Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning Cuba, killer drones, farmworkers, public water, equal pay, and communications policy.

Long story short: tell President Biden to end our trade embargo with Cuba and ban killer drones, tell big agriculture corporations to treat their workers better, tell BlueTriton to stop taking public water from California, tell our U.S. Soccer Federation to pay the Women's team as much as the Men's, and tell President Biden to appoint a fifth FCC Commissioner already. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

With people in Cuba taking to the streets in large numbers to protest, at long last, their oppressive regime, Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to end economic sanctions against Cuba. What's that, you say? That would be like rewarding an oppressive regime? No, actually, it would be like rewarding the Cuban people for their courage! It would also be like reversing a stupid, 60-year-old policy that never had the result it supposedly intended. If you're thinking sanctions did have the intended result -- by driving good Cubans into the streets -- consider why that policy should take 60 years to work. Also consider whether this pandemic, not sanctions, have had more of an effect on what Cubans are doing. Also, really? Starve a nation to hurt its government? That's evil! If we do less evil, we'll see less evil in the world. There's a reason leaders who do evil see crises everywhere years after they take power -- because they make the crises happen!

Win Without War also helps you tell President Biden to ban autonomous killer drones. Those last three words are three of the most chilling words in the English language -- drones that can decide for themselves who to kill? Who thought that was a good idea? Someone who thinks they're very clever, no doubt, but they might well find out differently at the Pearly Gates. You can very easily see, I trust, these "killer robots" making their way to law enforcement via the 1033 program, and killing Black folks with impunity? And eventually killing you "by accident"? You can't hold a drone accountable in a court of law, after all. Banning killer drones now is our only shot at stopping these dystopias. Don't be tempted to think it's like "closing the barn door after the horses have run out." They ain't all run out yet, and do we seriously contemplate doing nothing in the face of evil?

Care2 helps you tell big agriculture corporations to give their workers better benefits, including paid time off. The news hook is that folks have to pick fruits and vegetables in temperatures that are, in some areas of our nation, 25 degrees hotter than normal, and working outside while Western wildfires choke people thousands of miles East ain't easy, either, but big ag doesn't care about anything but money, so the big corporations make tens of billions of dollars in profits while their workers get dung pellets, dehydration, illness, and death. It shouldn't be that hard to break off some of their billions for their workers. Don't worry that "food prices will skyrocket" -- labor costs don't have anywhere near the effect on prices big corporations want you to think they have. And certainly don't be tempted to dismiss the whole issue because mostly immigrants work these jobs. They're people, too, after all.

Environmental Action helps you tell BlueTriton (formerly Nestlé Waters North America) to stop siphoning off public water from the San Bernardino Forest. California is having droughts and wildfires again, so letting some big corporation take water from Strawberry Creek so it can sell it as bottled water at an absurdly-high markup sure seems like a bad idea. Not for nothing, but BlueTriton only has a permit to draw out 2.3 million gallons of water annually -- but took out 58 million gallons last year. So this is also a law and order issue. Unless, you know, law and order is only for Black folks. A lot of people sure do use the phrase like that -- and those same people never use it against a corporation, even one that's obviously flouting the law. I'll keep trying to ensure people use that phrase correctly.

Ultraviolet helps you tell our U.S. Soccer Federation to pay the U.S. Women's Team as much as it pays the U.S. Men's Team. For-real for-real? The Women's Team should make more! I mean, if we believe in paying people on merit! The Women's team has won four World Cups and four Olympic Gold medals in the last 30 years, while the Men's team, well, reached the World Cup quarterfinals in 2002, and not for nothing but I hated how they played that year -- anyone can kick the ball far and run fast! It takes talent to slowly and methodically work your way up the field, precisely the thing a lot of Americans find "boring" about the sport. The USSF will retort that men's soccer is "more competitive" (a difficult statement to justify when men play men and women play women) or that men's soccer "makes more money," which only happens because of sexism in the first place and besides, we're all profoundly tired of arguments based on "more money," right? Our USSF just needs to do the right thing.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell President Biden to appoint a fifth FCC Commissioner already. It ain't just about getting net neutrality back, though of course getting net neutrality back would be a big deal -- it's also about ensuring everyone has access to high-speed broadband (particularly during a pandemic!), fighting media consolidation and media monopolies, and helping local media get back up on their feet after years of assuming big corporations know best. Our Federal Communications Commission has a lot of work to do, particularly in a social media-dominated world, and we would not best be served by a series of 2-2 deadlocks resulting in nothing getting done.

Action: concerning unconstitutional war-making, worker fairness, workplace violence, stupid nukes, and stupider Congressfolk.

Long story short: tell your House Reps to repeal the 2002 AUMF authorizing war with Iraq, pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pregnancy Fairness Act, fight workplace violence, reject new sea-launched nuclear missiles, and censure Rep. Gosar and strip him of his committee assignments. You can find phone numbers for your Reps and Senators using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page), but I'll also provide email/petition tools for all of these alerts below.

Both Win Without War and the Project on Government Oversight help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 256, which would repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force (or AUMF) Against Iraq. The Iraq war killed hundreds of thousands, displaced tens of millions, cost trillions of dollars, helped birth (in ISIS) something even worse than al-Qaeda, and of course Presidents have used it, and will use it, to justify even stupider adventures. And not for nothing, but it probably also cost Joe Biden Iowa and Ohio, if not also Florida and North Carolina, in 2020. I'm serious: Donald Trump looked like the anti-war candidate to a not-insignificant number of folks in those states. It's amazing how many supposedly politically-adept people still don't grasp the intensity of our feeling against that war. Well, we'll keep telling them.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Reps to pass H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and H.R. 1065, the Pregnancy Fairness Act. These bills would help women in the workplace, the former by giving women more tools to fight pay discrimination, and the latter by forcing employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers at the workplace. I say "reasonable" with the Italics Hammer because right-wingers love pretending that any progress, on anything, anywhere, will obliterate all boundaries everywhere. The bill would force bosses to give pregnant women more bathroom breaks; it would not force bosses to let them spend their entire shift in the bathroom. I mean, duh. As for Sen. Rubio's plaint that the former bill is just a sop to "trial lawyers": we wouldn't need so many trial lawyers if bosses would just pay their women workers what they've earned.

Prevent Workplace Violence helps you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1195, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. Why? Because it's a lot worse there than anywhere else! And also because right-wingers will probably find a judge who'll say the worker safety laws we've got don't apply to violence in the workplace. And also because corporations can ignore OSHA's 2015 guidelines without penalty, because they're guidelines. You shouldn't let guidelines do the work of regulations -- governments tend to cast this as a compromise with corporations, but then the corporations whine about how guidelines always become mandatory sooner or later. But we don't let corporate whining stop us from doing what's right.

Win Without War helps you tell your Reps to pass H.R. 1554/S. 595, the Nuclear SLCM Ban Act. SLCM stands for "sea-launched cruise missile," and if there's anything we don't need more of, it's a nuclear weapon, particularly one that even both Presidents Bush wouldn't green-light. Neither would President Clinton nor President Obama. So why are we even talking about it? Because of President Trump, of course, whose "bold thinking" led him to embrace a weapons system nobody else would, without asking, apparently, if everyone else had reasons for rejecting it. We already have way too many nukes on seacraft, and certainly we shouldn't be putting nukes alongside non-nukes. So, yeah, let's strangle this weapons system in its crib.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Reps to censure Rep. Paul Gosar and strip him of his committee assignments. I have no patience with folks who still associate with white supremacists -- who openly want to destroy our government, and sure did help try that on January 6 -- and anyway Republicans stripped former Rep. Steve King of all his committee assignments in 2019, so it's not like this is unprecedented punishment. Rep. Gosar (E-AZ) has walked back his support for white supremacists, but only when confronted by media outlets, and then not on Twitter, so let's not believe that line of BS. Maybe he thinks, like Rep. Greene of Georgia, that getting punished will just make him stronger. But in a thousand years no one will remember the name of either one of them.

Action: concerning voting rights, civil rights, fair wages, higher wages, internet freedom, and secure elections.

It's Monday, so it's time to call your Senators once again and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; and H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act. You can find your Senators' phone numbers using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page if you're on a cellphone; and you can find Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell's phone numbers here, though you'll have to scroll down a bit to find them. I mention Mob Boss Mitch, of course, because our House has passed all of these bills, but our Senate hasn't, because Mr. McConnell won't allow any votes on them. Didn't know that was how democracy worked, did you? Anyway, you don't have to tell your Senators why they should pass these bills, unless you really want to -- their staffers are there to take down your will, not argue with you about it. But I'm going to go ahead and describe the bills (and the paltry arguments against them) in some detail, since I haven't in a while, and I want you to get to the phone with the most confidence you can have. If you do, they'll sense that, and if enough of us call them, they'll bend to our will.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, includes a lot of terrific initiatives -- it would allow national automatic voter registration, require disclosure of large campaign contributions, create a public campaign financing system, make Election Day a national holiday, and mandate that states use nonpartisan commissions to draw up districts. All of these things have large support across the ideological spectrum, and their opposites (making it harder to vote or register to vote, letting state legislators carve out Rorschach-blot fiefdoms, letting corporations spend whatever they want to elect their lackeys) don't. What did Mob Boss Mitch have to say about the For the People Act? He called it "a Democrat power grab," which every right-winger in America would call whining if a liberal said something similar. And if a man equates more access to voting with Democrats getting more power, he might want to think about how maybe Republicans aren't convincing enough people to vote for them. That'd be pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps thinking, wouldn't it? So your Senators have no excuse to oppose the For the People Act. That's going to be a theme in the next several paragraphs.

H.R. 5, the Equality Act, would amend the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act (among other laws) to extend civil rights protections to gay and transgender folk, who can still get fired, denied housing, and denied credit just because of who they are and whom they love. The objections to the Equality Act are truly ludicrous and, frankly, reminiscent of racist objections to fair housing laws in the 1960s -- haters say they'll be "forced" to hire gay or transgender folk when the truth is the law would force them not to discriminate against them merely because they're gay or transgender, and folks who can't tell the difference between these things may not be cut out for the hard work of civilization. But wait, there's more! Haters pretend employers will be prevented from firing gay or transgender folk for good reasons, which they won't, and that male athletes will get sex changes in droves to compete and dominate in women's sports leagues, which, like, can you see such athletes hanging out with their crew after doing something like that? I mean, duh. The haters are not only wrong, they're stupidly wrong. That's also going to be a theme in the next several paragraphs.

H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, is not a "boon to trial lawyers" as its opponents say, but merely a bill that would give women more tools to fight pay discrimination. The bill would outlaw clauses in employment contracts that prevent workers from talking about their pay, and would prevent retaliation against employees who do talk about their pay -- and these are important, since talking about your pay is usually how you find out you're being shafted. The bill would still allow employers to pay men and women differently based on bona fide factors like, you know, skill levels and qualifications, but would restrict employers' ability to manufacture a "bona fide factor" merely based on salary. You know, of course he's more qualified, I pay him more, QED? The bill would also stiffen penalties for discriminating against women workers. And somehow all those good things get translated into BUT TEH TRIALZ LAWYERZ!!!!! in the right-wing mind, as if the words "trial lawyers" are a magic spell that transforms all bad arguments into good ones. Ranting about "trial lawyers" is just playing team sports, but our real duty as citizens is to do good works.

H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act, would raise our minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $15/hour gradually over the next six years -- yeah, I made sure to put those last six words there, for all the haters who say IT'S TOO TEH FASTZ!!!!! -- and would increase that minimum wage every year thereafter in accordance with the rise in the median hourly wage, so that maybe we'll never have to hear again how some 70-year-old made $2/hour when they were starting out and what's wrong with kids today? When they made $2/hour, it had the buying power of $12-$15/hour, which is, as you see, higher than our current minimum wage. The bill would also hike the minimum wages for tipped workers and disabled workers gradually and close the gap between these and the regular minimum wage -- because you don't think big corporations will try to convert everyone into a tipped or disabled employee just to avoid paying them more? Dear reader, they will. So don't brook these complaints, or any scare numbers about "jobs lost" that either won't actually happen or would amount to a drop in the bucket of monthly job creation numbers, and certainly wouldn't compare with all the good folks a higher minimum wage would bring out of poverty.

H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, would reverse the FCC's 2017 net neutrality repeal and reinstate the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order which originally encoded the principle of net neutrality in law. Net neutrality, as you know, dictates that internet service-providing corporations should deliver all files to your computer at the same speed and with the same priority -- and this principle alone has made the internet the greatest information-sharing source of all time. But the corporatists at the FCC hated that, because it meant you had the power to determine where you wanted to go on the internet, and corporations had less power to herd you into junk news ghettoes like they do so easily on TV or in print. So don't brook, for example, Justice Kavanaugh's argument that corporations have a First Amendment "right" to restrict whatever internet traffic they like, as if we somehow don't have First Amendment rights to visit whatever website we want! Net neutrality used to be a principle that enjoyed bipartisan support among politicians -- and it still enjoys broad, bipartisan support among regular Americans like ourselves. So, again, our Senators have no excuse not to support this bill.

H.R. 2722, the Securing America's Federal Elections (or SAFE) Act, would mandate voter-verified paper ballots for federal elections. This is a big deal, since (as we just saw in Mississippi) a lot of electronic voting machines don't let you vote for the person for whom you want to vote! Sometimes, when you've been doing something a certain way for hundreds of years, a machine actually can't do it better! Voter-verified paper ballots won't stop unscrupulous politicians from creating boxes of fake ballots, I suppose, but if you want to do that, you have to get a lot of other people to buy in, and only one of them needs to snitch to make your "victory" illegitimate. And you can steal votes a lot more easily with software, particularly when it's developed by some private corporation that'll fire any "snitch" who speaks out about its flaws. The bill would also fund state efforts to update their voting systems, which you know some states "forget" to do in their black and brown neighborhoods. As with H.R. 1, the For the People Act, you have to wonder why Mob Boss Mitch thinks it's just not worth it to make sure everyone can vote. What could he be afraid of?

Speaking of Mob Boss Mitch, he talks a lot these days about "bills we can pass," and acts like taking votes on bills that "can't pass" are a "waste of time." You know that's all rubbish -- even if these bills fail to pass the Senate, forcing your Senators to go on the record against voting rights, civil rights, fair wages, higher wages, internet freedom, and secure elections is certainly worthwhile. But I want you to really think about Mob Boss Mitch's words, and measure the sheer contempt for the popular will they betray: nothing is worth doing unless a group of Senators pass a bill the President will sign. That's nowhere near the way it should work! How should it work? Absent a legitimate Constitutional concern -- and not just the bogus "concerns" of big donors passed off as "legitimate" concerns -- our Reps and Senators should pass the bills we tell them to pass, and the President should sign the bills we tell him to sign. We cannot rest until we have a system that works this way -- and when we get that system, we cannot rest in our duty to conserve that system for future generations, who will then have to work to keep it. But when we can do that, we'll have the "more perfect union" of which President Lincoln dreamed.

Action: concerning public lands, racism, and equal pay.

Our Administration is desperate to open the Tongass National Forest to road-building, which seems innocuous on its face -- except that logging and mining corporations have long angled to get roads built in the Tongass so they can get their logging and mining operations in there! Hence H.R. 2491/S. 1311, the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which states that our government "shall not allow road construction, road reconstruction, or logging in an inventoried roadless area where those activities are prohibited by the Roadless Rule," as adopted in early 2001. That's right, yet again we have to tell this Administration that they have to follow legally-enacted regulations, which we might otherwise describe as "the law." But duty is duty, no matter where it takes us, so Environmental Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect public lands by passing the Roadless Area Conservation Act. Obeying the law, protecting pristine areas from development -- why, that all sounds conservative, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard by now that our FBI considers black protestors a more important security threat than white racists, even though, ah, recent events would seem to counter that assessment. I mean, when mass murderers repeatedly say out loud how much they hate non-white people, wouldn't you have to pay attention? And even though police commit most of the violence that purportedly "accompanies" black protestors, our FBI has cooked up a "black identity extremist" category, which is even more absurd when you consider that for hundreds of years we systematically denied black folks any sort of identity other than chattel. Hence CREDO helps you tell our FBI to get its priorities straight, and go after white supremacists more than black protestors. If you really think black protestors have nothing really to protest anymore, well, a) you're wrong and b) that would have literally nothing to do with a reasonable assessment of whether black protestors or white supremacists are more dangerous. We fought a World War against the latter, after all.

Finally, H.R. 3804/S.2083, the Athletics Fair Pay Act, would mandate that our government pay U.S. Women's Team soccer players the same as U.S. Men's Team soccer players. Seems like a no-brainer to me, particularly since the U.S. Women's Team has won four out of the eight women's World Cup tournaments ever and the Men's Team has only been to one men's World Cup final and didn't even qualify for the tournament in 2018. And if your Tea Party uncle objects by saying oh, so now we're going to pay the WNBA the same as we pay the NBA?, well, you may be tempted to say why not?, particularly if you're not all that emotionally-invested in what your favorite athletes make (or if, like me, you're working toward that 91% tax bracket on millionaire income which would pretty much end the era of absurd pro athlete salaries). But comparing it to the NBA/WNBA is actually beside the point -- the NBA and the WNBA are private entities, but the U.S. Men's and Women's soccer team play for our country. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to promote equal pay by passing the Athletics Fair Pay Act.

Action: concerning good House bills and a bad Senate bill.

It's Monday, so it's time once again to call our Senators and tell them to pass the following bills: H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; and H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act. The House passed all these bills, but the Senate won't even vote on them, because Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell (E-KY) won't even hold a vote on any of them. He even calls himself the "Grim Reaper" now! Who but an insane person would be proud of the fact that they refuse to pass legislation promoting voting rights, civil rights, equal pay for women, a higher minimum wage, freedom from corporate interference on the internet, and safe and secure elections? Seriously, let that be your meditation object as you call your Senators. You'd think a few of them would want to go on the record supporting the things I've listed above, but too many of them think of politics as nothing more than team sports -- a profound offense to those of us who call America our team.

In the wake of a mass murder apparently perpetrated by someone who really, really hated immigrants, Republicans have responded swiftly -- with legislation that would further injure immigrants! Yay priorities! S. 1494, the so-called Secure and Protect Act, would (among other nefarious works) impose an unnecessarily high screening standard on potential aslyees, essentially prevent Central American refugees from even getting asylum in the U.S., and deny immigrants due process by subjecting them to abnormally fast "rocket docket" hearings. Naturally, Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called a Committee vote on the bill without even letting Democratic members speak on it, which is what you do when you're really confident in your bill. And aslyees and refugees are actually the least likely people to commit terrorism, because, you know, they're fleeing terrorism in their home countries. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to resist this persistent posturing about immigration by rejecting the so-called Secure and Protect Act.

Action: concerning immigration, Honduras, and equal pay.

You've all heard the stories coming out of the border concentration camps -- kids sleeping on cement floors, babies left largely unattended, and inadequate soap, food, and water. You may also have heard that our Administration has argued before the 9th Circuit that the law doesn't compel them to provide soap per se. Hence the ACLU helps you tell Congress to investigate the conditions at these concentration camps and hold Customs and Border Patrol accountable for their actions -- which include the deaths of six children in custody -- and Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis of our Administration's making. You know how I hate to pile on (i.e., that I don't)? Well, family separation at the border is actually fiscally irresponsible! $775 a day in taxpayer funding to care for one child at a concentration camp! This policy doesn't work on any level!

Meanwhile, the military coup in Honduras -- one enabled by the Obama Administration's hair-splitting over the precise meaning of the word "coup" -- is now 10 years old, and things ain't getting any better for the good people of Honduras, as poverty has grown and the government mocks law and order by imprisoning human rights activists and killing and injuring protestors in the street. But we have leverage: our Congress can pass H.R. 1945, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, which would suspend "security" aid to the lawless government of Honduras, and our government could actually enforce the labor standards enshrined in one of those notorious "free" trade deals, the Central America Free Trade Agreement. Hence the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell our government to stand up for the good people of Honduras. I mean, if this were Venezuela, President Bolton would already have sent 5,000 troops, amirite?

Finally, CREDO helps you tell the U.S. Soccer Federation that the U.S. Women's National Team deserves the same pay and the same standard of medical care as the Men's Team. You may know that one of these two teams has won three World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals since 1991, and guess what? It's the team that faces more discrimination! The Women's Team got a pay hike in their 2017 collective bargaining agreement with the Soccer Federation, but they still don't get equal pay with the Men's Team that, frankly, isn't nearly as accomplished, and yet the U.S. Soccer Federation still makes the Women's Team play more on injury-causing Astroturf and doesn't promote their matches nearly as much as they do the Men's Team. And no it doesn't matter that "women's soccer doesn't make as much money" -- what matters, in America, is the law, which requires that we pay men and women the same if skill level and responsibilities are the same. That is only fair, after all.

Action: concerning law and order, immigration, and various good bills Mob Boss Mitch won't even bring up for a Senate vote.

First things first. Late last year, five-months-pregnant Marshae Jones started a fight with another woman, who then shot Ms. Jones in the stomach, killing her unborn baby -- but now the state has indicted Mr. Jones for manslaughter and let the actual shooter go free! Their reasoning: the would-be mother "initiated and continued the fight" with the shooter. Hopefully you'll recognize that as utter horsedoodle, since, hopefully, you never got away with anything as a kid by saying "he started it!" Call me old-fashioned, but I would charge the shooter for the shooting, in part because I accept our responsibility, as civilized people, not to respond to every provocation we get -- let alone with force! Hence Change.org helps you tell the Pleasant Grove police department to dismiss the charges on Ms. Jones and charger her shooter instead.

Meanwhile, hundreds of workers at the Boston furniture corporation Wayfair walked out last week in protest of their employer's furnishing of our Administration's border concentration camps for immigrant children, so Sum of Us helps you tell Wayfair's CEO to stop selling furniture to these camps. Now, you might be saying, I hate what our Administration's doing as much as the next guy, but don't these kids need beds to sleep in? But you should recognize that as a rhetorical hostage situation! You're not cramming these kids into squalid rooms, and you're not going before federal courts arguing that you don't have to give these kids soap because the law doesn't spell that out; our Administration is doing all that, and corporations like Wayfair are helping them. So if you bring the Big Stick of Bad PR upon corporations like Wayfair, you might help end our Administration's family separation policy, which will only help these kids.

Finally, your Senators are home this week, so go ahead and call them and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; and H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act. Long story short, since I've been telling the long story on these bills for months now: H.R. 1 would better protect our voting rights and make gerrymandering harder; the Equality Act would extend civil rights protections to gay and transgender folks, the Paycheck Fairness Act would help folks get equal pay for equal work, and the Save the Internet Act would restore internet freedom for people, not for corporations. I know, I know, Mob Boss Mitch says the Senate won't vote on these bills because (and I quote) "I get to decide what we vote on," but pressuring our Senators to pass these good bills is still our duty as Americans. And, you know, all Mitch McConnell has been doing for a dozen years is blocking good legislation. I shudder to think that's what he's taking to the Pearly Gates.

Action: concerning government spying, health care, and paycheck fairness.

You've heard that even our National Security Agency would rather not have the authority to Hoover up good Americans' phone data without a warrant, as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act allows? Well, Reps. Amash (R-MI) and Lofgren (D-CA) would at the very least restrict our government's use of Section 702, by prohibiting spying without an actual investigative target (i.e., an actual suspect!), by prohibiting spying on folks outside the U.S. just to collect data on someone inside the U.S., and by prohibiting spying that our government knows is entirely domestic in nature. And Reps. Amash and Lofgren will offer this legislation as an amendment to a must-pass appropriations bill, one that'll fund most of the government for the next fiscal year, so it's got a good shot at becoming law. Hence Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect good Americans' privacy by passing the Amash/Lofgren anti-spying amendment.

Meanwhile, our Department of Health and Human Services (or HHS) has proposed a rule rolling back yet more Obama-era health insurance protections preventing discrimination against gay/transgender/queer folk as well as women. Now, I think the 2018 elections proved that taking away people's health care so unpopular that it causes politicians to lose elections, so what's our Administration's game here? Same as it always is -- to suggest that protections for "those people" aren't as important as yours! And a lot of Americans, who fancy themselves to be hard hats and not hippies, still fall for that even though they're not particularly mean to folks who aren't like them in their daily lives! And once you go down this road, as a citizen, you find it harder and harder to admit you were wrong. So get it right the first time, and let the ACLU help you tell our HHS to scuttle its plan to deny protections against discrimination to vulnerable people in America.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The Paycheck Fairness Act would give women more tools to find out they're making less than men for doing the same work, mainly by making it legal for workers to discuss their pay with their co-workers, which is usually how they find out they're getting shafted (and which, perhaps not coincidentally, their bosses try to prevent them from doing). Moms Rising also reminds us that this past June 10 was the 56th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act's passage, and yet women still make less than a dollar for every dollar a man makes, even when you adjust the data for comparable skills and experience. Right-wingers will tell you that just proves that laws that try to help people just don't work! They're wrong, of course -- the battle for justice doesn't end with a single law, and we must re-earn justice every day of our lives.

Action: concerning voting rights, clean water, and paycheck fairness.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk and state legislators stop denying prisoners the right to vote. Why? Because denying prisoners the right to vote gives governments the power to deny the vote to whomever they can throw in jail. Could it be a coincidence that America not only incarcerates more people than any other nation on Earth, but incarcerates a disproportionate number of Americans of color? Even if it is actually coincidence, there's no denying that the result is racist. And there's another problem: the census counts prisoners for the purpose of apportioning Congressional districts, which means the unscrupulous can pack prisoners into rural districts and deny them a voice in those districts! If you're inclined to retort that we've always denied prisoners the right to vote, please re-read the previous four sentences, in which I explain why that's a bad idea. And maybe slap yourself.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reject the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay area, then the Alaska Wilderness League still helps you do that. You probably thought this was all over when Scott Pruitt's EPA announced its own lack of support for the mine, didn't you? But that only meant Pebble Mine supporters would try to get their foot in another door, hence the Army Corps of Engineers' public commenting period. You already know that Pebble Mine would not only pollute Bristol Bay waters, but kill the world-renowned sockeye salmon industry that thrives there -- which means, not incidentally, that Pebble Mine would also be a job-killer. But you probably also know that Pebble Mine is also the kind of project that might not ever get built, but will enable someone to bilk someone else out of a lot of money. Your comment could help stop all of that.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass H.R. 7/S. 270, the Paycheck Fairness Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The House passed its version last month, with only seven Republican votes -- to think that only seven Republican House Reps can use this vote to tout themselves as moderates! In the Senate, of course, it's worse -- Republicans hold 53 of 100 seats, and of those, I can see two who would vote for the bill. That doesn't mean we give up, though -- it means we inform them of our will, again and again and again. And the Paycheck Fairness Act would make it easier for women to find out their bosses are paying them less than their male counterparts for no good reason. You'd think that'd be a conservative solution -- you know, to give good Americans tools to help themselves. Of course, today's Republicans are reactionaries, not conservatives. But that's just another reason to keep fighting.

Action: fighting banksters and bad bosses.

Word on the street is that Republicans are getting ready to reintroduce the so-called Financial Choice Act -- but they're planning to make it even worse, in part by defanging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by crippling its rule-making ability and stripping it of authority to go after big corporations that try to rip off consumers. No amount of hand-wringing over properly-executed mandates is going to put lipstick on that pig, especially since the CFPB's role in exposing the Wells Fargo scandal -- you remember that, it was all over the news! -- has become so well-known. I recommend you call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject the Financial Choice Act and any other attempt to keep our government from actually trying to protect us from financial predators. I have it on good authority that calling their D.C. and local offices is the best way to pressure them. That's six phone calls total, but it won't take as long as it sounds, and it'll work a lot better than hoping against hope.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration may reverse the series of Obama Executive Orders that granted fundamental protections to those who work for federal contractors. The Obama Administration made federal contractors grant paid sick leave, pay at least $10.10 an hour, and be more transparent about gender pay and rights violations, while also preventing federal contractors from forcing their workers into binding arbitration agreements that abrogate their right to a day in court. Because, apparently, Mr. Trump's 46% victory at the polls was nothing if not a mandate for lower pay and worse treatment by your employers! I sure don't want to hear any right-wingers argue that the 25% of workers who work for federal contractors shouldn't have "more rights than everyone else" -- because the best way to fix that would be to ensure that the other 75% gets the same better deal! Anyway, the Economic Policy Institute helps you tell President Trump not to reverse the gains federal workers won under Mr. Obama. He doesn't care what you think, but duty is duty.

Action: bad Trump nominees, bad Muslim bans, and bad attempts to kill good privacy and equal pay initiatives.

Senate Democrats have taken to skipping Committee meetings in an effort to stall President Trump's Cabinet nominees, which has led to some truly hysterical hand-wringing from the right -- Sen. Toomey (R-PA) called it "an unprecedented level of obstruction," which is to laugh! Surely you recall Senate Republicans refusing to confirm several of President Obama's nominees in 2013, which (unfortunately) led Democrats to get rid of the filibuster for Presidential nominees; Republicans seem anxious to point out that they didn't put up much of a fight on Mr. Obama's 2009 nominees, but his 2009 nominees were largely center-right nominees of whom even Pat Robertson seemed to approve, whereas Donald Trump's 2017 nominees are far right-wing extremists who do not speak for anyone but their biggest campaign donors. I was planning to urge you to use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call your Senators and tell them to oppose the nominations of Tom Price to Secretary of Health and Human Services and Mick Mulvaney to the Office of Budget Management -- Mr. Price for his obvious hostility to Medicare and Mr. Mulvaney for his stated desire to slash Social Security -- but hell, any of them is fair game right now.

Meanwhile, as you might expect, I've got action alerts concerning Mr. Trump's nefarious Executive Order which shut down refugee admissions for at least the next four months and banned legal immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations (though not the ones he's got business interests in or the ones who actually sent terrorists to kill us, amirite?). Amnesty International helps you tell your Senators to denounce the Trump ban from the Senate floor, while the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Demand Progress, and MoveOn help you direct your will at all of Congress, and Sum of Us helps you contact Mr. Trump's CEO buddies, who (unlike some CEOs) have held their tongue about the Order. People who cheer on Mr. Trump's un-American ban should look into their own past and see if they were very well-received when they got here. Chances are they weren't! But did it kill this country to let such folks in? Of course it didn't. But the blind fear some folks have toward anyone who isn't like themselves is sure going to kill this country if we let it. And Donald Trump won't care, as long as he's making money. Let's try to make him irrelevant, as he most definitely deserves.

In other news, the FCC lately mandated that your internet service provider get your permission (which you can withhold!) before selling your data to third-parties -- and, of course, now that Mr. Trump is in office, his nominee for FCC Chair really, really wants to get rid of that mandate, because it's a good thing that helps people, rather than a bad thing that helps corporate CEOs make even more unearned money. Let me know if I'm not making my feeling absolutely clear, OK? Consumers Union helps you tell the FCC not to reverse the FCC's new privacy protections. Folks who would give you guff about this need to answer why on Earth we should expect privacy for our offline private information but not our online private information. The ease with which corporations can find and collect information is no excuse -- as your mama taught you, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. You wish our current ball-swinging man-child President's mama had learned this.

Finally, because like Ferdinand Foch I fight everywhere, Congress is mulling a backdoor attack on equal pay by rolling back pay reporting requirements that could reveal pay discrimination based on gender or ethnicity. What do our best and brightest corporate leaders have to hide? Some Congressfolk (no doubt egged on by these "best and brightest") act like any reporting requirement is onerous, like we're asking them to lift 16-ton weights with their pinkies or something. We only managed to get these reporting requirements last year, which means Congress might deep-six them before anyone has actually had to report any information! And the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions (or EEOC) and the Labor Department (in theory, amirite?) need this information in order to investigate bad actors and enforce the many laws that would prevent corporations from discriminating against their employees. Hence the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to gut equal pay reporting rules.

Around the table: a surprising (and amusing!) announcement from the Trump campaign, and other stories.

From Stephanie Woodard at In These Times, we learn that police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group -- but the "liberal" media hardly covers these killings. I would caution against using this fact to tell black folks they have nothing to complain about, because they finish second in a race you really don't want to earn a medal in. Still, though tales of mistreatment of Native Americans are every bit as vivid as tales of mistreatment by black folks, we don't talk about it nearly as much, which could be because of Black Lives Matter's mobilization efforts, but could also be because we can only feel guilty about one thing at a time in America.

The Economic Policy Institute offers a lengthy primer about the gender pay gap. You probably already know that adjusting for simliar levels of training, experience, and expertise doesn't make the gender pay gap go away, but you may not know that the gap is actually worse the higher up you go on the pay scale -- because at the low end, minimum wage laws have a more profound leveling effect -- and you may also not know that the gap has narrowed over the last 35 years not necessarily because we're getting so much better at being fairer, but because men's wages have gone down over that period. There may be other things you may not know, but you'll never know unless you read the article.

Outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid says Democrats will likely get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if they retake the Senate this fall. And it's still a bad idea, just like it was when Democrats got rid of the filibuster for almost all Presidential nominees back in 2013. The better solution remains two-fold: get rid of Senate holds on bills and nominations, and make politicians work for their filibuster by actually speaking, instead of signaling their willingness to filibuster and then go off to dinner. I'd certainly be happy to look like a fool to stop, say, Estate Tax repeal, so why aren't Republicans willing to look like fools to stop, say, campaign finance reform? We'll just never understand.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggests that Mr. Trump would like to have another debate with Hillary Clinton between now and Election Day. No truth to the rumor that Hillary Clinton's has campaign responded, "why, yes, that's a great idea! How does November 7 look?"

Action: pro-discrimination bills, chemical plant safety, and equal pay.

By now you've noticed the wage of anti-gay and anti-transgendered legislation cropping up in state legislatures all over the country, and fighting them has been rather like playing a game of whack-a-mole with a pencil; hence the ACLU helps you tell all the nation's Governors to fight these pro-discrimination bills wherever they crop up. And they could crop up anywhere a state is having, say, budgeting troubles, which is, sadly, most states. The two so-called "religious liberty" bills that have successfully passed, in North Carolina and Mississippi, have provoked backlash from all over the country, just as Indiana's "religious liberty" bill did last year -- Paypal scrapped plans to build a headquarters in North Carolina, Charles Barkley has been vocal in urging the NBA to move its next All-Star Game out of Charlotte, and both Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams have canceled concerts in North Carolina and Mississippi, respectively. Certainly nothing prevents us from reminding other Governors that the backlash could hurt them, too.

Meanwhile, we have lately observed the third anniversary of the huge fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 and injured dozens of others in West, Texas -- and the EPA is now welcoming public comments on its Risk Management Plan for chemical plants, which aims to prevent such explosions from happening and guide first responders in the event they do happen. The EPA has made some necessary changes, but needs to make more -- the plan needs to cover more chemical plants and needs to ensure chemical plants coordinate with local communities more, among other things. UCS is right to note that the EPA's plan directly affects communities of color, which sit next to chemical plants more frequently, for some reason. And the objections from right-wingers and corporatists? Let me guess: REGULASHUNZ BIG GUMMINT OVERREACHEZ SMALL BIZNIZZIZ COMMUNIZM SOCIALIZM NAZIZM!!!!!! The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the EPA to create the most vigorous possible Risk Management plan for chemical plants.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the United States Soccer Federation (or USSF) to start paying the U.S. women's national soccer team the same as it pays the U.S. men's national soccer team, then CREDO still helps you do that. The women's team has won three World Cup titles (1991, 1999, 2015) and four Olympic gold medals (1996, 2004, 2008, 2012), while the men's team got as far as the quarter-final round in World Cup play only once in the last quarter-century (2002); it's enough to make you ask, what's a woman got to do? Are you about to instruct me that the U.S. women's team does so well in the world only because America's Title IX funding far outstrips any support any other country gives to its women's sports -- or because more sports compete for male athletes in America than in other countries, or for female athletes in this country? You'd still have to explain why the women's soccer team should be paid 40% as much as the men's soccer team -- or, indeed, why women should ever be paid less for doing the same job.

Action: net neutrality, equal pay, and campaign finance.

Suddenly the House of Representatives is all hot to pass H.R. 2666, entitled the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act. They not only act like "regulation" is a cuss word, but they think regulating broadband internet rates would somehow sound bad to the numerous broadband internet users already paying too much for service. H.R. 2666 would forbid the FCC from ever regulating broadband rates, so the FCC couldn't stop Comcast and Charter from jacking up rates or inventing fees. Even worse, the bill's alleged net neutrality exemptions don't actually exist -- Sec. 3 of H.R. 2666 purports to exempt any FCC rate action that would relate to paid prioritization, but cites "section 8.9 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations," when section 8.7, not 8.9, covers paid prioritization. I'm sure that's an "administrative error." End result: the big telecoms could charge for visiting certain websites or create tiers of service -- and thus neuter net neutrality. So Free Press helps you call your House Reps and tell them to reject the net neutrality end-around, H.R. 2666.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that the U.S. Women's Soccer team, despite winning the World Cup, despite drawing more TV viewers in their World Cup-winning match than any other soccer game in American history, gets paid approximately a quarter of what the U.S. Men's Soccer team gets paid, and has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (or EEOC) to correct this injustice. Can anyone say level playing field? Folks interested in perpetuating this disparity argue that women's soccer doesn't generate as much revenue or viewership, but both of these are demonstrably untrue -- the U.S. Women's Soccer team generates more revenue than the Men's team, in fact. If this doesn't sound like the most important thing in the world, remember a few things: one, that signing on to Moms Rising's petition to the EEOC demanding equal pay for the U.S. Women's Soccer team will take you less than 60 seconds, and two, that the young girls who grow up rooting for them shouldn't have to get used to getting paid less because they're girls.

Finally, we've talked about forcing corporations to disclose their "beneficial owners" (i.e., owners who collect money from corporate revenues), in part so we can identify folks trying to spend millions of dollars to influence elections -- but the FEC can also do something about that, by ferreting out the "ghost corporations" that exist solely to hide the identity of big political donors. "Ghost corporations" often come into existence mere days before making six- and seven-figure contributions to SuperPACs, almost like that was their sole reason for existence or something. But federal law already bans funneling cash through "straw donors," and the difference between a "straw donor" and a "ghost corporation" might well be merely semantic, so Demand Progress helps you tell the FEC to crack down on possible campaign finance violations by investigating these "ghost corporations." The good news? Both Republican and Democratic FEC members have suggested this is something they'd be compelled to do. But we still gotta tell them, because it's our job.

Action: refugee children, equal pay, and climate change.

Congress is back to work, such as they do, this week, but apparently has no plans to do anything about the mass of refugee children at our border, since that was so July already, I guess. Hence the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass supplemental funding to address the issue properly. Your demands will be specific: at least $2.7 billion, with $1.2 billion of that going to housing and services for refugee children. Funding these services properly will not guarantee that every single child at the border gets in safely; it will only guarantee that every single child has a fighting chance of getting it. Certainly it would guarantee a better chance of getting in than the piddling $694 million House bill, or Sen. Johnson (E-WI)'s notion of buying them all tickets on Orbitz and send them back (which could, you know, involve sending them back to this). And to those who would squeal WHEREZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! Well, what about all those corporate tax cuts the House has been handing out like candy? No outrage over that? Quelle surprise.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 1890/SB 1212 would help eliminate the gap between men's wages and women's wages. The bill would mandate equal pay for equal work, except where factors such as seniority or superior education would permit unequal pay, and would specifically prohibit employers from lowering wages in order to maintain such pay scales. The bill would also put the burden of proof upon the employer that factors like seniority and education cause pay disparities, rather than the sex of the employee, and would further prevent employers or labor organizations from retaliating against workers who initiate pay-discrimination complaints. Finally, the bill would also prohibit employers from making gag rules about pay -- where they prohibit you from talking about your pay rate to your co-workers -- a condition of employment. The bill really ought to prohibit employers from instituting such gag rules after hiring you, too, but HB 1890/SB 1212 will still do a lot of good. Keystone Progress helps you tell your state legislator to support equal pay for equal work.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA to pass the most vigorous rules possible to lower carbon emissions at existing power plants, then Public Citizen helps you do that. Public Citizen specifically helps you advocate for stricter limits on the carbon emissions from gas plants (the fracking apologists have long told us that fracking is friendlier to climate change than coal, which, ah, isn't really true) and avoid spending taxpayer money on carbon capture technologies, which are rather like putting a giant bomb under the earth. The big coal corporations threw a massive tantrum at the EPA's rule restricting carbon emissions at new power plants; how will they respond, do you think, to being told they have to reduce emissions at their old power plants? Not with restraint, I presume, but we have the better arguments; all they have is their greed. And to those who say the new rules would kill jobs: rules create jobs, for the people who figure out how to comply with the rules and for people who have to rebuild plants. I say this a lot, but I'll keep saying it until even the politicians get it.

Around the table: more fallout from the *Hobby Lobby* ruling and our ongoing Republican hostage crisis.

Arkansas U.S. Senate candidate Tom Cotton (R), discussing the Hobby Lobby ruling, says his Democratic opponent, Sen. Mark Pryor, "thinks that faith is something that only happens on Sunday mornings." That'll surprise most Arkansans, who are well-acquainted with Mr. Pryor's demonstrated religiosity, on repeated display in Bill Maher's film Religulous, for example. Mr. Cotton hasn't apologized, but now says Mr. Pryor "is a man of faith and practices it with commendable openness." C'mon, Mr. Cotton, which is it?

Speaking of having and practicing faith, certain UUA and UUC pastors have protested the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling by handing out condoms in front of Illinois-area Hobby Lobby stores. But I suspect it won't be many more Roberts Court decisions before such actions don't enjoy First Amendment protections anymore, but instead become terrorist acts toward a corporate "person" enjoying the "inalienable" right to make profits.

Obama advisor contends that the Republican lawsuit against the President's Executive orders will backfire against them, as it will "remind() the American people that unlike congressional Republicans, he is actually doing something to help them." But not as long as the "liberal" media treat Mr. Obama's minimum-wage and equal-pay orders the way they should have treated Mr. Bush's unlawful warrantless-wiretapping scheme.

Another day, another prominent Republican politician caught on video pounding the myth that 47% of Americans are freeloaders. These "freeloaders" pay payroll taxes, state income taxes, and sales taxes, and their number includes a lot of seniors who now collect the benefits they worked for and paid into all their lives, but why are we listening to Bob Beauprez, anyway? He couldn't get elected Governor in 2006, either, and was one of the few enthusiastic supporters Mr. Bush ever had for his failed Social Security-privatization plan. In short, the man is (as Mario Cuomo might say) a walnut in the batter of eternity.

Finally, President Obama tells Marketplace that he thinks that "over time the Republican Party will move back to the center, mainly because if they don't, they'll never win the presidency again." Ah, no: the Republican Party could continue to move rightward, with hapless Democrats rushing after them to the new "center" -- or they could simply pretend to be centrists, which worked for George W. Bush in 2000, and could easily work again for Scott Walker in 2016 (as, hate to pile on, it already worked for Scott Walker in 2010!). How could Mr. Obama be blind to these two possibilities -- particularly after fighting these very same Republicans tooth-and-nail for six-plus years?

Around the table: more people behaving badly.

Dean Baker reminds us that the "carried interest tax deduction," enjoyed by Wall Street hedge fund managers, "has no economic rationale" and doesn't even "serve() some socially useful purpose." If you know that hedge funds serve only the super-rich -- and evade a lot of regulation because they're generally not available to the public, which generally isn't super-rich -- you're probably not surprised. Key argument: hedge fund managers argue that "it is good for the managers to have their interests allied with the investors in their fund" -- "but it has nothing to do with why the taxpayers should subsidize their income."

In the aftermath of the April 13 shooting deaths of three people at a pair of Kansas City-area Jewish community centers, FAIR notes the reluctance of the "liberal" media to label the accused shooter a terrorist and wonders, "Can White People Be Terrorists?" Don't fall into the trap of thinking the media is being circumspect because Mr. Miller is still a suspect -- recall how quickly the "liberal" media rushed into speculating that Muslims perpetrated the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, rather than the white man who left Buffalo because it was too liberal for him. And whether Glenn Miller is guilty of this crime or not, he is a terrorist, simple and plain. Golly, I wonder which right-wing pundits will take statements like those personally.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a master of throwing up his hands at things he finds too hard, advocates ending all campaign donation limits. Because they don't work, you see, never mind that at least three bad Supreme Court rulings have made that task much harder than it needs to be. Don't fall into the trap of saying well, at least he advocates transparency of donations -- when it's time to act on that statement, he'll have a half-dozen excuses why he can't, just like they all do.

Finally, Phyllis Schafly, that devoted friend of womanhood, claims that if women make the same money as men for the same work, they'll have a lot more trouble finding husbands. But to the degree that "women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner" and "men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner," why would these be laws of physics (as Ms. Schafly treats them), and not phenomena created by several thousand years of social, political, and economic conditioning?

Around the table: some difficult reading balanced out by some easy moral choices.

Pierce Nahigyan tells us why our government won't ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009. Spoiler alert: opponents claim it'll subjugate American government to a world government, though the CRPD mainly extends American-style protections to the world and anyway these are the same idiots who have no trouble letting "free" trade agreements subjugate our laws to corporate power. Opponents also claim it'll be a backdoor way to codify abortion rights all over the planet. Myself, I'd prefer a world where citizens have to help each other avoid having abortions to a world where folks treat the disabled like junk.

Mark Boyd at the Center for Effective Government tells us how the Treasury Department could close one corporate tax loophole and save the American taxpayer $10 billion annually -- without Congressional involvement. At which point John Boehner will whine about not being consulted (though Congress has already empowered Treasury to do away with the loophole) and complain that closing the loophole will "kill jobs." Where is the enterprising journalist who will finally ask how, exactly, will stopping corporations from stacking their overseas profits in fictional overseas corporations "kill jobs"? Not in the "liberal" media, I'll bet.

Mike Konczal tells us, at some length, about "The Voluntarism Fantasy" -- no, not the "fantasy" that your individual acts of voluntarism make a difference, because they do, but the right-wing fantasy that our government can simply stop doing all the things it's supposed to do at our behest and on our behalf because volunteers will do it all. Spoiler alert: this wasn't how it was in the old days before alphabet agencies, either -- the "voluntary civil society" simply didn't have the means to provide the help our government can, and anyway, without massive taxation of high incomes, where's the incentive for the rich to participate in such a society?

Buncombe County, NC school asks 9-year-old to leave his My Little Pony backpack at home because it's a "trigger for bullying." Now that's the right message to send to our youth -- let the bullies win! Avoid provoking them! Haven't they learned, from watching our political class over the last few years, that there's no way to predict what will "provoke" a bully? Better to actually do their jobs and, you know, teach kids not to be bullies. I mean, do we put that many chemicals in our meat now that pre-teen kids muscle school teachers?

Ho hum, a Minnesota state Rep says a package of family leave/equal pay bills make women (not including herself, I presume) look like "whiners." No, politicians who complain about having to do right by their constituents look like whiners. Doesn't Ms. Kieffer know it's not nice to project?

Finally, yet another Republican politician thinks we shouldn't bother with laws prohibiting segregation, because a "KKK bakery" which refused to sell to black folks would be so unpopular it would close. Which, again, doesn't address another possibility -- that businesses will follow the lead of this imaginary KKK bakery until no business in town serves blacks. Which has happened, you know. Nor does this philosophical house of cards address consumers' right to shop at the place of their choice. Always, with these jerks, corporations have rights and people don't. Now let's never speak of this Phil Jensen fellow again.

Around the table: unemployment drama, creationist twaddle, corporate whining, Tunisian progress, and a bionic breakthrough.

Long-term unemployment extension fails in Senate again, this time by 58-40. That's 58 votes in favor of extending long-term unemployment benefits, since a majority can't get anything done in Congress anymore. I'd say this is the kiss of death for Republicans running for re-election, given the popularity of unemployment benefits among even fairly conservative folk, but Republicans were a lot more obnoxious about unemployment benefits in 2010, and we remember how that turned out.

Creationist Ken Ham, fresh off his debate with Bill Nye, compares Mr. Nye either to Eve or the serpent in the garden of Eden, damned if I can tell what the hell he's saying. Seriously, though: has Ken Ham considered that the serpent is the good guy in the Gnostic version of the Garden of Even story? Just kidding: a guy like Ken Ham doesn't consider anything, and is proud of it. Even Pat Robertson would like Ken Ham to shut his yap.

National Labor Relations Board moves to shorten period between a petition for a government-supervised union election and the actual union election, which corporations hate, because they're haters. OK, they hate it because the move would give them less time to propagandize and/or harass their workers into voting the way they want them to vote, but some pro-labor analysts wonder whether it'll do any good, since corporations can just schedule more intense anti-union meetings with their workers. I don't agree -- at some point, all these meetings just interfere with the job, and managers will complain about it.

Think Progress tells us about Tunisia's new constitution, which guarantees freedoms our own Constitution doesn't even have. The Tunisian National Assembly apparently wrote environmental protections, equal pay rights, access to health care, and safe working conditions (among other things) into their nation's constitution -- even in America, we're left to infer most of these from our Constitution's text. Of course plenty of countries have plenty of terrific laws they don't or can't enforce, but this is still a happy event -- except, perhaps, for right-wing attention hounds looking for something to scream SHARIA!!!!! at.

Finally, scientists develop a bionic hand that would actually its wearer to feel sensations in his or her fingers. The hand is kind of bulky and can't currently operate without a slew of external wires, but scientists can work on that, even if the Ken Hams of the world say it offends God.

The Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to finalize rules requiring coal corporations to stop discharging toxic coal ash into our waterways. That would mean less mercury, arsenic, and lead in your drinking water. So what would the EPA have coal corporations do instead? The EPA would force coal corporations to transition out of using ponds to store their coal ash waste and into using "dry bottom ash systems," some of which you can read about here, if you're up to it. The forces of corporate power, in addition to yelling COMMUNISM SOCIALISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!! at every attempt to make sure we drink clean water, will tell us that forcing coal corporations to move to dry systems will make your utility bills go up. We could make many objections to that, but let's just boil them down to one: is that the world we want to live in, where the big corporations always hold us hostage so we don't make the world a better place? OK, two: if you can't drink the water, your cheap energy doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act fifty years ago, when women made about 59 cents on every dollar their male counterparts made, and now women make 77 cents on the dollar -- which is better, certainly, but which also isn't a dollar on the dollar, which is what women deserve. It's hard to imagine objections people could have to closing loopholes and tightening enforcement of what's already the law. OK, it's not that hard to imagine: a lot of right-wingers claim the bill is a boon for trial lawyers, as if women should redress allegations of corporate illegality somewhere other than the courts. Or maybe they'll tell us corporations have a First Amendment right to keep information about what they're paying their workers private -- as if workers have no First Amendment right to find out if their boss is screwing them! Argument-by-dog-whistle is no way to advance civilization.

H.R. 12/S. 123, the Voter Empowerment Act of 2013, makes online voter registration easier, makes intimidating voters harder, helps more disabled folks vote, and lets felons vote again once they get out of jail. And the bill directly addresses, and prohibits, voter "caging." You remember "caging," right, from Greg Palast's 2004 BBC Newsnight report? Where the state (in this case, Florida) sends fundraising solicitations or address verification letters to certain (i.e. black) voters, and then puts the voters who don't respond on a special list alleging that they might not be eligible to vote? Clever, huh? Why do people in power waste valuable time and attention on such matters, when they could just, you know, do something valuable for the folks they serve? The Brennan Center for Justice provides more information, and you can use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to urge your Reps and Senators to support the Voter Empowerment Act. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, Congress still works on the Farm Bill, and shows little or no interest in reforming one of the greatest injustices built into the Farm Bill for decades -- that giant multinational corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Archer-Daniels-Midland somehow collect the vast majority of agricultural subsidies. Indeed, between 1995 and 2011, less than four percent of America's farmers collected 75 percent of all of these subsidies. I pity the fool who raises his hand to say, but that makes sense, because those corporations are bigger! But if a pimp needs a slap I'm game to give it: big corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM shouldn't be getting more government help than the small farmers who need it more -- and certainly not to keep the price of corn syrup (and therefore soda and other junk foods) artificially low, which also keeps our children artificially fat. So USPIRG helps you tell your Senators to fight big subsidies for big agricultural corporations.

In other sad food news, an Oregon farmer has discovered genetically-engineered wheat growing on his farm. He didn't plant it, and even better, this particular strain of GE wheat never even received government approval for planting. And this wheat is one of them-there glycophate-resistant strains! Hey, we were going after glycophates in pesticides not too long ago! Now, nobody necessarily broke the law in planting this strain of wheat -- most likely, the strain was part of a field test. But maybe there should be a law against that, since we can't contain the ill effects any more than we can contain the wind or the animals that carry the GE seed from field to field. So Food and Water Watch helps you tell the USDA to halt all field testing of genetically-modified crops. Note well that many trade partners have outlawed GE crops, and that organic crops won't be organic once tainted with GE seed. These alone should be incentive enough for the USDA to act -- even if, you know, they don't take public service seriously or something.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), you may have heard the litany of flatugasms coming from (male) Fox News contributors lately, concerning Pew Research's finding that a record number of families with minor children (40%) now feature the mother as the breadwinner. No use slamming these fools any more than their own words (and their own co-workers) have slammed them -- best to remember, as Moms Rising reminds us, that women still earn 77 cents on their male counterparts' dollar, breadwinners or not, and mothers and women of color fare rather worse than that. Hence Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to pass H.R. 377/S. 84, the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would give us better tools with which to enforce the Equal Pay Act -- such as prohibiting employers from disciplining workers who discuss their salaries with their co-workers, and putting gender-based discrimination on equal legal footing with other forms of wage discrimination. I'd be hard-pressed to imagine legitimate objections to either of those items.

Good news: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) will automatically restore voting rights to non-violent felons who've completed their obligations to civil society. Personally I don't think felons should lose any voting rights, even while they're in prison -- the prison term is the price they pay for what they've done, right? -- but this is a good start.

Another day, another right-winger claiming that Comcast and Verizon have a "First Amendment" right to carry whatever networks they want. Sadly, this right-winger is D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh, one of Mr. Bush's most notoriously unqualified employees. Doesn't even know the difference between a service provider and a bookseller -- and he seems to think our First Amendment right to decide what we want to watch isn't part of the question.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says she's against pay equity laws because "women don't want the decisions made in Washington. They want...to make those decisions for themselves." And in a world where you don't get pay increases just because you deserve them, how does she think women get pay equity? Does she know the meaning of the words "our government"? And I noticed "I didn’t want to be given a job because I was a female" -- she must think it's OK to just change the subject if you're losing the argument.

New York Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner (D) says he's developed "an almost rhinocerosly thick skin" in re all the nasty things people say to him. Which are all deserved, by the way -- if you're going to be the Single Payer Health Care Guy, you don't also get to be the Takes Pictures of His Cock and Sends Them to Young Female Twitter Followers Guy. And "rhinocerosly" is not a word. I'm old enough to remember when making up words ended campaigns.

New York Times economics writer gives us "The Trouble with Taxing Corporations." Never mind that his proof that it's so much trouble consists of exactly three anecdotes in 33 paragraphs, or that his proposed solutions (the national sales tax? Over my dead body!) are mostly right-wing -- this notion that doing something about corporate taxes might be the right thing to do, but we should give up doing it because it's so hard? I'd dare call that un-American.

Banks may still be foreclosing everywhere they can, but at least they can't hide from their shareholders -- even when they decide to have their meetings not in San Francisco or Minneapolis but Boise or Salt Lake City. But some shareholder resolutions would be nice -- they wouldn't even have to win to get Wells Fargo (2012 profits: $19 billion) to start doing the right thing.

In a related note, the Wall Street Journal has permitted this Paul Farrell column entitled "Capitalism Is Killing Our Morals, Our Future" on its Marketwatch website. I sure would love to read something like that on its daily broadsheet! Anyway, it's not exactly what you'd expect -- the main point is that when everything is for sale, when parties to a contract have a "nonjudgmental" attitude toward what's being sold, then inequality and corruption thrive.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) says she voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act because "there were (sic) already existing laws that need to be enforced," failing to note that the Paycheck Fairness Act would have provided tools for enforcement of those laws. Worse, she worried the law would have made it harder "for job creators to create jobs." She may call that chiasmus, but I just call it clumsy. And I call it reactionary to cite better law enforcement as some kind of burden, and I also call her "job creators" job destroyers. Good citizens of New Hampshire, please turn Ms. Ayotte out in 2016.

Four citizens and eight corporations file suit against our government over IRS enforcement of the Affordable Care Act. The plaintiffs say the IRS overstepped the Affordable Care Act's bounds by making tax credits for health insurance to individuals participating in the federal health insurance exchanges as well as the state exchanges (because the states have been slow to set up their own exchanges, where they're doing it at all). We could have avoided this problem by setting up a single-payer system, maybe?

The Drudge Report fell hard for a satirical Daily Currant piece describing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg being denied a second slice of pizza at a restaurant. I guess this is why Mr. Drudge isn't America's Assignment Editor anymore, though I wonder what he'll have to do for the "liberal" media to shun him completely, as they should have done long ago. And at least he outclassed the Zero Hedge blog, whose anti-apology really has to be read to be believed.

Good news, everyone: CISPA, the House-passed bill that would have let corporations and government collaborate on infringing your privacy rights, is very likely dead in the Senate. Give yourself and your cohorts a high-five, and then beware of whatever "cybersecurity" legislation (likely several pieces of legislation) the Senate does offer up later on this year.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell President Obama to stop federal contractors from retaliating against folks who discuss their pay with their co-workers. Why? Because comparing pay with co-workers is, oftentimes, the only way folks can tell they're getting screwed. Thankfully, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restores a worker's right to take action within 180 days after discovering the pay inequity in their paychecks (rather than within 180 days after the pay inequity began, as the Supreme Court would have had them do), yet many companies still have pay secrecy policies. Mr. Obama can issue an Executive Order telling federal contractors they can't do that anymore; it's not the Paycheck Fairness Act or anything, but it's a start. And he doesn't even need the approval of President Boehner or President McConnell! Still, we gotta stay on him.

Meanwhile, the EPA has released its proposal for new tailpipe emissions standards, and the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to adopt the strongest standards possible. The EPA would essentially apply California's tougher gasoline emissions standards across the nation, cutting sulfur in gasoline by 60 percent and nitrous oxides in gasoline by 80 percent. (You find both sulfur and nitrous oxides in smog.) Naturally, the oil corporations don't want to comply, even though automakers are more sanguine, since with the new emissions standards they won't have to build one car for California and one for the rest of the country. But I kinda think of clean air as priceless -- even beyond all the health care costs we'll save if our kids suffer less from asthma, or all the construction and plant jobs corporations will create to keep up with the new rules.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a moratorium on fracking, CREDO still helps you do that. Why? Because Pennsylvania can't protect its citizens from the ill effects of fracking, well beyond their inability to inspect more than a tenth of state oil and gas wells. This is the state which allows municipalities to charge a piddling impact fee but prevents them from enforcing their own environmental regulations, the state whose own Department of Environmental Protection issues incomplete water reports to homeowners. And our legislators know as well as we do that fracking poisons the air and water -- why else did a few local state Senators slip a fracking moratorium for the counties around Philadelphia into the 2012 state budget? One day they'll have to actually drink fracked water. But it doesn't have to come to that.