Thieves in the Temple.

Action: helping small businesses yea, enabling financial predators nay.

Our House passed the HEROES Act late last week, and though it's a good bill offering real relief to those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, we can do more. Hence H.R. 6918, the Paycheck Recovery Act, would deliver actual help to small businesses (which the bill defines as having fewer than 20 employees, not "fewer than 500 at any one location" like the CARES Act) and guarantee continuing paychecks to those businesses' employees who make less than $90,000 who have lost their jobs during this pandemic. Close to 40 million Americans have now lost their job, and if I were a betting man I'd say most of them make less than $90,000. The assistance would end once the unemployment rate stays below seven percent for three months in a row. Oh, and no small business receiving assistance under this bill would be able to use the money for stock buybacks, executive bonuses, or payments to shareholders. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to help out small businesses and their employees by passing the Paycheck Recovery Act.

Meanwhile, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government that, as they put it, "(a) pandemic is no time to gut the rules meant to keep consumers safe from financial scams." OK, there's never a good time to do that, but doing it now is just another gut-punch for good Americans, and this Administration is contemplating plenty of evil along these lines: they're trying to gut rules restricting predatory payday lenders, they're trying to lift rules on the kind of speculative trading that almost destroyed our economy in 2008, and they're trying to roll back rules that make banks invest in the communities in which they do business. Who told them that redlining and banksters and 300% payday loans are all popular? The self-interested fools who think whatever's good for them is good for America, and the idiots who have somehow dominated all debate on economic policy for the better part of the last half-century. I long for a land where hurting working people isn't the only policy choice, but first, let's stop the hurt as best we can.

Around the table: more of the soft white underbelly of the events of the day.

Senate passes, by 55-45, resolution aiming to restrain our President from making war on Iran. The House will pass it, possibly more quickly than the Senate did, and then our President will veto it, and 55 Senators ain't enough to override a veto, and yes I think a few of the eight Republicans who joined all 47 Democrats in voting in favor of the resolution did so because they know it'll ultimately die. Still, when the politicians do our will -- and our will is most certainly to avoid another quagmire in the Middle East, as well as reassert Congress's Constitutional war-making authority -- this is a good thing, and something we can build on. As an aside, Sen. Lee's statement favoring the resolution -- "(w)e don’t send a message of weakness when we stand up for the rule of law. That’s a message of strength" -- is well-spoken, and also the kind of thing we can build on.

Ho hum, our President says his budget doesn't cut Social Security, but his Treasury Secretary admitted that it does. Well, he said it would cut increases in future benefits, which in his mind isn't a cut, and I suppose inflation doesn't exist in his mind, either. Please don't let the trolls in your life squeal BUT TEH OBUMMURZ WANTEDZ TO DOEZ TEH SAMEZ!!!!, since we fought it when he proposed it, too. Trolls aren't simple-minded; they just want you to think they are, and make yourself simple-minded when you argue with them.

Right-wing gadfly in Tennessee state legislature introduces a bill that would declare CNN and the Washington Post "fake news," which proves, once again, that there's no bigger whiner in America than a right-winger. It's not enough to simply say "you call it 'fake news' because you can't win an argument against it on the merits" -- we should acknowledge that websites that pretend to be mainstream news websites and websites that call themselves "news and satire" websites are, in fact, fake news. But if an editorial at a newspaper hurts your fee-fees, it's not "fake news."

We are making too much of former Administration DHS Secretary/Chief of Staff John Kelly's assertion that folks who watch Fox News "because it's reinforcing what you believe" aren't "informed citizen(s)," because even though Fox News is an even more naked propaganda outfit than it used to be, the other cable news channels are also pretty terrible, and trying to stay informed by watching cable news is like trying to get all your protein from ice cream. Sure, you'll get some, but you'll also get fat and diabetic a lot faster than you would from, say, chicken or yogurt. Thieves in the Temple can be either one for you. Hell, we can be steak, too.

Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch says the red-baiting of Bernie Sanders is "already becoming laughable" -- particularly in the recent utterance of Chris Matthews, one of this millennium's worst cable news blowhards. But you need not even read through Mr. Lindorff's defense of socialism, really, or even consider the popularity of Medicare and Social Security -- all you need do is realize that you paid taxes for the road you drove to the store yesterday, and that you paid taxes for the schooling your kids get, and that you paid taxes for the clean air you breathe and the clean water you drink, to realize that you are a socialist.

Finally, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on ads trying to convince us that he really "gets" racism -- I heard one of them at least three times yesterday at work -- but in 2008 he actually said "the end of redlining" caused the 2008 financial crash. First, banksters like the ones Mr. Bloomberg enabled with his trading software, caused the crash. Second, redlining ain't about poverty, it's about race. Third, redlining ended? I guess he doesn't talk to many real estate agents.

Around the table: tabulating an unusually high number of setbacks to civilization, sorry.

Supreme Court stays various injunctions against our Administration's transgender military ban -- meaning the ban is in place until all the legal challenges thereto can be resolved. Seems to me the conservative thing to do would be to leave the injunctions in place and let the lower courts work it out, but apparently that's insufficiently conservative to this Court's "conservative" majority. Dig, also, our Administration Solicitor General whining about how many federal courts are now issuing used-to-be-rare injunctions against "major policy initiatives." That couldn't be because so many of your "major policy initiatives" break our laws, could it? What a snowflake.

Apparently because absurdity just isn't absurd enough, Vice President Pence compares our President to Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that both men have "inspired us to change." I guess he means to equate the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Open Housing Act with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which remains our President's only significant legislative "achievement." The only way our President has "inspired us to change" is that he's inspired so many more good Americans to confront corrupt bigoted assholes like him a lot more forcefully, but I don't praise or thank corrupt bigoted assholes for that, nor do I argue for their continuance in office because some good happens to come of their assholery.

Lo and behold, Senate Majority Leader/Obviously Great and Wonderful Real American Co-President Mitch McConnell, mere days after saying he won't allow a Senate vote on any shutdown-ending bill that wasn't obviously the result of spirited negotiations between Democrats, Republicans, and our President, now plans to bring a shutdown bill that meets precisely none of those criteria to a vote this week. No use lamenting that he has no principles, because folks like Mob Boss Mitch think principles are for us "little people," not their "betters," like him.

Buried in this article buying the Republican fiction that they can't get our President's nominees through quickly enough despite the fact that Democrats literally can't filibuster them anymore is Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) whining about how "(i)t's very difficult for a president to advance his or her agenda if you don’t have the right people in place." I also despise the holds and withdrawals of unanimous consent that comprise Senate Democrats' last tools to stall our President's nominees, but Sen. Young appears completely unconcerned about the people's right to advance their agenda through their representatives in Congress, or about our President's constitutionally-mandated duty to do the people's will. I don't give one rat's hind quarter about a President's "agenda," and that's how our Founders wanted us to be.

Finally, why does our "liberal" media suppose our President has ever been any kind of "deal-maker," like this shutdown mess should be some kind of surprise? It's not just that every "great deal" he's ever made only allowed him to suck out a bankrupt corporation's wealth like the vampire he is -- a good deal benefits everyone, not just the guy who makes it, but our "liberal" media haven't attended that aspect of deal-making in some time, so obsessed are they with "who wins" and "who loses" like everything's a damn horserace.

Action: concerning war in Yemen, Social Security, and chemical plant regulations.

Word on the street is that Rep. Hoyer (D-MD) has decided he's not OK with the Saudi/UAE attack on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah after all; possibly he feels this way because he (like most House Democratic leaders) suspects he's about to become, to quote a phrase, a walnut in the batter of eternity, but I care less why people do the right thing than that they do the right thing. And I gotta say, with our Administration shedding allies right and left, it's a bit disconcerting that they've hung on like grim death to Saudi Arabia; why, it's like they're trying to do everything wrong. Anyway, Just Foreign Policy still provides a petition on Change.org which helps you tell your House Reps to vote on the war in Yemen before they recess for the month of August. I know, they've been pummeling Hodeidah for weeks now, but the time to do the right thing, and to stop doing evil, is always now.

Meanwhile, H.R. 6251/S. 3147, the Social Security Administration Fairness Act, would restore Social Security Administration funding and impose a moratorium on Administration office closures. Republicans know they can't just end Social Security, because voters would turn them out of office, so they try to inflict a death-by-a-thousand-cuts to Social Security, in this case by depriving seniors of the help they need to help navigate the system. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Administration Fairness Act. And speaking of death-by-a-thousand-cuts, our President has excluded Social Security Administrative Law judges from having to meet civil service requirements, which means he can eventually replace these judges with cronies who might decide to "deal" with the backlog of Social Security disability claims by dismissing them all. Hence Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to restore the independence of Social Security judges.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to stop trying to gut the Chemical Disaster Rule, then the Union of Concerned Scientists still helps you do that. The EPA just installed improvements to the Chemical Disaster Rule after the West, Texas chemical plant explosion that killed 15, injured over 160, and either damaged or destroyed 150 buildings. That was only five years ago! It was all over the news! It's like they think we have no memory of anything at all. Memory is, of course, one of the building blocks of civilization, so of course this renegade EPA wants to obliterate it, in the service of mammon. Would it be piling on to mention that a great many folks who live near chemical plants are low-income and communities of color? Don't say those people should just move, then, not unless you've miraculously come up with the solution to redlining.

Around the table: power, corruption, and lies, part 864.

Against the advice of EPA career staffers, most of whom he's going to throw under the bus before too long anyway, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt approves waiver exempting large swath of southeastern Wisconsin from smog rules -- and Gov. Scott Walker's favorite corporate crony, Foxconn, just so happens to sit there. But, ah, is Mr. Walker absolutely sure he wants to run on all that corporate welfare he handed out to Foxconn?

David Mislin at The Conversation explains how "Anti-war Protests 50 Years Ago Helped Mold the Modern Christian Right." Mainly, a lot of Protestants left the anti-war churches -- most of which had never protested a previous American war -- and joined the more fundamentalist ones. You do have to wonder, of course, what role racism also played, given all the tension over (among other things!) open housing laws in the mid-'60s.

Ho hum, ThinkProgress finds that Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), now running for Jeff Flake's Senate seat, has totally broken her pledge to vote against her party 20% of the time. I never would have made such a pledge in the first place ("that was four pro-party votes; I sure hope the next one's something uncontroversial!"), but she did attack her opponent's bipartisan bona fides back in 2014, so she made her bed. For the record, she's voted the President's way 97% of the time since January 2017. That's a campaign ad waiting to happen -- but Kyrsten Sinema would likely be the one running it, so forget about seeing it.

With the West Virginia Republican U.S. Senate primary less than a week away, an Evan Jenkins campaign ad doctors a photograph of Patrick Morrisey so that it looks (vaguely!) like he's shaking hands with Hillary Clinton, when in the actual photo he was shaking hands with the President. I expect this to backfire on Mr. Jenkins bigly, though not necessarily to Mr. Morrisey's benefit (Don Blankenship is also running, and oh boy would he get buried by the right campaign ad). In any case, the Jenkins flack who said the campaign was just "tak(ing) creative license while arranging images in order to help make a substantive point" is an evil bastard whose career in politics should be over, though of course it won't be.

Get a load of House Speaker Paul Ryan claiming that the end result of Democrats winning back Congress would be "subpoenas and gridlock." In reverse order: this clown couldn't repeal Obamacare even though Senate Democrats couldn't filibuster it, and even the Republicans' list of evil achievements is actually pretty small, basically comprising tax-cuts-for-the-rich and a few overturned Obama Administration rules. And as for subpoenas, that is to laugh: a Democrat politician's default setting is don't rock the boat. There won't be subpoenas until and unless the President's guilt is obvious to a deaf, dumb, and blind infant. Who was it who called Paul Ryan the stupid person's idea of a smart person?

Finally, while it's grotesquely easy to tabulate the multitudinous ways in which "400 years of slavery" isn't a "choice," as Kanye West suggested to TMZ a few nights ago, let's not let pass the putative genius saying he admires the President because he did "the impossible." So, by implication, Mr. West thinks it's less impossible for black folks to overcome redlining, police brutality, and environmental racism than it is for a white billionaire to become President. Success really does make people forget where they came from.

Around the table: the persistence of redlining, and other horrible truths.

If you're looking for some really depressing reading, Earth Justice provides this list of bills under consideration by Congress that would curb your right to get redress for grievances in our courts. The courts have been our most effective weapon against the injustice this Administration constantly perpetrates, so of course Congress wants to take that weapon from us! Now, many of the bills that got passed by the House stand a good chance of dying before a Democrat filibuster, but that's no reason to get complacent. When I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Reveal's analysis of over 30 million home mortgage records finds that -- surprise, surprise! -- folks of color still get turned down for conventional mortgages at a considerably higher rate than whites, even though discrimination is, you know, against the law. Banksters say it's not what it looks like -- that they deny mortgages based, to a large degree, on credit scores. But they also refuse to release the credit scores, saying, at various times, that it'd violate privacy rights (hey, no one's demanding names!), would be too expensive (waaaaah!), and wouldn't actually tell us anything (then what are you afraid of?). Someone should tell them that three bad arguments don't add up to one good one.

Ho hum, Dear Leader says his destroy-all-regulations-and-cut-all-taxes-for-rich-people policies have brought electricity prices down, when -- hard to believe, Harry! -- electricity prices have actually gone up over the last year. They've gone up 3 percent, which outstrips inflation by a little less than a percentage point, but again, this is the guy who not only thinks he can turn around a cruise liner on a dime, but tells everyone he's done it after utterly failing to do it. And, seriously, big corporate tax cuts lowering energy prices? That is to laugh. Big corporate tax cuts gild the plumbing in a CEO's 19th vacation home, and nothing else.

Now we know why EPA Administrator Scott "Cone of Silence" Pruitt has to fly in a special first-class safe space: because one passenger told him he was "fucking up the environment." All together now: waaaaaaah! You know, when someone says something nasty to me -- and people say much nastier things to me than that! -- I don't demand a "safe space" from them at taxpayer expense; I give these morons exactly the amount of what-for I think they require, and then I move on. That's what good people do. It's not what our current Administration's officials do, which not only makes them snowflakes, it makes them bad people. Don't get your shorts in a bunch about life's many shades of gray when I say that. These people are bad. No navel-gazing is possible about this matter.

The story of the Florida shooter being vaguely associated with the Nazi wannabes at the Republic of Florida turns out to be a hoax -- perpetrated by right-wing trolls, of course. How the Republic of Florida leader who had identified Mr. Cruz as an associate got similarly "pranked" I can't tell -- either he's a bad leader or he was in on the joke to begin with, and neither of these possibilities flatter him. And anyway, the Republic of Florida got more publicity than it was going to get, and now it gets to play the victim card, by virtue of being unfairly associated with an evil school shooter (by the Anti-Defamation League, no less!). Sad that right-wing "pranksters" never seem to suffer for their sins, though.

Finally, the President tweets that the FBI missed "the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter" because they were too obsessed with the Russia investigation -- and gets an earful from students who survived that shooting. Sadly, Reuters does not report on the students who took the President to task specifically for making their tragedy all about him, as he seems to love to do. Maybe he'll block these kids, like he blocks anyone else who gets the better of him in an argument! I must say I've just about had it up to here with this disgusting piece of filth who somehow got elected President.

Around the table: what "free markets" really mean, and other important lessons.

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gays from discrimination at the workplace. The word "gay" doesn't appear in the Civil Rights Act, but the Court ruled, essentially, that discriminating against gay workers isn't appreciably different from discriminating against workers because of their sex, which latter item is in the Civil Rights Act. An 11th Circuit panel reached the opposite conclusion last month, but don't bet that even a Neil Gorsuch-infused Supreme Court would strike down such a ruling, at least as long as Anthony Kennedy is still around.

One great economist, Paul Craig Roberts, briefly describes the work of another great economist, Michael Hudson. You'll learn how classical economists use the term "rent" (i.e., "an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the receipient of the income stream," not necessarily what you pay your landlord). Also, "(c)lassical economists, such as Adam Smith, understood a free market to be one in which taxation freed the economy from untaxed economic rents. In neoliberal economics, Hudson explains, 'free market' means freedom for rent extraction free of government taxation and regulation. This is a huge difference." And if you were to suddenly see rents everywhere in this economy, you wouldn't be alone.

Third-party private tax collectors will begin operating soon, and given all the The Consumerist tells you what you need to know. Long story short: the IRS won't outsource just any old tax collection effort, you'll still get written notices from the IRS and the private collector before you get any phone calls, the private collector still can't call you just any old time, you can opt out of working with the private collector, and private collectors will by law direct you to pay the IRS, not them. I'd still prefer the IRS just did all the work they're mandated to do, though of course they can't mainly because Republicans have been starving their budget for years.

From the "Racism is Not Dead" department: a ProPublica analysis of four states finds car insurance corporations charging higher premiums to folks in minority neighborhoods, though these folks don't actually cost car insurers more! This "may amount to a subtler form of redlining," they say, which is quite an understated way of putting it. You'll also find that the article includes many criticisms of its methods -- and refutes just about all of them. (That doesn't stop the trolls in the comment section, because what reason ever stopped a troll?)

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect thinks "Republicans have made a key miscalculation in their decades-long strategy of attacking social programs," since their white working-class supporters need these programs more and more now. I'm sure the poll figures cited are quite accurate, but I remember saying a long time ago that folks would be more sanguine toward food stamps as they knew more people using them (or had to use them themselves) and I'm just not seeing it. All that seems to happen is that the 25% of this country that's bat-guano crazy (a sector which, sadly, overlaps pretty well with "downwardly-mobile whites") just gets crazier.

Finally, Republicans get rid of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, clearing the way for the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch to the high court. And Sen. McConnell (E-KY) had this to say: "There cannot be two sets of standards: one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president." Of course, the Republican standard for "nominees of the Democratic President" is to completely fail to even hold hearings, which they did in 2016, and were planning to do if Mrs. Clinton won the Presidency, and surely would have done in 2009, too, if they'd had a Senate majority then. Good citizens of Kentucky, could you please turn out this clown in 2020? And Democrats: how about running candidates who might inspire people to vote for them?

Around the table: Standing Rock, millennial voters, affordable housing, defense spending waste, and the Governor's race in North Carolina.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' has delayed the easement permit that would enable the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, pending an environmental study, but Kelly Hayes at TruthOut reminds us that this fight is far from over. "(W)hile it's true that environmental impact statements can in fact take years to complete," she says, "no attention to detail -- either legal or environmental -- should be expected under a president-elect who has promised to govern in the style of an autocrat." But Republicans typically overestimate the public's impatience with environmental regulations, and so we have another opening.

Another day, another "liberal" media article blaming young folks for Donald Trump's win. Mr. Obama may have done better, but folks 18-29 went for Mrs. Clinton by a 19-point margin, whereas folks over 45 went for Mr. Trump by at least 7 points, and of course the "liberal" media won't blame seniors voting against their own interests. Frankly, though, in an election where the "winning" candidate only got 46% (his total seems to be going down all the time!) and lost the popular vote by 2.5 million votes, you could argue almost anything was the deciding factor -- maybe, even, that Bernie Sanders (or someone else at least as inspiring) wasn't the Democratic nominee.

Buried somewhat in this news item about Ben Carson's nomination as Housing and Urban Development Secretary is Mr. Carson's opposition to putting affordable housing in "wealthier neighborhoods." He's upset with that, and not redlining? Also, n.b. his general opposition to government programs for the poor: "(w)e the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent...it's not the government's job." Always they pretend our government is some alien thing that couldn't possibly derive its power and authority from us and couldn't possibly belong to us -- certainly it couldn't work on our behalf! Why would they want us to think that way, I wonder?

Department of Defense buries internal study finding at least $125 billion in "administrative waste," thinking, apparently, that Congress would use their findings to cut their overall budget. But it seems to me the Pentagon worried over nothing! Democrats are so weak they won't do anything that could be seen as being "weak on defense," and Republicans are no doubt already drafting their statements that the Pentagon understands the problem and should be allowed to fix it on their own. (Oh, and don't wait for Sen. McCain to do something about it. He'll condemn it, and that'll be far from worthless, but he won't do anything else.)

Finally, and I do mean finally, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory concedes his race to Roy Cooper, and Tom Jensen at PPP reminds us that sustained and organized liberal opposition to Mr. McCrory's reactionary policies may have done the most to finally bring him down. Mr. Jensen cites the state's Moral Monday movement in particular for keeping these issues out front, and while their work is obviously very important, I wish it had more effect down-ballot, as Republicans still enjoy huge majorites in the state legislature. I doubt 2018 will present very much opportunity to change that in North Carolina -- but I'd be pleased to have Moral Monday prove me wrong.

Around the table: the power of structural racism, and other ominous tales.

Terrence Heath at the OurFuture blog explores the influence of "structural racism" in the Freddie Gray murder. Folks who think structural racism doesn't exist, well, first off, have never talked to a real estate agent, and second off, don't know their history -- not just the part where a modern-day police sergeant tells a reluctant subordinate to "make up" a reason to stop a few black men, but the part where our government, all the way back in 1937, literally redlined which neighborhoods would get federal subsidies and which wouldn't, and guess which ones didn't. (Spoiler alert: those would be the neighborhoods with residents like Cab Calloway, Thurgood Marshall, and Billie Holliday.)

Weren't we worrying, not too long ago, that Hillary Clinton's choice of transition team head would be telling-and-not-in-a-good-way? Well, now we're here, with the news that former Senator and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will head the Clinton transition team. Ken Salazar is not exactly Bernie Sanders, as you know -- he was pretty good at keeping the uranium miners out of the Grand Canyon, but otherwise he's a pro-fracking, pro-Keystone "free" trader, and he'll likely steer a Clinton Administration (if there is one, of course!) toward folks like himself. Now, that doesn't mean we just throw our hands up and go home -- it means we understand the obstacles we must hurdle. This is one of them. And our duty is unchanged.

The incomparable Jim Naureckas at FAIR catches the New York Times extolling "American power" in training Honduran cops to help reduce violence -- without mentioning that you have all this violence in Honduras in the first place because a right-wing regime overthrew a democratically-elected (but inconveniently liberal) President back in 2009 while our State Department got all Hamlet about the precise definition of "coup." When the Honduran government is the biggest murderer in Honduras, it's hard not to achieve a murder reduction at some point -- "ah, listen, fellas, could you maybe stack the bodies in the soccer field two-deep this month instead of three-deep? Bad press, you know? K thanks bye" -- and I can't help but think that the Times has come out with this article to answer the agitation by good Americans against our government's continued funding of Honduran police.

Uh oh: former Indiana Senator/current Senate candidate Evan Bayh now faces questions about his residency in Indiana, after CNN reports that he's usually used his Washington, D.C. address to buy homes, donate to candidates, and get fishing licenses. Residency issues felled Richard Lugar in 2012 after 36 years in the Senate, and though Mr. Lugar's issues were more pronounced, Mr. Lugar was also more popular -- but then Mr. Bayh has been sitting on over $10 million in campaign funds for six years. I still wish an actual populist, rather than a fake "moderate," would prove that a liberal populist is exactly the fellow who can win in a red state like Indiana. You know, like Byron Dorgan did in North Dakota for three terms.

Finally, you might have heard that Michael Moore told Bill Maher a few weeks back that he thought Donald Trump would win the Presidency, but after the last few, ah, difficult weeks Mr. Moore now believes Mr. Trump doesn't really want to be President and may now be actively sabotaging his campaign. He says it was all a negotiating ploy to extract more money from NBC, home of The Apprentice, and sadly that's far from implausible. He even says Mr. Trump would rather drop out than be a "loser," but that ship has pretty much sailed. Of course I still fear that Mr. Trump will win, because candidates who can present themselves as "outsiders" will always have an advantage over candidates who can't.

Around the table: will evangelicals flock to Trump? And other burning questions.

More than 60 years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a Governmental Accountability Office report finds the nation's schools increasingly segregated by race and income. The number of segregated schools has more than doubled over the last decade and a half, meaning these students have less access to Advanced Placement classes, less access to college, less access to opportunities for a better life, really. But I wish the article had explained why this segregation is happening (cough redlining cough) rather than just let the Dept. of Education yammer on about grant programs and a "new urgency" to fix the problem.

Surprise, surprise, the "liberal" media point to one New Jersey hedge fund manager moving to Florida as an example of how high income tax rates "force" millionaires to leave certain states for certain other states. Say it with me: one anecdote does not create a broad trend!New Jersey is still home to an admirably progressive income tax code despite Gov. Christie's best efforts, and most folks who move out (ahem!) actually wind up paying higher state income taxes wherever they go, but doing research and finding out the facts is hard work, and the "liberal" media hates hard work more than any imaginary welfare queen. The punchline: this hedge fund manager has apparently moved to Florida because his mother and sister live there.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), whose son is transgendered, cuts an ad in Spanish decrying the mistreatment of transgendered folks via "bathroom bills." Frankly, as a Republican Latina, she has a terrific opportunity to reach a lot of people who might otherwise settle for the bathroom jokes you've likely seen on Facebook, so good for her for taking it. And don't waste your time telling me that she only opposes mistreatment of transgendered folks because her son is one, as if we should only learn things by conducting thought experiments.

Joshua Holland, writing at The Nation, explains "What Everyone Gets Wrong About Independent Voters." Long story short, from the subtitle: "Most independents are just partisans who are turned off by partisanship," and the swing voter is a dying breed, though if it's "around 5 percent of the electorate," per the penultimate paragraph, then it's still enough to swing a close election, which is the kind of election we're going to have for the foreseeable future. Of course, the way to get someone to vote against their interests is to appeal to their independence -- Americans won't do evil unless they think they have to, and even then it still has to feel like their idea.

From the "Shoulda Seen This Coming" file: confronted with the reality that video evidence is easy to come by these days, South Carolina police agencies are now suppressing it, when they can, apparently to protect their officers. This is much easier to do with a body camera or a dashboard camera than with a citizen shooting footage on a cellphone -- but even the latter generally has to be publicly released before police departments will act. And no, the alleged "War on Cops" is not an excuse -- if you really value law enforcement, and public service, you'd punish officers who do wrong. (As an aside, this is a tremendous piece of reporting -- Radley Balko has really outdone himself, and that's saying a lot.)

Finally, Bill Berkowitz, writing at TruthOut, wonders if Christian evangelical voters will "walk down the aisle" with presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. And concludes that they likely will, rather than vote for Hillary Clinton -- as one source puts it, "(i)t may not be a warm embrace, but a side hug will do." And n.b. what I said in the fourth paragraph above: evangelicals, like everyone else, will have to feel like they have no other choice than to vote for Mr. Trump, and it has to feel like their idea (which I think Ralph Reed reveals in the fourth-to-last paragraph, with all that malarkey about "forgiveness" and "mercy").

Around the table: the "Citizen Legislator" strikes again! And other follies.

The incomparable Bruce Schneier tells us why Apple should continue to resist FBI efforts to force them to build backdoors into iPhone software. Long story short: the FBI's solution to its problems breaking into one phone is to make every phone vulnerable not just to government spying, but to hackers. And, in time, not just every phone, either, but everything that uses computer software, meaning it'll be easier for hackers (and governments!) to, for example, make your car brakes fail while you're driving it.

Ho hum, arguably the most reactionary state government in America finds that drug-testing welfare recipients doesn't save any money. At least one North Carolina functionary says that drug-testing welfare recipients helps get them treatment -- although, of course, if you're not finding very many drug addicts, you're also not helping very many drug addicts. If he's that anxious about helping people, he might be better off drug-testing the legislature.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the man who gives the "Citizen Legislator" a bad name, backtracks on his vow to reject any Supreme Court nominee President Obama offers. Naturally, he also suggests it's your fault that you thought he said something that, well, he actually did say. Some observers are chalking this up to stupidity or ineptitude, but you have to consider the possibility that Sen. Johnson actually thinks it doesn't matter what he said two days ago, because no one remembers that long. I wonder where he got that impression (cough from the "liberal" media cough).

Perhaps even worse, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) comes out and says the Senate shouldn't vote on a Supreme Court nominee because it would change the ideological makeup of the Court. He even suggests that having a vote would "mislead the American people" into thinking that the nomination is about qualifications or something! And, like the others, Mr. Toomey doesn't explain how picking up the phone and calling your Senator and telling them what to do is somehow a less "direct say" for the American people than voting for a single candidate on a single Election Day for any number of reasons.

Bryce Covert, writing at The Nation, instructs us that "Race Best Predicts Whether You Live Near Pollution." Which is not surprising if you know that government, banks, and realtors all conspire to segregate neighborhoods, or even if you've ever just heard a real estate agent call the absence of blacks in a neighborhood a "good thing."

Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz says he'll get rid of "gluten-free" meals for soldiers when he's President, because he'll have none of that political correctness in his military dadgummit. It clearly hasn't occurred to Ted Cruz that he is easily the most politically correct person in any room he walks into -- that all his swordfighting over how he's more "conservative" than the next person is far more pernicious a species of political correctness than being scolded for calling women "girls."

Action: lead poisoning remediation, and net neutrality.

In the wake of the massive lead poisoning crisis in Flint, MI, where twice as many kids now have dangerous amounts of lead in their blood, Color of Change helps you tell our government to restore full funding for the Center for Disease Control's Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Program. Our Congress has, naturally, cut such funding over the last three years; in 2012, Congress allocated $29 million to the program, but in the most recent omnibus bill allocated only $17 million, which was a $1.5 million increase over the previous fiscal year's number, but still not enough. While I'd hate to think it would take a disaster on the scale of Michigan's mismanagement of the Flint situation to get our Congress to act, I'm certainly not above using guilt and shame when appropriate. And no it is not "politically correct" to note that these crises seem to happen an awful lot in predominantly Black neighborhoods, neighborhoods redlined by active conspiracy among politicians, bankers, and real estate corporations. Just like in a lot of bad action films, Black folks too often get it first.

Meanwhile, the FCC's net neutrality rules may have survived the appropriations process in Congress, but the big telecom corporations are still trying to, ah, be creative in subverting the rules. T-Mobile, for example, now offers a "Binge On" service which lets you stream content from a select few big content providers like Hulu or Netflix without counting it against your data cap. Trouble is, if you want to stream content from, say, Youtube, you'll find not only that it counts against your data cap, but that the Youtube content gets to you a bit slower than the Hulu or Netflix content. And that's paid prioritization, the very thing net neutrality rules outlaw -- a corporation can't make it harder for you to access content if that content doesn't come from one of their "partners." You should get to go where you want to on the internet without worrying if it's going to cost you more or suddenly work more slowly. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to stop T-Mobile's pro-corporate, anti-freedom "Binge On" plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: from the Trump tax plan to the actual will of small business leaders.

Don't be swayed by soft "liberal" media coverage: Donald Trump's tax plan is a big fat turd that mainly helps the super-wealthy. Also, don't be swayed by the promise to close hedge fund tax loopholes, or by vague promises to close other corporate tax loopholes, and certainly don't be swayed by the promise of no taxes for folks who make less than $25,000 (which is, thanks to the EITC and the CTC, already happening!) -- note well that Mr. Trump would slash the top rate from 39.6% to 25%, would slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%, would repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Estate Tax, and would allow corporations to repatriate offshore profits at 10%, which will only encourage more offshore tax sheltering.

Rick Cohen at Nonprofit Quarterly finds redlining still alive and well in America. Key quotation: "it is kind of remarkable how much of the public has slowly bought into the notion that the problems of, for example, mortgage foreclosures have been largely due to borrowers making silly or stupid decisions about how much debt they could carry and not about banks selling more expensive loan products in minority neighborhoods and lenders engaging in often nefarious, even fraudulent practices." Yes, we are too quick to criticize the folks who've been victimized by evil, and very slow to criticize the folks who do the evil.

NASA scientists declare that Mars must contain liquid water, after finding water molecules in the salt deposits on Martian mountainsides. No one has observed water actually flowing on Mars yet -- the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observes the surface once a day, at the hottest point of the day, which is what I'd do if I wanted to be sure Mars had water -- but more vigorous observation may yet find it.

Ho hum, Jeb Bush releases his energy plan. So, is there anything good about it? Well, let's see: it would gut federal regulations on coal and fracking, punt a lot of responsibility and accountability to the states, allow us to export oil and gas which won't lower energy prices but which will make oil and gas CEOs wealthier, and would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, so no, no, no, and no. Oh, but it would also impose a strong 40%-by-2040 renewable energy standard, because we've got to find new ways to create energy! I kid, of course -- Jeb Bush doesn't care about renewable energy, because renewable energy CEOs aren't his people.

Finally, Good Jobs First points us to a study from the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation, suggesting that most small business leaders think state laws and programs benefit large corporations more than small businesses. Which you already knew, but, as always, it's nice to have some data behind it. And anyone who complains that the survey includes responses from only 41 business leaders had better complain just as loudly when pro-big corporate articles include responses from single business leaders. Spoiler alert: they won't.

Around the table: Shell abandons Arctic oil drilling, and other stories.

This is a surprise: Shell announces it will abandon plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean. The Times credits cheap oil and the resulting falling profits for industry's unwillingness to embark on big projects like drilling in the Arctic; Obama fans no doubt figure that he let Shell move forward on its existing drilling leases knowing they'd abandon them, but that's a hell of a thing to count on, and I certainly wouldn't discount all the bad PR generated by drilling opponents (bad PR helped along by Shell's previous misadventures in the Arctic).

The Justice Department orders Hudson City Savings Bank (which serves the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas) to pay over $30 million to stop "structuring its business so as to avoid majority-Black-and-Hispanic neighborhoods." That "structure" includes not putting branches in such neighborhoods, working with brokers there, or making customers close on houses all the way up in Fairfield, CT. The Rand Paul Freedom Brigade would tell us that you should be able to sell to whatever customers you like. But the rest of us would ask why that should result in segregation, and assert that the freedom of black folks to live wherever they like is more important. Redlining is real, folks, and any program that would end racism must destroy redlining.

John Boehner, now on his farewell tour, warns against the "false prophets" who "whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know...are never going to happen," a criticism apparently directed at his far-right flank. Anyone else think it would be rich for the man who owes his entire Speakership to his far-right flank to "warn" anyone about them? Seriously, this guy would still be bumbling along as Minority Leader if Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, et al hadn't "whipped people into a frenzy" in 2009 and 2010.

Ho hum, Jeb Bush thinks Pope Francis I should clam up about climate change, because he's "not a scientist." We could debate whether the Pope's several years working in a food lab before seminary school, or his secondary school diploma in chemistry, make him a "scientist" per se, but, ah, what's Jeb Bush's scientific expertise, exactly? Jeb Bush's scientific expertise derives from the same source as the rest of his "expertise" -- whatever his big corporate donors tell him. Having to keep big campaign donations coming really makes you much less free.

Finally, The Nation profiles John Fetterman, the Mayor of Braddock, PA who is also running for the 2016 Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. You know the road to hell is paved with the skulls of folks who say "I'm not focus-grouped, I'm not poll-tested" and don't deliver on that promise -- and you're also witnessing a Presidential candidate who perhaps isn't as focus-grouped or poll-tested as he should be! -- but Mr. Fetterman seems to know how to talk to people who don't start out agreeing with him, and that's a good thing. It might even help get him past the Establishment figure the Establishment hates (Joe Sestak) and the Establishment figure no one cares about (Katie McGinty) in the primary.

Around the table: working folks struggle, while the "liberal" media wants to send us back to war.

How soon we forget: USA Today finds Americans more inclined to "flex muscle" in world affairs. A recent Pew poll found that 31% of Americans think we're doing "too little" about various world conflagrations, up from 17% just nine months ago, but that finding doesn't endorse the minority getting all the say about everything. And statements like "(i)f we pull back, someone worse takes over" aren't a vigorous endorsement of bombing whomever for the greater glory of President Walker's corporate cronies -- which is surely where our "liberal" media elites hope to guide us, just as they did during Tha Bush Mobb's years.

Paul Krugman discusses some not-well-reported health care spending findings, including that health care spending growth has slowed noticeably and that Medicare will be spending $1,000 less per recipient in 2014 than the CBO predicted it would back in 2010. But Drew Altman at the Kaiser Foundation points out that folks may be thinking health care costs are going up because they're paying more out of pocket, via larger deductibles -- which, well, seems like another problem a Medicare-for-all program might have forestalled.

Joelle Gamble at the Roosevelt Institute argues that making the tax code more progressive won't solve all the problems people of color face when they try to advance in the economy. She reminds us that during the 1950s, tax rates were high and the social safety net more effective and people of color didn't benefit very much from it, but governments openly promoted or tolerated "socially racist institutions" like segregation and Jim Crow laws back then -- in the same manner they now covertly tolerate socially racist institutions like redlining -- so I suspect progressive tax policy would do more for people of color now than they did then. Of course redlining will require additional work, though I'd prefer to cap the mortgage interest deduction than eliminate it, and I'd also like states and localities to assess property taxes more by square footage than by location.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead notes the introduction of the Modern Slavery Bill in the British Parliament to note how much slavery occurs in supply chains all around the world. 11% of British business leaders think there's some slavery in their supply chains, while, perhaps coincidentally, 11% of those same leaders say they've actually looked at their supply chain very closely. More trenchant is this quotation from a Telegraph article: "lengthy business supply chains are corruptible and can hide a multitude of crimes." Well, gosh, it's almost like that's the idea! Anyway, the more of our own stuff we make, the shorter (and less evil) the supply chain will be.

Over 160 protestors (including a dozen sit-in protestors) decried Apple's use of a private, non-unionized firm for its security workers last week at the Apple store in San Francisco. Just about the only non-unionized security firm around, too, lest you're thinking of cutting Apple some slack. As one report said, “(i)f tech companies are serious about building a pipeline from K-12 schools for a more diverse tech workforce, it starts with paying their parents a livable wage” -- particularly in San Francisco, which is becoming as expensive as New York or London these days.

Finally, Josh Israel at Think Progress reminds us that Joan Rivers, who died on Thursday after complications from surgery, was not just a gay icon but a long-time supporter of gay rights. I have to admit I'd forgotten that, just as I'd never known she'd played one half of a gay couple (opposite Barbra Streisand, no less) in Greenwich Village in the '60s or that she was an ordained minister officiating at least two gay weddings in the state of New York (which must have been a hoot) -- or that she used that awful reality show to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a New York charity that delivers meals to very ill home-bound folks (including AIDS patients). Good work, Ms. Rivers.