Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning banksters, school lunches, and jobs.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to roll back so-called "Earned Wage Access" loans. "Earned Wage Access" schemes promise to give you some of your paycheck before payday if you need it, but then slam you with 300% interest rates and usurious junk fees, meaning they're just another payday loan. No use arguing that these loans give good Americans more "choice." In a civilized society, there should be no "choice" to be some rich bankster's prey.

More Perfect Union helps you tell our U.S. Department of Agriculture (or USDA) to limit sugar (and calories from sugar) in school lunches. The "added sugar" part of our food labels is a relatively recent development, and our USDA's proposed sugar limits would be the first-ever. But of course big sugar corporations don't want this to happen! We first started adding sugar to food to conceal that food's spoilage; hundreds of years later, we’ve made it a mania, and no CEO's "right" to more unearned money can change that.

Finally, More Perfect Union also helps you tell Stellantis to honor its contractual promise to re-open the Belvedere, IL plant it closed in 2021. The United Auto Workers (or UAW) union fought Stellantis (owner of Jeep and Chrysler) tooth and nail to get the Belvedere plant reopened, but now Stellantis's CEO wants to delay reopening until 2028 – after the UAW contract expires. So clever! Thus it’s time for the Big Stick of Bad PR to come out. Shame still works, or Donald Trump wouldn’t call it a tool of totalitarianism.

Around the table: from wrong-headed protestors in Canada to wrong-headed American economists.

When I hear that truckers in Canada are "snarling traffic, disrupting business and residential neighborhoods and leading the police to compare the demonstrations to a 'siege' on the nation’s democracy," I wonder if these protestors would have responded to liberal protestors who also clog city streets, albeit just with their bodies, by demanding the "right" to run them down. Of course I don't disapprove of the truckers' tactics, but we all have a duty to protest the real wrongs in our society, and vaccine mandates ain't one of those. Anyone who protests them, when so many worse things that cause actual harm are going on, is a crybaby. That's true no matter how many hard hats they own./p>

Militia members take over a northern California county board of supervisors, after county residents spend nearly two years acting like snowflakes about the county's not-even-all-that-restrictive COVID-19 restrictions. Why Carlos Zapata isn't in jail for the threats he made in 2020 I couldn't say -- except to suggest that maybe the "Reagan Republican" recently deposed in a recall, Leonard Moty, didn't understand that he and his kind were always a gateway drug to this kind of thing. (And Patrick Jones is yet another far-right-winger who says "we want to return to a county where we grew up" without wanting the high tax rates on the rich that were once a feature of every county where folks like him grew up.)

When I hear that Bank of America is refusing to forgive certain small business PPP loans -- even blocking those businesses from getting relief from our Small Business Administration -- I'm tempted to ask how did Bank of America get the power to screw over small businesses like this? Except, of course, that I already know that Republicans controlled the Presidency and the Senate when they passed the CARES Act, which created the so-called Paycheck Protection Program. I also know that even though Democrats wouldn't have done that much better if they controlled everything, "not much better" might be the difference between being in business or being in the poorhouse for at least a few small businesses. Also too, I doubt Tom Brady had this problem.

When confronted with the news that a right-wing pastor in Tennessee actually put together a well-attended book-burning ceremony, the only advice I can offer to Democrats is 1) get video, 2) put it in every Democratic election ad, and 3) say "this is who you vote for when you vote Republican!" Seriously, we're in trouble if book-burning isn't politically toxic to those who do it. (Actually, the right-wing pastor who ran this book-burning has created a lot of drama over the last few years, not limited to 2020 election BS and COVID denialism. If you vote Republican, you're voting for all of that, too! Tolerate no "I'm voting for lower taxes and better judges" rubbish from your friends and neighbors!)

From Julie L. Holcomb at The Conversation we learn "How 18th Century Quakers Led a Boycott of Sugar to Protest Against Slavery." Yes, even good Americans in the 18th century understood that the sugar industry not only enslaved its own workers (who typically died three years after starting work in that brutal trade), but enabled the spread of slavery everywhere else. And we sure ain't the first people ever to link consumption and morals, for the Quakers did that hundreds of years ago; in this, as in so many other things, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Finally, Larry Summers "predicts" that high inflation will keep on going throughout the year, and I say "predicts" because most of us know by now not only that much of this inflation is corporate price-gouging (when corporate profits are as high as they are, that's kind of a tell!), but that corporations are price-gouging in response to Joe Biden's rather aggressive actions against monopoly power, which makes Mr. Summers's "prediction" more of a threat delivered on behalf of his corporate cronies. But in that context, his "prediction" that inflation won't fall below 3 percent by the end of 2022 would be a rather specific threat to pass along, since if inflation falls to, say, 4 percent, I think Democrats will benefit at the ballot box in November. Perhaps the corporations are a bit afraid Mr. Biden might succeed. Perhaps they should be. But they'll only have reason to be if we fight monopoly power, too.

Around the table: further describing our struggle with an incompetent President and a cowardly opposition.

It's about time someone put it like this: "Trump's Policies Won't Bring Back Coal Jobs -- They Will Kill More Miners." President Trump has not only vastly overestimated how many new coal mining jobs the economy has created over the last year (50,000? More like 1,000!), but if he succeeds in rolling back clean air and clean water regulations -- including regulations that specifically protect coal miners from black lung! -- then a lot more coal miners will die. The "happy ending," here, is that bosses will be richer, and bosses are the only people who matter to Mr. Trump anyway.

Ted Rall at Counterpunch reminds us that, yes, Virginia, "Democrats Could Lose Again This Fall." It's good to hear other folks saying that Democrats' complete lack of an agenda and the fact that Clintonistas still run everything (even as Sandernistas have all the energy!) may cripple them, but I doubt that Americans will vote Republican if they "vote their pocketbooks" -- hey, if the economic "recovery" of the Obama era didn't save Hillary Clinton, I don't see it saving Republicans, either -- and when more and more folks find out that the tax "cut" bill didn't cut their taxes very much, I see tax "reform"'s numbers going back down.

Joe Emersberger at FAIR catches the "liberal" media slobbering all over Ecuador's President, who ran as a liberal populist and has, of course, revealed himself to be a right-winger upon taking office. Odd how the "liberal" media calls a man who does whatever his big corporate cronies tell him to do "his own man." Also odd how they call the actual populist a "strongman" but leave that word in its sheath when the right-winger actually bullies judges. The good news? Actual liberal policies are actually so popular all over the planet that you have to at least pretend to be one to get anywhere. Why, if Mr. Trump had bashed banksters more consistently during the campaign, he might actually have won a popular vote majority.

Surprise, surprise, the Trump Administration is letting a corn syrup lobbyist help the USDA set dietary guidelines. And perhaps, like other sugar-addicted corporations like Coca-Cola, she'll use her "expertise" to downplay sugar's nefarious effects on our health! And what a surprise to learn, in addition to learning that our government gets "advice" from precisely the wrong people, that waivers to Mr. Trump's already-weakened ethics rules are so, so easy to get.

Finally, President Trump tells Ohio ralliers that Democrats who failed to applaud at his State of the Union should be considered traitors. Almost as bad, he equates their failure to applaud with a failure to love one's country, as if America is Donald Trump and Donald Trump is America, a feat of ego-stroking (among many other kinds of stroking!) the Founders would have found appalling. And I guess it's no use citing Article III, Section 3 of our Constitution to our President, though it sets the bar for treason considerably higher than he does. Memo to Trump votaries: if you support calling your enemies "traitors," particularly for the crime of not clapping at Dear Leader, then you are damaged beyond my ability or willingness to engage with you.

Action: drug pricing, pot prohibition, and automatic voter registration.

Sign for Good helps you tell the Senate to investigate HHS Secretary nominee Alex Azar's role in insulin price gouging while CEO of big pharma corporation Eli Lilly. We know that Eli Lilly jacked up the price of insulin over 300% while Mr. Azar was there, and when your right-wing uncle says BUT OVER FORTY CORPORATIONS MAKE INSULIN YOU LOSE HA HA SNORT, you can remind him that Eli Lilly is one of the three biggest corporations that control, between them, over 90% of the market. You may also remind him that diabetics need insulin to survive, and that the world is becoming more diabetic all the time, thanks to all the sugar and other carbohydrates we ingest (a problem our government doesn't exactly help by subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup). So, in sum: greed is bad, monopolies are bad, corporate welfare for monopolies is bad, and you can't natter on about a "free market" for life-saving drugs. And if you do natter on about it, you may have a heart of stone.

Meanwhile, as you know, Attorney General Sessions recently rescinded the Cole memo, promulgated under the Obama Administration, which limited federal interference in states that had loosened laws against marijuana. And this proves, among other things, that "states' rights" mainly means "whatever best oppresses black folks" -- I mean, a real conservative would say the facts don't justify pot being on Schedule I, so the states are a good place to see if loosening pot prohibition really works, but then Jeff Sessions isn't a real conservative. Anyway, he doesn't get all the say around here -- the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Congress to defund all efforts by the Justice Department to meddle in states that have legalized marijuana. Congress has defunded DOJ efforts to meddle in medical marijuana states, so this wouldn't be a long walk.

Finally, H.R. 5779/S. 3252, the Automatic Voter Registration Act, would mandate state election boards to ensure that everyone who's eligible to vote in that state is also registered to vote, except for folks who decline registration. The bill also mandates that a citizen's information can be transferred directly from a state agency to the election board without any further action from said citizens, which, of course, is not the same as your government spying on your emails without a warrant, or your local police department disguising a spying device as a cell phone tower -- automatic voter registration would ensure that information citizens have already volunteered gets to the election board. After all, the only reason someone would think voting should be hard (and some folks say this out loud!) is that they can't win a vote, or an argument, on the merits. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support voting rights by supporting the Automatic Voter Registration Act.

Action: internet freedom, energy efficiency, and food labeling.

Word on the street is that the FCC could vote to kill net neutrality -- and thus give corporations more power to steer you where they want to steer you on the internet -- just before Thanksgiving, when they think no one will be watching. Too late! Battle for the Net helps you call your Congressfolk and tell them you want strong net neutrality rules that protect our right to determine for ourselves where we want to go on the internet. You know, kinda like the rules we have now, the rules FCC Chair Ajit Pai is so determined to destroy so he can please his corporate cronies. You hear whispers that some Congressfolk would like to put a stop to Mr. Pai's plan, but that they're just not hearing enough from their constituents about it. Frankly, I don't know what part of "millions of comments in favor of strong net neutrality rules" they missed the first couple of times around, but if they're going to announce exactly what it is that will make them move, then I think it's perfectly all right to oblige them. This time.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania state legislators are actually trying to exempt big corporations from paying into the state's energy efficiency program. SB 805 would also prevent any such corporations from receiving any funding from state energy conservation plans, but that's symmetry, not fairness. Fairness would be compelling every corporation to participate, with the larger corporations having to accept that they'll never get as much back in grant money as they put in, because with great power comes great responsibility. Right-wingers love saying "rights have responsibilities," a phrase with which no one actually disagrees, but I rarely hear them say power has responsibilities -- in fact, it often seems their entire program aims to relieve the powerful of any responsibility to civilization. So Penn Environment helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject SB 805 and preserve the state's energy efficiency program.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell the FDA to stop delaying implementation of their new nutrition labels already. Brook no silliness from the Trump Administration about how they're going to gut the rules anyway, so there's no sense in making big food producing corporations follow them now -- and be aware that such statements can and will be used against them in the inevitable lawsuit accusing them of regulating in bad faith, which is actually against the law. Changing food labels is not prohibitively difficult, since the big food corporations don't use monks with quill pens to write each and every food label, and the new food labels would improve the old ones, by ending confusion over serving size and listing added sugars. If big corporations are really going to throw a hissy fit over this, you have to wonder why. Do they aim to hide, say, the outsized power of the corn lobby, which takes so much taxpayer money to produce high-fructose corn syrup that the price of soda virtually hasn't changed in over 35 years?

Action: civil rights, ANWR drilling, and food labeling.

Mr. Trump's nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General is bad enough, and his widely-reported zeal for slashing the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is even worse, but his nomination of John Gore to head up the Civil Rights Decision also demands our opposition. Why so? Because Mr. Gore has had his name on some of the most horrible right-wing anti-civil rights initiatives of the past few years -- he's defended Republican redistricting from New York to Florida, defended Florida Gov. Scott's racist voter purge of 2012, and even defended North Carolina's notorious "bathroom bill" in court. My guess is that the Trump team will say this guy really understands civil rights!, but understanding how to subvert civil rights laws is nothing to brag about. The next few years are going to be very, very hard, but we don't have to take that lying down. Hence People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to oppose the Gore nomination

Meanwhile, with the ascension of Mr. Trump to the Presidency, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) has become a thing again, and though Sen. Stevens is no longer with us to wear his Incredible Hulk tie to ANWR votes, Alaska's current Senatorial delegation (Sens. Murkowski and Sullivan) are still anxious to open up the area to oil drilling, though estimates of oil reserves in ANWR have never been all that impressive, and though drilling there would injure the wildlife (it is a wildlife refuge, after all!) and the native Americans who live there. But why should Mr. Trump care, when there's unearned money to be squeezed from somewhere? Make no mistake, ANWR drilling is only a thing because some CEO will make money from it. And that's before we get to the problem of where the polar bears are going to live, now that climate change has decimated their more northerly habitats. The Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your Senators to vote against any bill that would open up ANWR to drilling.

Finally, the FDA currently focuses on salt and fat when evaluating "healthy" labels on food, but while salt and fat are important, we also know that other factors figure into whether or not we can call a food "healthy" -- like added sugar content, use of chemical pesticides, antibiotic abuse, and using "whole" ingredients more than highly-processed ones. Using genetically-modified organisms shouldn't earn a food a "healthy" label, either, if for no other reason than that GMOs usually indicate the overuse of pesticides. I can already hear folks say that if you believe a "healthy" label on a food product, you're a fool. But why should it be that way? Cynicism sure does make you feel better for a moment or two, but it's no way to change the world. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell the FDA to make sure "healthy" food labels tell you a lot more about that food than they currently do.

Around the table: banksters, "treason," soda taxes, the Supreme Court, and sexual harassment.

Certain sexual harassment-recent events have dominated the news cycle the last week-plus, as you know, but Wikileaks' latest dump of hacked DNC emails shows Hillary Clinton making far too nice with banksters in thoser six-figure speeches she's never wanted to talk about. How one could possibly have witnessed the banksters crash our economy in 2008 and still suggest that "the people who know the business best should tell us how to regulate it" is mind-boggling -- I mean, that level of spiritual corruption should really pay a lot better than six figures. And banksters don't know how to do anything but redistribute our wealth upward to themselves. Let's have them work in a farm or a factory or a hospital or a group home for five minutes and see how they do.

Conservative borough councillor starts petition to make opposing Brexit a treasonous offense. Oh, splendid -- another moron who equates disagreement with treason! Though of course we Americans would recognize this petition as noxious simply because our right to give our counsel to our elected representatives is inviolate, the fatal problem for this effort in England is that the Brexit vote was legally non-binding, and thus defying that vote does literally no injury to the popular will, regardless of whether or not the British government would dare defy the Brexit vote. Britain may have a wider expanse of treasonous offenses than we do -- including adultery with the king or queen or with the king or queen's partner, or otherwise interfering with the line of succession -- but at least these have some history behind them; all this clown's petition has behind it is self-pity and insecurity.

Ho hum, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have, in recent years, donated millions of dollars to health-focused groups -- but have also spent millions of dollars trying to defeat legislation actually aimed at curbing our soda intake. I'm no fan of soda taxes myself -- they hit working families the hardest, and we really should be going after the corn subsidies that make soda sell for the same amount of money it did 35 years ago -- but the behavior of Coke and Pepsi is noxious. They actually offered CHOP $10 million if the city government dropped its push for a soda tax! And they spent nearly $40 million defeating a federal push to institute a soda tax in 2009! Think maybe they could have created some jobs with that money?

Sen. McCain suggests that Senate Republicans would unite against any Hillary Clinton nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, then walks his remarks back a few hours later, saying through a spokeshack that of course he'd evaluate every nominee on the merits. Even if a Democrat wins Louisiana's open Senate seat (which, in a jungle primary with at least two Republican candidates at each others' throats, could actually happen), they have no shot at a filibuster-proof majority, so only shame will keep Republicans from blocking the next Supreme Court nominee until a Republican wins the Presidency again, however long that takes. But this sure sounds like an unforced error for John McCain, one I presume his opponent -- Democratic House Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who really should be doing a lot better than she is right now -- will exploit.

Finally, Buzzfeed finds a 2013 radio interview in which Donald Trump, Jr., suggests that women who "complain" about sexual harassment aren't tough enough. Where to begin with this? With the casual equation of a locker room with a workplace? With the notion that sexual harassment is "basic stuff"? With the male predilection for being "tough," when merely not-being-a-prick will get you through most workdays? With the absurd belief that coming forward about sexual harassment isn't tough? Or with the suggestion that "teaching kindergarten" isn't tough, or isn't a real job in a real workforce? That's the problem with these Trumps -- they fling so much crap at you it's hard to get around it. And they're probably proud of it, too.

Around the table: government spying, "vetting" Bernie Sanders, sugar in soda, vertical farming, and profiting from hardship.

Lo and behold, the Senate Intelligence Committee approves an appropriations bill that would permit the FBI to read your emails without a warrant. This is a giant middle finger to the American people, given that a Republican-held House just unanimously-as-in-everybody approved an email privacy bill that would require warrants for emails. Sadly, President Obama would probably prefer the Senate Intelligence Committee's approach, so we'll go to work on him; when I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Adam Johnson, writing at FAIR, takes issue with the notion that Bernie Sanders would wilt as a general election candidate because he hasn't been properly "vetted." Mr. Johnson does a exhaustive job cataloguing the multitudinous criticisms Mr. Sanders has received, but I think it's also true that Republican attack ads will bring those criticisms far more attention than they've received so far. Of course, the notion that Republicans wouldn't run a scorched-earth campaign against any other Democrat is absurd -- if Jesus ran as a Democrat, Republicans would run a million ads calling him a dirty hippie.

Jennifer Chaussee, writing at Wired, tells us how "Sugar’s Not Just Bad for You -- It’s Bad for Coca-Cola’s Business." You may have thought that corporate welfare handouts like the subsidies that make high-fructose corn syrup so cheap would be good for Coke's business, but Coke actually relies heavily on cheaply-produced foreign sugar that isn't always so well-backed by foreign governments. Hence their move to alternative sweeteners -- which may also benefit sugar workers, who may be the worst-treated workers in the history of the world.

Jodi Helmer, writing at TakePart, analyzes the evolution of indoor "vertical" farming by profiling a New Jersey operation operating in what used to be a laser-tag center. Strange, isn't it, that farming sometimes has to go indoors to avoid pesticide use? And with climate change progressing and urban populations growing, we're going to need solutions that aren't chained to arable land -- solutions that make land arable. It's still more promise than realization, as evidenced by the fact that the AeroFarms operation in Newark grows only 10 kinds of crops (it started out trying to grow 200!), but this is also the kind of thing that individuals can do. Which means those of us who do it in ten years or so will be singled out as terrorists by big ag.

Finally, Hillary Clinton has hit Donald Trump hard for saying he "sort of" hoped the housing market would collapse shortly before it did, because then cash-flush guys like him could make a killing, so to speak. Mr. Trump's counterpunch isn't bad, I suppose, but a statement like "I feel badly for everybody" really relies on you being very, very tuned in to his stream-of-consciousness style, and saying "(w)hat am I going to do? I'm a businessman" invites you to fantasize that someone even more powerful has a gun to his head, just making him benefit financially from good Americans losing their homes. And in re benefiting from crises: George W. Bush spent eight years as President creating crises so Republicans could benefit politically from them, and banksters still create crises all over the planet so they can get rich off them. And I think Americans understand this a lot better than they did a decade ago.

Around the table: an ancient warning about sugar, and other tales.

Michael Hudson weighs in on the significance of the now-famous Panama Papers. Better strap in, though, because he covers a lot of ground -- how Panama and Liberia are less "countries" than tax havens for foreign criminals and American oil/gas corporations, how foreign criminal income props up American military spending and doesn't get taxed, how money laundering takes cash to plenty of locations before it winds up in a tax haven like Delaware or Wyoming. Mr. Hudson also says we won't fix this, since politicians won't be able to tax corporations hard again and get campaign contributions from them. Of course I disagree that it's hopeless -- it's sorta my job -- but I appreciate why he thinks so.

Geoff Gilbert, writing at TruthOut, speculates as to "How Sanders Could Lay the Foundation for a Third US Political Party." He finds hope in Mr. Sanders's fundraising, which is both enormously impressive and relatively free of big corporate influence. But he'd actually have to retain that fundraising apparatus and/or hand it over to an actual third-party operation, neither of which is a given. And Mr. Gilbert may be optimistic (certainly in the short term!) in thinking a 24-7 Youtube channel can counteract the force of traditional media, especially if Mr. Sanders can't sign up the "dream team" Mr. Gilbert describes. I mean, I like the theory, obviously, but I also know that lots of eyeballs remain glued to TV.

Ian Leslie, writing at The Guardian, tells the story of British scientist John Yudkin, roundly dismissed for warning, way back in 1972, that sugar, not fat, was the biggest danger to our health. More people accept the sugar-is-poison notion today, but of course in the old days Mr. Yudkin became a pariah, despite the obvious strength of his signal insight -- that heart disease, which had increased dramatically in the first half of the 20th century, correlated more precisely with sugar intake than saturated fat intake, especially since Westerners had been eating saturated fat forever (it even shows up in breast milk!) but had only taken up sugar in the previous few centuries. Sadly, the story also includes a counter-hypothesis (the Seven Countries study) that turned out to be as self-serving in some ways as Samuel Eliot Morison's infamous craniometry studies, and ideological descendants of Seven Countries who employ personal attacks against their contemporary opponents.

University of Sheffield students testify that they're having trouble finishing their reading because of time constraints. Speaking as someone who didn't finish all the reading in college either, I think the mote in these kids' eyes is their social lives -- your first time away from home, and all the possibilities and challenges that entails, leaves less time for Arnold and Achebe. I suppose the slow evolution of media from books to screens has a not inconsiderable influence as well, but I always maintain that screens can supplement books. (I actually did dip into the comments, against my better judgment, and found some unusually frank and useful tips on not-reading-the-whole-text from a commenter named Contabs.)

Finally, tens of thousands of California voters seem to have mistakenly declared their affiliation with the far-right American Independent Party. It could be a fault with the state's voter registration form (which has a box for "no party preference" rather than "independent"), or it could be the fault of inattentive voters. At least the American Independent Party, an offshoot of the many George Wallace campaigns for President, has officially abandoned racial segregation as a goal.

Around the table: mostly good news which should not induce in us a sense of complacency.

Obama Administration issues moratorium on new coal leases, and promises overhaul of how our government manages leasing programs. Federal coal leasing is fraught with problems, as you know, not least among them a fee-assessment system riddled with loopholes; the Obama Administration also promises that coal leasing will, in the future, take climate change emissions into account. A new President could scuttle the whole program, but (as we learned, sadly, when Mr. Bush embraced climate change denialism) when the President does something, people start listening.

Iran releases four prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, in a prisoner-swap deal with the United States. You may recall some far-right Senators whining that the Iran nuclear deal didn't include Mr. Rezaian's release, but apparently our government is not compelled by laws of physics to negotiate one deal with one foreign government at one time. Kudos to you if you demanded that the Iranian government release Mr. Rezaian, because you helped get results, which is more than a lot of politicians do.

Federal dietary guidelines now suggest that less than 10 percent of your daily caloric intake should come from added sugars. That means no more than 200 calories from added sugars if you're eating 2,000 calories; that's 50 grams of sugar (or 12 1/2 teaspoons), which jibes with most contemporary science about the matter. Of course, far-rightists will squeal ZOMG TEH GUBMINT TELLZ US WHAT TO EATZ!!!!!, and without FDA-mandated food labeling concerning added sugar, most folks won't know exactly how much added sugar they're eating. (Hint: if the food doesn't contain fruit, milk, or sweet vegetables, it's more likely to have added sugar.)

Ted Cruz failed to disclose a loan of $1 million from his wife's employer, Goldman Sachs, in advance of his 2012 run for Senate. The big story isn't necessarily that he may have broken the law despite assurances from his campaign that the donation got disclosed somewhere, or that it blows apart the narrative that the Cruz clan sank all its savings into his Senate run -- but that Ted Cruz frequently rails against banksters and bailouts while taking bankster bailout money. Such hypocrisy should finish his campaign -- at least, it would, in a sane and healthy society.

Finally, Santa Fe, NM restaurant workers suggest a way to defend workers' rights without forming a union. The way includes filing National Labor Relations Board complaints and hitting the employer with the Big Stick of Bad PR, but the "Somos Model" (so named for Somos un Pueblo Unido, the local worker rights center), contains other good advice, too -- like don't talk the employer alone, or sign anything alone. Turns out, in some cases, that forming a union might actually be an "extra step" -- something the SEIU clearly believes, given its efforts to get a $15/hour minimum wage for folks who aren't SEIU members.

Action: concerning discrimination, campaign finance, and sugar intake.

In all the noise about the "religious freedom" to discriminate against gays, the ACLU reminds us that a Bush Mobb legal memo concluded that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 essentially authorizes taxpayer-funded organizations to discriminate against certain folks on "religious" grounds, and thus helps us tell President Obama to review this Office of Legal Counsel memo that bigots use to justify their "right" to discriminate. We presume that if the former Constitutional law professor orders a review, then the rickety legal standing of "religious freedom to discriminate" will collapse faster than that house on stilts from Lethal Weapon II, and while that may not happen -- after all, this former Constitutional law professor has actually expanded unconstitutional terrorism-related surveillance since ascending to the office -- putting pressure on the President is never a bad thing. And while it's bad enough that our laws would permit bigots to claim "conscience" in depriving others of their freedoms, it's even worse that our government would fund such bigotry.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yarmuth (D-KY), who lives out in coal country, has introduced H.R. 2125, the Keeping Our Campaigns Honest Act of 2015, and guess what acronym that bill's title spells out? KOCH, of course! The KOCH Act would compel the FCC to require SuperPACs and other political organizations to disclose their big donors in their radio and TV ads. You may recall that the majority in the Citizens United v. FEC decision wondered why disclosure of donors' identities wasn't enough to keep big money at bay. Perhaps we could test that theory, if we could get adequate campaign finance disclosure in the first place! But Republicans filibustered the DISCLOSE Act every time it was offered between 2009 and 2014, and Great American Super-Real and Awesome President Mitch McConnell, once an advocate of campaign finance disclosure, now likens disclosure to bullying. It's enough to make a man think that the real weaklings in America are the people with the most money. Anyway, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to support campaign finance disclosure in the KOCH Act.

Finally, you may recall that the FDA planned to revamp the nutrition labels that tell you how many calories, carbohydrates, etc., are in your food, and that we wanted them to include the amount of "added sugar" on every label. The good news is: not only does the FDA plan to do that, they also plan to mandate that food labels include an estimated recommended daily allowance for added sugar. Folks are probably going to find that number uncomfortably low (I'm sure I will, too!), but the corporations who try to defend all the sugar they pack into their foods can do little in opposition but mutter about regulations and Big Gummint and say the science on sugar is "inconclusive." But while fine details about sugar intake may not be concluded as of yet, no one can reasonably say sugar is good for you -- and no one can reasonably say that the big agricultural corporate corn subsidies that keep the price of junk food artificially low is a good thing, either. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the FDA to include both added sugar and percent of daily value figures on food labels.

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

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

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

Around the table: "the only job Scott Walker cares about creating is his own," and other truths.

Better sit down for this one: the Coca-Cola corporation gets caught funding scientists who say that ingesting a lot of calories (like, you know, from soft drinks) doesn't have a whole lot to do with obesity. These scientists say things like, "'Eat less' has never been a message that's been effective," when the message more pertinent to Coke would be "eat less sugar." Or, maybe, "eat less shit."

After an ACLU report finding that Chicago's "stop and frisk" program just so happens to overtarget black folks, Chicago Police Department and ACLU agree to get an independent evaluation of said "stop and frisk" program. That's a good start; now we just have to get the police to do something with the information we already know they're going to get, rather than just shove it down the memory hole.

Jeb Bush's official campaign website accidentally (or perhaps "accidentally") puts up and then takes down attacks on Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. The attacks on Mr. Rubio compares him with Mr. Obama ho-hum (though citing Mr. Rubio's apparent missed votes might stick -- it sure stuck to John Kerry!). The attack on Scott Walker, however, is dead on, and worth repeating: "the only job Scott Walker cares about creating is his own." That's so good Mr. Walker's eventual Democratic opponent might steal it.

Speaking of the worst human being in politics, Scott Walker says he didn't know until this week that he was the target of the now-closed John Doe probe that ended in 2013 with six convictions of Walker aides. The man who combines the political cunning of George W. Bush with the micromanaging skills of Karl Rove didn't know that? The hell he didn't.

Finally, Moody's Analytics, which has predicted the last nine Presidential elections correctly, says a Democrat will win the 2016 Presidential election -- by the not-very-mandatey margin of 270-268. Moody's did not predict that the "liberal" media would promptly use this result to tell the winner to "stick to the center," but I'll go out on a limb and predict it. (Moody's model, incidentally, has the Republicans taking Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada -- and still losing, as Democrats narrowly take Virginia, New Hampshire, and Iowa.)

Around the table: from Democratic "leftism" to the deleterious health effects of processed sugar.

Another day, another fool (this one a sitting House Democrat, but still a fool) claiming that the Democrats are going "too far left" -- but thank God we still have Bill Moyers around to school a fool. Of course the first thing wrong with Mr. Delaney's screed is the title: "The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party." I was thinking first, not last. But I'm sad to report the "left-wing version of the Tea Party" won't be Occupy -- the time for them to challenge Democrats in House and Senate primaries was 2012, when they were still on everyone's minds.

Paul Krugman tells us that the Texas "economic miracle," one allegedly spurred by "low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor," isn't what it appears to be. Mr. Krugman concedes that Texas's "permissive land-use policies" "have kept housing cheap" and therefore drawn folks to move there, but Texas's economy, we learn, has benefited from other factors -- the recent fracking boom, the long-term movement of Americans southward -- that can't be created by a legislature. Say that to your right-wing friend and he'll say see? Government can't do anything! Go ahead and tell him (do I need to gender-equivocate here?) that changing the subject is just a way of conceding the point.

MediaMatters's Eric Boehlert sees "More Bad News for Rush Limbaugh," as a vanguard Indianapolis radio station kicks him off its airwaves after 22 years. I'd hesitate to call this bad news for right-wing radio in general, though (one Republican radio consultant says it is, but he could be playing possum) -- new right-wing radio hosts seem to pop up all the time, faster than we can whack them, and where are the left-wing Rush Limbaughs who might inject our discourse with the coarse humor it needs? Nowhere, that's where. That's because liberals are nice.

A ProPublica/NPR report finds that the Red Cross raised $500 million for Haitian earthquake relief and built a grand total of six permanent homes. Every charity has problems in Haiti we could probably all recite, but the Red Cross has a few unique ones -- its apparent (and possibly racist) insistence on relying on workers who don't speak the language, its insistence on fundraising at least in part to close other operational deficits, and, of course, micromanaging from a home office that seems to understand fundraising better than it understands work. Even better than the part where the Red Cross starts a "hand-washing campaign" without adequate access to soap and water: the part where a Red Cross spokeshack accuses ProPublica and NPR of "creating ill will in the community which may give rise to a security incident"! Can you say hostage situation, boys and girls? Don't report on our failings, or the security of these good people gets it!

Finally, Dr. Jeff Ritterman writes in TruthOut that the McGovern Commission's 1977 declaration that we need to get fat out of our diet was wrong -- we need to get the processed sugar out of our diets. Happily Dr. Ritterman reminds us that when the fat went out of food, the taste went out with it, and when the taste went out, the sugar went in -- and thanks to our government's subsidization of high-fructose corn syrup, sugar was cheap. He goes on to explain exactly how excess sugar makes your body run badly, and he does this better than anyone else I've ever read.

Around the table: corruption, trade deficits, corporate hackery, regulatory shortcomings, and stupid tax credit tricks.

Republican Special Prosecutor Frances Schmitz, currently leading a bipartisan corruption investigation into Gov. Scott Walker's campaign finance dealings, comes out and all but calls Mr. Walker a liar. Like how Mr. Walker calls the John Doe probe a "witch hunt" "trying to intimidate people," as if you, the voter, are somehow the one getting intimidated and witch-hunted? I have no problem with the people intimidating the powerful. And the best part of all this for Mr. Schmitz? Given all the Walker underlings who've gone to jail lately, it might be more dangerous to be an ally of Scott Walker than an enemy.

Our trade deficits are going up, up, up, and our trade deficit with South Korea has more than doubled since President Obama's last "free" trade deal with (of course) South Korea. And could those "free" traders saying don't judge the TPP based on past deals maybe enlighten us on why the TPP will be so much different? No, they could not -- especially since they're so determined to keep its text secret.

Ho hum, the Union of Concerned Scientists finds that the majority of anti-food labeling comments to the FDA come from food corporations. And contra the elitist asshole who claimed not too long ago that industry comments will always win over those of citizens because they're just better, the food industry says things like "there is scant evidence to support the idea that added sugar contributes to ill health," which begs the question of whether they've outsourced their PR to a group of monkeys with typewriters.

North America's largest firefighters' union says the DOT's new rules concerning oil and gas transportation by train will be something of a hindrance in their disaster response. While the DOT's regulations does apparently improve standards for rail car construction and speed, they don't require corporations to notify local fire departments beforehand that hazardous materials are coming, which, yeah, is a hindrance, since you can't fight past fires with future knowledge.

Finally, we learn that as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is cutting funding for state colleges, Duck Dynasty is still getting its notorious tax windfall. Priorities! And Mr. Jindal seems to think getting rid of the entertainment tax credit would be like a tax increase! Ah, no -- it would be like a tax cut for everyone else, since the state would no longer be bleeding money supporting a TV program that's not exactly going to pull up stakes and move to Pennsylvania, now, is it?

Action: freedom for Raif Badawi, "ban the box" laws, and better nutrition standards for day-care centers.

As you may recall, the Saudi Arabian government sentenced blogger Raif Badawi to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes, two years after he started a blog where good Saudi citizens might discuss religion and politics. But it's been 12 weeks since the Saudi Arabian government inflicted his weekly punishment of 50 lashes. That could be bad news or good-but-don't-get-complacent news. The possible bad news? That Mr. Badawi is too ill to be tortured. The good-but-don't-get-complacent news? That the world outcry over his treatment has given them pause. And where does the "don't get complacent" part come in? That if we turn our attention away from his case, they might start lashing him again. So Amnesty International helps you keep up the pressure on the Saudi Arabian government to release Mr. Badawi and to stop imprisoning and torturing people merely for speaking freely. Also, Amnesty (along with other groups) plans mass demonstrations outside Saudi embassies across the world on May 7 (the first anniversary of Mr. Badawi's sentencing); more details as they arrive.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Keystone Progress joins with MoveOn to help you tell your state legislators to pass "ban the box" legislation, as 13 other states have done. The "box," in this instance, is that box on employment applications that ask if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. Legislation "banning the box" would force employers to wait until after interviewing the applicant and making a (conditional) offer of employment before checking an applicant's criminal background, which would, at least, allow the applicant the opportunity to impress the employer in an interview, and prevent employers from simply discriminating against people with convictions in their past. Why do I call that "discrimination"? Because it is -- more than one in five Americans have a criminal conviction in their past; do 20% of Americans therefore deserve permanent unemployment? Besides, if you've committed a crime, and served your time, you're square with civil society, and you don't need to keep paying and paying for it. Only weaklings make people keep paying and paying.

Finally, the USDA, having done a good job updating school lunch standards for the first time in over 40 years (the same standards Republicans keep attacking), now turns its attention to updating meal and snack standards for its Child and Adult Care Food Program (or CACFP), which gives grants to states so they can feed over three million children and over 120,000 adults (who are either elderly or in some way disabled) in day care-type settings. And the USDA's proposed standards would increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, while reducing the availability of fried foods. The proposal doesn't address sugary drinks, but certainly we can tell the USDA that's a priority of ours. So Moms Rising helps you tell the USDA to enact the most vigorous CACFP food standards possible, so that kids in day care and after-school and summer programs can eat nutritious food, and endure fewer diabetes- and obesity-related health problems during their lives. I sure would like to be able to say that the USDA did two good things under President Obama -- even if that means giving the Republicans another target to hit.

Action: tax relief for working families, strong dietary guidelines, and shareholder transparency.

Various Congressfolk have lately introduced bills to expand and make permanent the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit, as well as reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. If you don't think about these things when you hear about "tax reform," there's good reason for that -- our "liberal" media seems to agree with Republicans that the only permissible policy prescriptions for tax reform are those that cut corporate taxes and wealthy folks' taxes. But neither of these actually put money back into the pockets of working families, like the EITC, CTC, et al do -- and working families, as you know, are far more likely to put that money back into our economy, whereas wealthy and corporate types tend to hoard their windfalls. Hence NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell Congress to focus on tax relief for people who work, rather than people who don't. Yes, the divide is now that great -- the wealthy don't actually work, or even enable work, so much as they redistribute income upward to themselves.

Meanwhile, the FDA's new labeling guidelines would mandate that corporations tell you how much sugar they've added to the product -- and this is no small thing. But the USDA has recommended updating Americans' dietary guidelines, and these guidelines would suggest that added sugar shouldn't comprise more than 10% of our caloric intake. Which might actually be a bit high -- 200 calories (10% of 2,000) is a little more than 13 teaspoons of sugar daily -- but naturally the big food corporations oppose the notion anyway. And if your right-wing uncle says ZOMG TEH GUBMINT CONTROLZ TEH DIETZ!!!!, feel free to tell him he should be more concerned about warrantless wiretapping and NSA data-vacuuming, which are actual injuries our government does us. You may want him to consider, also, that sugar corporations might be behind whatever "source" is telling him that the Obamas want to control what he eats. In the meantime, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the USDA to issue the most vigorous Dietary Guidelines possible, especially in re added sugar intake.

Finally, you may remember that Antonio Weiss stood to gain a $21 million bonus from his employer if he was able to get that Treasury Undersecretary job in our government. This and similar developments have, perhaps not surprisingly, made shareholders quite angry, and some of them have petitioned for disclosure of those bonuses once they're made. Bankster CEOs, naturally, oppose such transparency to their shareholders, and why not? It's not like they pay those bonuses out with shareholder money or anything. Oh, wait, yes, they do. It's like being a CEO means never having to be accountable to anyone, even the people who pay you. And it's also like moving from the private sector to our government means never having to be accountable to anyone, even the people who pay you -- those people being taxpayers, meaning you and I. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell three big banking corporations to drop their opposition to shareholder transparency resolutions. What are they afraid of? That people will think banksters only care about money? Sorry, banksters -- all of America already thinks that.

Action: unlawful detainment, waste coal regulation, and truth in food-labeling.

The ACLU helps you tell the Department of Defense to free Mohamedou Slahi from Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Slahi fought with mujahideen in the early '90s against the then-Communist government of Afghanistan, but claims that after that government fell and mujahideen started shooting each other, he severed his ties with al-Qaeda -- which seems likely (despite his family ties to a bin Laden "spiritual adviser" who went on to denounce the 9.11 attacks), since our government has detained Mr. Slahi at Guantánamo for over a dozen years and hasn't charged him with a crime. It gets worse: a military commission wouldn't prosecute him in 2003, finding that Mr. Slahi's "incriminating statements -- the core of the government's case -- had been taken through torture," and a federal judge ordered his release nearly five years ago for similar raeasons. Yet he remains in Guantánamo, because TEH TERRORISTZ KILLZ TEH BABIEZ!!!!! Mr. Slahi has also written a nearly 500-page memoir, by hand, about his detainment; if you have a few hours, you can read it (in somewhat redacted form) here.

Meanwhile, closer to home, both Pennsylvania Senators have been pushing to exclude waste-coal burning plants from mercury limits. Waste coal is actually the waste product of regular coal-burning, which means it's much, much higher in toxins like mercury, sulfur, and lead than ordinary coal. The coal industry's solution to having piles of waste coal sitting around has been to burn it, even though doing so produces much less electricity than burning regular coal and, naturally, pumps a lot of those toxins right back out. Sen. Toomey says strong mercury regulations would force waste coal plants to shut down, which would leave the waste coal sitting around. But he doesn't say burning waste coal doesn't even get rid of it -- most of it becomes waste coal ash after that! Also, waste-coal burning is not the only way to deal with waste coal -- planting beach grass on top of waste coal piles actually keeps toxins out of our air and water quite well. The Toomey-Casey legislation failed in the Senate last week, but it'll be back, so Penn Environment helps you oppose excluding waste-coal plants from clean air and clean water protections.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell General Mills to stop claiming their high-fructose corn syrup-laden products have no high-fructose corn syrup. How does that happen? Well, General Mills claims that products containing HFCS-90 are free of high-fructose corn syrup. Now look at those initials again. And look at the words "high-fructose corn syrup" again. Beginning to see the problem? Of course General Mills isn't dumb enough to put "HFCS-90" on the label; they just call it "fructose" instead. But HFCS-90 is a very concentrated form of high-fructose corn syrup, whereas fructose is the sugar you get from apples, blueberries, strawberries, and the like. The good news? High-fructose corn syrup has suffered so many richly-deserved PR hits over the years (namely for its role in keeping junk food cheap and, therefore, helping our children become obese -- and also for our government's role in subsidizing its production so it remains cheap) that food corporations not only have to hide it, they have to tell really dumb lies in order to hide it. I call that progress. But that doesn't mean we stop demanding more progress.

Action: tolerating torture nay, healthy school lunch standards yea.

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced his resignation, as you know, and he, like President Obama, was a don't-look-backward-look-forward sort of fellow when it came to prosecuting Bush Mobb-era torture, so Firedoglake helps you tell the next Attorney General, whomever that may be, to investigate our use of torture during the so-called "war on terror." Who has gone to prison over our government's illegal torturing of detainees? Only the fellow who exposed that torture to the world, and that's probably a result of the Obama Administration's war on whistleblowers. Naturally, Mr. Obama himself may be about to reverse himself on using torture, as some members of his legal team are mulling whether to re-adopt Bush Mobb-era legal interpretations permitting our government to torture people as long as it's not here on American soil. The conjoining of the words "Bush" and "legal interpretations" should be enough to strangle that idea in its crib, but just in case it's not, CREDO helps you remind Mr. Obama that, in Shepard Smith's words, "we do not fucking torture." When did right stop being right and wrong stop being wrong?

Meanwhile, if you've been thinking lately that every day is Halloween, that might be because children now consume, on average, over 120 grams of sugar every day, when scientists would rather you didn't have more than 48. The USDA did kids a solid by mandating more fruit and vegetables in school lunches and making junk food more scarce in public schools -- and yet Congress is mulling scaling back the new school lunch standards, because DEFICITZ!!!!! But the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to keep the school lunch standards intact. One question we can reasonably ask, if Congress attempts to gut the school lunch standards: is Congress objectively pro-junk food? Are Congressfolk objectively pro-diabetes, or objectively pro-obesity? I don't think these are untoward questions, nor do I think these matters are particularly hard to decide. What Congressperson, even one flush from winning re-election, could reasonably say there's room in the budget for all manner of handouts and bailouts for corporate cronies but nothing in the budget to keep healthy school lunch standards for our children?

Around the table: from occupation to "job terrorism."

Juan Cole writes that Israel's ultimate aim in occupying Palestine isn't peace; rather, "Israel wants Palestinian land and resources and won’t give them up." I always assumed that Israel's mania about its own defense was entirely authentic, but I understand why it looks the way it does to Mr. Cole, and anyway the result's the same. Personal to those who worry about "strengthening Hamas": wouldn't the creation of a Palestinian state take Hamas's main issue away from them?

Workers at a New England grocery store chain protest the ousting of its CEO with rallies, protests, and even strikes. Turns out Arthur T. Demoulas (not to be confused with the new CEO, his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas, now the avatars of a decades-long family feud) paid his workers better than other grocery store chains do, plus he offered bonuses, tuition assistance, and a generous retirement plan; one manager called Arthur T. "George Bailey," which is a high compliment, and if you can't imagine ever feeling this way about your own CEO, take heart that at least some folks in America can.

Take Part asks, "Is the Downfall of Soda Imminent?" Gallup found that 63 percent of Americans now say they avoid drinking soda, and though that's up from 41 percent in 2010, asking folks what they do (folks do tend to overstate their healthy eating habits, myself certainly included!) isn't as telling as seeing what folks do. Just so happens that sales were flat in Coke's most recent earnings report, and soda consumption is down by 17 percent since 1998, so there's hope, though thanks to our government's persistent support for high-fructose corn syrup subsidies, you'll still see more folks drinking soda than you would otherwise.

Jesse Eisinger explains the problem with Valeant, one of the largest drug corporations in the world. Valeant has reached this summit mostly by buying up other, smaller corporations that have already spent all the money on researching new drugs, which is fortunate, since Valeant's executives don't seem to like doing research, having apparently slow-walked an FDA-mandated study of a cosmetic drug originally used on HIV-positive patients. Banksters love them -- not just for their "business model," but for all the jobs they cut -- but you have to wonder if they've properly considered that Valeant would be nowhere without small businesses doing all the hard work.

Finally, another day, another Republican House Rep equating environmental regulation with "terrorism." Of course, Rep. Kelly's flatugasm also includes a hostage crisis -- the EPA "terrorize(s) the people who supply everything this country needs to be great," meaning you better not tell the energy corporations what to do, or else you'll live in eternal darkness, I suppose. Can't the good citizens of Pennsylvania's 3rd district hire someone else to represent their interests? The seat ain't that red.

Action: sugar's toxic health effects, and clemency for another non-violent drug offender.

The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the Surgeon General of the United States to commission a report on the health effects of sugar consumption. Your folks told you sugar was bad for you, generally because it rotted your teeth, and of course they were right, but they didn't know the half of it -- scientists have since found that the liver breaks down sugar into fats, but the liver stores some of those fats (which affects long-term liver function) and pushes other fats out into the bloodstream, which hikes up your blood pressure and makes your body's tissues more resistant to insulin. Then a vicious cycle ensues, with diabetes, breathing problems, high blood pressure, and heart disease becoming ever more endemic. Sugar is, unfortunately, big business in this country -- remember when the corn lobby put out those pro-high-fructose corn syrup TV ads in early 2009? -- but getting the Surgeon General on board would be a good thing. Remember when President Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, came out in favor of condom use in the late 1980s? That won a lot of hearts and minds, and we can do that again in our battle against the bad health effects of sugar.

Another day, another man serving a life-without-parole sentence for a non-violent drug offense -- in the case of Dana Jackson of Louisiana, selling a hundred bucks' worth of heroin to an undercover cop 15 years ago. Mr. Jackson has been a model prisoner, even helping good folks out during Hurricane Isaac, and the Louisiana Pardon Board recommended commuting Mr. Jackson's sentence five years ago. Moreover, the state actually reduced sentences for selling heroin a few years after Mr. Jackson's original sentencing, and then made those sentences retroactive a few years after that. (Louisiana does seem to be ahead of the curve in some matters.) But all these changes in the law didn't apply to people serving life sentences, which means that only Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal can set Mr. Jackson free now. Mr. Jindal will have served two terms at the end of 2015, so he's had more than enough time to consider the matter. I'd hate to think Mr. Jindal would wait until term's end to issue a pardon just in advance of a possible Presidential campaign; the time for justice is always now, so change.org helps you urge Gov. Jindal to free Dana Jackson.

Action: repealing the AUMF, getting Frankenfood out of WalMart, and better nutrition labeling.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your House Rep to repeal the post-9.11 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF. Both Bush and Obama Administrations have used the AUMF -- intended to give the President the ability to go after those who attacked us on 9.11 -- to justify new wars, warrantless wiretapping, drone strikes in countries with whom we're not currently at war, and indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay. But the Schiff Amendment to the last Defense Authorization bill fell a mere 27 votes short of passage; that amendment would have repealed the AUMF. It could be for the best that the amendment failed -- how disheartening would it have been to see the amendment pass the House and maybe even pass the Senate but then see the amendment get "conferenced out" just because Mr. Obama threatened a veto? And besides, we're better off putting the matter directly to Congress and getting their answers through their votes -- and we're also better off putting the matter directly to Mr. Obama.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell WalMart not to sell unlabeled, genetically-modified seafood. The FDA has received almost two million comments protesting their approval of genetically-modified salmon, but they've only been a moderately more stalwart defendant of the public good since Mr. Obama took over from Mr. Bush, which is really saying something. Still, if you can't get government to do its job, you can get big grocers to do theirs -- and Target, Safety, Kroger, and Whole Foods have already committed to keeping the Frankensalmon out of their stores. But America's biggest grocer, WalMart (and who'd have thought we'd ever have said that twenty years ago?), has not committed either way, and that's not to say they'll automatically do the wrong thing just because they've wreaked so much destruction on our economy. Certainly they're no less susceptible to the Awesome Power of Bad PR than anyone else. No, really: huge amounts of money only insulate you so much from bad PR, and frankly I think corporations generally overreact to bad PR, which is all the better for us.

Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the FDA to mandate that food corporations include information about added sugar in their food labels, if you haven't done so already. As you may recall, the FDA hasn't updated food labeling requirements in decades, but its current proposal does a lot of things right, and mandating "added sugar" information is one of them. Currently labels tell you how much sugar is in your food, but not how much sugar got added to the food, and that's a big deal -- folks are far too used to colas that have three times the sugar they need to have in order to taste good, and corporations can hide added sugars in fruit- and milk-based drinks more easily, since both fruit and milk already have sugar in them naturally. Thankfully, the FDA's proposal includes making corporations note added sugars in food (as well as noting amounts of Vitamin D and potassium and basing calorie counts on more realistic serving sizes), but the OBAMAZ TELLZ TEH PEEPULZ WHATZ TO EATZ!!!! crowd will be their usual emptiest-wagon-makes-the-loudest-noise selves, so the FDA will need all the support they can get.

Action: soda-free happy meals, a big bad merger, and the minimum wage.

Moms Rising helps you tell Wendy's and Burger King to take soda out of kids' meals. You know, so we can help keep kids from becoming obese and getting Type 2 diabetes, since sugary beverages pump more added sugar into kids than all other sources of added sugar combined. I bet I'll hear some libertarian-types saying what are you, anti-choice? Those would be some damn inattentive libertarians, of course: we're not saying stop selling soda, we're saying stop selling soda as part of a combination meal. Go to almost any fast-food joint and the default drink in kids' meals is soda. Why does it have to be like that? Because soda is so cheap, which in turn is because our government hands out billions of dollars in subsidies to the corn syrup producers? There's no damn good reason for it. And though we've tried and failed (for the moment!) to get our government to stop doing that, certainly there's no harm in asking of our fast-food titans to make it harder for kids to get their hands on soda. The kids will have to talk their parents' ears off to get it -- just like we did in the old days, and we turned out fine.

Meanwhile, Comcast has announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable. See any problems with that? Here's one big one: Comcast is the nation's #1 cable provider, one that already owns NBC and Universal Studios, among other things. Who's #2? Time Warner Cable, of course. Combine the top two cable providers into one company and you'll have a monopolistic behemoth just about no one will be able to stop from jacking up prices and compromising our privacy and trampling over network neutrality. One of the biggest problems with the media today is that too few corporations own too much -- no sense telling me there are 500 channels when only four corporations own them -- and we can't get our cable channels to serve its customers better because, in most media markets, you'll have only one big cable company, with no competition to keep everyone honest. Hence Free Press helps you tell the Department of Justice and the FCC to block a Comcast/Time Warner merger. They might do it -- Justice blocked the AT&T/T-Mobile merger a while back, as you may remember -- but they have to hear from us first.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to hike the minimum wage to $10.10/hour, here are three more, from the Campaign for America's Future, Moms Rising, and NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby. Folks making minimum wage make a shade over $15,000 annually, and most folks who make minimum wage are women, and over a quarter of those women have children. And to all the haters: no one budgets absolutely perfectly or enjoys a life untouched by unforeseen circumstances. It's always better to give these folks a hand up rather than ridicule them. And no, hiking the minimum wage won't cause prices to go up or force small businesses to cut jobs (like small businesses have the luxury!) -- but, as our President said the other day, it will put more money in the pockets of working folks, which means they'll have more money to spend, which means businesses will have more customers and will hire more workers to keep up with the demand. We used to know how all that worked. I wonder what happened. Oh, right -- the rich got all the say about everything.

Action: budget reporting, land grabs, and shutdown dramas.

MoveOn helps you demand that the New York Times report on what federal budget items cost in the context of the larger budget. In other words, the Times shouldn't tell us that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting soaks up about $400 million annually without also mentioning that the federal government spent about $3.3 trillion in 2012. If the Times told you that, then you'd know that NPR takes up a little more than one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget -- that's right, not one percent, but one percent of one percent -- and you might then think that fiscal "hawks" who whine about spending money on NPR might be full of soup. You'd be right to ask "why just the Times?" After all, the entire "liberal" media does a lousy job of reporting on budgetary items in context. Hell, they do a lousy job reporting on anything involving numbers! But if the Times starts doing it right, other papers will have no excuse to keep doing wrong.

Meanwhile, Oxfam has reported that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo benefit rather immensely from relationships with suppliers who steal land from indigenous peoples to grow sugar. If you're inclined to think (as I am) that your sugar habit is a lot more trouble than it's worth, consider this another impetus to ditch the habit -- and if you're at all familiar with the story of how the sugar trade absolutely ruined Central America over the last few hundred years, you'll find sad, sad echoes here also. We're not talking about lands seized via eminent domain -- we're talking about big sugar suppliers forcing people off their land, without their consent, without payment, occasionally violently. Coke responds by telling us very carefully exactly whom they don't buy "directly" from, which isn't the tiniest bit suspicious, and Pepsi tells us their suppliers have assured them they're following all "applicable" laws, which must be a tremendous comfort to the subsistence farmer whose house just got burned down. Thus Sum of Us helps you tell Coke and Pepsi to ensure their supply chain is uncorrupted by suppliers who steal land.

Finally, hot on the heels of the government shutdown/debt limit deal that got nothing for Republicans other than deep knowledge about the taste of dung but sets up another shutdown/debt limit crisis at the beginning of 2014, the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to end these artificial hostage crises and start governing like responsible adults. OK, the Sierra Club didn't actually say "start governing like responsible adults," but nothing in the world prevents you from telling them that. No, really: they need to hear it. They need to hear, from their constituents, that we're on to their games and that we hate their games, especially when their little shutdown drama allowed over 800,000 gallons of fracked natural gas to spill in North Dakota with nobody to clean it up. The Sierra Club makes a number of good suggestions -- public campaign financing, restoring the Voting Rights Act, changing rules that allow minorities to hijack our government -- and you can, of course, add to them. But don't be afraid to tell them you're angry. They need to know you're angry.

Around the table: home health workers get vital work protections, and other stories.

Good news, everyone: the Obama Administration's Labor Department issued a new rule extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. The new rule still exempts folks who provide occasional companionship to seniors, but not the vast majority of workers who bathe, dress, and toilet seniors (often several seniors per day). You probably advocated for this change over the last year-plus, so good job!

FAIR catches USA Today failing to check Republican assertions that too many people get food stamps or that the vicious food stamp bill passed Thursday would "restore() integrity to the program." And thus FAIR provides another lesson that "balance" -- or, more precisely, symmetry -- isn't the same thing as fairness. And would it have killed USA Today to note that our government lets more people get food stamps for good reasons?

Speaking of food stamps, intrepid constituent posts lengthy New Testament passage protesting Rep. Kevin Cramer's vote in favor of the Cantor food stamp bill -- and Rep. Cramer responds with a quotation from Paul's 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." Ahem: a lot of folks who get food stamps are already working, and if they're not making enough money to feed themselves, that's largely because corporations don't pay them enough. Also, you don't fight Jesus with Paul.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivers a scathing indictment of mandatory minimum laws and the War on Drugs -- suggests that drug-related incarceration has become the new Jim Crow, notes that while most drug dealers and offenders are white, most folks getting put in jail for all that are black, the whole nine yards. Good speech, but again: let's see if Mr. Paul's words lead to action.

Surprise, surprise -- Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the states so often praised as "low-tax" states, well, aren't, at least not for the working poor. Click through and you'll detect a theme: these states levy big sales and excise taxes, but have low (or nonexistent!) income taxes, and sales taxes always hit the poor harder, because, you know, the poor have to spend all their money just to get by.

Head of Amsterdam's health service says sugar should be just as tightly regulated as tobacco and alcohol, because it's "the most dangerous drug of the times." I'd be inclined to agree, and not just because I've had the damndest time cutting down on sugar, a much worse time than I've had cutting down on caffeine -- truth is, we're learning more and more about how sugar makes us fat. Would I insist on limiting the amount of sugar food processing corporations can add to food? I don't know. But I do know that we need to stop propping up high-fructose corn syrup producers with handouts.

Finally, Buzzfeed finds that "30 or 40" Tea Party House Republicans are forcing Speaker Boehner to the ideological right. Myself, I think that's what he wants us to think. But dig Rep. Schock's assertion at the end that "(i)f the majority of our members are bomb throwers, our leadership has no other choice but to acquiesce." Actually, Mr. Schock, leadership could, you know, lead.

The Senate takes up the Farm Bill again this week, and we've already had a win and a loss: a Durbin-Coburn amendment began the hard work of limiting crop insurance subsidies for big corporations, but a Gillibrand amendment that would have restored over $4 billion in food stamps got shot down, with 28 Democrats helping the Republicans do the shooting. And they call that fiscal sanity! But Food and Water Watch helps you email your Senators about amendments to the Farm Bill. Their list is pretty comprehensive; it includes, among others, two Barbara Boxer (D-CA) amendments that would force labeling of genetically-modified food, a Begich (D-AK) amendment that would ban genetically-engineered salmon, a Gillibrand (D-NY) amendment that would tackle antibiotic abuse in factory farm animals, a slew of factory farm-spanking amendments authored by Democrats Tester and Rockefeller as well as Republicans Grassley and Enzi, and a Shaheen (D-NH) amendment limiting crop insurance payouts to $50,000. The big agricultural concerns will try to drown us out, but they're nothing compared to us. After all, we're people.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Pennsylvania state Senate is actually mulling legislation (SB 975) that would legalize payday loans extracting 300% annual interest. Sigh. They're calling SB 975 a "micro-loan" bill, but if it looks like dung and smells like dung you don't need to eat it because Pennsylvania politicians call it meatloaf. And back in 2002, the state legislature actually passed a tough payday lending law -- one that limited the size of loans to $500, limited fees to $75, and limited interest to 20% for the first $300 and a mere 7.5% for any money over $300. Pennsylvania law also doesn't allow borrowers to take out a second payday loan until they've paid off the first, which keeps them out of an endless cycle of debt brought on by a temporary cash crisis. So why break something that's been working well for over a decade? I'd hate to think it's because the big banksters want to get into the payday loan business, but we can't discount the possibility. Keystone Progress helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject SB 975, and keep our payday loan laws strong.

H.R. 12/S. 123, the Voter Empowerment Act of 2013, makes online voter registration easier, makes intimidating voters harder, helps more disabled folks vote, and lets felons vote again once they get out of jail. And the bill directly addresses, and prohibits, voter "caging." You remember "caging," right, from Greg Palast's 2004 BBC Newsnight report? Where the state (in this case, Florida) sends fundraising solicitations or address verification letters to certain (i.e. black) voters, and then puts the voters who don't respond on a special list alleging that they might not be eligible to vote? Clever, huh? Why do people in power waste valuable time and attention on such matters, when they could just, you know, do something valuable for the folks they serve? The Brennan Center for Justice provides more information, and you can use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to urge your Reps and Senators to support the Voter Empowerment Act. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, Congress still works on the Farm Bill, and shows little or no interest in reforming one of the greatest injustices built into the Farm Bill for decades -- that giant multinational corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Archer-Daniels-Midland somehow collect the vast majority of agricultural subsidies. Indeed, between 1995 and 2011, less than four percent of America's farmers collected 75 percent of all of these subsidies. I pity the fool who raises his hand to say, but that makes sense, because those corporations are bigger! But if a pimp needs a slap I'm game to give it: big corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM shouldn't be getting more government help than the small farmers who need it more -- and certainly not to keep the price of corn syrup (and therefore soda and other junk foods) artificially low, which also keeps our children artificially fat. So USPIRG helps you tell your Senators to fight big subsidies for big agricultural corporations.

In other sad food news, an Oregon farmer has discovered genetically-engineered wheat growing on his farm. He didn't plant it, and even better, this particular strain of GE wheat never even received government approval for planting. And this wheat is one of them-there glycophate-resistant strains! Hey, we were going after glycophates in pesticides not too long ago! Now, nobody necessarily broke the law in planting this strain of wheat -- most likely, the strain was part of a field test. But maybe there should be a law against that, since we can't contain the ill effects any more than we can contain the wind or the animals that carry the GE seed from field to field. So Food and Water Watch helps you tell the USDA to halt all field testing of genetically-modified crops. Note well that many trade partners have outlawed GE crops, and that organic crops won't be organic once tainted with GE seed. These alone should be incentive enough for the USDA to act -- even if, you know, they don't take public service seriously or something.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), you may have heard the litany of flatugasms coming from (male) Fox News contributors lately, concerning Pew Research's finding that a record number of families with minor children (40%) now feature the mother as the breadwinner. No use slamming these fools any more than their own words (and their own co-workers) have slammed them -- best to remember, as Moms Rising reminds us, that women still earn 77 cents on their male counterparts' dollar, breadwinners or not, and mothers and women of color fare rather worse than that. Hence Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to pass H.R. 377/S. 84, the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would give us better tools with which to enforce the Equal Pay Act -- such as prohibiting employers from disciplining workers who discuss their salaries with their co-workers, and putting gender-based discrimination on equal legal footing with other forms of wage discrimination. I'd be hard-pressed to imagine legitimate objections to either of those items.

Tea Party caller suggests the best way to get Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to "listen" on immigration reform is to "shoot her." I eagerly await rebuke from Sarah Palin and other self-anointed members of the Civility Police. How long before Susan Collins decides, like Olympia Snowe, that she's had enough of all this shit?

2010 Alaska Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller files papers to run for the 2014 Alaska Senate election. Mark Begich must be seriously hoping he wins, and not just because he's a clown -- he's also a man whose stated political philosophy stands at odds with Alaska citizens' desire to have their Senators bring home the bacon.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announces that this term will be her last term in the House. Adds that it has nothing to do with all those pesky ethics charges or to her close election in 2012 or to the fool she's generally made of herself. Democrats aren't too happy, as her retirement takes away their putative candidate's main campaign issue, but the rest of us are happy, because we're always happy when embarrassing people leave our government. Though she could take on Al Franken in 2014, I suppose.

Finally, a study finds that a soda drinking habit can be as bad or worse on your teeth as a meth or coke habit. (The American Beverage Association, perhaps not surprisingly, disputes the study.) But cocaine and meth have other problems! you might be tempted to say. Soda does, too -- diabetes, obesity, the taxpayer money spent keeping high-fructose corn syrup cheap not going to address our lousy economy and our failing infrastructure, to name three.

As you know, CISPA is back, and it still lets corporations share your private information with our government without our government having to get a warrant, and still defines "cybersecurity" and "national security" far too broadly. If you think Big Brother watching you is bad, then Big Brother colluding with private corporations to watch you must be another boatload of bad. And though CISPA lets you sue a corporation that shares your information unlawfully, how will you know that? The Supreme Court just ruled in Clapper v. Amnesty International that the plaintiffs couldn't sue over warrantless wiretapping because they couldn't establish they had been harmed, when everyone knows our government doesn't have to say whom they're tapping! Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to oppose CISPA.

Meanwhile, you may have heard of "patent trolls," who buy patents from down-on-their-luck corporations or apply for overly-broad patents, all so they can spend their workday suing other people and extracting fees from them. Nice work if you can get it! One suspects the Patent Office ought to review patent applications rather more vigorously. At least H.R. 845, the SHIELD Act -- co-sponsored by Reps. Chaffetz (R-UT) and DeFazio (D-OR) -- would force patent trolls to pay the other side's legal costs if they sue and lose, which would give the patent trolls pause, since their "business model" counts on suing people who would rather pass on expensive court battles. EFF helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the SHIELD Act. And we can fight actual frivolous lawsuits for once!

In other news, the dairy lobby wants the FDA to let them put artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, in milk. But milk is a naturally-sweet drink! Checking the label on my 2% from the supermarket, I see 12 grams of sugar per eight-ounce serving, and no sugar added. I'm guessing the dairy industry sees high-fructose corn syrup drinks as their main competition for the kiddie market, and wants to say at least with milk, the kids get some calcium. And it's not like putting Ovaltine in your milk, either, because parents can stop kids from using Ovaltine, or make it a once-in-a-while treat. Bottom line: we shouldn't let milk makers put more sugar in milk; instead, we should stop shoveling all that taxpayer money toward corn syrup makers, so we can get a handle on all this sugar madness. In the meantime, Sum of Us helps you tell the FDA to nix sweeteners for milk.

Finally, Shell Oil has declared it won't drill in the Arctic for oil this year. That's after a number of high-profile PR reversals (losing control of oil rigs, failing safety tests, like that) in which Shell demonstrated how difficult it is to drill in an area you don't know very much about and can't clean up as easily as you can in warmer climes. So the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell the Department of the Interior to keep Shell out of the Arctic, and the Sierra Club helps you tell Messrs. Obama and Salazar to protect the Polar Bear Seas and the coast of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Shell may pull out this year, but it'll be back next year, having learned not a damn thing, I imagine, but still wanting to screw up the Arctic. Why should we permit that?