Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning immigration, mandatory minimums, and fossil fuels.

Daily Kos helps you tell our Department of Defense's Inspector General to investigate the militarization of our Southern border. When you hear that our Administration has deployed armed soldiers at our Southern border, you might reasonably ask: are we at war with someone? Our President would no doubt answer "yes," being a member of Our Glorious Elites, and therefore someone who uses the word "war" to mean all kinds of things it does not mean. But we are not at war with Mexico, and U.S. law actually forbids our government from using soldiers to enforce domestic laws. We don't use soldiers to enforce domestic laws because we don't want to become a tinpot dictatorship where people are afraid to be free. I suspect our DoD IG (Inspectors General still display a large amount of independence) will come to the same conclusion we have. But only if we speak out. After all, saying nothing and hoping for the best doesn't work.

Meanwhile, even though our Pennsylvania state Supreme Court overturned mandatory minimums many years ago, word on the street is that our state legislature wants to bring them back, in a four-pack of bills, HB 726, HB 1850, HB 1851, and HB 1852, that would target offenses committed with firearms. I understand that people want to "do something" about guns these days, but this is doing the wrong thing -- we should let judges do their job and decide case-by-case whether possession of a firearm really merits a longer sentence. I've been saying for a while now that we should make it just as hard to get semi-automatic weapons as it is to get automatic weapons, and I'd rather support that solution than another set of mandatory minimums that wind up slamming folks of color harder and costing the taxpayer more money -- and feeding into the prison-privatization machine, too. Hence the ACLU helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject more mandatory minimum sentences.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell big media corporations to stop taking advertisements from fossil fuel corporations and their flunkies. Sound harsh? Consider the simple fact that you already know whatever you need to know about fossil fuels -- you know what fuel your car needs and whether your house takes oil heat or gas heat and whether your stove takes electric or gas, for example -- and fossil fuel advertisements typically therefore extol the virtues of particular fossil fuel corporations; is it really too much to ask that ads give us information we can actually use? It's not particularly of issue that such ads tend to lie about fossil fuel corporations' commitment to renewable energy and about the real effects of pollution and climate change, but ads disguised as "news stories" or "opinion pieces"? They're a big deal, and any media outlet worth its salt would reject them out of hand. They don't do it now because they're corrupt, but that's why we're here: to show them a way out of corruption.

Action: concerning mandatory minimums, conservation, and William Barr.

Given that Senate Majority Leader McConnell (E-KY) has graciously allowed the Senate to vote on S. 3649, the FIRST STEP Act, now's a very good time to let the Drug Policy Alliance help you tell your Reps and Senators to support criminal justice reform by passing it. S. 3649 isn't everything we want, etc., but it would reduce some mandatory minimums, expand the "safety valve" for judges to grant sentences below mandatory minimums, and prevent prosecutors from heaping on longer sentences for firearm possession during first offenses. All of these things will help us actually rehabilitate prisoners (which is what civilized people do!), rather than simply heap more punishments on people in the vain hope that we'll look tougher. Sen. Cotton (E-AK) will try to sabotage the bill with amendments that would gut the bill, because he's so "tough," I guess. But how about regular Americans have a say here, rather than just law-and-order peacocks?

Meanwhile, Congress has also let the Land and Water Conservation Fund expire, as of September 30, so Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to support conservation efforts by reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Do not brook any absurd complaints from your Congressfolk about "fiscal responsibility" or hysterical hand-wringing about how it'll be "paid for," because it's their job to know that taxes don't actually fund the LWCF; royalties from oil and gas drilling do. They can't believe that "fiscal responsibility" is all about letting oil and gas drilling corporations get away with paying less money in royalties to the American taxpayer, can they? Well, our Congressfolk do believe a lot of strange things -- one of them apparently being that you can just let popular and well-running programs expire without suffering any consequences. They sure are lucky we're here to remind them of the consequences.

Finally, our President has nominated former George H.W. Bush-era Attorney General William Barr to succeed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and if you're thinking a Bush-era Attorney General would be an improvement over Mr. Sessions or Mr. Whittaker, well, William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut reminds you that Mr. Barr did not exactly do yeoman work for the senior Mr. Bush. And he not only comes from an era that prescribed more punishment as the solution to every criminal justice problem, he's never left it! Even worse, he has long been an adherent of the notion that the President Must Always Be Obeyed, just like Supreme Court Justices Alito and Kavanaugh. Gosh, listen to such men and you'd never know our Founders rebelled against exactly the sort of fellow who thought he was right all the time and everyone had to bend to his will! So the Drug Policy Alliance helps youtell your Senators to reject the nomination of Mr. Barr as Attorney General.

Around the table: yet more tales of corruption and venality.

Brian Klaas at USA Today puts it about as well as it can be put: "Donald Trump's Business Ties Explain a Lot of His Dictator Worship." For example, we can assume Mr. Trump praises Mr. Duterte because he's got a Trump Tower in Manila, or that he stops slamming China because one of his businesses got a lucrative trademark deal there, or that he congratulates Turkey's President for "winning" a referendum that destroys democracy there because he's got two buildings in Istanbul. And that's before we get to his conflicts of interest in Saudi Arabia, of course.

Speaking of conflicts of interest, the Trump Administration now routinely grants waivers to employees so they can meet with the organizations they used to work for! And here you thought your government was supposed to serve the American people! David Dayen, bless him, serves up the conflicts you already know about first, and then dives deep into the one you haven't heard about (Andrew Olmem, once a lobbyist, now an assistant to Gary Cohn), one uniquely positioned to help a former bankster client avoid regulatory scrutiny. Because he "knows the issues," of course!

Joshua Cho at FAIR serves up a study whose results will disappoint you but not surprise you: the "liberal" media, in covering Trump cabinet appointees between Election Day and Inauguration Day, talked to Republicans more than Democrats by about a 5-2 ratio. Because they control all the branches of government, you see, and therefore their viewpoints "deserve" more airtime! Except that back when Democrats controlled our government in 2009, you may recall, Republicans still got disproportionate airtime during stimulus bill coverage, presumably because their "minority" viewpoints need to be heard! It's almost like they think you have no memory of anything that's ever happened.

House overwhelmingly passes bill making "sexting" between teenagers could get said teenagers 15 years in jail. No one approves of sexting, but imposing a mandatory minimum sentence that could equal the offender's entire lifetime up to that point is rather like taking a sledgehammer to a mosquito -- n.b. the story of how our government let a sexual abuser off the hook by trying to nail him on child porn charges. The bill's motto appears to be: when in doubt, punish someone who can't fight back, and punish them real, real hard. Pick on someone your own size, Congress.

Finally, there's so much to say about Vice President Pence's statement that "the left" is obsessed with climate change "for some reason," but let's just leave it at this: most people think our government should do more about climate change than it's currently doing, yet our government wants you to think it's only "the left" that wants it. This is what Our Glorious Elites always do: they take what's broadly popular and suggest it's actually an "extreme" position. Given that their favorite solution to every problem (i.e., cutting government spending that actually helps government's owners, the people) is itself an extreme position, Our Glorious Elites have a nasty pot-kettle-black problem.

Action: Social Security, the death penalty, and mandatory minimums.

H.R. 1114/S. 427, the Social Security Expansion Act, would, as its title suggests, expand Social Security benefits for all seniors, and pay for these benefit expansions by instituting a payroll tax on income over $250,000. That would, of course, create a sort of "donut hole" in the current payroll tax scheme, since income over $117,000 doesn't get taxed into Social Security at all -- and indeed, the Harkin/Begich bills from 2014 would have simply eliminated that $117,000 income cap -- but certainly this tax-hike-on-the-rich would result in Social Security doing better by our seniors. The bill would also tie all cost-of-living increases to the CPI-E, or the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers, and for good reason -- seniors have fixed incomes and high health care costs, which other indeces don't capture. The Social Security Expansion Act warrants a phone call to your Reps and Senators; you can find their phone numbers, of course, using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on your cellphone, the bottom of this page).

Meanwhile, the state of Arkansas, after not executing a prisoner for a decade, now plans to execute two inmates a day on four separate days over a 10-day period, something no state has ever done before -- and all because its supply of the dangerous execution drug, midazolam, expires at the end of the month. Even if you support the death penalty, you would raise an eyebrow, I think, at the notion that using up stock of an expiring drug would dictate when to carry out executions -- and, not for nothing, but both Florida and Arizona have banned this drug, because it can cause prisoners to convulse for a quarter-hour after injection. If, of course, you're all about causing prisoners pain, then you're not a civilized person who treats people humanely even when you think they don't deserve it -- you know, like Jesus would do! -- and you really should stop reading this blog and go read Breitbart or something. Just remember to wipe off your computer screen afterwards! The ACLU helps you tell Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson to drop his "execution blitz" plan.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents take note: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the state's mandatory minimum sentencing regime in 2015, on the grounds that suspects didn't find out they were a target of a mandatory minimum until after sentencing, but HB 741 would re-establish mandatory minimum sentences (while requiring prosecutors to argue for a mandatory minimum sentence during trial, which would likely satisfy the Court's objections). But who could be against mandatory minimums for people who sell drugs and molest children? Someone who thinks judges should judge, and someone who has faith that we can keep people safe and punish people honestly for heinous crimes, that's who. Mandatory minimums also increase taxpayer costs (as you'd figure it would, since mandatory minimums also jack up the prison population) and prosecutors who claim they need the mandatory minimums to get to drug kingpins need to ask themselves how well that's all worked out. So the ACLU helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject mandatory minimum sentencing.

Action: government spying, and sentencing reform.

H.R. 5321/S. 2952, the Stopping Mass Hacking Act, would reverse a pending change to Rule 41 of the Federal Criminal Procedure code for search and seizure -- a change that would permit a federal judge to issue a warrant for federal agents to search computers outside their jurisdiction. The Justice Department -- which, as you might imagine, supports the change -- defends it in pretty much the manner you'd expect: they tell us the change would only apply in "narrow circumstances" (which, as we know, never widen in legislation or lawsuits!), and that it ensures a judge would issue a warrant for such investigations, as if that's a gift to us and not a right. We shouldn't be writing warrants that vacuum up data of folks against whom prosecutors can't even establish probable cause, because that's what the rule change would do. Congress has until December 1 to reject the rule change, through legislation, and the Stopping Mass Hacking Act (a very quick read) simply orders that the rule change "shall not take effect." Hence UTalk helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Stopping Mass Hacking Act.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Republican leadership to hold a vote on the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. Last I heard, Super Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell didn't want to hold a vote on this actually-bipartisan bill -- one that would actually ease up on tough-on-crime posturing at the federal level, and let judges do more judging than mandatory minimums and "war on drugs" insanity currently allow -- because he feared the wrath of Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton. If you fear those two hotheads, of course, you have no business being a leader of anything. But then, using Sens. Cruz and Cotton as a shield is probably just a way of opposing the bill without coming out and saying you oppose it, since doing so would be unpopular, as only rageheads want to throw everyone in jail forever anymore. Mr. Ryan, for his part, has spoken of the need not to step on the toes of his Committee heads. But last I looked, a Committee chair's ego isn't more important than a Congressperson's duty to do the will of his or her constituents.

Around the table: a Republican campaign strategy emerges, and other absurdities.

Mike Ludwig at TruthOut wonders if Republican squealing about "the opioid epidemic" might enable them to keep the Senate. I don't think that will allow them to keep the Senate all by itself -- if you remember 2014, you know they'll have to squeal about many different things (this week it's ISIS, next week it's ebola, et cetera) to keep the Senate. Note well, though, that "change the subject" is all they have. And One Nation's attempt to blame New Hampshire's Governor (who also just so happens to be running against an endangered Republican incumbent) seems to have backfired big time.

Even the Christian Science Monitor is happy to tell you that millennials don't invest in the stock market mainly because they don't have the damn money. So banksters can take their "if you really want to change things, you have to have skin in the game" crap and cram it. You'd still like more "liberal" media organs to recognize that a major reason millennials don't have any money is that they're already in debt up to their eyeballs from college and home ownership, but saying that out loud would offend said banksters, who benefit from other people's debt.

Eben Bein at Yes! magazine profiles the Massachusetts woman who has spearheaded a years-long movement trying to get the state to adopt a cap-and-trade system for controlling climate change. I'm old-fashioned about these things -- I'd prefer vigorous regulation to cap-and-trade. But I wish her the best, not least because she put up at least $10,000 of her own money just to get research done (research that said cap-and-trade would actually grow the state economy, by the way). And I'm bracing myself for all the "conservative" excuses about why a state shouldn't be allowed to pass cap-and-trade on its own. (The Koch brothers' arguments can be easily answered, since they're essentially saying it's OK for energy corporations to raise prices on consumers, paying their executives less apparently an impossible option.)

Uh oh: turns out that little Star of David-related meme that Donald Trump put up and quickly took down over the weekend originated with -- get your surprised face ready -- a white supremacist message board. But of course the tweet isn't anti-Semitic, because Mr. Trump's Social Media Director got it from a Twitter user, never mind where that Twitter user got it. And usually the Trump campaign credits the sources of the memes it retweets, but, strangely, not this time. But nothing to see here, folks!

Finally, Illinois law enforcement officers arrest a man for "flag desecration" for, you guessed it, burning an American flag. Because of "the reaction it was gathering" and "the concern for the safety of all involved," of course! (They couldn't even bring themselves to say "our concern," you notice.) Cooler heads remembered that burning a flag, no matter how disgusting it may be, is a First Amendment right, according to a Supreme Court ruling written by the late Justice Scalia. I feel compelled to add, as always, that folks who feel they need "protection" from such speech -- speech that always loses its audience, no less -- are weaklings who dishonor our heritage as freedom-loving Americans.

Action: Puerto Rico, and mandatory minimums.

H.R. 5278, the diabolically-named PROMESA Act, still awaits a vote from the full House, despite reportedly being negotiated to President Obama's approval, and that can only mean one thing -- H.R. 5278 is an explosive turd of a bill that no politician wants to be caught dead supporting. That doesn't mean it won't pass, though -- it only means they'll wait until they think no one's looking. So Moms Rising helps you remind your Congressfolk that we're still looking, and tell them to reject the PROMESA Act. The only promesa this bill aims to keep is the one politicians seem to value above all others: the promise to force debtors to pay back loans to already disgustingly-wealthy banksters who know better than to give out unrepayable loans in the first place. I know, you also thought they were taking a risk on such loans and thus should prepare for the possibility that it'd blow up in their faces. Indeed, our bankster class never shuts up about how we should leave them alone because they take so many "risks"! But with our government's help, which means our help, banksters never suffer the consequences of their actions anymore -- only we do. Our government had better realize that pandering to banksters is going to kill our democracy, and right quick. One promesa we can make: we'll always be there to help them figure that out.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ayotte (R-NH) has proposed a pair of amendments to the national defense authorization bill that would establish new mandatory minimum sentences for illicit fentanyl users. Fentanyl, which is many, many times more potent than morphine or heroin, has established medical uses as an anesthetic and a treatment for chronic pain. But some heroin dealers add fentanyl to their "product" without the user's knowledge -- meaning that the Ayotte amendments would heap additional penalties onto heroin users who don't know they're using fentanyl. If you're saying so what, doing heroin is illegal, consider more carefully the precedent these amendments would set -- you could one day go to jail for things you don't know you're doing, too, in the name of "responding to crisis." But the Ayotte amendments comprise yet another attempt to load down a must-pass bill with unrelated amendments that wouldn't pass as stand-alone bills. If Congress wants to "do something" about drug addiction, they should fund successful treatment programs, rather than exiling ever-more low-level drug users to the prison-go-round. And the more folks who can manage their addictions, the fewer drug dealers we'll have. So Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Senators to reject the Ayotte amendments to the defense authorization bill.

Action: better treatment of farm workers in Peru, and saner sentencing in America.

You may recall that the Peruvian corporation Tal S.A. -- which produces half of the blueberries Americans buy from Peru -- has fired nine of its workers, who just so happened to be their union's entire executive committee. Your fellow CEOs would find you a bit gauche if you were that obvious in America, but things are a little more freestyle in Peru. Despite our best efforts, Tal S.A. hasn't budged in its unwillingness to give these folks their jobs back and negotiate a fair contract with their union; in fact, they've fired hundreds more workers, and blamed the union for it. I know right-wingers who would be more than happy to blame you for it, too, if you pressured Tal S.A. to do the right thing, but you should recognize such an argument as a hostage situation, and we don't do hostage situations. So now it's time to tell Tal S.A.'s American buyers to pressure Tal S.A. into treating their workers better, which the International Labor Rights Forum helps you do. Tal S.A. may think it has us by the short-hairs, but we buy and eat the blueberries, so we have the power. Our Glorious Elites spend all their time telling you you don't have the power, but they're wrong -- and they live in mortal fear of a world where we all know they're wrong. Helping them adjust to reality really would be the compassionate thing to do.

Meanwhile, S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee ages ago and represents a more bipartisan criminal justice reform act than we had any reason to expect from this Senate -- but the full Senate hasn't voted on it. Possibly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell awaits an opportunity to extract Estate Tax repeal as a tribute for allowing a vote, but remember: it doesn't matter what he wants, it only matters what we want, and we want a bill that would begin to wean us off our habit of handing out endless mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, because a sane and healthy society doesn't hand out endless mandatory minimum sentences for such things -- certainly not when banksters crap all over the economy and can't be put in jail even for a day. Anyway, the ACLU helps you tell your Senators to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. Don't believe the hype from right-wingers that sentencing reform is somehow "anti-police," or equals "disrespect for police." If police only feel validated by the most draconian sentencing possible for their collars, then they're getting the whole public service thing wrong. And most police aren't like that -- in fact, I suspect they'd welcome even the slightest amount of relief from being on the tough-on-crime treadmill.

Around the table: Donald Trump abandons his anti-"free" trade position, and other really, really big surprises.

American Friends Service Committee issues report finding that the "liberal" media has displayed (in TruthOut writer Mike Ludwig's words) "a pervasive tendency toward painting violent extremism as an inherently Islamic problem that is only solvable with the use of force." And surprise! The right-wing news sources were little worse than the others -- which must be at least partly because the others try to ape the right-wing sources. The best trick the "liberal" media pulls off? "AFSC found that 57 percent of news items characterized extremists to be psychotic, bloodthirsty and "irrational," but 61 percent of news items described just how "rational" these actors can be." Even the overlap between the two was more than 20 percent of news items. Nice work if you can get it!

Ruth Graham, writing at Slate, wonders if the "Christian left" can become "a real political force." Short answer: it already has been, all through American history, so why not now? Slightly longer answer: zeal may be "the missing ingredient" for liberal Christians, and given all the sins the right has committed with their zeal over the last few decades, it's easy to see why. But it's not devotion's fault devotion has a bad name to so many liberals. (To be fair: many liberals, having received undergraduate training, are loath to declare evil things "evil." Yeah, I know my Saussure, too, but the time for justice is always now, and our enemies really are evil.)

Mike Konczal steps up to remind us that when corporations become monopolies, the state needs to step in. And not just to break up monopolies, either, but to regulate markets as public utilities, just as the FCC has done with telecom corporations in its net neutrality rules. "Rather than tinkering with market incentives," he writes about public-utility regulation, "the state declares that businesses must adhere to certain principles of access, innovation, and fairness." I'm old enough to remember when conservatives used to insist on government action to ensure access, innovation, and fairness, but now right-wingers call all that "socialism," because the TV told them to.

In case you thought everyone had boarded the train away from "tough on crime" law-making, here comes Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) to tell us that he thinks we're not locking up enough people. Of course, he can't advance an argument without accidentally blowing it up -- "(l)aw enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes" is just as much an argument that things like mandatory minimums don't work. And, ah, saying don't reform mandatory minimums or else crime'll go up? I call that a hostage situation, and we don't do hostage situations in America.

Finally, note well that Donald Trump has now wavered in his opposition to "free" trade agreements. "I’m a free trader, but I’m only a free trader if we make good deals" is a nonsensical statement -- "free" trade deals, by definition, override our laws and outsource our jobs, and thus, by definition, are never good for America. Saying he could support "free" trade deals if they're adequately byootiful and yuge should finish off any notion that he'll be any different from any other Republican once in office -- watch him declare the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" one of the "good" "free" trade deals come November.

Action: lead standards, payday lenders, and sentencing reform.

H.R. 4694/S. 2631, the Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act, would strengthen federal standards for lead-contaminated dust or soil. This is a big deal, because a lot of federal housing still has lead paint in it, even though we've known for decades that any amount of lead a child takes in causes brain damage, and our regulations haven't kept up with the science. The Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act would add an "elevated blood lead level" standard to the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992, and would update the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act to require HUD to conduct a proper lead paint risk assessment before letting a family with a child under 6 into federally-supported housing -- and a "visual inspection" of a property won't be assessment enough. And the bill would also end the exemption that "zero-bedroom housing" currently gets from lead paint standards. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act, and thus also support tougher lead-paint standards and healthier children.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is, as we speak, putting the finishing touches on rules that would limit the damage payday lenders could do to debtors -- which, as we know, generally involves gigantic fees and automatic loan roll-overs that keep working families in debt. Naturally, the payday lending industry is doing its damndest to fight new rules concerning payday and car title loans, among others, but really, this should be easy -- it's not often that our government helps good Americans defend themselves from unscrupulous lenders who aim to put them in a cycle of debt they can only escape with extreme difficulty. And any Congressdope who defends payday lenders (cough Debbie Wasserman-Schultz cough) should crumble before negative attack ads excoriating them as, oh, I don't know, objectively pro-greed. Or objectively pro-debt. Or objectively pro-financial predator. Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell the CFPB to enact the most vigorous possible curbs to payday lending abuses.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, then the Friends Committee on National Legislation still helps you do that. (Note: you'll be telling your House Rep to support two bills that, taken together, do basically all the same things that the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act would do.) Why do I keep tugging your elbow about a bill that flatly doesn't do everything we'd like a sentencing reform bill to do? Because the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act does represent progress -- it does provide relief from the mandatory minimums that make our judges less effective, that treat low-level drug offenders as if they're, oh, I don't know, banksters or something. And what did we learn from Nixon Administration official John Ehrlichmann? That the "war on drugs" has always been a lie, that our government knew it was a lie, and that our government invented it to discredit anti-war and civil rights protestors. So of course we should encourage our government to move in a more positive direction.

Action: encryption, and sentencing reform.

The notorious Burr-Feinstein anti-encryption bill has officially dropped, and its progenitors are making the usual nonsensical noises. Sen. Burr (R-NC) yammers on about how "consumers have a right to seek solutions that protect their information -- which involves strong encryption," but then presents a bill that makes "strong encryption" impossible by demanding a backdoor to encryption programs to which only our government will have a key, and by demanding "intelligible data" on demand when the whole point of encryption is to make data unintelligible to folks who aren't supposed to read it. Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) is no better, fearmongering that "terrorists and criminals are increasingly using encryption to foil law enforcement efforts," which statement is actually far from proven (and what, "terrorists" alone wasn't scary enough for her?). So the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell Congress to protect your right to privacy and security by rejecting the Burr-Feinstein bill.

Meanwhile, S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, still awaits a vote from the Senate despite passing out of Judiciary six months ago today, so the ACLU helps you urge your Senators to support fair sentencing reform by voting for S. 2123. If S. 2123 passes, nonviolent drug offenders would get shorter mandatory minimum sentences, some nonviolent drug offenders could escape mandatory minimums entirely, and the Fair Sentencing Act's 2010 adjustment of the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity could be applied retroactively. The bill would also ease some of the more onerous conditions placed on juveniles tried and convicted as adults. Of course this bill isn't everything we'd want, but it is more than what we've got. Naturally, since it would do a modest good for the true owners of government, the American people, the Senate is taking its own sweet time considering it. But that only means we need to be more assertive in communicating our will. I have every faith that you'll do that.

Around the table: what being on the White House "kill list" is like, and other horrors.

Malik Jalal, writing in the Independent, tells you how being on the White House's "kill list" has affected his life. Put yourself in his shoes, and imagine keeping away from your family so they don't get "accidentally" bombed to death by drones, and you'll find it a sobering assessment. If you're wondering if Mr. Jalal has maybe "done something" to be on the list, ask yourself who decides who's on a "kill list," or whether the very existence of a "kill list" doesn't actually rid the world of terrorists but merely creates more of them.

FDIC and the Fed find that five big banksters have failed to come up with "credible" plans to wind their businesses down in case of financial instability, and as such can be subject to stricter regulation and/or breaking up in to smaller banks. That's ostensibly so these banksters can't crash the economy with their bad gambles and then receive massive taxpayer bailouts, like, you know, in 2008. But the two agencies couldn't agree on Goldman Sachs and gave Citigroup a shot at fixing the flaws in their plan. Perhaps not coincidentally, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been perhaps the most connected banksters in our government (and worst actors in our economy) for many years.

President Obama threatens veto of H.R. 2666, the bill supposedly concerning broadband rate regulation that actually seriously injures, if not kills, internet freedom. "(C)able and phone companies could claim that FCC rules against blocking and throttling -- concepts at the core of federal net neutrality protections -- amount to rate regulation," author Sam Gustin writes, putting it rather more succinctly than I did yesterday. The House plans to vote on H.R. 2666 today (you can call your House Reps using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page), so we'll see if it can get a veto-proof majority. Then, of course, it still has to go through the Senate.

The Guardian looks at some 70 million comments left on its articles over the last decade, and finds -- surprise, surprise! -- that of the 10 writers who receive the most abusive comments, eight are women and the other two are black men. The Guardian doesn't just block threats to life and safety, but also abusive speech toward the author, ad hominem attacks on both journalists and other commenters, "dismissive trolling" (which mocks the author or the reader for thinking the subject serious enough to merit coverage), and "whataboutery" (the kind of thing that earns the "are you conceding the point by changing the subject" response from me). That's pretty hardcore -- I tend to let people argue or behave badly and then ridicule them for it, but in any case, the First Amendment only protects you from your government, not from The Guardian's (or anyone else's) rules for commenting.

Finally, Three New York Times op-ed writers ask "Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?" Short answer: not really. Somewhat longer answer: black leaders did, in fact, want less crime (duh), but also wanted more of the kind of investment in their communities that might have actually curtailed crime for the long term, and, well, they didn't get that. They got longer sentences instead. And "(w)hen blacks ask for better policing," the writers say, "legislators tend to hear more instead. It's true that a lot of black Congressfolk voted for it, just as a lot of Medicare-for-All advocates voted for the Affordable Care Act -- but that's hardly a signal of devotion.

Action: sentencing reform, safer pork processing, voting rights, and campaign finance.

Word on the street is that the House may actually be ready to move on sentencing reform -- not on S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, but on two bills that would, put together, accomplish most of what S. 2123 would accomplish. H.R. 3713, the Sentencing Reform Act, would allow judges to issue sentences shorter than mandatory minimum sentences for certain non-violent drug offenders; it would also reduce mandatory minimums for other offenders and make the crack/powder cocaine sentencing reforms of 2010 retroactive, as S. 2123 would do. And H.R. 759, the Recidivism Risk Reduction Act, would direct our government to build a "Post-Sentencing Risk and Needs Assessment System" that would help give prisoners the kind of productive activities that would help them avoid breaking the law again -- and that is the slab of S. 2123 that H.R. 3713 doesn't address. So the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3713 and H.R. 759, and thus bring some sentencing reform to America.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has allowed a few pork processors to run high-speed pig slaughterhouses, which (and stop me if you've heard this before!) run some 20 percent faster than most slaughterhouses and have (sigh) less government oversight. Because, as we know, running slaughterhouses even faster is automatically better in every way! It creates even healthier pigs than factory farms already do with their filthy housing and antibiotic overuse! And slaughtering pigs faster never results in more food contamination, injured workers, or increased cruelty at the hands of overworked, frustrated workers! Of course, this USDA program is only a "pilot program," but that's how the USDA does its dirty work -- pork processing corporations don't want to give up all that money they're redistributing upward from workers and consumers to themselves, nor do they want to welcome federal inspectors back into their facilities if they can help it. Hence CREDO helps you tell the USDA to stop their high-speed pig slaughter program.

Finally, Sign for Good helps you tell Congress to enact four reforms that would expand voting rights and curtail the deleterious effect of big money in political campaigns. Which are almost the same thing, if you think about it -- votes mean rather little when Congressfolk only talk to the corporations that give them the most money. The bills that would directly expand voting rights are, of course, the Voting Rights Advancement Act (which would give the Voting Rights Act the teeth the Supreme Court knocked out in Shelby v. Holder) and the Voter Empowerment Act (which would increase citizen access to online and same-day voter registration). The campaign finance initiatives are the "Democracy for All" constitutional amendment (which would amend the Constitution to allow federal and state governments to make campaign finance laws again) and the Fair Elections Now Act (which would create a small donor-based public campaign finance system). Corporatists can speak very, very loudly with their money, but the people are still stronger -- if we make ourselves heard.

Action: battling banksters, predatory lenders, and out-of-control incarceration.

H.R. 4619/S. 2591, the Whistleblower Augmented Reward and Nonretaliation Act (or WARN Act), would strengthen protections for whistleblowers who expose bankster criminality. Currently the financial sector doesn't protect whistleblowers very well, which is, I guess, how you'd expect things to be in a world where banksters poop all over the economy but good Americans have to clean it all up. But the WARN Act would mandate rewards for financial industry whistleblowers and afford them the opportunity for relief if their employers have discriminated against the whistleblower (i.e., by firing them or harassing them). No doubt Republicans and their "moderate" Democrat friends will tell us the financial sector doesn't need to live under the "threat" of more lawsuits. Ah, hello? The financial sector nearly destroyed this economy, and is continuing to destroy it; thus I care little for their feelings. So the National Whistleblowers Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support financial sector whistleblowers.

Meanwhile, National People's Action helps you tell the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on predatory lending in America. "Every day that goes by without a strong rule means more families sucked into the debt trap and more dollars stolen from our local economies," NPA tells us, and it's hard to argue with that, when payday and car title lenders force people into 300% loans from which they can't escape. Of course, right-wingers tell us that today's generation is just too lazy to do the hard work of making a good life. These right-wingers are the kind of folk who would watch someone carrying 40 pounds on their back, put 40 more pounds on their back, and then call them "lazy" when they drop the load. People aren't "lazy" if they default on loans that lenders specifically design to keep them in debt forever -- they're just doing what they need to do to survive. How about we help them by forcing lenders to issue loans people can actually repay?

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to pass sentencing reform this year. Again, we receive an urgent message: approximately one out of every 28 children in America have a parent in prison -- with most of these parents in prison on drug charges that warrant treatment rather than incarceration -- and these kids need their parents around, not just because it's harder for their remaining parent to do the job of two parents. But S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, doesn't let people out of prison willy-nilly -- it allows judges to grant shorter sentences to non-violent drug offenders and circumvent mandatory minimum sentences for others under certain circumstances. Naturally, our Great and Awesome Real American President Mitch McConnell hasn't scheduled a full Senate vote on this bill. You'd think he'd recognize bipartisanship when he sees it, or, even, just an opportunity to look like he knows what he's doing when he sees it. But that only means we need to press harder.

Action: freedom for Omid Kokabee yea, a Senate vote on sentencing reform yea, and the extinction of elephants nay.

First things first: Iran convicted University of Texas/Austin physicist Omid Kokabee of having "connections with a hostile government" (i.e., ours) back in 2012, after the Iranian government (despite its best efforts, which included denying Mr. Kokabee access to a lawyer until his trial began) couldn't make a charge of "colluding against national security" stick. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Kokabee had long refused to use his expertise on behalf of the Iranian military and intelligence forces, even after being offered financial assistance to pursue his Ph.D. in Iran. More scientists ought to be like this fellow, but the government of Iran arrested him in 2011 as he was winding up a visit with family and then held him mostly in solitary confinement for the next year-plus, so you can see why so many of the world's scientists might not be their best selves. Mr. Kokabee is his best self, though, so Change.org helps you tell Iran's Supreme Leader to free Mr. Kokabee.

Meanwhile, S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, has passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is awaiting action by the full Senate -- but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn't yet permitted a vote on the bill, so the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Sen. McConnell to put the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act to a full Senate vote. Maybe this kind of stuff just isn't that important to him, but he's got big responsibilities now, among them his stated aim to make Republican governance seem not all that scary, and so he should be fine with hearing from all of the American people about this, not just fat-cat elites in his home state. He might want to consider that if he can get a bill passed that reduces the deleterious effect of mandatory minimum sentences and eliminates solitary for juveniles, he can brag about it whenever Democrats complain that all he wants is chaos and disorder. It's a price I'm willing to pay to get more justice for more Americans.

Finally, the worldwide ivory trade is threatening the world's elephants with extinction, but more and more international online marketplaces (including Amazon and Google) are refusing to sell trinkets made with ivory -- Yahoo! Japan, where online ivory sales nearly quadrupled between 2010 and 2014, being a conspicuous exception. Scientists teach us that elephants are more than intelligent enough to know they're being massacred into nonexistence, and for what? We can now make durable materials in ways 19th century scientists would have called alchemy; losing the elephant from the face of the Earth forever ain't worth another ivory cane handle or another ivory carving of the Buddha or the Virgin Mary. Luckily for us, Yahoo! itself hasn't been doing well almost anywhere in its operations, losing money and hemorrhaging workers faster, even, than poachers can illegally kill elephants; Yahoo! sure could use a PR boost, or, at the very least, one fewer PR headache. Hence Avaaz helps you tell Yahoo! to disassociate itself from elephant poaching by forbidding ivory sales on its sites.

Action: net neutrality, financial predators, and sentencing reform.

H.R. 2666, the so-called No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, would prohibit the FCC from regulating internet service prices -- which would render the FCC powerless to act when ISPs indulge in price-gouging or unduly restrictive data caps, since those are "rate issues." Even worse is S. 2283, the so-called Small Business Broadband Deployment Act, which would exempt small businesses from having to comply with net neutrality regulations -- and defines a small business as a business having fewer than 1,500 employees or 500,000 subscribers! Does that sound "small" to you? And don't the customers of these largely rural ISPs deserve the same right to go where they want to go on the internet as the rest of us? And while Comcast has some 139,000 employees now, how fast do you think they'd make the vast majority of them into "independent contractors" if this bill passed? Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject these attempts to destroy the FCC's net neutrality regulations, which enjoy the support of just about everyone not in some big telecom corporation's pocket.

Meanwhile, H.R. 4018 calls itself the "Consumer Choice and Protection Act," and purports to crack down on payday lenders and check-cashing joints (called "deferred presentment providers" in the bill, so now you know what that is), but actually does very badly at this sort of "cracking down." How? First, by amending the Truth in Lending Act to allow loose state laws on payday lending and check-cashing to supersede federal law, and second, by preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) from issuing any regulations pertaining to payday lenders or check-cashers for two full years after the bill's passage. And that latter item really tells you all you need to know about H.R. 4018, because the CFPB has been working on "deferred presentment provider" regulations; why not let the CFPB write their rules and let good Americans comment on them? Because that wouldn't get the result financial predators want, that's why. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 4018.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to support sentencing reform, then both the ACLU and the Friends Committee on National Legislation help you do that. Both action alerts help you support S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, an actually bipartisan effort, unlike so many legislative initiatives that claim that mantle. "Incarceration in the U.S. has gone beyond a system of rehabilitation, retribution, or even deterrence," says the most recent email missive from FCNL. "It has become mass incarceration -- a set of reactive rather than effective practices." And that's absolutely true: we put as many people we can in jail simply because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't -- though we should be afraid of what will happen when we fail to rehabilitate wrongdoers. And S. 2123 is a step in the right direction: it will essentially end solitary confinement for children and roll back mandatory minimums, particularly drug-related mandatory minimums. It's the beginning of what we need to do to become a sane and healthy society again.

Around the table: human trafficking, terrorism, Republican hawkishness, criminal justice reform, rape kits, and collective bargaining.

Lengthy Associated Press investigation finds widespread human trafficking in Thailand's shrimp-processing industry. Those who would argue that "free" trade pacts are the only way to deal with this sort of thing would do well to note that Thailand actually has laws against human trafficking, and that the Big Stick of Bad PR can be employed against Thai officials (and their corporate customers) when they fail to enforce those laws. They should also recall how hard the State Department tried to get Malaysia off its human trafficking blacklist so that country could join the TPP. And finally, they should also know that no one in America puts a gun to your head and makes you eat cheap shrimp.

Ho hum, the CNN Republican Presidential "debate" went on-and-freaking-on about "radical Islamic terrorism," but no one, including the moderators, talked about terrorism by white people. No Dylann Roof, no Robert Dear, no James Holmes -- and you'd think at least a few of these guys (John Kasich and Chris Christie, maybe, but certainly Rand Paul) would want the opportunity to beat up on someone like Dylann Roof, if for no other reason than to look like people who are capable of thinking. But I guess we all live in Trumpland now -- a place of such energy!

In a related note, the Washington Post wonders if Republican Presidential candidates' "strikingly hawkish stances" will wind up alienating "swing voters." Setting aside that the Post talks about "hawkishness" as if they weren't the most hawkish major newspaper in the country a dozen years ago and thus helped cause a lot of the messes we're dealing with now: the only way to get voters to vote against their interests is to make them think they have to, and Republicans have another 10-plus months to do that.

Brendan Fischer at PRWatch instructs us that the Koch brothers' support for criminal justice reform is not only self-centered, but dangerous. The Koch brothers care less about drug sentencing reform or mass incarceration of folks of color than they do about "overcriminalization" of white-collar crime, though you've surely noticed that not very many folks are going to jail for white-collar crimes these days. They also push a tougher "intent" standard for crimes, as if intent matters more than result. Generally, it should be hard to convict folks of crimes, but that doesn't mean it should be easier to put people in jail for having a dime bag of coke than for rigging financial markets, especially when the latter destroys civilizations more than the former.

Memphis, TN has constructed a brand new facility for processing rape kits, and as a result has significantly cut down its 40-year backlog in just a few years. Out of 12,000 rape kits, the city has examined, or is in the process of examining, over 8,000 of them, and while the city still has to perform additional analysis on a little more than half of the ones they've started or finished, they're setting a good example that I hope other cities will emulate.

Finally, the Seattle City Council votes to allow for-hire drivers (like the ones that drive for Uber or Lyft) to bargain collectively for better pay and working conditions. The "sharing" economy is born of nothing other than corporate opportunism, and collective bargaining seems to me a First Amendment right, but I shudder to think that some folks out there will cite this development as the First Sign of an Irreversible Apocalpyse, just as some people did at the creation of Medicare. People like that are dead souls, but I'll keep praying for them, just as they're praying for me, I'm sure.

Action: GMO food labeling, and sentencing reform.

You may have heard that the FDA has approved Aquabounty's GMO salmon -- but not as food, but as an animal drug, though the FDA also claims that the salmon is safe to eat. And supermarkets won't be selling Aquabounty's salmon as a "drug," but as food -- and they won't label that food as GMO food. That's as good an occasion as any to tell your Senators that you want genetically-modified organisms in food labeled as such, as Consumers Union helps you do. The fact that the FDA put Aquabounty's GMO salmon through a less rigorous process (for "animal drug" testing, versus food testing) for determining its safety doesn't bode well, nor does the FDA's reliance on Aquabounty's own studies which -- hard to believe, Harry! -- found the GMO salmon completely safe. Many grocery stores (including a few big chains like Kroger's, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods) won't sell any GMO salmon, but you may not be near any of these stores, and if you remain concerned that self-interested corporations have too much control over the GMO science, you ought to tell your Senators how you feel about it.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee advanced H.R. 3713, the Sentencing Reform Act, to the House floor, around a month after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced its version, S. 2123 (called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act); if these bills pass, House and Senate will need to go to conference to hammer out the differences. Both bills would reduce (but not eliminate) the burden of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent federal drug offenders, both bills would expand the "safety valve" for judges to waive mandatory minimums, and both bills would allow judges to reduce crack cocaine sentences for prisoners sentenced before mid-2010, but each bill also creates a few new mandatory minimums (the House for heroin-related offenses, the Senate for domestic violence- and terrorism-related offenses) and the House bill also leaves off the Senate's reforms for federal prisoner treatment. Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your House Rep and Senator, respectively, to support and improve their chambers' sentencing reform bills.

Action: war in Afghanistan, environmental regulation in Pennsylvania, and sentencing reform in America.

As you know, President Obama has reversed course somewhat in Afghanistan, saying he'll leave almost 10,000 troops there through 2016 and then more than 5,000 troops there afterward -- but, as you also know, President Obama promised he'd end the war in Afghanistan for-real for-real, so CREDO helps you remind President Obama to keep his promise to end the 14-years-and-counting Afghanistan war. Not that we should be surprised -- he said he'd end the Iraq war, too, before beginning his unauthorized-by-Congress air strikes in Syria purportedly designed to attack ISIS. Still, a man does become concerned with his legacy six or seven years into his Administration, and a man does become concerned, also, with the multitudinous promises he's made that he hasn't kept. At least you'd like to think so! We're not exactly dealing with a promising military situation there, either -- the corrupt Afghanistan government can't seem to get by without us, and they need a lot more of our help than we're willing to give. I was long a proponent of the get-bin-Laden-get-out school. Well, we got bin Laden, so we should have gotten out long ago.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature apparently plans to take up, as early as today, HB 965/SB 562, which would impede the ability of the state to implement and enforce environmental regulations. We strive to impede the ability of the state to spy on us and throw us in jail when we haven't done anything wrong, but we strive to improve the ability of the state to keep big corporations from polluting our air and water, and we do both of these things because we love freedom -- not just the freedom from state harassment, but the freedom to be healthy and pursue happiness. And no, corporate titans do not "exercise their right to pursue happiness" when they try to cajole legislatures into passing bills that would reduce public transparency on regulatory changes and allow Assembly committees to essentially nullify regulatory changes without actually going through the trouble of passing laws -- they're running roughshod over our right to pursue happiness. So both the Sierra Club and Penn Environment help you tell the Pennsylvania state legislature to respect the regulatory process and reject HB 965.

Finally, Congress comes back to work today, and the Senate Judiciary Committee might actually act on S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, beginning with a hearing on sentencing reform today. S. 2123 wouldn't gut the mandatory minimum sentencing regime in America, but it would take steps toward making that regime less repressive -- it would reduce some mandatory minimum sentences, give judges more room to give non-violent drug offenders sentences lower than the relevant mandatory minimums, and would apply previous mandatory minimum reforms retroactively, i.e., to prisoners who were sentenced before the reforms went into effect. When we supported the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, you may recall, we wanted current federal prisoners to be eligible for the reduced mandatory minimums the law mandates, and couldn't get it; with S. 2123, we can. The bill isn't everything a good American could want, but it will put us in a good position to get more of what we want in the future. Hence the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Senator to support reasonable sentencing reform in America by supporting S. 2123.

Action: "free" trade, and sentencing reform.

In the wake of the completion of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" -- that massive "free" trade deal that would, among other things, allow corporations to run roughshod over our clean air and clean water laws and charge you more for the prescription drugs you need -- Avaaz helps you tell Congress to reject it. The TPP would subject our laws to the whims of "investor-state tribunals" more than ever before, and these tribunals would mainly concern themselves with whether a nation's law costs investors money, as if some rich person losing money is the worst thing that could ever happen in the world. And if the tribunal does rule in favor of the corporation, the taxpayers of a particular nation will have to foot the bill -- and you know what we call that? A never-ending bailout, that's what. The TPP would also extend corporate monopoly power over prescription drugs such that affordable generics will take a lot longer to hit the market. Keep in mind that this is just what we know from leaks. If this sounds horrible to you, and it should, then contact your Congressfolk with a quickness.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration will release some 6,000 federal prisoners by the end of the month, thanks to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's 2014 easement of sentences for non-violent drug-related crimes (and its subsequent decision to apply that relief retroactively to folks already serving such sentences). But this is only an early step toward finally reforming our criminal justice system so that it's not all about punishment and is more about rehabilitation, which should be the primary goal of a good criminal justice system. S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, would enact a number of reforms, which include reducing certain mandatory minimum sentences, applying the relief from other sentencing reforms retroactively, and expanding the "safety valve" system that allows judges to reduce mandatory minimums when appropriate to the crime. So the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Senators to support the bill, and thus support sentencing reform. Don't be afraid to remind your Senator that being "tough on crime" is no way to run a just society, let alone a safe one.

Around the table: "free" trade secrecy, corporate tax avoidance, paid family leave, and solutions for gun violence big and small.

TPP negotiators forced negotiators from Australia and New Zealand to keep TPP text secret for four years, in order to "facilitate candid and productive negotiations," naturally. The article doesn't say whether American trade negotiators also had to sign such a "gag rule," but if they did, it would violate American law (Sec. 106 (a)(1)(B) of Public Law No. 114-26, to be precise) mandating that the President make the TPP text public for 60 days after the President "enters into" a trade agreement. I suppose President Obama's end-around could be to make Congress ratify the agreement before he "enters into" it, which would obviate his legal obligation to publish the TPP's text. And that would just be one more reason to tell your Congressfolk to vote against it.

Citizens for Tax Justice reports that offshore corporate tax shell games are alive and well in 2015, as nearly three out of four Fortune 500 corporations maintain overseas tax havens -- over twenty tax havens each, on average -- and three out of five of those corporations maintaining tax havens maintain one in Bermuda and/or the Cayman Islands, both notorious tax havens. That's $2.1 trillion that could be fixing bridges, upgrading sewers, paying teachers -- or turning our fossil fuel-dependent energy grid into a more renewable one. And no, tax havens don't "create jobs," or we'd have more and better jobs right now.

D.C. City Council introduces bill granting workers in the city 16 weeks of paid family leave, which would be the most generous package in the country, if passed. It also means staff members working for the numerous right-wing Congressfolk who'll live here over the next few years will enjoy the best family leave plan in the nation as their employers try to destroy it everywhere else. I'd be surprised if this hadn't occurred to President Obama.

Matthew Rodriguez at Mic offers "Six Surprising Ways to Curb Gun Violence That Have Nothing to Do With Gun Control." These are: increased access to drug/alcohol rehab, reforming sentencing guidelines for drug users, breaking the "school-to-prison pipeline," addressing structural racial inequality (this section is a bit low on actual solutions, though ending redlining would be a big start), narrowing the income gap between rich and poor, and addressing structural gender inequality. Yep, that ought to do it. And I'm glad someone is saying it.

In the meantime, a school in Indiana has implemented a number of reforms designed to thwart school shooters, including "hardened" doors and walls, doors that automatically lock, key fobs that contact the police faster than 911 calls, and smoke to disable shooters trapped in hallways. None of these require additional gun control measures or additional guns in the hands of school personnel, nor are they "Big Brother" measures, like forced ID for students and personnel. I wish them the best in preventing the next tragedy.

Action: sentencing reform, medical billing, and prescription drug affordability.

S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, wouldn't repeal mandatory minimum sentences, but it would make sentencing fairer. S. 2123 would reduce several mandatory sentences for drug and/or violent felony convictions, and would make these sentences retroactive, so that current offenders can get reduced sentences as well. It would also get relief for thousands of crack cocaine offenders under the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the sentence disparity between crack and powder cocaine users. And it would allow judges to sentence certain non-violent drug offenders more appropriately. If the bill doesn't do everything you'd like it to do (it doesn't do everything I'd like it to do!), it still would, if passed, make progress in sentencing reform in America, and it wouldn't preclude further efforts to make progress; note, also, that S. 2123 has six Democratic sponsors and four Republican sponsors, suggesting that it might be the result of actual negotiation. Hence the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Senator to support the sentencing reform in S. 2123.

Meanwhile, Consumer Reports reported this month on "surprise medical bills," which occur when your health care provider subcontracts certain aspects of your care -- specialists, lab work, anaesthesia, like that -- to providers outside your health insurance provider's network, which, as you know, results in higher costs. Thing is, your health care providers currently have no obligation to tell you when they're outsourcing any part of your care outside your network, hence the surprise. And much of this problem is emergency-related -- when you need your appendix out, as one Texas resident found out, you're not haggling over which available surgeon is in your network. Yes it does occur to me that single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care would obliterate this problem. But in the meantime, we need to tell our lawmakers to ensure that the privately-run health care system in this country doesn't repeatedly screw us over. So Consumers Union helps you tell your lawmakers to close the loopholes that could cost you tens of thousands of dollars in unexpected health care costs.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3513/S. 2023, the Prescription Drug Affordability Act of 2015, then CREDO still helps you do that. Would the Prescription Drug Affordability Act eliminate obnoxious pricks like Martin Shkreli, who pays about $20,000 more for a bottle of wine than I do? No, but it would make it harder for them to jack up drug prices fiftyfold in a day. And this bill would force big pharmaceutical corporations to disclose their pricing; naturally they've resisted such a move, almost as if they have something to hide. The bill would allow Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices, and while most people support such a thing, a lot of people would ask what it has to do with getting drug prices down for everyone. And I would answer that over 49 million Americans are currently enrolled in Medicare, which means Medicare is a big, big pool with a lot of negotiating power -- and thus also a lot of power to drag prices down even for folks who don't get Medicare yet. That's what Mr. Bush really feared when he wouldn't allow Medicare to negotiate its own prices years ago.

Action: human trafficking, and criminal justice reform.

One of the lesser-known bits in the nefarious "fast-track" deal was the part preventing our government from "fast-tracking" "free" trade deals with the worst human trafficking violators among nations. But it just so happens one of the potential signatories of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," Malaysia, is a nation the State Department's Trafficking in Persons report puts in Tier 3, reserved for the worst offenders. But President Obama is seriously mulling bumping Malaysia down to Tier 2, just to get the TPP done -- when Malaysia has shown literally no interest in controlling its slave trade. Are we a civilized nation, or are we not? Do we shun evil only when it's convenient, or do we shun evil whenever duty calls? If you know the answers to these questions, then NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your President and your Congressfolk to uphold our values as civilized people and reject any shenanigans with the TIP report. If a human rights issue winds up scuttling the TPP, people might start thinking that doing the right thing actually makes it easier to keep doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, Reps. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Scott (D-VA) have introduced H.R. 2944, the Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective Justice Act, a.k.a. the SAFE Justice Act; a fairly massive and ambitious bill, it would prevent politicians from applying mandatory minimums to anyone but drug kingpins and crime organizers at the highest level, which is always how it should have been. H.R. 2944 would also give judges more flexibility to sentence criminals below the mandatory minimums for drug and gun possession crimes, and allows judges to take drug addiction and/or mental illness into account when sentencing for those crimes. And H.R. 2944 would make these reforms retroactive, meaning folks already in prison who fit the criteria could get some mercy, which would in turn reduce overcrowding in prisons and cut the cost to the taxpayer. It will also necessarily deplete the bank accounts of private prison corporation CEOs, but hey, everyone has to make sacrifices for progress. So Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your House Rep to support H.R. 2944, and thus support a wiser criminal justice system.

Action: the "other" Keystone XL, offshore drilling, and smarter sentencing.

If President Obama hasn't killed Keystone XL dead because our government has a process for evaluating it that must be respected, as he says, then why has his Administration fast-tracked approval of an expansion of Enbridge's Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline? This pipeline runs through the northernmost regions of Minnesota and Wisconsin, so we the people ought to have a say about the deleterious effects an expansion might have on public safety and climate change. But earlier this week we learned from State Department emails that State approved that expansion with no public notice, no public comment period, and no environmental impact evaluation, and hoo boy do those emails sound inappropriately deferential -- the State Department seems to think it should be heeding Enbridge's schedule, rather than, you know, ours. Luckily, construction of the expansion is nowhere near complete, so CREDO helps you tell President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to stop the Alberta Clipper expansion.

Meanwhile, speaking of oil, Public Citizen helps you tell President Obama to halt any further expansion of offshore drilling. Sadly, we know from catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon Spillageddon in 2010 that it's not so much a question of whether they'll be another one, but when. And we also know that the big corporations don't like having clean-up crews on hand for big spills, because that costs money. But surely our government has learned from its mistakes, right? Well, no: Congress has passed no legislation on the matter, and federal regulators are just now proposing new rules addressing what happened five years ago, which oil corporations will have another 10 years before they get around to complying with them -- by which time we could be neck-deep in some Arctic catastrophe that will be even harder to clean up than that mess in the relatively temperate Gulf was. If we can't make offshore drilling safe, we shouldn't do it. I know, I know: that sounds conservative. It's a risk I'll take for love of country.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 920/S. 502, the Smarter Sentencing Act, then Families Against Mandatory Minimums still helps you do that. The Smarter Sentencing Act, as you know, would help give judges more of the flexibility they should have when sentencing non-violent federal drug offenders; currently they're far too hamstrung by mandatory minimum laws to dispense justice properly. However, you may not know that a passel of religious groups stand with us on this matter -- not just the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the Union for Reform Judaism, but Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition and Tony Perkins's Family Research Council also not only support more merciful (and practical) sentencing laws, and are actually in Washington lobbying for that as we speak. And I'm just as happy to stand with right-wing evangelicals on this matter as I am to stand with them on a la carte cable packaging.

Action: smarter sentencing, climate change, and food stamps.

H.R. 920/S. 502, the Smarter Sentencing Act, is one of those rare instances of a bill that's actually bipartisan in the way the people's will is actually bipartisan -- you know, versus thinks like "free" trade deals, where the elites on both sides come together in a "bipartisan" manner to screw the people over. The Smarter Sentencing Act goes further than much other sentencing-related legislation we've supported here: it would cut mandatory minimum drug sentences in half, give judges more flexibility in sentencing drug offenders, and allow folks sentenced to crack-related crimes before 2010 to get their sentences reduced. And did I mention bipartisan! Senate sponsors range from Sheldon Whitehouse on the left to Ted Cruz on the right; House sponsors range from Barbara Lee to Raul Labrador. I wish this bipartisan smart-on-crime trend yielded more results -- politicians have been making these noises for a decade now -- but that just means we have to keep pushing. Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Smarter Sentencing Act.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer to end its association with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Since folks started organizing to sever corporate ties with ALEC in 2012, over 100 corporations (lately including Google, Facebook, and eBay) have stopped associating with the group responsible for writing the Voter ID bills and right-to-work bills (among so many other backward, pro-corporate bills!) so many states have passed over the years. Why Pfizer? Because ALEC has lately declared its "skepticism" in re climate change, and Pfizer has declared the opposite; you'd think Pfizer wouldn't want to associate with folks who think climate change is a hoax perpetrated by an environmental lobby they want you to think is far more powerful than it actually is (so that you don't think the fossil-fuel lobby is as powerful as it is, naturally). And, once we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR, perhaps Pfizer will do the right thing and help starve the ALEC beast of the money it needs to continue working on behalf of its corporate paymasters.

Finally, Republicans are still strutting around like they own America -- an impression they got, perhaps, from the national Democrats' second Election Day lie-down in four years -- and as a result they're actually talking about cutting our food stamp program further. Congress successfully cut food stamps by almost $9 billion over 10 years in the nefarious 2014 Farm Bill reauth, but still Republicans yammer on about fraud and inefficiency, though they haven't been able to actually prove any claims about fraud and inefficiency. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk that you won't tolerate any more cuts to food stamp programs that working families need. Why do they need it? Because too many American corporations still act in an utterly immoral manner -- sitting on trillions of dollars in "earnings," extracting handouts and bailouts from weakling Congressfolk, spending money on stock buybacks instead of investing in America. And when corporations act like that, people suffer. It's well past time politicians started acting like people are more important than corporations.

Action: voting rights, saner sentencing, and campaign finance disclosure.

Various good-government groups will, this coming weekend, commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march from Montgomery to Selma led by Dr. King (dramatized in the outstanding film Selma), and hence the ACLU helps you tell Congress to repair the damage the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. As you remember, the Supreme Court found the Voting Rights Act's preclearance formula outdated (though, given the swift post-ruling proliferation of anti-voter legislation in a lot of the states the original Voting Rights Act targeted, maybe not so much out of date, amirite?). But the Court did not preclude (could not have precluded, really, so let's not give them too much credit) a different formula with which the Justice Department could preclear new state laws regarding voting rights, hence H.R. 885, the Voting Rights Amendment Act, an actual bipartisan piece of legislation. I would not be tremendously offended if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell worked to pass this legislation to prove that a Republican-run Congress isn't something to fear.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous alerts concerning H.R. 706/S. 353, the Justice Safety Valve Act, then Lisa Angelos, of Sandy, UT, has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fairer and saner sentencing for non-violent drug offenders. Ms. Angelos, as it happens, has a very personal reason to support the bill: her brother, a father of three, got 55 years in prison for a pot-related offense a little over a decade ago, and (in what has become a familiar refrain) the presiding judge opposed the sentence that mandatory minimum laws forced him to give. The Justice Safety Valve Act wouldn't change or repeal mandatory minimum laws, but it would give judges the ability to give sentences below statutory minimums if they can justify doing so, and the bill would also give all parties involved the opportunity to respond to the judge's decision. So, the bill would not only let judges judge a bit, but it would still allow a fair hearing of opinions about the judge's judging. Sounds like a win-win -- but only, of course, if we make ourselves heard.

Finally, President Obama has spoken more than once about the need for a constitutional amendment to overturn the nefarious Citizens United decision, but if you're a bit tired of Mr. Obama acting like there's little he can do about campaign finance corruption, you're not alone, and there are indeed many tools available to him. One such tool -- which would not require approval from Great American Super-Awesome President of Fun Mitch McConnell or his trusty sidekick Orange Johnny -- would be an executive order mandating campaign finance disclosure from any corporation that receives federal contracts. That would mean any corporation spending our money must account for its campaign spending to us. And note that corporations getting federal contracts could very well donate to those politicians who have helped them get federal contracts in the first place -- and if that isn't a recipe for corruption, I don't know what is. Hence both People for the American Way and Free Speech for People help you tell Mr. Obama to mandate campaign finance disclosure for federal contractors.

Around the table: who *else* gets rich off of our bloated prison system, and other stories.

Who makes money off all the people we put in prison? A lot of people, actually -- folks who run corporations that supply food, phone service, and health care to prisoners, but also corporations that use prison labor to process food, package computer accessories, and make clothing. Some corporations even use prisoners as telemarketers in call centers! Cheap services and wage slavery make buku bucks for greedy CEOs, so you can see why it's like pulling teeth to reform our drug and sentencing laws.

Another day, another study blowing a hole in the myth that tax cuts for corporations creates jobs. The Center for Effective Government found that -- get your surprised face ready -- the 14 corporations with the lowest effective tax rate all either created very few jobs from 2008-2012 or hemorrhaged jobs, while the 14 corporations with the highest effective tax rates almost all created jobs during that same period, with nine of the latter group creating more jobs than the corporation that created the most jobs in the former. Seriously, if the tax cut clown car were right, the more highly-taxed corporations should be creating fewer jobs than the more lightly-taxed ones.

"KKK Was Terrorizing America Decades Before Islamic State Appeared," writes Julia Craven at the Huffington Post. A horrifying and detailed history follows. Folks who claim that reminding good citizens about these atrocities is "un-American" need to explain how admitting your wrongdoings and working to fix them is "un-American."

Two animal-rights activists challenge the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006 on constitutional grounds. The defendants contend that our government has never defined "terrorism" to include non-violent acts (against people, presumably), and though I have my own concerns about releasing animals who've never lived in the wild into the wild, I've always thought people "terrorized" by what animal rights activists do are weaklings who certainly do not deserve to be coddled by the law. How is a burglary conviction (which these two men have already served) not enough in this case?

Finally, the normally respectable Warren Buffett says Sen. Warren should be "less angry" toward the wealthy and even suggests she "get(s) too violent" with her opponents. I don't think the charge of sexism passes muster in this instance, not because Mr. Buffett is better than the average bankster, but because the pro-bankster forces have lately accused everyone who opposes them of excessive anger, as if they should expect something less than anger when they crash our economy in acts of greed.

Action: compensation for sweatshop victims, medical marijuana for soldiers, and relief from mandatory minimums.

You may recall the horrible Rana Plaza sweatshop building collapse in Bangladesh that killed over a thousand people. The U.N. has since helped set up a corporate accountability and victim compensation plan known as "the Arrangement," which helps victims and their families get justice through a claims process and a trust fund to which anyone can donate, and "anyone" certainly includes the clothing corporations who used Rana Plaza to manufacture their wares. At least five such corporations have donated to the fund, but Italian clothing corporation Benetton has not. And there's a major PR hook to be exploited here: Milan fashion week starts in less than two weeks, and if enough of us sign this petition from Avaaz, demanding that Benetton help compensate those who suffered and died in a sweatshop in their supply chain, they could be mighty embarrassed during Milan fashion week, as they should be right now for failing to step up. Benetton tells us their duty is over, because they made a charitable donation. But compensation isn't charity.

Meanwhile, the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Congress to support H.R. 667, the Veterans Equal Access Act, which would ensure that those soldiers who need medical marijuana could get it, at least in states where it's already legal. Note well the phrase "in states where it's already legal," lest right-wingers get their shorts in a bunch over ZOMG OBAMA TEH DIKTATUR MAKEZ TEH TROOPS ALL ADDICTEDZ!!!!! Citing marijuana's status as a super-awful-dangerous Schedule I drug is equally irrelevant, as, again, some states have determined that's just not true in some cases (or, in Colorado, in all cases), and our federal government has not successfully overriden these determinations. Certainly if pot helps soldiers with PTSD manage their conditions to the point where they can function in and contribute to our society again, there's no good reason to deny them what could help them. And as in yesterday's birth control action alert, there's certainly no reason to deny our troops what we wouldn't deny to ourselves.

Finally, H.R. 706/S. 353, the Justice Safety Valve Act, is back, thanks to House co-sponsors Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), as well as Senate co-sponsors Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY). The bill would allow judges to give sentences shorter than mandatory minimum sentences "to prevent an unjust sentence" and to avoid conflicting with other laws governing imposition of sentences. The bill would also require judges to submit their reasoning for the shorter sentence in writing and would allow both parties involved in the original criminal proceeding a chance to respond to the judge's intent. So the bill blows a hole in the mandatory minimum regime, but allows all concerned parties to have a say in the process. Mandatory minimum sentencing has caught too many nonviolent criminals in its web, and has kept them in jail not just at great cost to the taxpayer, but also at great cost to those who could have rehabilitated themselves and rejoined free society sooner. So Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Justice Safety Valve Act.

Action: clemency for Lee Wollard, and an end to racially-motivated policing.

First things first. In 2008, a Florida resident named Orville "Lee" Wollard allowed his daughter's boyfriend to stay in their home -- then found the young man was stealing prescription meds (Mr. Wollard had just had surgery) and had hit their daughter. He told the young man to leave, but the young man attacked and injured him instead, then left with their daughter; hours later, the young man was acting out in their other, younger daughter's room. Mr. Wollard fired a shot into the wall, and that finally prompted the young man to leave -- but that action got Mr. Wollard a mandatory-minimum 20-year sentence even the judge said was too harsh. No use saying he should have taken the plea deal, because I can't say I would have been as restrained as Mr. Wollard if it were my house. So Change.org helps you tell Florida Gov. Rick Scott to grant clemency to Mr. Wollard, though Mr. Wollard might have a better shot if Charlie Crist (who is more acquainted with the quality of mercy) retakes the Governor's mansion.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to stem the tide of racially-motivated police actions in this country, then Moms Rising helps you do that. Mr. Obama has made sympathetic noises about the "significant racial disparities" "in everything from enforcing drug policy to applying the death penalty to pulling people over," but as usual with Mr. Obama, you want to see good works more than good words -- not that good words are entirely insignificant, coming from the President. The Moms Rising petition, like others, calls for more disclosure of race-related statistics from the Department of Justice, more training for police officers so they don't resort to excessive force, investigations into discriminatory police actions, and reforming the process by which municipalities receive weapons from our national military. And most of what's listed (maybe not "increased funding for the DOJ's Office for Civil Rights") is well within the purview of the Executive branch and won't require a note from Super-President McConnell.

Action: prisoner transfers, clean water, and militarized police.

Firedoglake helps you tell American Governors to stop sending their states' prisoners to out-of-state private prisons. I presume Governors do this because of overcrowding, but we can deal with overcrowding in other ways. We could, for example, focus on rehabilitating drug addicts rather than merely imprisoning them; certainly we could stop locking up small-time non-violent drug users on absurd mandatory minimum sentences. Shipping prisoners to private prisons could be a worthwhile option in isolated instances -- if our state governments were ensuring private prisons delivered good service to begin with. They're not, or else private prisons wouldn't charge exorbitant rates for prisoner phone calls, for example. That's exactly the kind of thing a corporation does when no one's fulfilling their oversight duty. And note that I said "in isolated instances" -- shipping prisoners across the country keeps them away from their loved ones, which hurts their chances at rehabilitation. Yes, I still believe in rehabilitation. A certain Someone may have taught me a little about that.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's HB 1565 would amend the state's 1937 Clean Streams Law to read that "(t)he use or installation of riparian buffers and riparian forest buffers shall not be required." Required for what, you ask? Well, first, what's a riparian buffer? A riparian buffer is, essentially, a strip of forest planted around a stream to protect it from pollution -- whether that pollution comes from development or agriculture. These buffers do wind up filtering out many of the pesticides and sentiments that threaten the health of streams and the wildlife living in those streams; they also require rather little maintenance after they're put in, and they also shade the water, reduce flood damage, produce alternative crops, and increase the value of the land. So why would anyone want to make such buffers "optional"? What superior water management method has eclipsed it? The answers are, respectively, "because developers want the land" and "none." Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state Rep to reject HB 1565, and keep our streams clean.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop the flow of military weapons to local police forces, then Roots Action still helps you do that. We haven't forgotten, I trust, the show of excessive force from the Ferguson (MO) police department against those peacefully protesting the shooting of Michael Brown, but we also don't presume that police officers really want to hide behind all that Transformerama -- we imagine most police want to do a good job, and that they must earn the trust of the communities they serve to do so. But if the Pentagon keeps handing out billions of dollars in war weapons to local police departments, then our police departments will slip back into old habits, just like you or I would in similar circumstances. Thankfully, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) has introduced the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which would slow the flow of heavy artillery like armored vehicles, high-calibre automatic weapons, and armed drones to our police departments. How will police protect themselves, you ask? By getting to know the communities they serve, just like in the old days.

Action: oil rail car safety, and smarter federal drug sentencing.

The federal Department of Transportation, having declared trains shipping oil an "imminent hazard" to the general public, has decided to issue new regulations governing their safety -- but, ho hum, oil and rail corporations oppose them, because money I mean big gummint overreach I mean JOBZ!!!!! But I bet the good citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia -- who had their drinking water fouled by 15 derailed oil cars in April -- would feel differently, as would those who've had their lives disrupted by the four other serious oil train-related accidents in America since the beginning of 2013. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of Transportation to adopt the most vigorous rules possible. The DOT plan isn't perfect, and the Sierra Club action alert makes it easy for you to ask them to do better, but their plan does mandate that oil transport corporations notify the public and local first responders when one of their trains rolls through. Oil and rail corporations who squeal SOSHULIZM!!!!!! or TEH JOBZ TERRORIZTZ!!!! need to explain how corporations telling folks they'll be moving dangerous stuff through their neighborhood is "socialist" or "terrorist," as opposed to some other adjective one might use, like "reasonable."

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to support S. 1410, the Smarter Sentencing Act, then Families Against Mandatory Minimums still helps you do that. S. 1410 has 32 Senate sponsors, including six Republicans, four of whom you'd expect (Lee of Utah, Paul of Kentucky, Flake of Arizona, Cruz of Texas) and two you wouldn't (Johnny Isaakson? Ron Freaking Johnson?); its House companion, H.R. 3382, has 50 sponsors, including Paul Ryan and 13 other Republicans, and these days that's about as bipartisan as things get. The Smarter Sentencing Act doesn't end mandatory minimum sentences, but does reduce a lot of mandatory drug sentences, and also allows judges to sentence lowest-level drug offenders below mandatory minimums -- plus it makes the crack cocaine sentencing reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive. The die-hard tough-on-crime crowd may be soothed by the fact that the bill only affects non-violent drug offenders. They may also be soothed by the fact that the bill reduces the amount of taxpayer money we waste locking up people who aren't that much of a threat to society. Of course, many of these die-harders are just haters, but no one ever said fishing for souls would be easy.

Action: war in Iraq, farmworkers' health, and mandatory minimums.

NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to resolve the ongoing clusterfrack in Iraq through peaceful means. "Peaceful means" excludes air strikes, by the way. War hawks may lament that the American people don't have the stomach to put boots on the ground in Iraq, but that recommends us, frankly, and who among those war hawks would ever have clean drawers if we deployed them to Iraq? (They certainly wouldn't have clean drawers with Halliburton doing their laundry, amirite?) So what are "peaceful means"? Oh, gosh, just what are the alternatives to bombing the stuffing out of everything? Well, just for starters, how about working with the U.N. and NGOs to get humanitarian aid to the oppressed populations of Iraq? Or negotiating with all the region's nations, not just the ones we like, for a political solution? More guns and more bombs ain't gonna do the job, though -- just so happens that ISIS is inflicting its pain on good Iraqis with, guess what, American weapons stolen (or, perhaps, "stolen") from the Iraqi government. I sure hope that wasn't part of the plan.

Meanwhile, the EPA has proposed updating rules aiming to protect farmworkers from pesticide exposure -- which sickens thousands of them annually -- and CREDO helps you tell the EPA to protect farmworkers with the most vigorous rules possible. Specifically, you'll ask the EPA to provide more access to personal protective equipment for farmers, to mandate more safety training, to restrict farmworkers from pesticide-treated fields until they're safe, and to enact a minimum age of 16 for farmworkers. That last item, believe it or not, would be a first -- farmworkers are, sad to say, the red-headed stepchildren of the American workforce, partly due to their exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act. The big agricultural corporations -- who have already cowed the EPA into rubber-stamping harmful pesticides -- oppose further restrictions, of course, but let them defend their position. Let them argue that safety training harms workers, or that respiratory masks just make workers uppity, or that kids under 16 learn character from ingesting carcinogens. Hell, let them explain how their alleged "right to farm" trumps farm workers' real right not to be poisoned by their work.

Finally, a change.org petition helps you petition Attorney General Eric Holder for clemency for one Roderick "Rudd" Walker, currently serving life in prison for conspiracy to sell LSD. You have no need to act because of your shared admiration for the Grateful Dead or jewelry-makers, for while no one disputes that LSD is yet another drug that you shouldn't abuse lest you find yourself unable to function in society, a judge sentenced Mr. Walker to life in prison without parole for conspiracy to sell LSD. Hardly a drug kingpin actively depriving other folks of their freedom, he wasn't even caught with any LSD on him, and got put behind bars almost entirely on the testimony of others who were themselves trying to ratchet down their own jail time, which all sounds like a big bowl of CYA to me. Giving this man life in prison without parole (and he's already served 12 years of that sentence) is like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer, and then missing the ant. Mr. Walker may be yet another victim of the mandatory minimum sentence, but as a non-violent drug offender, he may yet receive clemency from the Obama Administration. But only if we say something.

Action: tax policy, and smarter sentencing.

H.R. 4935, the perhaps optimistically-titled Child Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2014, purports to end the "marriage penalty" by expanding the CTC to higher-income married couples, which I don't necessarily oppose, and indexes CTC income thresholds and credits to inflation, which I certainly support. But H.R. 4935 does not extend the lowering of the income threshold, meaning that, after 2017, you'll have to make $15,000 annually to get the refund, which doesn't make it as much of a help to the downtrodden as it's supposed to be, does it? I suppose Republicans think if you're not making $15,000 annually, then you're just not working hard enough, end of story -- a position which might be more than heartless in a world where corporations don't go far out of their Way not to hire people. Sadly, that's the world we live in, so such a position would be heartless. But down with them and up with us: RESULTS helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Child Tax Credit remains a tool for folks to ameliorate and escape poverty.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to vote on the Smarter Sentencing Act (H.R. 3382 and S. 1410, for those of you keeping score at home) before they adjourn for the month of August. Don't let your Congressfolk tell you they have higher priorities than the Smarter Sentencing Act, when the vast body of evidence instructs us that Congress has no priorities. The Smarter Sentencing Act would give judges leeway in ignoring mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug criminals, would extend the Fair Sentencing Act's crack cocaine sentence reforms to those who received sentences before the Act's passage, and would reduce many other mandatory minimums. Note, also, the bipartisan nature of this bill -- it would be hard to get further apart ideologically in Congress than House lead sponsor Raul Labrador, the Idaho Republican, and Senate lead sponsor Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat. Unless you're talking the distance between Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee, or Richard Blumenthal and Ron Johnson -- who are, naturally, also Senate sponsors of the bill.

Around the table: more stories about health care and crime.

Ho hum, the national percentage of Americans without health insurance is the lowest since at least 2008 -- and has dropped almost five percentage points in the last year. Of course, it'd be lower if we had Medicare-for-All -- much lower, as in zero -- and the Affordable Care Act will remain a punching bag for Republicans, even though it's as Republican a bill as they come, but we should celebrate progress, I suppose.

Good citizens of Detroit have begun to protest the city's water emergency, and the police have begun to arrest them. You won't be surprised to learn that federal investment in municipal water has sharply decreased over the last 40 years, or that the state-created "emergency managers" -- unelected bureaucrats in charge of imposing austerity regimes on good citizens -- "manage" almost exclusively poor/black areas of Michigan. We're still awaiting the shutoff notice for the Joe Louis Arena, given that they're over $50,000 in arrears on their water bill, which is over $49,850 more in arrears than other good folks getting their water shut off.

Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who served several years in the big house for corruption-related charges, now thinks our collective mania for throwing people in jail is a bit overdone. Remember that I try to avoid bashing people for coming to their senses about a bad policy after it affects them -- after all, how many lives can we lead at once? And Mr. Cunningham's case against mandatory minimums and other forms of madness would be powerful, because he clearly has some stories to tell -- if the "liberal" media is ever interested in relating them, that is.

First Read's Chuck Todd nails it in re the House's lawsuit against President Obama: "The lawsuit focuses on the White House’s decision to delay the employer mandate, which happened in 2013. If the one-year delay was so egregious, why wait a year to address it with this lawsuit?" The only smart thing about what Republicans have done here (no, it's not bringing up their bottomless hatred of the Affordable Care Act again) is they've slammed Mr. Obama for doing something most people didn't like -- and something a Republican President would have happily done for his corporate cronies, no less. Recall how well their ZOMB OBAMACAREZ CUTZ TEH MEDICAREZ!!!! line worked for them in 2010, and how quickly they moved to destroy Medicare afterward.

Finally, the Washington Post alleges that the immigrant children crisis at the border somehow makes immigration less of a sure winning issue for Democrats. My objections to the article number approximately one per point made, but let's just say I must have missed the part where Republicans actually give a damn about immigrant kids, or about anything other than criticizing Mr. Obama, and the"liberal" media really needs to get out of the habit of declaring everything excellent news for Republicans, because it gets in the way of reporting.

Action: campaign finance reform, prison privatization, and mandatory minimums.

First things first. Word on the street is that today the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up Sen. Udall's Constitutional amendment, S.J.Res. 19, an amendment which would turn corporate "personhood" on its head and allow our state and federal governments to make laws concerning campaign financing -- laws including limits on how much folks can give. Why? Because corporations ain't people, and money ain't speech -- it's a shame we have to constantly articulate the obvious, but that's the age we live in. The Friends Committee for National Legislation helps you tell your Senators to support S.J.Res. 19 and reduce the influence of money in campaigns so that the influence of people can increase. Also, Free Speech for People provides a toll-free phone number, 1.866.937.7983, with which you may call your Senators and either urge them to support the amendment or thank them for their support; you can find out which camp they're in here. I really don't know what more can be said to the amendment's opponents, in a world where two-thirds of rank-and-file Republicans think the Supreme Court got it wrong in Citizens United v. FEC. Do they really think corporate influence in politics has made everything hunky-dory for Americans?

Meanwhile, two Temple University scholars wrote a study telling us that private prisons are better than public ones -- without telling us that private prison corporations funded the study. The three largest private prison corporations, as it happens. Well, I guess you get what you pay for! Hence Color of Change helps you tell Temple's President to investigate the matter. Private prisons are a lot like charter schools -- they take public money, they cut services and salaries to look "efficient," and they get to cherry-pick which prisoners they'll take, which makes them look much better than they are. Don't let right-wingers con you into inaction by saying come on, how are colleges supposed to write studies if they don't take money from corporations who'll give it to them? There used to be money for all that, you know, but during the 1980s, our government cut taxes on millionaire income from 70% to 26% and slashed public spending on higher education; if they hadn't done these things, colleges would be rather less tempted to take corporate money to do research. And even if there were "no money," right is right and wrong is wrong, and taking money from corporations to do research in which they have an obvious interest in the outcome is wrong. Again, it's a shame we constantly have to articulate the obvious.

Finally, Families Against Mandatory Minimums still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3382, the Smarter Sentencing Act. The Smarter Sentencing Act doesn't end mandatory minimums, but does reduce mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders and also makes the crack cocaine sentence reductions Congress enacted in 2010 retroactive for prisoners sentenced before then. The bill also gives judges more leeway to ignore mandatory minimums under certain circumstances -- which is why we have judges in the first place, right? In an ideal world, we'd be rehabilitating folks addicted to drugs before we imprison them -- or we'd rehabilitate them as we imprison them, at least. But the private prison industry hates that whole idea: after all, if they rehabilitated prisoners, how could they make money off imprisoning them again when hit a downward spiral? But the Smarter Sentencing Act at least recognizes the difference between non-violent and violent drug offenders, and recognizes also the value judges have in a civilized society, and we're certainly better off getting a little part of our civilization back than none at all -- though we must then commit again to get all of our civilization back from the elites who've taken it from us.

Action: ANWR drilling, and saner drug sentencing.

We managed to hold off oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all through Tha Bush Mobb's tenure in power, but a few Senators are trying to open up ANWR again, even though ANWR is home to the areas where the caribou and polar bear and musk oxen raise their young, even though our best estimates back in the day told us that drilling for the oil underneath the reserve would barely affect either our oil supply or our gas prices. That leaves only one motive to drill: to make oil corporation CEOs rich, a motive which, sadly, too many of our Congressfolk find persuasive, especially when it guarantees big oil corporate donations to their campaigns. But along comes S. 1695, a Maria Cantwell (D-WA)/Mark Kirk (R-IL) production, which would designate the Coastal Plain of the ANWR as wilderness, meaning no oil drillers could ever go in there and tear up the land just to make a few bucks. I guess S. 1695's opponents would argue JOBZ!!!!! But these are mostly folks who make a living slashing jobs to boost their own profits, so you can safely ignore them -- or point out that there is, in fact, more than one industry that employs people in America. The Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your Senators to support S. 1695, and keep the ANWR Coastal Plain safe for wildlife.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Sentencing Commission held a hearing on sentencing retroactivity last week, hearing from (among others) federal judges, the U.S. Probation Office, and the Department of Justice, with the third entity, naturally, offering the most pushback. But drug sentences have been too high for almost everyone for a very long time, and increasing punishment while ignoring rehabilitation is absurd, since the people whose addictions have robbed them of their freedom are the least likely to be deterred by more punishment. And given the increasing privatization of our prisons over the last few decades, you have to wonder if that was the idea all along -- that is, if "tough on crime" politicians conceived of higher sentences for drug users as a way of delivering more prisoners, and thus more taxpayer money, to crony private prison corporations. I mean, I hate to think so little of people, but sometimes I can't help it. But Americans across the political spectrum have wearied of bigger sentences for everything, so FAMM helps you tell the U.S. Sentencing Commission to apply new drug sentences to old prisoners without limitations. If you have friends and family in prison who would be affected, now's the time to speak up.

Action: campaign finance, clemency, and net neutrality.

Common Cause helps you tell your Senators to support S.J.Res. 19, which would amend the Constitution to permit state and federal governments to regulate campaign finance. The Senate has already begun debating the amendment, and, well, let's just say I wish I never saw this compilation of certain right-wing complaints about the proposed amendment. Sen. Cruz (R-TX) claims, without evidence, that the amendment would "repeal the First Amendment." Does it allow our government to put you in jail for speaking out against it? Does it establish a state religion? No to both of these questions? Then it does not repeal the First Amendment, because money is not speech. And, actually, the amendment would strengthen the First Amendment, because it would prevent people with money from drowning out the rest of us in the public square. But even more offensive than the notion that the amendment would muzzle "pastors" (it wouldn't) or that it's just like the Alien and Sedition Acts (it's not) or their invocation of Saul Alinsky (seriously?) is the sudden complaining about disclosure. Why isn't simple campaign finance disclosure on the table, amendment opponents ask? Well, they should talk to the Republican Senators who've filibustered it repeatedly over the last four years.

Meanwhile, Heather Minor has begun a petition on change.org with which you may ask President Obama to pardon her father, Randy Minor, who became addicted to methamphetamine in 1998 and apparently planned to manufacture more to support his habit, but got life without parole instead. I'm no Libertarian on drug issues -- I don't think we should make any drug we like and then let the "free market" decide what's best, because drug addiction is antithetical to freedom -- but I also think we should expend more effort rehabilitating nonviolent drug offenders. Yes, I know that would make it more difficult to put the big drug kingpins in jail, but nobody said democracy was supposed to be easy, and if your values don't inconvenience you, they're probably not worth having anyway. And even if we do put drug addicts in jail, do we put them in prison for life without parole? Are we that insecure in our manhood as a culture? Jesus Mary and Joseph even Mr. Minor's judge said, from the stand, that the sentence "far exceeds whatever punishment would be appropriate." And though Mr. Obama has been parsimonious with the pardon pen so far -- far more so than any recent President and how much love from the right wing has that gotten him? -- his Justice Department has moved to make these sentences more appropriate, so he may get on board.

Finally, I may be about the last person to see John Oliver's hilarious and inspiring pro-net neutrality rant, and I say that because it's apparently provoked thousands of Americans to send their pro-net neutrality comments (or perhaps I should say "pro-preventing cable company fuckery" comments?) to the FCC. (Seriously, watch the video to the end, when Mr. Oliver commands an army of internet trolls to "for once in your life...focus your indiscriminate rage" on doing something good, like telling the FCC to keep the internet as a place where everyone can make themselves heard, without having to pay tribute to Comcast or Verizon.) The link at the beginning of this paragraph helps you contact the FCC, but Free Press also helps you tell your Senator to sign on to Sen. Markey's letter demanding that the FCC preserve the internet as it is -- as a place where you, and not some corporation, determine what your internet experience is like, as a place where you can make your voice heard without the sanction of some corporate entity, as a place where you can start a blog or a business with fewer obstacles than any of your forebears have ever had in human history. The internet is the level playing field both conservatives and liberals have dreamed of all their lives. It would be a shame to trash it so a handful of big telecom CEOs can gild the plumbing in their seventh vacation home.

Action: smarter sentencing, mortgage modification, and antibiotic abuse.

Word on the street is that Senate Majority Leader Reid would like to bring S. 1410, the Smarter Sentencing Act, up for a vote this year. S. 1410 would cut federal drug-related mandatory sentences in half, give federal judges more flexibility in sentencing drug offenders, and make the Fair Sentencing Act's new mandatory sentences for crack cocaine-related offenses retroactive. The whole mandatory minimum sentencing push was like a collective fever dream for Americans -- if we just make sentences absurdly heavy, we'll win the war on drugs! -- but it was a nightmare for small-time drug offenders, and folks across the ideological spectrum have begun to see what Justice Kennedy saw many years ago, when he declared that mercy was, in fact, a valuable quality for a civilized society to possess. S. 1410 doesn't do everything you might like it to do -- it doesn't actually repeal any mandatory minimums, and adds new ones for sexual abuse and domestic violence, which victims' rights groups in both areas have opposed -- but the bill does represent progress. Families Against Mandatory Minimums provides more information here, and you can use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call your Senator, or use FAMM's email tool.

Meanwhile, you may know that the Federal Housing Financing Agency has blocked home mortgage modification for Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed mortgages for many years, largely because its old "acting" director, Ed DeMarco, appeared ideologically predisposed against using government power on behalf of government's owners, the American people. He actually said that mortgage modification -- a tool folks can use to write down the principal on their second home, by the way -- represented a "moral hazard," though banksters crashing an entire economy by issuing bad mortgages and then lying about them was, apparently, not a moral hazard. Anyway, Mr. DeMarco's been out of his job for almost five months, and his successor, ex-U.S. Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina, still hasn't allowed homeowners to negotiate their mortgage down to market value, stay in their homes, and provide a stable source of tax revenue to localities, among other benefits. I thought this was a priority of the Obama Administration -- but then again, so were net neutrality and GMO-labeling. All together now: it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. Color of Change helps you tell FHFA Director Watt to allow mortgage writedowns for needy families.

Speaking of food labeling, Dave Molidor has provided a petition via change.org that helps you tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to mandate that food-processing corporations label meats made from animals fed with antibiotics. Yes, good Americans, we have opened another front on our battle against antibiotic abuse, and though I doubt Mr. Vilsack cares very much what anyone other than his corporate cronies think -- this, after witnessing his approval of the "Roundup-Ready" Frankenseed, his opposition to genetically-modified food labeling, and his attempts to injure organic labeling standards, among other sins -- we still might as well fight the good fight, and force him to come up with some flatugasm about why he won't do it. Now with four out of five antibiotics in America going to nominally-healthy feed animals trapped in factory farms, you might protest that it's not likely that folks will be able to find antibiotic-free meat. Except that we already do -- and once we can get the meat clearly-labeled, food producers will find it more desirable to earn the label, thus earning more customers, thus earning more money. At least, that's how the free market's supposed to work, right?

Action: GMO labeling, absurd drug sentencing, and product safety.

Rep. Pompeo (R-KS) has introduced H.R. 4432, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act. Which it's not: H.R. 4432 would prohibit states, counties, or municipalities from enacting mandatory labeling laws -- now there is some small-government, states' rights conservatism for you! -- and would allow big food corporations to slap "natural" labels on their GMO food products, since the definition of the word "natural" is a matter of such intense debate. The bill would "permit" corporations to label their Frankenfoods voluntarily, but as we know, standards for voluntary labeling of GMO foods already exist, and no food producers are using them. And, as Steve Benen instructs us, Mr. Pompeo has also tried to scuttle a household product safety database and an EPA greenhouse-gas polluter database, all apparently at the behest of Koch Industries, which just so happens to be headquartered in his district. There's serving your constituents, and then there's serving your constituents up to your big donors. The Organic Consumers Association helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 4432.

Meanwhile, Robert Shipp is serving a life sentence for selling cocaine. No one argues that Mr. Shipp shouldn't pay for his crime (which should go without saying, but seriously, some people can't read), but even the judge forced by law to hand down the sentence objected, after noting that Mr. Shipp's suppliers got comparatively light sentences. Mr. Shipp was, according to his sister, an honors student walking the straight-and-narrow until his brother's murder, which sent Mr. Shipp into a tailspin as it might do you or I; his brother's murderer, incredibly, got a mere 20 year sentence, then got out in 10. Drug addiction keeps you from exercising your rights and reaching your potential as an American, so I don't support legalization generally (though marijuana shouldn't be a Schedule I drug), but certainly we should punish murderers more than we punish nonviolent drug offenders. So change.org helps you petition President Obama and Attorney General Holder for clemency. Mr. Obama has shown some capacity for mercy in this regard, and, lately, so has society.

Finally, H.R. 4361, the Sunshine in Litigation Act, would make it a lot harder for corporations to hide damaging information in legal cases if that information is in the public interest. This bill comes attached to a news hook, as we're only just now finding out (thanks to confidentiality agreements in settlements) that General Motors's bad ignition switches may have killed as many as 13 good folks since 2005; if you've contemplated buying a GM car since then, you might have wanted to know that -- and if you've lost a family member to a bad GM ignition switch, you might have wanted to exact justice. H.R. 4361 would restrict confidentiality agreements in court cases if said agreements obscure "facts relevant to the protection of public health or safety." And before right-wingers squeal about TEH END UV TEH PRIVACYZ!!!!, note that judges can still enforce orders that preserve privacy if public safety isn't at risk, or even if a judge can justify letting "a specific and substantial interest in maintaining...confidentiality" prevail. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4361.

Action: voting rights, generic drug warnings, and saner sentencing.

H.R. 3899/S. 1945, the Voting Rights Amendment Act, would plug the hole the Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 essentially by inserting a new formula for determining which states and municipalities have to get changes in their election law pre-cleared by our federal government -- states and municipalities that have broken federal election law five times in the previous 15 years would be subject to pre-clearance. You may know that right after the Supreme Court worked their will in Shelby County v. Holder, a lot of states and municipalities rushed to put new voting restrictions in place. If the Voting Rights Amendment Act passed, many of those would have to get those restrictions pre-cleared, and the Justice Department would likely strike many of them down -- but not if Congress waits another few months to pass it, which I certainly wouldn't put past them. But again: it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. Common Cause helps you tell Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act with a quickness.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell the FDA to mandate that generic drugs carry the latest safety warnings. What's that, you say? Generic drugs don't already do that? No, they do not, even though they account for over four out of five prescriptions, because of a strange loophole that actually prevents generic drug manufacturers from updating their safety labeling unless the FDA specifically tells them to do so. The FDA would actually like to close this loophole, but, alas, generic drug corporations wouldn't, and I sure hope it's for some reason other than because they'd have to be just as accountable for the problems their drugs cause as name-brand drugs. In any case, allowing generic drug makers to continue to evade accountability essentially amounts to a hostage situation -- you want the cheaper drugs, you take the risk, they seem to be saying to drug consumers. Of course, the FDA works for those consumers, at least nominally, so the FDA can compel generic drug makers to do the right thing. It's how our government ought to work, after all.

Finally, Carrie Tyler of Las Vegas, NV has started a petition on change.org with which you may tell President Obama to pardon her brother Timothy, who received a mandatory double-life-without-parole sentence for selling some pot and LSD to a friend-whoops-police-informant, solely because he'd had two prior drug convictions for which he didn't even do time. Note to the haters: no one argues that Mr. Tyler should have "gotten off" for his crime, but double life without parole for one pot and LSD sale? That's not a punishment; that's a bludgeoning, and how is it supposed to rehabilitate him? And how is his imprisonment getting the taxpayers (who've footed a half mil for Mr. Tyler's 20-years-so-far in jail) their money's worth? Now, Mr. Obama has been parsimonious with the pardon pen during his tenure, but he has lately granted clemency to eight offenders serving mandatory minimums under the old crack/powder cocaine sentencing regime, and seems to be looking to do more in this area, so perhaps he'll notice this petition's 200,000-plus signers so-far.

Action: smarter sentencing, robocalls, and paycheck fairness.

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

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

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

Action: mandatory minimums and executive pay.

On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder outlined how the Obama Administration would address mandatory minimum sentencing. The Administration plans to let U.S. Attorneys develop more flexible guidelines for filing federal charges, change the Justice Department's charging policies so that non-violent drug offenders get fewer mandatory minimum sentences, and expand the compassionate release program's eligibility criteria so that older, non-violent inmates can get out a bit earlier. The Executive branch has the power to do these things (so spare me the AMURIKAN CAESAR!!!! bit, right-wingers), but Congress will have to do more as well. Hence S. 619/H.R 1695, the Justice Safety Valve Act, which would give federal courts more discretion to vary from mandatory minimum laws, you know, like judges ought to be able to do. FAMM still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support S. 619. Also, S. 1410, the Smart Sentencing Act, would cut mandatory sentences for drug crimes and apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively; I have no email tool for that, but you can always call your Congressfolk.

Meanwhile, a mere three years after the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed, the SEC is apparently still debating whether and how to enforce the Dodd-Frank requirement that publicly-traded corporations disclose executive pay in relation to those corporations' workers' pay. What's the hang-up? Big corporations don't want to have to disclose the money, that's why! Probably they think it's some sort of First Amendment issue, that no one has the right to know what I make, but the SEC does have the right (indeed, the duty) to protect shareholders, and shareholders want to know how much money their executives make, and not just because executives get paid in their money. And it's been almost five years since the banksters took a dump all over the economy; why, exactly, should they still get veto power over the people's will as expressed to and by their representatives in Congress? USAction helps you tell the SEC to implement regulations forcing publicly-traded corporations to disclose executive pay.

Even the Washington Post says a Koch brothers-owned Tribune Company "doesn't bode well for the kind of fact-based journalism that most American newspapers strive to practice." The Post surely overestimates its own commitment to any "kind of fact-based journalism," but they're right anyway -- if the Koch brothers had the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times and the Hartford Courant and the Tribune Company's five other newspapers, we'd have another right-wing media mogul getting more "favorable" coverage of corporate corruption and pollution, and they don't need more apologists than they already have. We'll also continue to have less local news, as we have whenever one entity owns more than one newspaper or media outlet. Worse, the bankrupt Tribune Company seems eager to sell to the Kochs. We've already told the FCC to put a stop to this madness, but we can head this off at the pass, too, by telling the Tribune Company not to sell to the Koch brothers.

Closer to home, La Belle, PA, once had a coal mine, but now has a coal ash disposal site, where three corporations dump coal ash without the folks operating the site doing so much as covering it with tarp. That means coal ash dust blows everywhere -- and coal ash, you may recall, contains arsenic, mercury, and lead, among other heavy metals. Thus La Belle's population of around 200 is falling due to a higher-than-normal concentration of eye, mouth, and brain cancers. (Seriously, read that article -- it's bad when people take showers and see all that soot in the bottom of the tub.) The Sierra Club helps you tell PA Gov. Corbett and his Department of Environmental Protection to deny any permits to dump coal ash in La Belle. Nobody should suffer from cancer and respiratory problems anywhere, ever, even if they live in a town no one's heard of. Or, as one La Belle resident puts it, "I am pro-business. I believe in working for a living. But who the hell has the right to make a living making me sick?"

Speaking of nasty stuff getting inside you, Moms Rising still helps you tell major retailers to stop selling products with hazardous chemicals. We still figure that most of these retailers don't really know what's in the products on their shelves, and would be as appalled as we are if they found out -- and might even take corrective action. Of course, some folks tell us that, by demanding that retailers take hazardous products off their shelves, we're interfering with their ability to survive in this economy. But is that really the kind of world we want -- a world where we make money poisoning people, a world where we can change nothing because someone, somewhere, would lose money? (And please understand by "someone, somewhere" I mean "the corporation's CEO.") Flame "retardants" in couches, BPA in plastics and food can linings, formaldehyde in shirts, phthalates in flooring -- if we can dream better, why don't we do better? And why don't we deserve better?

Last but certainly not least, Reps. Scott (D-VA) and Massie (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 1695, the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, in the House of Representatives. Of course, Sens. Leahy (D-VT) and Paul (R-KY) introduced its companion bill, S. 619, not long ago. Both bills would allow judges to give sentences shorter than the mandatory minimums for federal crimes. Imagine that! Letting judges judge! That's better than letting testosterone-addled politicians hamstring judges from judging -- and as the American people are wearying of that sort of posturing, so, too, are politicians from both political parties. Of course, nobody thinks "people shouldn't pay for their crimes"; we think people should get the right sentence for their crimes. No one should spend decades behind bars for nonviolent drug crimes so some politician can beat his chest in public, and not everyone needs to be clobbered over the head to change their ways, either. Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your House Reps to support H.R. 1695.

S. 619, the Justice Safety Valve Act, would allow federal judges to sentence any non-violent offender to less time in jail than federal mandatory minimum laws would otherwise allow. Federal judges have had this power for almost 20 years in re drug offenders, but S. 619 would expand that power. About time, really -- why do we even have judges if we're going to tell them they can't hand out a sentence that fits the crime and protects the public? And S. 619 would also make judges both justify their decision to hand out such a sentence and notify all parties involved of their intent to do so, so they can respond. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has sponsored the bill, reminding us that mandatory minimums "cost() the taxpayers money without making them any safer." Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), the longtime Senate Judiciary Chair, has also co-sponsored the bill, thus putting the heft of his office behind it. And it's not a "get out of jail free" card, because the offenders still get a sentence. FAMM helps you tell your Senators to support S. 619.

Meanwhile, out in California, SB 323 would ensure that non-profits receiving state money adhere to state anti-discrimination laws. Seems common-sensical, doesn't it? Sadly, that hasn't been the "common sense" of most recent government thinking about the matter -- whether out of a desire to get more people help more quickly or just gum things up, Tha Bush Mobb allowed faith-based organizations to take federal money while continuing to discriminate against folks their "faith" told them weren't good enough, and the President of Super Happy Hopey Changey Bipartisan Fun Time Land has been no better. Again, it's left to California to lead, on an issue that's hardly "liberal," no less -- yes, SB 323 would protect ethnicities and gays from discrimination, but every time I say "if you take state money you should obey state laws" I feel like I should add "just like we did in the old days." If you're a California resident, Equality California helps you tell your state legislators to support SB 323.

Finally, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has created a SignOn petition helping you tell President Obama not to cut Social Security and Medicare. The budget he plans to submit to Congress this week reportedly does both, and Mr. Obama reportedly doesn't even support the Social Security and Medicare cuts in his own budget, but, as you know, he is the President of Super Happy Hopey Changey Bipartisan Fun Time Land, and so he has to make sacrifices to the Republicans on our behalf. Bet he'll say it hurts him more than it hurts us, too! Seriously, there's no need to unravel the 13-dimensional chess game he's supposedly playing here -- the Republicans rejected his budget right away (since it couples the cuts with indeterminate tax hikes), but folks will more likely remember that Barack Obama proposed to cut Social Security and Medicare, and independents won't cleave to Democrats because they feel sorry for them. Do good works, reap the rewards, that's what I say.

Back in 2010, Pfc. Bradley Manning leaked over 750,000 restricted documents (including some infamous diplomatic cables) to Wikileaks, and he then endured nine months of solitary confinement, being arraigned only last month and ultimately pleading guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him -- but not to the charge of "aiding the enemy." Firedoglake helps you ask Maj. Gen. Linnington, who will convene Manning’s court martial, to drop that last charge. You need not consider Mr. Manning a hero to oppose this charge; you need only read the relevant part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which punishes soldiers who consort with "the enemy." Not only hasn't Congress authorized war against Wikileaks, but broadcasting information that terrorists might read hardly qualifies as consorting with "the enemy," even "indirectly" -- otherwise, they'll think of something really outlandish, like accusing good Americans exercising their First Amendment rights against some crony capitalist's war of "aiding the enemy." Oh, wait: that was that whole winter of 2002-2003, wasn't it?

Meanwhile, S. 619, the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, would allow federal judges to hand out sentences that are shorter than mandatory minimum sentences when a court finds that a shortened sentence wouldn't jeopardize public safety, and also when a judge takes into account relevant factors, like a defendant's limited role in a crime. Why, that sounds suspiciously like the reason we have judges in the first place! "Safety valves" already exist for drug-related federal crimes, but have given relief to only about 80,000 non-violent drug offenders since 1995, and with federal prisons well over 100% of capacity, we need less tough-guy posturing from our government, not more. People are getting tired of that anyway, I think. Note well that S. 619's main authors are the current Senate Judiciary Chair, Democrat Pat Leahy, and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. I always thought Rand Paul was more a politician than his Dad, but I never dreamed some good would come of it. Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Senators to support S. 619.