Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning the “war on terror” and housing policy.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject attempts to expand the “war on terror” and invest more and better in housing policy. 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.

Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Senators to reject S. 4136, which would allow our Treasury Secretary to suspend the tax-exempt status of “terrorist-supporting” organizations. So, to review: our government calls organizations “terrorist” (or “terrorist-supporting”) without even defining these terms and aims to injure them without due process, all of which is a way of saying they can’t win arguments and they don’t respect law and order. S. 4136 supposedly aims to go after “terrorist-supporting” Palestinian organizations, but you can see them using it to come after you, right? Yes, you can. So it’s time to communicate our will to our Senators.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in housing policy for-real for-real. Before President Reagan’s massive housing cuts in the ‘80s, we didn’t have a homelessness problem in America; now, with landlords extorting renters and banksters sucking up as much of the available housing supply as they can, we’ve got a homelessness problem like we’ve never had before. The housing policy increases we demand are hardly bank-breaking – our government routinely wastes more money on the F-35 fighter plane – and these hand-up-not-hand-out public investments will save lives and help good Americans live better lives. So let’s do it.

Action: concerning banksters.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to keep private equity banksters out of our hospitals and our homes. 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.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to get private equity banksters out of our hospitals. We’re far beyond getting slammed with surprise medical bills because some hedge fund told a health insurance corporation to move your doctors out of your network – now folks get crap care at the emergency room, thanks to the understaffing that makes banksters rich but makes us sick or dead. And we’re also far behind saying “everything in the world doesn’t have to make a profit” and well into “everything in the world doesn’t have to be someone’s winning gamble.” Seriously, gambling culture is a sickness, and banksters have it worst of all.

In a related note, More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, so that working families can buy homes again! Currently some 40 percent of single-family homes go directly to the hands of banksters, who charge absurdly-high rent on those who live in them – when they even rent them out, and don’t use them as tax shelters! I always say banksters ruin everything, and that’s because they do ruin everything. But with a President who’s Made Fighting Monopolies Great Again, we need to show our Congressfolk that they need to fight them, too.

Action: concerning corporate profits, hedge funds, and IRS funding.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass a windfall profits tax, pass the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, and reject any further IRS funding cuts. 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.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a windfall corporate profits tax. So that corporations don’t just jack up prices on us whenever they feel like! Because that’s what they’ve been doing! Yes, supply chain issues did help inflation go up in 2021, but when you see high inflation and record corporate profits at the same time, then you know that corporate greed is the main driver behind our recent high inflation. That’s why we call it greedflation! We tax a lot of the wrong things in America; taxing corporations for their greed would be one of the right things.

Demand Progress also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act. Because that would literally be a good thing to do! Hedge fund buy up properties like mad in America, which means a) working families can’t buy as many houses, because they can’t exactly outbid hedge funds and b) rents go up into the stratosphere, because that’s what makes them money! It’s like hedge funds ruin everything in America. Maybe we should outlaw them! They’re banksters, after all! But if we’re not going to outlaw them, we should at least make sure they don’t hurt us, and passing this bill would help us do that.

Finally, Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any further proposed cuts to IRS funding. It’s not just about IRS funding hikes collecting at least $160 million more from rich folks – it’s also about our IRS answering three million more phone calls in 2023 than in 2022, and it’s also about wait times for phone calls going down from 28 minutes on average to three. That’s what you get when you properly fund government – you get service. And by making this this their line in the sand, Republicans only seem even more objectively anti-service.

Action: concerning health care, drama, and housing.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to lower health care costs, stop their big-drama impeachments, and stop cutting funding for affordable housing. 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.

Penn PIRG helps you tell your Senators to pass legislation lowering health care costs and making them more transparent. Specifically, you’ll ask them to make hospitals disclose costs in dollars and cents – yeah, we have to actually tell them to do that – and mandate “site-neutral payments,” where a service costs the same whether it happened in a hospital or doctor’s office. How would folks argue against that? By saying the “free” market knows best and we must bend the knee to it? The “free” market sure doesn’t seem very free for good Americans, does it? One might even call it costly.

Daily Kos helps you tell House Republicans to stop their big-drama impeachments, while Civic Shout helps you tell House Republicans specifically to stop impeaching our DHS Secretary. Why are they impeaching Joe Biden? For drama, of course! And some of them have the gall to say they have to impeach him in order to find out why they’re impeaching him, which sure sounds like a fishing expedition, and don’t they have a government to fund past this month? They want to impeach Secretary Mayorkas over the border. I guess they find Brown folks really threatening!

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to increase, not cut, investment in housing assistance. These guys, I tell you – they don’t want any immigrants to come in unless their presence cuts wages for everyone, and they don’t want to help anyone stay out of the damn cold; it’s all pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps with them, as if landlords aren’t raising rents absurdly high because they can, as if homelessness ain’t up 12% over the last year, as if redlining still doesn’t keep Black and Brown folks from living where they want. But if we don’t speak out, the cruel and heartless will win. And the cruel and the heartless should never win.

Action: concerning government shutdown dramas.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass a clean government-funding bill without drama, bring back the Child Tax Credit expansion without using it to keep handing out corporate welfare, and reject any attempt to slash IRS funding. 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.

It’s government shutdown week again, so the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject cuts to programs good Americans actually need and fund our government without hysteria or drama. This is typical right-wing garbage: wail about TEH DEFICITZ!!!!! and then punch working families in the face while leaving cutting corporate welfare intact. But any one of us, at any time, might need food stamps or Head Start or, you know, affordable housing that doesn’t have lead paint in it – yes, this is what our Best and Brightest Leaders Ever have proposed to do! But cut tax breaks for corporations that outsource our jobs overseas? Republicans would never! And that’s why we fight them 24-7.

It gets worse! The National Women’s Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to bring back the Child Tax Credit expansion from 2021, the one that put $250 or $300 checks per child every month in working families’ bank accounts – but Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk not to extend corporate welfare handouts. Rumor has it Republicans might support the former to get the latter, but we don’t have to have both to get one done! There’s negotiation, and then there’s hostage-taking; holding CTC expansion to corporate welfare is hostage-taking, and the parties can talk about their numbers in our House and Senate all they want, but they’re supposed to negotiate with us, not each other. No law on Earth compels us to accept a side dish of shit with our steak.

Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any Republican attempt to slash IRS funding. Don’t believe any BS that added IRS funding “gives them the ability to come after little people,” because hello! Our IRS was so underfunded they could only go after us “little people,” because we can’t hire million-dollar lawyers to get us off the way rich folks and corporations can! Strange that Republicans have stopped saying even that; it’s like they looked at the 2022 election results and found out that it didn’t get them enough votes! Most of us Americans, once we clear out all the distractions Our Glorious Elites force down our throats, understand that taxes pay for things we all use and rich people and corporations need to pay a lot more in taxes than working families do.

Action: concerning monopolies, affordable housing, and saving our Postal Service.

Long story short: tell our FTC and DOJ to stop the proposed United Health/Amedisys merger, tell state and local officials to make it easier to repurpose empty office buildings as affordable housing, and tell your Congressfolk to allow our Postal Service to offer more services. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Demand Progress helps you tell our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) and Department of Justice (or DOJ) to block the proposed United Health/Amedisys merger. If we allow that merger to happen, we would allow a big corporation to take a competitor of the market and become even more powerful, which means the resulting behemoth would have more power to kill jobs, cut services, and raise health care prices which are already too damn high. United Health would absolutely do all of that, because they’re already doing all of that! United Health is just another corporate worshiper of mammon, and worshipers of mammon have had too much say about everything in America for far too long. We won’t be able to change this sad state of affairs, however, unless we speak out in numbers they can’t deny. And our laws require our federal agencies to listen to public comments, so let’s do that.

MoveOn helps you tell state and local officials to make it easier to repurpose office buildings into affordable housing. Too many working families still don’t have an affordable place to live, largely thanks to landlords (who are becoming ever more corporate!) raising rents higher than inflation because they can. On the other hand, we have too many office buildings that’ll never be occupied again now that the pandemic taught us that we can do so much of our work from home without hurting anyone. It’s almost like the solution presents itself! States and localities would have to change zoning and land-use laws in order to help convert office buildings into living spaces, but that’d be easier than waiting for new houses to magically go up. And they’d have to refit those office buildings to make them more livable! But that better not be too tough for a can-do society.

Finally, Save the Post Office helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal laws preventing our Postal Service from offering more services, like postal banking. The only reason your Congressperson would oppose such a thing? Oh, you know, “big government is always bad” tell that to Social Security, Medicare, and the interstate highway system or “banks should do all the banking in America” never mind that banks don’t go to a lot of rural and urban areas and local Post Offices can fill that gap or “the Post Office has never made money” though we really shouldn’t evaluate every single thing in the world on its money-making potential. Especially a Constitutionally-mandated service provided to the American people! Seriously, we really don’t want a world where everything is like the private sector, where greed can run free without very much accountability to the people.

Action: concerning spending cuts, Speaker drama, tax cuts, and judicial ethics.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to oppose cuts to critical programs and fund our government like they said they would, reject any House Speaker who voted against certifying the 2020 election, restore the Child Tax Credit expansion, and pass ethics rules for our Supreme Court. 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.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject cuts to programs that deliver services good Americans actually need – like rental assistance, safe housing, healthy food, and education – and pass government funding bills that adhere to the debt limit agreement made between House Republicans and President Biden. What’s that, you say? The House can’t do anything until it has a Speaker? If we tell them they need to do the things we put them there to do, in numbers they can’t deny, they’ll have no damn choice but to stop their drama and get back to work. You didn’t know Republicans were trying to cut those things in order to fund our government, did you? Think maybe there’s a reason for that? Those cuts all hurt people; that’s the reason.

In a related note, Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject anyone for Speaker of the House who voted against certifying the 2020 election – and who therefore gave aid and comfort to the seditionists trying to nullify that election on January 6. What’s that, you say? That only leaves Tom Emmer? Actually, it doesn’t (almost 300 House Reps, many of them Republicans, voted to do their duty that day), but even if it did, tough fucking shit, Republicans! This is what happens to you when you spend all your time hurting people, and if nobody cares about your pain, maybe you need wonder if that’s your fault! (So the cuss word filter seems to be totally off at this blog now. And I used to apologize for using cuss words! You can express yourself without doing that, I’d say. But the likes of Christopher Shays, Sherwood Boehlert, and Walter Jones are gone; all that’s left now are motherfuckers, and they don’t deserve civil treatment.)

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to restore the Child Tax Credit expansion in effect for most of 2021. You remember, the one that put $250 or $300 checks per child in working families’ bank accounts every month, so they could cope with the higher prices of, well, everything? Some morons say the expanded CTC made inflation worse, which, like, ha ha ha ha ha inflation was so much worse after the expansion expired I mean duh. But then I guess said morons can retort that folks saved up all that extra money and caused inflation to go up with their spending a year later but ha ha ha ha ha only two kinds of people say something that stupid: people who have no idea how fast we go through money, or people who think you have no idea how fast we go through money. And people like that definitely shouldn’t get more say about everything than us.

Finally, the National Women’s Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact a real code of ethics for our Supreme Court Justices. I hopefully don’t have to recount all of the ethics imbroglios we’ve discovered lately concerning Justices Alito and Thomas, dutifully reported by ProPublica and suggesting that folks who had business before our Court (or who had business with folks who had business before our Court) might have plied these two folks with fairly sizable gifts that they may have broken the law in failing to disclose. Don’t be hoodwinked by Justice Barrett’s recent proclamation that yes, our Supreme Court should have some kind of ethics guidelines in place, for we can’t discount the possibility she’s saying that so she can make sure any resulting guidelines are toothless. Better we tell our Congressfolk what we want, and then make them do it.

Action: concerning Social Security, corruption, and housing.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject all efforts to cut Social Security, tell Sen. Menendez to resign already, and tell your Congressfolk to increase housing funding. 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.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject all right-wing efforts to cut Social Security benefits or raise the retirement age. Because people already work long enough for executives who hate them! And when right-wingers say we have to go “behind closed doors” to cut Social Security benefits, they’re really saying I hate democracy. I mean, there was a reason Bush the Lesser couldn’t even get a Republican-dominated House and Senate to vote on privatizing Social Security in 2005 – and that was because the people wouldn’t stand for it. Using a government shutdown as leverage to cut our earned benefits isn’t really any better – it’s still hostage-taking, and it’s still fascist. But these drama hounds will do it if we don’t speak out in numbers they can’t mistake.

Win Without War helps you tell Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to resign his Senate seat. He’s entitled to try to prove his innocence in court, but no law compels us to put up with him as a U.S. Senator any longer, because no one has a “right” to a Senate seat. This is a hard thing to explain to some people, as we were all reminded during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. And the indictments keep coming for Sen. Menendez, the latest one for conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Egypt. But Mr. Menendez acts like his constituents are rallying around him, although at present he’s polling around five percent in the Democratic Senate primary for 2024. So it wouldn’t kill him to actually show some leadership and resign.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to increase, not cut, housing funding. Perhaps our Congressfolk don’t know this because they live such sheltered lives, but rent is out of control in America now, thanks in part to the corporation with the monopoly on software that "suggests" rental prices, which means that federal housing assistance has to keep going up just to keep pace. I guess that doesn’t matter to the Republicans who can’t even find a new House speaker, since they think any government funding that actually helps people is evil. But they matter a whole lot less than we do, and the more we act like it, the more we’ll get out of our government to begin with.

Around the table: featuring the usual corporate lies and right-wing drama.

Well, how about that, yet more polling telling us that Democratic legislative priorities – including paid family/medical leave, child care, and the expanded Child Tax Credit – are actually popular, garnering over 70% support in each case, and Newt Gingrich said back in 2008 that if 70% of the people want something, they should get it. So maybe people like Kyrsten Sinema and Josh Gottheimer ought to look at this data and ha ha ha ha ha I crack myself up – people like that care about nothing but sucking up to their big donors.

What is driving the huge increase of homelessness among seniors? I bet you just can’t guess – “a series of recessions, high housing costs and a shortage of affordable housing.” Everyone knows landlords are jacking up rent all over the country – why? Because software told them to, or just because they can – and we’d be foolish to think seniors wouldn’t be affected by that. But please, right-wingers, give us some more booga-booga about China when talking about any problem.

So how are the big tax-filing corporations trying to stop our IRS from offering Americans free tax filing? By claiming that free tax-filing would hurt Black folks! Of course you recognize that argument as hostage-taking – don’t let Americans file their taxes for free, or the Black guy gets it! – but you won’t be surprised to learn that a) Intuit has worked hard to plant this argument in Black and Brown newspapers or that b) it cites research that doesn’t support its argument, like, at all.

When you hear that some right-wingers think Speaker McCarthy “set up the Biden impeachment to fail,” remind yourself that this is no more a real thing than the news of Matt Gaetz’s “personal” “spat” with the Speaker. Right-wingers want you to think they’re divided just like they want you to think they’re stupid, so you’ll be off-guard. They also do it to create drama, of course, which is literally the only thing they’re good at anymore. Their drama-loving ways might not result in failure at the ballot box, but St. Peter may treat them differently at the Pearly Gates.

Nate Silver reminds us that the COVID death rate wasn’t any different in red states and blue states – until the vaccines came along, after which COVID death rates shot up in red states. We could reasonably ask whether death rates is the only statistic that shows this disparity, but the difference is nonetheless stark. And, ah, those right-wingers who got the vaccine themselves but said it’s a “personal choice” for everyone else? They may not be off the hook at the Pearly Gates, either. I know, being a good person is so hard – but so is anything worth doing.

Finally, just so happens that at least two Supreme Court Justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito – have invested in corporations that could benefit from a favorable ruling in Moore v. United States, which aims to topple the mandatory repatriation tax in the 2017 tax “reform” law. (They’re the only two Justices who own individual stocks; the others invest in mutual funds and the like.) Note well that even if Chief Justice Roberts rules against corporate power here, he’ll almost certainly be in the minority when he does, meaning he can “clear” his conscience and still make bank. Justice Alito does not seem encumbered by similar concerns.

Readings for September 25, 2023.

We’ve heard enough about how subsidized economic development too frequently turns into corporate welfare for the undeserving rich, but is anyone doing it well? Good Jobs First finds two-count-’em-two American cities who are – Wichita, Kansas, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. Wichita’s Industrial Revenue Bond program is as transparent as they come, meaning that folks can learn whether corporations keep their wage and job promises when they take taxpayer money, while Grand Rapids spends a mere $14,000 per job, versus over $100,000 per job in nearby Lansing, and attracts over $30 in private investment per subsidized dollar. Hey, it’s only two examples, but it’s a beginning. Warning: the Wichita deep take link doesn’t work at this writing.

Sonali Kohatkar explains how the long-standing cooperative arrangement between Kaiser Permanente and its unions is about to fall apart, with the unions voting to strike at the end of this month. Long story short: Kaiser Permanente now acts more like a big corporate health care provider than the Medicare-for-All provider it occasionally seemed to be like, and the COVID pandemic put a strain on all hospital workers, to the point where they’re most definitely not content with half-measures. Will Kaiser Permanente come to its senses in the next few days? Probably not. Will its many satisfied customers ever be so satisfied again if they don’t? Certainly not. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere, admittedly a lesson few corporations know anymore, though all of them used to know it, or they’d face oblivion.

ProPublica reports that Massachusetts has several thousand subsidized apartments vacant despite having a 180,000-plus waitlist for folks who need housing. I’m going to say the big problems are that the state doesn’t tax the rich enough to fund programs like these, and (in a surely related note) they don’t hire enough people to vet applicants and fix apartments. I’m not sure centralizing applications state-wide (versus applying locally) is the root of all problems like some say, but the state should either develop a system that reaps the benefits of both (centralization reduces favoritism, while local authorities know their potential tenants better) or concede that favoritism simply isn’t as bad a problem as, you know, people with cancer living out in the street. If I can identify these problems, I’m sure they can, and they can almost certainly solve them better than I can, too.

Action: concerning worker safety, tenants' rights, and drug prices.

Long story short: tell Texas legislators to repeal a worker-killing bill, tell our FHFA to protect tenants from greedy landlords, and tell big pharma CEOs to stop suing over Medicare drug price negotiation. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Care2 helps you tell the Texas state legislature to repeal its just-passed law forbidding localities from mandating water breaks for workers. In the hundred-degree-plus heat, no less! Some “conservatives” these are, telling the cities of Austin and Dallas they’re not allowed to give workers ten-minute water breaks! What happened to smaller communities doing better for their people? I can’t even say big corporations really wanted something like this – honestly, a ban on local ordinances allowing water breaks looks like nothing more than a way to swing their testicles in front of good Texans’ faces, which I guess is all Republicans are about now. What, they’re going to govern? That is to laugh! Unless we get in their grills, that is.

People’s Action helps you tell our Federal Housing Finance Agency (or FHFA) to insure that anyone who receives federal government-backed loan treats their tenants with dignity and respect. That would mean, among other things, less stupidly-high rents, less evicting people on a whim, less discriminating against tenants due to race or sex, and keeping homes and apartments safe to live in. I know some property-owning corporations (and some property-owning people!) will squeal HOWZ CANZ I MAKEZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! If they can’t make money without treating people right, they deserve poverty. And, at the risk of blasphemy, eternal hellfire. Hey, I’m no coddler.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell big pharma CEOs to drop their absurd lawsuit aiming to prevent Medicare from being able to negotiate some drug prices. Some drugs, and not until 2026! Since that’s all we could get out of that “maverick,” Kyrsten Sinema. Imagine thinking you’re “independent” because you suck up to big corporations even more! But I digress. We should tell big pharma CEOs to drop their stupid lawsuit because the Big Stick of Bad PR works! We know it works because it’s worked in the past! It works better on corporations than on politicians, I’ll grant, and I wish that weren’t so, but we’ll take what we can get – and then go get more of what we deserve.

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 "free" trade, housing policy, and fuel emissions.

Long story short: tell Indo-Pacific Trade Deal negotiators to put people and planet above profits, share your story about background checks and renting apartments with our CFPB, and tell our EPA and NHTSA to enact the most vigorous fuel emissions standards possible. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Trade Justice helps you tell Indo-Pacific Trade Deal negotiators to ensure that any trade deal prioritize people and our planet over profits. If you think of the notorious “Trans-Pacific Partnership” when you hear about a proposed Indo-Pacific Trade Deal, I wouldn’t blame you, and frankly, I’d prefer no “free” trade deal at all. But our leaders may finally be listening to us; after all, the USMCA trade deal is a dramatic improvement upon NAFTA – for which both former President Trump and House Democrats deserve credit – and I certainly don’t let the perfect murder the good. Still, we should remain on our guard, so that we don’t let the evil murder the good, either.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your story about background checks and renting apartments to our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB). Our CFPB wants comments about this matter, particularly because we all suspect that landlords use background checks to raise rents, and don’t let folks retort so what, landlords will use any excuse to raise your rent, because the whole point of this particular CFPB rulemaking process is to prevent landlords from using any excuse to raise your rent! And background checks tell us nothing about someone’s ability to pay rent.

Finally, Consumer Reports helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (or NHTSA) to enact the strongest fuel-emission standards possible. Don’t listen to the folks who say all regulations hurt small businesses, because how many small businesses manufacture cars? Exactly. Also, regulations capping fuel emissions result in cars that get more miles to the gallon, pollute less, and cost less to fill up. Who could possibly be against these things? Oh, right, auto manufacturing corporate executives, who don’t want to spend money to make money. They shouldn’t get all the say about this matter – but they will, if we don’t speak up.

Action: concerning bad media, the horrors of renting, and mercury pollution.

Long story short: tell big cable corporations to stiff Fox News in upcoming fee negotiations, tell our CFPB your horror story concerning background checks and renting (if you have one), and tell our EPA to enact the most vigorous anti-mercury rules possible. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

No Fox Fee helps you tell big cable corporations Charter, Cox, and Xfinity not to give in to Fox News’s insatiable desire for higher cable fees. As Angelo Carusone’s excellent analysis points out, our campaigns against Fox News advertisers largely haven’t worked, because Fox News extorts huge fees from cable corporations, fees second only to ESPN – and this also means that everybody pays a higher cable bill because of Fox News! However, Fox News has, ah, landed in trouble as of late, and so we have a golden opportunity to pressure these big cable corporations into standing their ground against Fox News’s bottomless hunger for higher cable fees. But only if we speak out.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you leave a comment with our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) telling your horror story with background checks in rental housing. They’re looking to crack down on abuse in this area – on folks who do a background check on you without telling you, making you pay for said background check, charging you a higher rent based on your background check, among other things. None of this is cool, especially considering your background check might have mistakes in it! And seriously, to keep making people pay for mistakes they've already paid for – is a little more money worth the lack of mercy? Money you can't take with you, but mercy you can take to the Pearly Gates with all your other good works.

Finally, the Natural Resources Defense Council helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to strengthen rules preventing various forms of air pollution, including mercury pollution. As often happens with the Biden EPA, the most recent proposed EPA standards for mercury do improve the standards we’ve got, but they could be better – and the result would not be a “war on coal” as right-wing drama hounds constantly say, but fewer heart attacks, less cancer, and less brain damage in our children. Another result might be less money for big polluting corporation CEOs to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes, but hey, this is America, where we all sacrifice for the common good, right?

Action: concerning pollution, the minimum wage, abortion rights, and defense spending.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the TAP American Energy Act, raise the minimum wage to at least $15/hour, pass the EACH Act, and redirect more defense spending toward human needs. 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.

The Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund helps you tell your Senators to reject the so-called TAP American Energy Act, which our House passed late last week, and reject any efforts to fast-track dirty energy projects. This bill would defund renewable energy projects, weaken clean air and clean water regulations, and ramp up drilling on public lands; imagine being the politician who actually champions these things! But some Congressfolk have also proposed gutting the National Environmental Policy Act, which gives communities a way to protect themselves from pollution, so we must fight that, too.

The Progressive Reform Network helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour – or more. An astounding 52 million workers make less than $15/hour presently, and they all deserve a raise. Don’t tolerate any foolishness from folks who claim that folks who make less “don’t work hard enough”; in my experience, the folks who claim that made a lot more money when they were working minimum wage jobs. No, really: $2/hour went a lot further in 1969 than $7.25/hour does now. Right-wingers love pretending inflation doesn’t exist – until they want to beat up on Joe Biden.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the EACH Act, which would overturn the notorious Hyde Amendment, which has kept taxpayer money from funding abortions for 40 years. Some folks no doubt think that’s a reasonable compromise, but it’s really not, and not just because Roe v. Wade isn’t there anymore (so there’s literally nothing to “compromise” with!). Folks who have money will always be able to get abortions regardless of whether or not they’re legal, but folks who depend on Medicaid won’t, and as taxpayers we should ensure that everyone can access the safe and effective health care they need. And remember: if you think abortion is immoral, don’t get one.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to spend less on weapons and more on human needs. No, you can’t justify spending literally any amount of money by saying “we have to defend ourselves.” We already spend more money on defense than the next nine nations on that list combined; we’re spending far too much money enriching defense corporation executives and not enough on the things that actually defend and strengthen a civilization – things like education, health care, and housing. If we can’t defend ourselves for less money, maybe we’re not the greatest nation on Earth. Maybe we’re just the most arrogant.

Action: concerning education, banksters, and pollution.

Long story short: tell the Ohio legislature and a Florida texbook corporation to reject anti-education initiatives, tell the Biden Administration to keep the Silicon Valley Bank’s affordable housing promises, and tell our EPA to enact a more vigorous soot standard. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

You may have read my post from earlier today about Ohio’s “controversial beliefs” bill, which would be SB 83, the so-called Higher Education Enhancement Act; I said the details were even worse than the news hook (that the bill would ban the teaching of “controversial beliefs” in state-funded colleges), so here they are: it would ban mandatory diversity training, it would force professors to post all their syllabi online, and would ban any teaching that might cause “psychological distress.” You can reach the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jerry Cirino, at (614) 644-7718, and you can reach Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman at (614) 466-7584 and Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens at (614) 466-1366. You can tell them all you’re sick of the “hurt feelings” of bigots meaning more to them than the facts of history.

And now we’re on to Florida, again! The National Campaign for Justice helps you tell textbook publishing corporation Studies Weekly to stop erasing racism from its history texts. Apparently they’ve removed all references to race from its Rosa Parks lesson! That’d be like removing all references to Bernie Parent from a history of the Flyers’ mid-’70s Stanley Cup runs! Except not as evil, of course, for in Florida they act like they’ll hurt young white kids’ feelings by teaching them that Rosa Parks fought institutional racism, by white people, against Black people. Of course, kids ain’t really that fragile; grown-ups are. And fragile grown-ups shouldn’t get all the say about everything.

Daily Kos helps you tell our government to keep the affordable housing-related promises the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank made – specifically, by making honoring those commitments a condition of any SVB-related sale. One does get tired of always hearing that investors need to be “made whole” – and the Fed sure has bent over backwards to ensure that those investors were made whole! Nobody ever says the workers need to be made whole, and banks shouldn’t get off the hook for the promises they’ve made to communities, either. If the Biden Administration wants to prove that government works for Americans, keeping SVB’s promise to invest in communities would be a good start.

Finally, the Climate Reality Project helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to improve its soot pollution standard. The science tells us that the 8 microgram-per-cubic-meter standard would be much better than our EPA’s proposed 10 micrograms standard – it would more than double the reduction in health care costs over the next decade, because fewer folks will get sick, soot pollution helping to cause, as it does, a lot of health issues like heart disease, diabetes, and asthma. The costs to industry represent around two percent of that number, and though big corporations will complain that they have to pay it, this is America, where everyone makes sacrifices for the common good. Right?

Action: concerning marijuana laws, "free" trade, and big tech monopolies.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reform pot laws, help good Americans when trade agreements take their jobs away, and pass some big tech anti-monopoly bills. 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.

Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to reform our marijuana laws. Specifically, you’d ask your Congressfolk to expunge criminal records of folks convicted of pot offenses; since more than two out of three Americans think pot should be legal now, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher that past pot convictions could keep good Americans from voting or getting jobs or apartments. And if anyone tries to tell you well, sometimes the consequences of your actions don’t seem fair – an argument that’s not odious in and of itself – then kindly refer them back to the part of this paragraph that says “more than two out of three Americans think pot should be legal now.”

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize the Trade Adjustment Assistance (or TAA) program. TAA has helped good Americans survive the havoc wreaked by “free” trade deals for 40 years, but Congress let it expire earlier this year, and though we’ve largely stopped making “free” trade deals and yes Donald Trump deserves some credit for that, we’ve still got plenty of “free” trade deals on the books, and they’re still outsourcing our jobs. Not for nothing, but you’ll also be advocating that your Congressfolk do not hold TAA hostage to “free” trade “fast-tracking” authority. “Fast-tracking” trade deals, without debate or amendment, is a straight-up fascist move. Yeah, I said it.

Finally, More Perfect Union helps you tell your Senators to demand a vote on a pair of House-passed big tech monopoly bills, H.R. 3816/S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, and H.R. 5017/S. 2710, the Open App Markets Act. Both bills – passed in an actual bipartisan manner for once! – would loosen big tech corporations’ strangleholds over product searches and app stores, but our Senate hasn’t moved on them; you’d hate to think it’s because of all the big tech money Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s gotten. And you know a Kevin McCarthy-ish House won’t do jack about this, either, so the time for action, as usual, is now.

Action: concerning housing, privacy, and workers' rights.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to increase affordable housing funding and pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act, and tell your Senators to pass the PRO Act. 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.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to increase funding for affordable housing in America. Why? Because rents are skyrocketing, because a lot of good Americans face eviction, because too many rich folks block too many working families from buying a good home – and because we were a much, much stronger country when we took affordable housing seriously. Don’t brook any rubbish about how folks just need to bootstrap, because when rents shoot up higher than inflation, ain’t no bootstrapping happening. Don’t brook any dumb jokes about “the projects,” either. Racism looks intractable, but to just throw up your hands about it? That’d be un-American.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5524/S. 2957, the Protecting Data at the Border Act. Typically our government has to get a warrant to see your cellphone, but officials have been searching everyone’s cellphones at the border willy-nilly, our Constitution be damned. The Protecting Data at the Border Act would require our law enforcement to get warrants before searching cellphones at the border, and before you protest but they’re not citizens, please do two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) consider how easily our government could abuse this loophole to harass American citizens at the border, if they, you know, happen to be the “wrong color.”

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842/S. 420, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. Your right-wing Senators will likely lecture you about giving workers a “choice” to organize, but they ignore the bosses who don’t give them that choice! Bosses make workers’ lives miserable, demanding more for less pay, and then force workers to attend anti-union propaganda meetings and threaten those who organize by telling them they’ll fire them or outsource their job or close their plant. If all that’s OK with your Senator, he’s a monster. If it’s not OK with you, then you’re a decent person, and you ought to give your Senators what-for about it.

Action: concerning taxes, health care, and Social Security.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to tax billionaire wealth, extend expanded health care assistance, and expand Social Security benefits. 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.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to start taxing billionaire wealth already. Billionaires spent over a billion dollars on election campaigns in 2020, which is nearly 40 times as much as they spent in 2010, right after the notorious Citizens United v. FEC decision essentially repealed McCain-Feingold; soon we’ll have five trillionaire oligarchs buying enough Congressfolk to run the entire country according to their own whims, and the rest of us won’t be able to afford housing, health care, or education. You’d like to be able to afford these things, and to make a better life for yourself and your descendants, right?

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies and close the Medicaid coverage gap now. In reverse order: the Medicaid coverage gap is the gap between Medicaid eligibility and ACA subsidy eligibility, and the expanded ACA subsidies have helped 13 million Americans better afford their health care; the only reason not to keep these things going is cruelty. No, not “inflation,” because these things keep inflation down, as anyone who thinks about it for a second knows. Seriously, how does helping people spend less money “cause inflation”? I can hardly call economics a science anymore.

Finally, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Social Security benefits by $200/month, and pay for it by taxing income over $400,000 into the system for the first time. Right-wingers will guffaw: you want to increase benefits? Social Security is going broke ha ha snort! But if I had a dollar for all the deadlines for being “broke” Social Security has blown through in my lifetime, I’d have more than a few dollars, and again, taxing rich people will put more money into the system. Right-wingers will again guffaw at the “folly” of taxing rich folks more, but taxing rich folks more built the greatest middle class in world history. And some of these right-wingers come from that middle class!

Action: concerning good House bills, good housing policy, and bad Justice Department behavior.

Happy Monday, good folks! Now call your Senators and ask them to pass the following bills: H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; and H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act, and H.J.Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. Don't worry about giving your Senators' staffers too much to write down, because if they truly aimed to do the people's will, they'd have debated and passed these bills already. After all, it's been over a year since all Senate clocks got set to "Mitch McConnell Time" -- i.e., "never" -- and we're on Do the Right Thing Time, which is now, and our Senators should set their clocks like we do.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has introduced H.R. 5072, called A Just Society: A Place to Prosper Act. The Place to Prosper Act would institute several necessary housing reforms: it would establish a national rent control program prohibiting landlords from jacking up rent higher than inflation (unless inflation is under three percent, in which case they could increase rent by three percent); it would amend the Fair Housing Act by preventing discrimination on the basis of income; it would fund removal of lead paint from public housing; and it would keep landlords who routinely abuse tenants out of the running for various forms of public funding (including public mortgages and public housing insurance). If you cringe at the words "rent control," just ask yourself: should landlords be allowed to squeeze tenants with virtual impunity? Particularly in areas of the country (cough California New York City cough) where housing prices are absurdly high to begin with? The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect Americans from predatory landlords by passing the Place to Prosper Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Justice Department's Inspector General to investigate the apparently pro-Presidential machinations of Attorney General Barr, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. I mean, we ought to use Inspectors General while we still can -- our President has already tried to get rid of all the Inspectors General in our government, and if he gets re-elected, he'll no doubt feel emboldened to try again. And our Inspectors General have long done good, independent work on our behalf, and the DOJ's IG would have quite a hornet's nest to probe where Mr. Barr is concerned -- he intervened to demand a lower sentence for Presidential crony Roger Stone, which action prompted four DOJ prosecutors to resign; he tried blocking an investigation into a money laundering case apparently at the behest of our President; and he used outside lawyers to review various DOJ actions our President opposed, including the indictment of then-NSA chief Michael Flynn and the non-indictment of former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. Ain't none of this a good look for the President who constantly yells about "law and order," and we deserve real law and order in America.