsanto has been patenting (literally) garden varieties of fruits and vegetables like cucumber, melons, and broccoli in Europe. True, they're not patenting them in the U.S. (yet!), but anyone who wants to grow these things -- be they other big corporations and small farmers trying to make a living, or you and I trying to grow a few things in our backyards -- will have to deal with the European patents. How does a corporation become so presumptuous as to patent everyday food seeds? Actually, I could have asked that question without the last six words. Avaaz helps you tell European nations to close loopholes in their patent laws that allow big corporations to patent conventional fruit and vegetable seeds. Almost two million people have answered this call so far; if world public opinion is, as Mr. Chomsky says, the world's other superpower, should we not prevail?

Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell the ten largest retailers in America to keep products with toxic chemicals away from their stores and their consumers. Big task? Hey, we're Americans; we dream big. And your shampoo could well have carcinogens in it, your T-shirt could have formaldehyde in it keeping it wrinkle-free, and don't even get me started on what ineffective flame-retardants might be in your couch. We ask a lot not merely because asking a lot gets you more; we ask a lot because some of these big retailers might not be aware of all the crap that's in their products. Hey, we don't go to the store with a thousand-page list, and the big retailers are made up of people, so they may not know, either. If they do, of course, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. But if they don't, we might as well let them know.

In other news, you may have heard about that Denver-to-Baltimore United flight from February that suddenly diverted to Chicago for "security concerns" -- namely, a pair of parents who didn't want their four- and eight-year-olds to have to watch the movie Alex Cross, which, like a lot of PG-13 films, has a generous helping of violence, bad language, and nudity in it. We wouldn't be talking about this if a) we weren't able to subtract 4 and 8 from 13 and b) it wasn't shown on overhead movie screens. I've taken a dozen flights over the years where I not only had my own video screen, but the choice of half a dozen different movies; United has to ask if their one-size-fits-all approach really works. And I insist that parents have the right to protect their kids from entertainment too adult for them, and if you feel the same, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has an action alert for you.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Securities and Exchange Commission to require disclosure of publicly-traded corporate campaign spending, then People for the American Way provides another one. The SEC, as you know, regulates stock and securities trading. When a corporation decides to spend money on a politician's campaign, it's not spending its own money so much as it's spending its investors' money -- its shareholders' money, in other words. So why shouldn't shareholders know how the corporations are spending their money? Maybe the shareholders are fine with it, but maybe not, and they ought to have a say in that. The SEC listens to a lot of big corporate CEOs who think they have the right to spend anyone's money however they feel like, so they won't listen to us unless a lot of us speak up. And even if we don't own stock, we ought to speak up.

In the Maldives, an island nation located some 250 miles southwest of India, a 15-year-old girl faces 100 lashes in public for the crime of having sex with an adult male. She's not actually in trouble for having sex with her stepfather -- who also faces charges for raping her and murdering her child -- but for having sex with another adult male. Anyone else think the Maldives has got it exactly wrong? We have "age of consent" laws in this country for good reason -- we don't believe children can consent to sex without being manipulated by adults. And we punish the adults for that, because the adults are supposed to know better. And we certainly don't give children a hundred lashes in public -- and the fact that she won't get the hundred lashes until she's 18 tells me they know, deep down, that they're wrong. I know, their laws aren't our laws -- but what prevents us from criticizing their laws, or shaming them for their laws? Both Avaaz and Amnesty International help you tell Maldives to stop whipping children in public.

Meanwhile, the EPA plans to revisit toxic wastewater limits for coal power plants for the first time in 30 years. These power plants leak out arsenic, lead, mercury, boron and other toxic chemicals into our waterways, and as these plants get older, that'll only get worse. We can filter out most of that crap before it gets into our drinking water -- but what of wildlife that don't enjoy the benefits of fine filtration systems? Surely they count for something, even if they don't vote. And all that crap gets into the ground, too, which means it gets into anything that grows in the ground -- or anything we might grow in the ground. I eagerly await Republican complaints that stronger toxic wastewater standards will kill jobs (for people who refit power plants?) and make us all Socialists. You have to ask: are they in favor of dirty water? And you have to answer: they are, as long as it makes some crony of theirs rich. The Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to issue the strongest possible regulations on toxic wastewater.