Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, discrimination, and transparency.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, would enact a suite of necessary reforms in the areas of voting rights, campaign finance, ethics, and redistricting. The bill passed the House, but Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell (E-KY) said he wouldn't bring it up for a vote, because, and I quote, "I get to decide what we vote on." Well, he also called it a "Democrat power grab" -- which I guess he'd know all about, having orchestrated so many Republican power grabs! -- and he also said it was "radical" and "socialist," which is what they all say when they can't win the argument anymore. But regardless of what he says, he doesn't get all the say around here -- we do. Hence People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to reform our democratic processes by passing the For the People Act. You can also find phone numbers for Mr. McConnell at his website. His D.C. number is (202) 224-2541, but you'll likely have to call one of his local Kentucky numbers to speak with someone.

Meanwhile, pro-discrimination bills are still moving in Tennessee's state legislature, as the full House plans a vote tonight (Monday night) on HB 836, which would not only let private adoption agencies reject gay couples because of their "religious" "beliefs" but force the state to fund such agencies, and the state's Civil Justice Subcommittee is mulling HB 1274, which would force the state to defend any locality that enacts one of them-there "bathroom bills" folks use to humiliate transgender folks. In other words, these bills act like the folks who are used to getting all the say about everything all the time ever are "oppressed," while actually oppressing folks who deviate in some way from what the majority calls "normal." Hence the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state legislators to reject both HB 836 and HB 1274. One more time: no one in America has any "right" to use "religious" "beliefs" as an excuse to deny other folks their rights.

Finally, the House passed H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would, as you know, give women more tools to fight the wage inequality they face (and yes, they still face wage inequality even when you adjust the data for similar experience and skill). I bet Mob Boss Mitch, being TEH DECIDURZ!!!!!, won't want to hold a vote on that, either, and I bet he'll call it "radical" and "socialist," too, even though neither word aptly describes what the bill would actually do. Is it "radical" or "socialist" to keep employers from retaliating against employees when they discuss wages at their job? Is it "radical or "socialist" to keep employers from refusing to hire people merely because of their past wage history? Of course not. You might better describe these things, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, as "sensible" or "responsible." Hence Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to support fair wages for women by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Around the table: "what looks large from a distance/close up ain't never that big."

The Senate passed the "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify our President's "national emergency" declaration by a 59-41 margin, which ain't enough to overcome a Presidential veto, but as a few of those 41 "nay" votes get more scrutiny, well, we've got a shot. Thom Tillis's sudden "nay" vote after declaring very loudly that he'd vote "yea" has been all the rage on Twitter, but dig Martha McSally's "nay" vote after our Administration assured her it wouldn't draw money for its vanity border wall from four defense projects in her home state. She'll say protecting these projects is just her job, but it sure looks like the kind of political deal-making most Americans despise. Ben Nelson went from being one of the most popular Senators in America to one of the most despised for less.

The Senate also passed the War Powers resolution aiming to stop military aid to the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, but by a less-convincing 54-46 margin. Mr. Friedersdorf's 2020 analysis is a bit incomplete here -- sure, our President should be made to "own" this war, but it's not a certainty he'll run against a Democrat who's less hawkish than he, nor is it a certainty that Republican voters (let alone our President's most strident votaries!) will remember, or care, how this vote broke down. At least Todd Young's putting his money where his mouth is, and Steve Daines, who's up in 2020, might be slicker than I previously thought. (I suspect Susan Collins's embrace of actual independence here -- she's also up in 2020 -- comes far, far too late.)

Paul Street at Counterpunch watches MSNBC so you don't have to, finds the station full of "Red Scare Dems" who worry that the Democrats, in embracing popular/beneficial policy initiatives, will move "too far left." And one of them says that he would have to vote for the President he hates if Democrats nominate someone like (fill in any name, since they'll all be "too far left" for our "liberal" media anyway). So to sum: MSNBC employs putative liberals who constantly cry about "socialism," and it also employs Republicans who hate our President -- see, they're completely fair and balanced! (Don't be the one who complains that all this fake bipartisanship has given bipartisanship a bad name, because that's like turning off your living room light and then complaining that all of a sudden it's dark.)

Mehdi Hasan shows the world how to interrogate Administration cronies on his al-Jazeera program and what's the most telling thing about that? That the interview took place on a network virtually no Americans can watch? That Mr. Hasan showed up to a gunfight with a gun and Erik Prince didn't even bring a pointed stick? That American journalists are more likely to brag about which member of Our Glorious Elites they're in good with than about which poisonous elite they helped to bring down? That Our Glorious Elites are so far from our-best-and-brightest they'd need two buses and a train to get in the same neighborhood as our best and brightest? Really, it's a hard question to answer, and it's almost like that's the idea.

Survey finds that more than half of all victims of rapes, robberies, and burglaries simply won't report these crimes to the police. You'll be pleased to learn that some of these folks handle these matters themselves without resorting to additional violence, but folks who constantly yell at everyone for "not respecting our police enough" might want to wonder if police could do more to earn that respect. Also, too, that Reagan-era "finding" that our justice system is "biased" in favor of "criminals" would likely merit an it's-a-feature-not-a-bug statement from our Founders, as well as the you-don't-know-what-it's-really-like statement it merits from folks of color. Yeah, law and order is hard work, but we do it because civilization is worth it.

Finally, in the wake of our Justice Department charging 50 rich folks with paying millions to illegally get their kids into schools like Stanford and Yale, may I request that I never hear any more whining about the "unfairness" of affirmative action again? I used to remind everyone that folks of color need affirmative action just to get past all the legacy admissions of lifelong C students, but I clearly underestimated the scope of the problem. (And, please, if you've been whining about affirmative action all these years, don't up and say you're now just as concerned with what rich folks do to get their kids in college. I don't hear any affirmative action-complainers voluntarily talk about rich folks gaming the system. What you choose to fixate upon matters, you know.)

Around the table: starring the usual cast of right-wing whiners and Democrat weaklings.

You should read Bess Levin every day, though you don't need her to tell you that our Administration's 2020 budget is a "next-level horror show" -- though, then again, maybe you do need her to help you confront the extreme BS coming from yet another "acting" member of this Administration, acting OMB Director Russ Vought, who thinks it's some kind of achievement for a President to "attempt to tackle the debt within eight years." "Attempt"? Really? I guess our President wants a participation trophy.

Uh oh: Administration claims that forces allied with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro set an aid convoy on fire, but video evidence shows that an anti-government protestor did it, although apparently by accident. I was going to say "and there's yet another reason this Administration isn't as bad as Tha Bush Mobb," but then I remembered that Tha Bush Mobb couldn't get Mr. Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, out of office even after literally staging a coup. Other Administration claims about Mr. Maduro burning food and medical aid have also changed subtly upon being confronted with contrary evidence. I bet we didn't see any of that on the TV news, though.

Did you know there was a "debate" over whether payday lenders gouge people? According to NPR, there is, and it's a debate that appears to have our CFPB, a handful of payday lending corporation spokeshacks, and literally one person who used payday loans on one side, and the rest of us on the other. If NPR is too "liberal," as inattentive folks often say, then it must be a Robert Frost kind of liberal -- you know, the liberal who's "too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

White Pennsylvanian man puts up a billboard that says "whites have rights too" and calls possibly every politician of color he knows a "racist," then says he really only meant to "start a dialogue." "I just wanted to start a dialogue" is, as you know, the whine that emanates from everyone who talks without thinking, and did you notice he talked about how much he cares about "how you stand for my flag" and then corrected himself to say "our flag"? I sure did. All together now: waaaaaaaaah.

Finally, Rahm Emanuel gives his fellow-Democrats and us uppity liberals "advice" about how to beat our President in 2020 I won't tabulate my objections to Mr. Emanuel's piece, since they number approximately one per point made, but I will say this: nearly 100 million Americans didn't vote in 2016; what if even one-tenth of them are waiting for a Presidential nominee who might actually, you know, do stuff that helps people? The candidate who captures them will be unbeatable, "socialist" or not.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, discrimination, war-making, and "national emergencies."

As you know, the House passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, late last week; H.R. 1 would enact broad and far-reaching reforms in voting rights, gerrymandering, ethics, and campaign finance -- or it would, if Senate Majority Leader McConnell would hold a vote on it. But he won't, because, and I quote, "I get to decide what we vote on." He's wrong as usual -- if we get in his grill enough, and we get in his fellow Senators' grills enough, they'll hold a vote on it whether they like it or not. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to vote on and pass the For the People Act. Our Glorious Elites don't seem to understand that most Americans don't consider (for example) automatic voter registration "radical," or campaign finance disclosure "socialist," but folks like Mitch McConnell really believe that the richest people in America are the best people in America and should thus have all the say about everything. I guess it's just our terrific luck that we get a seminar every single day from our President about how little wealth has to do with character or talent.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee state legislature will take up HB 836 -- the so-called Child-Placing Agency Religious Freedom Bill, and with a title that clunky, you know it can't be good -- as early as tomorrow. HB 836 would let private adoption agencies refuse to place children with gay couples if it violates their "religious" "conscience" -- well, actually, the bill words it "written religious or moral convictions or policies," but that might be even worse! You can easily imagine adoption agencies refusing to place children with Unitarians, Jews, Catholics, agnostics, or atheists, when they should just concentrate on finding good parents. I guess the bill's supporters will argue that forcing agencies to put their bigotry in writing is some sort of major advance for civilization, but I'm such a churl I prefer that civilization advance by refusing to let some folks use their bigotry to deny other people their rights. Hence the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state legislators to protect the rights of all their constituents by rejecting HB 836.

In other news, H.R. 1274 would repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that each of the last three Presidents have abused in launching military campaigns without getting the necessary declaration of war that our Constitution mandates. You may recall that last year Congress tried to repeal the 2001 AUMF but replace it with a far worse AUMF that would have let a President start military operations without getting Congress's permission at all, unless Congress acted to end those military operations within 30 days of their start. But H.R. 1274, which is a very, very short read at Congress.gov, simply repeals the 2001 AUMF. Far too many politicians will protest that repealing the AUMF "puts our troops in harm's way," but that's a most disgusting form of rhetorical hostage-taking, and anyway I'll tell you what puts our troops in harm's way: sending them off to fight wars without doing the due diligence our Founders commanded and our Constitution requires. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to help restore law and order by repealing the 2001 AUMF.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass the "resolution of disapproval" that would reverse our President's "emergency declaration" which enables him to fund his vanity border wall, then Moms Rising, Public Citizen, and People for the American Way all still help you do that. Our President's vanity border wall is surely a totem of stupidity and hatred, but you don't need to feel some kind of way about immigration or refugees to oppose his "national emergency" declaration -- all you need to know is that our President said, out loud, in the presence of reporters, not even one calendar day after issuing his declaration, that "I didn't need to do this" but "I would rather do it much faster." Few, if any, words in the English language carry the connotation of "need" that "emergency" does, but I guess our President is bold enough to ignore the common meaning of common words. But we sure don't have to take his guff, and we also don't need to take the guff of Senators too cowardly to oppose a man who's so wrong so much of the time.

Around the table: concerning government spying, taxes, private prisons, "right to work," and "socialism."

Apparently now our government is tracking journalists and refugee advocates with a secret database run by the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic), which of course doesn't have the legal authority to do such things. A Customs and Border Protection spokeshack says they're targeting these folks because of alleged violence at the border in November, and how do you know that's bullshit? Because that wasn't what they told NBC7 a mere five days earlier. Tha Bush Mobb would have given us the bullshit explanation right away, which is yet another reason they're worse than this clown car of an Administration.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy offers "Fairness Matters," a chart book showing who pays state and local taxes these days. Long story short: lower-income working families pay a bigger share of their income in state and local taxes than the rich do, and states that call themselves "low-tax" because they don't have an income tax tend to fill revenue shortfalls with the kind of regressive taxes and fees that hit working families a lot harder. Some rich folks think that's the way it should be, because they think they're better than you. But they don't get all the say in America.

Here's some good news: big banking corporation JP Morgan Chase has announced it will no longer underwrite bonds and loans for private prison corporations. If you have agitated for this very thing, go reward yourself a Buffalo chicken cheese steak, or what you will. (Also, too, you think this might have had something to do with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's call for oversight hearings on the relationship between banksters and private prison corporations? Of course it did, and there's another lesson in the importance of pushing to get people in office who'll do good, rather than merely settle for people who won't literally burn down your house.)

Kenawha County (WV) judge rules that West Virginia's "right to work" law actually violates workers' First Amendment rights to free association. It's similar to the Dane County (WI) judge's decision against Wisconsin's "right to work" law in 2016, which the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court reversed because of course they did -- and, lo and behold, the Republican-dominated West Virginia state legislature is at this moment trying to impeach every member of the Democratic-leaning state Supreme Court. It's like they can't win unless they set everything on fire. Why do we, as civilized people, tolerate such insanity?

Finally, when you hear Sen. McConnell (E-KY) suggest that the now-passed-in-the-House For the People Act is a "radical" and "socialist" bill, you are reminded that all they can do now is call what they don't like "radical" and "socialist." And when Mob Boss Mitch has to call it that -- rather than farm out the remarks to some hungry youngster like, say, Tom Cotton -- that means the forces of evil are even more desperate. I'd call that good news, except that we all know what desperate people are like -- they're the kind of people who throw nukes at Venezuela and Iran to keep power.

Around the table: tales of corporate welfare and political folly.

Amazon scraps plans to build a second headquarters in Queens after facing fierce backlash over its planned collection of some $3 million in corporate welfare in order to build there. Folks who support the growth of Amazon's tentacles seem to have a hard time understanding that giving the biggest, richest corporation on the planet more money so they'll build there is the height of absurdity. Also, too, Amazon kills small businesses wherever it goes, so why would you want it in your hometown? Because you literally can't imagine a way to "create jobs" besides giving the rich even more money?

In a related note, Amazon doubled its profits to over $11 billion in 2018 and paid zero dollars in income taxes. Because of the aforementioned corporate welfare and executive stock option tax breaks, which argues for outlawing stock options as well as anything else does. Also, too, why do corporations need all these tax breaks when they don't pay taxes on their expenses to begin with? They don't pay taxes on the money they pay workers, either, because it's an expense, for frack's sake. If we taxed them as hard as we did in the '50s, they'd create jobs right quick.

Not even a full calendar day goes by before our President says, out loud, to reporters, that "I didn't need to do this" ("this" being "declare a national emergency over his vanity border wall") but "I would rather do it much faster." I can't even see Chief Justice Roberts rubber-stamping this reasoning -- I mean, if you don't "need" to declare an "emergency," how is it an "emergency"? Of course, you have to consider that maybe our President wants this effort to fail, so he can keep diddling the rage glands of his votaries all the way to re-election. No, his votaries won't remember that he shot himself in the foot, although that is always the risk when you "shoot from the hip." Or, you know, from wherever.

This may surprise you: McClatchy interviews with over 30 Democratic strategists reveals widespread fear that a Joe Biden Presidential campaign would fail, with one saying he'd be "a significantly weaker candidate than Hillary." Naturally, some Biden dead-enders see such widespread fear as evidence he'd be a great candidate! There's an elephant in this room, of course: being Barack Obama's Vice President for two terms makes him part of the problem, that problem being power rotating between malicious Republicans and weak Democrats, and a lot of voters are fed up with all of that. It'll be quite the learning experience for quite a few Democrats, not just Mr. Biden, when primary voters won't simply flock to "the candidate who can win." I mean, look where voting for "the candidate who can win" got America in 2016. (Hate to pile on, but maybe the reason Evan Bayh lost in Indiana in 2016 isn't that Democrats can't "bring back voters who haven’t backed Democrats in years," but that voters are generally sick of frauds like Evan Bayh.)

Finally, South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- who, like 293 others, is running for the Democratic nomination for President -- says the epithet "socialist" has "lost its ability to be used as a kill switch on debate" and says folks today would rather know if a potential solution works than whether or not it's "socialist." I'd like to think he's right about all of that, but he definitely won't be right if we don't point out -- every single time it happens -- that folks throw the word "socialist" around when they can't win arguments on the merits.

Around the table: starring jobs that create jobs! Which are not boss jobs.

If you thought about it for a minute, you'd realize that yes, manufacturing jobs actually create even more jobs simply because of all the jobs folks need to have to support them, but it's still nice to have some data behind it. When you think that auto workers not only support the jobs that make the tires and the windshields but also the jobs at the restaurant where they go after work -- not to mention the taxes all those workers pay! -- then you know that when bosses say "American workers make too much money," you can just tell them "that's the price you pay for American workers creating jobs."

Surprise, surprise, an anonymous-of-course Democrat has been talking about ginning up a primary challenge for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). That'll show her! Even Ms. Ocasio-Cortez couldn't care less if she gets primaried next year, but I gotta say that talking about all the "numerous council people and state legislators who’ve been waiting 20 years for that seat" sure ain't winning talk. A seat in Congress is no pearl of great price, but it still goes to the one who seizes the moment more than the one who "waits their turn."

Alan McLeod at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media define "'the Venezuelan people' as a term that exclusively means "anyone who agrees with US policy." Remember that when you read individual letters-to-the-editor claiming they "speak" for those Venezuelans who returned Mr. Maduro to office at a higher clip than anyone did for our last two Presidents, and remember, also, when they show you photos of anti-Maduro protests, they're not telling you about the sizable pro-Maduro protests, let alone the polling information showing that the Venezuelan General Assembly (headed by Venezuela's putative savior, Juan Guaîdo) is about as unpopular as Mr. Maduro. Also, too, how much good has American intervention done lately? Besides for American corporations, I mean?

Former CEO/independent Presidential hopeful Howard Schultz says Elizabeth Warren asked him for a donation once but he wouldn't do it because he thinks her policies would "lead to socialism." I'm sick of people who throw the word "socialism" around to describe whatever they don't like. I'm even sicker of people who once depended on public housing (not to mention everything else taxes pay for!) throwing the word "socialism" around. But you know what I'm most sick of? People who call things "socialism" and then, when mildly pressed on whether that's what they really mean, retreat to calling them "a level of socialism." The world would be a much better place if folks would just keep their mouths shut when they don't know stuff.

Our Supreme Court temporarily stays a Louisiana anti-abortion law from going into effect until later on this week. I thought they'd either let it go into effect or stop it entirely, but I should have considered that they might issue a temporary stay and let the drama go on another week -- as a prelude toward issuing a ruling that would let the Louisiana anti-abortion law go into effect permanently, though it differs little from the Texas law our Court struck down. I guess I should have figured that Chief Justice Roberts would want to peruse every definite article in a law to make sure it's the "same" law they already struck down.

Finally, there's Kellyanne Conway, the pride of Atco, NJ, saying that if Sen. Booker "were a Republican running against (declared female candidates), they immediately would call him a sexist for running against these women in the Democratic field." Just like we called every single male Republican candidate in 2016 a "sexist" for having the temerity to run against Carly Fiorina? Wait, we didn't do that? Of course we didn't do that. We might have called them sexist because they were being sexist, but not for running against a woman for the nomination. Stupid people need to go away.

Action: concerning health care, redistricting, and surveillance.

Sen. Warren (D-MA) has introduced a bill called the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act (Congress.gov has no bill number as of this writing), which would allow our government to manufacture generic versions of any patented drug. If you call that "socialism," please consider that actual socialism would more likely entail our government manufacturing all the drugs, but Ms. Warren's bill would only allow federal manufacture of generics under certain circumstances, such as absurdly high prices, lack of competition, or shortages, and none of these circumstances are shining examples of free market efficiency, are they? People want our government to protect us from the things that hurt and kill us, and the best our opponents can do is squeal SOSHULIZMZ!!!!! whenever we propose making our government do just that? Thus we should call our Reps and Senators and tell them to support better drug policy by passing the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA helps you tell your state Assemblyfolk to reform the rules by which they consider legislation. We know these rules need reform, because House state Government Committee Chair Daryl Metcalfe (E-12) seemed to spend the entire spring gutting actually-bipartisan redistricting reform bills in 2018 once they got to his committee -- why, one of those bills had the support of more than half of the House, meaning that, well, if it'd come to a vote, it would have passed! I know right-wingers think (and might even say, since these are interesting times!) that Committee heads should have the power to gut bills at will, because what do us little people know about governing? But if, like me, you think "little people" is a disgusting epithet, and if, like me, you think us "little people" actually do know a lot, you'll find arguments for reform more convincing.

Finally, Amazon aims to get a contract from our Pentagon to build a "weapon of unprecedented surveillance and power," called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. (Yes, the acronym of that weapon's name is JEDI, which suggests that its namers have literally no idea what Jedis stood for in the Star Wars films.) JEDI would vastly increase our military's ability to share and sift through surveillance information, using "artificial intelligence," which doesn't impress you if you've found, as I have, that autocorrect incorrectly anticipates what you're about to type nearly 100% of the time. And if you're tempted to say if Amazon doesn't build it, someone else will, recall that Amazon has already collected so, so much data on Americans that it could quite easily correlate with DoD surveillance information. Luckily for us, Amazon employees seem to have some sway within their corporation, so Roots Action helps you tell Amazon employees to pressure their management to bow out of the JEDI bidding.

(Posting has been light for a while, and will remain light until the new year. The main reason for that? I'm putting together another Penny Rants volume for release in mid- to late February. I know what you're saying to yourself: self, didn't he just put out a second Penny Rants volume last month? Why, yes, yes I did -- and soon I'll put out a third one, covering the last two very, very interesting years. So be on the lookout for that, and in the meantime, continue to enjoy the holidays and have a safe and happy new year.)

Around the table: "Where's My Tax Cut?" And other mysteries.

Remember when our Administration claimed that the corporate tax cut alone would give families $4,000 more annually? Get your surprised face ready: wages actually went down from 2018's first quarter to its second quarter, and when you account for inflation, the drop becomes steeper. Wages had been inching up slowly over the Obama years, keeping close to inflation only because inflation was so low, but now wages are dropping back, and stock buybacks are shooting through the roof. You may be old enough to remember when the SEC banned corporate executives from buying back stocks! Anyway: something's trickling down, but it sure ain't wealth.

After the spectacularly unsuccessful effort to prosecute over 200 J20 protestors on felony rioting charges, some of those defendants are preparing to file formal complaints against the Assistant U.S. Attorney who led the prosecution. Well, if you use the legal system to oppress people, as Ms. Kerkhoff did by (among other things!) withholding evidence that hurt her case, you'd better win a lot more than that, since the people you fail to prosecute can use that very same legal system to come after you. But proving prosecutorial misconduct is a high bar -- the judge who sanctioned Ms. Kerkhoff for withholding evidence called her actions "intentional," but wouldn't call them "malevolent." You could argue she was greedy for a successful prosecution, but then you'd have to explain why she overcharged the defendants.

A Yahoo Finance report says that Wall Street "management" of public pensions has cost those pensions at least $600 billion over the last 10 years. That is to say that investing public pensions in index funds -- which merely follow the market -- would have netted $60 billion more annually than banksters investing in hedge funds and the like. And by the way, $60 billion annually is the low end of their estimate! But this story will have a happy ending: in the next round of right-wing hysteria over ZOMG TEH PUBLIC PENSIONZ WILLZ BANKRUPTZ USZ ALLZ!!!!!!!, the role of banksters in losing some $60 billion annually will go unmentioned. (As an aside, I kinda never want to hear banksters talk about the "secret sauce" in their investments again.)

Mike Lux asserts that "left-wing politics can win anywhere in the country," which is true, but blunts that assessment somewhat by suggesting that Democrats should hew close to the wishes of "grassroots leaders," as Republicans do. I mean, yes, Democratic "leadership" is incompetent if not malicious, and the party would benefit from adhering to grassroots leadership in the short term, but it'll become a trap in the long-term if grassroots leaders (versus, you know, grassroots Americans) get all the say about everything. I mean, that's what's happened to Republicans, particularly as their grassroots leaders have become mainstream politicos. (As an aside, I think Mr. Lux really brings home the weight of the Democratic failures of 2009 and 2010 in paragraph 4.)

Finally, Lornet Turnbull at Yes! describes how Buffalo residents are trying to fight gentrification in historically-black neighborhoods: by creating a community land trust, the first of its kind in the city. Land trusts rebuild neighborhoods and keep them affordable for future generations, i.e., keep land out of the hands of developers who only care about money, and who raise rents such that folks who've lived there for generations have to leave. Right-wingers would no doubt call this "socialism" (though there's actually very little government involvement), but I suspect a real conservative would applaud the land trust mechanism because it keeps rapid developmental change from uprooting traditional neighborhoods. In any case, I wish these good Buffalo residents luck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: trillion-dollar deficits, "class warfare," actual socialism, the "liberal" media, and the proper remembrance of things past.

Stan Collender at Forbes says that trillion-dollar deficits will be "the new normal" under President Trump. We suffered four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits under President Obama largely because of a massive economic downturn, but the coming trillion-dollar deficits will result entirely from policy -- specifically the massive tax cuts for rich folks and corporations that Mr. Trump has proposed and Congress's relative distaste for the spending cuts he's also proposed. Naturally, the same right-wingers who squealed over the Obama deficits have nothing to say about the coming Trump deficits. They certainly won't advocate taxing the rich harder.

Another day, another right-wing moron claiming that keeping the top tax rate for millionaire income is "class warfare." It gets better: "we have divided our nation on almost every level: socioeconomic, gender, race, and now we’re going to divide on class and divide on wealth? When is it that we unite on things that we actually could agree on?" By his logic, of course, anti-racists are the real "dividers," not racists, but we could more easily "unite on things that we agree upon" if our political class weren't constantly shoving evil, hateful legislation down our throats.

The incomparable Michael Hudson at Counterpunch describes the real aims of socialism 100 years ago -- to free us from monopolies, landlords, and financial predators -- and measures how far we've fallen in achieving these aims since 1917. So if you called that center-right President Barack Obama a "socialist," or if you tell everyone that America is slip-sliding into socialism and why can't you see it?, then you really ought to read Mr. Hudson's article and then hang your head in shame. Also, the irony of Russia's transformation from failed Communist state to right-wing capitalist state (seriously, a flat tax and a national sales tax?) should not be lost on you.

I'll just let the headline speak for itself: "NYT Laments 'Forever Wars' Its Editorials Helped Create." I mean, thanks for getting on the bandwagon, New York Times, a mere 15 years after nearly everyone I know got sick of yet another war fought on yet another flimsy pretext. Lesson: ignoring your own history isn't a right-wing thing -- it's a thing all of Our Glorious Elites do. And for them it's a matter of survival, for how else could you look yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Finally, Corey Robin reminds us that we shouldn't look at George W. Bush through rose-colored glasses now that Donald Trump is President. Having come through Tha Bush Mobb years alive does, I suppose, lend itself to that temptation -- though those who didn't come through it alive would testify differently! -- but I do confess that I began a lot of sentences with "at least Reagan didn't" back in the day. Of course I now understand that the reason "Reagan didn't" wasn't because he was better, but because destroying the New Deal consensus was a lot like turning around a cruise liner. And I think Tha Bush Mobb years are a little fresher (or, more precisely, ranker) in our minds than that, so hopefully we won't "burnish() the past -- something you can only do because it’s no longer in front of you -- and dehistoriciz(e) the present."

Around the table: featuring health care scare numbers and tax code silliness.

The quite estimable Harold Meyerson likes Sen. Sanders's Medicare-for-All bill because it doesn't try to do everything at once. He makes a compelling argument for extending Medicare to children and workers 49 and over first -- for example, will right-wingers be very successful calling health care for kids "socialism"? Still, as you know, I prefer opening with what I want and then negotiating -- though of course this bill is way less of a pre-emptive compromise than the Affordable Care Act was.

Republicans respond to the release of the Medicare-for-All bill by pretending it would require $32 trillion in new spending. Over 10 years, of course, though nobody ever says that. Problem with that is that we spent $3.4 trillion on health care spending just last year, which projects to $34 trillion over 10 years -- or, if you account for premiums going up, $49 trillion. So the answer to the question WHERE DOEZ HE COMEZ UP WITH TEH MONEYZ!!!!! is "out of the much larger pile of money we're already going to spend."

The incomparable Bruce Schneier informs us that the only solution to big data breaches like the recent Equifax breach is (drumroll, please) government regulation. The "free market," after all, won't fix it: "The companies that collect and sell our data don't need to keep it secure in order to maintain their market share. They don't have to answer to us, their products. They know it's more profitable to save money on security and weather the occasional bout of bad press after a data loss. Yes, we are the ones who suffer when criminals get our data, or when our private information is exposed to the public, but ultimately why should Equifax care?" Particularly when Target, Yahoo!, et al, haven't suffered in the long term. Regulate and punish them and they'll learn through their suffering.

Another day, another analysis (this one from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy) showing us that the Trump tax cut plan would benefit the rich more than working folks. And no it doesn't deliver them bigger cuts because "they make more money"! Just look at the frickin' charts! And it certainly doesn't matter that President Trump himself says his plan won't deliver huge tax cuts to the rich -- it only matters to him that his votaries believe that, and that they scream it in your face when you try to argue with them. (You're not trying to argue with Trump votaries, though, are you? Don't argue with them; just outvote them.)

Finally, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore -- who may soon be the Republican nominee for the Senate seat until recently held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- said back in February that the 9.11 terrorist attack was "divine punishment." For failing to restrain financial predators with tough laws and regulations, no doubt! I kid, of course. But can Mr. Moore be the next Senator from Alabama? Of course he can! He's a Trumphole even if Mr. Trump is officially pulling for his opponent. It'd be nice if the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, runs on his successful prosecution of the last two perps of the 1963 Birmingham bombing that killed four black girls. The national party is no doubt giving him the exact opposite advice as we speak.

Around the table: in which the Democrats put forth a "strong, bold" economic agenda I'm sorry I couldn't get through that without laughing.

Miles Kampf-Lassin at Nation of Change evaluates what Sen. Schumer calls the Democrats' "strong, bold economic agenda," and finds it wanting. The plan's got antitrust enforcement, a $15/hour minimum wage, and paid sick and family leave, but no Medicare-for-All, no universal public college, no renewable energy grid refitting, and no 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, plus they're still plugging that damn retraining tax credit like that's ever been anything but corporate welfare. Also, too, "10 million more jobs over five years" will only run a little ahead of the population entering the workforce during that time, so it's not much of a promise. Remember, folks: don't invest yourself in the damn Democrats; invest yourself in the things you want your Congressfolk to do.

Speaking of corporate welfare, there's President Trump joining Rep. Ryan and Gov. Walker at a big to-do in Wisconsin announcing a new LCD screen-manufacturing plant supposedly to be built in Kenosha, which would create 3,000 jobs averaging $54,000 annually -- but would be financed by corporate welfare to the tune of at least $270,000 per job! Of course, if our state and federal governments were to spend, say, $54,000 on each $54,000/year job they created, Messrs. Trump, Ryan and Walker (who is, as you know, the King of Corporate Welfare) would call it SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!!! (Also, too, when you read the article, you'll find out that just about none of the promises made add up -- and that Foxconn, previously notorious for worker suicides at its Chinese plants, has walked out of deals like this before.)

The incomparable David Dayen tells us where a state-wide single-payer health insurance system could actually begin -- in Maryland, where many factors that would help establish a single-payer system (key among them being a) the relative absence of restrictive budgeting rules and b) the ability to level off hospital reimbursement rates) already exist. The Democratic front-runner for the 2018 gubernatorial race is a single-payer advocate, too, though we saw how that played out in Vermont. But then again, we can make things happen -- which is the only thing we should count on, since we're counting on ourselves.

Ho hum, major "liberal" media organs haven't critically investigated Amazon or its owner, newest-richest-man-ever Jeff Bezos, in nearly two years. This is despite (because of?) the fact that Mr. Bezos now owns the Washington Post (which has, I grant, surprised me at times since he took over). It's also despite the fact that close to one out of every two dollars spent online goes through Amazon, and that Amazon seeks to leverage its monopoly power in online commerce to get monopoly power in every other market eventually. I mean, no one thinks (in the absence of strong antitrust regulations) that Mr. Bezos will simply decide one day that he has enough money.

Finally, after the failure of the Republicans' latest (but surely not last!) health care "reform" effort, Fox and Friends's Brian Kilmeade bemoaned the fact that "the healthy people are paying for the sick people." Ugh, one more time: that's how insurance works -- and it's illogical to divide people into "healthy" and "sick," since anyone can be either healthy or sick at any time. And boy the Fox and Friends prettyheads sure complained a lot about Democrats celebrating the Republicans' failure. I wonder how they felt about the Republicans celebrating the passage of the House bill.

Action: net neutrality, and pregnant workers.

The FCC, as you know, voted late last week to begin the process of dismantling that agency's 2015 Open Internet Order, despite receiving almost six in 10 pro-Internet Order comments -- a number that jumps to 96 out of 100 when you discard, as you should, the "spam" comments signed by folks who had their private information stolen in a data breach. The FCC's vote begins a new public comment period, so The Consumerist helps you leave your public comment with the FCC about the 2015 Open Internet Order, which enthroned net neutrality as a legal principle. You know what the FCC did in its 2015 Open Internet Order: it used authority granted to it by Congress in law to reclassify broadband internet as a "common carrier," thus giving it the legal authority to regulate traffic over the internet. And the Open Internet Order does not, for example, make ISPs prioritize pro-government internet content over any other kind -- all it does is prevent internet service corporations from giving special treatment to some kinds of internet traffic. But if the new FCC Chair's plans gets his way, your ISP will be able to control where you can go and what you can see on the internet. Imagine having to watch some cable news jerkwads yell at each other before visiting your favorite political blog! It offends the civilized mind.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2417/S. 1101, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act -- which we've seen before in previous Congresses, shame Republicans acted like this guy and wouldn't let it come to a vote -- would, among other things, ensure that employers make "reasonable accommodations" to pregnant workers, and would prevent employers from denying jobs to pregnant folks just because they're pregnant. That latter item is especially important, for when do you need a job, money, and health insurance (since you usually get that through your job in America) more than when you're with child? What did Republicans have against this bill? You know, the usual: BIG GUMMINT HANDOUT OBAMA SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!! Today they might drop the "NAZISM" from their lazy Susan of complaints, but still, they've got nothing that would constitute a cogent argument. Not ZOMG WHAT IF WE HAVE TO HIRE ONLY TEH PREGGERS!!!!! The bill doesn't say that. And certainly not ZOMG TEH PREGGERZ WILL BE IN TEH BATHROOMZ ALL TEH DAYZ!!!! The bill doesn't say that, either -- recall the phrase "reasonable accommodations"; pregnant women use the bathroom more than you or I do, for reasons you might easily imagine, but they don't need the toilet moved from the bathroom to their desk. So both Moms Rising and the National Women's Law Center help you tell your Congressfolk to support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Around the table: where the *real* "purity tests" come from, and other lessons.

Michael Hiltzik takes us in the wayback machine to a time when "Anti-Communist Hysteria Almost Destroyed the University of California." Long story short: UC's institution of a loyalty oath in the early 1950s drove a lot of its faculty away -- a few by choice, 30 more by firing after refusing to take the oath. At least the U.S. Supreme Court ordered them reinstated two years later; today you can more easily imagine a Justice Roberts combing through arcanities to excuse inaction, or a Justice Gorsuch openly wondering why Big Gummint should have to do anything about anything.

From Noelle Sullivan at TruthOut we're reminded of another reason U.S. health care prices are so jacked up: "the cost of health care itself." When you get to the part where "there are many other ailments that companies won't fund research for, specifically because these ailments aren't good investments," you'll be reminded of the scientist who said we'd already have an ebola vaccine if anyone thought they could make money from it. It's really not "Communism" or "socialism" to say that we shouldn't leave health care up to the "free" market. I'm happy to leave the movie industry up to the "free" market, after all.

Surprise, surprise, President Trump has appointed a bankster lawyer to head up the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (or OCC), which has the power to pre-empt state laws curbing bankster misbehavior. You know, like charging onerous ATM fees, which states often legislate against more quickly than our federal government does. And if a state passes a law about a matter our federal government doesn't address, and that law doesn't abridge our Constitutional rights, why does our federal government get to nullify it? Does that sound particularly conservative? And more to the point, why do we even have national banks again?

This is a generally good article about the rise of "the Resistance" and the Democratic Party's own resistance to that resistance -- particularly when Jeet Heer points out that "the Resistance" is born not just of anger but abandonment, and abandonment by Democrats -- but I've got a bone to pick with paragraph 26, which blithely assumes that Bernie Sanders applied an "ideological litmus test" to Jon Ossoff and thus "threatened 'to create divisions where none previously existed.'" The party of "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" applies an ideological litmus test to the rest of us all the time, mostly by declaring their pet center-right candidates the only "electable" ones, and if Mr. Heer really thinks no "divisions" "existed" before then, then he didn't read his own article.

Two more things about the story where Rep. Frelinghuysen outed a protestor as an executive at one of his big donor's banks: where does he get off in paragraph nine suggesting that people protesting Republican policies are "ma(king) it difficult for us to meet our constituent needs"? The agenda we're protesting makes it difficult for him to meet his constituents' needs! And where does he get off suggesting that "highly orchestrated" speech somehow isn't free speech? He said exactly the same thing about the Tea Party, right? (And no, "I'm not suggesting people don't have a right to speak" doesn't get you off the hook right after you suggest people don't have a right to speak. That's not how argument works. That is, however, how lying works.)

Action: health care, and endangered species.

Republicans are making noises about giving Obamacare repeal another go, but why should we wait for that? Why should we let them dictate what we talk about in America, what solutions we pursue in America? Why shouldn't we, for example, use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to find our Reps' and Senators' phone numbers, so we can call them and tell them to support single-payer, Medicare-for-All health insurance? Single-payer is the clear preference of the American people in poll after poll, and the handful of people who call it "socialism" a) are wrong, and b) don't get all the say around here. I say they're wrong to call it socialism because in a single-payer system, doctors and hospitals remain private; they simply deal with one payer (i.e., our government), rather than deal with multiple payers (i.e., multiple private health insurance corporations and public organs like Medicaid and Medicare). Remember, also: our government belongs to us, and Republicans talk about it like it's some foreign thing over which we have no control in the hope that we'll actually believe we have no control. Their hope is vain.

Meanwhile, WildEarth Guardians helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject efforts to gut the Endangered Species Act. Particularly in the name of "reform," which is how they always do it -- I mean, no Congressperson is going to get up before the cameras and the crowds to say we need to gut the Endangered Species Act! No, they'll say they need to reform it, and suggest that it's supposed to (for example) let mining corporations and oil and gas drilling corporations and logging corporations befoul whatever they like. The ESA already accommodates such corporations enough, and if the grizzly bear goes extinct, it'll be gone forever -- no Jurassic Park-style preservation-in-amber will bring it back. And then when some fossil fuel corporation makes fuel out of their habitat, that fuel will soon be used up and gone forever, too -- except that we'll still be dealing with the emissions it created. That sounds like a lose-lose-lose proposition to me, though perhaps not to some CEO. Luckily, Americans are, by and large, far more concerned about what we pass on to our descendants than our Congressfolk are, so we just have to get them in line.

Around the table: public banking, religious oppression, immigration reform, Presidential cowardice, and armchair diagnoses.

The incomparable David Dayen, writing at In These Times, describes growing activism on behalf of the creation of "public banks," which "would leverage tax revenue to make low-interest loans for local public works projects, small businesses, affordable housing and student loans, spurring economic growth while saving people -- and the government -- money." Don't believe bankster hype that this would be "socialism" (Tea Partiers and Occupiers both seem to love it, and the one thriving public bank in America is the Bank of North Dakota), and certainly don't believe bankster hype that public banks would "risk" taxpayers' money -- you know, like banksters already do with taxpayers' money whenever a "public/private partnership" forms.

The Russian supreme court bans Jehovah's Witnesses from operating there. Because, apparently, they're "extremists" -- or, more precisely, because they showed "signs" of extremist activity, the word "signs" emanating from the Russian Justice Ministry's own mouthpiece. In case you were wondering, Russia's bottomless hatred of Jehovah's Witnesses has been going on for decades -- Communist Russia hated all religions, but really had it in for the Witnesses; now contemporary gangster-capitalist Russia likes the big orthodox religions, but really has it in for the Witnesses. I wouldn't blame you if that didn't seem a whole lot like progress to you.

Executive Orders or not, I don't particularly think President Trump would really reform the H-1B visa program, but the Economic Policy Institute reminds us that the H-1B program needs reforming. Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and Sanders (I-VT) tried a decade ago to prevent corporations that had recently laid off workers from filing H-1B requests, and good for them, because it ain't racist to point out that corporations use H-1B visas to drive wages down for all Americans. I don't think Mr. Trump really has this in mind, though I would be happy to be wrong about that.

Trump Administration moves civil servant off her current assignment after right-wing news outlets whine about her "loyalty" to Mr. Trump. Turns out Ms. Nowrouzzadeh helped work on the Iran nuclear deal, and I'm sure opposition coming from outlets like Breitbart has nothing at all to do with her Iranian ancestry. How nice to see right-wing media outlets acting just as badly in Republican times as they do in Democrat times. And what did President Big Balls do? Bow to them, just like Mr. Obama used to. How about we stop enabling the whining brats, you know, like adults would do?

Finally, several psychiatrists at a Yale University conference warn that President Trump has a "dangerous mental illness" and is unfit to be President. I've long said that Mr. Trump isn't crazy, he's just a jerk, and these folks haven't changed my mind -- none of them have actually put Mr. Trump into analysis, and yet of course they say there's "too much at stake" to remain silent. Then call him a jerk! Making him into a mental patient not only insults the folks who struggle with mental illnesses, it doesn't help us deal with him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: good Americans doing good works -- and the whiners and fools who try to hold us back.

Crowd numbers for Saturday Women's March in multiple cities well eclipse turnout for Mr. Trump's inauguration. You know organizers tend to overestimate turnout and police tend to underestimate it, but the D.C. Metro system reports that more than three times as many folks rode the subway by 11 am on Saturday than on Friday, the day Mr. Trump ascended to the Presidency. As this was happening, new press secretary Sean Spicer said the media manipulated photos to make inaugural turnout look worse than it was, because when the going gets tough, the Trump team whines. Mr. Trump got 46% of the vote, folks, and he struts around like he got 66%, then whines like he got 26%. But we have the power to make this a long four years for him, which is a lot better than vice versa.

Of course, before that, "liberal" media commentators were wringing their hands over Rep. Lewis boycotting the inauguration and questioning the "legitimacy" of the President. Of course, they don't criticizing Mr. Lewis to silence him -- they do it to silence you, so you "accept the results" and keep your mouth shut. Accepting the results does not impel you to keep your mouth shut, of course, even though the "liberal" media seems to think it does. (Read the whole article, of course, lest you miss another imploding Jonah Goldberg argument and speculation about whether Republicans might one day use "guerilla tactics" against a Democratic President, as if that isn't what they just did for eight long years.)

House Speaker Paul Ryan goes on Charlie Rose's show to say that he'd like to replace the Affordable Care Act's "subsidies" with "refundable tax credits," which are the same damn thing. I guess he'll go on to replace "houses" with "dwellings," "money" with "cash," and "food" with "sustenance." You know what's even worse than Democrats who are so smart they're dumb? Republicans who do badly even trying to convince you they're smart. Of course, Mr. Ryan would also make his health insurance subsidies far worse -- he would give almost everyone the same subsidy, regardless of income level, when any deaf, dumb, and blind infant knows that folks who make less money need bigger subsidies.

Behold! Right Wing Watch presents "10 Right-Wing Predictions About Obama that Never Came True." Didn't take your guns, didn't kill his critics, didn't impose Sharia law, didn't scheme to stay in office, and you know what's missing from their list? Didn't bring Godless socialism to America. So, will there be any, you know, shame coming from these right-wing prognosticators? Of course not -- they think shame is for losers, and their new President feels their self-pity.

Finally, Yes! magazine continues to explore "creative ways Americans are stepping up to build strong local economies." You'll meet the Oakland, CA, citizens who organized to ensure that the redevelopment of a long-gone Army base meet created good jobs for locals, the Nebraska ranchers who joined with environmental and tribal groups to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from running through their lands, the Goffstown, NH residents who banded together to buy the mobile home park that was threatening rent hikes and evictions, the Buffalo, NY residents who helped convert run-down buildings into energy-efficient housing, the South Carolina community development corporation that helped residents get good housing, and the good folks of West Virginia who evoked that state's coal-rich past by building museums. Moral: a lot of Americans have a lot of good ideas, and don't need to wait for some politician to "lead" them.

Around the table: big worries, little victories.

Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic tries to explain "How American Politics Went Insane" -- but diagnoses the problem mainly in reformers' efforts to make elections more accountable to the people! Nowhere does he analyze the distorting influence of corporate power in campaign financing, which would explain this "insanity" far better than would the gradual disappearance of smoke-filled rooms and Congressional staffers. And he sure goes a long way -- blaming democracy, reform, and transparency for all our current ills, even claiming we have a "crisis of followership" (among Congressfolk, he takes pains to say, but I think you get his drift) and suggesting hatred of politicians is a form of bigotry -- to avoid considering whether the problem is just that our leaders are utterly horrible. (Hate to pile on, but comparing the Working Families Party with the Tea Party, when only the latter has millions of dollars in corporate money backing it? That is to laugh.)

John Feffer at The Nation warns that "Donald Trump Isn't the Presidential Candidate We Should Be Worried About" -- that "the smarter, more capable neo-fascist politician who will rise in his wake" is the real worry. I appreciate the reminder that things could always get worse, and that the leader who would actually enact, say, a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. will speak a lot more softly and might even wear glasses. But yes, we should still worry about Donald Trump. Only two kinds of candidates have won Presidential elections since 1976 -- incumbents and candidates who could sell themselves as outsiders. Guess which one Donald Trump is. (I wish I could devote more space to Mr. Feffer's analysis of young/hip/urban "America A" and older/left behind "America B," which maps pretty well onto Thomas Frank's recent writings excoriating Democrat power-brokers as out-of-touch white-collar technocrats.)

Jeremy Corbyn refuses to resign as leader of Britain's Labour Party after a truly lopsided vote of no confidence among Labour MPs. Which doesn't convince me that Mr. Corbyn played possum in "not supporting the 'Remain' campaign vigorously enough," whatever that could mean (maybe they wanted him to tattoo "Remain" across his chest?), not does it convince me that he won't be just-like-all-the-others if he ever becomes Prime Minister. Mainly, it reminds me how far right the Labour party has lurched. They pretty much shot their center-right wad with Messrs. Blair and Brown; what techie-sounding-but-not-at-all-socialist economic ideas do they think would help them regain power from the Conservatives?

Not all the news is bad: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards issues Executive Order aiming to reform certain property tax abatement processes in the state. Every time I hear that Philly schools don't have money, I say "maybe the city should stop handing out 10-year property tax abatements like candy, then!" Certainly handing out property-tax abatements to corporations that don't actually use them to create jobs is a horrible idea, if not an irredeemably corrupt one, and making municipalities and parishes actually pass resolutions approving such projects (which allows for the possibility of citizen involvement, and that's no small thing) is an improvement.

Finally, the Missouri Department of Transportation plans to put solar pavers on a stretch of Route 66 by year's end. I don't know how successful they'll be -- the Missouri Governor's office will likely change parties in November, and the Transportation Department plans to crowdfund their installation. In a sane and moral society, we'd be paying for something like this with our taxes, versus all the non-job-creating corporate welfare we wind up paying for with our taxes. Still, I wish Missouri the best in its efforts.

Around the table: some excellent reading on actual populism, plus bonus problems with Texit.

In an extraordinary article I expect will be rewarding re-reading, Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman offer "10 New/Old Ideas to Give Power Back to the People." They remind us that populism doesn't equal racism or socialism, but actually has a long history of giving people more power over their lives, and real populism has always located "free markets" within free peoples, not free corporations. And, as we've lately been reminded, Our Glorious Elites want you to think you're their hostage -- there's No Alternative but low taxes on the rich, No Alternative but high college tuition and health care costs, No Alternative but a life lived in crushing debt, No Alternative but to stay in the EU so it can hamstring your ability to resuscitate your economy on your own (right, Greece?).

U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, strikes down Texas's notorious anti-abortion laws that have forced the closure of more than half the state's abortion clinics. Texas said that forcing abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and requiring abortion clinics to meet ambulatory surgical center safety standards "protected women's health"; the Court responded that abortion is actually a safe enough procedure that these standards aren't actually necessary to protect women's health -- they only reduce their access to abortion, which, I feel compelled to state again, is a legal medical procedure.

University officials have apparently begun to complain that the Department of Labor's new overtime rules are driving up tuition rates. That's some cojones, right there, when anyone who thinks about it knows that tuitions are going up-up-up because colleges overpay their executives and are top-heavy with administrators. It also helps to know, though, that most college employees (you know, like the ones who teach!) would be exempt from the Department of Labor's rules, or that tuition has been going up-up-up as overtime protections have eroded over the last 35-plus years.

Baltimore City Council may vote on a $15/hour minimum wage by summer's end. They'd phase in the hike by 2020 (so stop yer whining about how hard it'll hit small businesses, right-wingers!), and they'd also index the wage to inflation and end the much lower tipped workers' minimum wage, which will not destroy the restaurant business no matter how many waiters you can find who'll agree that it does. America is a big place, so of course sooner or later you'll find a waiter who thinks he's paid too much; the question is why that voice should be the only one on TV, or why it should carry more weight than the reams of data showing that the minimum wage helps working families. OK, it's not a "question" per se.

Finally, Atrios comes up with a bunch more problems Texas would have if it seceded from the United States. I hadn't thought of closing military bases or tariffs, but the most fascinating issue he brings up concerns Social Security. I'd figure that, after secession, individual Texans could sue the U.S. government to be made whole on what they've put into Social Security -- but I suspect that Texas and the U.S. would instead come to an agreement "on the behalf of the people of Texas" where the Texas government would get to collect all that money in a sort of block grant, which they'd then use to plug budget holes and hand out corporate welfare, neither of which would strike me as something that would benefit Texans or make them whole.

Around the table: Donald Trump abandons his anti-"free" trade position, and other really, really big surprises.

American Friends Service Committee issues report finding that the "liberal" media has displayed (in TruthOut writer Mike Ludwig's words) "a pervasive tendency toward painting violent extremism as an inherently Islamic problem that is only solvable with the use of force." And surprise! The right-wing news sources were little worse than the others -- which must be at least partly because the others try to ape the right-wing sources. The best trick the "liberal" media pulls off? "AFSC found that 57 percent of news items characterized extremists to be psychotic, bloodthirsty and "irrational," but 61 percent of news items described just how "rational" these actors can be." Even the overlap between the two was more than 20 percent of news items. Nice work if you can get it!

Ruth Graham, writing at Slate, wonders if the "Christian left" can become "a real political force." Short answer: it already has been, all through American history, so why not now? Slightly longer answer: zeal may be "the missing ingredient" for liberal Christians, and given all the sins the right has committed with their zeal over the last few decades, it's easy to see why. But it's not devotion's fault devotion has a bad name to so many liberals. (To be fair: many liberals, having received undergraduate training, are loath to declare evil things "evil." Yeah, I know my Saussure, too, but the time for justice is always now, and our enemies really are evil.)

Mike Konczal steps up to remind us that when corporations become monopolies, the state needs to step in. And not just to break up monopolies, either, but to regulate markets as public utilities, just as the FCC has done with telecom corporations in its net neutrality rules. "Rather than tinkering with market incentives," he writes about public-utility regulation, "the state declares that businesses must adhere to certain principles of access, innovation, and fairness." I'm old enough to remember when conservatives used to insist on government action to ensure access, innovation, and fairness, but now right-wingers call all that "socialism," because the TV told them to.

In case you thought everyone had boarded the train away from "tough on crime" law-making, here comes Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) to tell us that he thinks we're not locking up enough people. Of course, he can't advance an argument without accidentally blowing it up -- "(l)aw enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes" is just as much an argument that things like mandatory minimums don't work. And, ah, saying don't reform mandatory minimums or else crime'll go up? I call that a hostage situation, and we don't do hostage situations in America.

Finally, note well that Donald Trump has now wavered in his opposition to "free" trade agreements. "I’m a free trader, but I’m only a free trader if we make good deals" is a nonsensical statement -- "free" trade deals, by definition, override our laws and outsource our jobs, and thus, by definition, are never good for America. Saying he could support "free" trade deals if they're adequately byootiful and yuge should finish off any notion that he'll be any different from any other Republican once in office -- watch him declare the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" one of the "good" "free" trade deals come November.

Around the table: the "secret shame" of Americans, and other stories.

Neal Gabler, writing in The Atlantic, informs us that nearly half of all Americans literally cannot come up with $400 in a crisis. Mr. Gabler's own story of living hand-to-mouth will no doubt seem sadly familiar, and if you're thinking maybe the problem is that folks have money tied up in other things that are hard to convert to hard cash, well, no -- net worth has been declining since (guess when?) the mid-1980s. There's a lot more to the article than this, but let me just add that this is yet another reason Voter ID laws are such a bad idea -- folks who never had the necessary paperwork, or who lose the paperwork, are very likely not going to be able to come up with the cash to fix it.

Spencer Ackerman, writing at The Guardian, reports on the lives of six families who had a family member killed by American drones. They say "the strike lasts a moment and the consequences last a lifetime," in Mr. Ackerman's words, and most of them don't even know who the target really was -- after all, drones kill a lot of civilians. A victim who nearly lost his left leg to a drone strike says "(y)ou're worse off injured than being dead," and folks rarely even get financial reparations for the damage done. Incredibly, not everyone chooses hatred, which gives me hope. But, ah, what terror do these drone strikes help avert again?

Ho hum, University of Washington study finds very little evidence of price hikes in Seattle due to that city's $15/hour minimum wage hike. They did find a lot of business owners who fretted about having to raise prices, and a good amount of low-income workers who didn't think the wage hike would do very much for them. Still, TEH HIGH PRICEZ ARE TEH INEVITABULZ!!!!! is yet another right-wing "common sense" notion that seems to get beaten up a lot by reality.

David Corn, writing at Mother Jones, also thinks Bernie Sanders's relatively good performance in polls against Republicans won't continue once Republicans start pummeling him with the "socialist" hammer. Maybe he's right, but Republicans called the center-right President Obama a "socialist" for so long that folks might be tired of hearing it. Also, if I'm Bernie Sanders, this is the conversation I want to have -- if socialism is such a bad thing, how come I draw crowds of 20,000+ wherever I go? How come so many independents and Republicans support me? I also hope he has the sense to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, and say red-baiting is the last refuge of the scoundrel who's lost every other argument.

Finally, former Sen. Harris Wofford writes about his upcoming marriage to a man. 90-year-old Mr. Wofford survived his wife of 48 years, his "best friend" and "best critic," then years later met his future husband while swimming alone in the Ft. Lauderdale surf, and if you're familiar with the notion that folks' sexuality can change as they get older, you won't find that surprising. "(M)atrimony is not based on anyone’s sexual nature, choices or dreams," he tells us. "It is based on love." Good for him for finding it again.

Around the table: Bernie Sanders makes them shake in their boots.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) comes out against the recently-signed Trans-Pacific "Partnership."This seems jaw-dropping, until you remember that Mr. Portman is up in 2016, in a state that hates "free" trade with a vengeance, and until you realize his problems with the TPP aren't fundamental. Still, a representative's job is, you know, to represent, though it'd be nice if he'd say it's what his constituents want him to do. I'd certainly hate to see him get re-elected and then vote "aye" in late November.

Matt Gardner, writing at Tax Justice Blog, reminds us that all that money American corporations say they make from their Cayman Islands subsidiaries doesn't exactly flow through the local economy. Indeed, American corporations pretend to earn 17 times the size of the entire economy of the Cayman Islands. Remember that when they tell you corporations need to move overseas to create jobs here. I know, it sounds nonsensical, but when has that ever stopped Our Glorious Elites?

On that note: dig the word salad Goldman-Sachs chair Lloyd Blankfein spews forth about the prospect of a Bernie Sanders candidacy. The only thing "dangerous" about Bernie Sanders is that though he'll go farther than any of the other candidates to bring the banksters to heel, he won't go far enough. And if Mr. Blankfein can't put a coherent sentence together, how can he claim to have earned his money? (No, the answer is not "he can pay someone else to put coherent sentences together." By the evidence, whomever he might be paying to do that makes too much.)

Some "establishment" Democrats start talking nasty about the prospect of a Bernie Sanders Presidency. But we can safely ignore folks like "free"-trade lover Gerry Connally and leading-his-district-from-behind Scott Peters and Claire McCaskill-who's-toast-in-2018, since they think their constituents all want Democrats to be like Republicans without actually dragging their knuckles on the ground. I think Bernie Sanders will resonate with a lot of conservatives and independents -- just not the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" and who have public swordfights about who's "more conservative." (And, ah, attacking Mr. Sanders "with a hammer and sickle" may not be as effective as Ms. McCaskill thinks. It might be that, after watching Republicans go after Mr. Obama with a hammer and sickle for eight years, voters might be tired of it.)

President Obama, rather surprisingly proposes a $10/barrel tax on oil in his upcoming budget, and several Republicans do Jeff George Victory Laps while proclaiming the proposal "dead on arrival." Again: it's only "dead on arrival" if we say and do nothing. It's not a perfect proposal, frankly (I've never been a big fan of dedicating single revenue streams to single purposes, even to a purpose as nobel as rebuilding our transportation infrastructure along more renewable lines), but I will pass along any action alerts I get about it.

Finally, Marco Rubio criticizes President Obama for going to a mosque, blissfully unaware that Mr. Bush did the same thing not six days after 9.11. But you see, it was different when Mr. Bush did it, because he was not Barack Obama, who apparently does something divisive merely by getting out of the shower in the morning. ("Did you see the way he planted his feet? Thinks he's so much better than us.")

Around the table: includes tales of the "sensible center" and "politically incorrect" jerks.

Uh oh: another small town gets caught going "nothing to see here!" about lead in its water. Sebring, OH officials apparently didn't notify citizens of the problem even though the state EPA had been telling them to do so for at least two months. Water Superintendent James Bates looks like he's going to be the fall guy here -- though even the state EPA head says the agency should have pressed the matter a little more urgently, which may not be good news for the Republicans' New Establishment Hope, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

File under "Symmetry Does Not Equal Fairness": Jim Naureckas at FAIR finds the Chicago Tribune warning about extremism "from both sides" in the Presidential race, alienating the "sensible center." I mean, sure, Donald Trump is a racist and Ted Cruz an aspiring mass-murderer, but heaven forbid we vote for a socialist like Bernie Sanders! Besides, I thought America already chose "socialism" when it elected Barack Obama twice. I mean, the "liberal" media broadcast accusations of his "socialism" pretty uncritically for years. Or don't words mean things anymore?

Two former Disney workers sue both their former employer and two corporations that specialize in outsourcing, claiming that they unlawfully lost their jobs to foreign workers on temporary H-1B visas. H-1B visas are for foreign workers with "special skills," but a) at least one plaintiff got high marks for his job performance and b) both plaintiffs trained their replacements, and neither of these facts testifies to the specialness of those foreign workers' skills. And make no mistake, both the American workers and the foreign workers who replace them get played by corporate executives here.

Chris Matthews wonders, out loud, on his MSNBC show Hardball, who's going to watch tonight's Trump-free Republican Presidential debate if it's just "the two Cuban guys." Why does he bring up their racial heritage, unprompted? He does not say. But this is the same Chris Matthews who long ago buttressed his apology for saying mean/sexist things about Hillary Clinton by saying "I don't like saying things so carefully, so politically correctly, that no one thinks they even said anything." But a lot of times, when folks think they're being "blunt" or "bold" or "politically incorrect," they're just being assholes.

Finally, former major league closer/loud-mouthed racist John Rocker has endorsed Donald Trump for President. "I've always wanted to see the person that’s like, 'Yeah, I’ve made these comments, these are my beliefs, and you know what, if you don’t like it stick it. I'm not apologizing, I’m not changing,'" he says, forgetting that a President's job is executing the will of the people, not telling people to "stick it" when they disagree with him. Mr. Rocker, who last pitched for Tampa Bay in 2003 (two games, one inning, eight batters faced, three walks, no strikeouts, 9.00 ERA), now charges more for an autograph if he puts a curse word in it. Donald Trump really brings out the best in all of us.

Action: government spying in France, forced labor in Uzbekistan, and chemical safety in the U.S.

France is considering a bill that would give its secret service (the DGSE) the same sort of government spying capabilities our NSA has -- spying on phone calls and vacuuming up data without warrants, with very limited independent oversight on how it's using its powers. Because all that's worked out so well, and has been popular with so many people! Keep in mind, when considering the madness the French Parliament contemplates here, that we're still the only nation with a First Amendment guarantee that the government can't put you in jail merely because you spoke out against it. As a result, citizens of other nations are more likely than we are to consider free speech as something that ought to have "sensible" limits (besides the obvious limits on libel, slander, and terroristic threats), and that opens the door a bit wider for government spying initiatives like this one. But if our great gift to the world is our democracy, then we have a duty to weigh in on what the French government plans to do. Hence Access Now helps you tell the French Senate to reject the surveillance bill passed by the French National Assembly.

Meanwhile, Uzbekistan continues to force many of its citizens into labor every October in that nation's cotton fields, for little or not pay and for the monetary reward of that government's corporate cronies. (Personal to right-wingers constantly squealing about our "socialist" President: this is what a state-run economy looks like.) Worse, the World Bank invests hundreds of millions of dollars into agricultural projects in Uzbekistan, which helps prop up the slave labor regime. And Uzbekistan is the world's fifth-leading cotton exporter, so Uzbek cotton could wind up in your clothes. The World Bank has said it'll withdraw from Uzbekistan if it discovers evidence of slave labor there, but it might not be all that motivated to look hard for it. Hence the International Labor Rights Forum helps you tell the World Bank to investigate the matter vigorously. Let's at least put them in the position of falling back on the old but if we leave, we won't be able to effect change there argument -- which you no doubt recognize by now is a hostage situation.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Consumer Product Safety Commission (or CPSC) to ban flame-retardants in household furniture, then Friends of the Earth still helps you do that. I expect you know the long-story-short by now -- flame retardants don't particularly retard fires even as well as their name would suggest, and they typically contain toxic chemicals scientists have found cause brain-development issues in children, as well as cancer and reproductive issues in everyone. And when furniture with flame retardants does catch fire, it releases toxic fumes and smoke, which makes them harder to contain and thus puts firefighters at more risk. (Yes, firefighting is not a risk-free job, but there's no point in making it riskier if we can avoid doing so.) Deadline for comments to the CPSC is October 19, and we shouldn't expect positive action from Congress (which is still poised to pass a bad chemical safety "reform" bill they had the cojones to name after Frank Lautenberg), so now is the time to get cracking.

Action: clean government budgeting, help for underwater homeowners, and "banning the box" for federal contractors.

Congress is back to work this week (please take a moment to boo), and naturally they haven't finished spending bills yet, so Public Citizen still helps you tell House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to pass clean budget legislation, without the nefarious policy riders that would wither and die if exposed to sunlight. Politicians frequently treat "must-pass" appropriations bills as a means to pass riders defunding climate change efforts or financial regulation efforts or campaign finance efforts (to name three of Mr. McConnell's pet projects). If Congress tried to pass legislation doing these things on their own, they run the risk of exposing their heartlessness, and they might even lose their jobs next November. But use a must-pass bill as a hostage and you can strap all kinds of bombs to it, and our President too often compromises with hostage-takers so he can look like he's governing. I don't care about looking like I'm governing; I only care about good government, so I'll keep agitating against nefarious legislative aims, and I hope you will, too.

Meanwhile, seven years after Wall Street banksters took a massive crap all over our economy and put millions of families underwater on their mortgages, our government -- you know, that "socialist" government that hands out everything to everybody all the time -- has done just about nothing to help those underwater homeowners. Even the filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority couldn't get a simple majority of Senators to support a bill allowing good Americans to renegotiate their mortgages in court -- this, even though our law currently allows people to do that with their second homes. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency (or FHFA) has the authority to help borrowers reduce their principal, and now that Edward DeMarco is gone as FHFA head, they really have no excuse. (Mr. DeMarco considered principal reduction a "moral hazard" -- always blind to the moral hazards of letting banks do what they like and then protecting them from the consequences of their actions, his kind are!) So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell the FHFA to use its power to help underwater homeowners.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to issue an executive order forbidding federal contractors from asking job applicants if they've ever been in jail, then Color of Change still helps you do that. If the prospect of having co-workers who've been in jail skeeves you out a bit, consider that said folks have already paid the price society demanded of them, and it would be unlawful to keep making them pay, or to let employers keep making them pay. If their families want to keep making them pay -- in lawful ways, such as ostracizing them -- that's their affair. But allowing employers to discriminate as a way to keep punishing them for their crimes? That's not their job. And it also greatly increases the possibility that those folks who just got out of jail will go back to jail, since having a job is, I've found, a very good way of avoiding the sorts of temptation that land you back in jail. Of course, our private prison-industrial complex likes people who wind up back in jail -- and if they're black, they probably call that a bonus! But civilized people don't feel that way.

Around the table: "Courageous" news flackery, mercy for Corinthian students, a bad ag-gag law, Scott Walker's lousy job-creation record part 228, and another moron morons it up on Twitter.

CNN is not only starting up its own PR hackery shop, it's calling it "Courageous." No, this is not an Onion article -- "Courageous" (and I suspect I'll always put that in quotation marks) will deliver "news-like content on behalf of advertisers," but they promise they'll be "clearly labeling that and differentiating that." Remember back in 1996, when Roger Ailes promised everyone Fox News wouldn't be a right-wing news outlet just because a guy like him helped create it? Then you already know how much that promise means.

Excellent news: the Department of Education, after much pressure from good citizens like you, has decided to expand debt forgiveness to Corinthian students. Corinthian, you recall, is the for-profit college chain that folded in April after DOE assessed record fines. Personal to those who screech ZOMG TEH TAXPAYERS HAZ TO PAYZ FOR TEH LOANS!!!: where were you when our government gave out these loans? Cheering them on, probably -- or calling the Obama Administration's modest efforts at reforming federal student loan programs "socialism." No, I don't think I'm exaggerating about that.

North Carolina's reactionary state legislature overrides a Pat McCrory veto of an ag-gag law Vice suggests might be "the worst in the nation." That's right, it was too tough a pill even for Mr. McCrory, arguably the most reactionary Governor in America and that's saying something, to swallow. If the legislature wants to know why folks can't just go to the police when they see something (hint: because the law they wrote cites "duty of loyalty to the employer" as if that means a damn), then I want to know why existing laws against theft don't protect corporations from "espionage."

Ho hum, Scott Walker's Wisconsin also ranks dead last among U.S. states in "business start-up activity," which is exactly the sort of thing a man trying to sell his competence would hang his hat on. Here's what happens next: a) Scott Walker blames Obama, though the nation's economy as a whole is doing better than Wisconsin's; b) Scott Walker laughs and says his critics are always out to get him (even if these critics now include the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation), and c) if the "liberal" media gets up the nerve to report it (once they're done fellating him for riding a Harley in Iowa), he'll complain about how campaigns are so "negative." How to avoid negativity: don't do evil.

Finally, Minnesota native/abject moron posts, to Barack Obama's new Twitter account, an image of the famous "Hope" photo with a noose around Mr. Obama's neck. Then, naturally, he suggests it's everyone else's fault that they didn't understand he was really complaining about Mr. Obama's "communism" -- because, as we know, hanging Communists is a much more vivid image from American history than hanging black folks. Several quite justified Secret Service visits and at least one job loss later, it pleases me to note that we will never have to speak of Jeff Gullickson again.

Around the table: changing history on Iraq, small businesses, the popularity of socialism, voter suppression, and Hillary Clinton meets the press.

Pat Robertson now suggests he sorta always knew the Iraq war was "a big mistake" -- even though he told folks at the time the war was "on solid ground...in terms of Christian, biblical concepts" and later suggested war opponents were traitors. The right is having so much trouble dealing with their sins in the Iraq war that some of them have resorted to rewriting history! Those of us who knew all along the case for war with Iraq was BS -- many of whom were actual conservatives, not fake ones like Mr. Robertson -- can sleep better at night, not having to fashion such Rube Goldbergian (or Jonah Goldbergian!) contraptions with which to excuse our sins.

Robert Reich also notices the rift between small businesses and large corporations over corporate tax "reform," and hopes it signals a permanent breach between the two. We can only hope that it does! But I doubt this disagreement actually reflects a sea change in the thinking of the big small business lobbies. Such a change could only come about if the big small business lobbies actually listened to the concerns of actual small businesses, which Mr. Reich helpfully lists at the end of his post.

Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones notes that Bernie Sanders's platform planks are actually quite popular with Americans, despite his being tainted with the "socialist" label. One of the planks that supposedly isn't popular is his anti-"free" trade agreement plank, but n.b. that the Pew study referenced therein, suggesting that 55% of Americans favor the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," almost certainly doesn't tell the whole story, as that very same study simultaneously found high American public support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe and much lower American support for the TTIP's individual goals! Would Pew have found a 55% support rate among Americans for the TPP if they'd asked about investor-state tribunals or job outsourcing?

The Institute for Southern Studies profiles a father and daughter who had fled Liberia's civil wars during the 1990s and had since become naturalized citizens in North Carolina -- but who wound up getting stopped by poll workers because their names were on a list of nearly 1,500 voters whose "citizenship status" was "in question." The father pressed through and voted, but the daughter didn't, out of frustration, almost like that was the idea. The N.C. State Board of Elections actually wound up identifying very few improper votes through the list, just like every other right-wing voter "integrity" project, but I'm pretty sure they don't care, since their efforts did help get Thom Tillis into the Senate.

Finally, Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, notoriously tight-lipped as of late, takes half a dozen questions from reporters in Iowa. She didn't answer the first question, answered the implied question-behind-the-second-question much better than other former Iraq War supporters have done, hit the do-you-make-too-much-money question pretty well, didn't answer the fourth question which was worse than not answering the first, and answered the fifth question about as well as one could expect (I'm going to discount the sixth, which was obviously some reporter trying to get attention for him or herself, as she had already answered it). But I'm not seeing whatever it is that seems to inspire other people, let alone what I know would inspire liberals not just to vote for her, but run through a wall for her.

Action: net neutrality, pollution, and campaign finance.

Ho hum, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) has introduced a "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify the FCC's net neutrality rules. Such resolutions, as you know, supposedly stop the Executive branch from doing something unwarranted or harmful, yet I only ever hear of such resolutions on those rare occasions our government actually does something good for its owners, the American people. It makes one wish Democrats had ever contemplated a "resolution of disapproval" at, well, any damn thing that arrogant monster George W. Bush did. The good news? President Obama would have to sign this resolution of disapproval to make it law. You think even he would 13-dimensional-chess his way into signing a resolution undoing something he specifically and publicly asked an Executive branch agency to do? (And if he did, would right-wingers applaud -- or declare he's just doing that to put us off his real Socialist agenda?) In any case: it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want. So Free Press helps you tell Congress to respect the will of the people and reject the anti-net neutrality "resolution of disapproval."

Meanwhile, H.R. 912, the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act (or ACHE Act), would mandate that our government study mountaintop removal coal mining and determine whether it poses significant health risks to surrounding communities. H.R. 912 would then empower our government, under the auspices of the Clean Water Act, to prohibit such mining wherever it poses these risks. Sounds rational, right? Of course we know the science has already told us that cancer and birth defects and lung cancer all go up dramatically wherever corporations blow the tops off mountains to get to the coal underneath, but for the right wing, none of this is reasonable, because TEH WAR ON COAL!!!! All their other undeclared wars have gone badly enough that you'd think they'd have learned by now not to see a "war" everywhere but, to paraphrase a famous philosopher, you can't stop right-wingers, you can only hope to contain them, which we do by shaming them for putting corporate money over people's health. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support an end to mountaintop removal mining and the health horrors it brings.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell Chevron's corporate board to stop dropping huge piles of money on state and local elections. The news hook? The city council of Richmond, CA sued Chevron after a Chevron refinery explosion sent 15,000 people -- 15,000 people! -- to local hospitals. And then Chevron responded by spending $3 million on mayoral and city council elections in a happily failed effort to pack those offices with people who wouldn't sue them. What right do we have to tell Chevron how to spend its money, right-wingers ask? The right granted to us by the Constitution's First Amendment, obviously. Thanks to our right-wing Supreme Court, Chevron has a "right" to tell us all to go scratch, but it does not have a right, however, to be insulated from the PR consequences of such decisions, any more than a child who acts out has a "right" to be free from the discipline that would remind them how to act. Is that an unfair comparison? Maybe so -- after all, children are generally a lot more charming than corporations.

Around the table: Mitch McConnell vs. the law, Republican fancy talk vs. Republican actions, Stephen King vs. Paul LePage, and other battles.

Yes, Virginia, Mitch McConnell has written a letter to every state Governor telling them to ignore their responsibility to craft a carbon emissions plan as mandated by the EPA, because the EPA's plan is "probably illegal." Everybody who wanted to jail Rosa Parks for breaking the law back in the day now thinks they're Rosa Parks! But Rosa Parks did eventually help change unjust and unconstitutional laws, while Mr. McConnell defends the right of corporations to hike your prices when they're told to pollute less. You wouldn't tolerate such behavior from your children, so why tolerate it from corporations?

E.J. Dionne notes that the House Republican budgets prove that Republicans are completely dedicated to making the income gap between rich and poor worse. You already knew that, but it's still good to hear it from the "liberal" media -- it increases the possibility that we might actually hear it again, and perhaps even again. And though the rich have gotten richer under President Obama, Republicans who fight tooth-and-nail even his modest efforts against that trend also deserve much of the blame -- and when they call the Affordable Care Act "socialism," no one should take them seriously when they suddenly say they care about the poor.

Paul Buchheit describes "How Privatization Degrades Our Daily Lives." Long story short: privatizing public services doesn't save money, it costs money. Long story somewhat longer: privatizing health care makes us captive to whatever health care corporations want, privatizing public housing gives that over to hifalutin bankster schemes, privatizing the internet gives us slower, more costly service, and the U.S. Post Office is so "terrible" that FedEx (a.k.a. Newt Gingrich's favorite corporation) uses it for three out of every 10 ground shipments. If you think privatization is a scam designed to enrich some politician's cronies, you're not alone. Ironic, since privatizers long argued that public corruption could be avoided by privatization.

Paul Krugman says pro-austerity arguments still hold sway in British media a mere six weeks ahead of its national elections. He's right about that, but I think he's a little too sanguine about how far we've come. I admit it feels like we've moved past reflexive pro-austerity arguments, but listening to Republicans try to rebrand their pro-austerity policies as "policies that help the poor" isn't very far from yesterday, and it only takes one more economic meltdown electing one more Republican President for it all to come back hard.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates fears the spread of artificial intelligence. But he sounds like he's simply been asleep during every one of Windows's multitudinous updates and patches. Duplicating or surpassing the human brain is a lot harder than folks realize, and software needs fairly constant maintenance -- especially with regards to security -- and I think the latter task, especially, is big enough that humans will need to do it for quite some time, even if arrogant CEOs disagree. We don't live in the future with jetpacks and men on Mars and Second Variety-style war machines -- we live in the future where a Space: 1999 reboot would have to be retitled.

Finally, Maine somehow-still-Governor Paul LePage really steps in it by claiming that author/Maine resident Stephen King moved to Florida to avoid Maine's taxes -- when Mr. King actually still lives in Maine most of the year and pays those Maine taxes. Democrats who actually want to win elections should listen to Mr. King's words here, because they're that good. And Democrats who want to continue losing to people like Paul LePage -- who himself has apparently forgotten that he grew up dirt-poor and needed the help of Olympia Snowe's late husband to get into college -- can go on paying their million-dollar consultants to help them craft a "message" that inspires nobody.

Around the table: research apps, apparent "niceness," "liberal" media hypocrisy, "right to work," and homelessness.

The Consumerist notes that collecting users' medical data to help researchers, as Apple's new app suite ResearchKit would do, has some issues. And it ain't all about the privacy, though you may not have as much of that as you think, either -- issues mostly derive from users and researchers not "interacting in person in some way," which opens the door to made-up data, data skewed by class (since wealthier people tend to own smartphones, though I suspect that's changing as time goes on), and data that just isn't that useful, since every user's medical problems may not be that much of a help to anyone else.

If you were looking for one post summarizing all the reasons Scott Walker would make a terrible President, thank Right Wing Watch, because they wrote a great one -- replete with 32 links, including seven in one glorious paragraph. It occurs to me that when folks like Ted Cruz run for President, they make folks like Scott Walker look somehow "moderate," and that's mainly, I still think, because Sen. Cruz projects a "passionate" demeanor while Gov. Walker projects a "level" one. Confusing a man's outward "niceness" and his radical, reactionary works is a dangerous mistake, and I hope the American people understand that sooner rather than later.

I don't mean to assert that Hillary Clinton's email imbroglio is much ado about nothing, because it's not, but Joe Conason is right to remind us that the "liberal" media has been ignoring those times Republican Presidential candidates -- and Presidents! -- did similar things. Jeb Bush has released perhaps one in 10 emails he wrote as Florida's Governor, Scott Walker concocted a complete shadow email system while he was Milwaukee County executive -- and the Administration of Mr. Accountability One himself, George W. Bush, lost millions of emails and never archived millions more.

Since it's apparently Scott Walker day around here, let us at least celebrate the fact that Wisconsin unions have sued to keep that state's notorious "right to work" law from taking effect, asserting that the law allows the state to take a union's property (i.e. union dues, used to provide services to workers) without "just compensation." That might succeed and it might not, but let's get to business: people who join a union without knowing they're going to pay dues are ignorant, and people who think they're paying more in dues than they're gaining in income are dumb.

Finally, Carl Gibson writes about the research suggesting that it's cheaper to put the homeless in homes than it is to leave them out on the street. Right-wingers imagine that leaving the homeless to their own devices is "fiscally responsible," but the Big Gummint "socialist" solution of putting them in existing homes (or build tiny homes for them, as Occupy Madison did in Wisconsin's capital city) would actually cost the taxpayer less -- because the taxpayer pays to put homeless folks in the ER, or put them in jail, or put them in shelters, or (even) to put them on planes and ship them out of town, a spectacularly useless and cruel stunt.

Around the table: in which we finally learn why we need fast-track! (Spoiler alert: we don't need fast-track.)

U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman finally addresses the question of why Trans-Pacific "Partnership" negotiations have to be carried out in secret: "We can always do better on transparency... (but) there is no area of policy where there is closer collaboration between the executive and Congress than trade policy." That's just as good an argument for more transparency as for more security, but worse than that, "collaboration between the executive and Congress" is not transparency. Telling the American people, the owners of government, what's in the deal would be transparency. Strange how our government always wants to leave us out. You have to wonder if that's the idea.

A Haaretz editorial suggests that the machinations of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are actually anti-Zionist. How? By eroding Israel's alliance with the United States, by fighting battles of choice rather than necessity, and "crumbling the country's social cohesion," which I put in quotation marks because I'm still not sure exactly what it's supposed to mean. But I do suspect Mr. Netanyahu's obvious disrespect for President Obama, who's been exactly as pro-Israeli as the last five Presidents, does injury to country's well-being, this though a similar level of disrespect hasn't injured the Republicans' well-being.

Good news from South America: the Chilean Supreme Court has prevented the Chilean government from transferring citizen data from judiciary databases into one giant "Unified Data Bank," on the grounds that doing so violates data protection law, particularly the law that forbids the Chilean government from using citizen ID numbers as a "data point." Sadly, legislation could swiftly "fix" that, but if you believe that your government should have to jump through extra hoops to investigate you, or that big databases are like gingerbread houses to hackers and unscrupulous government officials, we should still celebrate the wisdom of the Chilean Supreme Court in this matter.

"Fast Food Companies are Invoking 'Main Street' to Fight Unions," announces the Washington Post. Well, you wouldn't expect evil to act otherwise, but the crux of this Main Street invocation? Suggesting their franchisees are small businesses because, well, they're franchises -- hence anyone trying to change working conditions at these franchises is HURTING TEH SMALL BIZNIZZEZ!!!!!! It's classic hostage-taking! Trouble with that line of reasoning, if we can call it that, is that nobody believes it -- nobody thinks of McDonald's as a chain of small businesses, especially once they're acquainted with all the decisions McDonald's makes for their franchises.

Health care premium growth has slowed under President Obama, but how do Republicans phrase this phenomenon? ZOMG TEH PREEMIUMZ GOEZ UP OVER $5,000 UNDER TEH SOSHULIST PREZNIT!!!!! That's $5,000 over six years, of course, and though the Affordable Care Act has had some success slowing the growth of health care premiums (and may yet have more), the lack of inflation generally also has a lot to do with that. Still, Republicans do love their scare numbers. And the punchline? Health care premiums grew a lot faster under their Former Personal Lord and Savior, George W. Bush.

Finally, the Fox News (sic) Channel embeds on its website a 22-minute video showing ISIS terrorists burning a Jordanian pilot alive. Some observers think FNC will boost ISIS recruiting, but I think that's overblown -- people who become terrorists are just looking to be set off by something. I think Fox really takes aim at their own viewers, who have to be fed these dramas so they don't direct their rage at more clear and present dangers, like banksters and corrupt politicians. And yet I still think if you want to see a video like this, you ought to have to work for it, and going to some news channel's website isn't "work."

Action: oil refinery emissions, and corporate interference in Congressional staffing.

The EPA, which has been rather busy under President Obama, plans to take on oil refinery emissions, and since oil refineries do put a rather nasty cloud of carcinogens, metals, and neurotoxins into our air every day, that's not a bad thing -- unless, I suppose, you're an oil corporation CEO anxious to gild the plumbing in your seventh vacation home, in which case you may view oil emissions standards as a Communist Socialist Nazi Kenyan anti-colonialist job-killing terrorist plot. Oil corporation CEOs would do well to remember that they have to breathe the air, too -- gated communities haven't quite advanced to become "bubble communities." Oh, my, that's not only a dystopian novel waiting to happen, it's a dystopia waiting to happen. But here's one way to forestall it: by telling the EPA to adopt the strongest possible emissions standards for oil refineries, as the Environmental Defense Fund helps you do. There'll be less gilded plumbing in the world, what a shame, but more breathable air, and less asthma and less cancer as well. I ask you: do civilized people deserve less?

Meanwhile, new House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana got some negative ink late last month for failing to whip a decent immigration bill through the House, but here's something about which we should have heard more: that Mr. Scalise used a corporate lobbyist to assist with interviews for his staff. You may say, big deal, they're just staffers, but I sure hope you're not saying that, because workers anywhere are important, and also, headline: Congressfolk don't read all the bills that cross their desk. I know we think they should, but even this no-work-doing Congress has introduced over 9,500 bills this session, some of them admirably short, many others less so, many worth your time and many not worth the space they occupy on Congressional servers, but who sifts through that morass to highlight what their Reps and Senators need to know? Hell, who writes these bills in the first place? Congressional staffers, that's who -- meaning maybe corporations shouldn't be picking them. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to condemn corporate meddling in Congressional staff hirings.

Around the table: the difficulty of defending the Kansas "experiment," and other stories.

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain report that our NSA has begun to advise Saudi Arabia's Ministry of the Interior (or MOI) on "internal security," although MOI is about as notorious a group of oppressors as you can imagine among the world's governmental agencies. Of course we're only helping them hone their spying skills so that we can "locate and track individuals of mutual interest within Saudi Arabia." There's no way that could go wrong.

The New York Times editorial board endorses legalization of marijuana, because it's "far less dangerous than alcohol" and because our draconian opposition to it ruins lives (and more likely black folks' lives than not). The Times doesn't say anything surprising, and they're actually behind the people on this matter, but I presume their aim is to bring elites on board, few of whom even remember why their forebears made Reefer Madness in the first place.

The CIA apparently intercepted an email from one of its officials to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) -- an email alleging that the CIA Inspector General didn't investigate a whistleblower retaliation claim as thoroughly as he should have done-- after which said Inspector General went to the email author's boss. Messing with Dianne Feinstein and her staff is one thing, but I wouldn't mess with Charles Grassley if I were the CIA -- unless they think he's going to retire or get primaried out by a knuckle-dragger in 2016.

Surprise, surprise, just about the only way to defend the Sam Brownback tax-cuts-for-the-rich-service-cuts-for-everyone-else "experiment" in Kansas is to just make stuff up. No, I'm not talking about wrenching actual facts out of their proper context -- Heritage Foundation "Chief Economist" Stephen Moore told the world that "low-tax" Florida actually gained "hundreds of thousands of jobs over "the last five years," when it actually lost nearly half a million jobs, and added over 500,000 jobs to Texas's job gains over those years while turning New York's modest job gains into "job losses." Maybe he's too used to a world where you can say anything you like and just have one of your cronies call whoever challenges you a terrorist.

Alasks Gov. Sean Parnell (R) petitions our federal government for help buying a million cases of canned salmon. I certainly don't oppose to the idea of our government buying surplus food and donating it to food banks, but why do I get the feeling that the teabaggers who now run Alaska's Republican Party would call this Big Gummint socialism if anyone else did it?

Around the table: the House does something good, a billionaire criticizes corporate tax evasion, and other apparent ironies.

Good news, everyone! H. Con. Res. 105, the McGovern/Lee/Jones resolution that would have mandated that President Obama come to Congress before starting any more military shenanigans in Iraq, passed the House by a 370-40 margin. Whether the Senate will take up the resolution is anyone's guess, but if you called your Congressfolk on Friday to urge them to vote in favor of the resolution on Friday, you did good. (The article says "it's unclear" whether the resolution would "trump" the AUMF from 2001, but I don't see why it wouldn't -- though I suppose the Obama Administration would fight it in court citing the AUMF.)

Billionaire Mark Cuban says he'd sell his stock in any corporations that would re-incorporate as foreign corporations simply to avoid paying taxes in America, and encourages others to do the same. I'm divided on Mr. Cuban myself (like him as Mavs owner and Shark Tank feeder, dislike him as Bush supporter and Yahoo! CEO), but he's on the side of the angels here, and I think he's being less "self-interested" than the article would have you believe.

Rand Paul gets another lesson in how difficult it is to get black folks to listen to you if you're a Republican, as he faces a small crowd at the National Urban League Conference. His work on mandatory minimums isn't as impressive as the Times suggests -- a statement I'm willing to revise if I ever see results -- and even if blacks forgive his reversed-under-pressure opposition to certain fifty-year-old civil rights legislation or overpraise his recent wobbliness on Voter ID laws, Mr. Paul's economic prescriptions wouldn't persuade them to vote for him in significant numbers. Then again, Republicans might only need a slight bump to win -- Mr. Romney got six percent of the black vote in 2012 and lost, while Mr. Bush got 11 percent in 2004 and won.

The Affordable Care Act has saved Americans nearly $2 billion on health care premiums since 2011, through its mandate that health care corporations spend at least 80 percent of consumer premiums on actual medical care (as opposed to "administrative costs," like, you know, overpaying the CEO). People don't know about this, partly because $2 billion spread out over millions of families over three years doesn't fatten very many wallets, but mainly because the law allows health care corporations to put that money back into consumer premiums, instead of cutting consumers some checks. It sure is a good thing that "socialist" President Obama let corporations do that in his "socialist" health care bill.

Finally, Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel still hasn't given up his quest to contest his primary loss to incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran -- though his camp hasn't actually filed a legal challenge, either. Though Mr. McDaniel's propensity to make enemies even among Mississippi Tea Party honchos may well benefit Mr. Cochran, I still wonder if the Republican establishment's efforts to circle-the-wagons-this-time around their incumbent will even work -- if Mr. McDaniel can drag a serious challenge to Mr. Cochran's nomination out into October, then ex-Democratic House Rep. Travis Childers could well be this year's Joe Donnelly.

Around the table: the ever-shifting definition of "intolerance," and other stories.

ProPublica finds plenty of activity on the federal health exchange, though the open enrollment period ended a little over three months ago. Some 8 million folks signed up during open enrollment, but apparently the last three months have seen almost one million "transactions" on the exchange, which could be new enrollments due to changed circumstances or changes/cancellations in health care plans. Dear Obama Administration: it sure would be nice to know more, since, you know, we are the people, a.k.a. government's owners.

The North Dakota agriculture commissioner's race has attracted a lot of big oil money, thanks to the appearance of a populist Democrat with a long list of specific reforms he'd bring to the job. North Dakota, you may know, produces more oil than some OPEC nations, but folks are getting worried about what'll happen to the land, air, and water, as they should be. On balance, I think the article finds the notion of a Dakota populist (hello, Byron Dorgan!) odder than history does. Best laugh line: an endorsement of the Republican incumbent from "a board member of a large North Dakota oil producer who asked not to be identified in case Taylor wins."

NJ state police captain (and former Sparta, NJ mayor) convicted of, among other things, using FBI databases to conduct personal business. Like what, you ask? Like conducting background checks on players from a minor league baseball team he followed -- now there's fantasy sports for you! -- and trying to vet a home health care aide he was thinking of hiring to take care of his mother, thus proving that Big Data is, among other things, one big damn gingerbread house.

Faced with seasonal price gouging, the town of Somerset, Kentucky decides to buy a gas station to compete with private gas stations. And opposing this move: a complete bunch of morons, including one corporate oil spokeshack who takes small businesses and jobs hostage -- hoping you won't notice that the city gas station employs human beings or that big oil corporations are the ones who really stand to lose -- and one convenience store owner who laments that the city took "the taxpayer money that I have paid them over these years" only to create "socialism." One wonders how he feels about the roads that bring customers to his store and the cops who would protect it -- let alone how he fails to see that the city-owned gas station really belongs to him and his fellow taxpayers.

Finally, Sen. Marco Rubio tells a far-right audience that gay marriage opponents are themselves victims of "intolerance," and even surmises that he'll be attacked as a "hater" and a "bigot" before his speech is over. Actually, the correct term for Mr. Rubio is "whiner," and perhaps also "narcissist," for thinking so many other people are thinking of him at any given moment. And by "intolerance" I'm pretty sure he means "failure to agree with everything I say."

Action: renewable energy, Arctic drilling, and the utter lack of compassion routinely displayed by the House of Representatives.

The Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4916, the POWER Act, which would extend renewable energy tax credits to projects that reuse waste heat from energy consumption. I remember reading about one such project in France in 2009 -- which reused heat generated by the Metro to heat nearby apartment buildings -- and I thought, "I bet right-wingers would call this kind of thing 'socialism,' especially when they hear France is doing it." But fully half of H.R. 4916's sponsors are Republicans (two from New York state, two from Nevada), so I have hope that this bill might, one day, be at least that noncontroversial vehicle for all manner of poison pill amendments. We'd beat such amendments back, of course, but aside from their obvious climate-change and job-creation benefits, waste heat-capturing technologies can be implemented wherever waste heat is generated, meaning that hospitals, police stations, and other places that really can't ever shut down will have one more tool to keep themselves going in a blackout.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior is taking public comments on the matter of handing out oil drilling leases, and the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell Interior that you oppose drilling leases in the Arctic. The Alaska Wilderness League tells us that "oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean is bad for three reasons. Oily sea creatures. Blankets of heat-trapping soot on Arctic ice. Melting icebergs that leave polar bears starving." Those are all good reasons not to drill in the Arctic, but we have others, as you know -- namely, that we don't know enough about Arctic ecosystems to know how our oil drilling will affect them, and we also can't clean up oil spills in frigid waters as well as we can (at least in theory, right, BP?) in more temperate waters like those of the Gulf of Mexico. Don't conservatives tell us that we shouldn't go bullrushing into projects without being aware of their ill effects? Then the conservative thing to do in the Arctic, it would be seem, would be not to drill for oil. Remember: the conservative thing to do is not the corporatist thing to do, as the "liberal" media would have you believe.

Finally, NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, notes that the House just passed a bill making an expired corporate tax cut permanent -- a bill that would cost some $280 billion over 10 years, and a bill that did not provide any offsets to its cost. Perhaps the House leadership will tell us that the tax cut (which essentially allows corporations to deduct the cost of depreciating equipment much more quickly) will "pay for itself," but Citizens for Tax Justice will convince you otherwise -- this economy isn't recovering as quickly as it should because both people and corporations don't want to spend their money, so giving corporations more money that they won't spend makes no sense. And this House has just approved an unpaid-for and unnecessary tax cut for its corporate paymasters totaling some $28 billion annually -- but won't authorize spending less than $4 billion to take care of undocumented children at the border, nor $6 billion for extending long-term unemployment insurance. Hence NETWORK helps you give your House Rep what-for on this matter.

Around the table: twelve lost years, a long walk, a sad relapse, and two tales about Florida.

David Cay Johnston asserts that Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts actually cost Americans some $6.6 trillion in income over the 12 years they were in effect. Then he describes some of the things we could have done with that money, including paying off all student loans, car loans, and credit card debt. You remember what happened instead, right? Right-wingers spent eight years calling reasonable people "traitors," then took a big dump on the economy, then called reasonable people "socialists" and pushed the same policies that got us into this mess.

The Republican Mayor of Belhaven, NC embarks on a 273-mile walk to Washington, DC to call attention to the plight of his town, which just lost its last hospital after its owner, the private health care corporation Vidant Health, decided to close it. Mr. O'Neal, who supports the Affordable Care Act's offer of a Medicaid expansion -- which, of course, the reactionary state government of North Carolina refuses to accept -- actually utters the phrase "immoral business plan" when discussing the former owner of said hospital. Joining the words "immoral," "business," and "plan" will make him a pariah in the Party. I wish him the best on his pilgrimage.

Leon County Circuit Court judge throws out Florida's most recent Congressional redistricting map, finding that political consultants "made a mockery of the Legislature’s transparent and open process of redistricting" and ran a "shadow redistricting process” aimed at protecting incumbents (though perhaps not Allen West, whom I recall having a little trouble figuring out where to run for re-election) and strengthening Republicans' hold on Florida's districts. At least two districts will have to be redrawn -- "at least" because those two districts border other districts -- but probably not in time for 2014.

Robin McKie of the Guardian visits Miami, FL and finds a city dealing with climate change right now. And though Miami plans to spend $1.5 billion dealing with sewer and drain issues, its porous limestone foundation and low elevation -- Miami will likely see six to 10 feet of sea-level rise before the century's out, and much of Miami isn't six feet higher than sea level right now -- will likely doom it. The climate change denialism among its leaders (like Sen. Rubio and Gov. Scott) certainly doesn't help.

Finally, some bad news: remember the infant scientists thought might have been cured of HIV after aggressive early treatment? Turns out the HIV has come back, and just ahead of a major HIV study hoping to expand upon the HIV's continued absence. Still, the baby managed to fight off a relapse for two years (a few months of that without the benefit of drug therapy), so there must be something there we can learn from.

Around the table: campaign finance, government spying, corporate welfare, health care satisfaction, and fracking dangers.

S.J.Res. 19, the Constitutional amendment that would enable our state and federal governments to regulate campaign finance again, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 10-8 vote yesterday. You'll note that's not two-thirds (that would have been 12-6) and you'll no doubt be disappointed, but no one said this would be easy. Surprise, surprise: exactly zero Republican Senators voted in favor, despite two-thirds of their rank-and-file voters disagreeing with the Court's ruling in Citizens United. Which kind of illustrates the problem S.J.Res. 19 would give us a shot at solving, doesn't it?

ProPublica discovers that the NSA may be paying special attention to folks who downloaded Tor during 2011 -- and, not incidentally, could have shared whatever information it collected with the FBI and the CIA. Tor, you may recall, is the privacy software that basically makes you anonymous when you surf the web. One of Tor's early developers says the NSA almost certainly didn't spy on Tor users while they were actually using Tor -- but nothing would prevent the NSA from spying on Tor users when they were not. The punch line? The Tor Project itself gets funding from the State Department.

Ho hum, New York's Authorities Budget Office finds that all the business tax breaks New York state tossed around between 2009 and 2013 might have been responsible for one percent of job growth in New York state during that time. Maybe that one percent included 100 percent of you, but when 99% of job growth doesn't come from handouts to corporations, then Republicans really need to stop with the histrionics about how we should create jobs by giving handouts to corporations.

Commonwealth Fund survey finds that about three-quarters of Americans who bought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges are actually pretty satisfied with it. Of course, I remember surveys telling us in 2009 that a similar percentage of folks were pretty satisfied with their pre-ACA health insurance, but if the Affordable Care Act were this "socialist" "monster" that pooped all over our freedoms and then made us eat it, you'd think those numbers would be a lot lower.

Finally, Cornell University researchers report that up to 40 percent of oil and gas wells in some areas of Pennsylvania will leak methane into the air you breathe and the water you drink. I almost hope somebody asks Gov. Corbett about this, so he can smile and say "well, what about the 60 percent that's safe, smartypants?" But the 60 percent that's "safe" won't be safe for long, what with air and water (and the people using them) moving around as they do -- and, of course, figures like "40 percent" mean much less when 100 percent of you has cancer.

Action: savagery toward women, paid sick leave, and Frankenfoods in "natural" products.

First things first. About four weeks ago, a group of eight (seven men and one boy, aged 13) broke into a widow's house in Indonesia, accused her of adultery, and gang-raped her. But they weren't done: they also beat up the man she supposedly had an affair with, soaked them both in sewage, and then marched them over to the local cops -- who promptly protected the woman and her friend and admonished their attackers for being incomprehensible savages and usurping the function of designated law enforcement officers, right? Ah, no: they charged the woman with adultery, the punishment for which is caning, approximately nine strokes' worth, according to the province's Shari'a law. Apparently male vigilante gangs operate with impunity (or tacit encouragement) in some areas of Indonesia, going after women who wear "tight clothing" or ride motorcycles the "wrong" way. It sure sounds to me like we would all be a lot better off if these men spent a few minutes each day with their right hand, but instead they allow their rage to rule in place of a civilized society. But, this is the age of miracle and wonder, and we can embarrass and shame a society that enables such things to happen. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell Indonesian authorities to stop the caning.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers now get five paid sick days annually (in businesses with five or more employees); other municipalities have scrambled to offer some form of paid sick leave for their workers, while big corporate special interest groups have persuaded state legislatures to ban municipalities from doing that, because SOSHULIZM!!!!! But out of all the nations in the developed world, only one doesn't guarantee paid sick leave to workers. Guess who that is? That's right, we're number one! But President Obama, as usual, has the power to at least get the ball rolling; hence Democracy for America and Social Security Works join to help you tell Mr. Obama to issue an executive order mandating that all corporations who contract with our government offer paid sick leave. Mr. Obama did lately issue an executive order mandating that new federal contractors pay at least a $10.10/hour wage to their workers, and while that's no small thing, why do I suspect Mr. Obama will shrink from this task, thinking he can't rock the boat too much before midterms? His opponents never worry about sinking the boat, let alone rocking it, before an election. He ought to just do the right thing, and we ought to tell him to do it.

Finally, did you know Chobani, who makes perhaps the most popular Greek yogurt in America, uses milk from cows that eat GMO grain? How damn disappointing. While Chobani isn't USDA-certified organic, they still plaster their packaging with the word "natural," and if GMO grain finds its way into a product, in however small an amount, then it's not "natural" unless we're using a definition of "natural" so broad as to be useless. And now Chobani has secured a loan of three-quarters of a billion dollars to expand its output -- which means more GMO grain will find its way into the stomachs of the cows who provide Chobani's milk, and thus into your stomach. Chobani has said it just can't produce enough yogurt without the GMO grain in its cows' food, but genetic modification doesn't actually increase yields to any significant degree; all it does is make certain aspects of production cheaper on a large scale, which mainly serves the purpose of delivering more profits into the CEO's wallet. Still, there is-so such a thing as bad PR -- and what law of physics would prevent Chobani from using its leverage to incorporate non-GMO milk, or even organic milk, into its product? Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Chobani to stop using Frankenfoods in its products.

Action: all net neutrality, all day.

Today, we're only going to act on one thing: network neutrality, the principle that demands that internet service providers treat all data moving across a network equally. How does this benefit us, as internet consumers? Well, if we make all data move across networks at the same speed, the internet service provider can't favor network traffic it likes better, and that state of affairs leaves you, the internet consumer, in charge of your internet experience. The way things are now, if you can find a website about, say, progressive taxasion, you can get there just as quickly as you can get to some slideshow rating the NFL's best defensive ends. Of course, the big telecom corporations don't like that, because it gets in the way of ensuring they'll always be able to make their unearned billions -- hence their plan to open up new "revenue streams" by making corporations providing internet content pay more for faster service.

But if we allow that, the internet will never be free again. The internet will forever be divided into a "fast lane" and a "slow lane," and the big internet service providers will have no incentive whatsoever to improve service on the "slow lane," which is where all the websites you and I like will be stuck. The only sites that'll get on the fast lane will be big corporate websites because big corporations are the only entities with the money to pay the "fast lane" rates. And that means your internet will be infested with more junk news, more mindless celebrity drama, and more cable news "pundits" screaming at each other like their mamas never taught them any damn manners. The corporate apologists like to say that "paid prioritization" will preserve innovation, but that's precisely the opposite of the truth -- the real innovators on the internet, the Googles and the Daily Koses and the Youtubes and the Facebooks, were not big corporations when they gave their innovations to the world. A big corporation would never have come up with any of those innovative forces, because big corporations -- especially the dinosaurs we contend with in these times! -- care about protecting the status quo, not upsetting it.

The FCC, at least nominally, protected network neutrality until yesterday. Now they plan to allow "paid prioritization" agreements between corporations, though they'll prevent big corporations from actually slowing down or censoring websites -- which, again, means very little when folks won't wait for that better website to load, and thus never discover what it has to offer them. The FCC will also take comments on whether or not they should reclassify broadband providers as public utilities, so they can properly regulate net neutrality, but we've been telling them to do that for years, and I know they're not so stupid they can't hear us. And now would be a good time to make one thing very, very clear: no ordinary American citizens, on either end of the political system, want to lose net neutrality. The only people who want to kill net neutrality are the corporations and their lackey politicians. And their arguments are utter horsecrap. They claim net neutrality is "a solution in search of a problem," when net neutrality's very presence has choked off the very problems they're trying to create! They claim net neutrality equals big government control, when it is not Big Gummint overreach to prevent corporations from controlling your internet experience for their own ends, any more than it's "anti-freedom" to stop people from murdering one another or burglarizing other folks' houses. One absolute gobsmacking idiot, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, actually referred to net neutrality as "socialism" the other day; when you call something "socialism" in these times, you've lost the argument.

But though these fools have lost the debate, they may yet impose their will on the American citizenry, simply because they have money and because the "liberal" media enables their venality and stupidity. That only means we have to speak louder, and a number of organizations will help you do that. Both CREDO and Demand Progress help you tell President Obama to keep his campaign promise to be "second to none" on net neutrality, lest we find net neutrality to be yet another area in which "second to none" means "second to Bush." Free Press helps you tell Mr. Wheeler to throw out his proposal and reclassify internet service providers as a public utility. You can still call Mr. Wheeler's office at 1.202.418.1000, or use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call and/or write your House Reps and Senators. You're not a "slacktivist" if you do any of these things; you are doing your job as a citizen, to convey your will to your elected representatives, which number includes your President and the people he appoints in the Executive branch.

If you despair (because who doesn't?), note well that corporations have wanted to kill net neutrality for well over a decade, and the only thing that's stopped them is us. Only a wall of united citizens can stop evil; we've been stopping evil a long time, and we'll have to stop it a long time still, until we draw our last breath having inspired those who'll carry on after us. But we can do it. We must do it. And we will do it.