Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning the Israel/Palestine war, food stamps, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop further arms sales to Israel, reject food stamp cuts, and fully fund our IRS. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject further arms sales to Israel. Now Iran has gotten involved, a move pretty much predetermined the moment Mr. Netanyahu decided to kill as many Palestinians as possible without hurting Hamas, though of course, this being Iran, they waited a very, very long time. But that doesn't mean we’re all suddenly pro-genocide! And it sure doesn't mean "Donald Trump should be President"! He'll rattle his saber at Iran, but ultimately do nothing, because that’s what Mr. Putin wants. We'd do much better to force an end to the Netanyahu stratagem, and that'll only happen when we stop giving him weapons. Certainly let’s not count on Donald Trump to do that!

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to put families first and reject cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (or SNAP), better known as food stamps. I'll keep saying "food stamps," I don't care! There's no shame in getting help from your government, since you fund your government. Why, food stamps are rather like insurance! But, of course, right-wingers want you to think we should be ashamed, because you don’t want to be Those People, do you? But we should not be ashamed! And we should not be cruel to those who've lost their job, or (more likely these days!) those whose job doesn't pay enough. Maybe we should go after corporate farm subsidies instead of hurting working families?

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS's efforts to find and punish wealthy tax cheats. Somehow, Congressional Republicans have made this the hill they'll die on! But did all that whining about our IRS help them win the 2022 midterms? No, it did not: to review, Republicans lost a net of one Senate seat and we only knew they'd narrowly won the House after another week of vote-counting. But if we want to find and punish rich tax cheats, the kind who hire rich lawyers to get them off, then we need to fully fund our IRS. Why, it's almost like Republicans are objectively pro-rich tax cheat! They certainly don’t love the poor tax cheat.

Action: concerning paid sick leave and nutrition programs.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to enact real paid/family medical leave and invest better in food stamps and senior nutritional programs. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact real paid sick/family leave legislation. What did we learn during the pandemic? That everyone needs access to our internet, for one thing, but also that everyone needs paid sick leave, which only a little more than one in four American workers now have. It should be four in four! It’s four in four in almost every other highly-developed nation on Earth! And it would cost an extraordinarily small amount of money! The Gillibrand bill from previous sessions would have funded it with a very small payroll tax amounting to about $8/month for someone making $50,000 annually, but I’d just as soon tax the rich. (Accidentally typed “tax the reich” there for a moment; how telling.)

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut food stamp benefits so they can increase big ag subsidies. Yes, Congress is really considering doing that – literally stealing from the poor and giving to the rich! Because that’s what farm subsidies have become: welfare for big ag corporations. And it helps make our kids fat! The price of Pepsi has literally not changed, even when adjusting for inflation, in over 40 years; if we subsidized fruits and vegetables the way we subsidize corn, we’d have a lot less childhood obesity, and a lot less diabetes. Thus those who think food stamps are some kind of “moral hazard” would have to concede that handing out corporate welfare to big ag concerns is a far worse moral hazard.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep investing in nutritional programs for seniors like Meals on Wheels. This is yet another program that would spend a little bit of money to do a lot of good, so naturally right-wingers hate it. Clearly they prefer programs that spend a lot of money and only do big corporate executives any good, like the F-35 “fighter” plane. Right-wingers also like saying they’ve got Social Security and Medicare, what more do they want? Two reasons that’s horseshit: one, Social Security and Medicare don’t cover everything, and two, right-wingers are constantly trying to kill the programs they say seniors are lucky to have! So enough with horseshit.

Around the table: of corruption, bad arguments, and surprising findings about guns.

Uh oh: the now-notorious Crow Corporation said more than once that eviction moratoriums were killing their business while Harlan Crow’s “vacation partner” Justice Thomas voted twice to kill them. Still right-wingers will claim one has nothing to do with the other, presumably because the Crow Corporation wasn’t actually a plaintiff in either case. But in a civilized society, you avoid even the appearance of corruption by, you know, not taking expensive gifts from powerful people. One might even say that serving power is innately corrupt. It’s me. I’m the one who would say it. I’m saying it.

In a peripherally-related note, we are reminded that some two dozen Congressfolk are farmers and thus maybe shouldn’t be influencing Farm Bill legislation that might direct more government subsidies their way. I think this is all pretty simple: if you dedicate yourself to a life of service, divest yourself of anything that’ll prevent you from serving your constituents, and if you can’t, don’t serve. And if that’s impossible for some politicians because their legislative jobs are part-time and relatively low-paying (neither of which applies to members of Congress!), then we ought to change that, too.

Embedded in this meditation on the firing of Tucker Carlson and the Joe Biden re-election announcement happening more or less at the same time is the insight that many Trump supporters believe their guy got swindled mainly because they love him so much. I’ve had Trumpholes try to feed me this patently illogical crap, telling me that my lack of love for Joe Biden is somehow less valid than their undying love for Dear Leader, as if their feelings are more important than anyone else’s vote. I guess they figure their feelings got him elected in the first place because it sure wasn’t more votes amirite?, but grown adults know that the thrill of actually getting an inside straight doesn’t compare to the misery you’d feel if you constantly tried to draw to one.

North Carolina Supreme Court, now a majority-Republican court, reverses itself on gerrymandering Congressional districts, meaning the supermajority-Republican state legislature will probably gerrymander themselves three or four more House seats in 2024. New York and California Democrats better get their act together, then! (Wisconsin’s Supreme Court might also have something to say about their supermajority Republican legislature’s gerrymandering.) Anyway, you may have thought judges cared about their legacy, but apparently not when Republicans are thisclose to controlling everything and everyone.

What is “the thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial,” according to Jeremy P. Shapiro at The Conversation? “Black and white thinking,” because that sort of thing does “simplif(y) the world,” after all. You’ll recognize many of the symptoms of black-and-white thinking, chief among them a tendency to find the one counterexample out of a million and assert that disproves all trends, but you might also suspect that perhaps it’s not so much that regular folks are such black-and-white thinkers but that Our Glorious Elites pound us into submission with their fake black-and-white thinking.

Finally, the headline may read “More Republicans Blame Mass Shootings on Video Games Than on Easy Gun Access,” but I think the Morning Consult survey described therein has far more interesting findings – that over 40% of Americans think TV and films brandish too many guns, certainly, but also that nearly six out of 10 Republicans blame “easy access to guns” for all the mass shootings! That’s a fact that seems lost on Republican politicians, who trap half of their votaries in a feedback loop of masturbatory rage and expect the other half to be good soldiers. This other half ought to step up and demand better from their party, maybe?

Action: concerning child labor, insulin prices, Medicare funding, and climate change.

Long story short: tell your state Governor to protect child labor laws, and tell your Congressfolk to cap insulin prices for all Americans, fund Medicare better, and reject any effort to roll back investment rules that protect pensions from climate change. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your state Governor to stop any efforts by your state legislature to gut child labor laws. You’ve heard of young kids enduring slave-labor conditions to make chocolate? Consider that our government has caught several big corporations breaking child labor laws in America – and consider, also, that right-wing state legislators are trying to loosen child labor laws in several states. I’m sure they’ll say it’s about kids getting $10 from grandpa for reformatting their hard drive, but that’s a load of horsedoodle – this is about exploiting 14-year-olds in dangerous construction jobs so you can pay them less. The children are our future – unless they’re just another workforce.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to cap the price of insulin at $35/month for all Americans. Currently folks on Medicare get that cap – Democrats could only get that cap through reconciliation last year, since it concerns government spending – but all Americans deserve it, and don’t tolerate any nonsense about how “price controls are bad.” You say “price controls” to Americans suffering 6% inflation and they’ll likely say that sounds like a great idea! And certainly don’t tolerate any nonsense about how “folks just have to eat better” – not in a nation that subsidizes sugar like we do, and not in a world where kids are born with diabetes.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Assuring Medicare’s Promise Act, which would ensure that certain taxes mainly paid by rich folks (including the Net Investment Income Tax and the Self-Employment Contribution Act) actually find their way to the Medicare Trust Fund. The bill wouldn’t actually raise taxes on anyone, and though I’m certainly game to do that to ensure Medicare is always there for us, the bill certainly deserves our support. More than the right-wing fools who whine about TEH LOSTZ JOBZ!!!! every single time someone tries to do the right thing in America, that’s for sure.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell Congress to reject Republican efforts to roll back a Department of Labor rule requiring big corporations to keep our retirement savings safe from climate change risks. If that sounds a little inside baseball to you – which Republicans are counting on! – consider that if climate change makes our planet unlivable, you won’t have a pension! Our laws mandate that our government protects investors – which you are, if you have a pension plan – and putting the “rights” of polluters above the rights of all Americans sure is some real short-term thinking. Naturally Republicans, being “conservatives,” are all about the short term. No reason we need to be, though.

Around the table: starring Saint Reagan, the racist! And Rand Paul, the bastard!

Jim Naureckas at FAIR reminds us that "Ronald Reagan's Racism" -- as recently exposed on previously-unscrutinized Nixon tapes -- "Should Come as No Surprise." Nor, I might add, should his cleverness about hiding his racism come as a surprise -- as Mr. Goldwater explained his opposition to the Civil Rights Act by saying "(y)ou can't pass a law that will make me like you or you like me," Mr. Reagan framed his opposition to a successful open housing referendum by saying "I have never believed that majority rule has the right to impose on an individual as to what he does with his property," all of which, of course, distracted us from these initiatives' true aim: to prevent people from taking away the rights of other people on the basis of skin color. It almost makes our current President's artless brutality refreshing. I said "almost."

The incomparable Dean Baker asks a question I haven't heard anyone else ask yet: "Why is Facebook, the World's Largest Publisher, Immune to Publishing Laws?" Long story short: people post a lot of false (and damaging in the legal sense) stuff on Facebook, but if our laws treated Facebook as a publisher, which it is, then Facebook would have to a) remove the false/damaging stuff and b) post prominent corrections so that everyone who saw the false/damaging stuff would see the correction. You know, like every other publisher has to do. That might sound like a lot of work, and might actually require Facebook to hire more workers and pay them well, but I've always believed that work builds character, and that adherence to the values of our civilization is the best job-creator.

Ho hum, more than half of our President's trade-aid-to-farmers went to only one-tenth of the farmers in the program. And our USDA claims that this is how the program is supposed to work! No, really, they said, and I quote, "the more acres they farm and bushels per acre they produce, the more assistance they receive." I guess they no longer believe that economies of scale "reduce costs." (As an aside, I'd be wary of suggesting that this is uniquely "a time when the number of mid-sized family farms is declining," because that's been happening for decades, and it's because our government no longer cares about consolidation or monopolies.)

Rand Paul offers to pay Ilhan Omar's way back to Somalia so she can "appreciate America more." Yeah, let's send people running from people trying to kill them back to the people who were trying to kill them, hardy har har. One more time: trying to improve America does not make you "ungrateful," nor does it mean you "don't love America enough." It's like these people think "a more perfect union" is some kind of magic spell, and not a phrase that actually means something.

Finally, let's address the ubiquitous center-right talking point that you shouldn't support an actual liberal for the Democratic Presidential nomination because Democrats wouldn't have the numbers in Congress to pass the legislation they propose. I was about to say this is something only cowards say -- don't support someone you believe in, it'll all end in tears! -- but it's actually worse than that: the No-We-Can't Caucus aren't cowards themselves, but folks who want you to be cowards. And why? Because they fear what we can do and will do when we stop obsessing about them! Our job as citizens, after all is to communicate our will to our representatives in such frequency and in such numbers that they do our will; our job is not to figure out which nominee is the most likely winner so we can be winners too, because that's playing their game. And history is, as usual, also instructive: the day before Election Day 1980, Democrats held 58 seats in the Senate, and you know what happened after that -- an "unelectable" extremist changed everything about politics for the next several decades.

Around the table: why local food is better, and other lessons.

Helena Norberg-Hodge reminds us that "Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment." Think of all the things we wouldn't be doing if we grew all our food locally -- things like seed extinction, monoculture farming, antibiotic abuse, factory farm pollution, high-fructose corn syrup subsidies, and crops genetically modified to better withstand resist proprietary pesticides, to name just a few. It's enough to make you think that the only thing Big Food does "efficiently" is delivery money into executive bank accounts.

"N.J. Attorney General to Cops: Stop Working With ICE" is a misleading headline, because ICE can, you know, get a warrant and thus earn the cooperation from police that such warrants mandate. Of course that subtlety seems lost on the ICE deputy director who squeals about "public safety" and issues ominous warnings that ICE will just have to arrest more people, which will "inevitably" result in "collateral arrests." What's preventing ICE from just getting warrants again? I sure hope it's not the Bush Mobb-era notion that warrants are "quaint."

When you hear that our government takes upwards of 10 years to process workers' claims for nuclear contamination compensation largely because nuclear labs don't necessarily document problems the way they're supposed to, you may feel compelled to ask: is this what folks mean when they demand small government? Because this is what we get when we demand small government, and no use telling me you just know some of these claims are BS -- if you had a comp claim that you knew other people were telling their friends "must be" BS, how would you feel? (Note well, also, that Tha Bush Mobb dragged its feet on giving these workers justice wherever they could.)

While our government's Office of Special Counsel tells federal workers they'd best not talk about resisting or impeaching our President while they're on the clock -- and the worst I'll say about that is that maybe the OSC takes their interpretation a bit too far -- that very same OSC found that half a dozen Administration officials, including our deputy press secretary, violated the Hatch Act, but let them all off with warnings. Who thinks OSC will be similarly-restrained with rank-and-file federal workers talking about impeaching our President? Not me -- this Administration, like so many others, thinks law and order is for "little people" like us.

Goldman Sachs analysts ask, in re gene therapy treatments, "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" That's very unfortunate wording right there, but if a treatment obliterates a sector of the health care economy, that doesn't mean it's evil; surely no one would wish to have leprosy or smallpox back as part of a perverse "job-creation program" because they once kept doctors and caregivers busy. (Oh, and Gilead's sales of their miracle Hep C drug could also be falling because now more people know how expensive it is and how noxious a corporation Gilead is.)

Finally, House Democrats forge ahead with their Leviathan of a voting rights/campaign finance reform/anti-corruption bill. And now that they've apparently purged attempts to simply repeal Supreme Court decisions without actually amending our Constitution, now I'm wondering if H.R. 1's pack-everything-in-one-bill might actually be the right approach. Any Republican who votes against it can be portrayed in campaign ads as "anti-voting rights" or "anti-campaign finance reform" or "pro-corruption." I mean, we're still relying on Democrats to run those ads, but at least they'll put Republicans on the spot. (Of course, when Republicans whine that we're trying to do too much at once, we can respond, paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, that you don't pull a baby out of a fire gradually.)

UPDATE. I really should have checked the date on that Goldman-Sachs article referenced in the fifth paragraph above -- not only is it from April, but I wrote about it then (and rather less generously than I did above, I think). I still think the insight contained therein is worth keeping.

Around the table: concerning internet freedom, executive pay, health care, clean water, and the folly of trying to get the President's votaries to "respect" you.

Senate passes "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal by a 52-47 margin. I expected 50-49, didn't expect Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) to vote "yea," and I guess I owe Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) an apology for hemming and hawing for two months over whether to be the 51st vote -- or maybe I don't, since 50-49 (sans Sen. McCain, still being treated for brain cancer in Arizona) was pretty much the foregone conclusion. Another foregone conclusion: the House reportedly won't take up the bill. We'll just have to get in their grills until that conclusion is no longer foregone. (And I know, 52 is still 15 short of the total we'll need to override our President's eventual reflexive veto, but one thing at a time.)

U.S. House Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has released the first report of CEO-worker pay disparity data mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and it's not pretty. The vast majority of the corporations the study tabulated have a 100-to-1 disparity between those corporations' CEOs and their average workers (not "lowest-paid," since then the disparity would be closer to the 300-to-1 figure that's become commonplace by now), but a handful of corporations have truly absurd ratios, like Six Flags, with a ratio of 1,920-to-1. Remember that most Americans think the ratio of executive pay to unskilled factory worker pay should be seven-to-one, which means we'd almost certainly prefer the executive-to-average-worker ratio to be even narrower than that.

From Politico we learn that Democratic Congressional candidates are running on "GOP Health Care 'Sabotage,'". For once, this actually is good news for Democrats -- unless they shoot their wad on this topic now and decide everyone's tired of hearing about it in October, and you know no one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat. Particularly one with a lot of consultant "help." (It might also help if Democrats would remind everyone that double-digit premium hikes have been a constant feature of our privatized health care system for decades, lest Republicans blame the hikes that have happened on their watch on Obamacare, which has -- though this is nothing to put on your tombstone -- slowed the acceleration of premium growth.)

In a peripherally-related note, Paul Waldman at The Washington Post explains why Democrats can never hope to win the "respect" of our President's votaries. I'd have said "because they're bat-guano insane" and left it at that, though Mr. Waldman is more generous -- both to those votaries (who do have legitimate grievances, though not the ones they're constantly airing) and to Democratic politicians, who do natter on about "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" and "adapting to changing times" more than Mr. Waldman grants. His answer is not to "play the game" of pandering to right-wing voters, which is good advice, but the better advice is to do things that actually make their lives better. A rage-filled voter can go either way -- toward blaming the wrong people, or blaming the right people. Do things that make their lives better, and they'll blame Black Lives Matter and obscure liberal college professors a lot less.

Finally, Amanda Marcotte at Salon reminds us that water contamination is also rampant in rural America, where agriculture's dependence on phosphorus results -- almost every other day in America! -- in a toxic algal bloom leaving carcinogens in our drinking water. She also reminds us (and I needed this reminder this week!) that Big Gummint programs offering money to big farming corporations to clean up their runoff isn't as good a tactic as simply mandating that they clean up their runoff. No need to object that mom-and-pop farmers get hurt, because there ain't that many of those left anymore, thanks to nearly 40 years of farm policy that puts corporations above people. And corporate profits above clean water.

Action: farm policy, GMO labeling, and the Iran nuclear deal.

The House plans to vote on the nefarious H.R. 2, the "farm bill" that'll set farm policy in the United States for the next five years, and Moms Rising helps you tell your House Rep to reject the House Farm Bill. Don't worry about people suddenly having nothing to eat if the Farm Bill doesn't pass, not just because that won't happen (Congress will just extend the old Farm Bill for a while if they can't pass a new one, as they've done the last two times), but because Americans don't let themselves be taken hostage, do we? The current Farm Bill is a cornucopia of evil, not just in cutting food stamps and imposing work requirements on them (for people who very likely either already work or are children or seniors, no less!), but in giving more subsidies to big farms, less assistance to farms trying to get off chemicals and monoculture, and more loopholes to corporations trying to put out pesticides, and more welfare handouts to factory farms. This bill deserves a humiliating death, so let's give it one.

Meanwhile, the USDA is considering labeling requirements for foods made with genetically-modified organisms (or GMOs), and surprise, their draft rule sucks! The USDA's standard would basically exclude sugars and oils (allowing more than two-thirds of GMO foods to go unlabeled!), would require labelers to use the nearly-unknown initials "BE" (for "bioengineered") instead of the far more well-known initials "GE" or "GMO," and would allow corporations to use various electronic means of labeling their food, without just, you know, writing some variation of this food has GMOs in it on the food label you're actually holding. But the USDA still has to take public comments on the proposed rule -- which they'll do for 60 days, in the hopes that well-organized food corporations will swamp us out. Let's destroy that hope by letting Just Label It help you leave a public comment opposing the USDA's inadequate GMO labeling proposal.

Finally, our President may have removed the United States from the Iran nuclear deal -- remember, when they tell you he's acting crazy like a fox, that George W. Bush's "crazy like a fox" act got us ISIS -- but the other six signatory nations can still keep the deal going, hence Roots Action helps you tell the other signatory nations to keep the Iran nuclear deal together. It is actually working, after all, and our President can't say it's not working without telling bald lies about it. Some will tell you you're "undermining America" by doing this, particularly by contacting Iran; others will even call you a "traitor." They can all go diddle their rage glands somewhere else. You never "undermine" your country by speaking out about what you think is right, and anyone can call anyone a "traitor," instead of taking the effort to persuade people they're right. And if this Administration's defenders resort to name-calling, they won't convince anyone of courage and character that they're right.

Action: internet freedom, farm policy, veterans' health care, and automatic voter registration.

Word on the street is that tomorrow Democrats will force a vote on S.J.Res. 52, the "resolution of disapproval" that would roll back the FCC's net neutrality repeal, so today's as good a day as any to call your Senators and tell them to vote in favor of the resolution, and thus support real internet freedom for all Americans. The FCC had the stones to call their net neutrality repeal "Restoring Internet Freedom," but their repeal only "restores" internet "freedom" for big corporations -- as in freedom to prevent you from visiting websites, freedom to slow down the loading of websites, and freedom to demand tribute from websites in order to prevent either of these things from happening. What about your freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, rather than let some corporation tell you where to go? Clearly, that actual freedom is not as important to the FCC as those other corporate "freedoms." But with S.J.Res. 52, we can begin to take our freedom back.

Meanwhile, Congress is mulling another farm bill, since that needs to be reauthorized every six years, and in H.R. 2 they've concocted a real stinker of a farm bill: one that stretches the definition of "family farm" so that huge farms can take even more farm subsidies they don't need, one that rolls back incentives that help farmers get off chemicals and one-crop farming, one that exempts pesticides from clean water and endangered species protections, and one that tramples on state-level efforts to control factory farms. Oh, and it also imposes new work requirements on food stamps, as if too many working families aren't already on food stamps because their employers don't pay enough. In short, this is another pro-corporation, anti-people bill from Congress, and it deserves a humiliating death. So the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to support small farmers and healthy food choice by rejecting H.R. 2.

In other news, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5671, the Burn Pits Accountability Act. So what are burn pits? Burn pits are what we used to dispose of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan, waste that could include human and medical waste, chemicals, paint, plastic, rubber, and even munitions. If that doesn't sound like an utterly toxic stew, I don't know what does! For all that, scientists haven't yet established a firm link between burn pits and Iraq/Afghanistan veteran illnessess, but the Veterans Administration maintains a Burn Pit Registry which can make establishing that link far easier, and H.R. 5671 would mandate that our Department of Defense ask soldiers whether they've been exposed to burn pits -- which they can do during health exams and separation interviews -- and then automatically register any veteran who answers in the affirmative. Thus the research -- and the healing -- can get a kick-start.

Finally, voter registration is now automatic in 13 states -- meaning citizens in these states become registered voters whenever they use state services like the Division of Motor Vehicles -- and Roots Action helps you tell your state legislators to enact an automatic voter registration law. You know what some right-wingers say when confronted with the common sense notion that we ought to make it easier for people to vote? They say voting should be hard! No: the work of citizenship should be hard, but it does not logically follow from that statement that each and every task associated with citizenship should be hard. You shouldn't have to spend endless time on hold when you call your Reps and Senators, you shouldn't be completely deprived of townhall meetings because your Rep is a criticism-hating snowflake, and you shouldn't have to fill out piles of paperwork in order to register to vote just because some politicians want fewer people to vote.

Around the table: featuring truly bad arguments and governments gone wild!

Laura Gottesdeiner at Mother Jones finds our ongoing war against ISIS to be, well, rather less "precise" than advertised, to the point where many Syrian citizens think the Americans' main aim is to kill as many civilians as possible. You'd hate to think we've outdone Mr. Assad in the area of killing Syrian civilians, let alone ISIS, but in May and June we managed to outdo both in that area. And if you're thinking destroying ISIS is more important than worrying about the "collateral damage," you have to consider what killing civilians always does in the long term -- namely, that it creates more ISISes.

You've heard from right-wingers that consumers win more money through arbitration than class-action lawsuits, but the Economic Policy Institute reminds us that so few consumers ever win in forced arbitration -- a mere 9% do, making that nice-looking $5,000-plus average virtually meaningless, since you get zero dollars if you lose. Also, and we often forget to talk about this when we talk about forced arbitration, that corporations win even more often when they take you to arbitration, and they collect, on average, over $7,000 when they win. Class action lawsuits may not make you rich, but it ain't all about you -- it's also about everyone else who got harmed, and making sure corporations don't harm people again.

The Turkish government has detained half a dozen activists for the heinous crime of discussing and learning about encryption and digital security. Oh, sure, the charges include things like "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organization without being a member," which sure sounds like a made-up thing, but make no mistake: they're oppressing good activists laying their lives on the line for their fellow citizens. And like so many other governments around the globe (cough Venezuela cough), Turkey's government does these things because it knows it will shrivel and die under ordinary circumstances. (But remember that our own CIA Chief, Mike Pompeo, has all but equated encryption to criminal activity as well.)

Ho hum, would-be Estate Tax killers still trot out family farms, even though the stodgiest Estate Tax opponents have never been able to find even one family farm that succumbed to it. Last month a House Ways and Means Committee hearing brought in a North Dakota farmer to decry the Estate Tax when his farm won't be subject to the Estate Tax, and a 2014 ad campaign against the Estate Tax featured a Kentucky farmer who took over $150,000 in farm subsidies over the previous 20 years! The Estate Tax repeal movement has always been one of America's stupidest -- but how many more bullets do we have to pump into this zombie lie to keep it down for good?

Finally, Janine Jackson at FAIR reminds us of the dangers of believing credulous "liberal" media stories about attacks against America by describing how the Tonkin Gulf "attack" led to the catastrophe in Vietnam. You have to hope that if/when Donald Trump tries something similar, today's "liberal" media will hate him enough to be a bit more skeptical, except that the "liberal" media seemed to love him best earlier this year when he fired a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at a just-deserted Syrian air base. So it's down to us to keep us out of war, as usual.

Around the table: "free" trade, government spying, health care, the "liberal" media, and Charles Grassley maybe finally in trouble.

President Obama criticizes anti-"free" traders yet again. "The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine," he says, but we don't say we should "focus solely on our local market" -- we say we should not let trade deals outsource our jobs and nullify our laws. They strain to give us the impression that they hear us, but they don't. If I said it to the President's face, I can't say for sure he'd hear it.

"Privacy activists" target Senators over measure expanding FBI's ability to get your browser history without a warrant. We don't learn who any of them are, but we do "learn" that "privacy advocates found the political wind against them after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history this month," as if subjecting everyone to more government spying would have stopped that. As an aside: they think Ted Cruz's "yea" vote for that amendment is a surprise?

Ho hum, doctors at for-profit, Southern hospitals seem to take more money and gifts from drug- and device-manufacturing corporations than doctors at other kinds of hospitals. However, New Jersey, which is not in the South, leads the way, which, though disappointing, is not surprising, as Big Pharma has virtually colonized the state. No use arguing that doctors are strong enough to not let gifts sway them, when a) the data says otherwise and b) doctors are people, after all, who might feel guilty at getting a gift and not using the product.

CNN's hiring of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandoski as a punditoid has, as you might imagine, resulted in some rather tortured argument from the "liberal" media. One anonymous-of-course CNN staffer says "insider" knowledge of the Trump campaign could be "very valuable to us" (never mind the non-disclosure agreement Mr. Lewandoski signed with the Trump campaign!), while a Washington Post reporter says he gets the "logic." This is, of course, the "logic" of the stooge, and a "value" admired only by the slothful.

Finally, Loras College poll finds Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley a mere one point ahead of his Democratic challenger, former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. Please remember, though, that this is one poll and that Mr. Grassley is pretty good at what he does, by which I don't just mean campaigning -- if you bring up death panels and Social Security and Merrick Garland, I'll bring up his investigations into churches violating IRS rules, dead people getting farm subsidies, and the Red Cross squandering donations. Still, his last race was his closest, and it was during the 2010 wave. And "vote for Judge so we can get a Supreme Court judge" might make a good ad.

Around the table: the "real Donald Trump," and other absurdities.

From the "Nobody Could Have Predicted It Except a Sentient Life Form" file: Donald Trump's handlers are now telling the Republican establishment that the billionaire has been "projecting an image" which they should not confuse with The Real Donald Trump, who is exactly like them. And then Mr. Trump tells a Connecticut that no way no how is he going to "tone it down," which I presume is also part of the scam. Seriously, though, at the point they try to persuade people that they should ignore bad behavior in public precisely because it's calculated to be drama, they argue for a politics in which we shouldn't make any decisions using evidence, but rather look for some "ironic" "calculation" lurking behind the evidence. And that's not happening, not in my America.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe issues executive order re-enfranchising some 200,000 convicted felons. His order only applies to those who have completed their sentences, and certainly the timing is a bit suspicious, but then again the drive to disenfranchise felons in the first place was also largely a matter of partisanship. And I can't abide the critics who say his order is too broad, because these felons should never have lost the right to vote at all. If society assigns you a debt to repay, society doesn't get to punish you again just because one party wants to win, or some folks want to ventilate their rage a little more.

Surprise, surprise, Philadelphia's Mayor wants to fund universal preschool with a soda tax -- and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the reactions you'd expect. Though my right-wing readers will likely find this surprising again, I don't like the soda tax either -- as Mr. Sanders says, it hits the poor harder than it hits the wealthy, which is exactly the opposite of how taxes ought to be. And not only are there better ways to fund universal preschool, there's a better way to fight childhood obesity -- like ending the massive welfare handouts for big ag corporations that allow cheap high-fructose corn syrup to exist, and allow soda to remain at literally the same price since 1981. I know Mrs. Clinton would never advocate for such a thing, and I'm afraid Mr. Sanders wouldn't, either, which is why we went with the corporate tax angle.

Adam Johnson, who's proving quite a find for FAIR, tells us to "Forget 'Bernie Bros' -- The Worst Trolls Work in Corporate Media." I don't know about "worst" trolls -- there are some pretty bad trolls out there! -- but the "liberal" media columnist justifying a ridiculous headline by saying "provocative headlines provoke" is, as Mr. Johnson says, the "the living, breathing definition of trolling," because it seeks to manipulate rather than inform. I tend to avert my eyes from headlines saying someone "called out" so-and-so, or headlines ending in "and it was glorious," for pretty much the same reason -- I'd rather have authentic emotional reactions to what I read.

Finally, Erin Sagen, writing at Yes!, discusses some of the challenges farmers face as they try to save seeds in a sustainable manner. This is a big deal not just because of big corporate "suicide seeds," or seeds designed not to yield more or better crops but simply to withstand proprietary pesticides, or big ag lawsuits against farmers whose seeds have been contaminated by GMO seeds and are thus "guilty" of "intellectual property theft" -- it's also a big deal because big corporate farming, in its quest to redistribute farmer wealth upward to its executives, frowns on things like crop rotation and crop diversity as "costs." I long for the day when "cost-benefit analyses" accurately represent the real cost of what corporations do to our economy, our civilization, and our lives.

Around the table: the horrible truth about superior military strength! And other stories.

Good news, everyone -- Congress passes, and the President signs, a law permitting good folks to "unlock" their cell phones, that is, use their cell phone with a different service provider than the one who sold them the phone. The bill reverses the U.S. Copyright Office's ruling that cell phone unlocking violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act -- but it doesn't reverse that ruling permanently, meaning that the Copyright Office will determine whether to extend the repeal in three years. Still, it's more freedom for the consumer in the meantime, and if you told the President and Congress to get it done, good job.

Patrick Cockburn notes that Israel's offensive against Palestine actually weakens Israel and strengthens Hamas. He is not the first to note the irony that greater military superiority, and the will to deploy it, is too often antithetical to real political superiority, but having invaded Iraq and spilled so much blood and treasure there over the last decade-plus, Americans should be particularly attuned to this message. And despite the "liberal" media remembering its pro-Israel bias, the shock of Israeli teenagers murdering Palestinian ones may be hard to shake.

Meanwhile, Toledo, Ohio residents can't drink the tap water, and Emily Atkins at Think Progress explains why. Long story short: a massive algae bloom in Lake Erie, where Toledo residents get most of their drinking water, has infested the water with a bacterium called microcystis, which can cause serious liver and digestive tract problems. Toledo residents couldn't drink the water until yesterday, and residents with liver issues couldn't wash in it. We're making it even worse, of course -- the main culprit, phosphorus runoff, is a major by-product of the massive amounts of fertilizers and pesticides in corporate farming.

ProPublica provides a timeline of the Senate's efforts to investigate CIA torture. It will remind you that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind on, as the charges that CIA Director Brennan called "spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts" turned out to be a) not terribly spurious and b) rather well-supported by the facts. Of course, being CIA Director means never having to say you're sorry, even (or especially?) under a Democratic President.

Finally, Tracie McMillian at National Geographic explains how it could be that so many Americans with so many middle-class trappings could still go hungry. Those who poke fun at obese folks needing food stamps may find their minds opened a bit by the reporting herein, where average Americans' declining wages force them to "pit one bill against another" even as easy credit allows them to get cell phones and flat-panel TVs, while our government's corn subsidies make eating fast food an all-too-easy choice for overworked and underpaid Americans.

Around the table: from occupation to "job terrorism."

Juan Cole writes that Israel's ultimate aim in occupying Palestine isn't peace; rather, "Israel wants Palestinian land and resources and won’t give them up." I always assumed that Israel's mania about its own defense was entirely authentic, but I understand why it looks the way it does to Mr. Cole, and anyway the result's the same. Personal to those who worry about "strengthening Hamas": wouldn't the creation of a Palestinian state take Hamas's main issue away from them?

Workers at a New England grocery store chain protest the ousting of its CEO with rallies, protests, and even strikes. Turns out Arthur T. Demoulas (not to be confused with the new CEO, his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas, now the avatars of a decades-long family feud) paid his workers better than other grocery store chains do, plus he offered bonuses, tuition assistance, and a generous retirement plan; one manager called Arthur T. "George Bailey," which is a high compliment, and if you can't imagine ever feeling this way about your own CEO, take heart that at least some folks in America can.

Take Part asks, "Is the Downfall of Soda Imminent?" Gallup found that 63 percent of Americans now say they avoid drinking soda, and though that's up from 41 percent in 2010, asking folks what they do (folks do tend to overstate their healthy eating habits, myself certainly included!) isn't as telling as seeing what folks do. Just so happens that sales were flat in Coke's most recent earnings report, and soda consumption is down by 17 percent since 1998, so there's hope, though thanks to our government's persistent support for high-fructose corn syrup subsidies, you'll still see more folks drinking soda than you would otherwise.

Jesse Eisinger explains the problem with Valeant, one of the largest drug corporations in the world. Valeant has reached this summit mostly by buying up other, smaller corporations that have already spent all the money on researching new drugs, which is fortunate, since Valeant's executives don't seem to like doing research, having apparently slow-walked an FDA-mandated study of a cosmetic drug originally used on HIV-positive patients. Banksters love them -- not just for their "business model," but for all the jobs they cut -- but you have to wonder if they've properly considered that Valeant would be nowhere without small businesses doing all the hard work.

Finally, another day, another Republican House Rep equating environmental regulation with "terrorism." Of course, Rep. Kelly's flatugasm also includes a hostage crisis -- the EPA "terrorize(s) the people who supply everything this country needs to be great," meaning you better not tell the energy corporations what to do, or else you'll live in eternal darkness, I suppose. Can't the good citizens of Pennsylvania's 3rd district hire someone else to represent their interests? The seat ain't that red.

Action: the Farm Bill, campaign finance disclosure, and Frankenapples.

First things first. Congressional negotiators have finally put together a Farm Bill, and, as expected, it's not good enough: it cuts food stamps by $8 billion over 10 years, and though it ends farm subsidies, it moves a big chunk of that subsidy money into crop insurance, which essentially makes the crop insurance program another subsidy program. (The Times reports that the Farm Bill will cap subsidies, though it doesn't say what those caps will be like -- if they're not like Sen. Toomey's caps from 2012, they're probably not good enough.) Thus we make our will known, again: PennPIRG still helps you tell your Reps and Senators to end the gravy train of taxpayer money to big agricultural corporations, while Daily Kos helps you tell Congress not to cut food stamps while playing a shell game with subsidies. Noting that this Farm Bill supposedly saves $23 billion in spending over 10 years, one might wonder why $8 billion in food stamp cuts is even necessary. Of course we know why: so Republicans can claim a "win." But they're not supposed to win. The people are supposed to win.

I didn't mark the occasion, but the fourth anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC passed last week, and though President Obama once seemed kindly disposed toward having the Securities and Exchange Commission mandate disclosure of corporate campaign spending, the SEC has not only failed to issue regulations on the matter despite getting more than half a million comments demanding them to do just that, but has "disappeared" the matter from its 2014 agenda. After hearing what, exactly, from big corporate bosses? That disclosure isn't necessary to protect shareholders, or that shareholders don't care that corporations piss away their money trying to elect knuckle-draggers to Congress? I do not believe that shareholders care only about money, because that is cynicism, and I do not abide cynicism. Perhaps they've been telling the SEC that disclosure amounts to "bullying" -- this, coming from financial tough guys who've spent the last few decades doing the helicopter dance in front of us! -- to which I reply: go see a therapist already. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the SEC to mandate disclosure of campaign spending by publicly-traded corporations.

Meanwhile, the USDA rather surprisingly extended its deadline for public comments on the "Arctic Apple." You remember the Arctic Apple? The apple genetically engineered, no, not to increase yields at orchards or even to resist corporate pesticides, but to not turn brown after it's been sliced? I'm tempted to say "who the hell thinks that's clever?" But I know that people who cherish "cleverness" in precisely that shallow manner don't actually have a whole lot of say in how corporations make decisions, even if corporations would like us (or them!) to think so. No, someone probably created this monster so that kids would eat more apples -- as if parents have absolutely zero say about that, as if an apple browning represents some elephantine injury to culinary aesthetics, as if our government doesn't make healthy food choice significantly harder by handing out all that taxpayer money to corn-syrup producers. Seriously, technology doesn't solve every problem. The USDA's new comment period ends tomorrow, so the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the USDA to reject the potentially unsafe and certainly unnecessary Arctic Apple.

Action: phone privacy, a lousy Farm Bill, and fracking in California.

It's not just the NSA that violates our privacy when we're on the phone: our own cell phone providers do it, even going so far as to sell your personal information to the CIA. Think about that -- your cell phone provider actually makes more dough violating your privacy, and it's not like the CIA merely aims to flood your Facebook page with pro-CIA ads. You'd think something like this would be against the law! But, apparently, it's not, because the FCC doesn't know how what to do about it and requests your help figuring that out. This should be a no-brainer, except that so many folks in Washington have less-than-no-brains. Common Cause helps you tell the FCC to protect your privacy on your phone from your cell provider and your government. Before I forget: no, it's not true that "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear." If your government wants to take you down bad enough, it'll pretend everything you do is suspicious.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that Congress has just about finished hammering out a new Farm Bill, one that cuts about $9 billion from food stamps over the next decade -- rather more than the Senate Democrats proposed last year -- and still preserves all of the big corporate agricultural subsidies that no actual conservative or liberal in America likes. If that sounds like a fairly precise perversion of what a Farm Bill should be in America, Daily Kos helps you tell Congress not to cut food stamps in the Farm Bill. Daily Kos seems hopeful that a left-right coalition can stop this Farm Bill from becoming law, which would mean that Congress would be forced to extend the most recent Farm Bill (and thus delay the nefarious food stamp cuts) for another year, as they've already done twice. I'm less hopeful -- I think the putatively implacable Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is ready to play ball on this and other issues. Still, duty is duty.

Finally, Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) -- who once famously said that governing is like navigating a canoe, in that you paddle a little to the left, then paddle a little to the right -- has issued weak regulations governing hydrofracturing, or "fracking," as it's popularly known even to non-Battlestar Galactica fans. Too many of our elected officials (hello, President Obama!) think that since natural gas is the wave of the future, we should encourage fracking wherever possible. Of course you see the logical problem with that premise: that encouraging natural gas extraction does not demand in and of itself that we encourage hydrofracturing. If the gas industry can come up with a way to get at the gas without pumping noxious chemicals into our drinking water or pumping greenhouse gases into our air, I'll listen. But fracking is just a way for gas corporations to deliver more profits to their CEOs. So Friends of the Earth helps you tell Gov. Brown to ban fracking.

Action: in which we provide for the *real* common defense -- against corruption and greed.

H.R. 3639, the confidently-titled Provide for the Common Defense Act, would restore sequestration defense cuts by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Because what could be more popular than taking from popular programs and giving to unpopular, waste- and corruption-filled programs? Specifically, the bill would increase deductibles for new Medicare enrollees after 2017 -- I hope young folks do remember that they will, one day, all be new Medicare enrollees -- and would attach cost-of-living increases to the dread "chained CPI," an index which, as we know, does not reflect the sheer number of fixed costs seniors face. To be fair, the bill also caps crop insurance payments, though it leaves other agricultural subsidies untouched. But on balance, this is a terrible way to "provide for the common defense." Remember when the 91% tax bracket helped provide for the common defense? I guess Congress doesn't. USAction helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 3639.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, could get a House vote as early as today, and this particular Innovation Act (authored by Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, and co-sponsored by nine House Republicans and seven House Democrats) actually would help unleash innovation -- not to mention actually stop frivolous lawsuits -- by making it harder for patent trolls to buy up patents and then sue people willy-nilly for "violating" them. If H.R. 3309 becomes law, would-be patent trolls would have to specify exactly what part or parts of the patent they think the target of their lawsuit is violating, plus they would have to pay the defendant's court costs if they lose -- and that's a substantial deterrent to filing frivolous lawsuits, since most patent trolls bet on their ability to collect quick settlements rather than have their opponents go broke defending themselves. The Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you email or call your House Reps and urge them to support the Innovation Act.

In other news, the Pennsylvania state Senate, though nominally dominated by law-and-order Republicans, plans to push through a bill (SB 411) that would virtually immunize gas drilling corporations from polluting nearby water tables. Because you learned from your parents that when you make a mess, you should lobby your state legislators to pass a law mandating that someone else clean up your mess, right? SB 411 allegedly builds on Pennsylvania's "Good Samaritan Law," which immunizes mining corporations that voluntarily treat acid mine pollution, but handing out a get-out-of-jail-free card to gas drilling corporations who know they're polluting the water we drink and bathe in and wash clothes and dishes with would be more accurately described as a loophole. And all the gas drillers would have to do to drive through this loophole would be to take the water from abandoned mine sites and use it to frack -- not, you know, treat it so that people might use it. Both PennEnvironment and the Sierra Club help you tell your PA state legislators to oppose SB 411.

Finally, in a slap in the face to all good Americans fighting the corruption of our democracy by mammon, the SEC has apparently decided not to issue a rule requiring that corporations disclose their election spending to their shareholders. The SEC has dragged its feet on this rule for years now, finally putting the issuing of said rule on its official agenda for 2013, then not issuing the rule and "disappearing" the rule from its 2014 agenda. Jesus Mary and Joseph did they think no one would notice? Do they think shareholders in America care about nothing besides money? Do they think shareholders don't care if their corporate boards waste their money trying to elect utter wastes of flesh like Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who came within five percentage points of unseating Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2012 with the help of $40 million in big corporate bucks? Public Citizen helps you tell the SEC to do its damn job already.

Action: "free" trade, the Farm Bill, and ENDA.

If you've missed previous opportunities to speak out against fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade agreement, the People's Email Network provides one more. Remember how the President used to have fast-track authority to submit trade agreements to Congress for a simple up-or-down vote, without debate or amendments? Congress let that authority lapse in 2007, but now they're talking about reviving it. But consider that, despite the wall of secrecy surrounding TPP negotiations, we have learned through leaks that the TPP would gut labor laws, gut environmental laws, gut privacy laws, and halt the free flow of information on the internet, and it would accomplish all of this mainly by putting all disputes before "investor-state tribunals" instead of, you know, the judges who know and interpret the laws of a given nation. So the TPP would befoul the earth, doom its people to low-wage McJobs, subvert our laws, and otherwise make our lives miserable so big corporations can steal more money from us -- and Congress wants to fast-track such a train wreck? Tell them a thousand times no.

Meanwhile, the Farm Bill still needs to be renewed! Thought we forgot about that, didn't you? You may recall that the Senate passed a mediocre-to-poor farm bill, but then the House passed a mass of hot-and-steaming which actually jacked up corporate agricultural subsidies (because who needs our government's help more than the big corporations?) and didn't even include food stamp funding! Now House and Senate conferees will meet to reconcile the two bills. Think anything good will come from that? And so we might as well view that as an opportunity to demand what we've deserved all along: a farm bill that slashes the undeserved welfare handouts big corporate farmers get, while still ensuring the working poor get the assistance they need to get by; a farm bill that promotes healthy foods and organic farms over high-fructose corn syrup and factory farms; and a farm bill that actually protects small farmers from their real enemies, the big corporations. Food and Water Watch helps you demand a just and kind American farm policy.

Meanwhile, the Senate cleared a procedural hurdle on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act this past Monday (I thought they were voting on the bill itself, and I apologize for saying so); the full Senate vote on ENDA could come any day now, so People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators and House Reps to support ENDA. ENDA has the votes to pass the Senate, but may get some poison pill amendments attached, so we'll be on the lookout for that. Of course, House Speaker Boehner has already said the House won't take up ENDA, because the bill would "increase frivolous litigation." Some folks call it progress that Mr. Boehner didn't resort to a bunch of anti-gay booga-booga, but now I have to remind folks that the occasional "frivolous lawsuit" is the price we pay for living in a society where we can redress grievances through the courts. When faced with such lawsuits, you don't curtail everyone's ability to sue; you appoint good judges who can slap stupidity down, while ensuring the legal system still helps everyone. That sounds like work, which must be why Republicans don't want to do it.

Action: bankster settlements and debt ceilings.

Over the weekend, we learned that J.P. Morgan Chase has tentatively agreed to pay $13 billion in fines to settle mortgage lending abuse cases with the Department of Justice -- and that settlement won't allow it to escape criminal prosecution over at least some of their alleged wrongdoings. So yay Justice Department! But note well that J.P. Morgan Chase might actually get to deduct this "loss" from their taxes, such that the taxpayers -- that's you and I, dear reader -- will be on the hook for $4.5 billion of that. I know, I know, $13 billion minus $4.5 billion is still $8.5 billion, but why should we tolerate J.P. Morgan Chase getting a $4.5 billion handout for doing wrong? Fortunately, we don't have to tolerate it: the Justice Department can forbid them from deducting the penalties from their taxes, as part of the settlement. So USPIRG helps you tell the Justice Department not to let J.P. Morgan Chase deduct its penalties from its income at tax time.

Meanwhile, if you're as sick of Republican hostage-taking as I am, you might be interested in telling Congress to abolish the debt ceiling, which CREDO helps you do. Congress used to raise the debt ceiling routinely, and didn't even separate raising the debt ceiling from routine appropriations bills until Newt Gingrich became Speaker in 1995. All through the 2000s, Republicans routinely raised the debt ceiling, despite passing many fiscally-irresponsible bills -- it was only in 2011, with a Democrat President and an ongoing economic Armageddon, that Republicans suddenly "found their voice." And what a shrill voice it's been, one that conflates "fiscal responsibility" only with spending cuts, and spending cuts borne almost entirely by working families, at that! Even our current "fiscal hawk" House actually increased big corporate agricultural subsidies, while wagging their fingers at the growing number of Americans who need food stamps. So I say they don't get a "debt ceiling" to play with.

Around the table: starring Pope Francis I! Also starring banksters and corrupt politicians.

Pope Francis I tells us he thinks the Catholic Church has become too "obsessed" with issues like abortion and gay marriage. I'd say it's not just the Catholic church, but what a breath of fresh air this guy is!

JP Morgan Chase will pay a $950 million fine to settle various civil lawsuits concerning its $6 billion-plus series of "bad bets" last year. That's less than $1 billion out of $6.5 billion in profits for the second quarter alone, but consider that regulators got an admission of wrongdoing out of JP Morgan Chase, and that some criminal investigations over the "London Whale" scandals (and others!) will still move forward. A mere five years after everyone else in America decided banksters were ruining the world, the Obama Administration may be starting to get serious about the matter.

The USDA rules that the contamination of a Washington state farmer's alfalfa with Monsanto Frankenfalfa -- which meant the farmer could not sell his alfalfa in countries that ban GMO foods -- is a "commercial issue" demanding a "marketplace" solution, and thus requiring no governmental intervention. Golly, looks like the "market" has decided that a farmer who gets his seed accidentally tainted with some corporate GMO alfalfa is completely screwed through no fault of his own. It's not like we have governments to prevent such absurdities from happening or anything.

Finally, Derek Pugh lists ten U.S. House Reps who voted to slash food stamps but who also receive farm subsidy money. And on that list, you may find the inimitable Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, whose farm received over $70,000 last year. You remember him? The one who said people who need food stamps "steal" from taxpayers? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he doesn't think of farm subsidies as "stealing from the taxpayer."

Around the table: home health workers get vital work protections, and other stories.

Good news, everyone: the Obama Administration's Labor Department issued a new rule extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. The new rule still exempts folks who provide occasional companionship to seniors, but not the vast majority of workers who bathe, dress, and toilet seniors (often several seniors per day). You probably advocated for this change over the last year-plus, so good job!

FAIR catches USA Today failing to check Republican assertions that too many people get food stamps or that the vicious food stamp bill passed Thursday would "restore() integrity to the program." And thus FAIR provides another lesson that "balance" -- or, more precisely, symmetry -- isn't the same thing as fairness. And would it have killed USA Today to note that our government lets more people get food stamps for good reasons?

Speaking of food stamps, intrepid constituent posts lengthy New Testament passage protesting Rep. Kevin Cramer's vote in favor of the Cantor food stamp bill -- and Rep. Cramer responds with a quotation from Paul's 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." Ahem: a lot of folks who get food stamps are already working, and if they're not making enough money to feed themselves, that's largely because corporations don't pay them enough. Also, you don't fight Jesus with Paul.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivers a scathing indictment of mandatory minimum laws and the War on Drugs -- suggests that drug-related incarceration has become the new Jim Crow, notes that while most drug dealers and offenders are white, most folks getting put in jail for all that are black, the whole nine yards. Good speech, but again: let's see if Mr. Paul's words lead to action.

Surprise, surprise -- Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the states so often praised as "low-tax" states, well, aren't, at least not for the working poor. Click through and you'll detect a theme: these states levy big sales and excise taxes, but have low (or nonexistent!) income taxes, and sales taxes always hit the poor harder, because, you know, the poor have to spend all their money just to get by.

Head of Amsterdam's health service says sugar should be just as tightly regulated as tobacco and alcohol, because it's "the most dangerous drug of the times." I'd be inclined to agree, and not just because I've had the damndest time cutting down on sugar, a much worse time than I've had cutting down on caffeine -- truth is, we're learning more and more about how sugar makes us fat. Would I insist on limiting the amount of sugar food processing corporations can add to food? I don't know. But I do know that we need to stop propping up high-fructose corn syrup producers with handouts.

Finally, Buzzfeed finds that "30 or 40" Tea Party House Republicans are forcing Speaker Boehner to the ideological right. Myself, I think that's what he wants us to think. But dig Rep. Schock's assertion at the end that "(i)f the majority of our members are bomb throwers, our leadership has no other choice but to acquiesce." Actually, Mr. Schock, leadership could, you know, lead.

Action: cruel food stamp cuts and logging in national forests.

As we first discussed a week ago, Rep. Cantor (E-VA)'s new bill, H.R. 3102, would cut food stamps by $40 billion over the next decade -- or twice as much as the House originally wanted to cut them back in June, and ten times as much as the Senate's Farm Bill would cut them. That $40 billion figure also represents approximately infinity times as much as I'd cut food stamps at a time like this, when real unemployment in this country is still just under 14% and corporations still won't hire folks despite their record-breaking profits! Imagine even considering such cuts, when almost one in four Americans report having some trouble putting food on the table! Then again, this is the Congress that actually increased farm subsidies to undeserving big corporations; it really is like they're telling us, the American people, to go screw ourselves. Well, the American people voted them into their jobs, and can always vote them out again, gerrymandered districts or not. The AFSCME helps you tell your Reps to reject Mr. Cantor's heartless bill.

Oh, but that's not the only wreckage Congress plans to leave: soon they'll vote on H.R. 1526, the so-called Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act (clearly the bill's authors forgot to put the word "healthily" at the beginning), which would set aside about a quarter of the land in our national forests as, ahem, "Reserve Revenue Areas" where loggers could go in, and dedicate some of that revenue toward rural schools. I can imagine the right-wing arguments behind this one -- you wouldn't want to be against rural schools, right? But of course it's entirely possible to oppose H.R. 1526 and still care about (and fund!) rural schools, because turning parts of our national forests into big logging areas isn't the only way to fund rural schools in areas where the logging industry has lagged -- which funding was the original purpose of the Secure Rural Schools Act that expired in 2012. You know that 91% tax bracket I keep going on about? Surely we could break off a piece of that for rural schools in depressed areas. So the Wilderness Society helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 1526 and thus keep our national forests safe and clean.

Action: food stamps, medical device warranties, and clean air and water.

Rep. Cantor (E-VA) has introduced the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act. Sounds like a good thing, doesn't it, all full of "reform" and "opportunity" and perhaps even "nutrition" and work"? Well, it's not: Mr. Cantor says the bill (currently not available for review on the Thomas or Govtrack websites) would find food stamp cuts, er, efficiencies by eliminating a) waivers for work requirements and b) "loopholes" in income and asset tests. Still sound good, all corruption-fighty and stuff? Problem is that most states don't operate the programs with which food stamp citizens would fulfill the "work requirements" -- and that, not "corruption," is why our government waives the requirements in the first place. And, as I've said before, "asset tests" tend to have a rosy view of how quickly one can turn "assets" into actual, usable cash. Make no mistake, this bill is cruel to the good and decent Americans who need it most -- this, after the House actually increased big corporate farm subsidies in its food-stamp-free version of the farm bill. So NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject these cruel food stamp cuts.

Meanwhile, you may recall that Congress tackled the medical device approval process in 2012 -- and you may also recall that, despite an unusually high number of news stories in the "liberal" media about folks whose medical devices failed on them and caused them further pain and hardship, Congress didn't dare require that medical devices actually be tested before they go to market. (And yes, 9 out of 10 Americans surveyed wanted pre-market testing, too. It's amazing how little Congress listens to its owners, the American people.) But Consumers Union has proposed another way forward: making medical device corporations warranty their products, so that if a hip or knee replacement fails (and they do fail!), at least it won't cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace it. Consumers Union directs its email tool (which you may find here) at the CEOs of the six largest medical implant manufacturers; I guess they're not directing it at Congress because they have no hope Congress will do its job, and I can sympathize with that view, even if I can't endorse it. Still, CEOs don't like bad publicity. And, as Consumers Union points out, even toasters have warranties.

Finally, S. 1392, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013, might actually cut pollution, increase energy efficiency, and reduce the effects of climate change -- but the Senate is, as we speak, mulling amendments that could give dirty energy corporations all sorts of welfare handouts and thus mitigate the bill's good works, so the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Senators to reject any amendments to S. 1392 that would help out corporate CEOs at the expense of the air we all breathe and the water we all drink. It's not hard to imagine what sort of pro-pollution amendments we might see, because we've seen a lot of them already. Remember the Murkowski bill from 2010 that would have prevented the EPA from regulating carbon emissions? Or the Rand Paul bill from 2011 that would have prevented the EPA from regulating cross-state air pollution? Or the Inhofe bill from 2012 that would have struck the EPA's then-new mercury and air toxics rules? These are the kinds of things to which our right-wingers could hold an energy efficiency bill for American buildings hostage. But we're not hostages. We're Americans.

House passes Farm Bill completely devoid of food stamp funding; they say they'll pass a separate food stamps bill later, perhaps at about the moment monkeys fly out of my butt. And they made big corporate agricultural subsidies permanent! It's like they're trying to do everything wrong. You know it's bad when Rod Frickin' Dreher quotes Ross Frickin' Douthat to tell you how monstrous the House Farm Bill is. (That The American Conservative printed it isn't a big surprise, though.)

TPM's Sahil Kapur says that Mr. McConnell may have lost the filibuster battle, but he's winning the war to enshrine a permanent minority obstructive force in the Senate. But that force could be broken by making Senators actually talk their way through filibusters -- when Senators have to make fools of themselves in public, and when good citizens will scratch their heads at our Senators yammering for hours on end about (for example) the "evils" of campaign finance disclosure, we'll see less obstruction, and the world will be a better place.

North Carolina state legislature passes an abomination of a tax "reform" "plan." Long story short: the rich get richer, the poor get shafted, because God and also because jobs. Anyone else want to forcibly eject North Carolina from our Union? We'll airlift the Moral Monday protestors out first. (Citizens for Tax Justice has more.)

Another day, another "liberal" media hack telling us that reinstating Glass-Steagall really isn't a good idea. Mr. Matthews actually tells us that the Warren-McCain bill's definition of "securities entity" is "pretty airtight," which is pretty much what you need to know, but n.b. that he (like others) says diversification is good for banks, as if we should give one rat's hind quarter what's good for banks at the expense of what's good for the American people. And he, like others, tells us that Alan Greenspan's Fed basically eviscerated Glass-Steagall, as if that's Glass-Steagall's fault and not Alan Greenspan's fault.

Mother Jones offers a primer on the massive Brazilian protests. Long story short: it ain't just about bus fare prices (though those can take up a quarter of a minimum-wage income in Brazil).

Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer explains why a massive minimum wage hike would be good for businesses. Of course he wants people to have money to buy stuff, but he also says this: "My investment portfolio includes Pacific Coast Feather Co., one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of bed pillows. Like many other manufacturers, pillow-makers are struggling because of weak demand. The problem comes down to this: My annual earnings equal about 1,000 times the U.S. median wage, but I don’t consume 1,000 times more pillows than the average American. Even the richest among us only need one or two to rest their heads at night." I've struggled to make this point so well. (Sadly, the comments mostly comprise a primer in how not to argue.)

Paul Ryan co-sponsors a Farm Bill amendment that would apply the dreaded "asset test" to food stamps -- meaning that if you have $2,000 in savings and/or a car worth $5,000, you can't get any. Silly Paul Ryan -- thinking that $2,000 can get you through even one catastrophe, or that a $5,000 car (the last one I bought for less than that cost me approximately one dollar in repairs for every six miles I drove) could be converted so easily to cash. If Mr. Ryan had ever worked somewhere besides politics or the family business, he might have a clue about these things.

Supreme Court rules that big corporations can force small businesses into binding arbitration agreements even if that prevents small businesses from redressing grievances in any meaningful way. Mr. Roberts thinks this is true even if said small businesses would otherwise sue big corporations for violating antitrust law. Antitrust law, good peoples! Next time your Republican uncle tells you Republicans (who gave us all five Supreme Court votes in the majority here) are "the party of small business," remind him of this case.

Speaking of antitrust law, the New Yorker explains "Why Monopolies Make Spying Easier." You probably already know the answer to that, but it's still worth reading about the internet of the '90s (what a time that was, eh?), Western Union's role in the 1876 Presidential election, and the halcyon days when America had thousands of phone companies. That's not a misprint.

HHS Inspector General finds some Medicare doctors as "very extreme in their prescribing" -- doctors who wrote an unusually large number of prescriptions, relied an awful lot on brand name drugs, or prescribed a high number of pain killers. We're not looking at more than three percent of Medicare doctors potentially doing wrong, but of course we ought to stamp out fraud wherever we find it. (And n.b. how many comments are intelligently critical of the article.)

Exodus International president shutters his pray-away-the-gay organization, apologizing for all the hurt he's caused. Normally I say great timing, guys! to such folk, but Mr. Chambers makes a fairly exhaustive list of sins, which isn't how you'd use an "apology" to keep lying to people.

Finally, the House's Farm Bill fails by almost 40 votes; partisan finger-pointing followed, which should only interest people who think this is all a big game. Mr. Obama deserves some credit, not only for saying he'd veto a bill like the House's that cut food stamps so deeply, but also for saying Congress might try to find savings in farm subsidies; these comprise two more acts of courage than I expected from him. But he did not say he'd veto the Senate Farm Bill, which cuts food stamps less than the House bill would have done and takes baby steps toward reining in subsidies, so let's not give him too much credit.

The House continues to mull the Farm Bill, and seems to have no interest in changing the status quo of agricultural subsidies -- namely, that the biggest agricultural corporations get the lion's share of them. Supporters of big agricultural subsidies love taking small farmers hostage when you oppose subsidies, but a mere four percent of American farmers get 75% of our subsidies while three out of five farmers get nothing. The good news? Reining in agricultural subsidies is now an actual bipartisan cause -- it wasn't a Democrat who proposed cutting off subsidies for corporations making over $250,000 in profits last year, but Rand Paul. So USPIRG helps you tell your House Rep to cut agricultural subsidies. And while we're discussing the Farm Bill, Moms Rising helps you tell your House Rep to stop cutting food stamps already. Yes, I've joined these two notions for a reason -- too many deficit hawks attack food stamps that help working families put food on the table in times of need, while leaving their precious corporate million-dollar handouts untouched. And then they expect respect! But they get none, as long as they toil for evil.

Meanwhile, the Regulatory Accountability Act is back; it's now H.R. 2122 and S. 1029, and the Center for Effective Government dishes the goods. This Regulatory Accountability Act would make a regulation's cost to corporations the primary concern of federal regulators -- versus their present primary concern, which is serving the interests of the American people. Nobody argues that "cost to businesses" shouldn't be a concern, but only a worshiper of mammon would make that the primary concern. And even if we only talk about money, what of the money regulations save? Clean air and clean water regulations, for example, save everyone money in health care costs and work time not lost due to illness. And this zombie RAA, like its forebears, piles on an extra layer of judicial review to every rulemaking notice -- plus it establishes a two-year expiration date for all rules, which only helps regulatory review agencies to sit on regulations its corporate influencers don't like. I think opposition to H.R. 2122/S. 1029 merits a phone call to your Reps and Senators. They'll never see it coming.

The Senate takes up the Farm Bill again this week, and we've already had a win and a loss: a Durbin-Coburn amendment began the hard work of limiting crop insurance subsidies for big corporations, but a Gillibrand amendment that would have restored over $4 billion in food stamps got shot down, with 28 Democrats helping the Republicans do the shooting. And they call that fiscal sanity! But Food and Water Watch helps you email your Senators about amendments to the Farm Bill. Their list is pretty comprehensive; it includes, among others, two Barbara Boxer (D-CA) amendments that would force labeling of genetically-modified food, a Begich (D-AK) amendment that would ban genetically-engineered salmon, a Gillibrand (D-NY) amendment that would tackle antibiotic abuse in factory farm animals, a slew of factory farm-spanking amendments authored by Democrats Tester and Rockefeller as well as Republicans Grassley and Enzi, and a Shaheen (D-NH) amendment limiting crop insurance payouts to $50,000. The big agricultural concerns will try to drown us out, but they're nothing compared to us. After all, we're people.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Pennsylvania state Senate is actually mulling legislation (SB 975) that would legalize payday loans extracting 300% annual interest. Sigh. They're calling SB 975 a "micro-loan" bill, but if it looks like dung and smells like dung you don't need to eat it because Pennsylvania politicians call it meatloaf. And back in 2002, the state legislature actually passed a tough payday lending law -- one that limited the size of loans to $500, limited fees to $75, and limited interest to 20% for the first $300 and a mere 7.5% for any money over $300. Pennsylvania law also doesn't allow borrowers to take out a second payday loan until they've paid off the first, which keeps them out of an endless cycle of debt brought on by a temporary cash crisis. So why break something that's been working well for over a decade? I'd hate to think it's because the big banksters want to get into the payday loan business, but we can't discount the possibility. Keystone Progress helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject SB 975, and keep our payday loan laws strong.

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.

Pennsylvania state regulators find that one in six water-pollution complaints to be the result of oil or gas drillers disrupting water supplies so badly they had to haul in clean water. The punchline? Given DEP's professed inability to catalogue or tabulate incidents (no, really, that's what they said in court!), the total tally of such disruptions could be rather higher than that.

Mr. Obama's budget proposes selling off the publicly-owned Tennessee Valley Authority utility -- and big-name Republicans in Congress are fighting the proposal. I can't discount the possibility that Mr. Obama proposes this absurdity ("I'm willing to give up one of FDR's signature accomplishments so we can get things done in Washington!") to shore up his cred with "independents" -- as if we mark independents by their willingness to respect dumb ideas.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reminds us that the gas tax doesn't drive gas prices in America. The federal gas tax has remained the same -- 18.4¢ per gallon -- for almost two decades, though somehow six in 10 Americans think it goes up every year. But they left "oil speculators" out of their list of reasons gas prices really go up.

Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) says food stamps represent an effort to "steal" from taxpayers. But guess who received almost $3.5 million in farming subsidies from 1999 to 2012? Guess whose $70,000 farming subsidy haul in 2012 was almost 44 times larger than the average Tennessee food stamp recipient's annual haul? Yep, that's right. This happens far too frequently these days; can't haters just be haters, and not hypocrites, too?

Virginia Attorney General (and 2013 gubernatorial nominee) Ken Cuccinelli decides to stop telling good folks requesting public records from his office that his office is exempt from state public records laws. "Because I realized what a schmuck I was being," he said. Nah, just kidding.