Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: email privacy, "religious liberty," journalistic disclosure, voting trends, frivolous lawsuits, and failed dolls.

Good news: the House of Representatives has unanimously approved H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act. We've fought for this bill's passage, so congratulate yourselves -- and then get ready to get this bill past the Senate. Last year, Sens. Leahy (D-VT) and Lee (R-UT) introduced S. 356, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act, which is virtually identical to H.R. 699; this bill, however, only has 28 Senate sponsors (vs. the 315 House sponsors H.R. 699 had). The good news? 10 of these 28 sponsors are Republicans, so maybe the bill has a shot -- if we act. As soon as I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Not all the news is good, though: Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has signed the notorious counseling pro-discrimination bill, which would allow counselors to avoid giving help to gay clients if that would conflict with their "sincerely-held principles" (a House amendment changed the wording from "sincerely-held religious beliefs"). Possibly Mr. Haslam looked at the overwhelming votes in favor of the bill in House and Senate and decided to throw the far-right a bone. Still, I'm long past tired of people whining that they have to serve people they don't "agree" with in order to do the jobs they've already agreed to do. It's like they just don't want to be grown-ups.

Ho hum, Vox's Matthew Yglesias writes a very, very positive piece on Goldman Sachs's entry into commercial banking -- without disclosing that Goldman Sachs funds a Vox podcast. And Vox has performed similar services for Comcast in the past. I hope Mr. Yglesias doesn't respond that Goldman Sachs only funded the podcast, not the particular piece he wrote -- but I also fear he'll tell us that that corporate sponsorship really doesn't mean all that much, because isolated anecdotes hifalutin jibber-jabber.

Hispanic voting rights advocate predicts that nearly two million more Hispanics will vote in 2016 than in 2012. And most of them will vote against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, who've both been swordfighting over who'd build the bigger wall, but I'm not seeing a figure actually describing the "skyrocketing" rise in registration among Hispanics, and of course Voter ID laws may well suppress this turnout, just as its supporters intended it to do.

Paul Kiel, writing at ProPublica, describes how Nebraska became a paradise for collection agencies to sue people over relatively small medical bills. Why? Because it only costs $45 to file a lawsuit in Nebraska, which makes suing over $200 medical bills a relatively cost-effective option for collectors -- and makes working families more susceptible to having their checks garnished and their savings accounts emptied out, when higher filing fees would, at least, force creditor and debtor to work together so debtor can stay afloat. Have any doubts that's the reason? Then note how, when a legislator proposed raising that cost by one dollar -- one dollar! -- he met with a storm of resistance from state collectors. Some folks will do anything to protect their frivolous lawsuits.

Finally, remember that "Hello Barbie" doll that could have compromised children's privacy with its artificial intelligence and wi-fi connection? Well, it's hardly selling, and reviews from folks who've bought it aren't very good, with almost a filibuster-proof majority of Amazon reviewers giving the thing one star out of five. One! Not even two! Yet Mattel hardly seems chastened -- a spokeshack said it was "representative of Mattel’s relentless goal to push boundaries and question limits" -- and the business press helpfully points to its capacity to "create buzz." Hey, whatever gets you through the night.

Action: GMO labeling, email privacy, and the "liberal" media.

Word on the street is that the Senate will vote this morning on S. 2609, the Senate bill that would establish yet another voluntary-labeling regimen for food containing genetically-modified organisms and would prevent states from enforcing their own mandatory labeling regimens. Plus, this "voluntary" labeling system wouldn't use, you know, words, like you'd expect a label to do, but QR codes, which you may or may not have the technology to read when you're in the store. Democrat weaklings probably think QR codes are a clever way to trick more big ag corporations voluntarily label their GMOs. This bill made the Senate Legislative Calendar a little over two weeks ago without so much as a committee vote, and I couldn't even find this bill on Congress.gov until lately; why, it's almost as if they've got something to hide. Well, their secret is out, and Consumers Union helps you call your Senators and tell them to reject "voluntary" GMO-labeling regimens that will continue to keep consumers in the dark.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte to allow a vote on H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, then Save the Fourth still helps you do that. H.R. 699 now has an astounding 312 sponsors, including lead sponsor Kevin Yoder, Republican of Kansas's Third District and 194 other Republicans; that not only fulfills Dennis Hastert's stupid "majority of the majority" rule for bill consideration, but represents a veto-proof majority of the House, were President Obama to be so stupid to veto the bill. Moreover, the bill would actually do good things -- it would require our government to get a warrant to read any of our emails, even the ones left on ISP servers; currently our government can take possession of any email left on a server for over 180 days, under the notion that it's been "abandoned," a notion that made sense 30 years ago but makes none now. Naturally, a popular, bipartisan bill that does good works on behalf of government's owners, the American people, can't even get a vote. So let's remind them whom they serve.

Finally, Presente helps you tell CBS to fire its CEO, Les Moonves, after he said that Donald Trump's clown show "may not be good for America," but is very good for CBS's coffers. I do not understand why the "liberal" media seems only to care about money. Do they not care about protestors getting the crap kicked out of them by Trump blueshirts while Mr. Trump eggs them on? Do they not care about all the insults and bullying and whining coming from someone who aims to lead and represent the greatest country on Earth? Do they not understand that the Trump campaign would be long over by now if they, the so-called "liberal" media, didn't cover everything his immature antics like they were Very Serious Events to Be Discussed in a Very Serious Manner? I worry, of course, that the answers to these three questions, respectively, are "no," "no," and "yes, and they don't care," but I guess I really would prefer to believe that our "liberal" media elites are so drunk on post-modern irony that they really do not see their own decadence. So let's help them see.

UPDATE. S. 2609 failed on a cloture vote this morning; 49 Senators voted against cloture, including seven Republicans -- though one of them was Mitch McConnell, and his vote against cloture allows him (as Majority Leader) to bring the bill up again. So the anti-GMO labeling bill is dead -- for now. But those of you who mobilized on very short notice made a difference today.

Around the table: the "war on terror" and other fictions.

National Security Agency plans to share data with other law enforcement agencies (including the FBI) without applying any privacy screens. Which, ah, isn't the first time our government has shared data ostensibly gathered to fight the "war on terror. Now your local police could arrest you using that information, and our government will tell them how to lie to a judge about how they got the information. Warrants, privacy, law and order -- they're all so quaint. Terrorists could never cause as much damage to our freedoms as our government does in the name of "protecting" them.

Jared Bernstein, writing at the New York Times, not only says "The Era of Free Trade Might Be Over" but adds "That’s a Good Thing." It's still weak tea if you've been watching Messrs. Sanders and Trump excoriate "free" trade deals, or, indeed, if you've been attending anything the American people have been saying for years on end, and there is always the chance that this tack is just another feint from Our Glorious Elites. There is also the chance that this tack is the only way Our Glorious Elites can talk themselves out of doing any more "free" trade deals, though. As usual, accept the latter, but prepare for the former.

The FCC has proposed new privacy rules to which internet service providers must adhere, and ProPublica summarizes them for you. On the plus side: you'll have to opt in to have your private data communicated to third parties, which is exactly the way it should be, and while the FCC rules would still only protect metadata, they would at least expand the kinds of metadata they protect. On the minus side, the FCC would allow big telecoms to continue charging extra for high-speed internet service that actually protects your privacy from said big telecoms. When it's time to write public comments, I'll be telling them that they're not really rights if you have to pay more to exercise them.

Associated Press reporters find it difficult to get daily schedules and emails from state legislators under public-records laws. Turns out a lot of states simply exempt legislators from their own public records laws (as Congress did with the Freedom of Information Act), but of course they didn't say that -- they called secrecy "essential" to the legislative process (!) and said they couldn't compromise the privacy of the big donors and bill mills that help them oppose the people's will. Because of the chilling effect, you understand. The people deserve better than their excuses. And there should be a chilling effect on corruption!

Finally, Indiana's state legislature has just passed some hardcore abortion restrictions in America -- ones that would, among other things, force women to pay for the "burial or cremation of the fetus." The phrase "reproductive Jim Crow laws" isn't hysteria -- it effectively denies abortions to some folks and not to others, and rights aren't income-conditional, or else they'd just be privileges. Yes, abortion is a right, until the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, or Congress and the state legislatures amend the Constitution to ban abortion, an effort the pro-life intelligensia has never spent any considerable energy on for some reason.

Action: "bathroom bills," Congressional redistricting, and email privacy.

You've no doubt heard that the South Dakota state legislature has passed HB 1008, which would mandate that students use only the restrooms, locker rooms, and showers aligning with their "biological sex" at birth. HB 1008 "allows" schools to make accommodations for transgender students, like giving them their own bathrooms -- which will result in transgendered students being ostracized and beaten up. It's hard for me to figure out what proponents of "bathroom bills" really want anymore. They can't want to protect children, since no one has ever advanced an example of a child injured or threatened by the presence of a transgender person in their bathroom. And they can't want to protect themselves from discomfort, either, since they would know better to codify such selfishness in law. No, this must merely be more politically-correct swordfighting between politicians desperate to prove they're more "conservative" than others. The ACLU helps you tell South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard to veto HB 1008.

Meanwhile, closer to home, SB 484, and Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to support SB 484, and thus support real redistricting reform. SB 484 would amend the Pennsylvania state constitution to create a redistricting commission composed of five members, four of whom would be the Majority and Minority leaders of the state House and Senate, and the fifth a civilian appointed by the other four. Currently the state legislature composes new districts every 10 years, which means that the party in power in the legislature composes Congressional districts that favor that party, so SB 484 would certainly represent an improvement. And Iowa redraws its Congressional districts every 10 years with a similarly-composed five-member commission (albeit in a system where the legislature retains final say), and they consistently draw competitive districts, whose members, as a result, face more popular pressure to do well by their constituents. So let's have more of that.

Finally, H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, would actually accomplish something we've been demanding for a long time: it would prevent our government from looking at "abandoned" emails "left" on servers, or, indeed, any emails without a warrant. And H.R. 699 has an astounding 310 House sponsors! The House only has 435 Representatives to begin with, and 194 of the bill's sponsors are Republicans, so House leadership can't even invoke that stupid majority-of-the-majority rule in refusing to pass the bill. Yet House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte hasn't moved the bill, nor has House Speaker Paul Ryan pressured him to do so. Mr. Ryan will no doubt say (as he has regarding the Voting Rights Advancement Act) that he doesn't want to step on Committee Chairs' toes, but when the people demand something, and their Representatives actually prepare to do it, doesn't it behoove the House Speaker to show some leadership? Demand Progress helps you tell House leadership to put H.R. 699 to a vote.

Around the table: Donald Trump snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, and other stories.

Because we're all about solutions here, Micah Lee at The Intercept shows you how to create an iPhone passcode that could "defeat the FBI's backdoor strategy." Long story short: set up a random, 11-digit passcode (versus the four-digit passcode you likely use now), and because the FBI would have to input passcodes directly into your iPhone, and because doing that takes time, and because adding extra digits to your passcode vastly increases the number of possible passcodes, it could take the FBI, literally, over 100 years to crack your iPhone. Just don't use, like, your birthdate in your passcode, because then it won't take a hundred years.

It gets worse for Democratic House Rep./U.S. Senate candidate Alan Grayson: not only did Mr. Grayson operate a hedge fund, which would seem largely at odds with his populist image, but until recently his children had holdings in an Eritrean gold mining corporation using essentially slave labor -- thus casting doubt upon his fervent denunciations of "free" trade deals with repressive countries on the House floor. Mr. Grayson's declarations that he simply didn't know seem, well, unlikely -- as always, the question isn't how many details a man can be expected to know, but whether he should know if his business arrangements depend on evil, particularly if they take place in a country that hasn't held elections in almost a quarter-century.

Ho hum, Ted Cruz's tax "reform" plan would shift yet more of the tax burden off rich folks and onto working families. Mr. Cruz's plan would get rid of payroll taxes (and thus not pay for Social Security and Medicare, I would think) and corporate taxes, and would institute a flat 10 percent income tax and a confusing 16 percent "business flat tax," all of which would, in another non-surprise, add at least $800 billion to the national debt every year. But I suppose Mr. Cruz will keep going on about "reduc(ing) record-keeping and reporting requirements," like that's the thing we're all going to talk about when we're all sitting around the fire with nothing to eat.

Georgia passes one of them there anti-gay "religious freedom" bills, and a Decatur-based telecom corporation announces it'll leave the state as a result. I wish 373K the best of luck in their move, particularly when religious bigots start calling them "job-killers" -- or worse, I suppose, given that 373K's co-founder and CFO are gay.

A right-wing group that used to demand that George W. Bush's judicial appointees get an up-or-down vote, now wants the Senate to block any Obama Supreme Court nominee, saying that "(t)he Supreme Court has a vacancy and your vote in November is your only voice." Again: that's utter rubbish -- any American citizen has a voice, anytime, about anything; any American can communicate their will to their Reps and Senators anytime, about anything. I'm getting tired of having to repeat this, but I'll keep doing it as long as I have to, because duty is duty.

Finally, Donald Trump complains about the treatment he gets at Republican Presidential debates. He's probably right that the GOP "stacks" the audience to applaud at the dumb things the other candidates say (versus the dumb things he says!), but complaining about that when you've just won big in two primaries makes you sound like a whiner, not a winner. It sure is a good thing his eventual Democratic opponent will make that a central message in the general election! I kid, of course -- calling out the other side's whining is too uncivil for them.

Around the table: ranging from insurance-corporate dystopian to a more agrarian utopianism, even in the heart of the city.

Donald Trump wins Republican Presidential primary in South Carolina. Jeb Bush finishes fourth, and then suspends his campaign, suggesting that you can count a bastard out if he gets outshined by an even bigger bastard. One quibble: the suggestion, in the above link and elsewhere, that it's somehow surprising that Mr. Trump's fight with the Pope didn't hurt him with religious voters in South Carolina. I mean, to a lot of these voters, Catholics aren't even Christians, and they get into (or long to get into!) swordfights over Who's More Christian just like Donald Trump did all the time.

Ho hum, President Obama's budget would let corporations "bring back" overseas profits and pay taxes on those profits at far lower rates than they otherwise would. I'd say, "well, it's a good thing Republicans won't even consider Mr. Obama's budget," but it'd be just like Congress to lift out all the bad parts of that budget proposal and pass them. Indeed, Congress has tried to pass this particular dung nugget already. Remember when they called this sort of thing a tax "amnesty," before the nativists made amnesty a bad word. Then it was a tax "holiday," and now it's a "transition tax." Next year they'll call it something even more absurd, like "stimulus" or "job creation."

Abby Jackson, writing in Business Insider, discusses a study provocatively entitled "Are Charter Schools the New Subprime Loans?" Turns out it's only a metaphor -- financial bubbles result from the multiple stakeholders (and their conflicting interests) loans now have, whereas charter school failures often result from the multiple authorizers (and their conflicting interests) they have -- but it's an apt metaphor nonetheless, and suggests solutions in both realms are possible, if our politicians only have the will to do the people's will.

Robert Naiman reminds us that Hillary Clinton, as President Obama's first Secretary of State, "enabled" (his word! My efforts are working!) the coup that ousted President Zelaya from office in 2009. How? By suggesting that, well, maybe a coup didn't really take place (because that's so hard to figure out!) and that the State Department needed to study the matter -- when her own emails reveal that she already knew a coup had taken place. It's hard out there for a pimp. And it's even harder out there for good Hondurans, thanks to Mrs. Clinton.

If you're in the mood for some serious dystopianism, Morgane Remy's got it, as she posits a world where insurance corporations can use all the data the internet collects on you as leverage to "control your lifestyle." No sense arguing that inductive reasoning doesn't have absolute predictive power, because that's not how insurance corporations think -- and I presume if you opt out of the "Internet of Things," insurance corporations will just charge you a lot more for not giving them enough data to work with. Maybe we need single-payer for all kinds of insurance -- it won't make the Big Brother problem go away, but it'll make it more controllable by the people.

Finally, if you're not in a dystopian mood, Jasleena Grewal, writing at Yes! magazine, writes about how a community vegetable garden in the "Banglatown" section of East London can "create a space where people could re-form social networks." A real social network, we are reminded, occurs among folks who live close to each other and run into each other regularly without planning to, and needs a place where folks feel comfortable enough to get to know each other, and the garden not only provides a place for folks of differing backgrounds to speak the "universal language" of growing vegetables, but also allows them to eventually take their plots away from the space and create a new space where they can teach the lessons they've learned to others. I wish the Nomadic Community Garden, and all its offspring, the best of luck.

Around the table: from the non-ISIS ISIS plot to the worker-owned co-op rising from the ashes of a failed corporation.

FAIR catches the "liberal" media howling about an ISIS nuke plot that doesn't demonstrate ISIS involvement in said plot. Details! They're so hard! But this is how they'll create another generation of rage-filled citizens the next Republican President will harvest. And like the last generation, they'll forget all about terrorism the moment their Personal Lord and Savior takes a giant dump all over the economy, and then rebrand themselves as teabaggers for the next center-right Democratic President.

California enacts the strongest digital privacy law in America -- by virtue of requiring that law enforcement get a warrant before compelling any business to turn over any electronic data. Alberto Gonzales would find that concept "quaint," and Barack Obama would oppose it because of "the grave threats we face," but this is America, so their kind don't get all the say around here.

Ho hum, North Carolina's reactionary state legislature imposes auto and appliance repair taxes in order to pay for another round of tax cuts for the rich. How hard would it be for Democrats to run TV ads showing some state legislator helping some guy in a monocle literally take money out of working people's pockets? I mean, that took me ten seconds to work out. But Democrats are either too "polite" to do it or too "smart" to think of it. Please understand that by "polite" and "smart," I mean weak.

Double ho hum, Notre Dame study finds a strong correlation between corporations that pay their executives in stock options and corporations with a lot of product safety issues. But don't they say stock options make an executive more invested in his corporation's success? Not when "success" no longer includes making good products -- or safe ones. Naturally, CEOs who've run their corporation for a while have fewer product safety issues. Why, it's almost like sticking around and building something lasting is, like, good for the world or something.

Right Wing Watch catches Mike Huckabee endorsing a boycott of Frito Lay over its gay-friendliness -- and remembers that Mr. Huckabee called a similar boycott of Chick-Fil-A over its gay-unfriendliness "economic terrorism." Don't people know they're not talking into the void? But even worse is the guy who suggested the boycott, who thinks we're now all supposed to "participate" in gay weddings (I bet Mr. Lane doesn't even get invited to them!) and also says that in the year 2000 we'll all be put in jail if we don't "cheer" gay weddings. Evidence of these assertions? I kid, of course. Let's never speak of this David Lane dodo again.

Finally, we check in with worker-owned co-op New Era Windows, and find them doing quite well. You remember when Republic Windows and Doors closed down in 2008 and the workers occupied the factory to keep it open and keep their jobs? (Even some Libertarians approved!) Well, Republic sold the factory to a California corporation Serious Materials, which then tried to shut the factory down again -- so the workers occupied it, again. And then Serious Materials buckled under popular pressure (which you may have helped apply, if you were reading this blog in 2011) and sold the factory to the workers, and now they're back on their feet and thinking they might be a model for other corporations. Times could get tough, and greed could see an opening to creep back in, but they're showing it can be done, so good for them.

Around the table: Donald Trump, John Boehner, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Vladimir Putin.

Jeffrey St. Clair, writing at Counterpunch, reminds us that Donald Trump's "noxious nativism" is "a grandiose hypocrisy": "(h)is father Fred boasted that his empire of suburban shacks was constructed by laborers 'right off the boat,' untainted by union membership. Donald followed the same reasoning at his own construction sites and in the low-wage jobs at his casinos and hotels." He also reminds us of the target audience for Mr. Trump's nativism: the same "Reagan Democrats" who have been pushed to the economic edge by thirty-plus years of Reaganism.

You may have heard that a certain Speaker of the House whose name rhymes with "John Boehner" has resigned. The headline here, "John Boehner May Have Been the Only Thing Standing Between America and Madness," is a little overheated. More likely, the next House Speaker will be a little to Mr. Boehner's right, and the "liberal" media will undeservedly label him a "leader" and a "moderate," as they did for Mr. Boehner, and thus move the "center" of American politics even further right. And we could fix the Constitutional "flaw" of having different parties control different branches of government by making independent commissions, not state legislators, redraw House districts. If Democrats would do something for America while they're in power, that would also help matters.

Jeb Bush tells a questioner at a South Carolina town hall that Republicans can win Black votes not with a "message" of "division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff," but an "uplifting" message "that says you can achieve earned success." Question: if your taxes pay for "stuff," how is it "free"? I wonder how long it'll be before Mr. Bush starts making town hall attendees sign loyalty oaths.

Marco Rubio proposes giving corporations a tax credit for giving their employees paid sick and family leave. Because if there's anything corporations just don't have enough of, it's tax breaks. Plus it still caps employee benefits at $4,000 annually, whereas the boon to corporations (a 25% tax credit?) will obviously be much larger. Is there any policy initiative Mr. Rubio can't drag through the mud?

Daily Kos diarist Puddytat says Scott Walker pulled the plug on his campaign because he listened too much to national Republican advisers and because it was hemorrhaging money. The lunchbags with Walker campaign logos on them is truly priceless irony. I must admit that I had forgotten that Wisconsin doesn't term-limit Governors, so Mr. Walker could run for a third term in 2018. But the damage he's done to Wisconsin should be so obvious to everyone by then that he'll again be "called" to quit.

Finally, the Russian government fails in its plan to crack the Tor network (upon which users can surf the net anonymously), as the corporation contracted to accomplish the deed has now committed to spend twice the money the Russian government gave them just to get out of the deal. Well, like your parents always said, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself -- and not contract it out to private corporations, particularly when FOUR MILLYUNZ RUBLEZ!!!!! doesn't go as far as it used to. Seriously, though, yay privacy!

Around the table: meet the biggest jerk in America today! And other stories.

What has two thumbs and is the world's biggest jerk? This guy, who used to run a hedge fund and who just bought the rights to the 62-year-old drug Daraprim, which treats toxoplasmosis, and who promptly raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. Hedge fund managers sure do a lot for civilization! Mr. Shkreli, who has already left quite the trail of slime in his 32 years, says he'll use the profits from the inflated price to develop better drugs for toxoplasmosis, though at least one scientist says there's no need for that and, hey, maybe there are better ways to raise money toward that end than gouging AIDS patients?

Nurses at a Swedish retirement home go from an 8-hour workday to a 6-hour workday -- and their work gets better, they like their jobs more, and turnover goes down. The employer had to hire more people (and I wonder if their employers classify them as "full-time" anymore, though that might be a bigger deal in America), but, hey, aren't we trying to figure out how to create jobs? Walter Einekel's entire last paragraph is worth reading, and savoring.

Surprise, surprise, a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary apparently violated the economic sanctions in Iran while Republican Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was HP CEO. And Ms. Fiorina wants you to think she just didn't know it was going on! But "vote for me because I can competently run a business" can't magically transform into "well, how do you expect me to know everything that goes on in a big business?" (And yes, I noticed that Ms. Fiorina didn't actually say she didn't know about it, but that the SEC concluded she didn't know about it. There's a difference, and I'm sure Chris Wallace noticed it, too.)

I hate to bring this guy up, but Ben Carson has been doing well enough in Republican Presidential polling that I have to deal with him. Mr. Carson says Muslims shouldn't be President, even calling the idea of a Muslim President "unconstitutional." Like those who thought John F. Kennedy would literally call the Pope before making big decisions, Mr. Carson conflates private faith with public service. I wonder why he can't tell the difference. (Stay until the next-to-last paragraph, though, and you'll see how Rand Paul can make anything worse. When is his dad going to take him out to the woodshed?)

Chris Christie, after being reminded that the Secret Service name he chose during that 26-hour-long debate last week is also the name of a Care Bear, declares that he'll be President if people find him "huggable." I think Mr. Christie actually performed a bit of sorcery there (not that newspaper headlines will tell you that), but still, he's got to be kicking himself for not running in 2012. He was the only Republican who could have beaten Barack Obama, but now he watches Donald Trump swing his attitude in our faces and says, "that was supposed to be me, except I can govern!"

Finally, Lebanon, New Hampshire citizens fight Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) efforts to kill their Tor relay, and win. Tor, as you may know, allows citizens to surf the internet anonymously, which helps (among other folks) survivors of domestic violence abuse and journalists who report honestly on oppressive governments. But no, getting good intelligence and then getting warrants isn't good enough for DHS -- they need to be able to interfere with everyone's privacy. (Personal to those who say don't complain about privacy in a public place ha ha snort: you're perfectly fine with people looking over your shoulder? And can everyone afford broadband at home?)

Around the table: terrorism, encryption, morality, religious "freedom," and the Iran nuke deal.

A study finds that most "lone wolf" terrorists "broadcast their plans to commit violence" before they do it. Why? Because they're drama hounds! They are, in fact, the worst kind of drama hounds. And some right-winger, somewhere, will angrily dismiss the findings because the study included white terrorists.

Justice Department officials express frustration that tech corporations like Apple "appear to be winning" "the public relations fight" over encryption. Interesting analysis! But, ah, are the American people winning this battle? How quickly we get disappeared from these decisions! Particularly when, you know, encryption appears to benefit the people, and strike a blow against wanton government spying.

Robert Reich surveys the growth in corporate power and the growing gap between rich and poor and calls it "a crisis in public morality" -- you know, versus the "private morality" of the bedroom that seems to obsess Republicans more. But that dichotomy kind of gets in the way: morality is morality, and "telling the truth" and "keeping your promises" remain more compelling moral values than "hate the gays" and "keep women from getting birth control," let alone "let corporations do whatever they want because freedom." But at the end, Mr. Reich himself cuts the dichotomy with the what-happens-in-boardrooms-not-bedrooms meme, and that meme is weapons-grade PR.

Rasmussen finds that some 66% of Americans think Kim Davis should, you know, follow the law regardless of her "religious convictions." The first rule of Rasmussen applies: if Rasmussen finds the number at 66%, then the real number is probably even higher. But I wonder what number pollsters would have found fifty years ago, before the advent of the whining religious bigot getting massive TV time. (Personal to Rasmussen, though: "gay marriage spat"? Only one side's spatting over this, last I looked.)

Speaking of Kim Davis, Judge Bunning has let her out of jail -- but her lawyer says she'll very likely continue to block gay couples from getting marriage licenses. Which nobody could have predicted! Seriously, you can't just say I FOLLOWZ TEH GODZ LAWZ!!!!! and then say "well, unless it means I have to go back to jail." Can you? I guess we'll find out.

Finally, an AIPAC official says he really, really wishes AIPAC hadn't signed on to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech in front of Congress -- you remember, the speech he arranged without telling President Obama -- because it alienated potentially sympathetic Democrats and turned the Iran nuke deal into a "partisan" issue. Sadly, you can't always count on the stupidity of your enemies, nor can you count on their hysterics always meeting with the contempt they deserve.

Around the table: internet privacy, worker rights, food safety, voting rights, and one audacious hombré from Maine.

New U.N. privacy chief says we need a "Geneva convention" for internet privacy. He's right, though of course we need protection from corporations (which buy and sell our info) as well as governments (which gobble it up to use against you later). Key quotation: "at least Winston (Smith, of George Orwell’s novel 1984) was able to go out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined."

National Labor Relations Board rules that its previous definition of "joint employer" wasn't broad enough, raising the possibility that temporary employees and employees of subcontractors and franchises can redress grievances with the parent corporations, rather than the "middle men." Naturally Congressional Republicans have already announced they'll attack this decision through the appropriations process -- because they somehow find it unconscionable to give working families more tools to fight an unnecessarily obscure employer-employee relationship that redistributes worker wealth upward to corporate CEOs.

Consumer Reports finds bacteria resistant to at least two antibiotics in nearly one out of every five samples of ground beef. Sustainably-raised beef fares substantially better as far as antibiotic-resistant bacteria are concerned (though not necessarily other bacteria), but you'll still find it there, likely because you found it somewhere else first. Could we, maybe, you know, stop pumping healthy animals full of antibiotics now? Factory farms aren't so old, after all, that we need to get all Russell Kirk about protecting traditions and such.

You remember the Wichita State scientist who has found that the Republican share of votes seems to increase as precincts get larger in Kansas (and elsewhere)? Well, she's sued the state of Kansas for the hard copies of votes in order to check her data, and Kansas's Secretary of State has asked a judge to block that request. Mr. Kobach is, you might have guessed, a Republican, one who won re-election in 2014 though polls had him on the skids for a moment. But until the data convinces me otherwise, I'll continue to assume Mr. Kobach won mainly because his Democratic opponent didn't offer enough of an alternative.

Finally, Maine Governor Paul LePage says he might challenge Independent Senator Angus King in 2018. Gov. LePage is perhaps hoping (and perhaps in vain) for another three-way election, since those are the only kinds of elections he can win. But while Mr. LePage's gubernatorial term ends in 2018, circumstances might well free him to campaign extensively before then.

Action: the Iran nuke deal, and student privacy.

The Senate will take up the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran when they get back from their month of fundraising their working vacations with their constituents, and the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell them to support the framework of the Iran nuke deal. It's going to be an ugly, ugly battle, full of misinformation and irrelevant information, the latter including ZOMG THEY STILL CHANTZ TEH DEATHZ TO TEH AMERICAZ IN TEH STREETZ!!!!! It doesn't matter how Iran feels about this deal. Hell, it doesn't matter how anyone feels about this deal. It only matters whether this deal will keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and this deal will do that, with its rigorous inspection schedule and the threat of reinstituting economic sanctions against Iran if they violate the agreement. And people who think that only war with Iran will keep us safe are the same people who said Iran should unilaterally give us everything we want as a precondition to negotiations, and people like that don't understand what negotiation is.

Meanwhile, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood joins with the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy to help you tell Congress to enact vigorous legislation to protect kids' privacy in our schools. The vast majority of schools now use cloud services for things like classroom instruction, bus route planning, and testing, which means that a lot of personal student data -- names and addresses, Social Security numbers, test scores, et cetera -- sits out there where hackers and corporations can exploit it. The solutions the CCFC and the PCSP propose? Notifying parents before disclosing (or re-disclosing) any personal student info to third parties outside the school district; complete bans on selling student information and advertising within instructional materials; stronger encryption standards for student info; and vigorous enforcement, including specified punishments for violations. That all sounds common-sensical to me, but Congressional efforts to protect student privacy have been weaker, likely to "protect" big corporate donors. But they ain't the boss of us.

Action: GMO labeling, cybersecurity, and treating children as adults in the criminal justice system.

H.R. 1599, the so-called Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, passed out of the House late last week by a 270-150 margin -- short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, but should we count on a veto from President Obama, whose USDA has been an even greater friend to GMOs than Mr. Bush's was? H.R. 1599 would prevent states from labeling GMOs in food, would make FDA efforts to label GMO food more difficult, and would even allow corporations to slap the word "natural" on products with GMOs in them, and no I'm not going all semiotic on the meaning of the word "natural." Now the bill goes to the Senate, which may be anxious to pass it, to "help small farmers" or some rubbish. If small farmers rely on GMO seeds, that's because the big corporations make them, and any Senator who really cares about small farmers would do something about that state of affairs. In the meantime, both USPIRG and Food and Water Watch help you tell your Senators to reject efforts to curtail GMO labeling.

Meanwhile, S. 754, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (or CISA), would help corporations share huge slabs of customer data with our government. Warrant, no warrant, who cares? Warrants are so 18th century already! Of course, if our government really wanted to stop cyberattacks, it would make corporations embrace encryption, stronger passwords, and multifactor authentication, and the notion that "corporations will embrace these reforms in time" won't comfort you if a hacker steals your credit card number before then. But our government cries wolf about jihad and ISIS and demands new powers, when vacuuming up all that data won't help protect us from terrorists -- and CISA would also allow the FBI and NSA to use the data for purposes other than counterterrorism and grant immunity against lawsuits to the corporations that hand over the data. So the Bill of Rights Defense Committee helps you tell your Senators to preserve privacy, reject government spying, and vote against CISA.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Justice Department to investigate the widespread practice of trying children as adults and putting them into adult prisons, then CREDO still helps you do that. It is tempting, I suppose, to throw up your hands and say the kids just get crazier every year, until you realize that folks have always been saying that for, like, forever, and until you remember that we are, all of us, defenders of civilization, and we have a solemn duty to pass that civilization on to our descendants. I would hate to think our descendants will think it's just normal to put kids on trial as adults at a time in their lives when they're simply unable to think like adults, or put them in adult jails where they'll be abused by bigger, stronger prisoners -- all of which will make their rehabilitation a lot more difficult. Of course, future generations might also think it's normal to leave kids in front of some computer screen all day while the parents go work one of their three jobs. But preventing that is also our job as defenders of civilization.

Around the table: from government spying to liberal politicians failing to learn the real lessons of their defeat.

Micah Lee at The Intercept reminds us that our government is collecting all our internet data, and that this is "many orders of magnitude more invasive" than collecting phone metadata. And though you and I know what "collected" means, the NSA doesn't consider this data "collected" until an analyst queries it. At least their justifications for their illegal, immoral actions are getting worse.

Lost in the controversy over Jeb Bush's statement that "people have to work longer hours" to get the economy rolling again is this reminder from Alan Pyke at Think Progress: that American workers are already substantially more productive than we were even a dozen years ago, but still can't get ahead, because our wage gains over that time have been basically flat. Of course, Jeb Bush wouldn't get that, because he's always been a boss, and never been a worker.

FactCheck.org catches Republican Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz alleging that the Hispanic unemployment rate has "gone up" under President Obama. It's gone from 10.1% at Mr. Obama's inauguration to 6.6% now, so he's simply wrong. Maybe "simply wrong" can be his campaign slogan. Or "I meant it's gone up at various times during the Obama years," a virtually useless statement when describing broad trends.

Denmark found itself able to produce 140% of its energy needs solely through wind power on Thursday; it was an especially windy day, but Denmark's turbines weren't even operating at full capacity, so that's still quite an achievement. It sure is a good thing Our Glorious Elites here in America know that wind power just can't work, because dirty Birkenstock-wearing hippies ha ha ha.

Finally, across the Atlantic, the interim leader of Great Britain's Labour Party tells her caucus they shouldn't vote against the Tories' plan to cut tax credits for working families. "We cannot simply say to the public you were wrong at the election," she says -- but, sadly, she does not add, "we can say to the public that we were wrong for failing to give you a populist alternative to the Tories, an alternative that would fight for your struggle to make ends meet," though that would be true.

Around the table: when is supporting a mandate not really supporting a mandate? When you're Scott Walker, of course. And other stories.

Scott Klinger at the Center for Effective Government tells us what we might expect from the budgeting hulabaloo. Surprise, surprise, Congress will cut as many good programs that help good Americans as they can get away with. Also, "(e)xpect the funding cuts to be concentrated toward the end of the 10-year budget window, so the public won’t feel much pain before the Congressional and Presidential election in 2016," and also, I might add, so that future Congresses can kick that can even further down the road.

And speaking of actual budget boondoggles Republicans won't dare touch, Good Jobs First, using its noteworthy Subsidy Tracker database, tells us that a solid two-thirds of federally-awarded "business grants and special tax credits" go to large corporations. Keep that in mind when your Republican Congressidiot tells you that we need to extend those tax credits for TEH SMALL BIZNIZZEZ!!!!! Of course Good Jobs First tabulated a little over $4 billion in handouts annually, and before you say that's not much in the context of a $4 trillion budget, remember that social spending really does deliver quite the bang for your buck, so we could spend $4 billion a lot differently and do a lot more good.

Nathan Newman informs us that "Big Data Is an Economic Justice Issue, Not Just a Privacy Problem." There's no "long story short" possible here, but you won't be surprised to learn that concentrating so much personal data into so few corporate hands tends to reinforce the income-redistribution-upward phenomenon we too often observe these days. And Mr. Newman's threefold policy prescription -- mandating more consent from customers, considering data control in antitrust actions, and banning big data-driven price discrimination -- is quite apt; if I get an action alert, you'll get an action alert.

Gov. Scott Walker (E-WI) supports the Renewable Fuel Standard, but tells Tea Partiers that doesn't really reflect a reversal of his "real" position, since he doesn't want new renewable energy mandates and wants to phase old ones out. Figures that the only Big Gummint initiative he supports is one that'll win him friends among big corn types in Iowa. Of course changing your position isn't the same thing as telling people you'll do one thing and then doing another -- the latter of which is far worse and is also Scott Walker's stock-in-trade -- but if his Republican primary opponents manage to take him down by confusing the two, I won't complain.

Finally, the Obama Administration announces that the Affordable Care Act has helped over 16 million Americans to get health insurance. That number sounds, if anything, a little low, and certainly it'd be higher if certain states weren't playing around with the Medicaid expansion. The bad news? If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, nearly 10 million of them will lose their coverage -- all because someone couldn't be bothered to be a little more specific about whether federally-run exchanges can offer subsidies in a 2,000 page-plus bill. OK, and also because some people are just assholes, but you don't hand an asshole a gun, ever.

Around the table: with generous helpings of your standard right-wing hypocrisy.

"Right-to-Work and Abortion Reversals Follow Pattern for Scott Walker," says Brendan Fischer at PR Watch. That "pattern," incidentally, is a pattern of saying he won't do things like "right to work" and a 20-week abortion ban and then doing them -- once he's elected, that is. And I knew he didn't run his 2010 campaign on taking bargaining rights away from public unions, but I didn't know that he actually said he would do the opposite if governor. The Democrat who's willing to run ten thousand ads saying "you can't trust Scott Walker" might have a chance against him in the 2016 Presidential race. Hillary Clinton might have a little pot-kettle-black problem with that, but such problems have never stopped right-wingers, so why should it stop her?

Katherine McFate tells us "What We Lose with a Privatized Postal Service." Money, for one thing. Community, for another -- "(i)n many small towns," small towns not adequately served by the big private delivery corporations I must add, "the local post office continues to be a community hub, a place to meet neighbors and get news." And will your harried FedEx or UPS driver check on the elderly? Not likely. Ms. McFate reminds us that the USPS could be doing even more for communities, like offering basic banking services.

Mike Konczal writes that "liberal nihilism" keeps us from fighting for real reforms that would help working families make more money. I'm not sure the nihilists he's describing -- the ones that overstate the effect of technology on jobs and wages, for example -- are liberals. I'm not even sure they're nihilists; these days, nihilist behavior is pretty much all on the right. I will agree, though, that refusing to discuss the roles of the Federal Reserve, the "shareholder revolution," and government policy in stagnant wages does ensure that nothing of consequence gets done.

The Consumerist warns us that hackers can hijack your Facebook account -- which means a lot more these days, as so many folks never log out of Facebook, and other websites have access to that Facebook login almost as a matter of course. The good news: the hack requires that you click on a malicious link for it to work -- and we're much better at avoiding clicking suspicious links in hysterical emails than we used to be. Still, be careful out there.

Ho hum, Andrews University, a Christian college in Michigan, has forbade students from holding a bake sale to benefit homeless gay youth because doing so would "conflict" with its "mission and practices." That's right, a Christian college just told its students basically not to act like Christ. Note well that the college Dean wouldn't come out and say AULL4One can't raise money for at-risk gay youth because AULL4One isn't trying to turn them straight, but he didn't exactly deny it, either.

Finally, a retired Army Major General calls the 47 Republicans' letter to the government of Iran, one clearly meant to undermine nuclear negotiations involving the U.S. and Iran, "mutinous." He also said the 47 Senator's ringleader, Sen. Tom Cotton, "should know better" as an Army veteran to avoid such a "gross breach of discipline," but that Mr. Cotton "simply does not care." Next up on Fox News: is Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton the right kind of soldier?

Around the table: today with almost *half* good news!

Uh oh: the Guardian catches the Chicago police operating, essentially, a "black site" detainment center for suspected criminals in an abandoned warehouse. During their stay, suspects get shackled, beaten, and kept away from their lawyers. Oh, and "suspects" include protestors. And, needless to say, the police don't keep very accurate records of their doings in the Homan Square warehouse. So quite a few police in Chicago seem pretty anxious about their small packages being discovered.

Clive Thompson at Mother Jones touts the homemade "mesh" network as a data-snooping alternative to mainstream internet service. Mesh networks can be safer, more democratic, and cheaper than big telecom services, plus they'll go into rural and impoverished areas where the big telecoms won't. But when Scott Walker becomes President, I bet the big telecoms tell him to declare all mesh networks "terrorist networks" and to arrest anyone who uses one. After all, the people who run big corporations literally live in terror of not being obscenely rich.

Daily Kos diarist Alex Forgue explains why a flat tax, despite its apparent simplicity, is a bad idea. Long story short: if you tax someone making $25,000 and someone making $1,000,000 annually at a flat 10% rate, "it is hard to survive on $22,500 compared to $900,000." And "(e)ven with a progressive tax structure, the wealthy can still survive and have money left over to invest." I'd add that the problem with the flat tax isn't unequal incomes so much as equal living expenses -- a wealthy person making 20 times what I make doesn't need to consume 20 times the calories, use 20 times the electricity, or put 20 times the gas in his car.

JetBlue, once famous for not charging baggage fees, now plans to do so -- at the advice of investors, no less! Wonder if they ever ask their customers anything? Apparently not, because at least one JetBlue exec apparently feels folks will just get used to it, a reason which could pretty much justify any of the thousand cuts customers feel at the airline counter. Maybe, one day, they'll also get "used to" being tossed out of the plane mid-air because the plane's overbooked.

Michael Shermer at Reason notes the 1980s finding that "Real IQ" scores have gone up three points a decade over the last century and supposes we're becoming "morally smarter," since most of the IQ point gains have occurred in abstract reasoning categories. I don't know that the raft of research Mr. Shermer describes convinces me, but I am already inclined to accept that "the moral arc of the universe may be bending in the right direction," even if individual humiliations along that arc are legion. Believing in that arc isn't a call to complacency, and I don't think that arc bends in a Libertarian direction, as Mr. Shermer does ("economic liberalism" isn't the same as liberalism, after all), but I remain an optimist in these matters -- as long as we act.

Finally, Sarah Jaffe at The Nation tells the story of how a group of 250-plus cable technicians in Brooklyn finally got their employer, Cablevision, to recognize them as a collective bargaining unit. Key lessons: winning the first vote to unionize is often a beginning, not an end, of struggle; a vigorous NLRB can be of tremendous help to a fight for a better life; and "one day longer, one day stronger" is a hell of a slogan to deploy to potentially dispirited workers. I wish them the best in their future together. I also wish I had half their strength and courage.

Around the table: from the "share the scraps" economy to the "anti-braking" movement.

Robert Reich calls the "sharing" economy -- that economy represented by corporations such as Uber and Taskrabbit -- the "share the scraps" economy. His argument is really solid, but I also think the meme will work pretty well -- it might work less well with young people who think they're invincible (it wasn't that long ago that I was one of them!), but then even they should be impressed when writing a product description (which is actually a lot more difficult than it looks!) only gets them $3. Best line: "But the biggest economic challenge we face isn’t using people more efficiently. It’s allocating work and the gains from work more decently." "Decently" is a very well-chosen word here.

The New York Times finds observers from both parties putting the blame for Louisiana's current budget Armageddon squarely on the shoulders of outgoing Governor (and likely Presidential candidate) Bobby Jindal. Theme: as Mr. Jindal's national profile has risen, his state's financial situation has fallen, almost like that's the whole idea. And remember that tax plan Mr. Jindal says would have addressed the corporate welfare problem in his state? That was the same tax plan he had to withdraw because it would have cut income and corporate taxes and hiked sales taxes, which is a great way of being mean to working families. One hopes the Times would be as tough with Scott Walker and the mess he's made in Wisconsin, but that mess may not be apparent until after he's President.

Citizens for Tax Justice describes just how bad an idea it is to use lottery systems to raise revenues. It isn't just that "a statistically impossible number of convenience store owners and clerks have hit lottery jackpots," at least partly by lying to you about how much money you just won -- it's also (and I can't believe I didn't think of this before) that lotteries get their money almost entirely from working families. After all, the rich don't play the lottery -- well, except insofar as they've turned our entire economy into a lottery rigged for their own benefit. The even worse news, undescribed by CTJ? That states are starting to turn to casinos to raise revenue, and from guess whom? Their most vulnerable citizens.

The Straight Dope provides a pretty good rundown on issues surrounding privacy and mobile phone/tablet apps. Key points: user agreements tend to make it impossible to use the app without consenting to all kinds of privacy invasion, but the real problem is that those apps might leave your data around unencrypted -- and also, the third-party doctrine means your government can get your private data without your consent once a third party (i.e., any phone service provider) to get it, which is another matter which you've likely already given consent without really knowing it. Fixing this will be a big job, but so's anything worth doing.

Yes! magazine reminds us that Alaska residents get a piece of that state's oil revenues every year. This has been true through Democratic- and Republican-run governments. Payments to citizens aren't big enough to live high on the hog from (they range from $1,000 to $3,000), but every citizen gets the same amount, which is very, you know, democratic of them. Of course I'd like the money to come from somewhere other than oil extraction, but if there must be oil, I'd prefer it belong to the people who live where the oil comes from, and not some politician's crony corporation.

Finally, on a lighter note, Robert Moore, Jr., writes a terrific piece of satire called "I'm an Anti-Braker." You should recognize the inspiration for this satire fairly quickly, so I won't spoil it for you.

Around the table: what happens to Muslims when they condemn terrorism! And other stories.

The New York Times's Charles Blow details "How Expensive It Is to Be Poor." Long story short: a lot of folks work but don't make enough money to get out of poverty; poor folks spend a bigger slice of their income in taxes, transportation, and fines for minor infractions of the law than rich folks do; and poor folks have far less access to banks than others and thus pay a lot of money in check-cashing fees and money order fees, and it's a lot tougher to get credit if you can't get a bank to serve you. If you find you can't relate, you might do better considering yourself blessed than finding fault with others who can relate.

Remember the "zombie cookies" we talked about last week, the ones you can't really delete from your computer, tablet, or smartphone? Well, after ProPublica reported on that last week, the corporation that makes those cookies has said it'll stop using them by early next month. Did they finally figure out how stupid they sounded when they said "clearing cookies is not a reliable way for a user to express their desire not to receive tailored advertising"? Sometimes it's actually a blessing when corporate executives and/or their PR hacks are so rock stupid.

Katherine McFate at the Center for Effective Government tells us that Rep. Van Hollen's bill resuscitating the long-dead "Robin Hood" tax on Wall Street transactions doesn't go far enough -- that it would spend the $100 billion or so it would take in every year on tax cuts for working folks, rather than on infrastructure repair. Of course I'd rather assess a much higher Robin Hood tax (1%, versus Van Hollen's 0.1%), and while I don't generally like to earmark revenue hikes to particular initiatives, I think we ought to be spending more on infrastructure improvements anyway -- for at least as long as interest rates are going to be close to zero.

The incomparable Duncan Black suggests that coverage of the recent huge drop in oil prices hasn't happened very much from an oil consumer's point of view. Personally I think the media coverage has been too apocalyptic, and likely because a Democrat's President (if oil prices had dropped under George W. Bush, the "liberal" media would be doing the helicopter dance in front of us as we speak), but it hadn't even occurred to me that the human interest aspect had been strangely missing from media coverage.

Finally, a Muslim group holds a conference entitled "Stand With the Prophet Against Terror and Hate," and find themselves confronted by some of the, er, classiest counter-protestors ever. But there's a silver lining: the next time any of these morons holding up signs saying "you are not Americans" complain that TEH MUZLIMZ NEVER SPEAK OUT AGAINSTZ TEH TERRORISTZ!!!!!, we get to remind them of how bratty they acted when Muslims did just that.

Around the table: community broadband, a basic income, bankster handouts, the "zombie cookie," living wages, and a citizen-no-more's whinefest.

President Obama tells the FCC to pre-empt state laws prohibiting community broadband. Which act will make the right squeal AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!! more than NSA data-vacuuming, invasions without Congressional approval, or warrantless wiretapping have ever done, and thus make me more sympathetic to Mr. Obama's initiative than I otherwise might be. Even if federal law does give the FCC the authority to pre-empt state laws that are, I think, plainly harmful to the community, I'd rather we fought pitched battles at the state and local levels. I don't accept that corporate PR hacks are simply better at fighting than we are, because I read their arguments.

Nathan Schneider at Vice notes that the notion of a "basic income" -- a guaranteed income for all citizens, whether they're working or not -- has captured the imagination of Libertarians as well as leftists. Trouble is, Libertarians would pay for a basic income not by taxing the rich, but by diverting money from Big Gummint programs into the basic income, but giving someone a pile of money to maybe buy health insurance, for example, doesn't replace Medicaid -- for one thing, you're in a pool with some leverage in Medicaid. In short, "(t)here's still no substitute for organizing more power in more communities."

Harold Meyerson explains why Republicans are so quick to push pro-bankster bills. Long story short: sucking up to Wall Street early increases the possibility voters will forget in approximately 20 months' time. Still, given that Wall Street is approximately the least popular sector of the economy, they'd be committing political suicide in a sane and moral society. At least we get to read the phrase "unless the mega-rich are compelled to give back what they’ve taken from their countrymen" in a major newspaper.

ProPublica describes a "zombie cookie," a piece of tracking software that you can't erase from your smartphone or tablet after it's put there. It gets better: like a teenage boy who doesn't understand the meaning of "no," Turn doesn't consider the act of erasing all the cookies on your smartphone or tablet an indication that you really want the cookie gone. Instead, you have to install another cookie to properly erase the first cookie -- and the new cookie doesn't stop tracking you. Got that? And yes, the NSA can look at your info, too.

Two ALEC-affiliated hotel trade associations have filed suit to stop Los Angeles's coming minimum wage for hotel workers. Other big corporate front groups have taken similar actions against rising municipal wage floors all over the country, but their efforts show a dearth of imagination -- they say these wages benefit unions when the workers don't have to join unions to get the wages, and they repeat the word "extreme" over and over again, in a land where no one considers $15.37/hour an "extreme" wage. Most folks would think executive wages are extreme, though. In short, this is typical right-wing projection.

Finally, a somewhat famous investor and bitcoin supporter who renounced his American citizenship because he didn't like paying taxes is having trouble getting a visa to re-enter his former country. Naturally he calls the government officials who won't let him back in "tyrants," but I bet he calls pretty much everyone who disagrees with him a tyrant. Anyway, if government officials are right to fear that Mr. Ver has no intention of going back to St. Kitts once he's done doing whatever he's going to do in America, I presume folks on the right will soon be enraged at the thought of Mr. Ver staying in this country illegally, taking work from good American citizens. Nah, just kidding.

Around the table: in which banksters attack pension funds and property rights.

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept investigates how banksters have gotten their grubby mitts on our state pension funds. You remember from living in the real world that the most important thing about a pension fund is not that it makes buku bucks, but that it's there when you need it to be, which is why their managers used to invest conservatively. But investing pensions in things like hedge funds don't even make the pension funds more money -- they only make banksters money, through exorbitant fees. At least the provincial government of Quebec instructs us how to do it right.

A Rasmussen poll finds more Americans thinking that private corporations spy on them more than their government does. But that's not an illuminating comparison -- corporations can spy on you to make you see ads and induce you to buy stuff, and in rare instances fire you, but your government can spy on you and put you in jail. And Americans who profess to worry little about government spying often forget that what's lawful today might become "terrorism" tomorrow. In any case, Rasmussen also found that nearly three in four Americans think our government's violated their privacy, which is the result I would have led with.

Noam Scheiber warns us that startups like Uber and TaskRabbit, which connect folks who need tasks done with folks who do them, could wind up turning us all essentially into temp workers. Yes, it is easy to imagine a Dystopian future in which we all get up in the morning worrying about whether some Amazon warehouse will need us to pull orders, or whether some wealthy bankster will need furniture moved. For a more historical perspective, I point you to Echidne of the Snakes, who also reminds us how organizations like Uber transfer risk "downstream" -- i.e., to workers.

Senka Huskic profiles the Southern Essex County (MA) Register of Deeds, John O'Brien, who continues to pursue the fraudulent foreclosure documentation foisted upon us by banksters, long after the Obama Administration settled with the big banks. Mr. O'Brien audited his county's mortgage assignments in 2010, and declared it "a crime scene," and not just because of robosigning. I'm glad he's fighting on, but it is unfortunate that right-wingers, constantly squealing about property rights in other contexts, have been largely quiet about how badly banks have screwed with property rights in America.

Finally, Europe's Parliament calls for breaking up Google. The vote was lopsided but non-binding, as the European Parliament has no jurisdiction over anti-trust matters -- but the European Commission does, and the vote could wave the stick of bad PR against the Commission enough that they act. What would action look like? "(C)hanges in its business practices and even possibly a big fine," the Times says -- so it would look like America's action, plus the changes in business practices and the size of the fine, of course.

Around the table: government spying, Israeli vengeance, net neutrality, organizing workers, and homes for the homeless.

Glenn Greenwald declares Congress "irrelevant" on the matter of curtailing our government's unconstitutional surveillance of its citizens, and advises other actions. Demanding better encryption and rejecting internet services that compromise our privacy are of course good ideas, and I'm fairly sanguine about the utility of pressure from other governments and court proceedings, but for the record, I don't regret pressing our government to pass the USA FREEDOM Act, weak as it was even in comparison to earlier versions -- when you can't get all, you still try to get half. And I still contend that Rand Paul's "principled" stand against the bill just so happened to result in him doing exactly nothing, and I'm sure he knows that.

Israel resorts to a tactic it abandoned a decade ago in attempting to punish Palestinian attacks -- by destroying the home of a man who drove his car into pedestrians. Trouble is, of course, that he lived in an apartment building, and so did 50 other folks, who were given notice, but we have only Mr. Netanyahu's word that they were given lawful notice, and if it seems un-American to punish people who didn't do anything to you because one of their neighbors did, well, you're not alone. (And if you think those 50 people did do something, you're welcome to prove it. "They would have done the same thing" would not qualify as proof.)

Right Wing Watch profiles five right-wingers who construct absurd arguments to oppose net neutrality. You've seen a few of them in this space already, but arguments pretending net neutrality hasn't been the rule all along are still the norm, and coming from people who would be nowhere without net neutrality, no less. One fool even counts the interstate highway system as something, like the internet, that works precisely because our government isn't involved in it, except of course that it is. How can such absurd arguments win the day? With the help of our "liberal" media, of course, which will treat such deranged utterings as if they come from Serious People and will never ask the most rudimentary questions that would collapse their arguments like the houses of cards they are.

Workers at an Alabama copper plant vote to join the United Steelworkers Union, despite Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley's efforts to thwart it. Gov. Bentley's letter to the copper workers includes a slab of hostage-taking -- a pro-union vote "could have a possible negative impact on your community by discouraging other companies from locating there" -- and also includes an attempted guilt trip when he implored the workers to give their employer (another) chance at addressing their concerns since, after all, "the company has made such an investment in you and your community." You know, it's quite possible a majority of those plant workers were Bentley voters anyway, since it is Alabama, after all.

Finally, a Tiny House Village for homeless folk opens in Madison, WI. A three-year project of Occupy Madison, homeless folk helped build the 98-foot houses in which they'll live, which should calm the fears of right-wingers that someone, somewhere, might be getting something for nothing, right? Just kidding -- right-wingers would obviously prefer that taxpayers spend a lot more money providing emergency services to the homeless, than that private contributions fund an idea considerably cheaper and safer for everyone. Next: Scott Walker wonders aloud why anyone would "aspire" to live in a 98 square-foot home!

Around the table: more good news from Election Day...and more "liberal" media "advice" after Election Day.

Scott Baker at Op-Ed News lists a few more victories from our recent Election Day debacle. Key finding: politicians constantly whine about spending money on public projects, but voters don't often feel the same way, approving massive infrastructure spending projects in no less than 11 states. People actually do want their politicians to spend money on worthwhile projects, and complaining about "corruption" in that context is pointless noise if one can produce no actual evidence of corruption.

Ho hum, another bad day for Democrats, another slew of "liberal" media outlets arguing that the lesson is for Democrats to move to the right. Exit polls find economic populism to be, well, popular, but who cares, when there's bipartisanship to be had? After you read the "liberal" media's counsel and you hear Mitch McConnell suddenly talk about the value of "bipartisanship" after all these years, you may be reminded that "bipartisanship," for the "liberal" media, seems to mean Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want.

Mike Konczal advocates "shrinking" the financial sector to promote more equitable economic growth. You already know the financial sector's too big because banksters go to some length to obscure its workings, and also because you've suspected that "finance has increased inequality by convincing corporate executives and asset managers that corporations must be judged not by the quality of their products and workforce but by one thing only: immediate income paid to shareholders." Conservatives are supposed to be about the long haul, but modern-day "conservatives" are only about getting money now, rather than providing services to people, as even 1990s conservatives believed.

The New Republic thinks that Senate Democrats should use the filibuster as "ruthlessly" as Republicans did. I disagree: of course you should filibuster awful legislation whenever it rears its ugly head, but bad behavior is bad behavior no matter who does it, and I still favor filibuster reform that makes Senators actually stand up and talk for 24 or 48 hours, rather than merely block legislation painlessly and go home. Even the "liberal" media can't put lipstick on a pig that actually stands up for 48 hours stopping a minimum wage hike or campaign finance disclosure.

Julia Angwin at ProPublica discusses the best encryption tools for internet communications. I invite those folks who still think big corporations create innovative products to list the major corporations creating the more highly-regarded products Ms. Angwin discusses. Spoiler alert: there's one, and it's Apple, and it's still well down the list. Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook are rather further down. Most of your innovation, here as elsewhere, comes from small businesses.

Finally, another study finds that shift work actually impairs thinking and remembering. Every 10 years on shift work ages you about 6.5 years, as far as your cognitive abilities, and n.b. that "shift work" includes second-shift work, because you probably don't get to bed before midnight. The good news? Once out of shift work for five years, your abilities recover. Still, the lead doctor suggests "design(ing) work schedules...that minimize the disruption of the body clock," a schedule which could include "not working very many nights in a row." I'm all for that, and somewhere, someone running a hospital is probably all for that, too.

Around the table: ebola, spyware, the minimum wage, religious folly, and the South Dakota Senate race.

NIH director says "we probably would have had" an ebola vaccine by now if federal funding hadn't been so stagnant over the last decade. Well, that's OK, because surely the free market will provide! Wait, what do you mean there's no money in curing poor Africans? Well, now that First Worlders are getting it, perhaps the big corporations will step up.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us against ComputerCOP, a piece of software that purports to protect children from internet predators -- but actually functions as spyware, exposing a family's private information to predators. And the corporation that makes ComputerCOP often sells it to police departments, which then distribute it to families, who wind up exposing their personal info even when they connect to secure websites! I think ComputerCOP's creators conceived of the software merely as a way to fleece police departments, but if you think it's a way for governments and corporations to spy on you, I don't blame you.

Ho hum, here's more evidence -- a lot of it -- that a higher minimum wage wouldn't kill jobs. It'd be nice if some enterprising member of our "liberal" media would challenge fools like John Boehner whenever they act like it's so obvious the minimum wage kills jobs. But that would require courage.

A corporation developing a Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky claims it has a First Amendment right to take state money and discriminate in its hiring practices. Because, you know, religious beliefs. Easy to defend against: if you take public money you have to follow public rules, and your right to exercise your beliefs ends when it tramples on other people's rights. I wish I had more confidence that our Supreme Court would also see it that way.

Finally, I've come to understand that I was far too kind to South Dakota independent Senate candidate (and former three-term Republican Senator) Larry Pressler -- millionaire income surtax and minimum wage hike yay, but not at the expense of means-testing Medicare and raising the Social Security retirement age and tort "reform." I was also wrong, apparently, about his chances -- he's been tumbling in polls lately, and almost exclusively to the benefit of the Democratic candidate, Rick Weiland. I'd noticed Mr. Weiland's progressive noises before, even approved of them; I just didn't believe them because they came from a fellow who used to work for the Architect of Capitulation, Tom Daschle. But I'd be happy to be wrong about that, too.

Action: privacy invasions, and fracking on public lands.

As you may know, Facebook is making smartphone users install Facebook Messenger, which acts like it needs access to your phone camera and your audio-recording software whether you want that or not, and which also acts like it should be able to send messages and calls and send info about you and your contacts to third parties, all without your consent. Did not the U.S. Supreme Court just unanimously rule that law enforcement needs a warrant to get to the information on your cellphone, on the basis that the cellphone carries an unprecedented amount of private information about its owner? This isn't substantially different, though corporations appear to believe that if we want to use their services, we have to follow their rules, when actually we have an inalienable right to demand better from them, and to stop using their services and/or embarrass the hell out of them before our assembled civilization if they don't comply. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Facebook to stop ramming privacy-invading features down our throats.

Meanwhile, Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to introduce legislation banning fracking on public lands. Our previous action alerts targeted various Executive branch agencies, which, as you know, pretty much dropped the ball, possibly out of a misguided belief that because fracking one time isn't likely to upset the water table fracking must be safe (though what gas drilling corporation fracks once?), or a mania for "weaning ourselves off of foreign oil" (which, as we know, can only be done one way!), or even out of a severely misguided sense that actually pursuing that "all-of-the-above" energy policy Republicans say they want will actually get Republicans on board. Anyway, I suppose it would be an act of courage for one of our Congressfolk to defy their campaign contributors and sponsor legislation banning fracking on public lands -- the most courage we've seen from Congress so far is the Casey/DeGette bill that would have forced public disclosure of fracking chemicals, and you saw where that got in the 2009-10 Congress. But the first act of courage is the mother of many others.

Around the table: campaign finance, government spying, corporate welfare, health care satisfaction, and fracking dangers.

S.J.Res. 19, the Constitutional amendment that would enable our state and federal governments to regulate campaign finance again, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 10-8 vote yesterday. You'll note that's not two-thirds (that would have been 12-6) and you'll no doubt be disappointed, but no one said this would be easy. Surprise, surprise: exactly zero Republican Senators voted in favor, despite two-thirds of their rank-and-file voters disagreeing with the Court's ruling in Citizens United. Which kind of illustrates the problem S.J.Res. 19 would give us a shot at solving, doesn't it?

ProPublica discovers that the NSA may be paying special attention to folks who downloaded Tor during 2011 -- and, not incidentally, could have shared whatever information it collected with the FBI and the CIA. Tor, you may recall, is the privacy software that basically makes you anonymous when you surf the web. One of Tor's early developers says the NSA almost certainly didn't spy on Tor users while they were actually using Tor -- but nothing would prevent the NSA from spying on Tor users when they were not. The punch line? The Tor Project itself gets funding from the State Department.

Ho hum, New York's Authorities Budget Office finds that all the business tax breaks New York state tossed around between 2009 and 2013 might have been responsible for one percent of job growth in New York state during that time. Maybe that one percent included 100 percent of you, but when 99% of job growth doesn't come from handouts to corporations, then Republicans really need to stop with the histrionics about how we should create jobs by giving handouts to corporations.

Commonwealth Fund survey finds that about three-quarters of Americans who bought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges are actually pretty satisfied with it. Of course, I remember surveys telling us in 2009 that a similar percentage of folks were pretty satisfied with their pre-ACA health insurance, but if the Affordable Care Act were this "socialist" "monster" that pooped all over our freedoms and then made us eat it, you'd think those numbers would be a lot lower.

Finally, Cornell University researchers report that up to 40 percent of oil and gas wells in some areas of Pennsylvania will leak methane into the air you breathe and the water you drink. I almost hope somebody asks Gov. Corbett about this, so he can smile and say "well, what about the 60 percent that's safe, smartypants?" But the 60 percent that's "safe" won't be safe for long, what with air and water (and the people using them) moving around as they do -- and, of course, figures like "40 percent" mean much less when 100 percent of you has cancer.

Action: corporate cell phone spying, and carbon emissions.

Facebook has introduced a new feature to its phone app, which allows them to listen to your phone conversations through your phone's microphone. Do they even know how that sounds? They say it's just a feature to use when you don't know what song is playing in the background, as if no other app on the planet can do that (and, ah, I can do it better, if the song was recorded between approximately 1968 and 1992). The feature is "opt-in," which I suppose is appropriate, but does Facebook have a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause? Is Facebook comprised of law enforcement personnel entrusted by the community to find and apprehend law-breakers? If the answer to these questions is "no," then they shouldn't have the ability to listen in on our phone conversations in the first place. No doubt Facebook's brain trust would think themselves foolish not to try and get all the information (and therefore money) they can out of a website used by virtually everyone on the planet who uses the internet, but actually the opposite is true: having awesome power, frankly, requires more restraint. It's really like Our Elites have forgotten that. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Facebook to stop invading its users' privacy.

Meanwhile, the EPA announced a proposal for carbon emissions standards from existing power plants (not just new power plants), and if you missed earlier action alerts about it, then both CREDO and Public Citizen help you tell the EPA to issue the strongest standards possible. The EPA's proposal aims to reduce carbon emissions in 2020 by 25% from the year 2005's emissions, but the year 2014's emissions are actually rather lower than 2005's, such that America has already achieved two-thirds of that 25% reduction, and frankly we're going to need to lower our carbon emissions more than that if we're going to beat climate change. But the coal corporations and their enablers have been throwing a tantrum about the EPA's plan all week. Aren't these folks supposed to be our "best and brightest," our Glorious Job Creators to whom we are supposed to bow in awe? And yet at the same time they are our "best and brightest," our "indispensible" people, our Kings and Queens of talent and innovation, they are also somehow severely threatened by a Big Gummint regulatory plan that basically gives current emissions-lowering efforts a bit of a push. Why, it's enough to make you think that our "best and brightest" are actually neither. At the very least, they sure do whine a lot.

Action: electronic privacy, and "burdensome" regulations.

The NSA claims it doesn't need a warrant to dig through your emails, because terrorism, but you may not know that the law already allows other law-enforcement agencies to dig through your emails without a warrant. How? Well, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed in 1986, and it considered any email left on a server for more than six months to be "abandoned," and if the user's "abandoned" it, the state doesn't need a warrant to look at it. Remember how much email you were using in 1986? Exactly. And how many of your emails are still out there on your server now, even after you've downloaded them to your computer? Quite possibly all of them -- and that's before we got to whatever, say, Amazon or iTunes has stored for you in "the cloud." But H.R. 1852, the Email Privacy Act, would mandate that government agencies get a warrant before looking at emails (and other documents) stored in the cloud. H.R. 1852 has over 180 co-sponsors, some of them Republicans; if it gets to 218, John Boehner will have little excuse not to hold a vote on it, spout though he will that it's a "job-killing" bill, or that it's Communism, or Benghazi, or something. Both Demand Progress and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1852.

Speaking of things the House would like to do, here comes a yet-to-be-numbered bill, the SCRUB Act, which stands for "Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act." But the bill would establish a burdensome nine-member commission to review and override regulations solely because of their "cost" to the "economy." Will such a commission count, say, the cost of treating illnesses, and the cost of the resulting lost work days, that laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act save our economy? Of course not -- they're mainly concerned about the "cost" to some coal CEO's bank account, since to them CEOs are The Economy. And if Americans don't like the idea of some trade-pact "investor-state tribunal" overriding our nation's laws every time some big corporation wants to dump some Frankenslurry into our water, why would we like giving a similar power to some commission? We've already got "commissions" for that; they're called the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Executive branch agencies the House and Senate establish through law. I think this bill warrants a phone call in opposition to your Reps and Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Action: a bogus "religious" "freedom" bill in Arizona, and keeping Amazon from handing over your customer info to the CIA.

First things first. Arizona's state legislature just passed SB 1062, which would let businessfolk and government workers discriminate against gay folks if they presume to hold a "sincere religious belief" that Leviticus is anything but a book about taking precautions with blood. You'd think Arizona's legislators wouldn't want so much attention after SB 1070, the nefarious "show me your papers" bill, but, apparently, they never learn. The bill now goes to Governor Brewer for approval, and both the ACLU and the People for the American Way help you urge Gov. Brewer to veto the bill. Is it any good, anymore, telling people that their religious "freedoms" don't get to trample on other people's actual freedoms -- that we all have "sincere beliefs" we don't automatically impose upon everyone else because, well, we're not more important than everyone else? Here's something that might make Gov. Brewer listen: businesses that exercise the "freedom" to have gay-free lunch counters will bring bad PR on themselves from all over America, and thus cost the state money. I hate to make it about money, but I also like to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Amazon recently got $600 million to provide "cloud computing" services to the CIA. And Amazon currently provides cloud computing services to you, if you're a customer. See where there might be a problem? Our government loves collecting information about us, and they might well use the "in" they've now got with Amazon to pressure them (or perhaps "pressure" them) to hand over information about what you're buying and watching. I've heard from good folks that "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear," but let's say you've watched the AMC show Breaking Bad on Amazon Prime. You're not doing anything wrong, right? But can you foresee the CIA asking for lists of people who've watched that show, because they think some of them might want to learn how to become a meth kingpin or build a wheelchair bomb? Can you foresee the CIA one day becoming so desperate for results that they harass or torture folks on that list until they confess to anything? If you can foresee any of that, then Roots Action helps you tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to promise his corporation won't provide customer info to the CIA.

Around the table: Richard Sherman is not a thug, and other obvious observations.

Guess which state has decided to end homelessness by giving chronically-homeless people apartments to live in and caseworkers to help them out? Utah, that's which state. One of America's most conservative states has decided it's actually cheaper to do that than to cover jail stays and ER visits, which is very fiscally-responsible of them. You know what would be even cheaper? Taxing millionaire income at 91% and closing corporate tax loopholes, both of which would force corporations to hire more workers and pay them more.

Tim Karr of Free Press warns that we are living through an "Information Counter-Revolution" right now, what with government surveillance and corporate smashing of net neutrality. But here's a thought: Americans are pretty well used to the internet the way it is, where they can pretty much go where they like when they like. If Verizon and AT&T really block or slow down sites that haven't paid tribute, we'll see a PR storm like we've never seen before -- and so will any government that sends ominous text messages to its citizens. Don't think Americans will get that angry? Then ask yourself what you did the last time a page took too long to load -- or thought the government might be behind it.

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) comes out against the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, after the EPA reports that the planned gold-and-copper mine would endanger the Bay's salmon population. And thus, also, the Bay's salmon farming industry. If you reflexively put "Alaska King" in front of "salmon," as I do, you know this is smart politics as well as smart policy. Meanwhile, the same corporation doing the "environmental review" on Keystone XL did one for the Pebble Mine, too. They, of course, find the EPA's subsequent review wanting, because it supposedly didn't highlight "the positive effects of cash income from employment on a community's overall subsistence-gathering capabilities." The "E" in EPA still stands for "environmental," right?

Sens. Bennet (D-CO) and Blunt (R-MO) introduce the Senate version of Rep. Delaney's corporate tax amnesty. This idea just won't die, so here we are, hacking away again: a lot of "offshore" profits are only "offshore" in a corporation's books, letting them "repatriate" the income at a lower rate will only encourage more "offshoring" later on, and corporations that "repatriate" such income typically don't use it to create jobs (in fact, many of the big 2005 tax amnesty benefactors cut jobs). Does Michael Bennet need reminding that he's only in the Senate now because Ken Buck was such a spectacularly awful opponent in 2010?

Finally, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman suggests that sports reporters call him a "thug" because they know they can't get away with calling him the N-word. I didn't notice at first, because a) I didn't see the interview, generally losing interest in a game after it's over; b) I don't read national sports reporting, which generally sucks even worse than national news reporting; and c) I only call politicians "thugs," and generally only when they act like thugs. But a star cornerback whose on-field celebrations annoy me still doesn't rate being called a "thug" 625 times in one day of television. I don't think Chris Christie got called a "bully" anywhere near that much the day after Bridgegate broke wide open.

Around the table: Medicare, the War on Poverty, NSA spying, and the Good Word on birth control.

Medicare proposes rule changes allowing it to kick out doctors who abuse their prescribing power and to make doctors formally enroll in Medicare's Part D program if they want to prescribe to its users. Next up on Fox News: Obamacare Run Amok: Big Brother is Watching Your Doctor! I wish it were satire, but too often these days what used to be satire is now just the news. Or, more precisely, "news."

Michael Tomasky reminds us that the War on Poverty -- roundly decried as a failure by luminaries such as Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio -- actually worked. In fact, it actually cut poverty almost in half in a mere six years. Like me, you may not like what welfare eventually became, but (also like me) you may find that a relatively small sticking point, and it's hard to dispute that community colleges, community health clinics, and infrastructure projects pulled a lot of folks out of poverty and into the middle class and the American Dream. What a shame we haven't really fought a war on poverty in over 30 years.

"NSA Can Hack and Spy on Any iPhone Any Time," says this Mac Observer article. While the article doesn't actually nail that point shut -- it presumes that since the NSA was able to install Dropout Jeep on iPhones they could actually get their hands on five years ago, and because they aimed to one day do it remotely, then they must have done it by now -- we could do worse than assume the NSA can remotely install spyware on our iPhones, and then demand our Congressfolk protect our privacy the way actual public servants would do.

Finally, Elissa Strauss takes to task the very notion that the Bible condemns birth control -- quite interesting, given that so many argue that a CEO's religious beliefs trumps their employees' religious beliefs vis a vis covering birth control in health insurance plans -- by citing the text and its historical contexts. Wonder why no one thought of that before. And by "wonder why no one thought of that before," please understand that I mean "because that might edify the public, rather than enrage it."

Action: Keystone XL, email privacy, and paid family medical leave.

Not too long ago, Public Citizen released a report documenting no less than 125 spots in Oklahoma and Texas where TransCanada had to dig their pipelines back up because they needed repairs. TransCanada calls these dings and dents and bad welds "anomalies," but they're occurring about every two miles, and we already know (from Greg Palast's reporting) that TransCanada finds proper pipe inspection to be a drag on profits, and therefore verboten. Set aside that there are 125 spots just in a section of pipe that comprises a little over one-tenth of the total proposed Keystone XL pipeline: how many pipe breaks does it take to cause a big damn spill that pollutes everyone's air and water? Hence Public Citizen helps you tell Congress to do its job and conduct proper oversight of the Keystone XL pipeline in Oklahoma and Texas. Yes, I'm figuring if Congress does its job, the pipeline won't get built.

Meanwhile, Techdirt helps you tell President Obama that he shouldn't be able to access anyone's emails without a warrant. Why tell Mr. Obama? Because Executive branch agencies have been trying to get even more power to access your communications -- which the NSA, as you know, already vacuums in -- and because at least one House bill (H.R. 1852, the Email Privacy Act) would revise the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to require that the Executive branch get a warrant before it can read your emails. Our government and our "liberal" media pretend everything is so complicated, but it's not: get a warrant from a judge, and no one's going to complain about it. Incidentally, H.R. 1852, a Kevin Yoder (R-KS) production, would also prevent our government from treating emails left on servers after 180 days as "abandoned," and therefore ripe for unwarranted scrutiny. How often do you purge all your emails from, say, your google inbox? Answer: more often after today.

Finally, Sen. Gilibrand (D-NY) and Rep. DeLauro (D-CT) will soon introduce the FAMILY Act (it's not a bad acronym!), which would let folks using family medical leave under the Family Medical Leave Act to be paid up to two-thirds of their regular salary while they're on family medical leave. Less than one in eight Americans get paid family medical leave via their jobs (the Family Medical Leave Act grants 12 weeks annually of unpaid leave), and the United States is the only industrialized nation which does not guarantee its citizens paid leave. Of course, the corporate talking heads will tell you that the FAMILY Act would hurt small businesses, but that's an opinion that just so happens not to be shared by very many small businesses. The FAMILY Act would hike payroll taxes by about $1.50 per week to pay for the program, and though I'd rather we break off a piece of a re-enacted 91% tax bracket to pay for it, it's not a terrible burden. Moms Rising helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support the FAMILY Act.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You may have heard of Carla Hale, the Catholic school teacher fired after her mother's obituary outed her. (Incidentally, want to pressure her school into rehiring her? Change.org has a petition for that.) And she's not the only one, as the folks mentioned here can tell you. But the timing couldn't be worse for the forces of oppression, as Sen. Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Polis (D-CO) have re-introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (S.815/H.R. 1755), or ENDA. If this ENDA is like past ENDAs, the bill would prevent employers from discriminating against employees because they're gay -- which discrimination would, in fact, include firing them for being gay. I'm eagerly awaiting the crowd of right-wing whiners who claim that people have sincere moral beliefs that being gay is wrong! Well, I have a sincere moral belief that it's not wrong, so whiners can go find the diaper-changing line and leave the rest of us alone. CREDO helps you tell your Senators to support ENDA.

Meanwhile, Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) and Rep. Capuano (D-MA) have reintroduced the Shareholder Protection Act (S. 824/H.R. 1734) in this Congress. As you may remember from previous alerts, the Shareholder Protection Act would give shareholders the right to vote on any campaign spending a corporate board wants to undertake. Even if you sincerely believe that money is speech, and that corporations have the rights of personhood, you have no business opposing this bill, because the money being spent isn't the "corporation"'s money, it's the shareholder's money, and why shouldn't they decide how it's spent? Corporatists will never tell you the real reason why they think shareholders shouldn't get to make those decisions: because it'll take the power away from executives. Haven't we had enough of runaway executive power yet? Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Shareholder Protection Act. Quick, before they spend your pension fund trying to elect people like Josh Mandel.

Finally, as you know, the House of Representatives passed CISPA, the bill that would let corporations and government collude in invading your privacy -- in the interest of "security," of course. And without a warrant, of course, warrants being, as one famous philosopher might say, "quaint" to our elites. Word on the street is that the Senate has no particular stomach to take up CISPA, but that doesn't mean we should declare victory and go home. What if the Senate writes up a similar bill, calling it, I don't know, KISPA? "See, it's a completely different bill, because it has a totally different letter in its title! Now go home, there's nothing to see here." When Senators eagerly place holds on bipartisan bills and uncontroversial nominations for no reason other than that they've lost the debate about said bills and nominations, there's no gutter-level to which they won't stoop. So the Electronic Frontiers Foundation helps you tell the Senate to reject CISPA, in whatever form they may bring it back to life.

"Imagine if Facebook, Google and Twitter built a privacy-killing surveillance machine to help the federal government spy on us," the latest missive from Free Press begins. I don't think I've explained CISPA better than that. Free Press goes on to remind us that the law currently forbids Facebook, Google, and Twitter from sharing your personal information with our government unless our government gets a warrant, and that the law currently allows you to sue Facebook, Google, and Twitter if they violate your online privacy. Guess what two things will no longer be true if CISPA passes? That's right -- Google could send your emails and search history, Twitter could send your physical location, Facebook could send your photos and status updates, all to our government, all without a warrant. And CISPA would give the big telecom corporations immunity from prosecution if they assert they made an honest mistake in sending your government all your personal data. So Free Press helps you tell your House Reps to reject CISPA.

Meanwhile, Congress is working on another Farm Bill, but why wait to do good works? H.R. 1414, the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, wouldn't end the nefarious corn subsidies that keep junk food cheap in this country, but it would direct more of our government's efforts toward sustainably- and locally-produced healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, and it would help folks use their food stamps at farmers' markets and other places where you stand a chance of getting good food. Railing at people for spending their food stamps on Pepsi and chips doesn't do us or them any good -- people don't do that because they're stupid or lazy; they do that because our government has completely distorted the market with corn subsidies. If the price of apples had stayed exactly the same for three decades, as the price of a two-liter bottle of Coke and Pepsi has done, folks would eat a lot more apples. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to support healthier food.

Finally, with yesterday's tax deadline an irresistible news hook, I've a slew of tax-related action alerts for you. CREDO helps you tell your House Rep to co-sponsor the Inclusive Prosperity Act, which Rep. Ellison (D-MN) plans to introduce this week; the bill would tax stock deals at 0.5% (not "five percent," and not "fifty percent," "liberal" media) and other financial instruments somewhat less. I'd flip that script and tax derivatives more than simple stock trades, but any such tax would discourage the lightning-fast computerized Wall Street trading that doesn't really do any work, and the bill would also exempt households with income under $75,000. (I'd even be happy to raise that exemption somewhat, to be honest.) Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell Congress and Mr. Obama to close the corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to stow some $32 trillion offshore. $32 trillion in hidden money won't create any jobs here, but putting that money under threat of confiscation might, finally, induce some CEOs to use it to create some jobs. Hell, they might even build some factories.