Thieves in the Temple.

A few thoughts about the election.

First, we have some good news.

Missouri voters enacted Proposition A, which raises the state minimum wage to $15/hour and guarantees five to seven paid sick days annually from most private employers. Workers can get five days at employers with 15 or fewer employees; I'm pleased that Prop A didn't simply give big corporations the opportunity to pretend they're small businesses because they might have fewer than 15 employees at a particular location. Nebraska voters also voted to mandate private employers to provide paid sick leave; voters here mandated five days at employers with 20 employees or fewer and seven at larger employers. And while the tally isn't final yet, Alaska voters have apparently voted to mandate paid sick leave, raise the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2027 and a prohibit captive audience meetings at workplaces, so that your employer can't force you to sit through political or religious meetings if they don't actually relate to your job.

Massachusetts voters approved a law allowing "transportation network drivers" (i.e., Uber/Lyft drivers) the right to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. And Nebraska voters weren't done, as they also repealed a state law using taxpayer money on private school scholarships by a 15-point margin. They weren't the only ones, either! Kentucky voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have permitted taxpayer money to flow to private schools. I am heartened that, even in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, good citizens like those in Nebraska and Kentucky agree with the common-sense notion that we ought to use public money on public schools (and certainly we should stop pretending that charter schools are somehow a way out of whatever problems we have in public schools, problems that do not result from CRT or whatever but from our refusal to fund them properly in the first place).

This year's pro-abortion initiatives met with some success, as voters in seven states expanded abortion rights at the ballot box, while voters in three others did not. The Missouri initiative, which guarantees a right to an abortion up until fetal viability in that state's constitution, will get most of the ink, largely because Missouri was the first state to ban abortion in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, but don't sleep on Montana voters, either – a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling locates the right to an abortion within the right to privacy, but precedents never change until they do, so enshrining abortion in the state constitution was a smart move on their part. I suspect initiatives like the ones that failed in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota might succeed in future years when some other Republican candidate is at the top of the ticket. (The one in Florida only failed because Florida required a 60% threshold for passage; clearly Florida politicians don't like it when good Floridians tell them what to do.)

Not every good ballot initiative succeeded, unfortunately, as Ohio voters rejected an amendment that would have created a bipartisan redistricting commission to start undoing decades of right-wing gerrymandering of that state's Congressional seats. Don't be too quick to blame Ohio voters for that – Secretary of State Frank LaRose wrote the amendment misleadingly in an obvious attempt to make it fail, and in any case Ohio Republicans have simply ignored previous directions from the electorate that would have compelled them to draw maps more fairly. What could they be afraid of? (Do go ahead and blame Ohio voters for replacing one of our Senate's finest human beings, Sherrod Brown, with Bernie Moreno, who clearly aims to threaten Tommy Tuberville for the title of "America's Stupidest Senator.")

I have little else to say about the national election. Somehow the whiny, traitorous asshole is back, so those Americans who want to threaten immigrants, beat up transgender folk, sling racial slurs, grab a woman's breasts in public, taunt Muslims on trains, and whine about all their clearly deserved rejections once again have a guardian angel who'll bless their every noxious urge. I pray that America survives another four years of this disgusting drama.

Action: concerning voting rights and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and expand (not repeal!) Medicare drug price negotiation. 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.

People Power United helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The first bill would standardize early and mail-in voting, ban gerrymandering, and force disclosure of big campaign donations, while the latter would give our government the power to investigate and end racist voting practices more vigorously and allow our Justice Department's ability to pre-clear voting law changes in any state or locality that has established a record of vote suppression. Who's against these bills? Self-serving Republicans, and approximately no one else. Must they win again? If we speak out in numbers they can't deny, they'll lose, and we'll win. It's that simple.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate prices for more drugs not fewer. Because "fewer" is the Republicans' preferred position, apparently! Many Republicans are actually running on repealing Medicare's ability to negotiate prices for a few drugs beginning in 2026. Taking such a position, in public, used to end political careers, but not in this sick, immoral, and decadent world; how do we begin to bring a sane, moral, and decent world back? By demanding that Medicare should be able to negotiate the price of any drug, on behalf of both seniors and taxpayers, since that's our tax money they're spending. If we speak out enough, our Congressfolk will heed our will.

Action: concerning high drug prices and Congressional corruption.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices and stop playing the stock market. 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.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare drug price negotiation so that good Americans pay less for more drugs. Republicans in Congress have lately said, out loud, that they will repeal Medicare drug price negotiation if they win back the Presidency and both houses of Congress! How a candidate could say I will make you pay more for drugs and therefore probably make you die faster and expect that people will like him I don't know. Of course, so many seats are so gerrymandered that candidates can demand mass murder of foreigners and still win, and it sure doesn't help that Democrats never run ads about such things. Maybe they should. Maybe I should.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban themselves from owning stocks. What's that I hear? You will never get them to do something that will make them less money ha ha ha I snort at your naïveté? And yet quite a few Congressfolk – apparently even they listen to good Americans more than the cynical do! – have been proposing stock bans of varying strength these last few years, and though none have passed, that isn't a cue to throw up our hands and declare defeat, it's a cue to speak out louder. Congressfolk should never own or trade stock! It's an engraved invitation to corruption! Never let cynics tell you that you shouldn't bother doing the right thing. But remember, also, that many cynics (though not the professional ones, of course) guard painful wounds.

Action: concerning voter rights, safer investing, and birth control.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect voting rights, protect investors from financial predators, and ensure folks can get the birth control they need. 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.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight vote suppression by passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The former would enact same-day and automatic voter registration all around America and vastly curtail partisan gerrymandering, while the latter would subject any state or locality with a demonstrated history of vote suppression (not just Southern states or localities, which seemed to be our Supreme Court’s problem in Shelby County v. Holder) to additional Justice Department management of their voting laws. And that’s how we get more Americans to vote! Not by stoking their rage, that’s for sure.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any resolution that would roll back the Biden Administration’s rule requiring financial advisors to put their customers’ interests first when giving financial advice. It’s a shame we have to spell that out, but we do – too many financial advisors only care about their own bottom line, even though they’re investing with your money. And it’s an even bigger shame that Republicans have such a hard-on to repeal this extremely common-sense rule. What’s wrong with them? Are they objectively pro-financial predators? Are they objectively pro-corruption? Of course they are! I don’t judge by their “intentions,” but by their actions.

Finally, the National Women’s Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Right to Contraception Act. It wasn’t that long ago that Republican politicians told people that if you protect and promote birth control you’ll have fewer abortions, but today’s Republicans are against all of it! Why, it’s enough to make you think they were lying when they said they favored birth control! Anyway, the bill would generally prohibit any attempt to keep people from getting the contraception they need, and wouldn’t let folks claim BUTZ MY FRAGILEZ RELIGIZ CONSHUNZ!!!! if they try. Remember: religious freedom is all about your ability to practice your faith, not your ability to force everyone else to practice your faith.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, junk fees, and Social Security.

Long story short: tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to end gerrymandering, and tell your Congressfolk to protect us from junk fees and expand Social Security. 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.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Common Cause helps you tell your state legislators to pass the Fair Districts Amendment, which would help us finish off gerrymandering once and for all. The bill would take redistricting away from self-interested politicians and give it to an independent redistricting commission of 11 folks randomly selected from among qualified Pennsylvanians. We’re all tired of representatives choosing their voters with Rorschach blot-shaped districts that exclude individual blocks and even individual houses; the Fair Districts Amendment would help us put an end to all that.

Our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) just cut credit card late fees to $8, but objectively pro-junk fee House Republicans want to stop that, so Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject efforts to repeal the CFPB anti-junk fee rule. Hard to believe that any Republican thinks “make Americans keep paying onerous fees" is a political winner, let alone a moral or practical one; it’s like they want Democrat attack ads – or they know those attack ads aren’t coming, because Democrat weakness. We can make all that a null issue by communicating our will in numbers no one deny.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Social Security. We can ensure we all have dignified retirements by finally taxing income over $168,600 into Social Security, but Republican “solutions” all start and finish with cutting benefits. Again, how is “taking food out of Grandma’s mouth” a political winner, let alone a moral or practical one? Democrats, stop out-thinking yourselves – or, perhaps more precisely, stop serving the same corporate paymasters Republicans do and making it look like you’re just out-thinking yourselves. I crafted a sample pro-Social Security ad in the first paragraph here. You’re welcome, Democrats.

Action: concerning government shutdowns, price-gouging, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to end government shutdowns, fight corporate price-gouging, and protect voting rights. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to end government shutdowns forever, by passing laws eliminating the debt ceiling and authorizing spending to continue at current levels whenever Congress can’t agree on continuing resolutions. Seriously, the only people in America who want government shutdowns are people who worship chaos and drama, and they shouldn’t get all the say about everything, or very much of anything, frankly. And stamping feet and preening about “runaway government debt” in order to cut Social Security and Medicare? Folks who do that should have their own circle of hell.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Shrinkflation Prevention Act, while Inequality Media helps you tell them to pass the Price Gouging Prevention Act. What’s the main cause of inflation? Not supply chain issues, not stimulus checks, not higher wages for workers – it’s corporate greed simple and plain, and these bills would make it harder for corporations to be greedy, as far as giving you less for your buck (the former bill) or raising prices higher than inflation or using inflation as a cover to raise prices when no other cost pressures would cause that (the latter bill). Ignore free market votaries; people matter more than ideology.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The former bill would advance a slew of reforms nationally, including same-day voter registration and fairer redistricting, while the latter bill would allow our Justice Department to strike down new vote restriction laws from any state or locality that has demonstrated a history of vote suppression. These bills would help more good Americans vote; that may not be the Republicans’ goal, but so what? Duty is duty, right is right, and wrong is wrong.

Around the table: good news about gerrymandering, bad news about corporate spying.

State legislative elections are about to be a little fairer in Wisconsin, as the Republican-dominated legislature voted to adopt Democratic Gov. Evers’s proposed district map, one which nominally gives Republicans a slight edge in holding both chambers, but not with near- or actual supermajorities, as they have now despite generally getting fewer votes than Democrats in the aggregate. Other proposed maps might have given Democrats a greater advantage (and, more to the point, been fairer), but with the end of Roe v. Wade I wonder if Republicans even have the edge observers think they have in the Evers map. I also wonder if a Trump ticket will boost downballot races (as it did in 2020) or be a drag on them.

Kate Wagner at The Nation tells us that the camera that yells at you after you trigger a motion sensor – I’ve experienced the “Hi! You are being recorded!” in my own neighborhood while bicycling, how obnoxious – “is an escalation of an already omnipresent aggression.” “It intrudes into our consciousness, induces paranoia and anger, makes us feel unwelcome in public life, furthers the idea that one’s private property extends beyond the stoop, and suggests that by owning property one has earned the right to curtail the rights of others.” And that prompts another reminder that both property crime and violent crime are half what they were 30 years ago, even if some folks obsess about it even more than they did then.

In a related note, private data-collecting corporation tracked visits to Planned Parenthood and helped anti-abortion groups do ad targeting with the location information – but the corporation apparently told investors it obtained that location information with user consent, which at least one highly-placed officer says isn’t true. Would have been nice to have all that information in the lede! Our SEC might sanction the now-bankrupt corporation for lying to investors – our SEC, you may recall, exists to protect investors from bad actors – while our FTC might sue to keep the now-bankrupt data-collecting corporation from selling off its location data without users’ consent. Note well that a second Trump Administration would pack our SEC and FTC with drama hounds who would “look for ways to partner” with bad actors.

Right-wing Congressdolt tries to get a zinger off on Joe Biden’s immigration policy, but winds up tripping over his own genitalia twice. First he tried to illustrate said immigration policy with a photo of an immigration “caravan” from 2018 – remember who was President in 2018? -- and then tried to pass off a photo of an immigration “caravan” in Mexico as a “caravan” in America. Of course, Rep. Edwards doesn’t care that he got called out for being stupid twice; he only cares that he “got the message out,” no matter how stupid the message was. You may not win converts that way, but you might intimidate the tending-toward-cowardly into submission.

A special election took place in George Santos’s old House district – and despite all the hand-wringing and horserace polling showing the race close, the Democrat won by eight points. I remain tired of hearing how “moderates always win races against crazy people” because, hello, 2016! But look at all the things Republicans and our “liberal” media insisted might propel Ms. Pilip to victory – immigration, crime, Israel, Joe Biden – that didn’t. Eight points is not a close race, abortion still matters, and, perhaps most importantly, Republican politicians all appear to be rage-filled drama hounds. I say “appear to be” because I think they’re all playing. Imagine living a life in which you decide that pretending to be an asshole is the road to power and glory!

Finally, folks are making a big deal about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Joe Biden; she also said she’d vote for him in July, so I’m not sure why it’s big news again in February. I will say that her assessment of Joe Biden as “one of the most successful Presidents in modern American history” is entirely accurate, even though that’s not a high bar to clear. I just hope enough good Americans prefer Mr. Biden over an objectively bad human being who pretends to be a rage-addled drama hound because that’s how you get attention in America these days. Yes, I’m saying a vote for Joe Biden is, among other things, a vote against the drama and sensationalism we should all have had enough of by now.

Action: concerning voting rights, trans kids, and anti-gay politicians.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect voting rights and protect trans kids, and tell Rep. Walberg of Michigan to resign over his pro-murder-of-gays comments. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Daily Kos Democracy Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The former bill would give all Americans same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, and expanded mail-in and early voting, plus it would criminalize many forms of voter suppression and create redistricting commissions in every state; the latter bill would restore our government’s ability to stop vote suppression in any area of our country that’s suppressed votes. Who opposes this stuff? Haters, that’s who. And why should haters win?

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject a Republican bill that would nullify the Biden Administration’s mandate requiring anyone who adopts children to acknowledge a trans child’s gender. Gosh, our government actually does something kind for once, and Republicans can’t wait to shit on it. And, seriously, if you don’t want to acknowledge a trans kid’s gender, then don’t adopt the kid. Why should this be so hard? Because right-wingers need an endless supply of “villains” to keep their supporters in a constant state of masturbatory rage? Sorry, that’s not a good enough reason to do a damn thing.

Finally, Civic Shout also helps you tell Rep. Tim Walberg (E-MI) to resign from Congress immediately. Rep. Walberg has already announced plans to tell everyone he’s just being oppressed for having reactionary, ahem, traditional opinions about gays, but, ah, no: he went to Uganda to tell Ugandan politicians to “stand firm” in support of laws that mandate the death penalty for folks in gay relationships. Even American homophobes generally don’t want to kill gays, but Rep. Walberg imagines he’s a martyr when he’s just objectively pro-murder. So, no, demanding his resignation ain’t about his “opinion.” And what a whiner! Will right-wingers ever stop whining?

Around the table: the truth is obvious, part 987.

Good news, everyone: America now produces 40% of its electricity without pumping out more carbon emissions. I’m old enough to remember when Alaska paced the nation in renewable energy with a mere 25%, that figure goosed up by the 80 zillion miles of coastline Alaska could use to develop hydropower. If right-wingers want to call our decreased dependence on coal a “war on coal,” they might want to address why no one calls the antibiotic era a “war on bacteria,” but they’ll probably just settle for posting alleged pictures of electric car graveyards, when electric cars are no more the be-all-end-all of renewable energy than ethanol production ever was.

Ho hum, despite right-wingers’ incessant attempts to claim that the January 6 rioters were “antifa,” everyone they accuse of being antifa turns out to be just another garden-variety Trumphole. Because they all keep saying they’re Trumpholes on social media! Of course right-wingers never cared about proving their point, but only asserting it enough times that tired people will just accept it. And they certainly don’t care about their point being disproven, because they’ll just ignore it and try to enrage people about something else.

the Wisconsin state Supreme Court has found state legislative maps unconstitutional, and will redraw districts themselves if the state legislature won’t. If you’ve noticed Democrats getting more total votes statewide in state legislative races yet still winning only one-third of the seats, you have already anticipated this outcome. And if you’re still hearing right-wingers whine about the court’s “partisanship,” then you know they have no shame. (As an aside, I wince whenever someone calls a state a “purple” state, because bruises are purple, too.)

Surprise, surprise, very, very few British citizens now think Brexit has really benefited their nation, and while I was never particularly against Brexit regardless of how many assholes also supported it, I also thought Greece needed to leave the EU way, way more than England did. Why, the EU let England keep their own currency! Anyway, anyone who believed the $350-million-more-for-health-care per week lie was a fool, though I’m sure most of the folks who mouthed it didn’t really believe it. But though I’m sure Brexit delivered victory to the Tories in 2019, I still think inflation will mean more to British voters than Brexit does now. If only today’s Labour party wasn’t somehow even worse than Tony Blair’s.

Bruce Schneier is about the only person I’d ever listen to about the possible benefits of Artificial Intelligence (or AI), and though I’m sure he’s absolutely right that AI can, in fact, streamline a lot of processes for the better, there’s a reason we think inside a lot of boxes concerning AI: because we understand that Our Glorious Elites will never give up power without a fight, and they’ll leverage AI only to keep that power, which means, at this stage of what folks optimistically call Late Capitalism, preserving their nearly-unlimited power to skim money off all our doings while sitting on their asses. And then they’ll just tell us to work harder if we don’t want to spend all our money on rent.

Trumpholes are threatening the lives of the Colorado state Supreme Court justices who struck him from that state’s primary ballot because of course they are. The best people support Donald Trump! And they include the kind of person who’d threaten someone’s life in an online forum composed only of dittoheads but who would never have the guts to kill someone in real life. I just can’t wait until these fools whine that their threats are somehow “free speech,” when our First Amendment doesn’t protect terroristic threats.

Finally, you weren’t wondering what Joe Lieberman was up to, but I feel compelled to note that he’s now stumping for third parties, and he sounds as stupid as ever. It’s easy to say “I’ve never seen this much anger at the two major parties” when you a) are perfectly happy to pretend righteous anger against Republicans and masturbatory rage against Democrats are the exact same thing and b) never, ever look for anything else that might be happening around you. And can we not call him a “maverick” in headlines, please? He spent a quarter-century in the Senate sucking up to corporate power; “mavericks” don’t do that.

Action: concerning Social Security, government spying, and health care.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any Social Security death panels, curb unlawful government spying on Americans, and help states start their own Medicare-for-All-style health insurance systems. 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 your Congressfolk that you will tolerate no “behind closed doors” death panels for Social Security. Because if the American people wanted you to do it, you wouldn’t have to do it “behind closed doors”! Yet House Speaker Johnson, who clearly doesn’t understand the whole concept of representing your constituents even though his job title is “Representative,” still thinks he can get a closed door Social Security commission to cut your earned benefits without any debate or anyone watching. Too late! We’re already watching! These Republican clowns have no idea how close they are to losing everywhere, no matter how they’ve managed to gerrymander their districts. I’m not kidding; people are tired of their BS. So we’ve got to keep speaking out.

Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act, and also reject the so-called FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act. Too often these matters are like Goofus and Gallant strips, with Gallant striving to prevent our FBI from searching our communications without a damn warrant and keep private data collectors from selling our data to law enforcement, while Goofus thinks we’ll tolerate our government getting our data even more easily without a warrant. Our House could be voting on these bills today, so the time to act, even more so than usual, is now. After all, nobody wants to give up their Constitutional rights merely because politicians are always complaining about crime or terrorism.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the State-Based Universal Health Care Act, which (as its title implies) would help individual states create their own Medicare-for-All-style health insurance programs, through getting waivers more easily and securing federal funding to cover 95 percent of its residents within five years. Admittedly getting Medicare-for-All done at the federal level remains an uphill climb, but recall that Canada’s Medicare-for-All-style health insurance system – the one that delivers better care for less money than ours does – started in Saskatchewan. Remember also that Vermont aimed to create such a system until its Democratic Governor got cold feet, citing the “cost.” There was a cost, all right – Vermont’s had a Republican Governor since then. There’s a lesson there, somewhere.

Penny rants for October 25, 2023.

When I hear that a New Jersey state Senator, aptly named Ed Durr, said on Facebook a few years ago that “(a) woman does have a choice. Keep her legs closed!” and that state Democrats are using his words to tar other state Republicans, I am reminded that Mr. Durr spent around $300 to unseat a putative titan of the state Senate (Stephen Sweeney) in 2021 and that nobody covered all the stupid and obnoxious crap he said on social media before that until after the election. When I then hear that Republicans promise to “support women and teens facing unexpected or unwanted pregnancies” and “lift them up and help them and their families with access to adoption services, health care, financial and food assistance, counseling and treatment, and family planning” (as Idaho Gov. Brad Little has said in justifying his state’s abortion ban), I am not surprised to hear that Idaho Republicans cut funding for all that stuff almost on cue – and I’d prefer to see Democrat ads about that kind of hypocrisy, instead of the more sensational stuff that should have simply ended Mr. Durr’s campaign two years ago, but instead made him into the Democrats’ Useful Idiot almost like that was the whole idea.

When you hear that Texas Republicans are stalling gerrymandering-related lawsuits – and thus preserving their otherwise-unearned legislative majorities – by claiming all sorts of “privileges,” including lawyer-client privilege and “legislative privilege,” you may well wonder why privileges, even Constitutionally-established ones, always seem to outweigh rights in America. And when you hear that “legislative privilege” aims to protect the privacy of legislative debates, you may reasonably wonder why legislators’ “privacy” is more important than our right to know what legislators are doing, putatively on our behalf. Because they’ll be more honest with each other if we don’t know what they’re saying? Ah, they know how that sounds, right? And if someone defends Texas Republicans because “citizens won’t understand how private deliberations work and will overreact,” you only need ask why leaders don’t prevent such overreaction from happening before it starts. That’s what leaders do, after all, even in a world where our “liberal” media know nothing about anything and sensationalize everything. Sadly, today’s leaders work harder at excusing their failure to lead than at, you know, leading.

The good people at Popular Information offer another reminder that hysterical media reports about “crime waves” and “America in chaos” stand in conflict with the facts. Property crime may be up this year, but violent crime and murders are down, and both property crime and violent crime are half (or less!) of what they were in 1991, even though whining about it from our political class seems to have doubled over that time. Meanwhile, wage theft (which politicians never talk about for some reason!) outpaces property crime, and don’t even get me started on polluters and banksters. Seriously, I’m beyond fed up with tough-on-crime posturing. Politicians swing their balls about crime because they have literally nothing else to offer voters, and the only consolation is that it doesn’t work as well as it used to, or else Pennsylvania wouldn’t have been a wave year for Democrats in 2022. Hate to pile on, but when Vivek Ramaswamy says we need to institutionalize more people – which, I hate to say, we probably do – just remember that if he’s elected President, there’s no way in hell he’d ever actually do it, because how can you keep people in a feedback loop of masturbatory rage if you actually help make their lives better? Whenever you think of tough-on-crime politicians, think of the hate monster from “Day of the Dove.” Then they’ll make perfect sense.

Action: concerning voting rights, solitary confinement, and our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to protect voting rights, end solitary confinement at federal prisons, and protect our CFPB from Republicans who'd defund it. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Daily Kos Democracy Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect our voting rights, including passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The former bill would, among other good works, force big donors to disclose their campaign contributions and prevent partisan state legislatures from gerrymandering Congressional seats to their own advantage; the latter bill would force any state or locality (even one outside the South!) that routinely suppresses voting rights to submit their election law changes for Justice Department review. Doesn’t matter that big-drama Republicans don’t want to do it, because they will, eventually, pay the price for refusing to listen to us. But only if we’re loud enough.

The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the End Solitary Confinement Act. Two centuries ago, Quakers conceived of solitary confinement as a way for a criminal to reflect on his wrongdoing, but in modern hands solitary too often becomes a way of punishing without rehabilitating, plus we use it all the time, and plenty of tools lose effectiveness when overused. The End Solitary Confinement Act would outlaw solitary at federal prisons, except for four-hour periods, and even then only as a way to de-escalate crises; the bill would also expand oversight and due process for prisoners. Don’t listen to anyone who says it sounds like you want every prison to be Club Med! Treating prisoners like human beings and actively helping them rehabilitate themselves ain’t fucking Club Med, and anyone who says so is an asshole. End of.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to subject our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to the Congressional appropriations process. Currently our Federal Reserve funds our CFPB, using fees from banks, and before you think but maybe Congress should always get to appropriate funds for federal agencies, note well that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (or FDIC) and Federal Housing Finance Agency (or FHFA) also get their funding from our Federal Reserve, and ain’t nobody whining about that! If folks only whine about our CFPB getting such funding, maybe our CFPB's doing something right! So let’s keep it that way. And here's three more words that describe those who would zero out CFPB funding: defunding the police.

Action: concerning corruption, gerrymandering, and saving our Postal Service.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to call for Sen. Menendez’s resignation, tell the Wisconsin state legislature to abandon its election-nullification scheme in impeaching Justice Protasiewicz, and tell your Congressfolk to let our Postal Service offer more services. 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.

Peace Action helps you tell your Senators to demand the resignation of Sen. Bob Menendez already. Just like Brett Kavanaugh and so, so many others, Mr. Menendez pretends not to know the difference between the right to presumption of innocence and the “right” to a position of power; he also, not incidentally, pretends that the people of New Jersey are really, really rooting for him, when the only reason they even put him in office is that they can’t stand the idea of putting a Republican in our Senate. In other words, read the room, dude! Anyway, only two kinds of people keep half a million dollars in cash in their homes: old people who don’t trust banks, and corrupt people. I’m pretty sure I know which category I’d put Bob Menendez in.

Rise helps you tell the Wisconsin state legislature to abandon its efforts to impeach Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz before she’s even heard a case. Their BS reason for impeaching her? Oh, she criticized gerrymandering on the campaign trail, which they think “prejudices” her. But everyone except elected politicians who couldn't win without gerrymandering opposes gerrymandering! It’s not a tough thing to say, and doesn’t even predict how she’d rule on a particular gerrymandering case (see Kennedy, Anthony). So, you think they’ll listen to us? They won’t want to. But they also won’t want to be humiliated by public outcry against their obvious folly, and they’ll only feel that humiliation if we all speak out against them. And make no mistake: they’re trying to nullify the people’s will as expressed in an election, so they deserve all the humiliation we can give them.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to improve our Postal Service by allowing it to offer new services, like postal banking, selling public transportation tickets, and checking in on seniors. That’d be better than the coward’s way out of slashing jobs, raising prices, and cutting services, and maybe letting our Post Offices offer more services is a far better way to ensure we have a Postal Service in the future – a Postal Service that our Constitution has actually mandated into existence and requires that we maintain, I feel compelled to point out. The privatizers will tell you that a privatized Postal Service could fulfill that Constitutional mandate with enough oversight. If you believe that, I’ve got some extra scholarships to Trump University to sell you.

Around the table: judges pimp-slap Alabama again!

11th Circuit three-judge panel again rejects Alabama’s redrawn Congressional maps. Alabama state lawyers actually argued before the judges that they don’t have to follow their ruling (which our Supreme Court famously confirmed earlier this year), and if there’s anything a judge hates hearing, it’s that their rulings mean nothing. Hence a cartographer and a special master will redraw Alabama districts this time.

When I hear that big insurance corporations don’t want to cover damages from natural disasters anymore, I can only say we are not a sane and moral society if we allow this evil to happen. Ultimately our government will have to wind up covering such damages, at which point right-wingers will squeal SOSHULIZM!!!!! and then have a circle-jerk lasting several hours. It would have been nice if the Washington Post had reported profit information for the big insurance corporations its article mentioned.

Please remember that “Iran’s Street Art Shows Defiance, Resistance, and Resilience” even if it takes another 50 years for them to get rid of the mullahs. Too many Americans still think the Middle East has no engineers or doctors or poets, but only has angry people who kill each other, and some of the folks who think that are friends or family of yours.

We can make too much of Gov. DeSantis’s apparent refusal to meet with President Biden following Hurricane Idalia – how much do they have to talk about, really? – but the snub sure doesn’t help Mr. DeSantis, who looks like the diaper-loaded brat he usually is anyway and nobody’s going to remember that he whined about all the security arrangements Florida didn’t have any trouble making after the last hurricane. Maybe Joe Biden isn’t as dumb as right-wingers want you to think!

Finally, when I hear that Democratic voters “can’t get enough of” Chris Christie’s “new Trump-bashing persona,” all I can say is OMG what horseshit. And then when I read about all the “liberal” media personalities who are going along with it, I’m even more sure I’m right. Note well that Democratic voters don’t vote in very many Republican primaries, and Republican voters either want Trump or someone who gives them everything Trump gives them without the baggage.

Allegedly trenchant analysis for September 5, 2023: Vivek Ramaswamy as Republican front-runner.

It’s now a few weeks after the first Republican debate, and I’m still sure the smart play for Republicans is to get behind Vivek Ramaswamy as their nominee and put someone on the ticket with him who might actually be able to run a country. Doesn’t matter that he’s non-white – evangelicals didn’t turn up their nose at Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, the number of liberals caught off-guard by conservative Black and Brown folks is very small now, and right-wingers may not love Black and Brown folks in the abstract or the tangible but they’ll defend their Black and Brown fellow-travelers to the death. Doesn’t matter that he sounds batshit, either. That fool Ron DeSantis actually thinks all his precious oppo research will make a difference? Was he paying attention in 2016? What does matter, though, is that Mr. Ramaswamy helps Republicans get the Trumphole vote without actually having to have Trump on the ticket. How stupid do Republican politicians sound trying to defend Donald Trump these days? Very, very stupid, that’s how. Now imagine a world in which they don’t even have to talk about Donald Trump anymore, let alone defend him, but can run someone who’s pushes all the same emotional buttons without having any of the Trump baggage. Then imagine those Republican politicians reassuring nose-holders that since someone like Tim Scott is on the ticket, things will actually get done. That sure is a better idea than letting Donald Trump run again (and again!), and it’s also a better idea than getting behind the trans-hating, race-baiting, book-banning, COVID-enabling Ron DeSantis.

That doesn’t mean Mr. Ramaswamy will beat Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s done a good job. Doesn’t matter that Mr. Biden’s approvals are low now, or even next year, because I suspect our economy will keep on chooglin’ into Election Day 2024. And it also doesn’t mean Mr. Ramaswamy will have the same coattails Donald Trump obviously had on Election Day 2020, when Republicans picked up 15 House seats and damn near held our Senate. But Republicans need to face facts: they are the party of masturbatory rage now, and nothing else. They can still win elections wherever they can gerrymander districts or suppress voting rights, but that’s a tough thing to do across an entire nation, and the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections – the exception being George W. Bush in 2004, who would never have been able to win re-election in the first place but for the Electoral College. So the best strategy for Republicans, going forward, is to nominate freak candidates for President. It’s not a good strategy. But it is their best one.

At the risk of opening up a hole in space-time, I will devote a small amount of space to understanding the Trumphole a little better. Like Amanda Marcotte, I am enormously tempted to say that Trump supporters are “deplorable bitter clingers” and nothing else, but I really think it’s more than that: just like murderers think of themselves law-and-order adherents facing extenuating and unprecedented circumstances, Trumpholes throw tantrums they feel perfectly justified in throwing – and yet would happily use the word “tantrum” on anyone else on the other side who ever got emotional. A lot of Trumpholes have been provoked, I suppose, but not by liberals, or immigrants, or transgender folks, or public school teachers, or whomever the Enemy of the Week is. Big corporations provoke them, and the politicians who suck up to big corporations – which has, as you know, been a bipartisan attitude for some time – also provoke them.

Many Trumpholes will agree with that analysis; some will even volunteer it – and then support candidates who have enabled their provokers, because Critical Race Theory Cancel Culture Bud Light Trans People Try That in a Small Town. Even this ain’t entirely stupid – everyone knows Democrats have been chasing big campaign donation money as much as Republicans, and Democrats have long pushed so-smart-they’re-stupid solutions to our problems (we’re going to teach construction workers to write code! No, I am never letting that go!) for decades. But Democrats have also come around a bit lately – Joe Biden is the most anti-monopoly President we’ve had since FDR, and it’s not exactly business-as-usual to see large-scale public investment (mainly through the Inflation Reduction Act, but also through the American Rescue Plan Act) that actually moves us forward as a civilization. That dilemma will impale Mr. Ramaswamy; he’s not stupid enough to oppose public investment or support monopolies, but saying “I’ll just do all of that better” won’t win hearts and minds, either. And yet he represents a better bet than hoping the Big Man himself survives all his interlocking indictments with all their interlocking co-defendants. In or out of jail, Mr. Trump could still get the nomination and win, though likely not if the economy’s still humming along. But if you’re a Republican politico, you’d rather not keep drawing to an inside straight.

Around the table: the drama, it burns! Part 399.

Here’s some good news: a Leon County circuit judge has struck down Florida’s last gerrymander and told the state legislature it’ll have to do better. Right-wingers will appeal, but they’ll have to come up with something better than “Florida’s state Constitution violates our federal Constitution,” which argument sure doesn’t sound very states’ rights of them, does it?

Don’t get too excited that3M will pay $5.5 billion for selling defective earplugs to our soldiers, because that suit has 300,000 plaintiffs, working out to less than $18,500 each and that’s not counting the lawyers’ cut, and might we say hearing loss (not to mention betrayal!) is worth more than that? Anyway, file that under “Why We Shouldn’t Privatize Shit, Part 2399” and "The Private Sector is So Not Better Than the Public Sector, Part 3884."

It’s heartening to hear that most Americans – even most Republicans – support unions and strikes, but remember that those numbers will go down the minute corporate propagandists go on TV with their they get goodies you don’t get rubbish. The obvious answer to that is well, then organize for more goodies, and also punish bosses who refuse to negotiate.

When I hear that wannabe Nazis marched through a Florida park chanting “we are everywhere,” all I can say is no, you’re not. The article doesn’t note that there were no more than 50 marchers in that “terrifying” video. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to Nazis, of course, but how about we stop giving them the big dramas they want?

Be careful reading stories telling you that TEH EPA IZ REMOVINGZ PROTEKSHUNZ FORZ TEH WETLANDZ!!!!!, because our EPA is literally only complying with our Supreme Court’s will. That information should be in the headline, not just the lede. It’s not in the headline because our “liberal” media are lazy, stupid, or evil. But I repeat myself.

Finally, billionaires are having trouble building a “new green city” in Northern California because they’ve pissed off all the locals. This article is way, way too credulous, so I’ll say it: they want to build a “new green city”? That is to laugh! Billionaires just want to build a city that redlines Black and Brown out of it. They also want to be able to abuse the help with impunity.

Action: concerning voting rights, taxing the rich, and criminal justice reform.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the ACE Act and pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the OLIGARCH Act, and the People’s Response 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.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called American Confidence in Elections (or ACE) Act, while the Daily Kos Democracy Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. Again, this should be easy: the ACE Act would make it harder for you to vote, by making you jump through unnecessary hoops and giving billionaires more say than you, while the Freedom to Vote Act would make it easier for you to vote, by expanding early voting and clamping down on gerrymandering. We live in a world where solutions are actually quite simple and politicians are too cowardly or evil to implement them. And that’s why we have to get in their grills all the time.

Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms (or OLIGARCH) Act, which I have to say is not as clumsy an acronym as I thought it’d be. The OLIGARCH Act would impose a wealth tax that increases as a particular taxpayer’s wealth goes up, from 2% for households with 1,000 to 10,000 times the median household wealth up to 8% for households with 1,000,000 times median household wealth. Thus the OLIGARCH Act obviates the need to adjust tax brackets with inflation, since it bases its tax on median wealth. Rich folks will lie like mad about this bill, so we need to get out in front of them.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the People’s Response Act (or the PRA). The PRA would (largely through grants and funded research) encourage different approaches to community policing than the put-cops-everywhere-and-make-them-do-everything-model we now employ. This isn’t just better for the folks who lose their loved ones to police violence, it’s better for the police. We use police like Swiss Army knives, expecting them to jump into any situation and handle it effectively, when virtually no one has the flexibility of mind to go right from confronting a violent assault to talking a man out of jumping off a bridge. That just means we, as a civilization, have to be more flexible.

Action: concerning voting rights, price-gouging, and financial predation.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the American Confidence in Elections Act, pass the Freedom to Vote Act, start punishing price-gouging corporations, and reject the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century 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.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called American Confidence in Elections (or ACE) Act – also known as the “Big Lie” bill – while the Daily Kos Democracy Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act instead. Don’t ever be tempted to demand that your Congressfolk just pass a bill that incorporates the best bits of both! The “Big Lie” bill, which would impose Voter ID nationally and let billionaires spend even more money on elections, doesn’t have any good bits. Meanwhile, the Freedom to Vote Act would give us more early voting, less gerrymandering, and less campaign spending; clearly those are good bits.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to start holding corporations accountable for their price-gouging. It’s simple: when you have high inflation and record corporate profits at the same time, as you did for most of last year, then you have corporate price-gouging. We used to hold corporations accountable for this sort of thing, before the “free” marketeers took hold of our civilization, and we need to get back to that post-haste, or else corporations will just keep hurting us forever and ever. The year-over-year inflation rate may be down to 3% at present, but we still can’t let corporations get away with what they’ve done.

Finally, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, which would not only give handouts to crypto corporations that deserve their bad reputation, but would require our Federal Trade Commission to consider “innovation” whenever it writes new regulations! To quote a phrase, right-wingers have tortured the word “innovation” so that it tells them whatever they want to hear; if this bill passes, pretty much any bankster will be able to claim their new fraudulent product is “innovative,” and thus escape much-needed government scrutiny. Do we really want to “innovate” on the definition of a “safe investment” until it includes mostly unsafe investments?

Around the table: now with *even more* bile!

When I hear that some Republican House Reps claim to be preparing for a “World War III”-level fight against their own Speaker over spending cuts, I have a few reactions. First, none of these clowns would do anything but soil their pants in a real foxhole. Second, too many folks want to be war veterans without doing any of the hard work that comes with being war veterans. Third, when you’re throwing around words like “war” to describe negotiating with your own people, you’re showing your utter contempt for civilization. Not that item three is a surprise; these people hate civilization, because it repeatedly reminds them there are other people in the world who mean a damn.

Alabama state legislature redraws their Congressional maps, but doesn’t include a second majority-Black district “or something quite close to it” as our Supreme Court mandated. Well, that’ll teach people to count their chickens! Folks were salivating over getting another majority-Black district in Louisiana, too, but these states are just going to run out the clock on this matter, knowing our Supreme Court will allow them to use the maps they just made because “it’s too close to the election.” You think our Supreme Court knew that ahead of time? Of course they did!

Now the Florida State Board of Education has adopted “standards” which require public school teachers to tell students that slaves “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and they deserve all the ridicule they’re going to get. There’s an upside to virtually anything, but generally the bigger the horror, the smaller the upside, and the mere existence of an upside doesn’t make just anything OK, and making slavery OK is of course what Florida fascists want. I eagerly await the first class clown to ask if surviving starvings and lashings from cruel masters was a “skill” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

People ask me what I think about Country Music Television (or CMT) yanking that Jason Aldean song about how us city folks shouldn’t try any of our putative shenanigans in a small town off the air. Long story short: my loathing for right-wing weaklings who act tough is bottomless, Republicans sure do have some cojones whining about “censorship” as they’re banning books about racism, and though I have only watched CMT for perhaps an hour out of my life, I’ve only heard terrific songs during that time – good, complex, hummable relationship songs – and I really doubt that’s just my dumb luck.

So Donald Trump is now obliquely threatening “to do things” to Special Prosecutor Jack Smith “that have never been done before” and also suggesting that since he has “a tremendously passionate group of voters” maybe it “would be very dangerous” to put him in prison. So Mr. Trump has become a surrealist, but instead of painting a pipe with the caption “this is not a pipe,” he’s issuing terroristic threats and saying “this is not a terroristic threat.” Anyway, his “tremendously passionate group of voters” are whiny diaper-loaded brats. A lot of them have guns, sure, but they’re about as ready overthrow a government as your average high school football team.

Finally, when I hear that former NBA superstar/current TNT analyst Charles Barkley has become a “role model” after all, I can’t help but think that whole thing’s quite overplayed. A handful of barfights got him negative press as a player, but everyone I know who’s met him say he’s kind, generous, and affable, suggesting, again, that maybe people treat you the way you treat them. The article doesn’t delineate his political transformation, either, from Friend of Rush Limbaugh to supporter-of-affirmative-action-but-also-for-poor-whites to “I was a Republican – until they lost their minds” (that was 2006!) to protector of diversity at Auburn and defender of gay and trans folk. I’m just grateful to know that someone, somewhere, didn’t let all that money make him an asshole.

Action: concerning voting rights, health care, and right-wing dramas.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject anti-voting rights bills and pass pro-voting rights bills, tell our Senators to make sure all Americans can get insulin, and tell our Senators to get rid of holds so drama kings like Tommy Tuberville can’t prevent over a hundred military appointments. 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.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called American Confidence in Elections (or ACE) Act and instead pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the teeth our Supreme Court punched out of the Voting Rights Act, while the Freedom to Vote Act would enact universal early voting, clamp down on gerrymandering, restore ex-felons' voting rights, and restrict dark money campaign contributions. But the ACE Act would enact strict Voter ID requirements and open the floodgates for even more billionaire spending on elections. It ain’t hard to tell Goofus from Gallant here.

Public Citizen helps you tell our Senators to make sure everyone who needs insulin in America can get it. It’s a life-saving medicine! If our government can’t prevent big pharma corporations from charging an arm and a leg for it, then what is our government for? Right-wingers would answer that our government has no responsibility to ensure diabetics can get insulin, but would also say our government must ensure that bigots can force their bigotry down our throat, though they don’t put it like that. I would hate for any of them, or any of their loved ones, to get diabetes themselves, but sadly, experience teaches us that such a tragedy is the only thing that ever convinces a right-winger to act human.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell Senate Democrats to break through all of Tommy Tuberville’s super-dramatic holds on military promotions, but how about we do even better and call our Senators to tell them to outlaw holds completely? Democrats have 51 Senators, so they can do this, and if Democratic Senators have put a hold on even two bills or nominations over the last two decades, they’ve completely escaped my attention. Mr. Tuberville, all by himself, and just this year, has put a hold on over 150 military nominations, because abortion or something, but Republicans have done this to plenty of bills over the years, and when one side repeatedly abuses the American people with a tool, we’ve got to take the tool away from them.

Around the table: Republicans will eat themselves! And other truths.

Some rare good news from our Supreme Court, as they have thrown out Alabama’s 2020 redrawing of Congressional districts on the grounds that it unlawfully concentrated Black voting power into one district. Blacks comprise more than a quarter of Alabama residents, so they can easily have two districts to represent them. I keep hearing that the ruling will have ripple effects in other Southern states, but that would require our Supreme Court (or one of the lower federal courts) to specifically rule against their district maps; the idea that these states will preemptively give up power strikes me as more than a little optimistic. No one gives up power easily, particularly those who never deserved it in the first place.

George Chidi at The Intercept wonders why, if “no one believes in” the Cop City training facility in Atlanta, then “why did Atlanta’s city council fund it?” One reason is that virtually no one thinks current police training facilities are anywhere near adequate, but another reason is that the mostly-Democratic city council is afraid of being painted as “soft on crime” – and/or thinks they won’t suffer too much electorally from building it, which may not be true, given how close the 2020 Presidential/Senate and 2022 Senate races were. I will say that the activist who said to a City Council member “I will fucking find your ass” belongs in jail. Hey, if the pricks who say “I know where you live” to school board members belong in jail, so do those I might find more sympathetic. Threats are threats, no matter who issues them.

Ho hum, right-wingers take to our airwaves to tell us that all that carcinogenic wildfire smoke that was all over the Eastern seaboard last week was perfectly safe for us to breathe! Just like the air in India and China, one Koch-funded hack said; even the least informed among us know the air is not, in fact, safe to breathe in India and China. “(W)ildfire smoke” is “natural,” they say, but particulates cause breathing problems whether they come from “nature” or burning coal or driving cars. We all know it’s climate change causing more wildfires, too. Now would be a good time to remind everyone that highly-paid fossil fuel industry hacks wouldn’t exist if we still had a 91% tax bracket on millionaire income.

In the wake of Target’s cowardice in the face of a few drama kings, Sonali Kohatkar reminds us that “corporations are not allies” to the queer community. Seems to me knocking down a pride display at a store is a reason to call the cops, not capitulate, and it also seems to me that when someone accuses you of putting trans-friendly bathing suits in the kids’ section when you haven’t done any such thing, you shame them for their stupidity/evil, but then I’m not a very flexible person. Also too, “(c)orporate support of causes is simply public relations. It is a sign that the culture is shifting thanks to the hard work of those impacted. It does not mean the business actually cares. Target’s recent capitulation to right-wing bigots proves this point.”

Florida Republicans, trapped between a rock and a hard place of their own making, start telling migrants that Gov. DeSantis’s new anti-immigration law “has no teeth” and is only “designed to scare you.” So that’s what you have to do when you’ve stepped in it that badly! One is of course tempted to laugh at Republicans attempting to justify having voted for the worst bill they could possibly find. And of course this law bites pretty hard for something with “no teeth” – ask anyone working in Florida’s farming industry if they’ll go to a hospital now that they’re going to get asked their immigration status. Oh, well – wherever Democrats are weak, fascism flourishes. It’s that simple.

Finally, North Carolina Republicans formally censure their senior U.S. Senator, Thom Tillis, for not being adequately conservative I guess, and all I can say is how soon they all forget! Thom Tillis was the North Carolina House Speaker who helped shepherd the most reactionary agenda in history from 2012-2014, and though North Carolina’s legislature has done far worse since then, these fools should be grateful for all he’s done for them. So North Carolina Republicans can primary him out in 2026 in favor of a “true conservative,” and then primary that fool out in 2032 in favor of a “true conservative,” and on and on and on until they start electing actual rabid raccoons to office. If any courageous Democrats ever emerge in North Carolina, of course, they’ll stop the cycle cold dead.

Around the table: of corruption, bad arguments, and surprising findings about guns.

Uh oh: the now-notorious Crow Corporation said more than once that eviction moratoriums were killing their business while Harlan Crow’s “vacation partner” Justice Thomas voted twice to kill them. Still right-wingers will claim one has nothing to do with the other, presumably because the Crow Corporation wasn’t actually a plaintiff in either case. But in a civilized society, you avoid even the appearance of corruption by, you know, not taking expensive gifts from powerful people. One might even say that serving power is innately corrupt. It’s me. I’m the one who would say it. I’m saying it.

In a peripherally-related note, we are reminded that some two dozen Congressfolk are farmers and thus maybe shouldn’t be influencing Farm Bill legislation that might direct more government subsidies their way. I think this is all pretty simple: if you dedicate yourself to a life of service, divest yourself of anything that’ll prevent you from serving your constituents, and if you can’t, don’t serve. And if that’s impossible for some politicians because their legislative jobs are part-time and relatively low-paying (neither of which applies to members of Congress!), then we ought to change that, too.

Embedded in this meditation on the firing of Tucker Carlson and the Joe Biden re-election announcement happening more or less at the same time is the insight that many Trump supporters believe their guy got swindled mainly because they love him so much. I’ve had Trumpholes try to feed me this patently illogical crap, telling me that my lack of love for Joe Biden is somehow less valid than their undying love for Dear Leader, as if their feelings are more important than anyone else’s vote. I guess they figure their feelings got him elected in the first place because it sure wasn’t more votes amirite?, but grown adults know that the thrill of actually getting an inside straight doesn’t compare to the misery you’d feel if you constantly tried to draw to one.

North Carolina Supreme Court, now a majority-Republican court, reverses itself on gerrymandering Congressional districts, meaning the supermajority-Republican state legislature will probably gerrymander themselves three or four more House seats in 2024. New York and California Democrats better get their act together, then! (Wisconsin’s Supreme Court might also have something to say about their supermajority Republican legislature’s gerrymandering.) Anyway, you may have thought judges cared about their legacy, but apparently not when Republicans are thisclose to controlling everything and everyone.

What is “the thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial,” according to Jeremy P. Shapiro at The Conversation? “Black and white thinking,” because that sort of thing does “simplif(y) the world,” after all. You’ll recognize many of the symptoms of black-and-white thinking, chief among them a tendency to find the one counterexample out of a million and assert that disproves all trends, but you might also suspect that perhaps it’s not so much that regular folks are such black-and-white thinkers but that Our Glorious Elites pound us into submission with their fake black-and-white thinking.

Finally, the headline may read “More Republicans Blame Mass Shootings on Video Games Than on Easy Gun Access,” but I think the Morning Consult survey described therein has far more interesting findings – that over 40% of Americans think TV and films brandish too many guns, certainly, but also that nearly six out of 10 Republicans blame “easy access to guns” for all the mass shootings! That’s a fact that seems lost on Republican politicians, who trap half of their votaries in a feedback loop of masturbatory rage and expect the other half to be good soldiers. This other half ought to step up and demand better from their party, maybe?

8 thoughts about the midterms.

1. Again, I wanted humiliation for Republicans – I wanted them to lose a lot of seats in our House and Senate. Still, Democrats will hold the Senate, meaning they’ll get two more years of judges, and by my reckoning they’ll finish with at least 213 House seats (adding in Alaska, Maine’s 2nd, Oregon’s 6th, Colorado’s 8th, New Mexico’s 2nd, and California’s 9th, 21st, 47th, and 49th), with 218 still possible, though unlikely (the best remaining path being through California’s 3rd, 13th, 22nd, and 41st and then Colorado’s 3rd in a recount). The last election like this? 1982, the election that cemented the Reagan Revolution! Democrats picked up over two dozen House seats that year, but with Boll Weevil Southern Democrats pretty much voting with Reagan all the time, Republicans had a working majority in the House then, if not an actual one, and Democrats netted only one Senate seat, reducing the Republicans' actual Senate majority from 54 to 53.

Heartening, in that context, but not for long – Republicans may act humbled now that they didn’t get the electoral sturm und drang they counted on, but if/when they win our House, they’ll promptly forget their humility and act like the fascists they wish they were. Incessant investigations into Hunter Biden, ugly and shameful though that’ll be, might be the best result we can expect from a Republican House. I doubt they’ll successfully defy our will to use the debt limit to force Social Security and Medicare cuts – though they’ll try, and, again, it’ll be ugly and shameful – but they might succeed in defunding our FTC and our SEC and our CFPB and our DOJ’s Antitrust Department; in fact, I bet that’s their real endgame, because the longer Biden Administration actually enforces antitrust law, the worse shape Republicans will be in every election after this one. We’ll be getting on Joe Biden about that! And you know our “liberal” media will pump out ten thousand think-pieces about how the so-called Freedom Caucus “holds Speaker McCarthy hostage.” News flash: Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are who the Republican Party is now. Kevin McCarthy is their beard. And he likes it that way.

On the other hand, if Democrats do manage to hold our House, we’ll have a lot less drama. And if leadership would read people like Josh Gottheimer the riot act, that sure would be nice.

2. Ballot questions, again, generally made democracy look good – put a question directly to voters and they usually make much better choices than politicians do. Three states enshrined abortion rights in their state constitutions, while a fourth (Kentucky) rejected an effort to make abortion unconstitutional there and a fifth (Montana) rejected an effort to create a massive loophole in abortion rights. Nebraska and Nevada voters raised state minimum wages to $15/hour and $12/hour, respectively; Connecticut and Nevada voters expanded voting rights, while Arizona voters rejected stricter Voter ID requirements; and California overwhelmingly rejected ballot initiatives that would legalize online sports betting and sports betting on tribal lands (and they say people don’t have morals out there!). Pot legalization was a mixed bag – Maryland and Missouri voters said yes, while Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota voters said no – but that’s two more states legalizing pot (and thus lightening police officers’ burdens), and I’m old enough to remember when zero states legalized pot.

3. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez – whom the pundits said wouldn’t win Washington’s 3rd, but what do they know? – has provided the blueprint for how Democrats should win back rural and rust belt areas, much more so than Tim Ryan, it turns out. Unlike the right-wingers who hide behind “small businesses” when they try to cut their corporate paymasters’ taxes, Ms. Perez can tell you how the catalytic converter shortage exposed real supply chain problems (i.e., that big dealerships can muscle small car repair shops out of parts with impunity). She also talks about police reform in a way working folks would relate – stop buying night vision goggles and start paying cops more, she says. And no use saying well, she only beat a Trumphole, because, hey, did Tim Ryan beat his Trumphole opponent? No, he did not.

4. A lot of bad people got re-elected – though if Ron Johnson really sold his soul to the devil for another term as a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, he paid too much – but at least Paul LePage got absolutely buried in his attempt to reclaim the Governor’s mansion in Maine, where (thanks to ranked-choice voting) independent candidates can no longer take enough sane people’s votes away from Democrats. To think Mr. LePage had the cojones to say that folks on the left and the right have just got to start talking to each other again! That’s like Donald Trump saying people in America are too angry! (Actually, Mr. Trump did say Greta Thunberg, who’s a billion times the person he’ll ever be, was “too angry.”)

5. So how did incessant Republican whining about “rising crime rates” resonate with voters? Now it can be told: not very well! It worked especially poorly in Pennsylvania, where state legislators tried to make impeaching Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (for not doing enough about crime, or something) their October Surprise; that effort fell flat at month’s end, likely because it was always noxious and offensive drama, but if “rising crime” were such a winning issue generally, then how did Pennsylvania Democrats get in position to flip the state legislature’s lower house after entering Election Day 23 seats down?

6. Looks like I’m getting a dozen emails a day from Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia for another few weeks, now that he’ll face Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff. Maybe Republican voters will stay home merely because the race won’t decide Senate control anymore, but maybe they won’t, and if Republicans take our House before then, Democratic voters will be rather more demoralized than they know now. Still, I’d be pleased to see Democrats take this race seriously and win it, not just because Mr. Warnock is a good Senator who deserves to win, but because with 51 seats the party can marginalize Kyrsten Sinema even further. Yes, as we’ve already seen with the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re much better off dealing with Joe Manchin’s old-school corruption than Ms. Sinema’s post-modern corruption. Let her go work for a hedge fund in two years, where she can sell her relationships, no, not with other Democratic Senators, but with Republican ones. You ever see her in a photo with other Democrats? No, you have not – but you’ve seen plenty of photos of her with Republicans. Such a maverick!

7. So whom are we going to war with first – Russia or Florida? Republicans clearly have an even bigger stranglehold over that state than we realized in 2020. Calling Marco Rubio an empty suit would represent a profound insult to empty suits, yet he beat Val Demings by 16 points. And Val Demings was a good candidate! Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist by 20, which should remind us that you don’t run a nice guy against an asshole. Mr. DeSantis’s redistricting antics netted Republicans three more House districts, though even in that he was outpaced by the incompetence of New York Democrats, who netted Republicans four.

8. John Fetterman flipped the only Senate seat to change hands by beating Mehmet Oz 51-47, while Josh Shapiro trounced Doug Mastriano by 16 points in that state’s gubernatorial election; Mr. Oz wasn’t as execrable a candidate as Mr. Mastriano – we’re talking about the difference between a clown and an arsonist here – but I must conclude that Mr. Fetterman’s stroke and subsequent shaky debate performance moved the needle in Mr. Oz’s direction. If we’d gotten to see John Fetterman at his best in this campaign, he might have won by 20 points, and then the pundits, who know nothing about anything of consequence, would have mystified him by saying he’s a “unique” candidate. It’s true that Democrats don’t often run a guy who’s that funny, that smart, that social media-savvy, and that able to relate to working folks, but truth is there are people like John Fetterman all over America, and a lot of them even want to serve the public. Will Democrat consultants notice them now? I kid, of course – if you’re paid to be blind, you’ll stay blind.

Around the table: of dictatorships and monopolies, and the good folks who fight them.

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept assesses “The Dark Odds Facing Iran’s Brave Protestors.” Protests have followed the state’s murder of a woman for not wearing her hijab in strict accordance with new right-wing government laws, and though we want better for good Iranians, Egyptians and Syrians have failed to capitalize on the Arab Spring because “life under dictatorship had not allowed any alternative institutions to grow that could easily replace the tyrannies now in place”; Iran’s police state has similarly suppressed such institutions. That’s a cautionary tale for those Americans who think crime is the number one issue facing them because they’ve watched the same four or five clips on the TV news for two years now.

Matt Stoller assesses our progress in our fight against monopolies. Long story short: yes, our government loses antitrust cases in court, but has also made progress on right-to-repair, wage-fixing, and price-fixing. Still, “(i)n a highly concentrated economy, losing merger challenges simply shouldn’t happen,” but he also reminds us that we lose before very, very bad judging. Mr. Stoller remains hopeful that lawyers will figure out how to win cases even against bad judges, and that judges aren’t evil per se but “just operating on autopilot with antitrust. And he also reminds us that the “narrative of powerlessness is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the monopolists’ arsenal, because it causes us to give up on self-government itself.” We definitely need to hear that more often! The “phony war” metaphor at the beginning is a bonus.

When I hear that 80% of Americans want a federally-funded paid family/medical leave program, I recall that Newt Gingrich used to say if 70 percent of Americans want something, they should get it, though I bet he would just mouth a bunch of BS about it now and our “liberal” media wouldn’t challenge him on it. I’ll bet most of Joe Manchin’s constituents want a paid family/medical leave program, too, and if he’s scared that his approvals in West Virginia are upside down now that he’s helped bring the Inflation Reduction Act to fruition, I would remind him that his job ain’t just to do his constituents’ will, but to convince them when he’s actually done it.

Ho hum, Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State candidate wants to end mail-in voting because of alleged/nonexistent “voter fraud,” but not only has he voted by mail numerous times, he’s also done it while living in a different state from the one in which he was voting. In a sane, moral, and decent civilization, this news would finish his campaign; in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, he needs only hope he’s worshiped enough at the altar of His Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump to please the big man’s votaries. Having claimed to be a “victim of election fraud” as the Republican nominee for Nevada’s 4th U.S. House district in 2020 – he lost that race by over 16,000 votes and nearly five percentage points – he may be well on his way toward this goal.

When I hear that Republicans actually plan to campaign on repealing drug-pricing caps passed entirely with Democratic votes – and that they’re using the same horsedoodle arguments about “stifling innovation” and “drug takeover schemes” and “price controls,” phrases that anger far-right partisans and literally no one else – all I can say is that I guess they’re counting on gerrymandering to deliver them the House, because they sure ain’t counting on making winning arguments. The shame of it is that it might work, especially given our well-founded suspicion that Democrats don’t want to win elections as much as they want to raise campaign money.

Finally, how about some good news? Over 270 workers at the Roosevelt Boulevard Home Depot in Philadelphia have filed a petition with our National Labor Relations Board to form a union. Much like Walmart, Home Depot has unusually terrific workers they get to treat like crap because those workers don’t have the opportunity to take their skills somewhere else anymore – which, of course, is because Home Depot has crushed smaller, independent hardware stores everywhere it’s gone. So let’s add “balancing monopoly power” as yet another reason we need more unions.

Around the table: featuring weak executives, hypocritical corporations, and other losers.

Ever the optimist and I say that as a compliment, Matt Stoller sees a chance at undoing the T-Mobile/Sprint merger through suits by private plaintiffs, including all those independent franchises T-Mobile promptly shut down after it went through. Still, we live in a transitional moment (at best!) in re mergers and monopolies, which is why even folks like Mr. Stoller still write sentences like “(a)fter AT&T was blocked from buying T-Mobile, and prices dropped, executives across the industry became increasingly agitated about competition in the market.” Aren't executives always saying they like competition? Sadly, they do not really like competition. That's because they’re weak.

You knew this was coming: most of the corporations making the biggest deal about paying for their employees’ abortions just so happen to have made big donations to the Republican Attorneys General Association (or RAGA), which “by its own admission, played a central role” in getting Roe v. Wade overturned. And besides, only around 5% of all corporations have even pledged to pay for employee abortions, plus they’re leaving out contractors and students, and besides, what if you don’t have a job? But yeah, all that great PR JP Morgan Chase hoped to get from its pledge should dissipate now that we know they gave $25,000 to RAGA just this past March. The putatively pro-abortion corporation that's lately cut off welfare payments to RAGA? Yelp, if you can believe it. GoPuff has been a major offender, and I bet you can more easily believe that.

Yahoo! News/YouGov poll finds an eye-popping 68% of Fox News viewers actually think the perps of the January 6 attempted coup were liberals trying to make Donald Trump look bad – which, like, Tucker Carlson was saying that that damn night, using a source that even the Washington Examiner soon repudiated – but the poll contains even more interesting results. A third of CNN viewers and a quarter of MSNBC viewers agreed, and more than a third of non-cable viewers (that’d be my category!) also agree, and that’s too damn many. Also, only 11% of Americans blamed the Trump votaries at the Capitol first and foremost. And that would have been my choice! Donald Trump incited a riot, but good Americans are supposed to take good enough care of themselves that they don’t get incited. Seriously! You're supposed to understand that being full of rage all the time is bad for you in at least two ways.

Michigan Republicans want to pass a bill that would allow parents to file frivolous lawsuits against public schools for exposing children to drag queen shows, though no one can cite a single example of this ever happening. I mean, how many of today’s teachers have even seen The Kids in the Hall? It’s not enough to say “well, the lawsuit will fail without evidence,” because the state government will have to pay to defend the suit, and, well, they’ll be using taxpayer money to do that. Bunch of damn drama hounds, right-wingers are, alleging horrors where they don’t exist and thinking it means nothing they can’t defend their position. Can Michigan Democrats run against this stupid crap, maybe? Because I think they'd win, even in the more gerrymandered areas of the state.

Mitch McConnell actually threatens that Republicans will tank a bipartisan semiconductor bill if Democrats take up any version of Build Back Better in the next month or so. And here’s how the fuck you’d deal with that: take the semiconductor bill, add it to the Build Back Better-ish bill, and pass it through budget reconciliation – which means Republicans would get no credit for reviving the American semiconductor industry. Oh, wait, is that uncivil? We’ll never get civility back in American politics until we stop playing pattycake with assholes. Too often Democrats act like they've never heard of boundaries. And seriously, what's Mitch McConnell's problem with lower drug prices? We need to ask that every time he makes a threat like this.

Finally, Bush Mobb Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says our Justice Department could well prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 coup but before we begin a bunch of sentences with “Even Alberto Gonzales,” remember that Alberto Gonzales comes from an entirely successful fascist regime, and what most likely bugs him about the Trump regime is how stupidly they went about it. I do wonder if “there’s a lot there” is a sly wink to the major complaint about George W. Bush before he became President, which, as you may recall, was “there’s no there there.” Of course, “there’s no there there” is exactly what competent fascists try to make you think.

Around the table: in which we confront horrible truths about security, renewables, and campaigns.

Salon asks Brennan Center scholar Elizabeth Goitein "(w)hat would have been the worst-case outcome on Jan. 6." The answer? A military coup. And yet many Presidential emergency powers, granted through law by Congress, could also have wreaked havoc -- the Insurrection Act of course, but also the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which lets Presidents freeze bank accounts of Americans suspected of collaborating with a foreign power, and the Communications Act, which may allow our President to flip a kill-switch on our internet. And that's before we get to the emergency powers Presidents claim to have in the rarely-seen-I-wonder-why Presidential Emergency Action Documents.

In a related note, Branko Marketic at Jacobin tells us why we should be wary a domestic anti-terrorism bill like the one our House passed last week. Long story short: the bill isn't as repugnant as something Republicans would push and have pushed, but that's not a high bar to clear, and one could easily imagine its mechanisms being turned against liberals, as, indeed, all the other mechanisms of "national security" already have been. The Biden Administration still harasses anti-racism activists far too much, and a future Trump Administration (until the man dies, no sense imagining it'll be some other Republican) will do considerably worse.

When one hears that "Supply Chain Failures Prove Growing Need for Localized Economies," particularly with regard to food, one is right to ask: how do we help recreate local economies? The article suggests more than a few ways to do that -- from supporting mutual aid groups and farmers' markets all the way up to fighting "free" trade deals and supporting seed banks. We should also note that our FTC's proposed merger guidelines (which could also undo mergers) could be a good ally in this fight -- if we can keep corporations from getting absurdly huge, we can also keep them from throwing our lives into chaos at will.

This Harper's-style list about corporate involvement in spreading the "Great Replacement" theory should disabuse any notions we might have that corporations are somehow too "woke." Many corporations find racists to be useful idiots, since they distract folks from what the corporations are doing. It's like they're saying yeah, you did catch me polluting your water table, but before you shoot me, have you ever considered how Black and Brown folks get all the goodies and you can't get anything? And the reason you "can't get anything" is corporate power! And too many folks remember the good times, without remembering that reining in corporate power and taxing the rich were how we got the good times.

Arguing against renewable energy because of the extractive/exploitative effects of lithium mining sure is better than merely saying ha ha you're using coal to power your electric car! or passing around pictures of supposed "electric car graveyards" on Facebook, but it's no reason to throw up our hands and say we're just going to have to use oil and gas and coal forever, either. And it's also no reason to say every advance in technology exploits someone, as if the Indigenous folks who live near the salt lakes that provide around seven-eighths of all extracted lithium simply don't matter, or don't know better. The can-do thinker, of course, would be thinking past lithium in the first place.

Finally, Democrats are starting to see some of their early redistricting victories/non-losses get reversed in court. "(C)ollapsing across the map" is overly dramatic, but that's not the real issue: the real issue is that no Democrat should lose to any of these insane Republicans, and like the baseball manager who's already complaining about injuries three weeks into the season, Democratic politicians seem to be psyching themselves into doing just that. I sure hope I don't find out that it's always been about locking in the big campaign donations! After all, if you win, you have to do things, but if you lose, you can keep fundraising off the knuckle-dragger you just enabled to victory.

Around the table: in which right-wingers salivate at their new-found prospects.

What is "the anti-abortion movement's next target," according to Kiera Butler at Mother Jones? Birth control, of course. After all, the "reasoning" Justice Alito used -- that rights not specifically listed by our Constitution should be "deeply-rooted" in order to enjoy Constitutional protection -- would form the basis for overturning Griswold, which allows birth control and is only eight years older than Roe. I fail to see how privacy isn't a "deeply-rooted" value in America, though; one would think the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would ring a bell. Anyway, read the article to discover (among other things) how well "suspicion of vaccines" maps onto "suspicion of birth control."

Did we all get a good laugh over the guy who painted Mr. Trump's face on his lawn winning the Republican primary for Ohio's 9th U.S. House district? Well, note well that Ohio recently redrew that district so that it's now one Mr. Trump would have won by three points. Marcy Kaptur's a good egg, the sort who has long won over independents and right-leaning voters, but in the meantime, let's discover which nuclear power corporation Mr. Majewski worked for as an executive, if any, and let's also see his text messages leading up to January 6. After all, Ginny Thomas also said she "left before the riot."

Looking to blue states as abortion havens in a post-Roe world? Not so fast: not every state has laws that guarantee that right fully. Parental notification laws still apply in many of them, and not every state makes health insurance corporations cover them (or lets Medicaid cover them); even in California, abortion after fetal viability is illegal. And while judges don't often deny a minor's request to bypass parental notification laws (Texas judges denied 7% of such requests last year), that won't be much comfort to those who do get denied, because it just happened to 100% of them.

Does PayPal have the right to shutter accounts of left-wing media organizations, as they've done to at least two media outlets lately? Depends on the contracts those outlets signed, of course, but broadly, yes. Do we have the right to shame and shun them for it? Hell yes we do! Nobody buys that "some potential risk associated with this account" rubbish with Consortium News, right? Yeah, I may not agree with everything Consortium says about Russia and Ukraine, but PayPal cutting off their ability to collect money doesn't exactly attest to PayPal's confidence.

In another post-redistricting Rep-on-Rep House race that always leads you to wonder who pissed off whom, avid Trumphole Rep. Alex Mooney leads actual moderate Rep. David McKinley by 15 points in West Virginia's 2nd House district Republican primary. David McKinley may not be the only Republican politician I still like, but I can't remember any others at the moment. If he took on Joe Manchin in 2024 and won, I wouldn't be heartbroken, but chances are another Trumphole would beat Mr. McKinley in that primary, too. Anyway, Mr. McKinley's relative lack of success in touting his Joe Manchin endorsement should maybe caution the Penguin about that 2024 race.

Finally, when I hear that Gov. Greg Abbott (E-TX) wants to challenge our Supreme Court's 1981 ruling that all children in America, including those of undocumented immigrants, must get public education -- mainly because THEREZ AREZ SO MANYZ OFZ TEH IMMIGRANTZ NOWZ!!!!! -- I feel compelled to note that more folks routinely came over the border in the '80s and '90s than now, drama and hysteria over the "crisis at the border" notwithstanding. Indulge me in my belief that saying so means something, even though I expect that fact to "elude" Sam Alito, too.

Around the table: the stench of price-gouging is everywhere! And other sad truths.

Somewhat good news, everyone! Our Supreme Court has rejected pleas from Republicans to overturn state Supreme Court-ordered districting maps in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina. While consistent with Justice Alito's refusal to reconsider Pennsylvania state Supreme Court-drawn Congressional map in 2018, it's not good news that four of the nine Justices (including Mr. Alito, of course!) wanted to take the suits, and may want to limit state courts' jurisdiction over legislative redistricting. Even in states which give the courts a role in redistricting by law? I wouldn't put it past them.

Ho hum, gas prices are going up all over America, ostensibly because of Russia, but turns out we only buy 3% of our oil from Russia to begin with! So why are gas prices so high? The economist interviewed in the article makes fairly unconvincing arguments -- if Russia's imports to the Northeast were already down, why are New Jersey gas stations selling gas a few cents above the national average? We learned in 2005 that a state with major oil refineries (in Paulsboro and Elizabeth) shouldn't have that problem. I smell price-gouging here, just as a lot of us do almost everywhere else.

Read Stanislav Markus's explanation of why Russia's oligarchs -- targeted by Western sanctions over Russia's invasion of the Ukraine -- are "a Group of Men Who Won't Be Toppling Putin Anytime Soon" and you'll likely be quite depressed at all the post-Soviet corruption it describes, a matter about which right-wingers have never seemed terribly concerned. The 1990s and 2000s waves of privatization (first of parts of the Soviet state, then of public services) were so irredeemably corrupt it's heartbreaking; this is the same civilization that produced Tolstoy and Chekhov. Anyway, the oligarchs have a lot of money now but no power, by Mr. Putin's design, and the oligarchs who do speak out (Mr. Markus says there'll be more of them) don't play well together.

Idaho state Senate passes an anti-abortion bill modeled on Texas's notorious S.B. 8, though Idaho's bill narrows who can sue -- it specifically allows women who get abortions, the men who impregnated them, and their immediate family members to sue. That difference clearly represents an attempt to circumvent the obvious issue with the Texas law, which is the standing issue, and while I still don't see how a family can have standing to sue over another family member getting an abortion (particularly if they're not parents of a minor!), I can all too easily see the right-wing supermajority on our Supreme Court deciding this (and not the Mississippi or Texas laws) is the back-door abortion ban they've been looking for all their lives.

As I contemplate the way in which the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into Donald Trump has, in the New York Times's words, "unraveled," I am reminded that rich folks just don't go to prison very often. I've argued with co-workers many times about this -- they see Donald Trump as someone who's so obviously bad at crime that surely anyone with eyes to see can see it. And they're right! He is pretty brazen and awful! But almost anything that happens during the course of an investigation creates an opportunity, and folks with money can exploit those opportunities better than the rest of us can imagine. Cyrus Vance's departure as Manhattan D.A., and his replacement by Alvin Bragg, created just such an opening. We may not learn what happened here until the historians take up the matter.

Finally, ITEP evaluates how much Rick Scott's Get Skinned by the Game plan will cost poorer working families across America. These folks already have "skin in the game" because they pay payroll taxes and Medicare taxes (not to mention state income taxes, property taxes, city wage taxes, and sales taxes), but ITEP's analysis provides even more fodder for Democrat attack ads, if they have the guts to run them. If Democrats were to air ITEP's finding that Mississippi residents could face 50 percent tax hikes under the Scott plan, they might even win a couple of races there. (Hate to pile on, but people's lives are not a "game." Only an irredeemable asshole like Rick Scott would call it a game.)

Action: concerning gerrymandering, public water, tax cuts for working families, the war on Yemen, and women's health.

Long story short: tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject pro-gerrymandering bills and pass an anti-privatization bill, tell your Congressfolk to bring back the Child Tax Credit expansion, tell President Biden to get us out of the war on Yemen for-real for-real, and tell your Senators to pass the Women's Health Protection 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.

First things first. Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA advises that you call your state legislators and tell them to reject both HB 38 and HB 2207. We've dealt with HB 38 before; it would make state judicial elections regional, which is essentially a way of gerrymandering state judicial elections, and given that our state Supreme Court consists of mostly Democrats at this moment, it wouldn't be untoward to call HB 38 a sore loser bill. For that matter, calling HB 2207 the same wouldn't be untoward; HB 2207 would replace the state's current, relatively objective redistricting commission with a brand new commission more beholden to the political party in control of the state legislature, which just so happens to be the Republicans. I call this a sore loser bill because Republicans lost to the express will of virtually every good Pennsylvanian that gerrymandering sucks and the politicians need to stop doing it. That's why we need to keep communicating our will.

Staying in the Keystone State, Sum of Us helps you tell your PA state legislator to vote "yea" on HB 527, a bill that would make privatizing public water in Pennsylvania much, much harder. Let me be the bajillionth person to tell you that my water bill has gone up noticeably since I went from a public water system to a privatized one. They say privatizing public works saves the public money, but no one who actually pays a bill believes that rubbish. Mainly privatization allows certain corporate executives to make more money without getting the necessary oversight by our government, which means it's what? That's right, it's yet another scheme that redistributes your hard-earned money upward. The politicians will keep doing that again and again and again, unless we step up and say no. It's that simple.

Today's also as good a day as any to call your Congressfolk and tell them to reinstate the expired Child Tax Credit expansion, which put $250 and $300 checks in the bank accounts of working families for the last six months of 2021. I haven't said this enough, but those checks were per child, meaning a single mom with four children could get as much as $1200 extra per month. So what do people use that money for? According to its recipients, they used it to buy groceries, pay the bills, buy clothes, buy school supplies, and the like. But according to the Penguin, who helped Republicans kill the expansion last month, they used it on drugs! Maybe some moms should show up at Joe Manchin's yacht with their kids in tow so he can explain to them why he blocked extending the CTC expansion!

Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to end all American support for the ongoing Saudi/UAE war on Yemen. Mr. Biden has made a lot of positive noises about ending our involvement in Yemen, but hasn't taken a whole lot of positive action, which is a lot more important. We're still giving the effort our intelligence and our logistical support, which shouldn't ease the conscience of anyone who's taking part in these efforts, and we're still selling weapons which wind up getting used there. This war, you'll recall, has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine and deprived us of some of the world's best fighters against al-Qaeda, and Congress has authorized none of that. And can you understand the arcane reasons the Saudi/UAE coalition is waging war on Yemen in the first place? If so, you may be the only one!

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act. You may have noticed that not one but two cases currently before our Supreme Court could result in our Court overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling that prevents states from making abortion illegal. No, don't count on Chief Justice Roberts to swing enough justices in the direction of "precedent" and "settled law"; he's more likely been waiting for a big enough right-wing majority on the Court to come along so he can get his way and still look like a precedent-respecting jurist. We can avoid all this drama if our Senate passes the Women's Health Protection Act and enshrines abortion protections in federal law. Nobody wants to see a fetus aborted, but the alternative is turning women into breeders again, and we can't accept that.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the *real* Dr. King, among other matters.

On this, the day after we celebrate the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., we should consider, as Michael Harriot does at The Guardian, how the real Dr. King would be received by today's America. Of course, Dr. King's approval ratings with whites were underwater every day of his life, and a lot of folks who venerate him today would have claimed the Fair Housing Act "went too far" in the '60s, but Dr. King also vocally fought police brutality whereas too many of today's Americans respond to yet another police killing of a Black man for brandishing a cellphone with I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! He also railed against poverty and the Vietnam War, to which too many folks back then responded we gave them the vote; what more do they want? And they'd respond the same way today.

And now perhaps the best headline of 2022 so far, from Janine Jackson at FAIR: "Elite Media Remember Lani Guinier as 'Embattled' — and Forget How They Battled Her." You may remember Ms. Guinier, who passed on January 8, as the Clinton nominee who voiced "extreme" opinions about voting, redistricting, and affirmative action; if you do not remember her as the first Black woman to get tenure at Harvard, for example, that may be because our "liberal" media repeated all the right-wing whining about her 1993 nomination to head our Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, only evaluating her writings more honestly after the drama prompted President Clinton to withdraw the nomination. (And I suspect he nominated her more to help create all that drama than solve problems in America, but Ms. Guinier would probably disagree with me.)

I've blamed the unvaccinated in America for most of the problems we're facing today, but Sarah Lazare at In These Times suggests that blaming the unvaccinated may be a way of failing to blame the Biden Administration for its leadership failures, such as failing to overcome intellectual property barriers in getting vaccines out to the rest of the world, which will allow new COVID variants to flourish, and failing to extend safety net programs (like hazard pay for those we all call "essential" workers!) that help a civilization endure a pandemic. And yet I can't stop blaming those folks who remain unvaccinated because they're still throwing their tantrums about Joe Biden winning the 2020 election. I remember how many vaccine slots were open in red states this past summer, and while I wouldn't expect poor folks from blue states to be able to scarf those up, I still think we should expend some effort blaming and shaming those close to us who have failed us.

Good news: DirecTV will stop carrying the so-called One America News (or OAN) network when their contract expires in April. AT&T is still OAN's sugar daddy, and Verizon FIOS still carries OAN, and all the cable corporations still carry the Fox News Channel, so we have more work to do to Make America Less Toxic Again (hey, that spells an actual word! Ring my promoter!), but we should celebrate our successes as we achieve them, and even though we hear that DirecTV wants to provide fewer offerings as a way to offer lower prices and compete with streaming services, this success definitely belongs to us.

Did Mike Pence really compare Democratic efforts to end the filibuster with the January 6 attempted coup? Yes, Virginia, he did, in that they are both "tragic." For Mr. Pence, of course, voter fraud is a real thing, and not just a slab of racist booga-booga Republicans always trot out because they don't have any ideas worth sharing. Even worse, state efforts to curb mail-in ballots are, for Mr. Pence, "common sense" reforms, even if they're not the "common sense" reforms he'll actually enumerate -- or, indeed, are not actually "common sense" in a world where Colorado has run its elections entirely through the mail for years.

Finally, swing-district Democrats want to break up the Build Back Better Act into elements that might pass because they're so popular, and that's not a bad strategy! They mention "curbing prescription drug costs and extending the child tax credit," and though they didn't say "let Medicare negotiate drug prices" and "extend the CTC expansion that was plopping $250 checks in millions of bank accounts every month," I would find it profoundly useful to force votes on these individual initiatives -- plus paid family medical leave, though the swingsters didn't mention that, apparently. And even though all of these bills will die in our Senate (unless they decide to pass them under reconciliation rules), at least then we can all see, once again, exactly which Senators are creating all the drama. Put these folks on the spot again and again and again until they yield, that's what I say.

Action: concerning solar power, voting rights, protecting democracy, corruption, and internet freedom.

Long story short: tell Florida's legislators to reject an anti-solar power bill, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading by members of Congress, and tell your Senators to confirm nominees to our MSPB and our FCC. 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.

First things first. The Florida state legislature is mulling a bill that would cut rebates by utility corporations to solar power users, which would slow solar development in Florida, almost like that's the whole idea. And apparently it is, in fact, the idea of Florida Power and Light, which stands with state legislators against just about the entire rest of the state in favor of this absurd policy. Seriously, when only one corporation benefits from a bill, isn't that enough reason to oppose it? Let's help put a stake through this bill's heart, by calling House Speaker Chris Sprowls at (850) 717-5065, Senate President Wilton Simpson at (850) 487-5010, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at (850) 717-9337. Yeah, I know, he doesn't care what you think. Tell him anyway.

Hazmat America helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Why? Because they'd deal body-blows to gerrymandering, campaign finance bribery, and racist vote suppression, that's why. And yeah, I know the Penguin and the Joker said they wouldn't kill the filibuster in order to pass bills they supposedly both support very fervently, but Common Cause helps you call voters in West Virginia and Arizona and urge them to call Sens. Manchin and Sinema to tell them to kill the filibuster in order to pass these bills. Yeah, I know Sen. Sinema gave this big, long speech on the Senate floor that professed her deep and abiding love for these bills she won't nix the filibuster to pass, but as a famous philosopher once said, everything before the "but" is bullshit. If we can't move them, we have to humiliate them.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The bill would, as you know, keep future Presidents from profiting from their office, abusing their pardon power, declaring "national emergencies" whenever they feel a sad, and firing Inspectors General for actually stopping corruption, and if this all seems a little like closing the barn door after the horses have run out, it's not, because the guy who did all those things stands a good chance of running again and winning in 2024, and if he does he'll do all of this again, and worse. If Republicans are shouting in your ear that this is a "Democrat bill," read that list of things the bill would do again. Those aren't "Democrat things," they're American things.

Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading. The bill currently before Congress -- H.R. 1579/S. 564, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act -- would mostly prohibit stock trading by members of Congress, but Sen. Ossoff (D-GA) plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses, since a lot of Congressfolk just so happen to have husbands and wives who make a lot of money trading stock. Think these couples never discuss Congressional oversight? Don't be like Nancy Pelosi and retort that this is a free market, because Congressfolk oversee big corporations as part of their job, and should avoid not just corruption, but the appearance of corruption. And so should their spouses! Hey, no one put a gun to their heads and told them to get married.

The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Senators to confirm three qualified nominees to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which helps protect federal employees from retaliation by their bosses. Or it would, if it had any members! That's right, the Trump Administration let the MSPB function without a quorum during its entire tenure, virtually guaranteeing that any federal employee who, say, dimed out corruption by their higher-ups would have virtually no recourse against retaliation by those higher-ups. Like, say, President Trump himself! Remember that when the Steve Bannon-types talk about "dismantling the administrative state," they mean to dismantle that part of the administrative state that fights corruption and protects good Americans from being stomped on by powerful people.

Finally, upon hearing that big telecom corporations are actively trying to sink the Gigi Sohn nomination to our FCC -- couldn't be because she fights for net neutrality, could it? -- Free Press suggests we call Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) at 202.224.3441 and tell her to call a vote on Ms. Sohn's nomination before the end of the month. Free Press also helps you tell your Senators to support the Sohn nomination. Sadly, the reason that vote hasn't happened yet may well be Kyrsten Sinema, who has come out against net neutrality in the past, because bipartisanship maverick independent streak getting to yes. Of course the whole point of democracy isn't getting Republican bullies to yes, but getting Americans to yes, which Ms. Sohn -- through her support of internet freedom for you, not for big corporations -- has already done. Odd how politicians burnish their "bipartisan" bona fides by opposing things Americans actually want -- things that actually prove that real bipartisanship is possible in America. And when I say "odd" I mean "so stupid it's boring."

Action: concerning gerrymandering, pollution, landmines, and Guantánamo.

Long story short: tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to reject a fake gerrymandering reform bill, tell our EPA to enact the most vigorous methane emissions regulations possible and start monitoring factory farm pollution, tell President Biden to keep his promise to outlaw certain landmines and close Guantánamo Bay, and tell our USDA to stop oil trains from rumbling through Utah. 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.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA informs us that the recently-introduced HB 2207 only pretends to create a citizens' commission for redistricting, in that it give the political parties far too much power over its composition and direction and would actually amend our state constitution to let one party have complete control over the process. They'll call that the voters' will, when gerrymandering Rorschach-blot districts that excise sides of streets and individual houses is the perfect way to subvert the voters' will! They got some cojones, these clowns, but that's all they got. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to find your state legislator's phone number so you can tell them to reject this bill -- unless it includes the Samuelson amendment that would at least give good Pennsylvanians a real independent citizens commission, which would negate all the bill's horrors.

Penn Environment helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous methane emission rules possible. Best to get to stepping, though, since their deadline for comments is Friday. Methane packs a bigger climate change punch than coal, and when big corporations let it leak from their oil or gas drilling facilities, they're not just moving the coastlines uncomfortably closer to you, they're wasting perfectly good energy -- and if they're drilling on public lands, they're also cheating you, the taxpayer, out of royalties. In short, nobody likes methane leaks -- except the big gas and oil corporations that don't want to do their part to keep our planet livable because it means the CEO can't gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And they shouldn't get their way about that.

US PIRG helps you tell our EPA to start monitoring factory farm pollution. Which cause the most water pollution in America, and which our EPA pledged to start monitoring 17 years ago; what's the holdup? The holdup, I suspect, is that big ag corporations get even more deference from our government than all the other big corporations to which our government defers -- all these big corporations have to do is dangle the spectre of high food prices and they get whatever they like. Well, we're not hostages in America -- we're free people. And asking our EPA to start monitoring (not even stopping!) factory farm pollution is not so damn much to ask. Rivers of hog poop have a lot of methane in them, too, and too much hog poop makes people sick. Don't people count for anything?

Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to re-ban anti-personnel landmines. Donald Trump lifted this ban during his deleterious four years as President, and President Biden promised he'd undo it, but he hasn't, yet, and it's not like he hasn't had the time -- a stroke of a pen is all it'll take. Put five beers into Donald Trump and I'm sure he'll tell you other countries get to do it so we should too, but the whole point of America is to be the best possible example to other countries. It's like none of these folks in politics remember that -- or, more likely, they think they don't have to earn it anymore. But we must always earn America. And landmines have been known to blow people's legs off 50 years after the war's over, so let's not let cruelty be the example we set for the rest of the world.

Amnesty International helps you tell President Biden to close Guantánamo Bay already. Again, he promised to do this, and it's not like he can't get something done if he puts his mind to it -- like, you know, our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he should have done a lot better but at least he did it; get us out of this now 20-years-going-on humiliation and he might actually start stacking up some accomplishments. Guantánamo still has almost 40 detainees, held without charge or trial, and if they'd really done something so bad you'd think our government could charge them with something. That tells you they didn't do a damn thing! Someone already stands ready to say if even one terrorist was there it was all worth it, but they'd never say that if they were detained at Guantánamo for years on end. So we can blow them off.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to revoke permits for an oil railway running through the Ashley National Forest in Utah. Jesus Mary and Joseph what is it about Utah that makes big corporations want to screw with it? Utah has some of the most beautiful country in the world! And this railway won't even dig out the minerals that big corporations often covet in Utah -- but it will ruin wildlife habitat and wetlands there, and for what? If we don't move past oil -- which is more than possible in a world where solar and wind now cost less in some places than fossil fuels -- then we're not going to have a planet left. Why, even those jerks at Fox News who spend all their time laughing at people who want more solar and wind won't have a place to go.

Action: concerning press freedom, voting rights, weapons sales, "Grinch bots," and pregnant workers.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act so our Executive branch can't keep abusing it, tell your Senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Center for Rights and Dissent helps you tell your Congressfolk to reform the Espionage Act, so that our government can't use it to put journalists in jail. Yes, that's what Julian Assange is, regardless of whether or not you agree with him! And that's what releasing the Wikileaks papers was, too, and if we're going to put him in jail for that, then we should have put Daniel Ellsberg in jail for releasing the Pentagon Papers, and nobody's in favor of that, are they? I must say I find it disheartening to find President Biden continuing the unfortunate trend under President Obama of using the Espionage Act to punish truth-tellers, be they journalists or whistleblowers from within the Executive branch. American democracy demands more of President Biden, just as it demands more of us.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to vote on S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, this month. Especially now that Democrats have actually snuffed out the shutdown and debt limit dramas! And easy as it is to make fun of Joe Manchin's objections to the For the People Act, his Freedom to Vote Act is about as good -- it gets rid of ethics provisions I wonder why! but it adds provisions that would keep states from hijacking the people's will during elections, as many states have moved to do this year. And early voting for 15 days in all states, same-day voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, clamping down on partisan gerrymandering, restoring ex-felons' voting rights, and restricting dark money campaign contributions are all good works. So let's make our Senators do them.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4718, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act. In the wake of our government selling over $100 billion in weapons to nations we know abuse the rights of their citizens, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Philippines, the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act would allow our President to impose sanctions against any nation that breaks international human rights law, and that sure seems prudent -- I mean, you wouldn't want to be an accessory to someone else's genocide, would you? The bill would also establish a Commission on Atrocity Accountability and Human Rights, which would be able to supply Presidents with the information they'd need to determine human rights violations and impose sanctions. How would this bill's opponents object? Probably by yammering on about "socialism."

Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5263/S. 3276, the Stopping Grinch Bots Act. What are "Grinch bots"? They're pieces of software that roam the internet and buy up all the most popular items, so they can resell them at a high markup. Nice work if you can get it! Actually, since you're not a Grinch-bot -- and, very likely, you're not someone who writes Grinch-bots -- you can't get it, and more to the point, you can't get something nice for your nephew for Christmas this year because some bot has already bought it up and now wants twice as much as it paid for it. In a time of supply-chain bottlenecks caused by COVID, this ain't exactly what you need this holiday season. But Congress has done this kind of thing before, with 2016's Better Online Ticket Sales Act, so they can do it again.

Finally, the ACLU helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1065/S. 1486, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. We've been trying to get this passed for years, since too many bosses fire pregnant workers, won't hire pregnant workers, or make their pregnant workers' lives miserable; the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would prevent bosses from doing any of these things, by forcing them to make, and I quote, "reasonable accommodations" to their pregnant workers. Note well the word "reasonable," for when some right-wing prick rants about Big Gummint letting workers spend their entire shift in the bathroom, which the bill does not allow, because it is not a "reasonable" accommodation. Our House passed this bill in May by a wide margin, but the bill still needs a vote before the whole Senate, so let's prompt them to do that.

Action: concerning sedition, pollution, antibiotics, and student loans.

Long story short: tell Congress to investigate House Reps for helping to plan the January 6 attempted coup, tell President Biden to use federal policy to fight pollution and stop a liquefied natural gas train from being built, tell McDonald's to put its money where its mouth is in re antibiotic abuse, tell President Biden to cancel student loan debt, and tell big corporations to stop funding the campaigns of the folks who helped try to overthrow our government. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Win Without War helps you tell your House Reps to investigate (and, if need be, expel) the seven members who allegedly helped plan the January 6 attempted coup. Am I really writing that sentence? Yes, I am really writing that sentence. As you know, a Rolling Stone report from late last month that some of the coup's planners meeting with these seven House Reps "dozens" of times; if that's true, then these seven individuals need to go. One of them, perhaps not coincidentally, is Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who's gotten himself in some, ah, other trouble this past week. You can't get away with threatening your co-workers at your job, but apparently folks like him think they can get away with anything, and not just because they sit in absurdly-gerrymandered seats. But is that how civilized people act?

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell President Biden to undo the damage Donald Trump did to the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA). Specifically, you'd ask President Biden to 1) strengthen environmental reviews of potentially polluting projects, 2) allow our government to take climate change into account during such reviews, 3) keep polluting corporations from having too much a say in such reviews, and 4) give the public more time to comment on regulations aiming to protect us from pollution. Yeah, Donald Trump did the opposite of all that, and not for "jobs," either -- he did it because the only other person whose opinion he respects is a boss, and bosses hate being told to stop polluting when their money's at stake. But that's what civilized people do, and we need to do more of it, like we did just a few short years ago.

Penn Environment helps you tell the Biden Administration to cancel all permits for New Fortress Energy's proposed liquefied natural gas (or LNG) pipeline. New Fortress would run a hundred LNG rail cars across Pennsylvania every day, when less than a quarter of that carries the energy equivalent of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and once LNG gets into our air, as I expect it one day will because a train car will inevitably derail, it will expand to 600 times its volume and blow up the second someone accidentally lights a match. LNG rail was banned in America until 2019, and I bet you can't guess whose grubby pawprints are on that one. We banned it for a reason -- the money it'll make some CEO isn't worth the damage a major accident could do. Thus we, as civilized people, must step in again.

Consumer Reports helps you tell fast food corporation McDonald's to start acting on its 2018 promise to get antibiotics out of its beef supply. I bet McDonald's executives sure enjoyed all the positive attention for making that promise, but that was three years ago -- and what an innocent time it was! -- and in a world where over two-thirds of all antibiotics go to healthy feed animals, rather than sick people and sick animals, and this predicament threatens to bring back a world where the next cut could kill you, so McDonald's needs to get off the pot and start doing the right thing. A lot of people eat a lot of beef at McDonald's, to the tune of over two billion burgers every year -- they can't even put it on the sign anymore! -- so McDonald's could lead here, and I mean really lead, not pretend to lead like they've been doing.

Black Lives Matter helps you tell President Biden to cancel student loan debt. Which is in his power to do, since our government backs virtually all student loans, and canceling student loan debt would stimulate the hell out of our economy. Why, some of these folks might even buy homes one day! I'll brook no oldhead talk like I paid all my debts, why can't they? First of all, oldheads have no clue what today's student loan debt is like, because unless they're helping put their children through school they have no idea what the cost of college is today. Second, we promised students they'd get good jobs and good lives if they just went to college, and what did they get? Debt so crippling they're trapped in bad jobs and can't make good lives for themselves. It's time we made up for our mistakes. It's what adults do, after all.

Finally, Common Cause helps you tell big corporations to stop funding the campaigns of Republicans who gave aid and comfort to the January 6 attempted coup by voting against certifying the 2020 election. Again, they said they'd do it, but they keep funding these clowns, so one must conclude that they simply lied to get the good PR. Thus it's time, once again, for the Big Stick of Bad PR. This sure does seem like an intractable problem, but the more we call attention to it, the more it'll embarrass them, and the more corporations will adhere to our will. Hey, it worked when we got over 100 corporations to leave the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), and when you see it work, you want to see it work all the time. And as Americans -- hell, as civilized people -- we deserve that much.

Action: concerning government spying, voting rights, Social Security, Presidential power, and data privacy.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act; pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and get rid of the filibuster do accomplish these things; and to pass the Social Security 2100 Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale 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.

Both Daily Kos and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act already. The nefarious Section 215 -- which authorized our National Security Agency (or NSA) to collect metadata on good Americans without a warrant -- may be no more, but our work ain't done, because the entire USA PATRIOT Act is a mistake. And it's a mistake built to repel good-faith attempts to prove it's a mistake -- it allows our government to claim "national security" in court challenges and in response to calls to prove it's worked -- which is the worst kind of mistake. And I won't lie to you: I hated what the "war on terror" did to America and so I want the head of the PATRIOT Act on my mantle. Or is that not bleeding-heart enough of me?

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Also, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster in order to get them passed, since a Republican filibuster is literally all that stands between these bills and their passage. And we deserve to have them passed -- they'd take campaign financing, gerrymandering, and state efforts to rig their elections all to the mat, and it might not kill them, but it'll leave them bloodied enough for more good Americans to express their will, which is what elections are all about. Elections ain't where the work ends, but it's where the work begins. And all Americans deserve to at least begin that work.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5723, the Social Security 2100 Act. Anyone who bleats about TEH SOSHUL SECURITIEZ RUNNINGZ OUTZ OFZ TEH MONEYZ!!!!! should attend that the Social Security 2100 Act would increase both benefits and revenues -- the former by increasing the size of checks and by calculating inflation in a way that reflects seniors' real costs, the latter by taxing income over $400,000 into the system for the first time. Why the bill puts a "donut hole" between the current cap ($142,800 in annual income) and $400,000 I couldn't say, but this bill will put Social Security on a stronger footing. Not that it's on a bad footing now! That's just something right-wingers say. But all victories need to be maintained, and Social Security is no exception.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5314/S. 2921, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Perhaps not surprisingly, this bill aims to prevent someone like Donald Trump from putting our democracy through the woodchipper again, as it would explicitly prohibit self-pardons, limit the President's power to declare emergencies like Mr. Trump's sham "national emergency" he used to fund his vanity border wall, and protect our Justice Department from a President's political interference. People still think if the President appoints an Attorney General then that Attorney General should just do his bidding! But people who believe that are cynical, and the cynical shouldn't get very much say about anything in America.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Internet service-providing corporations can't just hand over your private data to law enforcement without a warrant secured from a judge who believes the information secured by the warrant has a better than 50-50 chance of securing a conviction -- but third-party data brokers can hand over your private data to law enforcement, and they do, for, like, money. Which, since it's law enforcement paying the money, is actually your money, since your taxpayer money funds law enforcement! So when your friends and neighbors shrug and say if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, just remind them that law enforcement misuses their money. Unlawfully and unconstitutionally, I might add.

Action: concerning voting rights, social media, prison phone rates, plastic pollution, and worker safety.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, and the Protecting America's Workers 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.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. By now you may know that the Freedom to Vote Act would authorize early voting for 15 days in all states, enact same-day voter registration, make Election Day a national holiday, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering, restore ex-felons' voting rights, and restrict dark money campaign contributions; you may not know that it would prevent states from interfering in elections so that a particularly party can "win" elections when their candidates get fewer votes. So ignore the right-wing rubbish about how "states should be allowed to run their own elections." If they're going to run them badly, then our federal government needs to step in.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I know, Republicans blocked the bill yesterday, but that's one reason we pressure them -- so they know there will be consequences to their actions. Unless they think "voting against me" is a "terrorist act" or something. I wish I were kidding about that! I think we will be there soon! Anyway, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore our Justice Department's ability to stop states and localities with an established record of vote suppression from suppressing the right to vote any further. That's any state and locality with such a record -- you know, for when right-wingers try to tell you "the South has changed." When no one's brought up the South!

Public Citizen also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3816/S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Normally I blanche when I see bills with the words "innovation" and "choice" in their title, but this one's pretty good -- it would prevent big online platform corporations from preferencing their own products, or discriminating against others' products, if the result "would materially harm competition on the covered platform." All monopolistic practices, you may notice! I believe Amazon is in court for this stuff as we speak, but I can think of other big tech corporations that should be shaking in their boots, like Facebook and Google. Or how about Apple? You can only use the "uniqueness" of your operating system as an excuse for so long! At least, that's how it should be. So let's make it be.

Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act. S. 1541 would make our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) cap what big telecom corporations can charge prisoners and/or their families for staying in touch over the phone. So that prisoners and their families can afford them! Currently these big telecoms can charge an arm and a leg for these calls, which is not only cruel, but also reduces the possibility that prisoners will stay out of jail once they get out of jail, and I believe every civilized person works toward prisoner rehabilitation. The only ones who don't, I presume, are the private prison corporation lackeys who love "repeat customers." But they're not civilized. But they don't get all the say around here.

Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2238/S. 984, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. It's not just about us breaking free from plastic pollution, it's also about the world's marine wildlife, who cannot afford well-heeled lobbyists arguing for their protection. The plastic corporations have big lobbies, but the hermit crab has us, and that's going to have to be enough. Besides which, a lot of animals harmed by plastic pollution can find their way to your dinner plate sooner or later, and if you didn't feel the harm before, you will then. And anyway, you probably did feel it before then -- a World Wildlife Fund/University of Australia-Newcastle study famously told us we ingest about a credit card's worth of plastic weekly -- but you just may not have known it. Now you know, and you can act.

Finally, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2876, the Protecting America’s Workers Act. The bill would strengthen reporting requirements for workplace injuries and stiffen penalties for workplace safety violations, but it would also expand whistleblower protections, particularly for workers who won't undertake obviously dangerous tasks and those who help inspectors find workplace violations. Maybe this bill doesn't excite people, and big corporations will call it a "job-killer," but this is exactly the kind of bill that could help you out a lot if you get hurt at your workplace because of some boss's negligence. And if this bill passes, employers also won't be able to get away with hurting you just because you're a "consultant" or a "contractor" or a "temp," either. So let's get this done.

Action: Election Day.

Today is Election Day; many of you may have voted already, but after today, this is it. So if you have any problems voting today -- including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues -- call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. (In Spanish, that phone number is 1.888.839.8682, or 1.888.VE-Y-VOTA. See other phone numbers at the 866.OUR.VOTE website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931; my guess is that the folks there this year will take you a bit more seriously than the folks there last year might have done. I still worry about pickup trucks with Confederate flags rolling through neighborhoods on Election Day; now I also worry about anti-mask and anti-vax folks yelling at you as you try to vote. And right-wingers will try, once again, to obstruct the vote-counting wherever it happens, so you may want to go to your state's Secretary of State website, find out where they're counting the votes in your area, and call 1.866.OUR.VOTE if you observe anything untoward -- you know, like masses of obnoxious jerks hurling abuse at election workers in an obvious effort to prevent them from doing their damn jobs.

Voting, as I've often said, is a citizen's minimum duty in America -- this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we citizens must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. Our politicians would prefer that you vote for them on Election Day and then just shut your yap, but they don't get all the say around here, and anyway there's more to vote for on Election Day than one flawed candidate or another. The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, for example, puts a rent control initiative before its voters today -- and, naturally, the city's banksters, real estate moguls, and landlords have spent buku bucks trying to scare voters into rejecting it, even though about half of St. Paul's residents can't afford their rent anymore. Tucson, Arizona puts a minimum wage initiative before its voters today; if they approve it, Tucson would escalate minimum wage hikes faster than the rest of the state, reaching $15/hour in 2025 and indexing the wage to inflation thereafter. New York puts no less than five propositions before the voters that would strengthen the state's redistricting process and make it easier to vote, while Boston voters will try to make their city Board of Education members into elected officials again. It's not all good, though: Colorado places a plethora of questionable-and-worse ballot initiatives before its voters today -- two would slash property taxes and give state lawmakers almost-veto power over federal assistance, while a third would institute a sales tax on marijuana sales; taken together these would (sigh) raise taxes on lower-income working people so wealthy people can have tax cuts. How these play out could have more of an effect on people's lives than the venal human beings who have spent the last year or two hustling for our vote.

So let's get out there and vote today -- and then tomorrow, let's get back to giving our elected leaders, whomever they may be, the what-for they most definitely deserve.

Action: concerning voting rights, abortion, defense spending, and the filibuster.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Women's Health Protection Act, cut defense spending, and end the filibuster. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. The Freedom to Vote Act would authorize early voting for 15 days in all states, enact same-day voter registration, make Election Day a national holiday, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering, restore ex-felons' voting rights, and restrict dark money campaign contributions, plus it would prevent states from interfering in elections so that a particularly party (cough Republicans cough) can "win" elections when their candidates get fewer votes. You know, like Donald Trump tried to do after he lost the 2020 Presidential election by seven million votes. Pass the Freedom to Vote Act, and we can better keep the unworthy from office. We just had a four-year seminar in what the unworthy are like, and I ain't going back.

Both Daily Kos and People for the American Way help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill would restore our Justice Department's ability to block state or locality voting rights law changes, in those states and localities that have demonstrated a pattern of vote suppression. That means (among other things) fewer state laws making it impossible to mail in or drop off a ballot, and fewer closed polling places in Black and brown neighborhoods. Yeah, states do this all the time, and though we saw as early as the 2020 Georgia Presidential primary that folks will wait in line all day to vote, why make them? Right-wingers love saying "voting should be hard." What they mean is winning should be easy -- for them. But they should earn victory like the rest of us do.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act. Our Supreme Court refused once again to stop Texas's notorious SB 8 -- which gives literally anyone the right to sue over an abortion, since determining "injury in fact" per our Courts' ruling in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife is, apparently, something only "losers" do -- so that means we have to pass legislation at the federal level. We can't count on our Supreme Court keeping Roe v. Wade around, either; I still think they'll strike down Texas's law, for the reason I described above, but other, more direct challenges may give them the opportunity they obviously desire. Unless, of course, we pass the Women's Health Protection Act first.

Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to cut defense spending in the upcoming defense appropriations bill. President Biden is the umpteenth President in a row to propose increasing defense spending; has that made any right-wingers like him better? I kid, of course -- being a right-winger, today, is all about masturbatory rage, not about assessing situations as they are. But I feel compelled to mention, once again, that we spend more money on "defense" than the next eight nations on that list combined, and yet politicians still tell us WE'RE NOT TEH SAFEZ!!!!!! You have to wonder, also, when we can't turn Afghanistan around in 20 years, whether we're spending "defense" money on the right things. Maybe we're just spending it on expensive things.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster. Mitch McConnell actually has the gall to say if you don't like the filibuster you should win arguments, when the filibuster is a crutch for people who can't win arguments. And Republicans now use it, or the threat of it, against anything that might help the American people, and annoying as Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have been, the only reason they matter right now is that Republicans say no to everything -- why, they've even filibustered taking tax breaks away from corporations that outsource jobs! How do you filibuster that? And when you abuse a tool, we have to take that tool away, or else we just become hostages.

Action: concerning monopolies, voting rights, data privacy, law and order, and fossil fuel subsidies.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to strike a blow against meat packer monopolies, pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis voting Rights Advancement Act, pass data privacy legislation and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and end fossil fuel subsidies. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First off, this'll seem a bit inside-baseball, but Matt Stoller writes about monopoly meat-packers causing higher meat prices, and notes that Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and Tester (D-MT) have written a bill with actual bipartisan support, called the 50-14 or "spot market" bill. This bill would require big meat packing corporations to buy half of their meat on the open market -- rather than force all cattle ranchers into contracts that may give ranchers assurance they'll be able to sell their cattle, but also makes it far too easy for meat packers to fix prices. It won't actually break up the monopolies, but it'll give ranchers a lot more breathing space. This bill merits a supportive call to your Congressfolk, and don't be swayed by the arguments against the bill -- as Mr. Stoller demonstrates, they rely on bad arguments and manipulated data.

Both Left Action and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Never mind that Joe Manchin prefers this bill to the For the People Act, because it's not so different that it doesn't deserve our support. The Freedom to Vote Act would expand your access to the voting booth, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering and dark money, restore voting rights to ex-felons, provide 15 days of early voting across America, enact same-day voter registration, and make Election Day a national holiday, plus it'll clamp down on states' recent attempts to gain the power to overrule the will of the voters in their elections. All of this would better secure voting rights in America, and thus merits our work on its behalf. (Also, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you write a letter to the editor supporting the Freedom to Vote Act.)

Both Daily Kos and People for the American Way help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This bill would amend the Voting Rights Act so that our Justice Department could clamp down on voting law changes from states and localities that have demonstrated a clear record of vote suppression -- and not just states and localities from the South, which was our Supreme Court's objection in Shelby County v. Holder. And since a lot of the states that have changed their voting laws lately just so happen to have a vote suppression record, one would think our Justice Department could and would do something about them. We'll likely have to nix the filibuster to get any voting rights bills passed -- but first, let's demonstrate, unmistakably, that the people want voting rights reform in America.

How to Stop Facebook helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real data privacy legislation in America. Our Federal Communications Commission enacted pretty good regulations protecting data privacy, but that was back in 2016 -- and our Congress promptly repealed them, via the notorious resolution of disapproval process. But now, with approximately zero Americans left who think data breaches and targeted ads and enabling Nazi wannabes is just the price you pay for staying in touch with those people you had a few laughs with freshman year, Congress should be more amenable to protecting your data, and protecting you from corporate surveillance. But we still have to tell them. (Oh, and don't fall for the calls for a new bureaucracy just to regulate Facebook; that'll just have our government rubber-stamping what Facebook does, and we've already got that.)

In a peripherally-related matter, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. This bill would close a Mack truck-sized loophole in the law, which currently prevents your internet service-providing corporation from selling your personal data to law enforcement -- but which does not prevent the third-party data gobblers that buy your data from your ISPs from re-selling it to law enforcement! And you deserve better than that, even if you have committed a crime that law enforcement should be able to discover. We don't have a Fourth Amendment for nothing, after all -- we have it so that we don't send innocent people to jail by accident, and so we don't create a police state that sends its enemies to jail at will. And we're not as far from that as we'd like to think.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to end fossil fuel subsidies forever. That'll be tough, since the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" includes even more fossil fuel subsidies, but we should still communicate our will. And though the recent California oil spill instructs us as to why we might not want to funnel taxpayer money toward corporations that pollute, you can of course make a more conservative argument against fossil fuel subsidies. Not ALL GUBMINT SPENDINGZ BADZ!!!!!, because that's a reactionary argument -- you can merely argue that the fossil fuels are an entrenched technology and hardly need taxpayer help to survive. Yes, they talk about "facing crises" all the time, but they're BSing you. They don't need your money.

Action: concerning water privatization, voting rights, debt drama, law and order, and credit reports.

Long story short: tell PA state legislators to block Aqua Pennsylvania's attempts to take over the Chester Water Authority, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, get rid of the stupid debt ceiling forever, pass the Counseling Not Criminalization Act, get rid of qualified immunity for police officers, and ensure good Americans can get credit reports easily and for free. 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 legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

First things first. Aqua Pennsylvania, the private water service corporation, wants to take over the publicly-held Chester Water Authority; if they succeed, they'll likely go after the public water services of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh next, which will give them pretty near complete control of Pennsylvania's water. They're basically a monopoly in every municipality they operate, which means what, class? Higher prices for you, that's what! (No, public water isn't a "monopoly," because it belongs to you and thus you have much more control over it.) Pennsylvania's legislature is mulling HB 1936, which would prevent private corporations from buying public water systems unless those systems are in financial distress; I'd prevent it under those circumstances, too, but HB 1936 will improve matters. Thus Sum of Us helps you tell your PA state legislators to support public water.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Ignore right-wing rubbish about "letting states run elections," because too many states have recently revealed they want to "run" elections that only Republicans can win. The Freedom to Vote Act would expand your access to the voting booth, clamp down on partisan gerrymandering where politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around, and end states' efforts to meddle in their own elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the Voting Rights Act so our Justice Department can step in and stop states and localities -- and not just Southern ones -- from suppressing the vote. America needs these bills to become law; I'm not sure I can put it any more simply than that.

Democracy for America helps you tell our government to end the absurd debt ceiling threat once and for all. Politicians only ever complain about our national debt when the other party runs things, and so it goes with today's Republicans, who let Donald Trump run up our national debt by nearly $8 trillion (comprising a nearly 40 percent increase) in just four years, but who now imagine we'll buy their gaslighting about how they're the "fiscally responsible" party. They may also imagine they'll be able to extort concessions (privatizing Social Security, cutting Medicare, etc.) in exchange for graciously raising the debt limit, though they haven't actually mentioned any concessions lately. So we need to neutralize the threat, and end the endless hostage-taking. And no, I don't care if President Biden does it on his own. I think most folks would call that leadership, which is a thing we haven't seen from very many Presidents lately.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4011/S. 2125, the Counseling Not Criminalization Act, which would mean fewer police officers and more counselors and nurses in our public schools. Because police officers don't have the skills to stop kids from acting out! And we shouldn't expect that of them! And a couple classes in conflict resolution can't match the abilities of folks who have spent years doing exactly that! Police officers are not Swiss Army knives, after all. If that sounds like "defunding the police" to your right-wing neighbors, then I would have to ask if maybe they care a lot more for "funding the police" than, you know, actually reducing crime. Yesterday's conservatives always said you can't just throw money at a problem; today's "conservatives" yell I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! every time you try to solve a problem. And boy do I hate yellers.

In a related note, Black Lives Matter helps you tell your Congressfolk to end "qualified immunity" for police officers, so that good Americans can finally get justice for the wrongs police have done to them. And police have done wrongs to them! No amount of I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! will bring back the Black kids killed for having a toy gun or the Black men killed for pulling out their cellphone. And ending "qualified immunity" won't automatically send police officers to jail, it'll just take away the tool that gives them near-absolute protection from accountability; plaintiffs will still have to prove their case, as they always do. And if your right-wing neighbors tell you "cops can't do their job" without having accountability for the wrong they do, well, ask them how that's conservative. I mean, conservatives always said they were all about accountability.

Finally, Consumer Reports helps you tell Congress to ensure you can get your credit reports easily and for free. Yes, our government already does provide free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com, but doesn't that website name strike you as a nefarious compromise? As if they went out of their way to let corporations trick you with websites with the word "free" in them? It's always seemed that way to me, that's for sure. So, yeah, we should publicized the fact that annualcreditreport.com is where you go for free credit reports, but we shouldn't let corporations charge you hundreds of dollars or siphon away your private info so they can resell it, either. That's not "the free market" in action; that's corruption in action, and for too long our politicians have just shrugged at corruption and called it "freedom." But if it makes folks less free, how is it freedom?

Action: concerning drugs, evictions, unconstitutional war-making, voting rights, nursing mothers, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell your Senators to pass the EQUAL Act, the Keeping Renters Safe Act, the National Security Reforms and Accountability Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, and the Postal Service Reform 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.

First things first. Late last week our House passed H.R. 1693, the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (or EQUAL) Act -- and by an actual bipartisan margin of 361-66! So what would the EQUAL Act do? It would equalize sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine -- a gap the Obama Administration narrowed, but didn't close, in 2010 -- and it would allow judges to resentence crack offenders so they can serve powder time. They always said crack cocaine was more addictive, but that was a lie -- a lie designed to put more Black folks in jail, no less! Our Senate has yet to take up this bill, and a phone call from you telling them to pass it might well encourage them to do so. If we keep quiet about it, that'll make them think they can do nothing, and we sure don't want to enable that sort of behavior!

Eviction Moratorium Now helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5307/S. 2776, the Keeping Renters Safe Act. The Keeping Renters Safe Act would enact the same national eviction moratorium that the Biden Administration had in place, until our Supreme Court struck it down; our Supreme Court would have trouble striking down a moratorium enacted by Congress, though I suppose they're a creative bunch and they're game to try. Why do we still need an eviction moratorium after more than 18 months? Because states have been very, very slow to give out federally-mandated rent assistance; is it fair, really, to put people out on the street because states don't do their job? No, it is not. Don't retort that none of this is "fair to landlords." Landlords can withstand hardship much better than their renters can. And when their renters get paid, they'll get paid. That's how you know the objection is rubbish!

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5410, the National Security Reforms and Accountability Act. What would H.R. 5410 do? It would make it harder to fight "war on terror"-style unconstitutional wars, declare national emergencies, and sell weapons. We should make these things harder! Making them easy, in the name of "not hamstringing our President's ability to act," has caused most of the problems we've had over the last half-century! And hamstringing our President's ability to act is the whole point of giving Congress the power to declare war! You may scrutinize the bill and decide it doesn't go far enough -- you may even prefer the similar S. 2391, the National Security Powers Act -- but if it passed, it would improve our ability to keep our government from fighting stupid wars in our name, and that's a good work to do.

Common Cause, Public Citizen, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. The Freedom to Vote Act is basically the For the People Act without its ethics plank (wonder why Joe Manchin would object to that!), plus the Freedom to Vote Act would clamp down on state legislature power to overrule the will of their voters, which is quite necessary now that several states have given their legislatures that power. The Freedom to Vote Act would still clamp down on gerrymandering and dark money, restore voting rights to ex-felons, provide 15 days of early voting, enact same-day voter registration, and make Election Day a national holiday, so it merits your support, even if Manchinian drama created it.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3110/S. 1658, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act. This bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (passed in 1938, well before the workforce had many new mothers among its members!) so that women can nurse in private and without being harassed by bosses. The bill would also ensure women can nurse in a workplace better than a closet or a car or a bathroom. Before your right-wing nephew starts wailing about TEH SMALL BIZNIZIZ!!!!!, attend Sec. 2, which exempts businesses employing fewer than 50 people (though you may want to mention the fact that an employer like McDonald's, known to hide behind its "franchises," might try to drive a Mack truck through that loophole). In any case, nursing mothers deserve better than they typically get from their jobs, and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act will give them better if it passes.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3076/S. 1720, the Postal Service Reform Act. You've heard that our Postal Service has begun charging more and slowing down deliveries, as part of Postmaster General DeJoy's "bold" "plan" to "save" the Postal Service, but we could solve literally all of our Postal Service's financial problems by simply removing the mandate that it pre-pay retiree benefits 85 years in advance, which the Postal Service Reform Act does. I mused earlier today that President Biden might be waiting until Mr. DeJoy's plan falls flat before firing him, but that waiting will hurt people, and the Postal Service Reform Act presents a solution we can implement now, that will bring us better results now. When you can do the right thing right now, you do it, that's what I say.

Action: concerning evictions, taxes, Medicare, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell your state's Governor to distribute eviction assistance funds immediately, and tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, enable Medicare to negotiate drug prices, expand Medicare, and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement 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.

Once again, Daily Kos helps you tell your state's Governor to get with the eviction assistance funding already. States have been giving it out very, very slowly, ostensibly to stop fraud, but you won't be "pro-fraud" if you suspect that "stopping fraud," in this case, actually means "we never wanted to do this anyway so we won't." States have also contracted out a lot of the rental assistance to third-party corporations, which always slows down the process. Government should do the job itself, that's what I say, and stop privatizing its duties. You may also want to remind your Governor that getting the rental assistance out also helps landlords get their money, if you think they might only view landlords as their constituents. Hey, it happens.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise all of the funding for the Build Back Better Act from higher taxes on rich folks and on corporations. You probably know that late last week, Sen. Sinema (D?-AZ) suddenly said -- not even four days before the vote on her pet "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" in the House! -- that she wouldn't support higher taxes on the rich or on corporations, demonstrating, once again, that her fuck-off ring is really for us. I had thought we'd have to put up with her for six or seven terms just like Max Baucus, but both Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman pulled similar shenanigans during negotiations over the Affordable Care Act in 2009, and they both retired in 2012 with their tails between their legs. Maybe Ms. Sinema, who is not rich despite being a shill for big corporations, goes the same way. In the meantime, we need to remind our Reps and Senators what we want -- and that what we want is more important than what she wants, 50th vote or no.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. Sen. Sinema's opposition figures here, too, but again, what we want matters -- if we communicate it! And People's Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare so that it covers folks older than 60 (vs. the current eligibility age of 65) and covers eye/ear/nose/throat care. Sen. Manchin figures here, of course, saying he can't support Medicare expansion until we can make it more "solvent." But he also supports Medicare drug price negotiation, which he surely knows would save the taxpayer at least $50 billion annually, meaning more money to get Medicare "fiscally solvent," whatever that actually means to Joe Manchin. It sounds more and more like he just doesn't want this to happen, but again, what he wants matters far less than what we want -- if we speak out.

Both Public Citizen and People for the American Way help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. The For the People Act descended into compromised oblivion, and as you may recall Joe Manchin not only failed to spell out what he didn't like about the For the People Act, but then went and listed reforms he wanted that were all in the For the People Act -- but for all this infernal drama, the Freedom to Vote Act is pretty good, and worth your support. It would not only enact same-day voter registration, 15 days of early voting across America, and voting right restoration for ex-felons, it would clamp down on partisan gerrymandering and address state attempts to give their legislatures the power to overrule the voters' will. We need all of that, so we should demand it, and we should get it.

Finally, both Daily Kos and People for the American Way help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I knew H.R. 4 would essentially restore a big part of the Voting Rights Act by creating a new pre-clearance formula that doesn't "discriminate" against Southern states, but still would clamp down on any state or locality that demonstrates a pattern of vote suppression. But I did not know that H.R. 4 would also give our Justice Department the power to clamp down on gerrymandering, if a court finds that particular gerrymandering act to be racist. Gerrymandering is noxious and ubiquitous enough that we need all the tools our Constitution and our laws can give us to fight it. Even if it makes certain incumbent politicians sad.

Action: concerning voting rights, privacy, law and order, defense spending, cyanide bombs, and plastic recycling.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the People's Response Act, and tell your Congressfolk to cut defense spending, ban cyanide bombs, and put responsibility for recycling plastic on its manufacturers, not people. 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.

Both Public Citizen and People for the American Way help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, which would do almost all of what the For the People Act would do -- it would make Election Day a national holiday, enact same-day voter registration and 15 days of early voting across America, give ex-felons back their right to vote, and clamp down on partisan gerrymandering and "dark money" campaign financing, plus it would block states from overriding election results that give them a sad. It's basically the For the People Act minus the ethics reforms, which leads one to wonder if all that drama Joe Manchin put us through really worth it. And he could still move the goalposts, as he's done repeatedly on other bills this year. Still, this is America, and what he wants should matter a whole lot less than what we want.

Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Our Fourth Amendment, you recall, protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement, but currently law enforcement can grab your personal data if they get it from a third-party data broker -- which buys your data from your internet service providing corporation, which latter corporation cannot hand over your data to law enforcement without a warrant. The law protects you from your ISP, then, but not from the corporations your ISP sells your data to. A certain strain of right-winger loves to point to this loophole as proof that government doesn't work and laws don't work, when all this loophole proves is that real security is a lifelong effort. I guess right-wingers don't like work.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4194, the People's Response Act. This bill would create a Division on Community Safety within our Department of Health and Human Services, and this Division would help states and localities stop using our police officers as the Swiss Army knives of our civilization, and instead implement better approaches to community problems. I think police should be serving warrants and making arrests -- I don't even want them getting kittens out of trees, because we have animal control officers to do that. And that's just one area where we already accept an alternative to policing without yelling about "defunding the police." Pass the People's Response Act and we can get our state and local governments to do better in other areas as well.

Both Win Without War and World Beyond War help you tell your Congressfolk to cut defense spending already. Because we already spend more on our military than the next 12 nations combined do! And how much of that is for defense, really, and how much of it is for enriching some defense contractor crony or other? We should also question, given the long-term effects of our meddling (still think our CIA planning a coup against Mr. Mossadegh in 1954 was a good idea?), whether we're really a positive force in foreign affairs. No, it's not "unpatriotic" to say so; in fact, I'd say it is unpatriotic to simply refuse to question yourself, since America is all about doing better, and if you're not asking yourself the hard questions, I sure as hell don't want you in my foxhole. Or anyone else's, for that matter.

The Center for Biological Diversity helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban our use of cyanide bombs in the wild. You don't like how land mines kill and maim people 50 years after the war's over, right? Now contemplate a capsule that not only lures wildlife in with a sweet smell, but sprays cyanide around indiscriminately when triggered, indiscriminately enough that it kills any and all wildlife in an area, not just the wildlife our government is trying to kill. It sounds like a developer's dream, actually, though I don't imagine unexploded cyanide bombs will just overlook them. Don't be the one who says this is no big deal because "death is always violent." The mere existence of violence doesn't justify perpetrating any and all kinds of violence on other living creatures. And civilization abhors nihilism.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the big plastic-manufacturing corporations, and not taxpayers, take responsibility for recycling their products. They've got more money, after all! You remember when soda manufacturing corporations started advertising their "shatterproof" bottles in the late '70s? You'd see a big bottle of Pepsi bounce on the floor again and again. We sure didn't know what that would bring to our world -- not just dead animals dying of plastic pollution, not just trash islands forming all over our oceans, but good Americans who now ingest about one credit card of plastic every week just by using the plastic products that are now everywhere. So it can't just be your local sanitation department, paid for by your taxes, doing all the work.

Action: concerning jobs, taxes, drug prices, government spying, gerrymandering, and saving our Post Office.

Long story short: tell "moderate" Democrats to abandon their plan to scuttle the reconciliation bill, tell your House Reps to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations in said bill, let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander legislative districts, and tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General DeJoy already. 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.

First things first. Nine "moderate" House Democrats have threatened to vote down the reconciliation budget bill if our House doesn't pass the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" first. Know why? Their letter contains the five emptiest paragraphs you will ever read, and if they really believe the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is a "once-in-a-century" thing, that is to laugh. And doing it their way, of course, puts the much better reconciliation budget bill at risk, almost like that's the whole idea. If any of these nine House Reps "represent" you, you can call them and tell them this ain't the hill they want to die on. And no, we shouldn't be "cautious" because we'll need most of those nine Reps to pass the reconciliation bill, or for Democrats to keep the majority in 2022. Democrats don't lose elections in spite of such "caution"; they lose elections because of it.

Peripherally-related to the above goal, you can call your own House Reps and tell them to jack up taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for the budget reconciliation bill. Such taxes could include: a 55% corporate tax rate on profits over $1 million just like we had in the 1950s, a 91% tax bracket on income over $1 million just like we also had in the 1950s, treating capital gains and dividends as regular income like we did until George W. Bush, a financial transaction tax of 1% like we had until the late 1960s -- beginning to see a pattern? These taxes didn't "cripple economies," but helped build the greatest middle class in world history, so they're not "impossible" so much as they're proven. Too many of these "moderate" Democrats claim tax hikes like these are too "radical" -- how something we used to do all the time could be "radical" is anyone's guess -- and they won't abandon their cowardice until enough of their constituents (i.e., us) get in their grills.

Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices by letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices. Medicare is the biggest buyer of drugs in America by far, after all, so if we let Medicare negotiate drug prices, we'll all have better drug prices. And even the right-wing Mercatus Center instructs us that Medicare drug price negotiation can save the taxpayer over $80 billion annually, which makes that a pay-for. We really can make this world a place where we don't reflexively cast morality and pragmatism as enemies! And no, Medicare drug price negotiation isn't BIG GUMMINT CONTROLZ TEH DRUGZ YOUZ GETZ!!!!!! Big pharma corporations control what drugs you can get by charging $900 a month for insulin, or $350 for a single dose of EpiPen. Fight the real enemy!

The Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3907/S. 2052, the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. As its name suggest, the bill would prevent our federal and state governments from using facial recognition technology on their citizens, unless future Congressional legislation specifically authorizes it; facial recognition technology sucks, as any number of Black folks wrongly accused of crimes could tell you, so governments certainly shouldn't be using it. If the bill becomes law, then anyone wronged by a government entity breaking the law could sue that government entity; accountability is important, after all. The bill doesn't prevent local governments from using the technology, but would prevent them from getting government grants unless and until they do so. You don't want to be put in jail because you barely look like someone else, right? Then you want to get this bill passed.

Common Cause helps you tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander districts for the benefit of incumbents and/or political parties. As you know, the census data mapmakers will use to redraw districts came out last week, so that process will begin soon, and historically that process has benefited politicians, not regular Americans. Take Wisconsin, where Republican state legislative candidates typically get fewer votes than their Democratic counterparts, but somehow win almost two-thirds of the state's lower house! How does that happen? It happens when mapmakers draw Rorschach-blot-shaped districts that exclude sides of streets and even individual houses. It's the biggest reason our representatives give us nothing but the back of their hand, and we have to stop it. We begin to stop it by putting them on notice, and by making gerrymandering toxic to them, for once.

Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy already. It ain't just his naked attempt to deliver the 2020 election to his Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump, nor is it his determination to make our Postal Service run badly -- it's also the corruption! A week and a half ago we learned that our USPS awarded a $120 million contract to the corporation he used to run, XPO Logistics, which still pays the DeJoy family over $2 million annually by renting office space. But wait, there's more! Last week we learned that Mr. DeJoy spent a few hundred Gs on bonds from Brookfield Asset Management, and guess who's a managing partner at Brookfield? Why, USPS Governor Ron Bloom, of course! I'm old enough to remember when even the appearance of evil could cause people to resign; how about we bring those days back?

Around the table: from PR hackery to dumb wars.

PR hacks look for "normal, everyday" Arizona residents to write letters-to-the-editor supporting binding arbitration -- and when they can't find any, even in Arizona, they offer $2,000 a pop! Nice work if you have no soul! It's like even Arizona right-wingers know that binding arbitration is the way corporations keep customers and workers out of our courts, and ensure that customers and workers lose more of the cases against them than they would in our courts. Next time you hear about "crisis actors" and "paid protestors" on the left, remember that PR hacks paying people to write pro-corporate screeds is the evil that actually happens. I'm not sure why they're targeting Arizona, though -- maybe Mark Kelly's not the easiest get, but they'd probably have Kyrsten Sinema at hello.

When I read that Donald Trump has "politicized the most basic of pandemic safety measures," and that it's "as if he named Band-Aids un-American, and demanded that we bleed to show our heedless fealty," I'm tempted to respond let's not give the man any more ideas! I can all too easily imagine him saying why do we drink water anyway? Only losers drink water! Own the libs by refusing to drink any more water! And then his votaries would not only stop drinking water but demand that we gut the clean water standards that are the main reason we have any decent health care in America at all. I wish this were harder to imagine.

Ari Paul reminds us that "Right-Wing Cop-Bashing Didn't Start With Trump." You'll be reminded of the white supremacist stand-off at Ruby Ridge and the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco -- both of which prompted right-wingers to yell about federal cops -- and G. Gordon Liddy's repeated admonitions to his listeners to shoot federal agents in the head. All that's just from the '90s. But, yeah, everyone who proudly brandishes their I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! sign has a line that can't be crossed, one that will turn them into the kind of folks who try to impale Capitol police with flagpoles. And they'll yell at you when you point out their hypocrisy, which is a hell of a thing to take to the Pearly Gates.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has spouted more unscientific nonsense about COVID than most Republicans and that's saying something, didn't bother reporting his wife's investment in a corporation producing a drug to fight COVID until 16 months after our laws required. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, too, which sure makes one suspect he had, you know, insider information. I wouldn't want to go into a re-election fight with this baggage; indeed, Richard Burr decided it wasn't worth it, and Kelly Loeffler lost in 2020. Then again, if the Democratic establishment forces another Amy McGrath-type candidate on the good citizens of Kentucky, then Rand Paul will get away with it.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (S-GA) responds to news that hospitals are filling up with COVID patients by saying "(e)veryone needs to get back down to common sense and needs to remember, we're human, we can't live forever." I'm old enough to remember when politicians ended careers by saying such things, but we live a sick, immoral, and decadent era in which a quarter of our electorate can only feel one emotion: rage. Also, her district is so gerrymandered she probably couldn't even lose to Jesus H. Christ himself. If only our House had passed a bill that could address this intractable problem! Oh, right, it did, and Joe Manchin won't let it come to a vote because bipartisanship with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene is somehow far more important.

Finally, as we confront the humiliating end to our 20-year presence in Afghanistan, I guess it's good to hear at least one "liberal" media outlet suggest that our whole adventure there was a stupid idea to begin with. $88 billion we threw away on training Afghan soldiers to fight the Taliban, and now we learn about "years of overly optimistic assessments from U.S. officials that obscured -- and in some cases, purposely hid -- evidence of deep-rooted corruption, low morale, and even 'ghost soldiers and police' who existed merely on the payrolls of the Afghan Defense and Interior Ministries." Sadly, none of this is particularly surprising, and if you thought maybe the whole point of the Afghanistan war was to bleed the taxpayers, I wouldn't blame you. And that sure wouldn't bode well for sticking around another two or 20 years to "fix things."

Action: concerning the filibuster, service shutoffs, banksters, and law-and-order policy.

Long story short: tell President Biden to actively oppose the Senate filibuster, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Maintaining Access to Essential Services Act, end hedge fund predatory behavior, and pass the Break the Cycle of Violence Act and the MEAL 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, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Both Public Citizen and The Juggernaut Project help you tell President Biden to lead on filibuster reform. He's used his bully pulpit to argue for the For the People Act -- said he'd "fight like heck" to get it done, in fact -- but if he's not willing to endorse getting rid of the filibuster, it'll all be for nothing. Republicans use the filibuster to stop everything, which not only means no gerrymandering reform, no campaign finance reform, and no end to racist vote suppression practices, it also means Democrats look like they do nothing all day, which guarantees they'll be in the minority in Congress again. People like it when you do stuff, and they hate it when you don't. It's pretty simple, much simpler than the 13-dimensional chess Democrats seem to play most of the time.

Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4979/S. 1783, the Maintaining Access to Essential Services Act, which would prevent utility corporations from shutting off your electricity and water and the like. I can already hear the right-wingers yell WHEN DOEZ IT ENDZ!!!!! Maybe it ends when they get the boards out of their asses and get vaccinated so we can end this pandemic! After all, a person without essential services is a person rather more at risk of getting COVID, and therefore at risk of keeping the pandemic going. There are times -- many times, in fact -- when the compassionate thing to do is also the pragmatic thing to do. This is one of those times. And remember how the Joe Louis Arena didn't get its water shut off in 2014 even after falling over $82,000 behind on its water bill. And I think people are actually more important than sports arenas.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would rein in hedge funds' predatory behavior. Hedge funds love to swoop in, buy corporations, and then suck the wealth out of them like the vampires they are, and as a result, good Americans lose their jobs. How do we put a stop to that? We tell Congress to make hedge funds (and their executives) legally liable for the evil they do, ban the practices that allow banksters to loot other corporations, protect the workers who'd otherwise lose their jobs and pensions (that last part's important!), and close the corporate tax loopholes that make hedge funds absurdly overpaid. No, they don't "rein in bad actors" in our economy. We've got laws and regulations for that, and if we don't, we make the laws and regulations better. Big corporations make very bad cops.

Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4118/S. 2275, the Break the Cycle of Violence Act. Which would do what? Fund community-based violence prevention programs, that's what. Which would be a whole lot better than calling the police every time folks can't solve problems with their family, friends, and neighbors. If you're tempted to call this "defunding the police," consider that a police officer should not be the solution to every conceivable problem -- not just for our sake, but for theirs. And if you're temped to call it a "slush fund" for Black folks, remember that no one will get rich of these government grants. Really, if it were all about grift, they'd be banksters. In fact, you really ought to look to the financial sector first if you're looking for grift.

Finally, the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2837, the Making Essentials Affordable and Lawful (or MEAL) Act. The MEAL Act would repeal the law that bans Americans with drug convictions from ever getting food stamps or other forms of public assistance -- which sure sounds like the kind of thing politicians do to look tough, and thus should be opposed on that basis alone. But, seriously, if we actually do believe in rehabilitation, then lifetime bans for drug convictions is the precise opposite of logic as well as the precise opposite of mercy. And as for the folks who don't believe in rehabilitation, well, maybe there's a police state that'll take them in. I hear things are a lot simpler in police states.

Action: concerning evictions, chemical safety, corporate welfare, worker rights, discrimination, and voting rights.

Long story short: tell our government to extend the eviction moratorium, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the PFAS Action Act, the End Polluter Welfare Act, the PRO Act, the Equality Act, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement 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, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Moms Rising helps you tell our Congressfolk to extend the eviction moratorium. Thanks largely to pressure from House liberals such as Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), the Biden Administration did issue an order extending the eviction moratorium for 60 days in high-COVID areas, and even though real estate groups might get our Supreme Court to overturn it rather quickly, that order isn't useless -- if nothing else, it buys a little time for somehow-undistributed COVID relief money to get to the renters who need it. Still, Congress needs to hear from us that they should do something about this -- Republicans would just love to see hundreds of tent cities spring up all over America. And I'm not worried about landlords' well-being. You don't get to be a landlord if you're not well-off. Besides, hardship builds character; isn't that what we always tell renters?

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 2467, the PFAS Action Act, and -- this is critical! -- not weaken it to please their corporate paymasters. H.R. 2467 would, among other things, mandate that our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) set standards for how much PFAS chemicals we can tolerate in our drinking water; the ideal number would be "zero," given how hard it is to break PFAS chemicals down (they don't call them "forever chemicals" for nothing!) and how scientists have linked PFAS chemicals to cancer and birth defects, but given their ubiquity in our products, we are already compromising by setting any non-zero limits at all. And our Senators know this bill should pass, so they'll try to weaken it and then take credit for it. That's a wicked game, and we shouldn't let them play it.

Both the Sierra Club and Food and Water Action help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2102/S. 1167, the End Polluter Welfare Act. This bill would end some $15 billion annually in corporate welfare subsidies to corporations that, frankly, don't need the money, like oil and gas drillers. Literally the only people in America who want to keep that welfare coming are the oil and gas drilling corporations who get it, and, sadly, they contribute big bucks to the politicians who'll vote on this bill. And these corporations don't spend nearly as much in campaign contributions as they collect in corporate welfare! So we the people need to stop that. After all, we're the majority.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The big story this past week, as you may know, is a National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) hearing officer determining that Amazon did, in fact, break laws during the April unionization vote at its Bessemer, AL warehouse, and our NLRB may order another election in the coming weeks, but wouldn't it be nice if it didn't even come to that? The PRO Act would stop a lot of big corporate abuse and intimidation -- including the forced anti-union propaganda meetings and the retaliation against pro-union workers -- before it happens. Again, big corporations won't like it, and they will spend to stop it. But I would ask this of our Senators: do you really want to take "I was easily bribed repeatedly by big corporations" to the Pearly Gates?

The Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. Have I mentioned how disgusting I find the arguments against the Equality Act? Why, yes, I believe I have, in some detail. And what's most disgusting about them? None of them are true! Why, those arguments would need to take two buses and a train even to get in the same neighborhood as the truth! The Equality Act prevents bosses, landlords, and banks from discriminating against gay and transgender folks just because they're gay and transgender, end of story. If that offends folks' "religious beliefs," then maybe -- just an idea -- they shouldn't base their religion around who they hate.

Finally, Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. And Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Again: the arguments against these bills all suck. The bills would curtail gerrymandering, enact same-day and automatic voting registration, give all voters 15 days of early voting, force big campaign donors to disclose their donations, give power to stop vote suppression at the state level back to our Justice Department, and end certain racist de-registration practices, so if folks call all that "a Democrat power grab," they may want to consider whether it only looks that way because of actual Republican power-grabs -- like Voter ID, or creating Rorschach-blot legislative districts, or closing polling booths in Black neighborhoods, or using the Interstate Crosscheck database to de-register Black voters without telling them, or any of the several dozen other right-wing tricks you can name.

Action: concerning worker rights, taxes, farming, social media, voting rights, and nuclear weapons.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the PRO Act, make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, pass the Farm Systems Reform Act, the Algorithmic Justice and Online Transparency Act, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and stop funding new nuclear weapons. 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, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The PRO Act would repeal state-level "right to work" laws, stop employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings or sign forced arbitration agreements, would stop employers from retaliating against employees (including managers) who blow the whistle on labor law violations, and would let employees determine how to conduct a union election. You didn't know that from your right-wing Congressfolk, did you? They'll tell you that the bill would injure "your right not to join a union," but that's not what "right-to-work" laws are all about: they're about employers choosing for you not to join a union! And that's not the same thing.

Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit (or CTC) expansion permanent. Those $250 or $300 checks have started coming, and since I'm not an evil bastard, I have trouble imagining how the right will portray this as an "evil" -- they could call it "fiscally-irresponsible," but we all know by now that Republicans only care about "fiscal responsibility" when the other party control Congress and the Presidency. But then I realized they could call it "buying votes"! They never call it "buying votes" when Republicans cut corporate taxes and taxes on rich folks -- though, by the evidence of the 2018 elections, that stratagem doesn't buy as many votes as it used to! Anyway, all Democrats need do in response is cut ads portraying fat-cat Republicans taking your $300 checks right out of your hands, and then the "vote-buying" accusation would become irrelevant.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4421/S. 2332, the Farm System Reform Act. One of the biggest problem with farms is how big factory farms are -- they use their outsized influence to make us less safe, thanks to their antibiotic abuse (which helps create superbugs) and the pollution they unleash upon local water tables. But the Farm System Reform Act would ban construction of new factory farms and expansion of existing ones, plus it would close down the existing ones by 2040. How will we get our food, then? Through the multitudinous smaller farmers who will better be able to thrive, now that factory farms aren't in their way. Remember: the "problem" isn't government -- it's the big corporation.

Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3611/S. 1896, the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act. Even President Biden has lately lamented how easily social media corporations can disseminate lies, but this bill would help put a stop to that -- first by requiring a crap-ton of transparency from social media corporations about their algorithmic processes and their content moderation practices (including whether people or machines do the moderating!), and then by making certain online practices illegal if said practices violate a user's civil rights (including their voting rights). The bill doesn't outlaw algorithms (which I'd happily do! I don't care if it makes cat videos harder to find!), but I bet the social media corporations will whine about being made to disclose exactly how they use them, in plain language. They can cry into all their hundred-dollar bills.

Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Plus Daily Kos helps you sign up to call West Virginians and urge them to urge their Senator, Joe Manchin, to vote for the For the People Act. Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. If you want to end gerrymandering, dark money, and racist vote suppression, you want these bills to pass. It doesn't matter that Republicans (and Joe Manchin!) make up stories about the "harms" these bills would do. You're right, and they're wrong. It's that simple.

Finally, Peace Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop funding nuclear weapons. Are we so afraid some other nation will come up with a more efficient way of destroying the planet? Our current stockpile of nuclear weapons dopes that quite well, thank you very much! And once you've got the planet-destroying weapon, you don't really need to tweak it. Defense contracting corporations will claim that you do, but consider what they get out of it if we swallow their line of poop: money. They get money out of it. Lots and lots of money. I'm so old-fashioned I don't think money is a very good reason to do anything -- particularly if it's my hard-earned taxpayer money becoming someone else's corporate welfare. So don't believe the hype. After all, it ain't called "hype" because it's true!

Around the table: the zombies keep coming, but so do the head shots!

COVID cases are on the rise again -- and Florida accounted for 20% of all new COVID cases last week all by itself. Add in just three other states (the article doesn't name them, but Texas and Missouri were two of them every day I looked last week) and that's 40% of all new COVID cases. And surprise, most of the new cases come from heavily-unvaccinated counties. They will not learn until they realize that most Americans have abandoned them as friends and compatriots -- and even then a lot of them will nurse their martyr complex. One of the biggest problems with The Future is folks believe they're martyrs without doing any of the hard work martyrdom entails. You refused a vaccine? You supported sedition? Now show me your actual nail holes!

Ho hum, President Biden's tax plans will not, in fact, harm small businesses or family farms, and I for one have had enough of delivering head shots to these zombies lies as I've been doing for nearly two decades. The only thing I will say is that the folks who tell these zombie lies sure do seem less convinced they'll work than they used to, possibly because good Americans see through them a lot better, as evidenced by the last Trump tax cut doing exactly nothing to stave off Democrats' taking back the House in 2018, and by polling suggesting that nearly three out of every four Americans want big corporations to pay more in taxes. Read the whole thing, though; it demonstrates that right-wingers aren't even any good at inside baseball anymore.

In a related note, Elias Khoury at FAIR reminds us that the Wall Street Journal calls tax cuts that benefit the wealthy "more money in taxpayers' hands," while calling tax cuts that benefit working families as an attempt to "buy votes." I guess that's all right-wingers can say against the Child Tax Credit expansion! That'll only work with two kinds of people: people who already believe whatever right-wingers tell them, and people who don't get $250 or $300 checks every month. And it's funny how right-wingers won't call tax-cuts-for-the-rich an attempt to "buy votes," since, by their own logic, that's what it is.

Surprise, surprise, the fellow who disrupted Rep. Porter's town hall the other day not only has a history of racism and anti-Semitism, but also has a history of using violence to disrupt otherwise peaceful events. "I came here to be purposely provocative," he said after provoking fights at Cal State-Fullerton in 2017, as if anyone should care. This Nick Taurus has already declared his candidacy against Ms. Porter in 2022; I'd like to say I don't see him having a shot, but we have been witnessing, for many years now, Republicans' willingness to "hold their nose" and vote for people like this. And while Ms. Porter could point to her good works in Congress, of course -- more than many other vulnerable House Reps! -- that fact also makes her the kind of person Our Glorious Elites would love to get out of the way.

President Biden moves to reverse Trump-era policy allowing massive corporate logging of old-growth trees in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. By "old-growth," of course, we mean "those trees are a thousand freaking years old," meaning they were around before the Norman conquest of England in 1066, which (among other things) ushered all those French-rooted words into the English language. See? There is actually a value to preserving history. One might even say there's actually a value to conserving history. It's not some kind of accident that "conservative" and "conservation" have the same damn root.

Finally, Mahnoor Imran and Adam Eichen at In These Times remind us, because we need it, that just because Joe Manchin won't let the For the People Act pass, that doesn't mean it's "dead" -- in fact, the bill is pretty much the opposite of dead, thanks to "the grassroots activism taking place across the country to get this bill passed." Take a gander at the numerous organizations fighting to pass gerrymandering reform, same-day and automatic voter registration, and campaign finance disclosure for big donors (among the For the People Act's many good works!) and never let them tell you your efforts are worthless.

Action: concerning voting rights, Medicare expansion, paid family leave, Medicaid expansion, and big telecom cruelty.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, expand Medicare, provide paid family/medical leave, pass a bill that would let individual counties and localities accept the Medicaid expansion where states won't, and pass the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act; and attend a rally in favor of the For the People 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, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Voting Rights Act used to have a list of states that needed to pre-clear their voting law changes with our Justice Department -- until our Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, ruled that discriminated against Southern states (which comprised most of that list!). The Voting Rights Advancement Act would amend the Voting Rights Act so that any state or locality with a record of suppressing the vote would have to pre-clear their voting law changes. Don't brook any silliness about how "the South has changed" from the likes of Mitch McConnell -- the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would fight vote suppression everywhere, not just the South. So let's get to it.

Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to improve and expand Medicare, by lowering the eligibility age to 60 and adding hearing, vision, and dental coverage. As they say, seniors have ears, eyes, and teeth just like everyone else, so there's no reason Medicare shouldn't cover them! And though I'd rather lower the eligibility age to zero, lowering it to 60 would be a good first step. I can already hear right-wingers whine how are you going to pay for it? If we pass it as part of the next reconciliation bill, we'd get tax hikes on rich folks and corporations to help pay for it -- plus we could let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, which even the Mercatus Center has said would save Medicare about $84 billion annually. (Toward that end, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3, which would let Medicare negotiate prices for most of the drugs it buys.)

Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk you want our government to provide paid family/medical leave to all our workers. That is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the American Families Plan, so we might as well tell Congress we want it, lest they think the American people care more about whatever manufactured outrage right-wingers want to flood the zone with today. And though asking HOWZ WILLZ WE PAYZ FOR TEH THINGZ!!!! does get tiresome, just so happens Sen. Gillibrand's previous family/medical leave bills have already answered that: with a payroll tax that would cost workers making $50,000 annually less than $9/month. Nine dollars! And that's not even how I'd do it! See, this is why I get tired of people who whine about paying for things.

Both Daily Kos and Moms Rising help you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would let counties and cities sign on to the Medicaid expansion even if state governments won't do it. What would be the opposing point of view there? That "states' rights" are too important? Gosh, that would be a tired argument! States that have refused the Medicaid expansion didn't do so because of some serious policy disagreement, but merely out of cruelty. No, a desire to "stick it to Obama" counts as cruelty; I mean, the result is the same. And if Congress doesn't have a moral obligation to fight cruelty, then why do we have a democracy to begin with?

Both Color of Change and Free Press help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 1541, the Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which would stop big telecom corporations from gouging prisoners when they talk to their families on the phone. Is it right that we would take advantage of prisoners and their families in this way? Is any cruelty OK if it makes you look "tough on crime"? And don't be the fool who says well, don't commit a crime, then, since we all know that contact with families helps folks in prison stay out once they get out. Also, too, there's a pandemic on, which means less face-to-face contact with families, which means more phone contact. Like I said, it's cruel, and that means we must change it.

Finally, Deadline for Democracy will be holding rallies all over America this week helping you tell your Senators to pass the For the People Act; here's where to find one. You just enter your zip code and find the event nearest you. Some two out of three Americans support the For the People Act, but Republicans Senators just keep on with their propaganda that an end to gerrymandering, campaign finance disclosure for big donors, 15 days of early voting nationwide, same-day and automatic voting registration, and an end to racist caging practices somehow all constitutes a "Democrat power grab." As usual, Republicans doth project too much -- they're the ones doing all the power-grabbing, and the For the People Act would make it harder for them to do it! So let's get out there, in force, and remind them who they're supposed to serve.