Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning the Electoral College, "stalkerware," and nuclear waste storage.

Feel like abolishing the Electoral College? I bet you do! And not just because two of the last five Presidential election winners actually lost the popular vote, but because, by the evidence, the Electoral College has plainly failed, twice in the last two decades, to do what our Founders intended -- to keep someone completely unfit for office out of office. You'll no doubt hear from folks who say they think the states should have more of a say in politics, but I say you got two Senators. Wyoming gets two Senators, and California gets two Senators, though California has 50 times the population, so why isn't that enough? And you've no doubt heard of all the machinations that could happen if someone doesn't feel like leaving office -- that they could, for example, get sympathetic legislatures to simply declare the results invalid and appoint their own electors, for example. I'll admit this is feeling a lot less like a contested election than it did six months ago, or even one month ago, but let's make this right anyway. Change.org helps you tell Congress to abolish the Electoral College.

Meanwhile, with so much schooling now taking place remotely, thanks to this pandemic and our government's incompetence in handling it, a lot of schools have hastily resorted to test-taking apps that, well, have a lot of problems, like flagging kids for cheating if they look around or talk to themselves, or if the app's facial recognition software misidentifies them. And these apps are surprisingly hungry for your private information -- they want access to all data on your computer and listen in on all your communications. No wonder they call it "stalkerware"! And, hate to pile on, but who gets the shaft from facial recognition software the most? Folks of color, that's who! Yeah, we all know it's tough enough to teach 30 kids in the same room with you, let alone 30 kids from all over town at the same time, but "first, do no harm" ain't just for the Hippocratic Oath, and you can't help but wonder which app developing corporations saw a way into hoovering up all kinds of personal data you wouldn't otherwise let them touch. Hence Fight for the Future helps you tell schools and colleges to ban "stalkerware."

Finally, our Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC) wants to "temporarily" dump radioactive nuclear waste in West Texas, a plan so unpopular that even Texas's far-right Governor opposes it. Possibly he just wants it dumped in some blue state's backyard, but dumping ain't even half the problem -- transporting it from all over the country could expose virtually everyone who lives near ports and train tracks, trains and ships being susceptible to leaks, accidents, and sabotage. Not to pile on, but the area our NRC wants to use is a heavily-Latino neighborhood, and don't folks of color get the shaft enough already? Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our NRC to scuttle its proposal to allow "temporary" nuclear waste storage in West Texas. "Temporary" nuclear waste storage, by the way, is already illegal; chances are this scheme, if our NRC goes through with it, will be struck down in court, but you might not find much comfort in that if you've already had your water table poisoned by an accident in the meantime.

Action: concerning nuclear waste and corporate investment in police departments.

Our Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC) wants to reclassify some kinds of radioactive nuclear waste so that big corporations can dump it in landfills! Which means it'll eventually wind up in our drinking water and in our crops -- and in our air, if landfills incinerate the stuff! If any of your friends tell you changing this rule will "create jobs," go ahead and ask them how. "By giving executives more money to create jobs" is not an acceptable answer, since we all know by now that when we give executives more money they hoard it, not spend it -- which means they certainly don't spend it on creating jobs! This regulatory effort will kill jobs, in fact -- the disposal operations to which nuclear power corporations currently send their waste do hire people to do jobs, after all. So, in sum: it'll kill jobs, and you won't be able to breathe the air or drink the water or eat the food, but some executive somewhere will be able to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home! Unless we all send public comments to our NRC opposing their rule change, which Food and Water Watch helps you do.

Meanwhile, on the heels of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's charging one already-fired police officer with one charge in the killing of Breonna Taylor, Daily Kos helps you tell big corporations UPS, Ford, and Humana to divest from the Louisville police department. The Louisville police department should be able to do its work on behalf of the good citizens of Louisville with tax money anyway, and the fact that police and jails already eat up almost half of Louisville's budget suggests that we ought to give them less of that work. Seriously, if we followed a treatment model for drug addicts rather than a punitive one, we'd be spending considerably less tax money, wouldn't need corporate money, and Breonna Taylor would be alive today. (The police who killed her were ostensibly conducting a drug investigation, after all.) And there ain't nothing corporations fear like the Big Stick of Bad PR. I wish they feared the law more than that, to be honest, but we're gonna use the tools available to us even as we work on getting better tools.

Action: concerning various forms of Executive branch corruption.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to investigate how much taxpayer money (i.e., our money) is flowing right into our President's pockets. You'll recall how he planned to hold the next G20 summit at one of his own hotels, until popular outcry forced him to do differently, and you may also recall him saying that he's not "supposed to hate" the Saudi Arabian citizens who drop buku bucks at his hotels; even from these two examples, we can see the necessity of determining exactly how corrupt this President might be. The more cynical among us will no doubt chortle that we shouldn't be "surprised" he would do that, but remember that people who say "and you're surprised?" are advertising their own cynicism, and cynicism is evil. (They're also trying to tell you how much better they are than you, and you certainly don't have to take that.) We take it as gospel that politicians shouldn't profit from public service, because that warps the service they give to the public, and we shouldn't carve out an exception for arrogant billionaires.

In a peripherally-related note, Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect the Ukraine whistleblower's identity from our President and his cronies. Our President has repeatedly demanded that the public know the identity of the individual who first reported on that infamous phone call to the Ukraine President, but our first job as civilized people is to protect the whistleblower's identity from folks who might decide to threaten or kill said whistleblower. And no, this has literally nothing to do with our President's habeus corpus rights -- he has the right, as an American citizen, to confront his accuser in a court of law, but he has no right to out his accuser so his votaries can take matters into their own hands. This is exactly the risk every whistleblower takes when they confront the abuse of power, whether in government or the private sector. And as civilized people, we either protect those who confront the abuse of power, or we lose the right to call ourselves civilized. It's that simple.

Our Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC) would loosen regulations governing storage of radioactive waste, because what stimulates an economy more than letting some corporation bury nuclear waste in a shallow pit near an aquifer providing drinking water to good Americans? Sadly, too many Americans agree with big corporations that regulations are for LOOZERZ!!!!!, and when their loved ones get cancer from drinking the local water, they just blame Black Lives Matter or something. But the best part of all this? Our NRC is apparently considering changing the rules just so one waste management corporation in Texas can accept the most radioactive materials even though they don't have a license to handle them! Corruption isn't just about abusing the process to harass your potential opponents, or about redirecting taxpayer money to corporations you own, it's also about deforming the rules so your cronies can benefit. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our NRC to reject its plan to loosen nuclear waste storage regulations.

Action: concerning law and order, nuclear waste storage, and "free" trade.

You've been on a Greyhound bus, right? Well, Greyhound has lately gotten justly-bad PR by announcing that it'll continue to let Border Patrol agents board buses and harass non-white citizens without probable cause. Don't let right-wingers tell you TEH LIBRULZ WANTZ TEH IMMIGRANTZ TO RUN TEH FREEZ!!!!!, because if Border Patrol boards a Greyhound bus with a warrant, of course Greyhound should cooperate. Why do you suppose they'd come on board without a warrant? Because our government, from Tha Bush Mobb forward, has pretended that warrants are just an impediment to law enforcement doing its work. Hello! Getting a warrant is law enforcement doing its work! And using the spectre of TEH IMMIGRANTZ AND TEH CRIMEZ!!!! to justify breaking down protections that have helped sustain a civilized society for over two centuries is short-sighted at best and racist at worst. Hence the ACLU helps you tell Greyhound to (in the ACLU's colorful phrasing) "stop throwing passengers under the bus."

Meanwhile, our nuclear regulatory commission (or NRC) plans to start a federal nuclear waste dump in Andrews County, Texas. The NRC floated this plan once before, only to decide (after multitudinous negative public comments) not to pursue it, but in These Interesting Times, no idea is so awful that it can't pop up again and again like a zombie in desperate need of a head shot, so here we are again. If you're wondering how they're going to have a nuclear waste dump in one spot when we have nuclear power plants all over our country, well, they're going to transport nuclear waste by rail, which would be a splendid idea if trains never got into accidents. But wait, there's more! The Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water to millions of heartland Americans, ain't far away from the proposed dump site, so add "anyone who wants to drink clean water" to the list of Americans who should oppose this plan, which Public Citizen helps you do.

Finally, the USMCA trade agreement, which would replace the hated NAFTA, does some good -- particularly in its (eventual) dismantling of the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) system between the U.S. and Canada and the drastic curtailing of the ISDS system with Mexico. ISDS, as you know, allows foreign investors to take us to court whenever they claim our laws have "cost them money," and allows them to nullify our laws and exact tribute from the taxpayer when an ISDS tribunal finds in their favor. That's the sort of thing that should be offensive to any law-abiding citizen, particularly now that we are acutely aware of how little work investors actually do anymore. But USMCA could be better -- it could push for better enforcement of its clean air/clean water/worker safety provisions, and could eliminate corporate welfare handouts to big pharma corporations. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to make a better trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, family leave, and nuclear waste.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: we've told Gov. Wolf to call a special legislative session to pass redistricting reform, but that won't mean anything if the legislature screws up the reform process again, so Fair Districts PA helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to do the right thing during a special session on redistricting reform. One of those "leaders" -- House State Government Committee Chair Daryl Metcalfe -- gutted not one but two redistricting bills in his own committee, and when House leaders successfully kept future redistricting bills out of his committee, legislators from both parties swamped those bills with hundreds of amendments. So, yes, we're demanding they come back during their time off to do their job because they've done an abominable job so far. They could redeem themselves by doing a good job this month, however.

Meanwhile, as several right-wing Senators work on a plan to divert Social Security funding into a paid family leave plan -- anything not to raise taxes on their corporate paymasters! -- Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 337, the FAMILY Act. The FAMILY Act would finally bring paid family leave to America by establishing the Federal Family and Medical Leave Insurance Trust Fund within the Social Security Administration. Monthly benefits would range between $580 and $4000, depending on your income, and an 0.2 percent payroll tax (that's two-tenths of one percent, not "two percent," "liberal" media!) would fund it. So when your right-wing uncle says IZ TEH GUBMINT GOINGZ TO DO EVERYTHINGZ!!!!, remind him that our taxes pay for our benefits, which any of us could use. Just remember: you won't convince him you're right -- but you might convince anyone else who might be listening that you're right.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject the proposed placement of a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, then Food and Water Action still helps you do that. If you're tempted to respond well, you gotta put the waste somewhere, then you should ask yourself which is worse: storing nuclear waste in hardened containers near nuclear power plants, or transporting that waste across 44 American states and thus risking contamination from the inevitable trucking accident. And there's yet another reason we should reject nuclear power as a nation -- you know, along with the fact that you can get low carbon emissions from solar and wind, and the fact that power plants that present such a high risk of contamination from accidents and/or terrorist attacks tend to be so unpopular that they need massive government handouts to build them and keep them running. So, yeah, let's stop doing that.

Action: farm policy, and nuclear waste storage.

Here's something else you might not know about H.R. 2, Congress's new, nefarious Farm Bill: Title IX would take consultative jurisdiction over pesticide harm to endangered species from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, so that the EPA has sole jurisdiction over the matter. Defenders of this move may argue that it "reduces bureaucracy" or "right-sizes regulation," but you already see the flaw in that reasoning: we would really leave pesticide oversight solely to this EPA? The whole reason we have several different actors look at the same thing is to prevent one bad actor from doing great harm; yes, it makes the process slower, but wouldn't a conservative argue for doing the right thing more slowly versus embracing a streamlined process above all? Hence Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the "Poisoned Pollinators Provision" of the Farm Bill.

Meanwhile, the House recently passed H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which would establish a massive nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain -- which the good citizens of Nevada have been fighting literally for decades now. Some proponents cite the danger of storing nuclear waste in over 100 areas of the country in order to justify concentrating it all in one location. Problem with that is trucks would have to transport all that waste all across America, and trucks have been known to crash on occasion, and that threatens the millions of good Americans who live near interstate highways with contaminated water and serious health care issues. Would we have these problems if we put the necessary effort into solar and wind power? No, we would not. Food and Water Action helps you to reject the House's plan to build a massive nuclear waste storage area at Yucca Mountain.

Action: internet freedom, discrimination, clean water, and arts and humanities funding.

The FCC is holding an open commission meeting today, so let's all call them up 1.888.CALL.FCC to tell them not to junk net neutrality regulations that let us, and not some corporation, decide where we want to go on the internet. The FCC's new Chair, Ajit Pai, has said that net neutrality's "days are numbered," and when good Americans across the political spectrum would rather have their internet the way it is than have it be like cable TV, you have to wonder why he says that like it's a good thing. Nah, just kidding: he says it like that because he only talks to other corporatists, and not to regular Americans. That's why we're calling, because we're regular Americans, and we don't want an internet so full of pop-up ads we stop using the internet. Now that I think of it, that's probably a good way to put it to the FCC: the more they try to "monetize" the internet, by letting corporations determine where we go and what we do, the less we'll use the internet, and the less money they'll all make. And we'll all be less free, of course.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee state Senate has now postponed its vote on SB 127 -- called the "License to Discriminate" bill by the Tennessee Equality Project -- three times, and has also offered to amend the bill to answer some of our objections. However, SB 127 still allows corporations and non-profit organizations to receive public finds and discriminate against good Tennesseeans merely because of those organizations' "religious beliefs" -- corporations will still be allowed to deny birth control coverage to women, and will still be able to deny spousal coverage to gay employees even though gay marriage is the law of the land now. Really, it's simple: if you take public money, you follow public rules, including the ones you fear will give you the gay cooties. The state Senate has scheduled the vote for today; I wouldn't lay money that they'll actually go through with the vote, but you should still allow the Tennessee Equality Project to helps you tell the Tennessee state legislature to reject SB 127.

In other news, Florida Power and Light (or FPL) has come up with a plan to store radioactive nuclear waste underneath the Biscayne Aquifer, which provides clean water to millions of South Floridians. Why would FPL need to store nuclear waste? Because they're planning to build two new nuclear reactors at its rather controversial Turkey Point plant, which they hope will be operational by 2030. Given that taxpayers have historically gotten less bang for their buck by subsidizing nuclear power than just about any other power source, one has to figure the chances of getting those reactors running by then is actually very small. And leaking carcinogens into the drinking water in the meantime is a terrible idea. But big corporations and their lackeys in government apparently don't agree with us, so Urban Paradise of South Florida has begun a petition on Change.org with which you may tell nearly three dozen Florida state legislators to prevent FPL from putting nuclear waste underneath the Biscayne Aquifer.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (or NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (or NEH), then Sign Here Now helps you do that. The only negative response I've received about this effort (on this blog's Facebook page) to stop Mr. Trump from zeroing out funding for the NEA and the NEH proceeded thusly: "fuck the NEA." Sadly, that is about the level of discourse I've come to expect from the right about this matter, and it isn't lost on me that I was talking about the NEA and the NEH and the commenter had nothing at all to say about the NEH. Back when I found right-wingers who sounded more reasonable, they used to ask me why should the government pay for art? Of course, the more pertinent question is why it shouldn't, and the answer I usually get, unfortunately, is that government shouldn't pay for anything, unless, of course, it makes money for some rich donor or other. But civilized people know better than to make everything about money.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell the EPA to reopen three water-contamination investigations possibly involving fracking, and to ensure that citizens in the affected areas get clean drinking water. What's that, you say? The EPA actually abandoned water-contamination investigations? Yes, they did -- and what's worse, their preliminary report on Dimock, PA water pollution concluded that the entire gas drilling process released more methane into the drinking water, and that fracking may have caused methane pollution as well. (Sheathe those knives, right-wingers: you know as well as I do that there's more to gas drilling than just fracking.) Why did the Dimock, PA investigation, and similar investigations in Wyoming and Texas, get shut down? At least in Dimock's case, I'd hate to think it was because it was an election year. Well, Barack Obama ain't running for re-election, so he ain't got no excuses now.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that the Senate might change the law so nuclear power plants can ship casks of waste on American roads and railways to "consolidated interim storage" sites. And this idea's proponents are probably saying: well, at least we're shipping casks around instead of pools of spent fuel rods! You know what would be even better, though? Nuclear power plants storing their own waste in steel and concrete casks on their own property and those casks never going anywhere. Why would we move the casks, anyway? Because the nuclear power industry would rather store the waste on someone else's property. It's almost as if they somehow know it's bad stuff! Nuclear power plants can't make money despite decades of massive federal subsidies and now they want more from us? And any cask brigade would be a slow-moving target for terrorists, even worse than the "mobile Chernobyl" activists call it. CREDO helps you tell the Senate Energy Committee to scrap the "mobile Chernobyl" plan.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Senate to enact vigorous chemical safety reform, Moms Rising still helps you do that. Out of 80,000 chemicals registered for use in American products, how many have been safety-tested? 200. That's one-fourth of one percent (not one-fourth, "liberal" media!), which ain't enough, not when scientists link chemicals like flame "retardants," phthalates, and BPA to learning disabilities and cancers, and you can find these things in your furniture, your household cleaners, your packaging, and even your fruits and vegetables. Moms Rising will help you advocate for more rigorous protections for families in heavily-polluted "hot spot" communities, for making corporations (and not the public) prove the chemicals they make are safe, for letting states set stricter standards than our federal government if they so choose, and for giving the EPA vigorous law-enforcement power. And to your Senators who might harrumph about "the possible harm to businesses": businesses aren't more important than families.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell the National Organics Standards Board to prohibit apple and pear growers from labeling their produce "organic" if they use the antibiotic tetracycline. That's what organic standards are for, right? Keeping artificial stuff out of food? Yet apple and pear growers have enjoyed an exemption from organic standards for years, and want to extend that exemption for another three years. Tetracycline helps combat fire blight (so named for its burnt appearance, though the pathogen Erwinia amylovora causes it), but the whole point of organic labeling is to prevent the consumer from ingesting harmful chemicals, and tetracycline (which studies have linked to lupus, breathing problems, and fetal bone growth issues) is one of those. Also, using antibiotics on fire-blighted trees has helped create even stronger strains of Erwinia, and there are other ways to fight it (like planting more resistant varieties and more vigilant pruning). Of course, they're more labor-intensive, but I hear a lot of people are looking for jobs these days. And "organic" is a label you really ought to earn.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to enact stronger standards for storing radioactive nuclear waste. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Currently more than 70 sites store nuclear waste (tens of thousands of tons of it!) in "spent-fuel pools," which aren't particularly safe from terrorist attacks and need lots of energy to maintain, instead of dry casks, which are made of steel and concrete and which have no need for electrical maintenance (thus making them safer during a power outage!). And the pools were only supposed to be short-term storage to begin with! It's a wonder we don't have more problems -- which, I imagine, would be the right-wing response to any effort to move spent nuclear waste to dry casks. But it has happened elsewhere -- a spent-fuel pool ruptured and leaked radioactive material into the air during the Fukushima disaster -- and if we can imagine it happening here pretty easily, we should deal with it promptly. And this seems to me the more conservative viewpoint -- after all, we do have life and property to conserve, don't we?

Finally, Public Citizen helps you support an end to the arbitration forced upon consumers by corporations. As you may recall, Sens. Franken (D-MN) and Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Arbitration Fairness Act in the Senate in 2011, and Rep. Johnson (D-GA) introduced a version in the House. They've yet to re-introduce the Act in this Congress (thomas.loc.gov has nothing for "arbitration fairness" as of this writing), but that doesn't mean it's not important right now, or that we can't talk about it with our Congressfolk. More and more corporations -- like banks, cell-phone providers, and cable corporations -- slip forced arbitration agreements into their contracts, and as you may recall, the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that corporations could force consumers into agreements that actually prevent them from banding into classes and filing class-action lawsuits. And the arbitrators don't rule in your favor very often, because they get their checks from the corporations -- though, really, since we buy the corporations' products and services, we're paying for it. But no one should have to give up their rights just to get a product or service -- or a job.