Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: in which we continue to chronicle the right's decades-long implosion.

Claire Kelloway at The Intercept, in a thorough report that repays re-reading, calls Tom Vilsack's apparent return as Agriculture Secretary "Everything That's Wrong With the Democratic Party." Even his one good work at the Obama USDA proves this thesis: his improved school lunch nutrition standards got relentlessly (and stupidly!) attacked by Republicans while approximately zero Democrats rushed to their defense, even though "keep our children away from junk food and thus obesity and diabetes" seems to me good politics as well as good policy. And, you know, they say Mr. Vilsack "gets" rural areas, but he's actually the kind of big ag corporatist who's been helping Democrats lose rural areas over the years, as evidenced by his being zero help in winning his home state of Iowa for Mr. Biden. Turns out rural folks' priorities differ from corporate ones, just like everywhere else on Earth.

This is an interesting result: our Supreme Court leaves in place a 10th Circuit ruling striking down that Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship before voting. Our Court has blessed bad vote suppression schemes before, but won't go out of its way to bless this one? You'll recall that this was the case Kansas's then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach lost at the District Court level so badly that the judge actually ordered him to take continuing education classes so he could argue cases less stupidly, and no judge really wants to be the first to say hey, the village idiot had a point!

I'd heard that a White House official (the director of the White House's security office, as it turns out) got COVID so bad he needed to have half his right leg amputated, which is absolutely awful, but I did not know that a friend started a GoFundMe page to help him pay his medical bills! Which makes it even worse! The GoFundMe page has raised $30,000 so far, though I can't tell if that'll cover his bills or not. In any case, it appears that our soon-to-be-gone Administration reserves the ONLYZ TEH BESTESTZ!!!!! treatment for our soon-to-be-ex-President and his closest cronies. Is it time for Medicare-for-All yet?

Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times says what we're all thinking: that in refusing to (in Mitch McConnell's 2016 phrase) "accept the results," our soon-to-be-ex-President has "concoct(ed) an animating cause for his post-presidency: a grievance-fueled campaign against Biden and the Democrats he accuses of stealing the election -- as well as against any Republicans who didn’t bend the rules the way he wanted." Thus he still rules the party, and if you're thinking these BS grievances over an obvious electoral loss will really animate the next generation of rage-fueled Republicans, consider that a) rage is a hell of a drug, b) Congressional Republicans will obstruct Mr. Biden the way they did Mr. Obama, and c) Democrats will largely capitulate to them, and we have learned that when all these things happen (cough 1994 2002 2010 2014 cough), any rage-fueled asshole can win an election.

Speaking of which, Texas GOP Chair Allen West responds to the controversy over his "secession" remarks the only way you'd expect -- by calling his critics "ignorant" and playing the Greg Brady Exact Words game. Did you see the word "secession"? I don't see the word "secession"! So how does he expect "law-abiding states" to "form a Union" without seceding from the one we've already got? He has no answer but to (again) resort to projection, calling the four states named in Texas's absurd lawsuit the "real perpetrators of secession," which also means, I suppose, that defying the will of Dear Leader automatically makes you a "secessionist." Long story short: waaaaaaah! And let's never speak of him again.

Finally, in a completely unexpected development, our Attorney General is leaving his post, to "spend more time with his family," we're told. But our soon-to-be-ex-President has lately screamed and yelled a lot about Mr. Barr, who said his office couldn't find significant voter fraud, and who also didn't disclose an actual investigation into Joe Biden's son Hunter (this lack of disclosure conforming with Justice Department rules). This latter item means that, in at least one respect, William Barr was a better public servant than James Comey. Of course, as usual, we're talking about the difference between a mound of dung the flies have found and a mound of dung they haven't found yet.

Action: concerning bankster welfare, slave labor, and school lunch nutrition standards.

You've heard that the "economic stimulus" ideas our Administration is contemplating as a response to the coronavirus are mostly give-rich-people-more-money-they-haven't-earned? Well, banksters think that the coronavirus justifies letting them out of passing "stress tests" that would demonstrate their ability to weather another financial Armageddon. We can go ahead and call that corporate welfare. I guess your kids can use the coronavirus as an excuse to get their cookies before they eat their dinner, too! And burglars can use the coronavirus as an excuse to get off scot-free when they break into your house! More to the point, of course, is that banksters would use the coronavirus as an excuse to shirk their duty not to smear dung all over our economy again. And you know our Administration thinks duty isn't for big people, but only for little people like us. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell our Federal Reserve not to use the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to enable banksters. These people really act like diaper-loaded brats, but at least babies are more charming once you change them.

Meanwhile, turns out Apple ain't just providing China with technological help oppressing the Uyghur Muslim population there -- it's also using Uyghurs as slave labor in its supply chain! It's a double-whammy! I'm old enough to remember when the corporatists would scold you for protesting slave labor in supply chains by saying you like your cheap consumer goods? And now we have a corporation using slave labor in its supply chain to make consumer goods that aren't even cheap. You have to wonder if Our Glorious Elites planned to take our outrage hostage to cheap stuff, then replace the cheap stuff with expensive stuff. It is the logic of the drug dealer, after all. But we won't fix it by meditating on our own alleged hypocrisy, or by building our own cellphones, which requires expertise most folks don't have and can't acquire on the fly -- we'll fix it by continuing to wield the Big Stick of Bad PR, and continuing to demand that corporations do right by their employees. So MPower Change helps you tell Apple to stop using slave labor from oppressed Chinese folk in its supply chain.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our USDA to scuttle its own efforts to roll back school lunch nutrition standards, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. If I seem strident about this matter, it's mainly because I've seen so, so many stupid arguments about getting our children to eat less junk food, and more fruits and vegetables, in school. People say some variation of GUBMINTZ DON'TZ TELLZ TEH KIDZ WHAT TO DOZ!!!!, when, actually, we have legally charged our government with this very task for our children while they're in school. And you'd think more people would want more support from our government when they try to get their kids to eat a banana instead of a bag of chips! I also hear that "some kids throw their apples away," as if the behavior of "some kids" means we should do nothing for any kids, or that "some districts are having trouble meeting the standards," when most districts aren't having that trouble and, again, do we stop doing good works because of a few stragglers? And when our USDA decides that french fries can count as fruit, they've all but said they're losing the argument.

Action: concerning government spying, nutrition standards, and forced arbitration.

Ban Facial Recognition helps you tell universities across America to (naturally) ban the use of facial recognition technology on campus. Proponents of facial recognition like to tell you that it'll reduce crime, but there are a number of problems with that, and the fact that crime rates are falling faster than we're reducing our own fear of crime is only one of them. Another problem is that facial recognition, like your Tea Party uncle, can't hardly tell black folks apart. Another problem is that you did not consent to be spied upon when someone uses facial recognition technology on you; make consent easy and transparent and you can make that particular problem go away, but of course you can see why law-and-order types don't think very much about consent. Another big part? You know law enforcement will use facial recognition on folks who agitate for peace, for racial equality, for voting rights, for health care, for all manner of good policies -- in other words, liberals! Yes, liberals! And, really, who's more liberal than a college student? Besides me, I mean.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard that our Administration wants to roll back the school lunch nutrition standards which are literally the only positive achievement of the Obama USDA. But you may not have heard that our Administration's proposed rule would, get this, count french fries as a fruit and pasta as a vegetable. Because what keeps you more regular than french fries? In other words, our Administration wants to count junk food as a fruit. Think maybe one of the many acting department heads in our Administration decided to curry favor with our President by telling him he's really been eating fruit all this time? Seriously, politicians who think we should count junk food as fruit are objectively pro-childhood obesity. And don't believe the hype that kids don't want to eat healthy -- if we subsidized fruit the way we subsidize high fructose corn syrup, kids would never want anything other than apples. The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell our USDA to scuttle its own plans to destroy school lunch nutrition standards.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Amtrak to stop forcing arbitration on its customers, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. You already know that forced arbitration clauses keep you from exercising your right to redress grievances in court, and force you into an arbitration hearing that you're not likely to win (meaning whatever you've heard about "average awards being bigger than in class action suits" is rubbish, since the average award to arbitration losers is, well, zero). But you know what stinks even worse about Amtrak forcing you to go to arbitration to punish them for their wrongdoing? Your taxes pay for most of Amtrak's operations! Which means that, in a very real sense, you are Amtrak's boss! And if anything belongs in our courts, it's cases brought against our government by its owners, the American people. Word on the street is that Rep. Lamb (D-PA) and Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT) will introduce a bill on this matter very soon, but you can still let your Congressfolk know how you feel now.

Action: concerning war with Iran, school lunch nutrition standards, and health care privacy.

Word on the street is that the House may vote next week on two excellent ideas: defunding any future Presidential attempt to wage war on Iran, and repealing the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF). The whole point of breaking off from King George III was most decidedly not to defer to a President who makes King George III look like the very model of sanity, so Win Without War helps you tell your House Reps to restrain our President's attempts to start war with Iran. In a related note, the Project on Government Oversight informs us that over 50 members of Congress and/or their spouses own, on average, somewhere between $45,000 and $110,000 each in defense corporation stock, and you can smell the conflict of interest there, right? As in what incentive do our Congressfolk have to stop us from fighting stupid wars if they stand to make money from them. So the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to divest from "all investments tied to their Congressional responsibilities." They'll say that's hard, but so's anything worth doing, so don't brook any whining from your Congressfolk.

Meanwhile, our Department of Agriculture has announced that they intend to roll back literally the only achievement of the Obama USDA -- the nutritional standards that replace junk food with more fruits and vegetables in school lunches. House Republicans have been trying to gut these standards for years, armed with dramatic anecdotes about kids throwing out apples, because what else can you do when you are objectively pro-childhood obesity? Am I being too harsh? On these clowns? Our USDA's maneuvering has nothing to do with "reducing burdensome regulations" and everything to do with catering to big food manufacturing corporations who want our kids hooked on their burgers and fries. It might also have to do with a President who really thinks fast food is the best food -- or, more broadly, a President who thinks long-term thinking is for losers. So Change.org helps you tell our USDA to protect kids' health by reversing course on its school lunch rollbacks.

In other news, you know that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA) protects your private info when you go to the doctor or to a hospital, but what about the information you're giving to health-tracking apps on your phone? The corporations that collect that info can do whatever they like with that data, including selling it, and I don't think you signed up for that! And if you're not particularly worried about your heart-rate-while-jogging getting sold to someone who might try to sell you new running shoes, consider that apps tracking menstrual cycles actually reveal a lot more information that you would think -- like, how often you have sex, how often you have sex without using birth control, even how many miscarriages you have. And then imagine some data broker compiling that info on you into a profile that could affect your ability to get insurance (or get it at a good price)! Smells like dystopia, doesn't it? So Consumer Reports helps you tell health-tracking app corporations to protect your privacy.

Action: concerning public lands, phone price gouging, and school lunch shaming.

CREDO helps you tell our Department of the Interior to reject any plans to privatize our national parks. Because they belong to us, that's why! This is typically where right-wingers change the subject and howl WHEREZ DOESEZ TEH MONEYZ COMES TEH FROMZ!!!!, and the correct answer is "from all the taxes you've been cutting on rich people for 40 years," but let's stay focused on the point, which is that public lands belong to us and our government administers them on our behalf. When we sell them to private corporations -- which we can only do once, so it's not actually fiscally-responsible! -- they manage the parks on behalf of their shareholders, or (if they're particularly corrupt) their executives, which means you don't get a say in what happens to our public lands. Oh, sure, governments say they're going to hold private corporations accountable for their wrongdoings, but then they don't, almost like that was the whole idea. So let's keep the meddling middleman out of our public lands by keeping them public -- and thus keeping them ours.

Meanwhile, S. 1764, the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, still awaits consideration; the bill would mandate that our FCC regulate phone calls to America's prisoners so that big telecom corporations don't gouge them, or their families. I mean, really, $25 for a 15-minute phone call? Just because prisoners can't do anything about it doesn't mean we can do anything to them, but sadly, our Congressfolk only think of prisoners when they're trying to whip up hysteria over crime, or deliver taxpayer money to their crony private prison corporations. Is that harsh? Too bad! Too many politicians want to be cruel without anyone calling them cruel, and when they whine about it, they're acting exactly like all those "politically correct" people they also love to whine about. I'm not sure I can even call that irony; I feel like irony shouldn't lead directly to disgust. Anyway, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass s. 1764 and prevent big telecom corporations from gouging prisoners.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3366/S. 1907, the No Shame at School Act, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. School administrators all over America are shaming kids whose parents haven't squared away their school lunch bills -- by making them wear wristbands like this is freaking Nazi Germany, or serving them coal meals when everyone else gets hot meals, or making them throw out their meals, or preventing kids from graduating -- and though they're getting the appropriate amount of shaming from the American people for what they're doing, the fact that they even tried it in the first place means there's no harm in passing a law from preventing them from doing it again. I have long hoped that since so many Americans have experienced debt and poverty since the 2008 financial Armageddon, that experience would make us all a lot more empathetic about each other's experiences. I suppose I still have to wait. But I don't wait for such things quietly, and you don't have to, either.

Action: concerning social media, school lunch shaming, and Bahamian refugees.

In the wake of reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hobnobbing with notorious right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro -- ostensibly in order to understand why right-wingers constantly whine about Facebook's "bias" against them! -- Free Press helps you tell Mr. Zuckerberg to adopt vigorous rules defending its users from abusive hate speech. So far Mr. Zuckerberg has hidden behind the First Amendment in his effort to avoid adopting such standards, but the First Amendment doesn't protect us from Facebook; it protects us from our government, and Facebook, as a publishing platform, has no obligation to publish every single noxious utterance of every single asshole in order to adhere to a notion of "free speech" -- or, at the very least, no obligation to make these utterances public. And if he wants to know why right-wingers constantly whine about Facebook's bias, he doesn't have to ask Ben Shapiro -- he can ask me. Right-wingers constantly whine about Facebook's bias because whining is all you can do when you can't win arguments on the merits. You're welcome.

Meanwhile, you've heard horror stories of schools sending collection notices to families who can't afford school lunches, or putting wristbands on their children so everyone can identify them by their debt? Sounds like something you'd have seen in Nazi Germany, right? Well, H.R. 3366/S. 1907, the No Shame at School Act, would put a stop to school lunch shaming, would prevent school districts from handing over parents' private info to debt collectors, and would streamline the certification process for school kids so that simple misspellings (for example) won't lead to school lunch debt. You'd think civilized people would know better than to make a kid's life miserable just because his parents don't make a whole lot of money -- so I guess that means the people who would do such things aren't particularly civilized. Civilization isn't just something we have to maintain, after all; it's also something we have to earn. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop school lunch shaming by passing the No Shame at School Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to allow Hurricane Dorian refugees save haven in America, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas last month, leaving over 70,000 good Bahamians without homes, but our President, of course, cited the possibility of allowing "some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very very bad drug dealers" into the country, as if America has never had a vetting process for refugees, ever. Gosh, nobody ever said you have to be stupid every single time you show mercy; why do you suppose some people would like to link the two in your mind? And why do you suppose our President would want you to think we have always just let people into America willy-nilly? It couldn't be because fear is the only weapon he has left, could it? It's not like he can point to a whole lot of good works as President (or as a human being, really) and persuade people to support him that way. But we're better than him, so let's do better than him.

Action: concerning war with Iran, racist housing policy, and school lunch shaming.

You've heard that our President doesn't want to go to war with Iran? Don't you believe it! No, him firing John Bolton doesn't mean we're in the clear, and him fighting Lindsey Graham over Iran policy doesn't mean we're in the clear, either. What would put us in the clear? Communicating our will to our Congressfolk that we don't want another stupid war in the Middle East, that's what! Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to include the Khanna-Gaetz amendment, forbidding funding of any military operations in Iran without explicit Congressional approval, in must-pass defense authorization legislation. Seriously, if you're thinking that maybe this President is "different," or that only he can stop the "deep state," stop that. True, this President may be less adept at maneuvering the levers of power than his predecessors, but he only cares about his own ego, and the only people who can stop the "deep state" are us. So we need to keep working.

Meanwhile, our Administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed gutting civil rights protections mandated by the Fair Housing Act, so the National Women's Law Center helps you tell our HUD to stop its efforts to let more landlords discriminate against folks of color. I don't know what their rationale for this move is. I kinda hope it isn't we don't need these protections anymore, because, gosh, have they talked to a real estate agent? Real estate was, for many years, the last place you could get away with saying something openly racist like "this is a good neighborhood because it's mostly white." Actually, I do know what their rationale is -- our President and his father got sued real good back in the 1970s for refusing to put folks of color in their apartments. Is this his revenge? I kinda hope not, because a man who'd do that is a small man indeed, and I prefer to believe the best about people.

Finally, you may have heard that schools have been shaming kids whose parents can't pay school lunch fees, sometimes by making kids wear wristbands (gosh, so many people love strutting around these days, I wonder why?) or by putting their names on public lists. I've said we shouldn't be afraid to shame people, but we shouldn't shame kids who did nothing wrong -- we should shame adults who, for example, redistribute everyone's income upward to themselves! Anyway, H.R. 3366/S. 1907, the No Shame at School Act, would prohibit this kind of school lunch shaming, plus it would prevent school districts from handing over parents' private info to debt collectors -- because this, too, is apparently a thing now -- and it would streamline the certification process for school kids so that simple misspellings (for example) won't lead to school lunch debt. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to help out working families by passing the No Shame at School Act.

Action: press freedom, school lunch nutrition standards, and redistricting.

Amnesty International helps you tell the Burmese government to release two Reuters journalists investigating that government's ongoing extermination of its Rohingya minority. And what bogus charge do these two intrepid journalists face? The Burmese government says that by procuring "important and secret government documents" -- it's a good thing they said the documents were "important" and "secret"! -- they've broken the Official Secrets Act, but legal experts inform us that Burma rarely-if-ever prosecutes anyone under this law, a relic of British colonial rule. And even the Trump Administration has demanded the release of the two journalists; surely the Nobel Peace Prize-winner heading up the Burmese government doesn't want to be outclassed by the Orange Menace just so she can avoid even more PR hits from the genocide she's currently allowing her military to conduct. At least, that's what I'd imagine, as a reasonable, civilized person.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Trump USDA to abandon its effort to roll back school lunch nutrition standards, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "school lunch nutrition standards" would get laughs from kids and adults alike, but the standards the Obama Administration put in place back in 2014 have actually helped kids get more fruit and vegetables in their diet and have actually helped get junk food out of schools. Of course you already know the key word in the previous sentence for the Republican party is "Obama," and anything with Mr. Obama's name on it must be erased from history. That's not just the Trump Administration's problem, either -- Congress has been hot to repeal the standards since they regained full control in 2015, even though doing so would make them look, you know, objectively pro-childhood obesity. But they don't get all the say around here -- we do.

Finally, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court ruled that the state's Congressional district map "clearly, plainly, and palpably" violates the state constitution, and gave the legislature about 2 1/2 weeks to submit a new map -- so now's as good a time as any to let Common Cause help you to tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to pass HB 722/SB 22, which would reform the state's redistricting process. If the politicians have proven anything, it's that we can't trust them to draw legislative districts that put the people's needs over their own -- but taking it out of the legislature's hands and putting it into the hands of an independent commission (as HB 722/SB 22 would do) would give us a better chance at avoiding the evil of gerrymandering. We shouldn't let legislators draw districts that split counties and cities apart (let alone districts that exclude single houses and sides of streets!) out of their greed for continued and undeserved power.

Action: healthy school lunches, clean water, and campaign finance reform.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Agriculture to keep, and not roll back, the school lunch nutrition standards set by the previous Administration, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The right has ginned up a "controversy" over what should be a very uncontroversial matter -- keeping junk food out of school lunches and putting more healthy food into school lunches -- and it's quite possibly even more ridiculous than the other fake outrages they peddle. For a time the "controversy" relied on anedcotes about kids not eating their apples, overblown accounts of states "having trouble" meeting the standards, and the tired right-wing trope of TEH BIG GUMMINT REGULASHUNZ IZ ALWAYSEZ TEH WRONGZ!!!! But now the controversy also relies on our Agriculture Secretary's rather flexible definition of "standard." You didn't know conservatism was all about not following the rules when you feel like it, didn't you? I kid, of course -- conservatism is not about that, even when the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" act like it is.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state Senate passed SB 624 not that long ago; you may recall that SB 624 would amend state clean water laws so that corporations -- like, just to pull an example out of the air, corporations that practice longwall coal mining -- can pollute local streams with as long as they submit a plan to clean up their mess later on. Whether they actually follow through on their plan to clean up their own mess isn't even the point -- the water's polluted in the meantime, meaning you can't drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, or fish in it! If your kid didn't want to clean his room, but instead wanted to submit a cleaning plan to you so he could do it later, would you put up with that? Of course you wouldn't! And your kid isn't even planning to pollute your water! The state House Energy and Environmental Resources Committee has planned a vote on SB 624 for this coming Monday, so the Sierra Club still helps you tell your state Reps to oppose SB 624 (and also SB 561, a sort of REINS Act for Pennsylvania, which we need like we need a hole in the head).

Finally, Pennsylvania still barely has any campaign finance laws to speak of, not even gift-banning laws with any teeth, so Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to pass a strong gift ban. It's bad enough that so many of our allegedly greatest legal minds think money is speech, but they also get their shorts in a bunch when folks try to ban gifts to lobbyists, saying that of course politicians can vote objectively even though they get gifts, though virtually any sentient life form would regard such gift-giving as a temptation, if not an outright bribe. Odd, how some people find themselves defending politicians' good nature! Still, avoid the temptation to throw up your hands and say people are just corrupt -- or worse, to say that human nature is corrupt and any law that tries to change that is a bad law. People do change over time -- we settle far fewer of our disputes with murderous violence than we used to, after all. And a world without corruption would be a better world than the one we've got, and that alone makes it worth fighting for.

Action: voting rights, cable set-top boxes, and school meal reauthorization.

CREDO helps you tell the Election Assistance Commission's Inspector General to investigate the EAC Director's recent decision to let Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia require proof of citizenship to vote. What's that, you say? Shouldn't you have to prove you're a citizen to vote? Here's a better question: do you routinely carry information proving your citizenship around with you? No, that's not your driver's license: it's your birth certificate, your passport, your certificate of citizenship, or your naturalization certificate, and you carry none of these in your wallet. And no, these states do not intend to target "undocumented immigrants" -- they mean to target black and Latino voters. These states have already pulled similar shenanigans, after all -- closing down DMVs in black neighborhoods (Alabama), putting out Spanish-language voting guides with inaccurate info (Kansas), or just plain old sitting on voter registrations from black folks (Georgia). So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict they won't ask any white voters for their paperwork.

Meanwhile, you may not have given any thought to this matter, but your set-top cable box may be costing you as much as $230 annually. But your cable provider won't permit you to use any other device with their service -- instead, they require you to get the box they want you to get and then overcharge you for it every month. The FCC has proposed rules that would force big cable corporations to allow you to use the box you want, even if it's not their box, and if you've watched Hulu or Netflix over your Wii or XBox, you already know this isn't some pipe dream. Of course, the cable corporations are treating it like that, and they're counting on you not to notice all the fees they stick in that bill you pay every month. But President Obama has, surprisingly, spoken out in favor of the FCC proposals, and the FCC is accepting public comments on the matter now, so Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to protect consumers from excessive set-top box fees and require cable corporations to give us more choice in the matter.

Finally, Congress has been negligent in reauthorizing school breakfast and lunch programs. Obviously Congress hasn't been so negligent as to let kids starve while they're at school, at least not yet, but without an actual sense of what our government will spend on school meals for the next few years, schools won't know what equipment they'll be able to afford or what staff they'll be able to hire, among other things that actually require long-range planning. Of course, Congress likes that sort of chaos, more so now, even, than in Tha Bush Mobb years. But, once again: it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want, and that's a stable school lunch program with nutritious meals for kids. Really, you'd have to be a Scrooge McSmallgovernment to disagree. Hence the Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell Congress to reauthorize the school meal program already. Note that Pew's email action tool helps you demand they keep the USDA's stricter nutrition standards, too, since Congress has been so hot to gut those.

Action: "free" trade, school vouchers, voting rights, and predatory prison phone call rates.

The Trans-Pacific "Partnership," as you know, is a done deal, awaiting ratification by the various signatory nations, including ours. Roots Action's petition, with which you may tell Congress to reject the TPP, goes like this: "We are writing to urge the Congress to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This agreement would destroy jobs, degrade the environment, undermine the Internet and weaken U.S. democracy and sovereignty." That's all true, and fairly succinct besides -- and if your Rep or Senator decides to write you back with a bunch of booga-booga about China or bipartisanship, remember that, as a citizen, you don't necessarily have to explain yourself to your Reps or Senators; you need only communicate your will. (They still have to explain themselves to you, of course -- and if they're snippy about that, well, they can always get another job, more easily than you or I can, I would think.) Public Citizen also helps you tell Congress to reject the TPP; their missive is a bit longer, if you prefer that (I go back and forth myself). Either way, the time to act, as usual, is now.

Meanwhile, the House plans to vote on H.R. 10 tomorrow; H.R. 10 would extend the voucher program in Washington, D.C. that allows taxpayer money to be diverted toward private and religious schools. See? House Republicans can get it together long enough to vote on bad ideas! Maybe next week they'll vote to put junk food back in public schools! But seriously, how does H.R. 10 harm the country? By diverting public money -- taxpayer money, your money -- away from the public schools that belong to you, the schools over which you have more control, toward private schools that will not necessarily accept your children, do not necessarily do a better job than public schools just because they're private, and are often religious schools. And making you, the taxpayer, pay to support religions you don't agree with? You'd think the "sincere religious belief" crowd would relate to that. But they do not, since the religious schools they'd fund are their people, and their people are always better than you. People for the American Way helps you tell your House Reps to reject the D.C. voucher program and reject H.R. 10.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the U.S. Attorney General to investigate whether Alabama's plan to shutter more than 30 DMVs across the state violates the Voting Rights Act, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. What do DMVs have to do with voting rights? Well, Alabama has one of them there Voter ID laws -- you know, the ones that make everyone produce photo ID at the voting booth even though hardly anyone actually commits the kind of voter fraud Voter ID laws supposedly protect against. And the most common place to go to get the photo ID that would satisfy Voter ID laws is the DMV. So why is Alabama closing 30 more DMVs? Well, they say it's because of "budget problems," but lots of states have budget problems, particularly in the last seven years or so, and very few of them resort to this manner of "resolving" them -- and surprise, surprise, the DMV closures will disproportionately affect black folks, rural folks, and seniors, many of whom have been voting for longer than many Alabama state legislators have been alive! So, yeah, let's try to kill this rubbish.

Finally, the FCC is mulling whether to stop phone corporations from charging prisoners and their families more than 20 times the cost of a phone call made on the outside, and they could issue new regulations in mere days. So if you haven't done it already, Sum of Us helps you tell the FCC to cap the predatory phone rates some big telecom corporations charge prisoners to keep in contact with their families. Should families have to pay thousands of dollars annually to keep in touch with their loved ones in jail -- particularly when we know that the more contact prisoners have with their families, the less likely they'll backslide once they're out of jail? If you think the answer is "yes," you should point out exactly where judges have issued sentences including "gouging the prisoner for phone calls to his/her family." Too many Americans still think it's OK to pile on whatever punishment they think prisoners deserve (never mind what society has already given them!) to prove they're tougher than everyone else. But this is a civilized society, so they shouldn't get all the say about everything.

Action: voting rights, clean water, and child nutrition.

Common Cause helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Renewing and strengthening the Voting Rights Act used to be a bipartisan cause, but the bill just got its first Senate Republican co-sponsor, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. And the Supreme Court, as you know, struck down a significant part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. I dare Republicans to say, well, the Supreme Court spoke, and we have to follow their will -- not just because they tend to say the exact opposite when, say, a Kentucky county clerk decides she's not going to issue any marriage licenses to gay folks, but also because the Supreme Court all but invited Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act in a way that would satisfy their concerns. The Voting Rights Advancement Act does that, by applying pre-clearance formulas to any state or municipality that establishes a pattern of voting rights violations, not just Southern states. But clearly we'll need to tell Congress to do the right thing, perhaps many times. Of course, we're Americans, so we're up for that.

S. 1500, the so-called Sensible Environmental Protection Act, would allow corporations to dump certain pesticides in our waterways without a permit. "Certain pesticides" only include those "authorized for sale, distribution, or use" under federal law, but don't feel better, because S. 1500 doesn't say how much of an "authorized" pesticide a corporation can dump without a permit, and this is a fairly important matter to consider when determining how to protect our waters. Sadly, S. 1500 bill has a certain "bipartisan" sheen -- five of its 15 co-sponsors are Democrats, leaving a mere 41 who might filibuster the bill. And one of those five is North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, who just swore off a run for state Governor in 2016 and thus will need, ah, help getting re-elected to the Senate in 2018. None of that is our concern, of course -- protecting clean water from pollution is our concern. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to actually be sensible about the environment and reject S. 1500. (Like how they re-define "sensible" to make your concerns look "insensible"?)

Meanwhile, the Child Nutrition Act expires on September 30. You recall that one of the few things the USDA has done well under President Obama is improve nutrition standards in school lunches -- which, naturally, has resulted in the House repeatedly trying to roll back this standard, by promoting legislation letting lagging school districts "opt out," instead of telling them to get with the program, as civilized people would do. And their arguments in favor of this absurdity? That some indeterminate number of kids throw away their school-provided apples instead of eating them, and that government is tyrannical because it sets standards for food provided in public schools, instead of just letting kids eat whatever they like. Because the only thing that says "freedom" more than letting kids pursue the ephemeral sensations offered by junk food without the distraction of discipline? Letting them get obese and suffer from intractable health problems well into adulthood! The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to protect child nutrition standards.

Action: keeping banksters out of government, and keeping big ag corporations from ruining school lunch standards.

Americans for Financial Reform still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3065/S. 1779, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, which would slow the "revolving door" between bankster corporations and government regulatory agencies. The bill wouldn't prevent folks from moving from Wall Street to government and back, but it would remove some of the incentives folks have for doing that -- it would ban "golden parachute" pay packages banksters hand out to executives who move to our government, it would limit the amount of lobbying regulators can do for the banking industry after they leave our government, and it would force more regulators to recuse themselves from cases affecting their former (and future?) employers. These are all, frankly, common-sense reforms, and if your lawmaker exclaims that it "restricts the freedom" of bankers to get work, you may remind them that your freedom to be protected from Wall Street crapping all over our economy is more important. (If they claim that only bankers understand banking, refer again to said crapping.)

Also, if you missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, then CREDO helps you do that. The USDA has done one thing right, by kicking a lot of the sugary, salty, fatty crap out of our schools and getting more fruits and vegetables in, but naturally our Congressfolk want to roll all that back, so they can appease their big junk food and big agricultural corporate donors. The Republican-held House went very, very far out of its way, as you recall, to try to roll back the USDA's school lunch standards because one in 10 school districts had some indeterminate problem meeting the new standards, and also because some kid, somewhere, didn't eat the apple he got at school that afternoon. Since no good American is objectively pro-child obesity or objectively pro-juvenile diabetes, that attempted rollback should have finished at least a few Congressional careers, but it didn't, because Democrats didn't run ads about it, because they're weak. But that doesn't mean we can't make Congress do the right thing, no matter who Congress thinks is in charge.

Action: war in Iraq, and healthy food for schoolkids.

If you missed previous action alerts in re preventing America from fighting another war in Iraq, then USAction still helps you tell President Obama and Congress that you oppose any military action in Iraq, including airstrikes, which seems to be Mr. Obama's preferred option. Yes, it's perfectly awful that ISIS fighters have been terrorizing good Iraqi citizens, but Mr. Maliki's government was no model of statecraft either, and that's the whale we found ourselves lashed to back in the mid-2000s, when Our Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush clearly gave no thought (not an unprecedented occurrence) to whether toppling Saddam Hussein for short-term political gain might actually strengthen the regime of an actual religious dictatorship, that of neighboring Iran. But Sen. Graham (R-SC) has lately told us we need to go attack Iraq again in order to prevent another 9.11. Why, it's almost like that was the idea all along -- to wage war on Iraq so aggressively awfully that we'd have to go back again, thus helping to create even more terrorists to avenge! Didn't Ron Paul warn us about blowback?

Meanwhile, Congress postponed voting on the agricultural appropriations bill last week, perhaps out of embarrassment that the bill would let our public schools opt out of the USDA's new nutrition standards for school lunches, standards that would help keep junk food out of school cafeterias by ensuring that cafeteria food had more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Congress says it wants to help struggling schools, but the USDA is actually already doing that, by providing grants and technical training to schools struggling with the standards. Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to support the new nutrition standards for all schools. And though I don't know if the new nutrition standards really will save over 125,000 lives annually and save $17 billion in health care costs annually, I do know that my parents were right when they told me as a child that if I ate right, I might not enjoy it as much as I would if I ate Little Debbie snack cakes all the time, but I'd certainly enjoy the health benefits later -- health benefits like, you know, not being obese or having diabetes or heart problems.

Interesting story: the Librarian of Congress decided, late last year, to end the exemption of cellphones from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, thus making cellphone unlocking illegal. But then over 100,000 folks petitioned the White House, saying you should be able to use your cellphone with whatever service provider you want -- and the Obama Administration agreed! Naturally, that's not going to be enough -- apparently unable to force the Librarian of Congress to revisit the decision (the Librarian continued the exemption in 2006 and 2010), the Obama Administration called for Congress to pass a law making cellphone unlocking legal. After all, it's only a cellphone industry artifice that makes you buy a new phone every time you switch providers, and even the big telecoms seem to want to move past it. So Free Press helps you tell Congress to do the right thing. I know, I know, but it's still our duty to tell them.

Meanwhile, the USDA has updated nutritional standards for the snacks and drinks kids get in school from vending machines, school stores, or the a la carte line -- all the food available in school outside of the school meal programs, in fact. And this is the first such USDA update in over 30 years; think how much we've learned about the food that makes us fat since 1979, and you see the need. The new standards would, once finalized, require "any food sold in schools" "(b)e either a fruit, a vegetable, a dairy product, a protein food, a 'whole-grain rich' grain product (50% or more whole grains by weight or have whole grains as the first ingredient), or a combination food that contains at least 1/4 cup of fruit or vegetable." Food would also contain less than 35% of its calories in fat, and total sugar levels would be either less than 35% of calories or 35% of weight. Moms Rising helps you tell the USDA to set the strongest standards possible.