Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning taxes and law and order.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to extend tax cuts for the rich and to pass the Clean Slate Act so good Americans can get back on their feet after paying their debt to society. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to renew the President-elect's infamous tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-corporations law. It used to be hard to get rich! That's because we taxed millionaire income at 91%, so the rich couldn't compound their power without end! During the New Deal era we had one billionaire; now we have hundreds, and none of them contribute a damn thing of value to this world. Meanwhile health care workers and first responders and store clerks and baristas – not to mention scientists, philosophers, and artists – all go hungry, and our nation becomes so sick, immoral, and decadent we elect an overt fascist to the Presidency. Tax the rich like we used to and we stop all of that dead.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Clean Slate Act, which would seal federal records for criminal case dismissals and acquittals and – most importantly! – convictions for nonviolent offenses, so the good Americans who've paid the debt they owe to society can get on with their lives and contribute to civilization again. Also, if these folks can get on with their lives, they'll be less likely to go back to jail, though our private prison-loving President-elect might not see that as a good thing. I've long tried to turn law-and-order talk on its head – stop detaining drunks and street fighters and drug-users indefinitely, and start putting real sociopaths like polluters and pension-raiders in jail. The Clean Slate Act will contribute toward that worthy end, so we should support it.

Action: concerning pollution and racism.

Long story short: tell our EPA to protect communities from the hazards of vinyl chloride, and tell a Texas county to stop reclassifying Native American history as "fiction." Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

The Hip Hop Caucus helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to protect communities from the evils of vinyl chloride. You remember vinyl chloride from its featured role in the East Palestine (OH) train disaster in early 2023? Well, our EPA has already designated vinyl chloride as a "high priority chemical," and scientists have told us vinyl chloride causes cancer. And the corporations manufacturing vinyl chloride tend to neglect communities they displace of build through, hence we demand that our government step in. You think corporations will do the right thing on their own? Ha ha ha corporations are like children without the charm.

The National Campaign for Justice helps you tell Montgomery County (TX) to stop reclassifying Native American history as fiction. Just when I think they can't sink any lower! Montgomery County told libraries to stick Colonization and the Wampanoag Story in the fiction section, though it is actual history written by an actual historian, after secretly creating a "Citizens Review Committee" and keeping actual librarians off said "committee." I guess the exercise was "say 'we never oppressed Native Americans' without actually saying it." But too many assholes already tell too many of us that our lived experience and heritage is fiction, so how about we prevent a local government from getting away with that particular evil?

Around the table: today, with upwards of 29% good news!

The PRO Act may not be very close to passage nationally, but the PRO Act has passed in Vermont, and will not only outlaw those forced propaganda meetings corporations like to make folks attend like they don’t have enough work to do, but will let domestic workers organize and let public workers form a union via card-check. There’s a lesson here for all Americans – don’t strap yourself too closely to Democrats, and fight for what you actually want, and you might more easily get Democrats to go along with you. I mean, they can put their finger to the wind just like anyone else. Come to think of it, didn’t New Deal legislation pass pretty much because the politicians were following the people’s lead? Why, yes!

Study published in The Lancet predicts that worldwide life expectancy will increase by almost five years by the year 2050, from around 73 now to around 78. Why? Because we have more non-communicable disease these days than communicable. Say, remember that time we all had to wear a mask all the time so we didn’t accidentally kill each other? Turns out that’s a habit that helps people live longer! And think how much better we’d do if we adopted better ventilation practices in public buildings! But it’s also going up because, well, a lot of nations have a lot of room to grow their life expectancy. What will be a drag on life expectancy? The fact that a lot of us are too fat because we eat too much crap.

Team Trump sends a cease-and-desist letter to the makers of the movie The Apprentice. Can you say “diaper-loaded brat,” boys and girls? How about frivolous lawsuit? And why don’t Republicans defend the free speech rights of the filmmakers? Because the only lawsuits they find “frivolous” are lawsuits that make corporations pay for the harm they do to good Americans, that’s why. In a peripherally-related note, GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.

Tim Cushing at TechDirt tells the story of what happened to a couple of cops who literally tortured a Fontana, CA man into confessing to a murder that never occurred. The “suspect” actually called the cops for help because he thought his father had disappeared; turns out his father had taken public trans to visit a relative and a female friend, but the cops decided he was dead and decided the son was the killer, pretty much without thinking very hard about it, or at all. You’ll really love the part where they threaten to euthanize his dog if he doesn’t confess, and then bring the dog into the interrogation room. Sadly, these cops didn’t lose their jobs but the city paid almost a million bucks in damages to the tortured citizen (four years later!), which of course came out of his and everyone else’s taxes. Who bellows I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!!! after hearing that story? Someone you should straight-up eject from your life, that’s who.

Donald Trump endorses primary challenger to Rep. Bob Good (E-VA), which is probably the death-knell for the otherwise noxious right-wing incumbent. And also an opportunity for Democrats, if they have the sense to recognize it: Virginia’s 5th Congressional district usually votes Republican in federal and state elections, but not by absurd margins, plus the 2020 election saw 400,000 out of 580,000 potential voters actually vote. So a lot of these 180,000 folks might be persuaded to turn out against the Republican – by an actual populist Democrat who won’t let the party’s consultant class dominate their messaging. I’m not sure I see that individual among the Democratic primary candidates, but I’d be happy to be wrong.

Despite all the bad PR they’ve received for their, ah, unique educational “reforms,” Florida’s government continues to leave a trail of slime wherever they go, now putting together training materials that lump “cancel culture” “victims” in with Josef Stalin murdering three-quarters of a million political dissenters. When they lecture us about “the dangers and evils of Communism,” and then equate the quite deserved shame of garden-variety racists with the imprisonment or murder of actual political dissenters, they’re telling you that shame is only for right-wingers to use against you, never for you to use against them. What has two thumbs and won’t eat Florida blueberries until they stop being fascist? This guy!

Finally, Louisiana passes law reclassifying abortion drugs mifepristol and misopropol as “controlled dangerous substances.” People have been using these drugs safely for decades, and the fact that some asshole somewhere may have misused it – if the bill’s sponsor’s “personal story” isn’t some made-up sack of dung – doesn’t change that. Let it be known that having a Democratic Governor for two terms hasn’t changed Louisiana politics one little bit, so be wary of supporting weak “centrists” (or “the only people who can win”) in red states. The only liberal who can really win in a red state – which is to say, win an election and be of some utility to the people of that state – is a populist.

Action: concerning endless war, health care, and public banking.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to do all they can to get a cease-fire in the Israel/Palestine war, and pass both the EpiPen Act and the Public Banking Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Demand Progress helps you demand an immediate cease-fire in the Israel/Palestine war. Pleased to see someone else refer to it as exactly that, since that’s exactly what’s happening – even the Iraq War’s most fevered supporters never called it the “U.S./al-Qaeda war,” and not just because that would have been absurd. But with the International Court of Justice lately saying that some of Israel’s actions might qualify as genocide – and with that court continuing to consider South Africa’s genocide complaint – I would think we have some momentum here. But we’ll only turn that momentum into good works if we speak out now.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the EpiPen Act. You recall how Mylan jacked up the price of EpiPens 500 – to around $600! – between 2009 and 2016, and controlled 90% of the EpiPen market back then? Well, the EpiPen Act would cap the price of two EpiPen doses at $60, or one-tenth of the price that made Mylan so much money, like any corporation should profit like that off a drug that people with anaphylactic allergies will die if they don’t have. Right-wingers love squealing about “price controls,” but I think most Americans would look a lot more sanguinely on the concept now – particularly with regard to live-saving drugs.

Finally, Take On Wall Street helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Public Banking Act, which would more easily allow states and localities to open public banks like North Dakota’s, which has helped good North Dakotans weather recessions and depressions for over a hundred years. You may have noticed several members of the Squad – Reps. Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Omar – among the bill’s sponsors. Our “liberal” media concentrates far too much on their alleged anti-Semitism and not a whole lot on their actual populism; one has to wonder why that is. It’s because media outlets are objectively pro-bankster. That’s the reason. Also sexism.

Action: concerning tax cuts for the rich, Social Security, Medicare, and stock buybacks.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject attempts to extend the Trump tax cuts for the rich, tell Democrats to ignore Kevin McCarthy’s Social Security/Medicare benefit-cutting commission, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Reward Work Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Republican attempts to extend the Trump tax cuts for the rich. Yep, our Republican-held House is trying to extend those tax cuts for the rich, and they’ll pay for it by wiping out renewable energy tax credits, because nothing is more important than “owning the libs.” Seriously, it’s like the first question they ask when they make policy is how can I hurt people? And of course wiping out renewable tax credits won’t pay for all those tax cuts for the rich, thus mere weeks after all that posturing about the deficit, they’re going to try to make those deficits even bigger. And they’ll get whatever they want if we don’t speak out.

Social Security Works helps you tell Democrats to ignore Kevin McCarthy’s Social Security/Medicare commission. Republicans didn’t get Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts in their debt limit “deal,” but Speaker McCarthy has announced he’ll put together a commission that’ll get together “behind closed doors” to cut these benefits. They’ll have to do it “behind closed doors” because everyone will hate them even more if they do it out in the open! Sadly, a few Democrats may want to demonstrate their “seriousness” by joining this commission. We need to get in their grills about that, and if we do, they’ll fold, because weak people always fold in the face of strength.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Reward Work Act, which would ban stock buybacks and let workers elect a third of corporate boards. Stock buybacks let corporations plow their profits into buying stock back from other shareholders, instead of investing in, making their workplaces and their products better; it used to be illegal, because it concentrates corporate power in fewer hands, and the Reward Work Act would make it illegal again. And putting more worker-friendly folks on corporate boards would also help make workplaces better. Republicans pretend to be populists, but if they were populists, they’d support this bill.

Action: concerning debt ceiling drama, high drug prices, and defunding the police.

Long story short: tell President Biden to demand a clean debt ceiling increase, and tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to jack up prices on life-saving medicines or defund the police at our IRS . Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Social Security Works helps you tell President Biden to demand a clean debt ceiling increase from Congress, one that doesn’t cave to Republican attempts to take us all hostage. “Clean” means no Social Security cuts, no Medicare cuts, and no cuts to our CFPB, SEC, FTC, or DOJ Antitrust Division, all of which are doing great work attacking the monopolies that crush our civilization. We should win this fight, not just because Democrats control the White House and the Senate, not just because attempts at hostage-taking should always be met with maximum force, but because not even Barack Obama would negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling a decade ago.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any Republican attempt to roll back the drug price caps in the Inflation Reduction Act. Shame we have to tell our Congressfolk “don’t jack up prices on life-saving medicines,” but here we are – the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Donald Trump and In That Order, who do unconscionable evil, then gaslight you and call you traitor when you fight them. Whomever votes to raise prices on life-saving medicines should lose their next election. It’d help if Democrats nominate candidates who’ll actually fight for their constituents, and not be the Next Iteration of Pete Buttigieg.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Republican efforts to defund our police at our Internal Revenue Service. Doesn’t sound so populist when you put it like that, does it? And that’s exactly what Republicans want to do – they want to literally defund the police who catch the rich tax cheats who are their true masters. Oh, sure, they say ZOMG TEH IRSZ IZ COMINGZ AFTURZ YOUZ!!!!!, but that’s horsedoodle – our IRS hasn’t had the money to go after anyone but poor folks for years. Republican fake populism clearly didn’t work for them in the midterms, so let’s not let it work now, when everything counts.

Around the table: the most pro-corporate Supreme Court ever! And other total non-surprises.

I’m sure you already knew that the John Roberts-led Supreme Court is easily the most pro-corporate Supreme Court in recent memory, but it’s still good to have some data behind it, even if we’d also like to know how the Roberts Court compares on this matter to, say, the Courts led by Salmon Chase or Morrison Waite. How incoming Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson writes on corporate issues will help tell us whether President Biden actually wants to change our politics so that ordinary Americans count again, or whether he just wants to look like he's doing that.

I wouldn’t blame you for being skeptical that “the teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels,” because our “liberal” media cry “crisis” at a lot of things (cough crime cough) that aren’t actual crises, and the fourth paragraph of this article admits it can’t teacher levels well, at least not beyond data and anecdotes from (by my count) nine “state and district-level reports.” To the degree that it’s happening, though, I point the finger at right-wingers yelling and screaming at (and threatening!) teachers over wearing masks and getting vaccines and teaching about racism. Yes, the pandemic was rough on teachers, but I’d lay money that all the right-wing whining afterward tipped more teachers over the edge.

Not long before Kyrsten Sinema finally signed off on the Inflation Reduction Act after forcing through at least one significant change-for-the-worse, someone in the “liberal” media actually wondered why Democrats “left (her) out” of negotiations on the bill. Gosh, I don’t know – maybe because they hate her even more than they hate Joe Manchin? Joe Manchin is garden-variety corrupt, after all, but Kyrsten Sinema thinks she’s so much smarter than us, and the next person I meet who actually likes people who think they're so much smarter than everyone else will be the first. And anyway, “mavericks” don’t go to bat for banksters, not when even Donald Trump says nasty things about them.

Surprise, surprise, study links “Earning Persistently Low Wages” “With Faster Memory Decline In Old Age,” which results include dementia. I’ve long said that people aren’t “bad at math” or “bad at budgeting” so much as they don’t make enough money to make a budget work, and I’ve also suspected that failure at that task alone (never mind the consequences of that failure, like foreclosure and eviction and getting your water and your heat and your electric turned off) makes you less sharp as the years go by. I’ve even suspected that not having savings to fall back on (as low-wage earners rarely have) also makes you less sharp. Now we have data that supports these notions.

The money shot from this article about how John Fetterman’s parents supported him and his family well into his 40s shows pretend-Pennsylvanian Mehmet Oz calling Mr. Fetterman a “pretend populist,” but I don't care that Mr. Fetterman grew up in a (his word!) “cushy” suburb or needed a substantial cash infusion from his parents as late as 2015. No child picks where they’re born or where they grow up, and if you're lucky enough to have privilege, your life's work is leveraging that privilege for all the folks who don’t have it, so in that light, giving up an insurance underwriting career to mentor young orphans and high-school dropouts seems heroic. And how did Mr. Oz leverage his privilege at pandemic's outset? By telling Sean Hannity that some kids would have to die to keep the economy going. Gallant, meet Goofus.

Now Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI), the man who gives the “Citizen Legislator” a bad name, wants Congress to have to renew Social Security and Medicare every single year. As a way of “controlling government spending,” something the Ron Johnsons of the world never do when it comes to all the welfare handouts they give to corporations. But Americans like their Social Security and Medicare, and the only way this ends well for Mr. Johnson is if Mandela Barnes – the presumptive Democratic nominee now that his top three Democratic opponents have bowed out – simply doesn’t mention it in campaign ads. Sadly, this is not difficult to imagine. Too many Democrats preoccupy themselves with being “different” and “special” and "thinking outside the box" when what they really need to do is go for the throat.

Finally, let us take a moment to celebrate good Kansans turning back an anti-abortion constitutional amendment by an impressive 59-41 margin. The people of Kansas accomplished this despite a) voting on the matter during a primary election which always has lower turnout, b) a poorly-worded-probably-on-purpose ballot question, and c) a mysterious effort to mislead pro-choice voters into pulling the wrong lever that’s almost certainly going to send someone to jail. The news wasn’t all good from primary Tuesday, though: Lucas Kunce, as impressive a candidate as Democrats have ever lucked into in Missouri, lost his bid for the Senate nomination to (sigh) the beer heiress who goes-along-gets-along with Republicans like that has ever energized turnout. Even that cloud’s got a silver lining, though: Mr. Kunce’s strong showing (he lost 43-38; a lot of folks ran) puts him in a good position for a 2024 Senate race against Josh “Running Man” Hawley.

Around the table: how an apology *should* sound! And other truths.

HHS Inspector General finds that private Medicare Advantage plans denied over 80,000 requests for pre-authorization of medical care in 2019, even though Medicare proper would have covered that care. Medicare Advantage also denied payment for claims nearly one-fifth of the time, even though (again) Medicare would have required payment. And how many people give up rather than challenge these denials? Think on all of that when you imagine that privatized Medicare is "better." Privatized Medicare is better for health insurance CEOs, but not for our seniors.

Former white supremacist Evan McLaren -- who, among other things, marched for the wrong side in Charlottesville in 2017 -- disavows his association with white supremacy in a statement published on Substack. We've been burned by others who "left" the movement only to still hate Jews, but Mr. McLaren's statement took my breath away, frankly; I'll quote the last paragraph in its entirety: "I apologize to everyone who was affected in any way by my past activities. The main purpose of this statement, however, is not to apologize. I do not realistically expect to repair my public reputation, to the extent that it meaningfully exists, or to heal rifts with people I have alienated. I don’t hope or expect to be forgiven. My only purpose here is that, on those occasions when someone happens to explore the Internet search results related to my name, they might also find this statement as an indication that, while I was a source of toxic energy and opinions in the past, I am at least not that anymore." Now that's an apology -- no ifs about it! Joe Rogan might do well to study it before his next screw-up.

From the "I Shouldn't Have to Explain This" file: no, California will not "legalize infanticide" by passing AB 2223, because "don't automatically investigate stillbirths" and "never, ever investigate stillbirths" are not the same thing. Of course the right-wingers who created this drama in the first place knew that; they were just hoping you didn't know that. Now you do, and you can move on to more important things, like making sure polluters and financial predators go to jail.

Nick Vachon wonders "Where Are All the 'Pro-Worker' Republicans Now?" after Amazon and Starbucks workers win organizing efforts, but of course he poses the question rhetorically: Marco Rubio's "support" for Amazon workers hinged entirely on Amazon's refusal to sell some of his favorite right-wing books. No, I'm not inferring here; he spelled that out! And I can't help but think he supported the Bessemer, AL Amazon workers because he suspected their effort would fail. I guess there's a limit to how much point-scoring Republicans will try to do against these "woke" corporations. And, frankly, Democrats are little better, what with their deep abiding love of white-collar workers and their utter cowardice in pushing populist (and popular!) solutions. I could help them with that.

Kevin Kuehn and Kevin King at The Conversation discuss teenagers' self-harming behavior and how to combat it. I wouldn't pay too much attention to recent teen self-harming data -- teens were in lockdown for a big chunk of 2020, after all -- but you won't be surprised to learn that "participants reported higher levels of distress right before they self-harmed or thought about suicide, and reported significantly reduced levels of distress immediately following." I mean, you wouldn't do it otherwise! I would suggest that self-harm gives at least some teens the illusion of control over situations over which they otherwise have very little or no control. Remedies for self-harm include more connection with more people (as with drug addicts) and validating feelings that prompt self-harming behavior without validating the behavior itself.

Finally, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) vows to investigate the "origins of COVID," which scientists have already determined, should Republicans win the Senate and he get a Committee Chair. Maybe he should concentrate on winning re-election first! If Charles Booker focuses on insulin prices and Ukraine policy -- two subjects he's discussed a lot already, and two areas where Rand Paul's weak -- Mr. Paul could be in for a big surprise. (No, the fact that Mr. Booker's a Black Lives Matter activist won't be a liability in the state that killed Breonna Taylor.)

Around the table: why we need Utopian thinking, and other truths.

Paul Rosenberg interviews historian Victoria Walcott about why we need Utopian visions to create social change. Ms. Walcott's new book (Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement) not only reminds us that the rapid-fire successes of the Civil Rights movement only came about through decades of education and agitation, but that young Coretta Scott gave Martin Luther King, Jr., Edward Bellamy's famous Utopian novel Looking Backward while they were still courting, and the book informed much of Dr. King's thinking during the '60s. She also reminds us that the notion that "working-class people had a right to leisure, had a right to intellectual life, had a right to artistic endeavors" was once a Utopian vision. Her book comes out later on this month. (And not for nothing, but far too many of us embraced dystopian thinking during the '80s and '90s, not just because of the right-wing ascendancy in America, but because of our own immaturity.)

Robert McChesney and John Nichols, writing at the Columbia Journalism Review, propose a "Local Journalism Initiative" to revive local news organs. The internet (and monopoly news corporations, don't forget) have basically killed the advertiser-funded model of journalism, so Messrs. McChesney and Nichols would turn to taxpayer funding to restart the web of local news organs that kept us all connected until recently. The Initiative would send a lump sum of money to every county and then that county's eligible voters would vote on which three news organs to spend it upon (though, depending on the vote, more news organs than that could receive the money); the only news organs that could receive that money would be non-profit, county-based, functioning for six months, completely independent of any larger entities, and publish original content at least five days weekly. All that's for folks who read "taxpayer funding" and saw only the spectre of totalitarianism -- and for folks who think the BBC's failures mean NO GUBMINT INVOLVEMENTZ EVAHZ!!!!!!

From the "He's Not Wrong!" file: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants a "strategic pause" on negotiations over the COMPETES Act, saying that Jeff Bezos shouldn't get a "$10 billion bailout to fuel his space hobby." And they say there are no populists on the left! Of course there are; our "liberal" media just ignores them. But the way he puts it is the way we should all put it, not just because nobody actually likes "bailouts," but because once right-wingers weaponize a word or a phrase, it's only right that we should take the words from them and point them back at them. (His repurposing of Sen. Manchin's "strategic pause" phrase is just icing on the cake here.)

Iowa judge rules that former one-term Rep. Abby Finkenauer can't appear on the Iowa Democratic Senate ballot in early June, because a few of the signatures she gathered for the campaign have no dates on them. Losing this case by literally three signatures sounds petty, but if you're that close to the line (Iowa requires a certain number of signatures, but also requires that at least 100 of them come from at least 19 different counties), you didn't do your job. Overall, I'd say this is no great loss. And it's also a boon for Admiral Mike Franken, who's been all over my Facebook feed saying how bad Fox News is for his soldiers, which sure doesn't make me hate him.

I'll admit I was surprised that Donald Trump endorsed Mehmet "Dr." Oz for Pennsylvania's Senate seat this year -- I'd figured he'd just prefer to wait to see who won and then pretend that was his choice the whole time. David McCormick's road to the nomination just got a lot harder -- and, ah, nobody really thinks Rick Santorum's quickly-issued endorsement will save him, right? Rick Santorum lost his last statewide election by 18 points 15 years ago and he was the incumbent! -- but I can't say Jeff Bartos's road to the nomination got that much harder; one could see benefits and drawbacks to having only one opponent he can call a carpet-bagger. If Mr. Oz is the nominee, then Republicans may not have as easy a time saddling John Fetterman with the story of the Black man he chased down with a gun, since their guy basically said on TV that we'll have to sacrifice more children to the economy. (Also, don't believe that the Trump brain-trust is having a "meltdown" over this endorsement. It's always drama when right-wingers fight in public, and of course it's bad drama.)

Finally, this just may be my favorite headline so far this year: "U.S. Didn’t Expect Major Explosions When an ISIS Bomb Factory Was Bombed." The article describes "a flawed 'collateral damage estimate' before an airstrike that killed scores of Iraqis in 2015," but (and I know this will come as a shock to you!) I don't think stupidity explains this mistake; I think malice does. Not in the I WANTZ TO KILLZ TEH NONWHITEZ PEEPULZ!!!! sense, but in the sense that you find it harder to prove to everyone you're "tough on terror" if you pass up targets "merely" because they might literally blow up and kill innocent people. I'm not sure I can say that's better, though. (And brace yourself for yet another iteration of nobody could have predicted in one of the post-strike assessments.)

Around the table: Vlad the Bad as rational actor, and other horrible truths.

University of New Haven scholar Matthew Schmidt discusses the Russian war on Ukraine, and he makes a lot of sense: the Russian military ain't so hot, the Ukrainian military is very, very good, Vlad the Bad tried to win the war in the first week and doesn't seem prepared for failing in that, and yes he might use nukes on the battlefield in order to break the stalemate. Even so, Mr. Schmidt tells us Vlad the Bad is a rational actor, "following his own system of logic" where Russia is "the center of this geographic and cultural and spiritual space known as Eurasia," and Ukraine becoming more "Western" threatens that space. Where does it end? Likely with "the destruction of the Putinist regime," perhaps years from now.

Former Missouri half-term Governor Eric Greitens, now running for Senate, doubles down against his ex-wife's allegations of physical abuse (against both her and their children) in their custody battle, saying "truth will always prevail." He can ask Sean Parnell about that! Of course, Mr. Parnell had basically lost his custody battle when he bowed out of the Pennsylvania Senate race; the Greitens' battle isn't nearly as far along. But I can't help but think that that Eric Schmitt's $1.6 million fund-raising haul at Mar-a-Lago is more on his mind as he calculates all his denials -- and he calculates them to reach Trump votaries, who respond viscerally (and supportively!) to men who deny serious wrongdoing.

ProPublica finds the famous St. Jude's Children’s Research Hospital actually trying to muscle donors' families for bequests -- occasionally trying to get of children and other relatives disinherited in court! -- and that's a far more scathing indictment of their corporate character, I think, than their irregular-but-not-nonexistent support for parents visiting their kids. Says one person who actually beat St. Jude's in court over his father's estate: "Think of all the fees for lawyers that didn’t go to St. Jude, not one child, not one cancer patient." Maybe St. Jude's will respond that it's worth it because they get around double the national average in donations from wills and they use that money to keep massive medical bills from destroying families, but using probate as a weapon toward that end is evil, and anyway it should be civilization's aim to keep massive medical bills from destroying families, not St. Jude's.

When I hear that politicians like Blake Masters (running for Senate in Arizona) and J.D. Vance (running for same in Ohio) get their talking points from Tucker Carlson rather than Donald Trump, I question whether Mr. Carlson will ever have the same power as Mr. Trump, since Mr. Carlson projects neither the self-made myth or the tough-guy myth as well. And when I hear that all three gentlemen "sympathiz(e) with Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical worldview," I'd say Democrats have an easy retort, if they have the guts to use it: I'll take American values over Putin's anytime. I don't even care that they pretend to be economic populists, because so did Mr. Trump, and that did very little for us. (Hate to pile on, but if Blake Masters really can't imagine a liberal driving a logging truck, that's a failure of his imagination.)

In the wake of record-high gas prices, a Hart Research Associates/League of Conservation Voters/Climate Power poll finds that 87% of Americans think Congress should do something about oil corporation profiteering, with 80% specifically endorsing a windfall profits tax. 80% of the people support it, you say? You know what that means: Kyrsten Sinema will soon come out against it, because "bipartisanship"! And Joe Manchin will come out against it, because I just can't get there. But you know, folks like the Joker and the Penguin are playing the game like it's 2011, when that "we can't raise taxes on the rich because it'll hurt small businesses" lie still had a bit of cred; they now operate in a world where virtually everyone thinks oil corporations raised gas prices just because they could.

Finally, voting rights groups have sued a group that's named themselves the U.S. Election Integrity Plan for sending armed members into Black and Brown neighborhoods in Colorado to "question" them about their voting habits. Occasionally, they wear badges, pretend to be from "the county," accuse folks of voting illegally, and take photos of their houses, but I question the Bannon/Lindell axis's wisdom in choosing Colorado for this little adventure -- they're a lot more likely to run into armed liberals there than, say, Connecticut. I'm also bummed this is a civil suit, because I'd rather these clowns go to jail for a long, long time. I mean, c'mon, law and order, folks!

Around the table: exploding lies about inflation, law and order, and COVID.

Matt Stoller says about 60% of the inflation hike comes from rising corporate profits. How does he know? Long story short: inflation is five percentage points higher than it was in 2019, and the sharp spike in corporate profits probably accounts for three of those five percentage points -- and n.b. we have investment managers on the record saying that they want to find corporations with "pricing power," a power you don't have unless you also have monopoly power. Thus inflation isn't just a thing that happens, but a thing people with unearned power make happen. You'll also understand "why economists tend to dislike rules against profiteering" -- because "(p)rice gouging, they believe, transmits important information." Well, as long as we have "important information," it must be OK that people get hurt! (And seriously, why do we listen to Larry Summers? Like the proverbial fool who thinks everything's a nail because all he's got is a hammer, Mr. Summers's one solution to every problem is STOP ALLZ TEH GUBMINT SPENDINGZ!!!!)

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says his administration will prosecute anyone who might have helped the St. Louis Post-Dispatch expose a massive security issue in a state website. Well, waaaaaaaaaah -- I mean, if you don't want to be embarrassed, don't earn embarrassment, and blowing the whistle on a state security issue ain't the same as "attempt(ing) to steal personal information and harm Missourians." Hate to beat a dead horse, but this is what happens when Democrats don't run economic populist candidates -- know-nothing, do-nothing right-wingers like Mike Parson coast to re-election.

Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette describes the mercurial rise of an anti-abortion Missouri state legislator who, our "liberal" media tell us, listens to Lizzo and Beyoncé and watches The West Wing, and I must admit that I, too, have long found it tiresome that our "liberal" media outlets go mining for the "unexpected" personal traits of right-wingers. It has the effect of "normalizing extreme viewpoints," as Ms. Pennachia says, and I wouldn't expect any right-winger to be impressed that "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me" are two of my favorite Merle Haggard songs (though neither one is "Branded Man" or "Uncle Lem."

Now an Oklahoma legislator, with obviously no intimate knowledge of Texas's notorious anti-abortion law, not only wants to give parents the "right" to demand that school libraries remove a book, but give them the "right" to "earn" a $10,000 bounty for every day the school doesn't comply. None of these efforts should survive even cursory legal scrutiny -- seriously, have none of them have ever heard of standing to sue? -- but perhaps a few authors will get a boost in their book sales if they get banned in Oklahoma. Why, authors could even try to get their Oklahoma buddies to demand that a book gets banned and then split the bounty! These right-wingers never think anything through.

J. Alexander Navarro at The Conversation reminds us that when folks got tired of wearing masks and social distancing in the 1918 flu pandemic, they paid and paid and paid. Today's lazy, entitled right-wingers won't listen to that, so maybe they'll listen to this: people don't actually want to fuck you as much as you think, so maybe you're not losing out all that much if you cover up that mug of yours.

Finally, Matt Novak at Gizmodo runs down "Fox News' Worst Lies About Covid-19 From 2021." I was actually disappointed to hear that Fox had peddled the BIG GUMMINTZ LYINGZ ABOUTZ TEH DEATHZ!!!! lie (which lie depends on a misunderstanding about the difference between reported deaths and confirmed deaths, not to mention the difference between correlation and causation), because when a relative parroted it to me for the first time I thought maybe it came from some YouTube "celebrity," not plain old rubbish-peddling Fox News. This is why we demand that our cable corporations stop carrying Fox News.

Around the table: from Joe Biden's recent success to Ted Cruz's fake populism.

Here's another deleterious side effect of moving quickly during a pandemic: new brands of hand sanitizers with high levels of carcinogens. The online pharmacy Valisure filed a petition with our FDA last week finding that at least 15 brands of hand sanitizer contained the carcinogen benzene at levels above 2 ppm -- a level our FDA set a year ago, probably to encourage production. Benzene is one of the worst carcinogens, per our Department of Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization. The link above provides a list of the brands Valisure identified; I haven't heard of any of them, suggesting that brand name recognition has some utility.

You've heard of Joe Biden's American Families Plan? Well, the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy finds that the plan's tax hikes would fall almost entirely on the top 1 percent of taxpayers. Specifically, it'd bring back the 39.6% tax bracket on income over $400,000 (but why not go higher?), while also subjecting capital gains and dividend income over $1 million to the same tax rate (it's currently 20%). It'd do other things, too, like finally end the "carried interest" loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay less on their unearned millions than you do on your hard-earned thousands.

Amanda Marcotte at Salon writes that President Biden has "turned the tables" on Republicans, partly by speaking plainly (which I wasn't sure would be a strength with him!), partly by embracing actually-popular ideas (though not enough of them, not yet!), and partly because Republicans don't even talk policy anymore, but just talk about whatever diddles the Batshit Insane 25%'s rage glands. I just hope her assessment isn't premature, even though he's done a good bit better than I thought he would. And I'm ashamed to say I didn't realize that the Republicans' Kamala's-in-charge trope is all about stoking racist and sexist rage. I mean, I can't explain it any other way!

In a peripherally-related note, Chris Walker at TruthOut reminds us that Republicans demand "unity" but that most voters like President Biden's policy prescriptions thus far. Far from being "catnip for their liberal base," as Mob Boss Mitch put it, the American Rescue Plan enjoyed 63% support in polling, while the For the People Act, putatively a "Democrat power grab," also in Mob Boss Mitch's words, garners 68%, which is actually a bit lower than the 70% of Americans who think Republicans should find common ground with President Biden, a cunning reversal of the usual "liberal" media formulation. Thus we are reminded that, just as "healing" meant "forget the hurt we caused you," "unity" means "submit to our will."

Sen. Scott's Republican response to the Biden address got all the ink, but Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) also delivered a response to the Biden address -- for the Working Families Party, and from the left. The WFP has been a fixture of New York state politics for over 20 years, though it has run or endorsed candidates in other states. I sure hope nobody from the right whines about "the liberals" getting two responses to the Biden address, lest I remind them that it wasn't that long ago that both the Republican party and the Tea Party -- the latter of which existed more in fever dreams and fundraising drives than in reality -- gave responses to numerous Obama State of the Union addresses.

Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz (E-TX) declares he won't be taking any more corporate PAC money. Not because corporations redistribute worker income upward to executives or pollute the planet or make unsafe products, but because they "run away" when the "left's digital pitchforks come out." In other words, Ted Cruz is as much a friend to the American worker as Marco Rubio, who infamously supported the Amazon union drive only because Amazon no longer sells some of his favorite right-wing screeds. Well, Ted Cruz is nothing if not cunning, so he might get a few new votes by pretending to hate corporate power without actually hating corporate power. And rageheads won't notice the difference.

Around the table: describing mostly sad journeys.

Despite our best efforts, Gov. Brian Kemp has signed Georgia's notorious SB 202, which will severely restrict ballot access, mainly for the Black voters who will not be voting for Brian Kemp or very many Republican state legislators. Given that Joe Biden won Georgia and two Democrats captured U.S. Senate seats in January runoffs, you might well call SB 202 a "sore loser" bill! The good news? The legislature stupidly did this right away, giving Black folks plenty of time to figure out how to vote despite the new restrictions. But next time Mitch McConnell calls the For the People Act "a solution in search of a problem," you can always say here's the problem.

Yes, Virginia, Amazon truck delivery workers do, in fact, urinate into bottles. Because they work 10-hour shifts and have to deliver a package about every two minutes! And if they come back with undelivered packages, they get disciplined and (eventually) fired! And rather than say "well, they're not the first human beings ever to use piss bottles," maybe we should wonder why Amazon doesn't hire more of them -- or, heaven forbid, whether we really need that Game of Thrones DVD set the day after we order it. (As an aside, dig the Amazon twitterer who calls his corporation "the Bernie Sanders of employers." As if! And how did a "Communist" become so popular?)

Ho hum, Joe Biden holds a press conference, and all our "liberal" media want to talk about is immigration and working with Republicans. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's what Republicans want to talk about! I warned that once Donald Trump was gone, our "liberal" media would go back to letting right-wingers be their assignment editors, and I was right! The only positive development since 2009, I suppose, is that there's no obvious Matt Drudge working today. May there never be one again! Putatively intelligent people talked themselves into giving him way too much say over what happens in America back in the day.

In a peripherally-related note, Julie Hollar at FAIR finds that, "For Sunday Shows, Border Is 'Political Crisis,' Not Humanitarian Emergency." It's like they've all forgotten that, to be a truly great nation, you have to treat everyone with the dignity and humanity they deserve. Of course, turning everything into a Goddamn horserace makes you forget just about everything that makes you human, let alone great. And maybe our government should stop treating Central America like its personal piss bottle? (Also, CNN appears to have aired a staged border crossing without knowing it was staged; maybe I was wrong when I said all that Project Veritas BS had taught our media something.)

Peter Slevin at the New Yorker reports extensively on how Iowa's become a hard-right Republican state, to the point where even "solid, mainstream" Democrats lost most of their elections in 2020, and I can't help but retort that these "solid, mainstream" Democrats are mostly Republican-lite -- and Republican voters will always have an inarticulate contempt for Democrats who try to act like Republicans -- and that if Democrats would, say, actually make life easier for small farmers when they have power (which is so, so not Tom Vilsack!), they could withstand the onslaught of Republican lies a lot better. The article says Cindy Axne managed to hold onto her House seat with "face-to-face campaigning," but doesn't tell us what she said face-to-face. That'd be the more important question, one would think.

Finally, I've thought long and hard about Branko Marcetic's article detailing Kyrsten Sinema's metamorphosis from anti-war, Green Party liberal to "proud neoliberal Democrat" who made a little show of rejecting a minimum wage hike, and though this isn't the article's fault, you may come away from it knowing little more about what makes her tick. Possibly I feel this way because I don't condone the acquisition of power for its own sake -- Jesus Mary and Joseph she doesn't even get richer by capitulating to power, just like Scott Walker! Anyway, if you're inclined to think "she's just representing her state," you should ask not just whether she's really just representing the state's powerful interests, but whether she could broaden the electorate (and thus your own real power base!) by taking more populist economic positions. After all, Mark Kelly is up for re-election in 2022 already and had no problem supporting the $15/hour minimum wage; maybe he's figured that out.

Around the table: exposing more child labor, more vote suppression, and more bad arguments about taxes.

British TV channel investigation finds children 13 and younger picking coffee beans used by Starbucks and Nespresso. Let's just let the first sentence of paragraph 2 tell it: "Channel 4’s Dispatches filmed the children working 40-hour weeks in gruelling conditions, picking coffee for a daily wage little more than the price of a latte." Starbucks sure ain't converting low labor cost into lower coffee prices, amirite? And dig Nespresso's CEO asserting that "we’ve launched a thorough investigation" -- "to find out which farms were filmed and whether they supply Nespresso," banking, I guess, that Channel 4 won't be able to expand its investigation to other farms in the future.

Guardian investigation finds Texas closing 750 polling locations since 2012 -- and, guess what, "the overwhelming majority of closures came in areas that saw the largest increase in black and Latino residents." Why, even John Roberts might call that racist! Though he's disappointed me before. Texas replaced a lot of their polling places with "vote centers," which you might suspect they designed to work badly just from the name, which reeks of vagueness. (Do people vote there? Do people count votes there? It's like they don't want you to know!)

What is "The Latest Wildly Misleading Argument Against Taxing the Rich," according to Steve Wamhoff at ITEP? That they already pay a much larger percentage of their income in taxes -- when you leave out things like capital gains and dividends, which comprise most of rich folks' income but generally gets taxed at a considerably lower rate than income. When you add those in, surprise! The top 1% pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than folks in the 6th to 20th percentiles. Also, too, a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger at Wendy's doesn't cost $199 to a customer who makes a hundred times what you and I make.

In a peripherally-related note, our Congressional Research Service finds that the 2017 tax "reform" did not, in fact, spur business investment or wage growth. Which you already knew, if you know that the way to spur corporations to spend money creating jobs is to threaten to tax their profits a lot harder than we do now, because they'll spend the damn money if they think we're going to tax it, and they're more likely to spend it making stuff and paying people to make the stuff. Still, good to have some data buttressing that knowledge. (And yes, that's Jonathan Chait writing the article. He's really not so bad.)

Finally, Chris Matthews abruptly resigns (or is fired, who knows or cares) from MSNBC's Hardball. And thus ends, for now at least, a long career of blustering on behalf of Our Glorious Elites. Seriously, though, imagine coming to the end of your life and realizing that's who you were -- a pretend "populist" who only showed courage and independence when it didn't matter and sucked up to power the rest of the time. And if you watch the clip of Steve Kornacki coming on right afterward and saying "that was a lot to take in, just now, I'm sure, and I'm sure you're still absorbing that," as if we should all be so emotionally-invested the second highest-rated show (out of three!) on cable news at 7pm, then you know they won't change a thing -- drama is what our media is all about.

Around the table: in which we lay the Mueller investigation to rest.

I touched on Charlie Sykes's piece on Politico last week, which argued that Democrats hopeful of recapturing the Presidency should remember 1972 and be cautious, but Josh Marshall does Mr. Sykes's piece more justice than I did. Mr. Sykes's "history is off," Mr. Marshall says, since President Nixon was rather more popular at a similar juncture in his first term than our President is, but one thing that's the same is that both Presidents aimed to divide the country, mainly through endless hammering of hot-button social issues. The one thing that's different? Mr. Nixon indeed had the "larger half" (in Pat Buchanan's words) of our divided country back in 1972, but our President has the smaller half now -- though, of course, we all saw how well that worked out for us in 2016.

You'll get a few paragraphs into this ProPublica story about how Chicago Mayor will (among other reforms) end suspension of licenses for unpaid parking tickets in that city, and you'll likely have the same reaction I did: Jesus Mary and Joseph people actually go into bankruptcy over unpaid tickets? I mean, no, it's not surprising per se, but it is no less appalling. Naturally most of the folks who face this problem are black, and if you're in the mood to say some variation of if you can't do the time don't do the crime, please do three things: 1) slap yourself, 2) note well that Chicago ain't even making very much money off their Draconian ticketing rules, and 3) ask yourself if getting your license suspended or your car repossessed by the city is really a fair punishment for unpaid parking tickets.

Ho hum, our "liberal" media has lost at least some of its "enthusiasm" for the coup in Venezuela that never succeeded, because if there's anything our media hate more than an actual liberal populist, it's a loser. Still, they've moved on to the next possible puppet of power, the former Venezuelan intelligence chief, described by one of our papers of record as "muscular," now there's some journalistic objectivity! I guess it could be worse, in that we could get a whole lot of "soul searching" from our media about "how we got it wrong," because it's tedious to watch people who don't have souls make a show of soul-searching in public.

Hard to believe, Harry, but CBP and ICE just held a Dallas-born brown-skinned person in custody for three weeks and I'll bet the only thing that prevented our government from actually deporting him was the Dallas News reporting on his plight. And CBP wouldn't let him use the phone while he was detained, though ICE did, and I bet that fact goes right into ICE's PR kit. Be prepared for your right-wing uncle to opine that if you're going to make an omelette, you're going to have to break a few eggs. Or deport a few American citizens!

Elizabeth Warren warns that "the odds of another economic downturn are high" "either this year or next year," and though I couldn't tell you whether the New York Fed's recession probability index is particularly edifying or whether our President's grandstanding on trade will actually do our economy any palpable harm, I do agree with Sen. Warren that debt makes every structure less sturdy, and a lot more debt (not just credit card debt and mortgage debt but student loan debt and corporate debt) makes it a lot less sturdy. I also notice that this recovery, such as it's been, has been going on for over 10 years, making it the longest in our history -- and that should prompt us to wonder when the other shoe's going to drop.

Finally, I did not pay attention to former Special Prosecutor Mueller's testimony before the House yesterday, and thus have no comment on it per se. I am surprised, however, that I've only just seriously considered that this whole investigation might have been a drama created by our President! Who better for our President's Deputy Attorney General to appoint to conduct such an investigation, after all, than the lifelong Republican with the by-the-book reputation who would take seriously the Office of Legal Counsel opinion that sitting Presidents can't be indicted? And if a few of the President's friends have to go to jail, well, we all know how he feels about his friends by now. Yeah, I know, our President supposedly said he was "fucked" after Mr. Mueller's appointment, but he says a lot of things, and he doesn't mean a lot of the things he says. Robert Mueller was never going to save us, and if this realization helps us get back to the very serious business of being thorns in our politicians' sides, then I guess the whole thing will have been worth it.

Around the table: concerning some of the difficulties we face in pushing the Overton Window leftward.

I sympathize with Alan MacLeod's frustration that "To Media, No Democrat Can Possibly Be Right-Wing" -- after all, it wasn't that long ago that Georgia Democratic Sen. Richard Russell helped found the Conservative Coalition, and that the American Conservative Union ranked the late Georgia Democratic Rep. Larry McDonald behind only Ron Paul as the most conservative House Rep. But I will say it's nice to finally hear our media call folks like Nancy Pelosi "center-left" instead of pretend (as they did for almost two decades!) that no one in America could possibly be further left than she. This is yet another reason I'm glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are in Congress -- and in America.

In a peripherally-related note, the incomparable Duncan Black, a.k.a. Atrios, answers the vexing question "Why Don't Democratic Senate Candidates in Purple States Support Popular Things" (like a higher minimum wage), and he answers it better than anyone else I've heard. Races in purple states, he says, "are generally going to be tough/close races, but the calculation is not 'boy if I support a higher minimum wage then the voters will get mad.' The calculation is 'boy if I support a higher minimum wage then the voters will like that, BUT the Chamber of Commerce types will dump a bunch of money into the race to oppose me and run ads calling me a child molester (or highlighting something else that might be unpopular about me).'" All of that is true, but it also demands a counterpunch from the candidate like "how about that -- I support a minimum wage hike and suddenly my opponents are lying about me! Don't let them take you hostage!"

Dino Grandoni at the Washington Post explains, with the help of a perhaps too-understated headline, how our "EPA's New 'No Surprises' Inspection Policy Has Some Critics Worried." You remember from school how all your surprise quizzes didn't really count if you didn't do well on them? You don't? Of course you don't! It boggles the mind how Republicans can claim to be the "party of personal responsibility" but also ensure that polluters won't have to put up with surprise inspections which is often the only way to catch polluters. Of course, for our President's votaries, "personal responsibility" is only for black people -- "belonging to the club" is what matters to them, and that's what no-surprise-inspections signifies to them. If Democrats had any courage, they'd run attack ads on this basis, and make the moral argument I've described, but you already know what the chances of that are.

In a peripherally-related note, our President opines that wind power "doesn't work" without taxpayer help. Given the price parity wind has achieved with fossil fuels in many parts of our nation, I rather suspect it would work without subsidies, but gauging whether wind power would work without subsidies now really isn't the point -- we're supposed to subsidize good technologies that need more research and more time to develop. Also, too, oil and gas get about the same amount of subsidies annually as wind power, so if our President "(doesn't) want to be subsidizing things that don't need to be subsidized," where's his enthusiasm for ending that slab of corporate welfare? And if he's so hot to stop handing out taxpayer money to energy sources that "don't work," where's his enthusiasm for ending handouts for nuclear power, which has lost money for a much longer period of time? (I notice he didn't tell other heads of state about the "piles and piles of dead birds" no one finds at the base of windmills. Clearly he saves those stories for us rubes.)

Defense contractor apparently leaves voice mail message threatening Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) over her introduction of a bill that would force public schools to ensure all their students are properly-vaccinated. Read the transcript of this phone call in its entirety, and you'll marvel at the continued existence of folks who have clearly never contemplated the benefits of deep breathing. And remember, folks: "I’m gonna kill your ass if you do that bill, I swear" is a terroristic threat, and therefore not protected by our First Amendment! I hope Rep. Wilson responds to this threat by fighting harder for this bill.

Finally, the New York Times reminds us that "Using Race for Gain" is an "Old Tactic" for our President. Yes, his settlement of that 1970s investigation into his apparent refusal to rent to black folks and his emptiest-wagon trumpeting of the "guilt" of the Central Park Five leapt to mind even before I got to paragraph nine. If you accept that race-baiting is a pattern with our President, as I do, then of course you regard reports that he "didn't...fully underst(and) what he was doing when he unleashed last week's racist tweetstorm as utter bullshit. And worse, as drama.

Penny Rants for Sunday, June 30, 2019: concerning certain law and order matters, plus did you know David Brooks is a "moderate" now?

In yet another decision purporting to demonstrate "non-partisanship," our Supreme Court rules that federal courts can't strike down state redistricting efforts that demonstrate extreme partisanship. The best I can say about their ruling is that it cuts both ways, and already has -- Pennsylvania state Republicans twice tried to interest Justice Alito in the state Supreme Court's redrawing of state districts before the 2018 election, but Justice Alito didn't bite either time. I could add, I suppose, that the ruling affirms Congress's right to make the process fairer (i.e., in the For the People Act), but that's not some elephantine act of generosity. And, at the risk of beating a dead horse, this Court would turn over every rock in Arizona to find an "animus" against religious folks whenever someone enacts an anti-discrimination statute protecting gay and transgender folks from bigotry, but seems utterly incurious about the actual animus of Republican politicians stupid enough to put their explicit intent to use the redistricting process to expand their power in writing.

Meanwhile, our Supreme Court's ruling striking down our Administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the census form will do some good in the short run, and I can't help but dig Chief Justice Roberts's understatement in saying Secretary Ross's reasoning behind the question "seems to have been contrived." I'm not as disturbed as other folks that our Court seems to think a citizenship question on the census is A-OK as long as you follow the Administrative Procedure Act in getting it done, because I'm not sure any Administration could get that done if they get too many public comments against it, which they almost certainly will. I'm far more disturbed that four of nine Supreme Court justices seem to think the Administrative Procedure Act doesn't mean a damn thing. I'm also annoyed to hear our President wonder, out loud, if he can "delay" the census, for "no matter how long." He can't, because our Constitution says we have to conduct a census every 10 years, and does not add "or whenever our President stops throwing a tantrum about a citizenship question."

Another day, another "moderate" warning Democrats to reject the numerous populist and popular positions they're just now starting to take again after all these years. And I know what you're saying: when did David Brooks become a moderate? I won't tabulate my objections to his argument, since they number approximately one per point made, but I will point out that the math he presents doesn't work the way he wants you to think it does. I don't even mean all his cherry-picked polls about the economy and health care; I mean presenting Gallup's notoriously misleading polling about how conservative, moderate, or liberal Americans think they are -- as if every last one of them will vote, let alone vote as a bloc, let alone vote in precisely the way they describe themselves. If you know any conservatives who would rein in corporate campaign spending or any moderates who would raise taxes on the rich or any liberals who would regulate handguns and rifles pretty much as we do now -- hell, if you know anyone who's ever described "holding their nose" in the voting booth -- then you know what I mean.

Around the table: from centrist Democrats to empowered farmworkers.

Keith A. Spencer at Salon says "There Is Hard Data That Shows a Centrist Democrat Would Be a Losing Candidate." See? It's not just a feeling I have based on 100 million Americans sitting out the 2016 election! Seriously, Thomas Piketty (of Capital in the 21st Century fame) looked at 70 years of post-election data from America, France, and the U.K., and found guess what? That poorer working families used to always vote for liberal candidates, but now they don't, because generally there ain't one to vote for -- and while some of these voters now vote for faux-populist right-wingers like our President or Ms. LePen, many others simply don't vote at all. A solution presents itself! Anyway, it's nice to see Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Joe Biden portrayed as centrists.

West Virginia Supreme Court rules unanimously that gas drilling corporations can't drill on one person's property to reach reserves on adjoining properties without "express" permission from the owner. In a sane and moral society, conservatives would celebrate this ruling as a victory for private property, but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, I suspect that any "conservatives" who weigh in on this matter will squeal about TEH JUDISHUL OVERREACHEZ!!!!!, since "conservatism," in these times, only ever seems to mean "whatever makes rich people more money."

Is it "news" that our "liberal" media always talks about American aggression as a "response" to vague or nonexistent "threats" from Iran? Perhaps not, but it's still good to be reminded -- as it is also good to be reminded that when someone says some nation or other is a "threat," you have every right to ask "based on what evidence?" "Because Iran humiliated us in 1979 and 1980" is not evidence, nor is a quotation taken out of context, nor is an attack on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure that even our own intelligence forces won't say came from Iran.

Ho hum, our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes gutting its own payday lending rule, and then payday lending bigwigs spend $1 million celebrating the proposal at one of our President's resorts. And that's why you don't put a "successful businessman" in office! As we learned, no doubt, when our President said he wasn't about to "hate" the Saudis because they spend so much money at his hotels. I expect we'll get further reminders of this kind of corruption as time goes on.

Finally, New York's farmworkers might get landmark labor legislation if the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act passes that state's legislature and gets the Governor's signature. A state Supreme Court decision extended collective bargaining rights to farmworkers -- who, as you know, do not enjoy the protections of federal law in this area, which leads me to wonder if our national Supreme Court will forget its putative aversion to meddling in state affairs -- but the FLPA would go further, giving them, among other things, one day off weekly (!) and overtime pay. That latter item is very important, as farms often make their workers put in 13-hour days. When farmworkers get to organize for better working conditions, a lot of our work as citizens will become a lot easier, and don't believe the farm corporations' whining that it'll be "too expensive." They should learn to count the cost of bad actions.

Around the table: confronting the drama of our times, again.

In more ordinary times we'd be pleased as punch to find Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) producing a policy paper excoriating corporations for their short-term obsession with shareholder value at the expense of research, development, and "long-term corporate capabilities," but these are not more ordinary times, and this is Marco Rubio we're talking about here, so not only is he short on actual solutions that might ameliorate the problem, he of course won't admit that public investment has ameliorated the problem fairly decisively in the past. Should I give him credit for slamming "outsourcing investment decisions to financial markets" as any good anti-bankster would? Nah -- not when the only alternative he'll entertain is corporations making all the important decisions, when corporations making all the important decisions is how we got here in the first place.

It may be premature to announce, as Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has done, that "the days of insulin price-gouging are over" in Colorado with the passage of a bill capping out-of-pocket insulin costs at $100 a month, but $100/month is a lot more manageable than $600 to $900 a month, which is the kind of thing that leads diabetics to ration their insulin, a strategy that might not be significantly safer than Russian roulette. So if insulin-producing corporations demand more money from health insurance corporations to make up the shortfall, will those health insurance corporations then pass that cost on to their customers? If they want to be even more popular, perhaps!

I don't think it's good news that our President might not really "mean it" when he calls the media "the enemy of the people," since his votaries, who live vicariously through their President's tantrums, do mean it. I also don't think that we should feel very sorry for media outlets like CNN, which has never really had an adversarial relationship with the Our Glorious Elites, no matter how much acting out they might do. If they really wanted to cultivate an adversarial relationship with our President, they'd go after, say, his attempts to gut clean air and clean water regulations, rather than the drama he creates to distract us.

Regarding that video manipulated to make Rep. Pelosi sound "drunk": I guess it's good that our "liberal" media did a better job debunking it than they did with all those more obviously-manipulated videos coming out of Project Veritas in 2009 and 2010, and I guess it's good that you might need someone to "interpret" the altered audio for you ("she sounds drunk, get it?"), but I fear it won't be long before more radical alterations of video become more common and less detectable. Still, if Ms. Pelosi were less of a corporatist and more of a populist, the release of an obviously-altered video aiming to make her look bad wouldn't have made a difference. I mean, this President is a fake populist, and that seems to insulate him from actual facts that actually make him look bad.

Finally, at the risk of seeming very late to the party, I enjoyed the Game of Thrones finale more than most folks seemed to do. And more than I expected to: the finale overcame, as well as could be done, the fatal flaw of the show's final season -- namely, that it frogmarched Dany into madness rather than (at least!) letting her go mad at her speed. We can all easily tabulate other wrong notes (Tyrion's nomination of Bran for King, for example, had at least one Hallmark card moment), but the thing I'll always remember about the finale is a group of survivors coming to grips with their complicity in creating the decadent society that almost destroyed them and everyone they knew and loved. I was even surprised to consider that all those pornographic scenes from the show's early years might have had an actual narrative purpose! Given Bronn's eagerness to spend state money rebuilding the brothels that made the show infamous, I don't know how it'll turn out for Westeros. But I hope we do at least as well when the most decadent human being ever to hold high office in Amerca -- a man whose continued presence in that office indicts us all -- goes before the voters next year.

Around the table: chronicling an unusually high amount of low-level corruption.

Our President pardons the two Oregon ranchers, currently serving five years for arson on public lands, who "inspired" the Bundy brothers' 2016 seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Public lands belong to whom, again? To the people. That's kinda why they call them "public." The Hammonds and Bundys of the world, of course, act like they're the "public" and no one else is, but ain't nothing they can do our President can't make worse. Law and order!

Actual rich liberal populist wins Mexico's Presidential election, and the "liberal" media here in America hope for "business-friendly" change. I guess that's an improvement from saying Mr. López Obrador is "just like" our President (just like him, except in, you know, nearly all of his policy proposals!), but "business-friendly" shouldn't be everyone's first concern, when corporations go around ruining everything in the world just so they can squeeze it for money. Remember, kids: money doesn't last, but civilization does.

Ryan Cooper at The Week asks an obvious question: "If democratic socialism is so bad, why is Norway so great?" Important lessons: don't confuse democratic socialism with things like Communism (particularly as practiced by the Soviets) and don't put yourself in the position of arguing that elite individuals should control the economy but the people shouldn't. And wasn't our President complaining about not getting enough immigrants from non-"shithole countries" like Norway? (As an aside, the relatively high U.S. per capita income is undoubtedly goosed up by our world-leading supply of super-rich, which, as I've often said, doesn't mean you see a bump in your bank account.)

Uh oh: Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) has been putting GPS tracking devices in campaign signs so he can locate the people who steal them! Which has led him, no, not to an Antifa or Black Lives Matter protestor, but to a retired pastor. I wouldn't steal campaign signs myself, but maybe Mr. Reed should have considered that getting all Captain Queeq about a campaign sign makes him look like a small man. And really, if you were to serve the good people of New York's 23rd district, instead of serving mammon, you wouldn't have to worry about who's stealing your campaign signs.

Double uh oh: shortly after voting for that massive tax "reform" last fall, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), who personally stood to gain $2.1 million from that tax "reform," bought himself a million-dollar yacht. Naturally his spokeshack whines about negative campaigning and "partisan smears," and the fact that Mr. Buchanan disclosed the purchase is irrelevant, like following the law is some gift he gives to us or something. This little yacht purchase is exactly the stuff of classic (and relevant) campaign ads. I wouldn't lay money on his Democratic opponent having the guts to run it, though.

Finally, Democrats seem to be meeting the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination with "mixed messages," which is, admittedly, always a danger when a nominee is so completely awful on everything. But I can help with that problem! Here's the message: Judge Kavanaugh thinks Presidents should be even more powerful, which would make the American people less powerful. You're welcome, Democrats. (Full disclosure: Democrats never take my advice.)

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 818.

If you've noticed that you hear an awful lot of criticism of alleged "radical leftists" in the mainstream media but you don't actually hear these "radicals" themselves, well, you're not alone: Nathan J. Robinson at Current Affairs wonders why we can name virtually every talking head who slams "political correctness" and "social justice warriors" but hardly anyone who's politically correct or a social justice warrior themselves. You can answer this question in at least two ways: 1) because these talking heads who style themselves as "dissidents" are actually card-carrying members of Our Glorious Elites, and how do you get people to go along with ridiculous ideas if you can't deflect to some "common enemy"? And 2) waaaaaaaaah! (I remain convinced, by the way, that the real reason so many right-wingers use the "SJW" shorthand is that it shares two letters with "Jew.")

We learn from George Joseph and Liam Quigley at The Intercept that plainclothes police officers in New York City commit a rather disproportionate number of police shootings there: they comprise around 6% of the force, yet commit over 30% of the shootings. Why? Some observers suggest that plainclothes cops can get mistaken for robbers, but many others suggest that the lack of a "blue suit" gives them the "freedom" to "act like gangsters" -- and it is more difficult to get a badge number if it's not displayed, or a unit number from an unmarked car. Just so happens they don't wear body cameras, either.

Michigan state legislators push a Medicaid work-requirement plan that just so happens to target majority-black cities while leaving majority-white rural areas alone. I'm happy to oppose Medicaid work requirements for blacks and whites myself, and not just because most folks on Medicaid are already working like we should be proud of that as a civilization -- no, really, we should be proud of a civilization where everyone can get good-paying work and only need programs like Medicaid when times get tough, as times do for virtually everyone except the crowd who constantly hector us to work harder. (Also, dig the Chamber of Commerce lobbyist's "(w)e were just trying to be helpful" act. She must think we're all suckers.)

Ho hum, the New York Times reports on how "national Democrats have been embracing recruits near the political center" in red states. What's the definition of insanity again? And what authority do the same folks who lost 2016 all over the map now have to say "but here's how you win in Kansas"? After all, a liberal Sanders acolyte came within six points of defeating Rep. Ron Estes in Kansas's 4th early in 2017, in a district Mike Pompeo used to win by 30 points. The Times might even get this, at some level, because they simultaneously describe Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) as one of those "moderates" and as someone with a "populist economic message." (I will concede that Clarke Tucker, the star of this article, has a good shot in Arkansas's 2nd since if he makes health care his issue, as it looks like he'll do.)

Finally, our President wants to help out a Chinese corporation punished by his own Commerce Department. A corporation punished for violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea, no less! What will the President's votaries say when they learn he's suddenly so obsessed about Chinese jobs? Wait, let me guess: leave him alone give him a chance he knows what he's doing he got a great deal but her emails but Benghazi he shoots from the hip both sides do it fake news shutup traitor.

Action: fighting fracking and trophy hunting of endangered species.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) to ban fracking and fracking-related activities within the Basin, then CREDO still helps you do that, and with the deadline for comments on the DRBC's proposed ban coming this week, the time to speak out is now. The DRBC has proposed banning the actual practice of fracking in the Basin, which is good, but has also proposed allowing gas drilling corporations to import and release fracking wastewater into the Delaware, which is most emphatically not good. If the whole point of banning fracking is to protect our clean water and thus our health, then why would you let corporations dump nasty-ass wastewater into the drinking water of 15 million good Americans? Imagine King Solomon actually splitting the baby in half and you'll see that this is exactly the sort of "compromise" that makes good Americans hate their representatives. So let's beat it down.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to stop the importation of elephant hunting trophies, then Avaaz still helps you do that. Don't you just love people who try to tell you that since elephants aren't endangered here in America, then American hunters should be allowed to go over to Africa (where they are endangered) and bring home as many trophies as they like? And these are the same people who constantly whine about TEH MORAL VALUEZ!!!!! They're also, sadly, the same people who respond to any criticism with a defense of hunting in general, as if we weren't talking about the precise immorality of hunting endangered species. But these kind of folks don't get all the say around here. Why is that? Because they haven't earned it. I mean, if you want all the say about everything, you should at least, like, know things, and not just stamp your feet louder than everyone else.

Around the table: guns, education, populism, decadence, and strategy.

Zenobia Jeffries at Yes! magazine writes about black folks who have strongly embraced gun ownership in the wake of the "megalomaniac" who's now President. Many years ago, I embraced a very rigid view of Second Amendment rights out of a similar fear that Tha Bush Mobb would haul me away, but I've come to believe that, in a civilized society, that you don't locate the idea of "self-defense" solely in a handgun, but mainly in the values and institutions that neuter megalomaniac Presidents in the first place -- and if those values and institutions, frankly, haven't worked very well for black folks (just ask Philandro Castile!), our task is to make them work well, not abandon them.

Betsy DeVos's Department of Education informs Department workers that they'll no longer negotiate with those workers' chosen representative, the American Federation of Government Employees Council 252, but instead imposes a "collective bargaining agreement" upon them. I can't fathom the circumstances under which this could possibly be legal -- I can imagine even John Roberts saying that if management imposes its will on labor without negotiating, it can't be said to be "collective bargaining," or even "bargaining." But then, this is the Administration way: do what you want, regardless of the law, and dare anyone to stop you.

It really shouldn't surprise us by now that West Virginia's public school teachers don't fit snugly into the red-blue paradigm, nor should it surprise us that socially-conservative-but-pro-union is really a thing. I also don't think West Virginia's particular brand of pro-union populism should be a template for the rest of the country, since West Virginia's economy relies on coal more than any other state. And "bringing jobs back to coal country" might be more about reclaiming used-up coal land for agriculture and renewable energy than recasting REGULASHUNZ BAD!!! as a populist tenet.

If you want a true indicator of how sick, immoral, and decadent our society has become, you need look no further than all the cable news personalities the Administration has either hired or is contemplating hiring. The President has recently hired CNBC's ridiculous Larry Kudlow to replace the almost-as-ridiculous Gary Cohn as his top economic advisor, and one Fox and Friends host (not a famous one) has actually moved up in the State Department. TV news is the worst news, which means cable TV news is the worst of the worst. Hence another reason to demand the ability to buy our cable channels a la carte: so we don't have to financially support these morons as they schmooze their way into our government.

Finally, Republicans are apparently hoping that they can keep their Senate majority by having the President go to states he won and talk about how "Democrats are hindering his agenda." I'm not sure how big the President's "base" is, really, and it sure does seem "counterintuitive" to have him go around the country and whine about how he can't get anything done. On the other hand, since this President isn't a Democrat, the "liberal" media will be much less likely to cover all of his whining as whining. And out of all the Senators up from states the President won, the only two I'd miss are Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown.

Around the table: health care, deficits, Russia, fossil fuels, and liberal chances in right-wing districts.

Our President proposes expanding temporary, cut-rate health insurance plans so that they're considerably less temporary. And the result? More young, healthy people will roll the dice with these plans that don't have to cover the health care issues (including pre-existing conditions) that all other health insurance plans have to cover -- which will help make all the better health care plans more expensive. He might as well call it making health insurance suck again! Seriously, when I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

The incomparable Dean Baker reminds us that (all together now) Republicans obviously don't care about deficits, despite the "liberal" media's insistence that they really, really do. "This rule should be taught in Journalism 101," he writes: "Reporters should not infer views or beliefs." That's obviously true, but what's even more important is that growth-through-tax-cuts-for-the-rich has never worked -- it didn't work under Mr. Reagan, it didn't work under Bush the Lesser, and it won't work under our current President. You'd think the "liberal" media would have noted the disaster that Sam Brownback's tax-cutting "experiment" has been in Kansas just recently, but for the "liberal" media, yesterday is always another country.

Cato Institute senior fellow/Soul Coughing fan Julian Sanchez advances a novel theory: "Russia Wanted Trump to Win. And It Wanted to Get Caught." Mainly, "Project Latkha didn’t merely aim to influence the outcome of the election, but also its tone, and Americans’ attitudes toward their own democratic institutions." Also, "If we run with the hypothesis that Russia’s core goal was to sow doubt about the integrity and fairness of American elections — and, by implication, erode the credibility of any criticism aimed at Russia’s — then the ultimate exposure of their interference may well have been viewed not as frustrating that aim but as one more perverse way of advancing it." And if Congress passes laws stifling online free speech, that'll only remind you of Mr. bin Laden's long game -- not to take away America's freedoms, but to get America to do that for him.

Former U.S. House Rep. Dennis Kucinich, running in a rather crowded Democratic primary for Governor of Ohio, says he'll stop all gas and oil drilling there if he gets elected. The flesh is willing -- someone should have long ago said "(f)resh water and clean water are not negotiable issues" -- but the observer who criticizes Mr. Kucinich's plan for not emphasizing what he would do in the absence of gas and oil is spot-on. Mr. Kucinich's public works program concerns infrastructure and statewide public broadband, which is good, but doesn't seem to specify solar and wind projects, so that's a missed opportunity.

Finally, a Pennsylvania Democratic operative said this earlier this week: "Democrats have to realize that Republicans can run conservative candidates everywhere and get to 218 House seats. Democrats can’t run liberals everywhere and get to a majority." Of course, Republicans are running mostly reactionary candidates, not conservative ones, but I'd also question the meaning of the word "liberal," here: if "liberal" means "social liberals who let corporations do whatever they like," I'd completely agree with his assessment. But if "liberal" means "economic populist," then I think he's dead wrong. Liberal economic populists can win anywhere, anytime -- as long as the consultant class doesn't get to them first.

Around the table: what stands in the way of a Democratic wave, and other lessons.

If you're already gushing at the possibility of a Democrat victory in the coming midterms, Ari Berman at Rolling Stone cautions that Republican-held states have devised a lot of nefarious ways of suppressing the vote. Mainly Mr. Berman concentrates on Wisconsin, once the home of great American public servants like Bob LaFollette and William Proxmire, but now a right-wing swamp of extreme gerrymandering, vote suppression, and dark money political contributions. But here's a ray of hope: maybe the Supreme Court heard about 2011 Republican lawmakers saying "ignore the public comments" while mulling the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

Here's another corrective to your enthusiasm: Ryan Grim and Lee Fang at The Intercept describe how actual populists in U.S. House races have to run against the Democratic establishment before they can run against (beatable) Republican incumbents. You'd think Pennsylvania state Democrat poobahs, in particular, would have far less credibility after their lousy showing in 2016 (seriously, who could possibly care about getting Katie McGinty's endorsement?), but they're still around, saying Democrats have to appeal to Republican moderates who will never vote for them rather than the left-leaning and left-behind economic populists who otherwise wouldn't vote for anyone. What's the definition of insanity again?

Bill McKibben at The Nation presents "Three Strategies to Get to a Fossil-Free America," wryly adding that "none of them rely on Washington to do anything useful." Here they are: getting states and localities to move to renewable power; blocking new fossil-fuel projects like gas and oil pipelines and fracking wells; and stop the flow of bank money to fossil-fuel projects. I laughed out loud at the part where folks actually installed fields of solar panels on Keystone XL's path.

In a peripherally-related note, The Straight Dope describes the phenomenon of the "fatberg," or the massive, dense blob of cooking oil and other waste that tends to block off sewer lines. The biggest culprit in the creation of the "fatberg" isn't that turkey grease you dumped down the sink (though it doesn't help!), but the massive amount of used cooking oil restaurants dump into sewers. Sadly, the only idea advanced to stop the fatberg -- converting cooking oil into energy -- is over a decade old already, and some enterprising small-town or big-city mayor should already have made it the great work for which they'll always be remembered.

Finally, Araz Hachadourian at Yes! magazine describes the "time bank," where good Americans who might be short on cash trade hours of services instead. Folks might swap mowing the lawn for a good food dish, for example -- and no money changes hands. Some 500 of these banks exist across America, and I suppose today's "conservatives" would decry them as TEH SOSHULIZM!!!!, even though they consist of people signing and fulfilling contracts with each other without the assistance of some governmental body, which would ordinarly sound like something after a conservative's own heart.

Around the table: vampire elites fear sunlight, and other truths.

Theo Anderson at In These Times suggests, and I hope he's right, that economic populist candidates on the left "don't need the establishment anymore." Admittedly, similarly rosy assessments drew on a rather narrower body of information (a city council race here, a special state election there) than the Virginia and Alabama elections have since furnished. And I rather suspect that anyone who adapts the small donor model can either outraise corporate-funded candidates or fool corporations into wasting even more money on candidates no one really likes.

Ho hum, Durham County (NC) aims to require 48 hours' notice before "spontaneous" protests. In a sane and moral society, proposing such a thing would end the career of whomever proposed it -- how "spontaneous" can you be if you give two days' warning, after all? -- but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, it may take a few days for good Americans to say what do you have to fear/ and you really want your Confederate statues so badly you're willing to urinate all over the First Amendment? before county officials back down.

Good Iranian citizens take to the streets to protest their country's government -- at great risk to themselves, I should add! -- but our "liberal" media uses the event as an excuse to talk to the same morons who always want America to drop a crapload of bombs to "liberate" other countries. These "experts" don't indulge in a whole lot of let the Iranian people decide their own fate, I notice! Think that might be a way of suggesting they're "incapable" of doing so? I suppose I am a bit amused that Our Glorious Elites didn't see these protests coming, just like they didn't see the 1979 revolution coming.

Louise Matsakis at Wired tells us why we should be skeptical of folks squealing ZOMG TEH RUSHINZ WILL DESTROYZ TEH INTERNETZ BY CUTTING TEH UNDERWATER CABULZ!!!!! "One of the estimated 428 undersea cables worldwide is damaged every couple of days," she reminds us. "Nearly all faults aren’t intentional. They’re caused by underwater earthquakes, rock slides, anchors, and boats." Even if someone could cut literally every one of these cables at once (which is what it would take, since cutting one cable merely causes traffic to be re-routed through another one), that still wouldn't affect internet transmissions within nations. Lesson: fight the real enemy -- like, say, Mr. Pai's FCC, which would actually take your internet freedom away from you.

Good news, everyone! Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down key parts of Idaho's "ag-gag" law as unconstitutional. I'm startled to learn that Idaho passed this law after an undercover operation at a dairy corporation uncovered, among other things, sexual molestation of animals by dairy employees. You'd think legislators wouldn't want to be caught in the position of making it harder to uncover sexual molestation of animals by food processing corporation employees. And you'd think more of them would start to get disgusted with having to serve evil all the time. Sadly, this is a little like turning around a cruise ship.

Finally, we learn that worker-owned cooperatives are making a stand against "platform" monopolies like Uber. (A "platform" monopoly controls data in a particular economic sphere -- i.e., Amazon is a platform monopoly in online sales.) You'll not only be reminded that over a third of America gets its banking services via a credit union and over a tenth gets electricity from a co-op, but you'll also learn about no less than eight co-ops making a difference -- including Ace Hardware, which likely has a store near you, and has actually expanded over the past year, unlike other corporations closing stores as they redistribute worker wealth upward to themselves. Why, it gives one hope!

Around the table: tax "reform," racism, the "liberal" media, deaths-by-taser, and real live voter fraud.

Virtually all recent polling finds that the majority of Americans oppose the Trump tax "cut" plan. And that's based on what we've been able to find out about it in the precious little time Congress has spent "debating" the bill! We Americans are demonstrably smarter about tax "cuts" than we used to be -- after all, how much "trickling down" has really gone on over the last four decades? -- but I worry that this won't become as real for Americans as the health care "reform" debate obviously did. Then again, Republicans might be greedy enough to pass this bill before Christmas, and then it'll become quite real indeed in the coming months when we all go to do our taxes.

Donna Minkowitz at The Nation finds speakers of a secret white supremacist conference doing things like denouncing corporate power and embracing single-payer health care. I've long suspected that a lot of white supremacists would find their racism a lot less compelling if we shined the light of economic populism upon them -- no use telling me wrong, because I've seen economic populism convert people! -- but we should beware of the possibility that the "liberal" media will pretend single-payer health care is a "racist" position merely because Richard Spencer contaminated it with his racist cooties, just as they've done with "free" trade. And then our work becomes much harder, but when was it ever easy, or supposed to be?

MSNBC reverses its decision to fire Sam Seder, after realizing that they'd completely misinterpreted an eight-year old tweet from Mr. Seder, a misreading helped along, naturally, by a massive right-wing campaign against Mr. Seder. Maybe I'm just a demanding bastard, but I'm not that impressed that MSNBC finally got it right, because the original screw-up is so inexcusable. Seriously, read what people write, in context, and then refute or ignore the drama that assholes create about it. Why is that so hard?

A Reuters report finds over 100 incidents of prisoners dying after corrections officers used tasers on them. Many of these prisoners were already restrained when tasered, and many of them died after being subjected to other, non-taser force. The Reuters findings cover over 17 years, but I would think they lowball the actual number of deaths-by-taser, and anyway, one is too many. And "law and order" ballswingers would see it exactly the same way if it happened to someone in their family.

Finally, former Colorado Republican Party Chair is convicted of voter fraud after a) going on and on in public about how Democrats are the only ones who ever commit voter fraud and b) filling out and mailing in his ex-wife's absentee ballot. Of course he blames it on a "diabetic episode," which you're free to translate as "the Twinkie defense." What are the chances of Fox News throwing a hissy fit over this actual documented instance of voter fraud? I kid, of course -- the chances are precisely zero, because a Republican did it.

Around the table: from the Presidential "private spy network" to the way to win and do good works in Trumpville.

Some well-off and well-connected Trump supporters appear to be creating a private spy network that circumvents the CIA and would only report to current CIA head/potential next Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Even if you don't like the "deep state," then creating a private spy network answering only to someone the President trusts is about the worst way to fight it. You think the Founders wanted a President with his own spy network? Also, too, George W. Bush fired the spies who disagreed with him, and that paved the way for this.

Even the father of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts, says the Republican tax "reform" plan is an "abomination" and "an act of brutal plunder, and it proves that capitalism in the West is now "merely a looting machine." His use of the word "looters" to describe those that would benefit from the tax "reform" should shame all the Ayn Rand acolytes who support the plan, but I bet it doesn't. They all fancy themselves "makers" and they fancy working families as "takers," and many of them think looters don't even exist.

Ho hum, ProPublica still finds plenty of scams and malware in Facebook political ads that don't meet Facebook's own guidelines for its ads. Gosh, I don't know, maybe Facebook should hire people to fight this crap? A lot of people are still looking for jobs, you know, and they're a lot more trainable than executives think (or, perhaps, want you to think). And anti-kudos to Mark Zuckerberg for deflecting this into a "free speech" issue. Tricking people into paying $100 a month for erectile dysfunction "medication" isn't "free speech," it's fraud.

David C. Barker at Quartz says that Republicans probably won't pay a political price for passing that awful tax "reform" bill. I don't know that the bill's unpopularity is "somewhat overstated," but I will conceded that it sure is harder to get folks angry about a labyrinthine tax bill than about taking away their health insurance. And Mr. Barker's probably right that the bill won't destroy the economy in the short term -- it will do great long-term damage, but voters need to be prompted to see that damage before it happens. Think Democrats will do that in their ads? I kid, of course.

Finally, from the "All is Not Lost" file: a Democratic Socialist winning a city council election in a small Iowa city may not be big news -- even if that city went for Mr. Trump by five points just last year -- but I think Ross Grooters has put his finger on a winning formula, namely remembering that "everybody is facing the same economic hardships" and you have to talk about "what has to change" so voters can actually thrive, instead of constantly worrying about the next disaster draining what little savings they have. I bet it also helps that Mr. Grooters grew up in a conservative family, not that I'd know anything about that.

Around the table: on the mental gymnastics performed by Trump supporters, and other matters.

President Trump calls a dozen Democratic Senators and tells them he'll "get killed" financially if his tax "reform" effort passes. Because, after all, if you can't trust Donald Trump, who can you trust? He also told them that they've got to pass an Estate tax repeal because they had to "give the rich something," but what can you give people who already have everything? (Oh, and a Trump spokeshack again spreads the lie that Democrats are holding up his nominees when they're not even able to filibuster Presidential nominees anymore.)

Politico reporter revisits Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and finds that although they generally said they'd abandon him if he didn't deliver, now they're saying they won't abandon him even though he hasn't delivered. You'll encounter all the naked self-contradiction of their analyses and you'll say well, what the hell else are they going to do? Most of us have a very hard time admitting we're wrong, and it's not like Democrats offer very much in opposition. (By "offer very much," I mean offer very much economic populism, not whatever else it is Democrats think people want.)

Maine voters overwhelmingly approved a Medicaid expansion at the polls earlier this week, but didn't actually provide a funding mechanism in their ballot resolution, so Gov. Paul LePage may yet get to stop it, by declaring a lack of funds (Maine's share of the expansion would be around $54 million) and sending the resolution back to the legislature. Of course Mr. LePage -- who was very poor and very abused by an alcoholic father as a child and I got past it, so suck it, poor people! -- has already vetoed five-count-'em-five Medicaid expansions as Governor, and the current state Senate Majority leader would like to succeed him, so it doesn't look as good as it did on Election Day, which is a shame. (The good news: Utah might succeed in 2018 where Maine has thus far failed.)

Surprise, surprise, hedge fund manager/Trump campaign financier Robert Mercer appears to have used money sheltered from U.S. taxes in Bermuda to finance some anti-Clinton efforts. So quite a few Democrats will now be able to attack quite a few Republican opponents by referring to all the tax shelter money being spent on that Republican's behalf -- but nah, they won't do that, not when they can coast on this week's results in Virginia.

Finally, in a story that may be breaking a few weeks early, a woman has come forward to accuse Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of molesting her when she was 14 and he was 32. Mr. Moore has denied the allegations, but the bulk of the Post's report describes a man who seemed to spend an awful lot of time with girls when he was spending time with anyone, and that's not a good sign. Also, he tried to date at least three other teenage girls in his early 30s, though none of those attempts resulted in any sexual relations (and in one of them he actually seems kinda human). I bet he still wins the race anyway, because rage.

Around the table: racism as a virus, cowardice as a Democrat virus, and other high concepts.

U.S. House passes an actually-bipartisan amendment that would essentially roll back the Department of Justice's efforts to expand asset forfeiture. Allowing police to seize property from the accused, not the convicted, is obviously unconstitutional -- except to the politicians who prefer posturing about being "tough on crime" to actually solving problems. The Senate could still shoot it down -- as they just shot down a Rand Paul amendment that would have repealed the 2001 AUMF that three Presidents have now abused -- but it's still a step forward.

The incomparable Heather Digby Parton writes a long and thoughtful article (including excellent analysis of recent polls) wondering whether making a deal with President Trump on the debt limit was a "trap." Call me old-fashioned, but I think you can walk through a lot of traps if you stop playing 13-dimensional chess and just work for your constituents, though that seems to be a lot to ask of contemporary Democrats. Certainly one should cast a wary eye at Democrat efforts to "win back" Trump voters, the vast majority of whom were Romney voters, McCain voters, Bush voters, et cetera. The worst thing about the debt limit deal, as I've said, was that it cleared the board for Republicans this month, so they can exert more effort on odious tax "reform" and health care "reform" efforts.

Credit reporting corporation Equifax removes forced arbitration clause from the free credit monitoring service it set up in the wake of its now-notorious data breach, but not from its general Terms of Service. That means that Equifax could try to force you into an arbitration court if you have a dispute with them over this whole imbroglio (which means that even if you threw their own statement saying they wouldn't force arbitration on you back at them, you might be doing so before an arbitrator). So I'd be conservative and monitor your credit using an actually-free credit report via annualcreditreport.com. (Yes, that is a totally valid way of using the word "conservative," though I guess I can't blame you for doing a double-take.)

Adam Johnson at FAIR informs us that the six top US newspapers actually spent a little more time condemning anti-fascists than they did condemning fascists after Charlottesville. Even if I were generous, and assumed that the "liberal" media condemn anti-fascists because it doesn't actually take a lot of moral courage to condemn fascists, I still don't think the isolated incidents of violence from folks resisting fascists is more than half of this story. I think Nazi wannabes committing considerably more acts of violence against people they think should be wiped from the Earth is more than half the story, actually.

Ho hum, Martha Pskowski at TruthOut describes how Coca-Cola has been sucking the water out of the ground in an area of rural Southern Mexico. Conservatves ought to find a lot of these themes familiar -- like the city overtaking the farm and the extermination of local traditions -- but too many of today's "conservatives" simply repeat the words free market over and over again, possibly in an effort to position themselves for their next job as a corporate PR hack. Trouble is, Coca-Cola's water-draining arrangement probably violates Mexico's Constitution, which literally guarantees clean water to its citizens.

Finally, we've been hearing a lot lately about the "intra-Democratic divide," which is a vast improvement from our "liberal" media treating Barack Obama like he was Thee Most Liberal Liberal Imaginable, but too many folks treat "reaching out to working-class whites" or "keeping black and Latino voters" is an either-or. Mr. Marshall is right to suggest that racism is a "virus" that lies "dormant" but can be "activated" by the right set of conditions, but one of the conditions that helps activate that racism is a corporatist Democratic candidate who has nothing to offer other than not being a Republican. Give people the economic populism they crave and deserve, and racism won't be anywhere near as important.

Around the table: mostly about Charlottesville, but also about health care and spying on protestors.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions calls Charlottesville attack an incident of domestic terrorism and vows to pursue "the most serious charges that can be brought." That leaves him wiggle room, of course -- by which I don't necessarily mean farming the case out to the state of Virginia, because that might work out worse for the suspect -- but I won't lie to you and say it's utterly meaningless that he said it, since he is Attorney General, after all, and he has a pulpit.

But just as one hand giveth: Department of Justice has been trying to get IP addresses for over 1 million Americans who may have visited an anti-Trump website. I'm stunned, frankly, that the DOJ could get such a broad warrant, apparently in connection with the 200 folks still being held on felony riot charges in connection fo Inauguration Day protests. If judges are showing that much deference to the Executive branch (particularly this Executive branch), that's not a good sign.

Ho hum, CBO estimates that if President Trump cuts off Affordable Care Act subsidies, premiums will go up 20 percent by next year for those who use subsidies to get health insurance, and 25 percent by 2020. Note to the President: it's not "letting Obamacare fail" if you actively work to make it fail, any more than it's an "accident" if you set fire to your own house.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that the ACLU shouldn't get slammed for representing people we don't agree with. Not just because rights are even for Nazi wannabes, and not just because news items saying ZOMG TEH ACLU DEFENDEDZ TEH NAMBLAZ!!!! tend not to tell the whole story, but because, as the ACLU itself puts it, "once you chip away at one person’s rights, everyone else’s are at risk...Free speech doesn’t belong only to those we agree with, and the First Amendment doesn’t only protect speech that is tasteful and inoffensive. In fact, it is in the hard cases that our commitment to the First Amendment is most tested and most important." Another way of putting it: if your values only tell you what you want to hear and never inconvenience you, they're bad values.

Finally, President Trump finally leveled specific condemnations at Nazi wannabes a mere 48 hours after the Charlottesville attacks, though not without also bragging about the economy and pretending he'd already condemned them. I'm sure his votaries aren't offended -- after all, they heard him the first time, and are pretty sure he was "made" to say what he said the second time. How long before they finally get tired of a President who struts around like that but can so easily be "made" to do things against his will? Probably about the same time they get tired of feeling sorry for themselves, so that could be a while. In the meantime, how about Democrats run some actual populists for office, so Trump votaries can have a real model of better behavior?

Around the table: time for another exciting campaign from Danny Tarkanian! And other stories.

Martin Longman at Washington Monthly says Democrats might fight their way back to power in rural/poor white districts by fighting monopolies again. I'd quarrel with some of his points, but if you're looking for something that unites rank-and-file Americans, fighting monopolies might be it, particularly since monopolies lay waste to communities that never vote Democrat anymore. Fighting monopolies might even be the idea that unifies all the other things that unite rank-and-file Americans across the ideological spectrum (like opposition to media consolidation, corporate crime, "free" trade, and bankster power).

Apple removes some of its Virtual Private Network (or VPN) apps from its Chinese app store, which just so happens to jibe with China's ongoing internet crackdown. Apple is notorious for strong-arming app developers into making their products to conform to its rigid hardware and software requirements, but it would have been a vain hope to think they'd play hardball with the Chinese government. So remind your friends and family to avoid thinking we should let corporations do whatever they like, so that corporate power can be a bulwark against totalitarians.

If you've fallen prey to the notion that we shouldn't expect to see life-saving vaccines if there's no money in it (cough ebola cough), Dean Baker reminds us that our government can play a role in developing such vaccines, such as the Zika vaccine. Of course, corporate whining about government involvement in vaccine development is doubly offensive when you consider how much taxpayer money goes into developing big pharma drugs -- and sigh, our government will grant the corporation it paid to develop the Zika vaccine a seven-year monopoly on it.

Political gadfly Danny Tarkanian says he'll take on Sen. Dean Heller in the 2018 Republican primary, because Mr. Heller isn't pro-Trump enough. Can he win the nomination? Sure he can, even against a formidable campaigner like Mr. Heller. Can he win the general? Of course he can, even though he's now lost five attempts for high-profile office since 2004 -- 2018 isn't going to be a year for non-ideological problem-solvers to win office, but a year for populists and fake populists to win office. Still, we can't discount the possibility that the end result (or even the intent!) will be that Mr. Heller looks more palatable to the good folks of Nevada -- he really blew it with that last health care vote, after all.

I've long believed that websites like Napster existed because people really, really wanted to download music and the record corporations should have moved a lot more quickly to fulfill their desires, but my generosity most certainly does not extend to the hackers who are trying to blackmail HBO into giving them a cut of their largesse. We may reasonably debate whether HBO has too much money, but that doesn't make everyone who wants to take it from them into Robin Hood, even if it means some folks will get to see the next Game of Thrones episode a few days early. So yeah, this "Mr. Smith" is just an asshole, or a group of assholes.

Finally, since we're on the subject, I'm with Charles Blow's characterization of Donald Trump as "America's Whiniest 'Victim'" -- until he suggests that Mr. Trump's votaries are just as whiny as he is. A lot of votaries have legitimate grievances (corporations have utterly ravaged their neighborhoods and livelihoods, after all), though TEH BLACKZ GETZ ALL TEH GOODIEZ!!!! is, frankly, not a legitimate grievance, and if we addressed their legitimate grievances, a lot of their illegitimate ones would magically disappear. Still, it is a shame that none of them will never add the sum of Mr. Trump's whining and deduce that he is, in fact, a whiner.

Around the table: the "Pharma Bro" heads to jail! And other stories.

President Trump supports bill that would cut legal immigration in half. So how will those white folks who always work themselves into a red-faced rage about TEH ILLEGULZ!!!!! prove they're not racist now? After all, they deflect charges of racism by saying but of course I support legal immigration, but this bill curtails legal immigration, so if you support this bill, you support less legal immigration. Of course, less legal immigration means more undocumented immigrants for people to get into a red-faced rage about, and thus more souls for the Trump goblins to harvest.

Joshua Holland at The Nation argues that single-payer isn't the solution to the problem of achieving universal health insurance coverage in America. So what is the solution, then? Well, the two solutions offerred by Mr. Hacker at Yale would both improve the system, and might even ultimately lead to single-payer coverage, but mainly we learn that converting to a single-payer system in America would be really hard, that not every "single-payer" system is a single-payer system per se, and that the folks fighting hardest for it should be nicer to their opponents. In other words, it sounds like folks slightly to our right want us to feel ashamed of ourselves for fighting so hard. Good luck with that.

Strangely enough, the title of this Patrick Eddington article at The American Conservative --"Why is Mattis Declaring War on Whistleblowers?" -- kinda buries the real story: that a group of NSA employees created a good system for constitutionally sifting internet traffic for terrorist activity, a system that some observers say could have prevented 9.11, but because the NSA Chief hated it and wanted to develop an entirely different and inferior system, the NSA buried it, and the folks who created it suffered greatly, at least in part because they filed whistleblower claims about it. In any case, it sure does look like the Trump Administration will be no better at protecting whistleblowers than previous ones.

Adam Johnson at FAIR describes the "liberal" media's addiction to "perseverance porn" -- i.e., the news stories about folks walking 10 miles each way to work, going right back to work after a serious accident, etc. The "liberal" media extolls these stories as proof that anyone-can-make-it-if-they-try, instead of asking fairly obvious questions, like "why isn't the walking man's area served by public transportation?" or "why doesn't his job pay him enough so he can buy a second-hand car"? As with the notion that the man who walks the streets of a "dangerous" neighborhood without incident for decades isn't news but the one who gets mugged is, one should wonder why the folks who can't get to work after getting run over don't make the news.

New study suggests that "Obama-Trump" voters may be more likely to simply be Republican voters who voted for Mr. Obama, rather than disaffected Democrats who voted for Mr. Trump. Thus, of course, getting those voters back is a fool's errand. Actual economic populism of the Bernie Sanders kind is, of course, the Gourdian knot that slices this problem -- an actual economic populist might expand the number of Democrats who actually come out to vote, and attract some Republicans whose emotional attachment to their party might only be built on rage. I guess that's why Democratic elites won't ever do it.

Finally, hedge fund manager/HIV drug price gouger Martin Shkreli now faces up to 20 years in prison after his conviction on securities fraud (two counts) and conspiracy (one). And just as Al Capone ultimately went to jail for tax evasion, the original Man with a Face Even a Mother Could Punch didn't get nailed for jacking up the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet, which is what he'd go to jail for in a sane and healthy society. (No, he wouldn't go to jail for being a sexist pig -- though, in a sane and healthy society, he would be more thoroughly shamed and ostracized for being one.)

Around the table: in which we contemplate the "war on terror," free speech, the "liberal" media, smart birds, and an actual conservative health care plan.

Good news, everyone: U.S. House of Representatives passes two amendments to its defense authorization bill that would prevent American involvement in the Saudi-led war against Yemen. Yes, these amendments could well get conferenced out in reconciliation, particularly if President Trump demands it (and what an "independent" he'll be if he does!), but it's still a good first step -- particularly since it should be hard for Mr. Trump to use the 2001 AUMF (specifically aimed at those who attacked us, or harbored our attackers, on 9.11) to justify continuing to participate in a war on the same side as al-Qaeda and against Houthi rebels who fight ISIS well.

Ed Dolan at Vox explains "What a Good Conservative Health Care Plan Would Look Like." How do I know that these are actually conservative ideas? Because I'd actually be willing to implement some of them (definitely greater price transparency and drug reimportation from Canada) in an honest negotiation about health care reform -- though the other side would at least have to give up a public option, of course. I mean, negotiations have to be win-win. And I hasten to point out that a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system would wipe away any complaints about employer-sponsored insurance tax deductibility.

Glen Frieden at FAIR notes the relative absence of actual liberal populists from NPR's "varied mix" of on-air perspectives, while giving yuge airtime to right-wing commentator Jonah Goldberg, often without identifying his political bent. NPR professes to like Mr. Goldberg because he's not as "predictable" as the others, but the only thing "unpredictable" about him is exactly which tortured road he will use to arrive at the same place all the other right-wingers go. Also, he's really bad at punditry -- I can't tell you how many columns of his I've read where he accidentally destroys his own argument, and not even by trying to be hip.

Ho hum, Trump lawyer threatens unnamed individual in a string of profane late-night emails. The lawyer later apologized, and I suppose we could argue whether Mr. Kasowitz's threats rise to the level of criminality ("I already know where you live" and "You will see me. I promise. Bro." sure weren't his two best ideas that day), but certainly responding with four profane, rage-addled emails to someone best ignored describes a man who may not be the best person for whatever job he's got. I can already hear Mr. Trump saying I hire only the best people, the classiest people! The best!

Finally, researchers find ravens able to plan for the future. Ravens already save food for later, but scientists suspect that ability may be hard-wired, so they trained them to a) choose a rock from among a series of items, and then drop that rock into a tube to release a treat from a box, and b) exchange a token for a food reward. And ravens show more long-term planning than a lot of politicians do, by actually doing better on experiment a) when waiting 17 hours for a reward than they did after waiting 15 minutes, and by preferring to hold on to their tokens for the promise of a better reward later in experiment b). So think about all that next time you watch The Birds.

Around the table: in which our populist instincts find little reflection in the "liberal" media.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that Arab and Muslim immigrants who were unlawfully detained and/or tortured can't sue high-ranking public officials for damages. Because national security, naturally -- how can Our Best and Brightest make "difficult but necessary decisions" if they're worried about getting sued? Seems to me if you did nothing wrong, your best course of action would be to win the lawsuit, especially since, as a member of Our Best and Brightest, you would have the means to fight it. And the Court left open the possibility that plaintiffs can sue far lower-ranking officials for damages, which is rather like King Solomon literally splitting the baby in half.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, describes the kind of "Jim Crow Scam" that could have tipped the Georgia 6th special House race to Republicans. In Georgia, of course, it's considerably worse than elsewhere -- community organizations register voters, call the state government to find out why their registrations didn't go through, get the run-around, and then get raided and shut down by the state. And Interstate Crosscheck does its dirty work here, too. Stop me if you've heard this before, but a better candidate -- not the perfect moderate, but the perfect populist -- could have won that race regardless. 6th District Democrats will disagree with me, but they're wrong -- the major difference between rank-and-file liberals and conservatives these days is tone, not substance.

Speaking of which: the stunning thing about appeals for Democrats to move right on social issues so they can win more elections (as Jim Naureckas at FAIR tells us) is that the data tells Democrats to move left on economic issues. Strangely, "liberal" media pundits never suggest that Democrats should ever target folks who are conservative on social issues but liberal on economic issues! I've long said that the pro-lifer who wants to tax the rich at 91% is more my ally than the can't-we-all-get-along pro-business pro-choicer; we know these people exist, and we also know that corporatist Democrats offer them literally no reason to vote Democrat.

Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg soberly evaluates the Kansas tax-cuts-for-the-rich "experiment" under Gov. Brownback, and finds it wanting. We need not tabulate all the ways in which Mr. Brownback has thoroughly bollocksed up his state (though Mr. Ritholtz's own tabulation is quite valuable, and "underpromising and overdelivering" is good advice for any undertaking!), but I did not know that Kansas finishes high on the list of states that lose a lot of its residents to other states. What state is at the other end of the spectrum, welcoming the most new residents? Oregon -- which passed a massive tax hike on the rich back in 2010. Could that be mere coincidence?

Finally, on the occasion of Jeffery Immelt leaving General Electric with a $200 million-plus golden parachute, Sam Pizzigati reminds us that CEOs don't really earn all that damn money. GE once gave us "breakthroughs like the first commercial electric power station (1882), the first high-altitude jet engine (1949), and the first laser lights (1962)," but not now, not when it's so much easier to artificially create a fortune by becoming a monopoly, securing corporate welfare, and slashing jobs and pensions. And the sad part is that too many Americans think "well, he made a lot of money" is an accomplishment. And that's because we don't do accomplishments anymore. Feel free to conclude that the lust for mammon keeps us from dreaming of real good works that we might pass down to future generations.

Around the table: modern-day wage slavery in California, and other sad tales.

Anthony DiMaggio at Counterpunch argues that we've been overestimating economic populism as a factor in President Trump's support -- and thus underestimating factors such as racism, xenophobia, and "the elitist class war against the middle class and poor." Studies find Trump voters aren't poorer, more unemployed, or more from Rust Belt regions, while other studies show sexism and racism to be better predictors of Trump support, and still other studies find a disproportionate percentage of Trump supporters being well off. And when they say 70 percent of Trump voters don't have a college education, you can always remind them that the rate nationally is 71 percent.

U.S. Supreme Court will hear appeal of a District Court decision striking down Wisconsin's most recent redistricting map as unconstitutionally partisan. Justice Kennedy has long said he'd like to evaluate a standard that deals with partisan redistricting, but that doesn't mean he'll approve of the standard advanced by the original plaintiffs, nor does his joining the majority issuing a stay of the District Court's decision suggest which way he'll rule. One thing, though: if too many Wisconsin Republican legislators said out loud that they were trying to use the redistricting process to ensure permanent or durable Republican majorities, rather than respond to citizens' needs, that could piss off John Roberts.

Brett Murphy at USA Today looks at how California port trucking corporations force drivers into becoming "modern-day indentured servant(s)." Basically, these corporations turn their mostly immigrant truckers into independent contractors who "work toward" "owning" their truck, and then use their truckers' indebtedness to force them to work 16- and 20-hour days for little pay. And if they miss work for any reason, they seize their truck, and all the money they've paid toward it! Corporate hacks have their litany of excuses -- abuses are rare, drivers are lazy, unions make trouble, it's so hard to make money anymore. I suppose once major retail corporations start bowing to public pressure to stop taking advantage of this situation, we'll also hear you don't want your prices to go up, do you?

This New York Times article describing how Mr. Trump's business ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE (and his lack of business ties with Qatar) are influencing his Middle East policy quotes Mr. Trump as saying Saudi citizens "buy apartments from me," spending "$40 million, $50 million" and then asking rhetorically "Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much." He and his votaries imagine he's just shooting-from-the-hip, but he's actually confessing that his own business ties (and not so much the people's will!) will set American policy, and confessing your wrongdoing as if it's nothing doesn't make it nothing. It sure doesn't make it "not wrongdoing."

Finally, Jon Schwarz at The Intercept alerts us to an actual historical mini-series on the History Channel called "America's War on Drugs" -- and notes that it's "the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50 years," i.e., that "the war on drugs has always been a pointless sham." It's not just a sham because President Nixon essentially created the "war on drugs" as a way of discrediting black and hippie protestors, but because of our own government's well-documented collusion with various drug cartels. Still, as Mr. Schwarz says, it's a big deal that it's on TV -- and not sequestered on a pay channel, even!

Around the table: from racial gerrymandering to Republican whining.

U.S. Supreme Court upholds federal district court ruling striking down two North Carolina Congressional districts, concurring with the lower court that the state legislature deliberately sought to dilute black voting power by adding black voters to those districts. The Court highlights the utter perversity of the Republicans' argument in re the 1st district -- that the Voting Rights Act mandates that black voters get black representation, even if that means getting less representation in other districts, apparently -- and Republicans may regret arguing that they redrew the 12th district on partisan-not-racial grounds if the Court ever gets around to ruling on partisan redistricting.

Justice Gorsuch didn't participate in the above case, but he did dissent (along with Justice Thomas, who, for reasons unknown to me, joined the 5-3 majority in the North Carolina case) from the Court's decision not to hear an appeal that could have struck down McCain-Feingold bans on large contributions to political parties. One can only hope Justice Gorsuch will be writing a lot of dissents over the course of his career, but we'd be unduly optimistic to think that'll be what happens in the short term.

Mark Travant at the OurFuture blog suggests that the Trump Administration "reality show" distracts us from Republican attempts to cut Medicaid. I'll admit I've been more obsessed with protecting Medicare over the years, but Medicaid provides insurance to over 60 million Americans, whereas Medicare insures over 40 million. So between those two, we're about one-third of the way to insuring everybody. Right-wingers will respond but everybody's already paying, but I'll respond that folks with millionaire income aren't paying enough, and that we could be spending what we're spending a lot more effectively -- you know, like they do in Canada.

Forget about Jon Ossoff's run in Georgia's 6th (his ads are still marred by "cut the deficit" and "high-tech jobs" messaging, which, like, yawn) -- Rob Quist has a real shot at grabbing Montana's at-large House seat for the Democrats. Partly he's got a shot because he's an unapologetic liberal populist, but he's also got a shot because his opponent (Republican Greg Gianforte) once sued the state to keep good Montanans from fishing on public lands near his land. That pushes all of Montana's buttons, but Mr. Gianforte already lost the 2016 gubernatorial race in Montana due in large part to this controversy, so I worry that Montana voters might be tired of hearing about it. I guess we'll see.

Finally, a Mississippi state House Rep says on Facebook that folks who remove Confederate statues -- statues "erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans," he says -- should be "LYNCHED!" (Shouty caps in original.) Even his fellow far-right Mississippi Republicans have slammed him for it, but he's so far apologized only for using the word "lynched" (or, rather, "LYNCHED!"), not for his sentiment. I'm sure his less-than-half apology was part of the plan all along -- to create drama and get attention coming and going. Here's your attention, clown: waaaaaaaaah!

Around the table: the continuing adventures of President Manchild.

The Trump Administration releases its tax "reform" plan, one notable mainly for the lack of details. And the rollout is notable mainly for how testy Messrs. Mnuchin and Cohn got when reporters pressed them for said details. Look at the handy one-page bulleted list, though, and you'll see the same-old same-old: Estate Tax repeal, a big cut for the top income bracket, and an even bigger cut in the corporate tax rate. And they also use "small businesses" as a human shield to justify repealing the Obamacare tax that only hits six-figure investment income! Will the "liberal" media notice when Mr. Trump first says the corporate tax rate is too high and then tries to assuage the fears of deficit hawks by saying "well, nobody actually pays that rate, so it won't be that big a cut"? I wish I could be sure.

I've been warning that Mr. Trump's multitudinous failures as our President foretell another stupid war, and Matt Novak at Gizmodo sees the same thing. The "liberal" media stoking fears of a North Korean bomb hitting New York, Fox News saying air invasion of North Korea would yield fairly immediate victory, the media's amnesia about how hard it actually is to occupy another country -- remind you of anything? Apparently Mr. Trump has decided that the only way to get the "liberal" media off his back is to start a war, and shamefully, he might be right. But I'd like for future historians to be able to tell the story of how he failed because he couldn't get the people off his back.

Jim Lobe tabulates all the times the Washington Post has called French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen "far right" while calling Trump Administration advisor Steve Bannon "conservative." You might come away from this outstanding article thinking there are no more conservatives in America -- just reactionaries calling themselves "conservative" and redefining the term ever rightward. And as bad as it is to use the word "conservative" to describe a man who likes Vichyites and openly boasts of wanting to "bring everything crashing down," it's probably even worse to use the word "populist" to describe the former Goldman Sachs bankster, which our "liberal" media also does. And you never have seen Steve Bannon and Marine Le Pen in the same room.

21 state Attorneys General write Education Secretary DeVos expressing "profound concern" that she has directed the Federal Student Aid office to withdraw a guidance aimed at helping students avoid loan troubles. After all, what says "innovation" more than "letting banksters gouge students more easily"? And right-wingers who say why do we need to tell students how to avoid being fools? should learn to focus their righteous anger more on the banksters who go very far out of their way to fool the students. I'm tired of folks who blame the wrong people all the time.

Ho hum, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) bought over $2 million of a big pharmaceutical stock looking to get an MS drug approved in the U.S., then wrote legislation speeding up FDA approval of drugs, then bought $1 million more of that corporation's stock mere months before his legislation became law. He may have evaded actual law-breaking, but that speaks to the weakness of our laws rather than his upstanding nature. Of course his office has responded by describing how awful MS is, as if letting Rep. Collins do exactly as he wanted was the only possible way to get relief for MS patients.

Finally, President Trump takes to Twitter to excoriate the 9th Circuit for ruling against him on "sanctuary cities," even saying "(s)ee you in the Supreme Court!" Of course it wasn't the 9th Circuit that ruled against him but a federal District Judge, but why have facts when you can wallow in rage? He may also be a bit optimistic that the U.S. Supreme Court will even take up the case, since their default setting since the Rehnquist days has been "defer to lower courts wherever possible." Still, what a big baby he is! And imagine how much whining you'd hear from right-wingers if Mr. Obama had said something like this. (They are generally silent now, but they may only be pretending to be ashamed.)

Around the table: the popular will, domestic terror, curious royalty payments, Administration drama, and the French elections.

Buried in this rundown of a recent NBC/WSJ poll results is this nugget, from an NBC/WSJ poll: Americans think their government "should do more to solve problems and meet the needs of Americans" by a nearly six to four margin. 57 to 39 is a big spread, but really, given the question's wording -- i.e., "solve problems" -- that spread should be even bigger, since government can, in theory, solve problems by doing something or by doing nothing. For example, it can solve problems both by preventing pollution and by not spying on good Americans without a warrant.

DHS Secretary John Kelly admits on CBS's Face the Nation that he doesn't know how to stop "homegrown terrorists." But that's our Trump Administration -- always boasting about how good they are at the unnecessary or the harmful, while utterly helpless to do their actual jobs. But of course there's also more to domestic terrorism than home-grown ISIS fanatics -- the Planned Parenthood bomber wasn't an ISIS fanatic.

The Buffalo News headline asks a provocative question: "How Did (NY Gov. Andrew) Cuomo Make $783,000 on Memoir That Sold 3,200 Copies?" And Jim Naureckas at FAIR notes that a) the corporation that published his memoirs is Harper-Collins, owned by, you guessed it, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which has made a habit of funneling large royalty payments to politically-connected authors, and b) News Corporation just so happened to be supporting certain tax cut proposals before the legislature at that time. Could this suspicious appearance of "legalized bribery" scuttle a Cuomo Presidential race in 2020, or a third Cuomo term as Governor in 2018? We can only hope!

Donald Trump says he won't fire Press Secretary/Utter Hack Sean Spicer because, get this, he "gets great ratings" and "(e)veryone tunes in" to watch him. I don't think hate-watching is a widespread phenomenon, particularly among mature people, and I also doubt Nielsen actually tracks Mr. Spicer's conferences, but Mr. Trump's statement is more proof that all he cares about is that you're talking about what he's doing, not whether he's doing anything particularly well, or even whether the people approve of what he's doing. In short, it's all about the drama.

Finally, over in France, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen survive the first round of voting in the Presidential election; they'll proceed to a runoff in a little less than two weeks. So, to sum: the actual left-wing populist and the nominal conservative didn't make it to the runoff, so a poll-favored establishment centrist will face off against a far-right anti-immigrant candidate who pretends to be an economic populist. Gosh, doesn't that all sound familiar?

Penny Rants for Sunday, April 23, 2017: politics as sport and drama, and other considerations.

"CNN Treats Politics Like a Sport," says Carlos Maza at Vox, and "That’s Bad for All of Us." You know it's bad when CNN's own president says "(t)he idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way," as if no one overhearing that could possibly call it evidence of a sick, immoral, and decadent society. Of course, calling politics "sport" is a way of turning good Americans into spectators, though our Constitution demands that we be participants in our democracy. And the accompanying video reminds us that CNN also thinks of politics as "drama" ("drama" being, like a sporting event, something you watch rather than participate in). We then witness (among so many other things!) a CNN punditoid say something ridiculous and then CNN coverage of the fallout over the ridiculous thing he said as if it'd ever be a story in a sane and moral society. This video, which runs a total of 6 minutes, 2 seconds, is a more trenchant slab of media criticism than Outfoxed is, and Outfoxed ran 78 minutes.

OK, I'll admit, Jon Ossoff outperformed my expectations in last Tuesday's special election in Georgia's 6th House District -- his 48% outdid his late polling, so maybe voters (and not just Democrat voters) might actually prefer an obvious milquetoast moderate to a Republican right now. 48% doesn't avoid a runoff, though, and he'll have a tougher time with one opponent than he did with 17. On the other hand, that opponent is former Susan G. Komen Foundation executive (and former Georgia Secretary of State) Karen Handel, who should really be parlaying that résumé into a Senate seat, except she's already tried and failed. Democrats will pound Ms. Handel's involvement in the Komen Foundation's messy divorce from Planned Parenthood, but that won't get Mr. Ossoff over 50. Here's what would: Ms. Handel told supporters to keep Democrats from "steal(ing) a seat"; if Mr. Ossoff has the presence of mind to retort that seat belongs to the good voters of the Georgia 6th, not the Republican Party!, then he might actually pull this off.

So Bernie Sanders lent his star power to Omaha Democratic Mayoral candidate Heath Mello at a rally on Thursday night -- and then we learned that Mr. Mello not only opposes abortion but has advanced anti-abortion legislation while serving in the state legislature. I've long said that the pro-lifer who wants to bring back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income is more my ally than the pro-choicer who wants "free" trade agreements to outsource our jobs and nullify our laws, but I don't see much evidence that Mr. Mello actually is an economic populist -- even his infrastructure plan reheats the same "public-private partnerships" that Americans rightfully dismiss as corporate welfare. Democrats no doubt see an opportunity in a city Mrs. Clinton won by eight points, but Mr. Sanders is likely the cagier operator here, knowing that most folks will only remember that he went to bat for someone who didn't hew precisely to party orthodoxy. Still, I'd prefer he'd go to bat for an actual anti-abortion economic populist; I know they're out there.

Given all the weirdness involving an aircraft carrier going somewhere other than where the Trump Administration said it was going last week, some observers are floating the notion that maybe Donald Trump is crazy-like-a-fox. Authors Raymond Tanter and Ed Stafford negotiate the "madman approach" with some care; long story short, the "madman approach" might work OK against more rational states, but not against other states that, ah, may be "practicing" their own version of the "madman approach." But you should remember that some of Mr. Bush's supporters said the same thing about his apparent insanity in going into Iraq -- that he was attempting to scare our enemies with his craziness -- and, well, how did that work out? We got ourselves an al-Qaeda presence in Iraq, where it wasn't before, and then out of American internment camps in Iraq we got an ISIS presence all over the Levant, and ISIS is doing its damndest to make al-Qaeda look quaint. So remember: so many folks fancy themselves as tricksters; so few folks are any good at it.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 472.

President Trump suggests he could stop funding subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, saying Congress hasn't authorized them. If he does do that -- something neither Congress nor health insurance corporations appear to want at this point -- he might wind up with his very own Hawley-Smoot tariff, and for what? To "make Democrats negotiate" without giving them a damn thing worth negotiating for? That's like creating a hostage situation and then just killing the hostage! He'd be better off funding subsidies and running Obamacare into the ground in other ways, which is I'm sure where he'll be before long.

David Dayen reminds us that the economic "populists," such as they were, have far less sway in the Trump Administration than the Goldman Sachs crowd now. Which is not a pivot to the center, as anyone who thinks about it knows! No one voted for Mr. Trump because they wanted banksters running things -- in fact, his voters expected completely the opposite. And the center isn't Where Our Glorious Elites are -- it's where most Americans are, which is, again, not with the banksters.

Alex Pareene at Fusion reminds us that airlines like United can "treat you like garbage because they're an oligopoly." "When everyone gets mad at Pepsi, Pepsi has to apologize because it is very easy to not drink Pepsi," whereas airlines "do not need to do anything to convince people to fly with them, because they all merged and consolidated until there were just four firms controlling the vast majority of domestic flights." It's not a monopoly per se, but it might as well be. All praise the new economy!

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has requested 24-7 bodyguards, possibly because he's going to fire one out of every four EPA workers. Seriously, right-wingers walk around like they have the biggest balls, and yet they need the biggest security details, paid for with our tax money, no less. You'd think there'd be a lesson in there, somewhere -- you know, like if you don't hurt people, you don't need so many goons protecting you.

Some good news out of California: the state is making so much solar power that wholesale solar prices are actually in the negative for a few hours a day. This isn't about residential customers generating so much power that utilities have to pay them -- this is about corporations that generate solar power having to pay utilities on occasion, because it's apparently cheaper to do that than to simply stop generating power. So the utilities may not die a horrible death after all. These really aren't bad problems to have, you know.

Finally, in a truly impressive display, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) says at a town hall that it's "bullcrap" that taxpayers pay his salary. He "meant" to say he pays his own way in the world and does what he does in Congress as a service, but all anyone's ever going to hear is "you said you paid for me to do this? Bullcrap!" And if he thinks he's in a safe Republican seat, he might want to talk to Lee Terry about that -- or Ron Estes.

Penny Rants for Wednesday, March 22, 2017: the battle to win hearts and minds in America.

New York Times house conservative David Brooks has won a lot of plaudits from the left for describing President Trump's budget thusly: "He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health. But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs. Indeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy." That's entirely accurate, of course, but, ah, read the whole column in which this insight appears, which is called "Let Bannon Be Bannon!" It's bad enough that Mr. Brooks thinks that Mr. Bannon is a populist, that he has a coherent governing philosophy, that a coherent governing philosophy is automatically superior to governing by the seat of your pants, and that Mr. Trump is actually governing by the seat of his pants. But, really, would Steve Bannon have come up with something more nurturing than the "hard power" budget? I suspect the next houseplant that man grows will be his first. And I bet he tries to make it grow faster by yelling at it.

Cracked columnist Christina H. writes about "What Changed My Mind" about being a "Hardcore Conservative," by which she means she used to be a stereotypical far right-winger who'd call Democrats "Demoncrats" and assume that liberals were all oversexed. Her condemnation of Hollywood on that last notion (among so many others!) is entirely appropriate, but here's the sentence you really need to attend: "(w)e all know nobody likes to admit they are wrong, but did you know nobody likes to admit they were until very recently wrong?" And thus she reminds us that usually we change our worldview far enough out of sight that we can hide it, if only to save our own egos. She also reminds us that conversations we overhear are more likely to change us than conversations we've invested ourselves in, that the stories we tell while we're just shooting the breeze do a lot more to change us than well-constructed arguments do, and that the folks "on your side" can do more to change you than the folks "on the other side," which is true even though it's regrettable that we describe folks in terms of "sides" at all. This is all important information -- it may even be enough to make you feel comfortable with the idea that you do your best and God does the rest.

Matt Harbowy at Medium writes "On Transgendered Bathrooms -- Or, as Most People Call Them, 'Bathrooms.'" I think he's actually quite generous to say that the brouhaha over transgendered folks in bathrooms derives, at the legislative level, from "the fears and tortured psyches of legislators trying to 'imagine' (since they typically have no direct experience with homosexuals of either gender) what it means if you put either homosexual or transgendered individuals into...the single gendered bathroom of their own childhood" -- I say "generous" because I tend more toward thinking these legislators are merely manipulative and heartless. But it's true that gendered bathrooms at schools are little more than "an opportunity for male bullies to be out of the watchful eye of mostly female teachers and supervisors," and it's also true that converting multi-urinal and multi-stall gendered bathrooms into single-stall/single-urinal non-gendered water closets would pretty much end the controversy. I think this idea (which would only be marginally less "efficient" than gendered bathrooms are now, especially when these are hardly ever filled to capacity) is exactly the kind of thinking this country needs -- though our political class wouldn't want it, since the result would be less drama, not more.

Finally, I wasn't waiting for this, but Hillary Clinton says she's "ready to come out of the woods" after her Election Day loss to Donald Trump -- and of course she's preaching about Americans finding common ground. The Clintons virtually invented the sport of Democrats and Republicans coming together to give Republicans whatever they want, so one could be excused, I think, for feeling something less than enthusiasm at this prospect. Besides, we not only can "ignore, or turn a cold shoulder to someone because they disagree with us politically," we must -- shame and ostracization are the tools of civilized people, even if some folks wield them in an uncivilized manner. Still, as it happens, Americans do have a lot of common ground: we like privacy, we like our right to dissent, we like good pay for hard work, we like clean air and clean water, we like not dying from health care problems, we like good government programs that deliver what they promise for our taxes -- and we hate corporate crime, media consolidation, media sensationalism, and "free" trade deals that let corporations outsource our jobs and nullify our laws. Of course, none of this lends itself well to a "bipartisan" "consensus" among Our Glorious Elites who only want to redistribute more of our wealth upward to themselves.

Around the table: Paul Ryan is a dumb guy, and other truths.

Robert Levering describes "How Anti-Vietnam War Activists Stopped Violent Protest from Hijacking Their Movement." "(T)he primary way to deal with those who advocate violent tactics is to isolate them," he writes, "(to) do everything possible to separate them from the peaceful demonstration," because violent protestors need the cover of nonviolent protestors the way fire needs oxygen. Also, nonviolent movements need to "train() marshals" to "essentially be our own force of nonviolent peacekeepers." You just know the "liberal" media would rather talk about violent protestors than the vast, vast majority of nonviolent ones.

Like Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post, I'm tired of the media pretending Paul Ryan is a smart guy, when (as someone once said) he's a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy. He says "(t)he people who are healthy paying for the people who are sick" like that's not how insurance usually works (except the people who are sick are also paying for the people who are sick). And you and I and everyone you know will belong to both groups at different times in life. I was surprised to learn that Mr. Ryan is so terrible he even makes Tucker Carlson look good for a minute, though I'm sure that's exactly how they both intended it.

You've perhaps heard Sean Spicer declare that "the deep state" has it in for President Trump, but Mike Lofgren, the man who coined the phrase "the deep state," reminds us that Mr. Trump's actions thus far suggest that he and the deep state actually have the very same aims. It's more tax cuts for the rich, more freedom for banksters, and more war against the Middle East all down the line, even if "free" trade is gone (for now!). It's enough to make you think (as Mr. Lofgren says) that Mr. Trump could save Our Glorious Elites' political agenda "by masking it in a façade of fake populism and reality-TV stage management." Unless we step up with real populism, that is.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) alleges that President Obama is staying in D.C. to create a "shadow government," and then his office walks his comments back. Say obnoxious crap and then say you didn't really mean it -- well, that was the formula for getting attention in America, at least before Mr. Trump cut out the second step. But Mr. Kelly says so much obnoxious crap that some enterprising Democrat in his district could put together a greatest hits ad -- though let's learn from 2016 and not run only that ad, OK? Because if you want to hold public office, you have to do something.

Finally, we learn how the "Kalamazoo Promise" -- where a Michigan town pays 65 to 100% of your college tuition if you graduate from a Kalamazoo public school and meet certain other criteria -- has improved lives there. Lower dropout rates, higher college-completion rates, alleviated student loan debt, a rebounding population -- and yet some of the folks who've benefited the most still fret that other folks will find out they got help to go to school, when everyone gets help to do everything. Why, some of our richest Americans are completely dependent on Big Gummint, though they prefer you to think otherwise.

Penny Rants for Sunday, February 19, 2017: just say no to the border tax! And other stories.

Republicans purport to wring their hands over "who would pay" for a 20% "border tax" on imports. That question's easy to answer: who always pays, i.e., everyone except corporate CEOs. That explains why they like the idea so much! Well, that and the fact that the "border tax" would (along with a 20% "corporate income tax") replace the 35% corporate tax, finally delivering that big corporate tax cut that corporations don't need because they already get so many handouts tax-wise. Of course all that's heinous, but what folks may not realize is that the "border tax" is essentially a back-door national sales tax -- you think Congress will lift a finger preventing big corporations from passing that tax on to consumers? -- and, as you may know, I hate sales taxes, because they hit working people far harder than they hit the well-off. When are we going to get back to taxing high incomes in this country? Don't tell me those high-income folks have earned it unless you can explain to me exactly how these hifalutin financial instruments are exactly like the real, hard work our parents and grandparents did when they built a middle class in America.

The Philadelphia Daily News's John Baer frustrates me at times, like when he describes the apparent difficulty good Pennsylvanians have been having getting hold of their junior Senator, Republican Pat Toomey. (I haven't been able to reach him on the phone for days myself.) He quotes Mr. Toomey's spokeshack extensively to the effect that Mr. Toomey only has four staff per office, all of whom who have other duties, which begs the question why not hire more staff? That would be job creation, after all. And while Mr. Baer reassures us that reaching out to your elected officials is "fundamental to creating or maintaining a society that actually cares about how and by whom it is governed," he's still a bit too eager to point out that "some, if not most or all" folks who complain about not being able to reach Mr. Toomey "are tied to a national online effort called 'Indivisible' urging grassroots opposition to Trump’s agenda." "Are tied to" should beg the question by whom?, if not the question why would a journalist use passive verbs?, if not the question why does that matter? And, having taken the Parable of the Prodigal Son to heart over the years, I've stopped cutting people down by saying where were you before the election?

David Brooks at the New York Times wonders "What a Failed Trump Administration Looks Like." The spirit is willing to believe Mr. Brooks's assertion that Mr. Trump can be "played" by anyone who flatters him enough, but I still think we're better off believing that Mr. Trump and Our Glorious Elites are playing us, and that this "war" between himself and the "establishment" is a phony war. And sure I laughed out loud at the final "saving thought" that "(t)he human imagination is vast, but it is not nearly vast enough to encompass the infinitely multitudinous ways Donald Trump can find to get himself disgraced" -- but he disgraced himself in fairly unprecedented ways before Election Day, and still won. My real problem here, though, is that Mr. Brooks seems to think everything was fine until Mr. Trump got elected, that "moral arbiters in Congress like Howard Baker and Sam Ervin" ever did very much moral arbitrating, that "a single media establishment that shapes how the country sees the president" is a good thing. And I bet quite a few black folks could tell him that we already weren't "experienc(ing) the same reality."

From the "So Smart, They're Dumb" file: Democratic Party poobahs have apparently asked for Bernie Sanders's help in ensuring that all of this populist anger gets directed at Republicans and not them. Why they think they deserve a shield against populist anger is beyond me -- sure, they're "unified" against Obamacare repeal, but that's yet another place where unity won't actually help them fight repeal! Worse, they seem to think they deserve a shield not just against populist anger but against the popular will -- they have no business suggesting that, say, Pat Toomey should get pointed questions at townhalls but Robert Casey shouldn't, because Mr. Casey should be just as accountable to the people as Mr. Toomey. The Post doesn't report what Mr. Sanders said in reply, which should concern you if (like me) you worry that he now has the Democratic leadership's ear not because he's earned it (though he has!), but because they want to neuter him and co-opt his supporters. If he needs to, he can always ask Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras how well ingratiating oneself with elites has worked for him.

Finally, embedded in this interesting assessment, by U.S. News and World Reportcontributing editor John Stoehr, of Donald Trump's weakness in the face of reversal, is his claim that white working class folks are predisposed to "authoritarianism" rather than "socialism," and that they "eat and sleep being told what to do." I'm not entirely sure what that last part means, unless he's telling us the workplace isn't a democracy and a great deal about familial relationships isn't particularly optional, but I know plenty of white working class folks myself, and they regard themselves as fairly independent thinkers, and you can only create a real authoritarian state if you convince the majority they're doing it on their own. Also, I'd say the white working class isn't predisposed to "authoritarianism" so much as they're predisposed to impatience. And you can't really blame them, not just because politicians fail them so often, but also because, well, being impatient is really part of our heritage as Americans -- we get crap done because we refuse to be thwarted, and impatience doesn't need to end in authoritarianism any more than conservatism needs end in reactionary extremism.

Around the table: arts funding, "free" trade, voter "fraud," Standing Rock, and triumphs for the residents of Richmond, CA.

What's "The Irony of Trump's Attack on the National Endowment for the Arts," according to Henry Godinez at TruthOut? Why, the fact that so much NEA funding goes to the very same distressed rural areas that support Mr. Trump, of course! Which I imagine is all part of the plan -- take from rural Americans, blame Democrats, enrage rural Americans further, rinse, repeat. If you are a rural American, of course, you might want to say something to your Reps and Senators about it.

Dean Baker reminds us Our Glorious Elites are having a very, very hard time coming to grips with the fact that the American people understand full well what "free" trade deals do to us. Hence the lies about automation, the booga-booga about China, and the bait-and-switch where Our Glorious Elites talk about American support for "trade" as a way of suggesting Americans support "free" trade, which is a bit like trying to prove Americans all love bestiality by saying Americans all love sex. Also, too, Americans hate "free" trade because it's the most obvious way politicians try to "redistribute income upward."

Ari Berman says the Trump Administration's utter lies about "voter fraud" "Will Lead to Massive Voter Suppression." I know what you're saying: will lead to? But "voter fraud" hysteria leads to bills outlawing same-day registration and tightening Voter ID requirements, all while we're waiting for someone, anyone, to win a lawsuit against the Interstate Crosscheck database, which I presume is inevitable if someone will but file it. (Oh, and "(t)his morning, on this show, is not the venue to lay out all the evidence" should have ended Stephen Miller's political career, but it won't, because ours is a sick, immoral, and decadent society led by a sick, immoral, and decadent Administration.)

American military veterans join the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline, by literally standing between Native protestors and the governments that aim to remove them. Will right-wingers assault the patriotism of these brave veterans? I kid -- of course they will, because when you're morally and intellectually bankrupt, all you have left is to defend the "leader" of your "team," no matter whom you insult in the process.

Finally, because it can't all be bad news, a blue-collar California town stands up to Chevron and builds a better future for itself. The Richmond Progressive Alliance -- an actual populist coalition, versus the fake ones running our government at present -- has been around for a dozen years; its victories include getting a supermajority on the city's Council and leveraging a threat to use eminent domain to force banksters to renegotiate mortgages into solid rent controls for working families. I wish them luck in their future endeavors -- particularly against Chevron, which makes residents because of its own laziness.

Around the table: friendly reminders about Our New Overlords -- and about policies that work.

Jim Naureckas catches the New York Times wondering if Donald Trump will "continue to be the relentless populist" oh gosh I'm sorry I couldn't finish that sentence without spewing tea all over my computer. The idea that Donald Trump is any kind of "populist" insults not just intelligence but sentience, and we didn't need to witness him putting banksters in at Treasury and Commerce (or the anti-worker radical at Labor) to know that. Seriously, if all it takes to be a "populist" these days is a nasty attitude, our civilization is in deep trouble.

Trump spokeshack Kellyanne Conway is an extraordinarily inarticulate individual, so I guess it's possible that she didn't really mean to redefine bald lies as "alternative facts" on Meet the Press on Sunday. Still, the Facebook memes I've already seen (like this one, and this one) are not only apt and hilarious, they're weapons-grade PR. And I'd like to take on her initial response to Chuck Todd's apparent anger at that Sean Spicer press conference: "Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck." If you're all about the drama, you don't get to call it "drama" when other people complain about what you're doing.

Speaking of drama, multiple news outlets report that Donald Trump brings his own cheering section to press conferences and speeches, which is why it seems like his ignorant utterings get "cheers" and "applause" from reporters and CIA operatives. This is a matter that (as Sarah Cooper says) could be fixed by someone moving the camera around the room a bit -- but then again, this is the same "liberal" media that completely fell for the obviously-deceptively-edited O'Keefe-in-a-pimp-suit video. Better to hope that good Americans tell each other that their President goes around trying to gaslight everyone into thinking everything he says is super-popular, and that we all come together to shame him for this behavior.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) announces he's going to vote for Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State after all. But you didn't really think he'd buck party leadership (or President Trump) on this one, did you? Remember what I said: when the "liberal" media reports on "fissures" within the Republican Party, you should regard these "fissures," and reports about them, as feints, designed to make you think some Republican is going to do something about this Trump guy -- so that you don't do something about this Trump guy. (Believing in the myth that "even Republicans oppose Trump" is, of course, another way to get you to sit back and wait for someone else to do something.)

Finally, Nathan Schneider at Yes! magazine reminds us that, back in the '30s, rural co-ops brought electricity to areas that power corporations wouldn't touch -- and that is the spirit that's more likely to revitalize forgotten America. Almost a thousand of these still exist in America, and they apparently even enjoy the support of Vice President Pence. You could kinda see why -- they put power (literally!) in smaller communities, and as long as they govern themselves adequately, they obviate the need for federal regulation and oversight. Of course, most contemporary "conservatives" would probably call co-ops "socialist" or "Communist," but they don't get all the say in America.

Around the table: more lessons from the election, plus bonus EPA oppression of activists.

Joan C. Williams at the Harvard Business Review describes "What So Many People Don't Get About the U.S. Working Class." It is a really eye-opening article, and I won't be able to summarize all its necessary insights, but here are some: white working class folks "resent() professionals but admire() the rich," white working class men retain more traditional notions of manliness than most Democrats understand, and white working class folks aspire to middle-class jobs and pay, not minimum-wage jobs and pay, and see the poor as a drain on them. Of course, the right Democrat could remind people that rich folks aren't necessarily successful at anything useful -- they're just very good at redistributing workers' wealth upward to themselves.

If you've got a few minutes, check out this story of a Mississippi environmental activist apparently ramrodded into jail by our government. Tennie White got 40 months for allegedly falsifying three lab test results, but you might well come away from the story thinking she got 40 months for being a thorn in our government's side as they dragged their feet making certain local corporations clean up their mess (and these messes are worse in Mississippi than almost anywhere else). Note well, also, that this was Mr. Obama's EPA ringing her up -- though I suppose Mr. Trump's EPA will ring a lot more of them up.

Daniel Golden at ProPublica writes about how the problem of "legacy admissions" to colleges has only worsened over the last decade. The most famous legacy admission in America right now might be Trump advisor Jared Kushner, who got into Harvard the year after his father made a $2.5 million donation to the school, and Mr. Golden's 2006 book found this phenomenon quite rampant at America's universities; now fewer legacy admissions get in, but they still get in at a higher clip than the general population. So the next time someone complains to you about affirmative action, you can trump (so to speak!) them with legacy admissions. (Hate to pile on, but this is also yet another argument for the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income: if we have fewer folks with too much money to begin with, we should have fewer legacy admissions as well.)

Peripherally-related to the item from the other day in which Rick Perlstein warns us against making casual connections between past and present, Robert Borosage presents "Lessons from the Reagan Years" as we "Tak(e) on Trump." I agree that Democrats shouldn't "accomodate" Mr. Trump for short-term gain in 2018, not necessarily because there'll be no short-term gain in 2018 under any circumstances, but because you don't fight a radical by appearing "sensible" and "reasonable." Of course, these days you barely even have Republican moderates -- the Republican moderate caucus in the Senate when Mr. Reagan took office was two dozen strong; today, that "caucus" is Susan Collins of Maine, who rarely bucks leadership.

Finally, Paul Krugman says that "a bit more populism" won't solve the Democrats' problems with white working-class voters. Problem is, Mr. Sanders's proposal to "stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry," isn't a "bit" more populism for Democrats, it's a lot more -- Democrats don't stand up to any of these actors because they're afraid of losing their money. Also, while his pessimism about the "liberal" media actually covering "changed policy positions" is understandable, it's not the attitude that helped get rid of slavery, either.

Around the table: the death of Democratic populism, explained! And other things, also explained.

Matt Stoller at The Atlantic takes us back to the time "Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul" -- specifically, the time the "Watergate babies" that came into Congress in 1975 overthrew a populist anti-bank committee chair who had been in Congress for nearly half a century. Mr. Patman, a Texas House Rep, pretty much exemplifies all the contradictions about populism during the New Deal era -- he, like many populists and progressives of the era, was, at various times, a segregationist and a Vietnam War supporter, but his fierceness against bankster capitalism and corporate monopoly power remains unmatched by any member of Congress today, including Sen. Warren. Of course the whippersnappers who helped overthrow him also helped turn the Democratic party into the party of social liberalism, which essentially meant that economic populists were abandoned by both parties. Read the whole thing, though -- it's a marvelous history lesson, one that (as all great history lessons do) suggests what we can do about it if we only do it en masse.

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel rules unanimously that torture is so unlawful that it's "beyond the power of even the president to declare such conduct lawful." You'd think a lot of right-wingers would applaud this decision, given that it declares the primacy of law and order over any faux-serious debate about military tactics, and restricts Presidential power just as the Founders intended, but instead they'll probably just yammer on about activist judges and that speech Jack Bauer gave on 24.

Dean Baker at TruthOut talks about the need to "retake the English language" when talking about "free" trade. He's made these points before, but he hasn't made them quite so clearly -- that it's literally impossible to call a trade pact a "free" trade deal if it codifies all sorts of policies, like expanding patent and copyright protections, that actually restrict trade, and a trade pact can hardly be a "free" trade when tariffs are already historically low. Also, too, "(t)he real story here is that the TPP is a deal about redistributing more income upward. It's imposing more competition on those at the middle and the bottom while maintaining and increasing forms of protectionism that benefits those at the top."

One more note for those whippersnappers supposedly thinking of voting for Gary Johnson: Gary Johnson doesn't like net neutrality. He can't really tell you why, either: his answer (from a 2011 interview) essentially boils down to government does it, so it's bad. Refuse to do anything because of "unintended consequences" and guess what? You will never do anything, because everything has unintended consequences. I know what the fully-intended consequences of opposing net neutrality are, though: that corporations, not you, will control your internet experience. It's bad enough they control your cable TV experience, though if we passed a strong a la carte cable packaging bill, we could change that.

A former porn star accuses Donald Trump of inappropriately kissing her, with Mr. Trump retorting, "I'm sure she's never been grabbed before." Why he recast her accusation as "grabbing" rather than "kissing" is unclear, unless he thought it made a better zinger, but no porn star deserves to be grabbed or kissed without their permission merely because they've done the deed in a movie -- using what happens under a contract to describe consent is moronic. (As an aside, why is he saying he'll sue all these women if he becomes President? Why not now?)

Finally, notorious cartoonist Jack Chick, purveyor of short, primitively-drawn religious tracts that have inspired mirth and scorn from young folks for decades, has died at the age of 92. Mr. Chick's little pamphlets, which religious folks have often distributed for free, rail against the occult, Catholicism, Communism, Islam, drugs, and homosexuality, among so, so many other things, and though of course I disagree profoundly with his notion that your only choice is either to believe in Jesus or go to hell, I must admit that he had a fierceness about him I can't help but admire -- a fierceness he could turn on himself occasionally, it seems. I'd be glib to say I'd feel differently about him if he'd taken over the world, because that was never going to happen -- he wasn't good enough at disguising his aims, possibly because he never tried. R.I.P.

Around the table: what we call "popular" Our Glorious Elites call "marginal," and other lessons that bear repeating.

Jim Naureckas at FAIR catches the New York Times arguing that British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has "marginalized his party" with his positions on re-nationalizing energy corporations, spending on poor working families, and Israel-Palestine relations -- except that all of his positions just so happen to be popular with British folks. Remember when the "liberal" media consistently told us opposing the Iraq war was a "hard-left" position -- even though the majority of Americans opposed it? Remember when Barack Obama slammed the "sanctimonious" "purists" who opposed extending Bush Mobb tax cuts for the rich -- even though the majority of Americans agreed with those "purists"? If Our Glorious Elites tell us a policy position is marginal, that's almost a sure sign that it's not so much marginal as popular.

Dean Baker evaluates another "free" trade supporter's arguments that the Trans-Pacific" Partnership will "help the world's poor," "boost growth" and "open Asian markets more," and finds them wanting. Key points: the TPP will likely only boost growth by two-hundreds of one percentage point over 15 years -- that's less than one-fiftieth of our weak economy's GDP growth over the last three months! -- and Asian nations, far from "ma(king) most of the concessions," stand to gain the most from loosened trade restrictions. And what will be the cost to "the world's poor" of the expanded "investor-state tribunal," when corporations can simply exact tribute from their government in a secret court, and prevent their government from enacting laws to protect them from those corporations?

The Washington Post notes that Democratic leaders have largely pulled their spending from the Ohio Senate race, in which former Gov. Ted Strickland is taking on Republican incumbent Sen. Rob Portman -- and suggests the party isn't confident that Mr. Strickland will prevail. Which is an entirely reasonable conclusion -- and probably the correct one! -- but I wonder if such machinations are actually part of a long possum game on Mr. Strickland's behalf. Note well that Mr. Strickland, left for dead in his 2010 gubernatorial re-election effort, actually only lost that race by two points -- and that Republican groups pulled their spending first last month, which, if a possum game were to continue, would necessitate a similar Democratic pullout. Consider, also, that 2016 (unlike 2010) should see Presidential election turnout, and that Donald Trump may yet prove toxic at the top of the ticket. Again, I could be wrong, and admittedly Mr. Strickland hasn't done a good job either raising money or campaigning, but I think the various chess moves support either theory at this point. (The Colorado Senate race, also covered in the Post article, probably is what it looks like -- though, really, who'd have thought Michael Bennet could ever be a formidable incumbent?)

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman begins investigating possible antitrust violations in a state program that helps schools keep EpiPens on hand. Also, two U.S. Senators (Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota) and one House Rep (Tammy Duckworth of Illinois) have written the FCC and the DOJ, respectively, suggesting that the New York program might also violate federal law. But, please, right-wingers, keep telling us how "free markets" always operate in the best interests of consumers -- even, presumably, the ones who have to pay hundreds of dollars more for life-saving medication than they would have under a government that actually enforced strong antitrust legislation.

Finally, Al Gore advises us not to vote for third-party candidates in 2016, adding wryly that "in my experience it matters a lot" in re issues such as climate change. Yes, Barack Obama's EPA has done a pretty good job while George W. Bush made climate change denialism mainstream, and I firmly expect that a Hillary Clinton EPA would similarly outperform a Donald Trump or a Mike Pence EPA. Still, Mr. Gore's comments efface the real problem with two-party politics: that Democrats run solely on the fact that they're not the ogres Republicans are, and when they do that, they perpetrate just another rhetorical hostage crisis --- vote for me, or the country gets it! I'm no great Jill Stein fan, as it happens, but Democrats had better hope a more formidable progressive third-party candidate never comes along, or they'll be the burnt toast they presume the Republican Party will be.

Around the table: statecraft vs. "statecraft," and populism vs. "populism."

Michael Corcoran at TruthOut reminds us that the "liberal" media have a "deep-seated conflict of interest" in their reporting (or non-reporting) of Clinton Foundation donors having so much access to Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State -- specifically because a lot of "liberal" media figures are Clinton Foundation donors themselves. As we know, big donors generally aren't stupid enough to ask for a quid pro quo (which would get even John Roberts's antennae up), but they sure want something for their money. People have got to get over the idea that criticizing Hillary Clinton is the same as electing Donald Trump; as a citizen, your right to give honest counsel to your representatives is sacrosanct, and great responsibilities come with it, such as the responsibility to oppose what you don't agree with regardless of which "team" pushes it.

Michael Dear at Politico notes that "The World Is Full of Walls That Don’t Work," and wonders why Donald Trump is so bent on building one, since he's so obsessed with "winning." of course, Donald Trump isn't preoccupied with "winning" the "battle" against immigrants -- he's preoccupied with winning the election, which doesn't have to have anything to do with winning any real battles, or even putting forth workable policy initiatives. I suppose it's something that Mr. Dear's first in-depth example of an unworkable wall is the one dividing Israel and Palestine.

You know not to buy EpiPen on eBay by now, but Laura Northrup at The Consumerist tells you why you shouldn't buy them online from Canada, either. Only around one in 25 online pharmacies claiming to sell cheaper drugs from Canada actually meet U.S. or Canadian standards, so only use online sites with the domain ".pharmacy" in their addresses -- or get your doctor to prescribe Adrenaclick (not EpiPen, since one isn't a substitute for the other). And how about we let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, too? If we do that, we can really get drug prices down in this country (since Medicare represents a very large pool of drug consumers).

Trump toady Wayne Allen Root says people who get "free stuff" from the government shouldn't be allowed to vote because of their "conflict of interest" in voting for politicians who "give" them "free stuff." The idea that any good citizen should be stripped of their right to vote, for any reason, is not only a disgusting piece of un-American filth, it's a desperate argument -- arguing for disenfranchising people with whom you disagree tells the world you can't win arguments on the merits. Even when Mr. Root decides, upon minimal reflection, that folks who get Medicare and Social Security can still vote because they paid into them, he advertises his ignorance: we pay for all government services, including food stamps and "free health care," and we could, theoretically, need to avail ourselves of such services at any time. How about we never speak of this Wayne Allen Root again?

Finally, Shailly Gupta Barnes at In These Times interviews Bob Zellner about his community organizing work in the late '60s, which included members of the Ku Klux Klan. Two important lessons to learn here: one, Mr. Zellner's work was life-threatening -- in fact, he almost got killed by the Klan at his very first civil rights demonstration in the '60s. Two, Mr. Zellner didn't build bridges by compromising all his principles, like professional whiners about "bipartisanship" do -- he did it by concentrating on what he and the Klan had in common, which turned out, at first, to be a mutual experience of government spying. That could work again today -- though people like Bernie Sanders, not people like Donald Trump, can make it work.