Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning robocalls, monopolies, and taxes.

Long story short: tell our FCC to crack down on AI robocalls, tell the Biden Administration to keep Lina Khan exactly where she is, and tell your Governor to opt in to our IRS’s free Direct File program. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Consumer Reports helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to crack down on AI robocalls. But wait, you say, haven't they cracked down on robocalls generally? AI robocalls give their makers the illusion that "nobody" made them (even though someone did most certainly make the AI program that makes the calls), so they're not subject to previous robocall regulations! That argument might convince a fourth-grader or a right-wing judge, but not civilized adults like us, so we must act.

Demand Progress helps you tell the Biden Administration to stand behind FTC Chair Lina Khan. A month ago, a major Kamala Harris donor said, out loud, after donating millions of dollars to her campaign, that she had to fire Ms. Khan if she won the election. I'd have thought you'd make that threat before donating the money! But Ms. Khan has done a great job standing between monopolists and total control of our economy, and no matter how many times they say that like it's a bad thing, it's a good thing.

Finally, the Coaliton on Human Needs helps you tell your Governor to opt in to our IRS's Direct File program. Because working families deserve to file their taxes for free, instead of pay some middleman hundreds of dollars to do it! But these tax-filing corporations still have enough power that they've made our government put obstacles in front of free tax-filing, like making state Governors opt in on their citizens' behalf. And some of them don't want to do it! Which is why we get in their grills about it.

Around the table: now with one-third good news!

Good news, everyone: our FCC has ruled that AI-generated robocalls are illegal, using authority granted by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits (among other evils) using artificial voices in solicitations. An AI-generated voice surely is artificial no matter how much it sounds like your mother, or Joe Biden. But every silver lining has a dark cloud: our FCC has assessed over $200 million in TCPA-related fines since 2015, but as of 2019 (when the Wall Street Journal looked into the matter) had collected less than $7,000 of that amount.

Also good news: our Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (or CMS) has told Medicare Advantage insurers they can’t use AI or algorithms to deny coverage to seniors. You’ll read the article and you’ll understand exactly how bad this problem is, but here’s another problem: that Medicare Advantage exists at all! It’s part of right-wingers’ plans to privatize everything, when you’re much better off dealing with your government than you are dealing with a private health insurance corporation that makes money mainly by denying coverage.

Our Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) now estimates that expanded IRS funding will bring in even more tax revenue; they previously predicted our IRS would bring in another $18 billion annually, but now they say the number could be as high as $81 billion, if Congress doesn’t slash their funding (even more) before then. Both numbers would improve matters in America, but please, right-wingers, keep making “defunding the police” your only aim. (Yes, “defunding the police” describes the Republican stance on IRS funding accurately. IRS agents are law enforcement, after all, and anyone who says they’re afraid of them but not regular cops is just lying to you.)

Actual climate scientist wins over $1 million in defamation suit against two right-wingers. The first compared him to Jerry Sandusky, “except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data” – I wonder how many times he delivered that line to his friends and family before he got a laugh – while the second merely called his research “fraudulent,” which I guess is why the second is on the hook for almost all of the money. It’s a good thing scientists can actually prove their research isn't fraudulent – although sooner or later a right-wing judge will just come out and say that facts don’t matter anymore.

FactCheck.org gamely tries to “unravel() misinformation” about the now dead-in-the-water immigration bill. You remember when Sen. Rick Scott (E-FL) misrepresented Medicare drug price negotiation as a benefit cut? Republican objections to the immigration bill are about that stupid. And they’ve made Sen. James Lankford (E-OK) look like a moderate, which he is most definitely not. On the plus side, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) finally said some mean things about Republicans on TV. Gosh, she might be running for re-election after all.

Finally, ex-Republican Stuart Stevens at the New Republic says Democrats should “Just Say” that “Biden Has Been a Great President, and while he is the best President of my lifetime, “great” is a bridge too far for me. I did notice him turning questions about his memory around in order to trumpet his achievements, and I’d like to see him do more of that. As I said long ago, dumping on Trump only takes you so far – and, sadly, I think this remains true even after he tried to overthrow our government. (As an aside, could it be that Joe Biden wanted the special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents to think he was a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”? Hey, pretending to be stupid always works for Republicans, so why not for him?)

Action: concerning monopolies, death panels, and robocalls.

Long story short: tell our DOJ and FTC to make corporations account for their aims when they propose mergers, tell our HHS Department to investigate death panel claims against HCA Healthcare, and tell our FCC to crack down on robocalls and robotexts (and tell our Senate to confirm a full slate of FCC Commissioners). Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.

Our Department of Justice (or DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) have proposed making big corporations account for their actions more precisely when they propose to buy another corporation. Naturally the big corporatists are whining about how much paperwork they already have to do, which may be enough to tell you that you should support the proposed changes. But as Matt Stoller explains further: big corporations don’t even have to answer questions like why they’re merging or who’s on their board of directors or who their competitors are or how much market share they’re proposing to gobble up, even though the answers to most of these questions would reveal that they’re trying eat their competitors alive and make themselves richer at civilization’s expense. We should at least make them commit such answers to paper; you can read the new proposal here, and you can leave a public comment about it here. Don’t believe the hype that these are “radical” changes, because only whiners would tell you that. Certainly don’t believe anyone who says “but we’ve always done things the way I’d prefer we keep doing them,” because anyone who says that commits the unpardonable sin of mistaking their life experiences for the entirety of human history. And, since corporate lawyers aren’t stupid, I’d say they’re committing that sin on purpose, which makes it twice as bad. Don’t let sin rule America, good peoples!

Care2 helps you tell our Department of Health and Human Services (or HHS) to investigate allegations that HCA Healthcare has used, guess what, an algorithm to push hospice care on patients who actually stand a decent chance of recovering. Because those patients won’t make them enough money, basically! Right-wingers, that’s what a “death panel” actually looks like! And it’s far, far more likely to come from some private corporation than from our government! Note well that Wall Street banksters love HCA stock, which makes HCA suspicious pretty much automatically, and also that HCA once had to pay a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding Medicaid and Medicare (among other federal health care programs). As if to prove our decadence as a civilization, HCA’s CEO back then is now Florida’s junior Senator, Rick Scott. Let's fight the real evil, gang!

Finally, U.S. PIRG helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) to crack down on illegal robocalls/robotexts. I’ve gotten no less than half a dozen of these irritants daily this past week, so I know they’re not doing enough, and so do you, I bet. Aren’t I on a damn do-not-call list? Why, yes, I am! But I guess these crooks just count on doing so much crime that law enforcement can’t catch them all. What a thing to bring to the Pearly Gates when you die! It’d help, of course if our Senate were to confirm a full slate of FCC Commissioners, which Free Press helps you do.

Action: concerning transparency, privatization, and robocalls.

Our Treasury Department plans to change campaign finance rules so that big political organizations can keep their big-money donors secret! Specifically, Treasury wants to make such campaign finance disclosure mandatory only if the IRS is auditing that particular group. What one has to do with the other I'll never know -- the whole point of disclosure is to shine sunlight on who's trying to buy our democracy, and no it's not about privacy rights, because money isn't speech -- folks who exercise their free speech rights need protection from our government more than folks who exercise an imagined "right" to either bribe elected officials or ensure more bribable people get elected. (My app isn't flagging the word "bribable," and further investigation reveals that it is, in fact, a real word. The more you know!) Anyway, Public Citizen helps you tell our Treasury Department not to change the rules to protect the identity of big money campaign donors. They don't need our government's protection -- we need our government's protection, from them.

Meanwhile, are you using an .org domain for your website? You know, like virtually every good-government website helping you express your will to your Congressfolk? Well, the Internet Society (or ISOC) plans to sell the Public Interest Registry (or PIR) -- which contains the names of all .org domains -- to Ethos Capital, a damn venture capital firm. It's bad enough that they want to privatize the part of the internet where people get together to cooperate on positive change, but to sell it to a damn investment firm, which we have every right to expect will charge usurious rates for .org domains until they all go out of business? I said it a long time ago and it's still true: Our Glorious Elites know they're evil, and they know we know they're evil, so they're going to try to take everything from us, including, apparently, .org domains. After all, banksters won't manage them in our interest -- they'll manage it in theirs. This is why we don't privatize everything! So Save .ORG helps you tell ISOC to abandon its plans to sell off the .org domain name database to vulture capitalists.

Finally, S. 151, the TRACED Act, would enact strong protections against robocalls and call-spoofing; the bill passed the Senate in May, but an improved version passed the House last week, so now it goes back to the Senate for approval -- and since both versions of the bill passed their respective houses nearly unanimously, we might be optimistic about its final passage. Still, duty is duty and complacency is anathema, so Consumer Reports helps you tell your Senators to help protect good Americans from scam artists by passing the TRACED Act. If you're like most Americans, you've lately stopped answering calls from phone numbers you don't recognize because they might be trying to trick you into giving up your Social Security number or a big wad of cash (or both!). The TRACED Act would force big telecom corporations to authenticate phone calls and block scam phone calls, and would also prevent big telecoms from imposing additional fees on good Americans for providing such services. These would be good works, so we should encourage them -- and not just because Congress so rarely does good works.

Action: concerning robocalls, working families, Arctic drilling, and racist policing.

Both houses of Congress have passed anti-robocall bills, and now they must conference out a bill to send to our President, and you know how House/Senate conferences can be a good place to pull all the teeth from good legislation, so Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the strongest possible anti-robocall bill. The ideal bill would give good Americans free call-blocking tools and anti-spoofing technology, force all robocallers to get your permission before even calling you, and get tough with those who'd violate either of these tenets. Yes, there's a time to get tough and a time to go easy; usually the emptiest wagons of our law-and-order discourse get tough and easy at all the wrong times, but I can assure you that getting tough on robocallers would be getting it right. None of us want people we don't know calling us, particularly if they're just trying to separate us from our money.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3760/S. 2112, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act, would fix a major injustice inflicted upon domestic workers: their near-total exclusion from the protection of federal labor laws. Domestic workers often can't get overtime pay, can't get workers' comp, and can't get justice when their employer harasses them; would you put up with that if it were you, or someone you loved? No use protesting that my boss treats me/my loved one fine, so I don't need the law, because laws are for everyone, and if something happened to you or your loved one, you might find our your boss is a fair-weather friend, and then you'll need the protection of the law. Would it be piling on to mention that most domestic workers are folks of color? No, it would not be piling on. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support working families by passing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act.

In other news, H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act, may come up for a vote in the House this week -- at which point I guess we'll be adding it to our weekly list of good House bills that Mob Boss Mitch won't allow the Senate to vote on, but it's still very much worth it to call your House Rep and tell them to support the bill, as the Alaska Wilderness League helps you do. Drilling anywhere in the Arctic is a dicey proposition, as it's much harder to clean up a spill in frigid waters than it is in more temperate waters and oil corporations don't even want to do that, right, BP? But drilling in the Arctic also interferes with a) a thriving salmon industry and b) a Native American population that deserves our protection from corporate greed. Sadly, we also must consider that this President can't be trusted to develop a region with any other aim in mind than to enrich his cronies. So let's stand against him and his venality yet again.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our FBI to stop targeting folks who protest fascism, cruel immigration policy, and racist policing, then Free Press still helps you do that. Right-wing politicians from our President on down have the gall to think these are the folks who threaten our nation, while all these white supremacist murderers swing their penises in our faces! Of course, these white supremacists generally support right-wing politicians from our President on down, but our FBI is supposed to be above all that, and if, historically, they haven't been, that's no reason to demand better of them, since, really, they work for us. And I'll brook no silliness about how they're our "first defense" against trouble and thus we should let them do what they want. Civilized people set boundaries, tell these "defenders" when they've gone too far, and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. That's not too much to ask of us.

Action: concerning Senate intransigence, robocalls, copyrights, and immigration.

It's Monday again, so let's call our Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act, and H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act. And this week we add to that list H.R. 2722, the Securing America's Federal Elections (or SAFE) Act, which would (among other good works) mandate paper ballots for federal elections. The House has passed all these bills, but Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell still refuses to hold a vote on any of them. Still, we have a voice, and we believe that secure elections, voting rights, civil rights for gay and transgender folk, paycheck fairness for women, higher wages for working families, and internet freedom for all Americans are all good things that our Senators should support, particularly if they want to remain Senators. You can find tools for finding your Senators' phone numbers in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone).

Meanwhile, both House and Senate have passed anti-robocall bills, but they didn't pass the same bill, so now House and Senate must conference out a bill that can go to our President, and you know how that can go -- for example, a lot of the worst parts in that 2017 tax "reform" bill somehow found their way into that bill during the House/Senate conference! -- so Consumer Reports helps you tell your Reps and Senators to agree upon the most vigorous anti-robocall bill possible. A conference bill should, for example, ensure that big telecom corporations give you free tools to end all those "spoofed" calls that pretend to be from your bank or our IRS or even your own damn number, and it should also crack down on international scam call rings. Remember: our Reps and Senators would be nothing without us, so they had better do our will here, not some big donor's will. I mean, nobody likes robocalls except scam artists and other people nobody wants to talk to on the phone. Surely Congress can hit a bank-shot layup?

In other news, H.R. 2426/S. 1273, the CASE Act, purports to streamline the process by which folks can redress copyright violations, but that ain't as good as it sounds -- by taking copyright-related claims out of our courts and creating a separate office within the U.S. Copyright Office to evaluate them, the CASE Act will open the floodgates for copyright trolls to slap copyrights on everything they can find so they can harvest settlements from the unsuspecting. If you think you won't be affected because you don't violate copyrights, ask yourself: have you ever shared a meme on Facebook or Twitter? If the answer is "yes," then it will affect you, once folks slap copyrights on everything in sight, knowing they'll get a quick hearing from the U.S. Copyright Office rather than letting the wheels of justice in our courts grind slow. Hence the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect us from copyright trolls by rejecting the SAFE Act.

Finally, we've been trying to get Greyhound to stop letting Border Patrol agents on their buses willy-nilly, but they don't care what you think, so the ACLU helps you tell Greyhound's owner, FirstGroup plc, to stop Greyhound from letting Border Patrol agents on their buses unless they have a warrant or are at an actual CBP checkpoint. Of course if CBP or ICE agents have a warrant, or the bus is passing through a CBP checkpoint, agents can get on board and search, but the CBP has been searching buses without warrants and declaring that pretty much anywhere is now a "checkpoint," and they've also taken plenty of folks of color off buses without having any real suspicion that they're undocumented immigrants. Again, Greyhound has demonstrated that it doesn't care about any of that, so we have to alert their owners to what they're doing. In a sane, decent, and moral society I wouldn't ever have to say this, but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society I often have to, so I will: law and order don't exist just to give us whatever results we want.

Action: concerning pollution, robocalls, pensions, and antibiotic abuse.

Word on the street is our House would pass spending bills that would dramatically increase our EPA's overall budget, increase National Park Service funding, increase clean energy research and clean water infrastructure investment, and double research on dangerous (and ubiquitous) PFAS chemicals, among other things. Who would oppose these things? Only a Scrooge McSmallgovernment, that's who, and it's well past time we painted the objectively pro-pollution crowd into a corner. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your House Reps to support strong anti-pollution provisions in upcoming spending bills. And there won't be any "I decide what we vote on" from Mob Boss Mitch in the Senate, either, because the Senate has to pass funding bills, too, and shutting down our government isn't actually very popular, even if punishing those responsible for shutdown dramas has proven difficult.

Meanwhile, our Senate has passed a bill that would help good Americans stop robocalls from coming to their houses and cellphones! S. 151, the TRACED Act, would (among other things) force big telecom corporations to use call authentication technologies and mandate the FCC to write rules allowing customers to challenge calls' authenticity. That's a hell of a lot better than what the FCC would do, which is suggest to corporations that they should authenticate calls voluntarily. As if corporations ever do the right thing without being dragged kicking and screaming into it! Now it's our House's turn to consider the bill, so Consumer Reports helps you demand that our House pass the most vigorous anti-robocall reforms possible. I mean, robocalls are so unpopular that our Senate took the initiative and actually churned out a decent bill, so there's no reason our House can't do even better.

In other news, H.R. 1994, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (or SECURE) Act of 2019, almost unanimously passed the House last week -- but that doesn't mean it's a giant ball of happy! The SECURE Act would (among its provisions) protect corporations from being sued if they select certain annuities for their 401(k) plans and then the annuities go belly-up, taking all the money with them. Why Congress would give welfare handouts like this may puzzle you, until you learn that House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) has taken campaign contributions from at least nine insurance corporations or trade groups. So CREDO helps you tell your Senators to reject the SECURE Act's pro-retirement scam provisions and expand Social Security instead. See what we did there? We stopped talking about what they want us to talk about and started talking about what we want instead. We have to do that every day if we want to take America back from those who worship mammon.

Finally, fast food corporation McDonald's has lately committed to getting antibiotic abuse out of its beef supply chain, a far more important development than its previous commitment to getting it out of its chicken supply chain, and we have our pressure to thank for that development. Now Consumer Reports helps you tell another fast food corporation, Wendy's, to get the antibiotic abuse out of its beef. We use four out of every five antibiotics in feed animals, not sick people or sick animals, and we do it to fatten those animals up and help them survive the factory farm experience, neither of which is a particularly good reason to bring back the world where the next cut might kill you. (The Sierra Club also helps you tell our FDA to regulate antibiotic abuse on family farms more vigorously than they do now; we might do better with Wendy's than with our FDA, but duty is duty.)

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, the quality of mercy, and robocalls.

S. 309, the For the 99.8% Act, would lower the threshold at which estates would face the Estate Tax from $11 million to $3.5 million -- which is still high enough that it won't ensnare any family farms or small businesses -- and would create several new brackets so that larger estates face a higher tax rate. In other words, Republicans would repeal the Estate Tax entirely, while Sen. Sanders would raise it on the wealthiest estates -- gosh, it's like a Goofus and Gallant strip. And the Estate Tax is most emphatically not a "death" tax, or everyone would pay it; currently only 1,900 folks pay the Estate Tax annually, comprising less than one-tenth of one percent of all the folks who die in a given year -- meaning that the next time you're in a room with a thousand zombies in it, you might not be able to see the one zombie who paid the Estate Tax. Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fair taxation by passing the For the 99.8% Act.

Meanwhile, you know about "banning the box," in which employers stop asking (via that ubiquitous box on job applications) if potential employees have a criminal record, so that folks who've already paid their debt to society can more easily get jobs and make a contribution to society. But you may not know that some District Attorneys have pledged to expunge the criminal records of folks who've served time for things those DAs won't prosecute anymore, like marijuana possession charges. In the event your right-wing uncle protests that these DAs are essentially imposing unconstitutional ex post facto laws upon us, you can remind him that American jurisprudence only forbids ex post facto laws that make punishments for crimes worse than before. Certainly you'd be hard-pressed to imagine our Founders actually intending to outlaw mercy. Color of Change helps you tell America's DAs to automatically expunge criminal records for those good folks who deserve it.

Finally, the technology already exists to stop scammers from "spoofing" phone numbers so you think the call's actually coming from your bank, power company, or loved one, and our FCC has already said they actually think corporations should use this technology, but naturally our FCC has a certain attitude toward government's role in a "free" market, to the point where they want phone corporations to be "free" to voluntarily install this technology before the end of the year, which leaves criminals "free" to continue to try to steal your money in the meantime. How many times must I tell these pimps! Corporations don't do the right thing until you make them! They say "doing the right thing" just costs too much money, but that's not even true -- doing the right thing might cost the boss some money, but the boss probably already makes too much money. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to help protect consumers by forcing corporations to stop "spoofed" robocalls.

Action: internet freedom, email privacy, and robocallers.

Roots Action helps you tell your state government to contract only with internet service providing corporations that respect net neutrality. Net neutrality, as you know, is the principle that demands that ISPs treat all network traffic the same, and that's the same principle that allows you, and not some corporation, to determine where you want to go on the internet. It's also the same principle that the FCC repealed late last year, because for them, corporate "freedom" to bilk us and herd us into junk news ghettoes is more important than our actual freedom to associate freely on the internet. But the state of Montana has already declared it won't contract with corporations that don't respect net neutrality; if enough states follow suit, those corporations are more likely to throw up their hands and keep things more or less the way they are. The FCC will hate it, but they're walnuts in the batter of eternity, and we're not.

Meanwhile, here's a welcome development: the Email Privacy Act, once unanimously passed by the House only to fall to some truly disgusting Senatorial machinations, is now a part of the House's version of the defense authorization bill. Now, the Senate will pass its own version, which might or might not include it, or the two bodies might conference it out -- but that's where we come in, by using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to tell our Senators to include the Email Privacy Act as part of the defense authorization bill. Unlike the poison pills they usually try to attach to defense authorization bills, the Email Privacy Act actually relates to national security, since it would require our government to get a warrant whenever it wants to look at personal emails left on a corporate server. So give your Senators a call; they won't see it coming.

Finally, if you have a cellphone, you're almost certainly getting phone calls from numbers that look like real people but are actually robocallers trying to separate you from your money; I can't tell you how many of these phone numbers I've put through a reverse lookup at Whitepages.com only to find they're "suspected spam" and/or "flagged as scam or fraud." Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to enact the most vigorous possible regulations restricting the power of robocallers to disrupt our lives. Yeah, the FCC is in charge of that, and they don't give one rat's hind quarter about you or I; they only care about their corporate cronies. But said corporate cronies have no particular interest in protecting robocallers, since they're a) extremely unpopular and b) generally small-time crooks at best. And if robocallers induce folks to use their cellphones less frequently, corporations will care about that. So let's get cracking.

Around the table: Wall Street taxes, think tanks, robocalls, voter registration, and the Disappeared President.

Robert Reich instructs us as to "Why a Tax on Wall Street Trades is an Even Better Idea Than You Know." You probably know why it's a good idea (would raise a lot of revenue, reduce banksters' political power, restrict useless high-speed trading, et cetera) but you may not know that Wall Street's objections are also utter horsedoodle -- financial transaction taxes have not sent corporations away to other lands, or else England's financial sector would be a lot smaller than it is, and this tax (the Robin Hood tax? the Wall Street sales tax? Take your pick) also wouldn't "hurt small businesses" unless they're engaging in high-speed trading, which, news flash! They're not. Always the big corporations hide behind the small businesses when they're being told to do the right thing!

Adam Johnson at FAIR catches the central hypocrisy of the "liberal" media's sudden discovery that corporate money compromises a lot of think tanks: that the "liberal" media has been quoting these think tanks for years. And, in the New York Times's case, at least, it's much worse: the Times has been letting the Center for Strategic and International Studies write op-eds arguing for, you know, more war-making, more government spying, and generally more paranoia and hysteria, which I doubt will end now that the Times has reported extensively on CSIS's big corporate donors. Key insight: "the think tank industry...is often based on laundering influence through ostensibly neutral-sounding 'institutes' or 'centers'." "Laundering" is about the perfect way to describe it.

Chris Morran at The Consumerist tells you "What You Need to Know About New Rules Allowing Debt Collection Robocalls from Feds." The FCC's new rules (mandated by, you guessed it, a rider in the 2015 must-pass appropriations bill) allow our government to call us, on wireless lines, if we owe our government money. Thing is, with so many student loans federally-funded or backed, that could be a lot of people. And the rules allow your government to call you before you're even late, apparently because a student loan lobby told them it'd be good for you. At least you can tell them not to call you (though it you owe more than one debt -- if you owe to the IRS, for example -- you'll have to tell them once for every debt you owe).

Surprise, surprise, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoes automatic voter registration bill, citing booga-booga about "non-citizens" being automatically registered to vote. Of course, he was for it before he was against it -- or, possibly, before he realized the bill would kick in before his 2018 re-election effort. And dig the state House Rep who thinks citizens will work harder to educate themselves about candidates if they have to work harder to register to vote! But I bet he still wants to make everything easier for his corporate donors, without any similar concern about how hard they're working.

William Rivers Pitt reminds us what's missing from most mainstream accounts of the ongoing dissolution (if that's what it is!) of the Republican Party: the role of George W. Bush in that dissolution. Disappearing the man who made Trumpism possible is how the Republican "establishment" gets to pretend it's somehow fundamentally different from Mr. Trump. But it's also how the Democratic nominee -- who, you no doubt recall, refused to disavow her vote for the Iraq war almost five years after she cast it the wrong way -- evades her own complicity in the various messes we're in now.

Around the table: government spying, overtime pay, "religious liberty," student loan debt, robocalls, and "free" trade.

Sen. Wyden (D-OR) places hold on intelligence authorization bill because it allows the FBI to collect some email/browing/social media login information without a warrant. I approve of his aims, but not his methods -- I oppose Senate holds even when it helps me, because what good are values if they don't inconvenience you? -- and Sen. Wyden's hold suggests the bill would likely have passed without it. But if Sen. Wyden wants to filibuster until the cows come home, I'm totally down with that.

U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear a challenge to Obama Administration's extension of overtime pay to home health care workers. Their decision leaves intact a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision written by none other than Sri Srinivasan, briefly mooted by the Obama Administration for the Supreme Court opening created by Justice Scalia's death; he may yet make me rethink my general skepticism about appointing moderates to the Court.

Supreme Court also declines to weigh in on a challenge to Washington state law prohibiting pharmacists from refusing to dispense birth control medication because of "sincere religious beliefs" or however they're phrasing it today. The Court's three remaining far-rightists were no doubt thinking of their Hobby Lobby ruling; I suppose it is possible that they wouldn't let, say, a Walgreen's exercise "religious liberty" rights in this manner, but then that would trample on the rights of the good citizens of North Dakota, which only allows small, closely-held pharmacies to operate in their state, and whose citizens have just as much right to legal birth control as anyone else.

Hillary Clinton proposes a student debt fix that would let young folks put off paying back their student loans while they're starting up new businesses. Her plan would also allow the first employees of those new businesses to get the same debt holiday, which means it's not completely biased in favor of entrepreneurs and against the rest of us, but it doesn't actually address any of the real causes of ballooning student loan debt. And I'm not sure tech entrepreneurs really need more incentives to start up new projects. Ultimately, this sounds like a corporate welfare handout to me.

Consumerist readers relay excuses AT&T has been handing out so it can avoid blocking robocalls. Not surprisingly, they're all complete lies; "not economically feasible" (break off some of that CEO pay, Mr. Stevenson!) and "concerns over lawsuits about hindering a business’s right to engage in commerce" (here's how it works: customers ask you to block robocalls, you block the robocalls) may even merit a punch in the nose. That punch would be directed toward the CEO's nose, not the call center rep's -- though call center reps forced to lie this often really should find another job.

Finally, you may have heard that Donald Trump gave a speech excoriating "free" trade yesterday, but if you look over this bit of horse-race analysis from First Read, you'll see what Mr. Trump is trying to accomplish. He gets the reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce to criticize him, he gets to pummel Hillary Clinton for (potentially) stabbing you in the back just when you're likely thinking he might stab you in the back, and he gets inattentive Bernie Sanders supporters to give him a second look. He's a political animal, all right. Of course, so was George W. Bush, and you remember how that worked out.

Around the table: horrible Presidential candidate tricks (plus Gary Johnson enters the race).

Ho hum, Jeb Bush would "help poor people" by ending food stamps and TANF, and letting states apply for "Right to Rise" grants from our federal government to (all together now) give states more "flexibility" and promote "transformative ideas to eliminate poverty and increase opportunity." If you read that last part as "transformative ideas to enable corruption and increase graft," you're not alone. "We have spent trillions of dollars on the 'War on Poverty,' but there are now still more than 46 million Americans living in poverty," Mr. Bush says, ignoring the most recent three-plus decades when we've converted this economy from one that helps people move up into one that keeps people down, which conversion more aptly explains rampant poverty today than the food stamps and welfare no one can live high on the hog on.

White nationalist SuperPAC robocalls in Iowa on behalf of Donald Trump for the Republican Presidential nomination. Don't hold your breath waiting for Mr. Trump to condemn them ("they've got YUGE ENERGY!!!!"), but I suspect these robocalls will backfire, since a) no one likes any robocalls and b) even most racists don't want to identify as "white nationalists." Next time the American National SuperPAC tries this trick, though -- maybe on behalf of someone a bit more subtle than Mr. Trump, maybe not -- it might not backfire. Once people come out of the closet as racists, they've got nothing left to do but double down.

No, Gov. Christie, 30 percent of the Gitmo detainees released by President Obama have not "returned to terrorism." Government data suggests that 5 percent have, with another 5 percent that might have -- and that, on balance, some 18% released by both Messrs. Obama and Bush have "returned" to terrorist activities, per the same data. Of course, I'm putting all these words in quotation marks because a lot of detainees were never terrorists to begin with. And you still have to wonder about the competence of a government that can hold people for 10 years but can't charge them with anything.

Former New Mexico Governor (and former Republican) Gary Johnson announces he will run for the Libertarian nomination for President in 2016. He has a lot going for him -- he's very personable, he has significant Executive branch experience, and his diagnosis that "(t)here’s no place for someone who’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal in either party" will persuade a lot of folks. On the other hand, Mike Huckabee was very personable in 2008, and he's borderline unwatchable now. I hope Gary Johnson is made of stronger stuff.

Finally, Hillary Clinton releases an ad telling the world that Republicans are awful and she's the only Democratic Presidential candidate who can stop them. You know what we call that, right? A hostage crisis! We'd be more accurate to say only the people can stop those awful Republicans, and since voting is the beginning of one's citizenship duties, not the end, voting for a palatable Democrat in one Presidential election is hardly a panacea for what ails our nation. I can't help but wonder about the timing, too -- Bernie Sanders just laid into Wall Street banksters the other day.

Action: wildlife whistleblowers, cell phone robocalls, and clean water.

The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell four Executive branch departments (Interior, Commerce, Treasury, and Agriculture) to implement laws regarding rewards for wildlife crime whistleblowers. The Obama Administration treats whistleblowers like traitors, but they're not traitors -- they're patriots saving the taxpayer money, and if they make our government look bad in the process, then our government deserves to look bad. Seriously, we can't be so defensive about Democratic administrations that we forget the difference between right and wrong. Congress mandated that these four departments implement whistleblower rewards for public servants who provide information about poaching and wildlife trafficking crimes that lead to convictions -- in 1981. For those of you keeping score, that was 34 years ago, more than enough time to foul up your first marriage to your high school sweetheart or realize you're on the wrong career track. Why should we ever make public servants wait that long to enjoy full protection under the law?

Meanwhile, some Congresscritter or other managed to get a poison pill into the most recent debt limit/budget bill, which now allows corporations to robocall your cell phone. Shades of the omnibus spending bill from late 2003, another "must-pass" bill that incorporated loosened media consolidation rules and loosened overtime regulations therein, even though both initiatives were wildly unpopular, and had even been voted down by both Houses of Congress that year. At least S. 2235, the HANG UP Act, would re-ban robocalls to your cell phones -- if we make the House and Senate feel our wrath, of course. Do not be swayed by politicians who contend that debt collectors have a right to contact debtors, because they don't have a right to make harassing robocalls, they don't have a right to harass relatives or references, and they don't have a right to keep calling numbers that have been reassigned to non-debtors (which harasses them). So Consumers Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the HANG Up Act, and keep robocalls off our cell phones.

In other news, hydropower corporations have launched the "Unlock Hydro" campaign, with which they hope to get bills like H.R. 8 passed, bills that would reduce hydropower corporations' responsibility to take clean water and thriving wildlife into account when they build their dams, bills that would switch federal and state responsibilities wherever doing so would allow hydropower corporations to evade their responsibilities as stewards of civilization. "Unlock hydro," indeed -- as if clean water and healthy wildlife are "locks," waiting to be sliced open by the sledgehammer of industry! Clean water and healthy wildlife aren't locks -- worshipping mammon such that you ignore your responsibilities is a far worse "lock" than any clean water regulation could ever be. And by "evading responsibilities" I don't just mean building without seeing what already lives there -- I mean pushing the cost of cleaning up any messes these hydropower corporations make onto the taxpayer, which is what, class? A bailout, simple and plain. American Rivers helps you tell your Congressfolks to reject these pro-money, anti-responsibility, and anti-clean water bills like H.R. 8.

Around the table: R.I.P. *National Geographic*, and other stories.

The National Geographic Society essentially turns over its "media assets," including its flagship magazine, to 21st Century Fox. And the National Geographic Society's Chief Executive called the deal "bold"! Doesn't he know that "bold" is the word Our Glorious Elites use to mean "something unconscionably stupid that will befuddle the inattentive while making us even richer"? I'd rather not watch Rupert Murdoch turn National Geographic into a mountain of dung, which he'll do -- I mean, Fox helped give us the National Geographic cable channel, and is that worth your time? At least I've got their first 127 years on disc and on my bookshelf, so I can remember when they did great work.

Warren Buffett, everyone's favorite rich man, praises Bernie Sanders for the campaign he's running. But remember when Mr. Buffett said Elizabeth Warren was too "angry" and "violent" when she criticized Wall Street banksters? Now that he seems more sanguine about a male politician who stands to Ms. Warren's left and whose tone toward the banks is about the same as hers, I'm more inclined to think Mr. Buffett was being sexist back then.

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, a Manhattan College history professor reminds us that the "liberal" media calls his positions "left" when they're actually supported by a majority of Americans. If you remember how the "liberal" media called opposing the Iraq war a "far-left" position after it had become the majority position, then you know that's how they do it -- they take the things most people want and they call them "left," or "liberal," or "extreme." Or "un-American." If they can just convince you that the things you want are things those people people want, they can win. But don't let them win. They don't deserve to win.

PR hack runs campaign purporting to show small businesses affected adversely by minimum wage hikes -- but the Center for Media and Democracy finds that several of the small businesses depicted in the campaign actually favor minimum wage hikes, and are none too happy about being misrepresented. When America's small businesses finally get tired of being taken hostage by right-wingers ("don't raise taxes on rich people, or this small business gets it!), then we will truly have progress in America. In the meantime, I'll do my part to remind small businesses that they're tired of it.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the FCC's rule helping consumers block robocalls. They act like "consent" from a consumer is so hard to get (it's only hard when you're trying to trick people into giving it!), and that's not very can-do of them. Seriously, though is there any cause so unpopular that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce won't support it? Next, I guess they'll tell you that you should always let your neighbor's dog poop on your lawn, because TEH GUBMINT OVERREACHEZ!!!!!

Finally, this really did have to be said, and I'm glad James O'Malley at The Independent said it: Syrian refugees are not somehow "unworthy of our help" if they happen to possess smartphones. Mr. O'Malley makes at least a dozen good points (like, hey, they're not fleeing Syria because they're poor so much as because their government is shooting them). But do people who point out refugees with smartphones (or poor Americans with debit cards) really not understand how easy it is to get a smartphone with very little money down (particularly, as Mr. O'Malley, reminds us, an older model)? Or are they just jerks who need to prove how smart they are, or who like to hit people when they're down? This probably won't surprise you, but I think they're just jerks.

Action: "free" trade, robocalls, and domestic violence.

CREDO helps you tell your House Reps to oppose "free" trade "fast-tracking" because of the damage "free" trade deals could do to our environment. (The Union of Concerned Scientists provides a similarly-themed action alert.) Apparently the European Union has decided to put off banning over 30 pesticides linked to cancer and infertility, all because they don't want to run afoul of that other massive "free" trade treaty, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP). To think that the mere threat of a "free" trade agreement could prevent a continent-wide legislative body from protecting its good citizens from ingesting pesticides that could harm them! And that's not the only "free" trade news hook lately, as the WTO ruled that our country-of-origin laws violate both the TBT and GATT (which has given Congress an excuse to try to repeal those laws). What we don't always understand -- and given that Tha Bush Mobb acted like this wasn't the case in re the Geneva conventions, we have good reason to be confused -- is that when the Senate ratifies a treaty we negotiate with other nations, it becomes the law of the land. So let's tread carefully here.

Meanwhile, the FCC has lately ruled that the big telecom corporations can, in fact, voluntarily help consumers block robocalls, robotexts, and telemarketing calls, without running afoul of federal "call completion" rules, which (as you might imagine) mandate that big telecoms shouldn't let so many calls drop, especially in rural areas where they haven't built out very much. I wonder why this was even an issue -- if a consumer has the technology to block calls, how does a big telecom get blamed for not "completing" them? I suspect the big telecoms were throwing that out there just to muddy up the debate, since that's what they do best. Some left-leaning writers have suggested that the FCC rules would cripple market research and political polling -- both of which do benefit society generally and which are exempt from Do Not Call lists for that reason -- but if the consumer makes the decision to reject robocalls, I don't think such "crippling" will happen. So Consumers Union helps you tell big telecom corporation CEOs to provide free tools to consumers so we can block robocalls from reaching our phones.

Finally, a Louisiana domestic violence worker has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell Google to stop giving addresses for domestic violence shelters and putting them on their maps. Won't that prevent domestic violence victims from finding help, you ask? Not realistically, no -- domestic violence victims may not escape their situations for a long time, for reasons you can easily imagine, and generally not until they've made many contacts with with domestic violence workers. A domestic violence shelter is not the kind of thing you just go looking for -- unless, of course, you're a domestic violence abuser, in which case you're more than likely going to stalk your ex, an obsession made far easier by giving out information about domestic violence shelters, and that could be life-or-death for the victim. And why ask Google? Because domestic violence abusers may not think to use a different search engine (since, as Robert Reich pointed out the other day, Google is so big it's become a verb) -- and other search engines will follow Google's lead anyway.