Thieves in the Temple.

Action: tax "reform," children's health insurance, and the Grand Canyon.

I still think you should call your Reps and Senators and demand that they reject whatever tax "reform" plan comes out of conference, but Public Citizen also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the final tax "reform" bill or, in the words of their latest email missive, "face the wrath of (their) constituents." How much wrath they'll face remains to be seen, particularly in districts where they've been able to gerrymander individual houses into the next district (or states that use the Interstate Crosscheck database), but why not remind them that in passing this tax "reform," they stand against us? And does standing against the people seem to them to be their job? Is it their job to take away the tax breaks working families depend upon (state and local tax deductions, property tax deductions, etc.) in order to shower upon big corporations and wealthy inheritors unearned and unneeded tax breaks? Is it their job to force cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security because of the massive deficits their tax "reform" plan creates? Is it their job to refuse to face the people in townhalls over their tax "reform" plan? They may not know what their job is, but we know what our job is.

In a related note, the Fairness Project helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. You may want to follow up with a phone call, in which you add that you want clean CHIP reauthorization, without poison pill amendments or hostage crises. CHIP's funding authorization lapsed on September 30, since the Senate was too busy trying to take health care away from at least 20 million Americans; the House has passed a CHIP reauthorization bill since then, but one larded with poison pills. Lately, Sen. Hatch (R-UT) has opined that though he'd love to get CHIP reauthorized, he's sick and tired of all these people demanding that government do everything for them, or something. Funny that he'd indulge in that critique when discussing children's health insurance, a matter that children can literally do nothing about. Unless Mr. Hatch wants them all to work factory jobs! And for him to go on about "spending and spending" when he literally blew open a trillion-dollar hole in the national debt is just icing on the cake. Might shame finally descend upon these politicians? Or must we wait for a Doug Jones victory in Alabama that's far from a sure thing?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Trump to abandon his plan of opening up the Grand Canyon area to uranium mining corporations, then Environmental Action helps you do that. If you wanted to sum up the problem here in seven words, here they are: uranium mining pollutes water that people drink. Specifically, uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area would pollute the drinking water of the Colorado River, which serves five U.S. states and two Mexican states and which, quite frankly, gets a little shallower every year, not just from corporations and people using more and more water, but also from climate change drying out the land. But you know how the unregenerate mammon-worshiper Donald Trump thinks: if some executive can make money, then screw everything and everyone else. And this is not about "creating jobs" for miners, because corporate executives won't create jobs for anyone unless one of two things happen: demand rises, or we make them. Sadly, in this age, the latter has to precede the former. Uranium mining is, for the Trump Administration, all about making mining executives richer, and nothing else.

Action: "free" trade, the Grand Canyon, and health care policy.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any renegotiated NAFTA that includes the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" system. These systems (which our very own Supreme Court Chief Justice, no great friend of the working family, also opposes) allow foreign corporations to sue our government on the grounds that we've prevented them from making money -- and if they win, they get to collect tribute from the taxpayer. And since corporations generally claim that any labor, environmental, or financial law "costs them money," those are the kinds of things that'll be on the chopping block -- though Canada has also voiced the wish that we would outlaw "right-to-work" laws at the federal level as part of a trade deal, so right-wingers have just as much to be alarmed about as we liberals. Of course, I get the feeling that Trump votaries would loudly support any trade deal their man negotiated, even if it contained the continuing offense to law and order that the ISDS represents. But we'll cross that bridge later; right now, we express our will.

Meanwhile, it's hard to believe we keep having to tell our government that the Grand Canyon is a national treasure and we shouldn't go mining and digging in it or around it, but we're here again, so CREDO helps you tell the Trump Administration not to open up the Grand Canyon area to new leases for uranium mining. If President Obama's first Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, is remembered fondly for anything, it'll be for imposing a 20-year moratorium on any new uranium mining within the Grand Canyon or its immediate surroundings -- but since Mr. Obama did that, Mr. Trump has to poop all over it! Don't believe him when he tells you we can have our magnificent national monuments and uranium mining, because uranium mining pollutes the water of the Colorado River, which provides water to five U.S. states and two Mexican states, and in this climate change era, that river is stretched enough as it is. Did I mention that the Havasupai nation lives right around that area? And we're going to pollute the water they put on their crops? Haven't we done enough to native Americans?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senator to oppose Alex Azar, Mr. Trump's nominee to replaced the disgraced Tom Price as HHS Secretary, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. Mr. Trump told America that Mr. Azar was just the kind of guy who could keep drug prices down, but while heading up U.S. operations at big pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly, Mr. Azar jacked up the price of insulin over 300%. Insulin, as you know, is not exactly an elective drug, but a drug a diabetic needs to survive, and with our junk food-laden culture promising to create more and more diabetics in the coming years, it's going to become a life-saving drug for a lot more people. Was Mr. Trump trying to say that Mr. Azar is so good at raising drug prices that he'll tell our government all the tricks of the trade so our government can stop it? Nah, politicians don't even put that much effort into their lies anymore, not in the fuck-you-I'm-President era. So let's make this the no-fuck-you-we're-the-American-people era, and stop the Azar nomination.

Action: health care, the "war on terror," and the Grand Canyon.

Despite reports last week that Senate Republicans don't have the votes either for their planned repeal-and-replace-badly bill or their just-repeal-and-don't-bother-replacing bill, word on the street is that they're going to try and vote on one or the other of these monstrosities anyway. The Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) hasn't helped Republican efforts, of course, by calculating that the just-repeal bill will kick 32 million more Americans off their health insurance, with more than half of those losses (17 million) coming in just the first year. But of course, when some Republican Senators talked about both bills' inadequate funding of Medicaid and/or fighting opioid addiction, you should have known what would come next: an offer of tens of billions just for funding Medicaid and fighting opioid addiction in the states those Senators just so happen to represent, which is exactly the kind of naked who-cares-what-it-looks-like opportunism that has made Mitch McConnell so beloved the world over. Still, you can call your Senators and remind them that the whole point of being a Senator is not to strike deals with other Senators, but to represent their constituents. And you can ask them if handing out massive tax cuts to the wealthy while throwing tens of millions of people off their health insurance (which both bills will do) represents their constituents.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that has enabled so much unconstitutional war-making over the last 16 years. Yeah, we're coming up on some anniversaries -- not just the anniversary of 9.11, of course, but the anniversary of every bad idea Tha Bush Mobb forced down the throats of the American people afterward, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the AUMF, which latter item President Obama used to justify military operations (in Libya and Syria, to name two) he didn't get approval from Congress to undertake. But when the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment from Rep. Lee (D-CA) that would repeal the AUMF, a spokeshack for House Speaker Ryan (E-WI) quickly declared that the amendment "endangers our national security," though of course Mr. Ryan supported the Iraq war, which we can pretty much say created ISIS, and thus "endangered our national security." And now the Lee amendment has somehow been quietly disappeared from the defense authorization bill; Ms. Lee blames Mr. Ryan, which, if true, gosh, whatever happened to not stepping on your Committee Chairs' toes? That has, after all, been Mr. Ryan's go-to excuse whenever someone actually calls upon him to, you know, lead. They have an excuse for every occasion, don't they? Would it be too much to ask for Mr. Ryan's not-that-red district to send him packing in 2018?

Finally, President Trump wants to drill everywhere, even (or maybe especially!) on public lands, and guess what that means for the Grand Canyon? It means that former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's one great achievement -- banning uranium mining in the area around the Grand Canyon for 20 years -- is in danger of going down. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to keep uranium mining corporations out of the Grand Canyon. He doesn't care what you think any more than his boss does, but let's tell him anyway, because it's our duty. The Colorado River, as you know, winds through the Grand Canyon, and it provides drinking water to over 40 million people in seven states plus the northwest region of Mexico -- and, well, it provides noticeably less drinking water to those good folks now, thanks to increased demand and climate change. Now imagine leeching uranium into that water. Does that sound like a good idea? Especially given that some uranium already leeches into the water naturally? Why, it's enough to make you think maybe tourism is the best economical use for the Grand Canyon, which is one of our national treasures, even if our government hasn't formally designated it as such. (Yes, Mr. Obama forgot to do that, too, during his last year in office.)

UPDATE. "Coming up on some anniversaries" is how that phrase in the second paragraph should have read! Error corrected.

Action: fighting banksters and polluters.

H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, passed the House a few weeks ago, because what's more American than giving banksters more tools to screw good people over? H.R. 10 is so awful that its defenders have few things to say in its favor, except that ALL REGULASHUNZ IZ TEH BADZ!!!! and IT HELPZ TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!!! Here in the reality-based community, of course, we know that regulations restricting financial predators are not, in fact, bad, and we also know that right-wing politicians love telling you that they do everything they do for small businesses when, in fact, they do everything they do for big corporate campaign donors. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the biggest problem small businesses have isn't government -- it's big corporations using their power to squash them before they have a chance to do great things. H.R. 10 still has to go before the Senate, so 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 tell your Senators to protect good Americans from financial predators and reject H.R. 10.

Meanwhile, state government officials in Arizona and Utah have urged the Trump Administration to lift a 20-year uranium mining ban in the area around the Grand Canyon. These officials claim that the uranium ban kills jobs, as if uranium poisoning wouldn't kill tourism jobs, and that Big Gummint shouldn't designate monuments in states, as if that's not at all self-serving. But now they also claim, in a spurt of Bush-Mobb caliber bullshitting, that uranium mining doesn't pollute groundwater. And what's to stop President Trump from claiming that his Grand Canyon will be the bigliest yugest Grand Canyon ever, one that will magically make even more tourism dollars while making his mining cronies rich? If you mess up the Grand Canyon, you've messed it up forever -- and if you put uranium into the River that provides drinking water for 40 million people, then you've messed them up forever, too. So Roots Action helps you tell your President and your Congress that the Grand Canyon should be a national monument.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania Assemblyperson to stop two pro-pollution bills passed by the state Senate, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. The two bills, as you may know, are SB 624, which would allow longwall coal-mining corporations to pollute public waters as long as they have a plan to clean it up later, and SB 561, which would require the state legislature to approve any and all Executive branch-issued regulations that could conceivably have a "significant economic impact." Of course, a lot of clean air and clean water regulations do have such an impact -- they drive health care costs downward. But I suspect that's not the "impact" Pennsylvania's state legislators care about -- I'm pretty sure they care about the impact such regulations might have on a corporate CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And as for SB 624, why would you trust a corporation's "plan" to clean up their mess? You make corporations clean up their mess, because that's the only way it can work.

Action: drug sentencing, water pollution, and the Grand Canyon.

The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell President Obama to release thousands of low-risk prisoners who committed non-violence offenses in time for the holidays. Hopefully, folks released would include folks still serving crack cocaine sentences under the sentencing regime before it was reformed in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The Fair Sentencing Act reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine minimum sentences from a ratio of 500 to 1 to a ratio of 17 to 1, but quite a few folks are still serving time under the old ratio, and why do that? The newly emboldened racist right will squeal about TEH THOUSANDZ OF PREDATURZ ON TEH STREETZ!!!! -- and they may not even hide behind coded language anymore! -- but good Americans don't gin up drama like that, only bad ones do. Speaking of which, we sure ain't getting any clemency under a President Trump, who declares his Presidency will be a "law and order" Presidency. Of course, Mr. Trump only thinks of black people when he thinks of "law and order," not the corporate criminals he's putting on his cabinet. But we'll still be around to remind everyone of what mercy really means.

Meanwhile, investigators have found lead and copper in the water at the Eastham Unit Prison in Lovelady, Texas, and prisoners there have testified to the water's "sulfur-like smell," "offensive taste," and "gritty residue." The prison administration apparently knows about the problem, as it has provided its guards with clean water, but not their prisoners. I can already hear the Trump votaries rolling their eyes and saying so what? They're prisoners! But as civilized people, we keep the water clean for prisoners as much we do as for everyone else -- I mean, how can you rehabilitate prisoners if you're poisoning them at the same time? And why do we heap punishment after punishment upon prisoners when their sentences and prison rules (which surely do not say "poison the prisoners' water") already detail their punishment? Also, too, consider the quality of mercy, a matter Jesus said more about than he ever said about gay marriage. Roots Action helps you tell the U.S. Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control to investigate the water pollution at the Eastham Unit Prison.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to declare a national monument around the Grand Canyon National Park and thus protect it for future generations, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. You know why this is particularly urgent: partly because corporations want to get their grubby mitts on the uranium in the area, and they don't care if it pollutes the Colorado River or not, though the river provides drinking water to seven states -- but mainly because the Grand Canyon is a national treasure, part of that great American heritage we ought to be passing on to future generations, rather than digging into so we can get a little energy today for nuclear power plants that can hardly sustain themselves without massive welfare handouts from our government in the first place! No, really, they can't -- and we can't compare their reliance on government handouts to wind power tax credits, since a) wind power is a lot younger and b) fossil fuel corporations spend all their time trying to crush wind power, instead of embrace it.

Action: poisoned workers, purity tests, and the Grand Canyon.

You may have heard that over 200 workers at Samsung's display and computer chip factories in South Korea have contracted serious illnesses, including lymphoma, leukemia, lupus, and multiple sclerosis, and 76 of them had died; most of these workers, contrary to what you might expect, were in their twenties and thirties, and were, in the words of one retired worker, "uninformed kids from the countryside" that Samsung used like they were "disposable cups." You may not have heard that Samsung did not disclose the harmful chemicals to which these workers were all exposed, out of a concern for protecting trade secrets. You recall that gas drilling corporations also use the trade-secret rationale to justify refusing to disclose the chemicals they pump into your drinking and bathing water; it's getting to the point where we can safely assume that when a corporation says "trade secret," it really means "I'm not telling you because I'm doing you harm." So Sum of Us helps you tell Samsung to compensate the families of workers who died in their factories.

Meanwhile, both houses of the California state legislature have passed AB 2844, a bill which would force all businesses and non-profits contracting with the state to declare that they do not have a policy of boycotting a "sovereign nation." If that sounds a bit obscure, consider that Israel is a sovereign nation, and that the BDS movement (boycott, divest, sanctions) aims to change Israel's policies toward Palestine by refraining from investing in, or using the products of, those corporations that contract with Israel. I don't think bills like AB 2844 violate the First Amendment -- no entity has a right to government contracts, and really, in my view, governments should be performing, not outsourcing, the tasks that the people have given them via legislation and taxes -- but I do think AB 2844 will be almost prohibitively difficult to enforce, and states shouldn't use purity tests to hand out contracts. AB 2844 now goes to Gov. Brown, historically tight-lipped about signing controversial bills, and Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell Gov. Brown to veto the anti-BDS bill, AB 2844.

Finally, MoveOn helps you tell President Obama to designate the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, and thus protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining forever. The Grand Canyon has been a national park for almost a century, but mining corporations want to dig up the area around the Canyon for uranium, which would, as you might expect, pollute the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to seven Western states. Mr. Obama's previous Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar (lately appointed by Hillary Clinton to run her transition team), rather unexpectedly imposed a uranium-mining moratorium on the Grand Canyon area, but that's going to expire one day, and designating the area as a national monument would prevent uranium mining there forever. A lot of good folks probably already think the Grand Canyon is a national monument because, hello, have you seen that thing? But a national treasure and a National Monument are two entirely different things. If Mr. Obama is so concerned about his legacy, he can forget all about the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" and designate the Grand Canyon area a national monument.

Action: helping Bosnian whistleblowers, protecting the Grand Canyon, and reclaiming Oak Flat.

If you think the Obama Administration War on Whistleblowers is bad (and it is), dig this item out of Bosnia -- small mining corporation Tuzla Kvarc exposes government corruption, and said government retaliates by a) seizing Tuzla Kvarc property, b) conducting inspections designed solely to harass them, c) destroying one of Tuzla Kvarc's buildings in the middle of the night, and d) filing criminal charges against Tuzla Kvarc for not having a mining license -- when a local official's demand for bribes in exchange for that very license started this whole mess! So Tuzla Kvarc hasn't been able to pay its workers in four months, and some of those workers have gone out on hunger strike, some refusing even water and medical care, to draw attention to their plight. I presume that this is what conservatives used to mean when they talked about overarching government power -- though, by the evidence, they've done a very bad job fighting it here in America, where our government now can't do anything for you but can do anything to you, and only acts with relative restraint because we're richer than Bosnia. So Roots Action helps you tell Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic to stop oppressing Tuzla Kvarc. Because the Big Stick of Bad PR does-so work.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to create the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. You'd think something like the Grand Canyon would be a national monument already, not just because, hello, it's the freaking Grand Canyon, but because the Colorado River runs through it, and that river supplies drinking water to seven states and the nation of Mexico. Yet it's not -- possibly because no one imagined a future where severe drought is a normal rather than an exceptional circumstance, and possibly because no one imagined that so many loggers, developers, and uranium miners would demand the right to exploit the area for its resources. So it's up to us, at the very least, to remind folks that one of our great national treasures, the Grand Canyon, isn't as well-protected from destruction as they might think, and that they need to do something about that. And we shouldn't worry that right-wingers will declare such a National Monument designation to be a sign of untrammeled communism, fascism, or socialism, because they say that stupid crap no matter what we do. You'd think President Obama would be acutely aware of this fact; nonetheless, we should remind him of it.

Finally, in a peripherally-related note, you may recall that the Arizona Senatorial delegation slipped a bit of corporate welfare into the most recent must-pass defense authorization bill, one that would transfer national park land (and San Carlos Apache holy land) in Oak Flat to a Rio Tinto-owned mining corporation, because money, I guess. No, really, because money -- Rio Tinto has long contributed to Sen. McCain's campaigns, and Sen. Flake actually used to work for a Rio Tinto subsidiary years ago, so one could well say that one hand washes the other. The Oak Flat area sits in the Tongass National Forest in Arizona, and sadly also sits on massive copper reserves, and Rio Tinto-owned Resolution Copper (which now owns Oak Flat) would create a crater literally two miles wide and a thousand feet deep to get at the copper. It sure doesn't sound like there'll be a whole lot left in that area for the rest of us, particularly the San Carlos Apache. But H.R. 2811/S. 2242, the Save Oak Flat Act, would repeal the land giveaway; the House's main sponsor is Rep. Raul Grijalva of New Mexico, and the Senate's main sponsor is Bernie Sanders of Vermont, perhaps you've heard of him. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Save Oak Flat Act.

Action: "free" trade, the Grand Canyon, and whistleblowers.

What happened when Colombia made a big chunk of the Amazon rainforest into a national park? An American mining corporation slapped a $16.5 billion lawsuit against the Colombian government, that's what. They wanted to mine for gold there, and because our nation has a "free" trade agreement with Colombia, the Tobie Mining and Energy corporation is suing for "lost investments" totalling over one-fifth of Colombia's entire national budget! One more time: governments have a right to take, and protect, land on behalf of the people they represent and for the purposes the people demand -- and that right (which, again, is really the right of the people of Colombia) supersedes the "right" of any corporation to make money. This is the very thing we've been talking about in the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" that our government plans to ram through after the election -- the mockery its "investor-state tribunals" would make of law and order, via their subjugation of people to mammon. So Sum of Us helps you tell Tobie to drop its lawsuit against Colombia.

Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters helps you tell President Obama to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining corporations (and other actors who would pollute that national treasure) by creating a Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument. Don't believe the hype that such a declaration would make Obama into Hitler -- if creating a national monument against the wishes of greedy corporations were all that made a President into Hitler, well, wouldn't we have elected, and therefore survived, a lot of Hitlers already? And certainly don't believe the hype promulgated by certain members of Arizona's Congressional delegation that the states should make these decisions, when what they really want is for their cronies to make those decisions. Indeed, Sen. McCain is up for re-election in 2016, and has even drawn a formidable Democratic opponent, who could rather easily attack Sen. McCain for being against the Grand Canyon. (Well, unless she's no better than he is, which is always a possibility.)

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4619/S. 2591, the Whistleblower Augmented Reward and Nonretaliation Act (or WARN Act), which would strengthen protections for whistleblowers who expose bankster criminality, then the National Whistleblowers Center still helps you do that. We'll need all hands on deck just not only to get this bill considered -- you think a Republican-held Congress would do anything to help people if it might also deprive their bankster friends of unearned money? -- but also to get it signed by a Democratic President whose has made his utter contempt for whistleblowers all too obvious over the years. Hey, maybe we can convince Republicans to vote for it by telling them it's anti-Obama! Seriously, financial sector whistleblowers have fewer protections than whistleblowers in other fields, but they deserve protection no less than anyone else for the critical and dare I say patriotic duty they perform in exposing wrongdoing.

Action: closing Guantánamo, protecting dissent, and making the Grand Canyon into a national monument.

As the Guantánamo Bay facility begins its 15th year, Amnesty International points us to a petition, on Whitehouse.gov, which helps you tell President Obama to, once and for all, close the Guantánamo Bay facility and thus end that blight on our history and our commitment to democracy. I'll admit that there are many fewer detainees at Guantánamo than at the beginning of the Obama Administration, but Guantánamo still houses more than 100 detainees, most held for a decade or more, without charge. If these are "the worst of the worst," you have to wonder why we can't charge them with anything, and thus you also have to wonder why we've tortured so many of them. The petition needs 100,000 signatures to mandate a White House response -- I can recall petitions only requiring 25,000 signatures before getting a White House response, and I don't know why the goalposts have moved, but that only means we must, as Phil Jackson used to say, "play above the referees."

Meanwhile, the Israeli Knesset is mulling a bill that would label certain national advocacy groups as "foreign agents," based on their reliance on funds from European governments. Sound common-sensical to you? Then ask yourself why the bill excludes other national groups that rely heavily on funds from foreign individuals, when a bill aiming to make foreign influence "transparent" should do both. Alas, we learn that groups fighting the occupation tend to rely on foreign government funding, while groups relying on buku bucks from folks like Sheldon Adelson tend to support the occupation. It's a damn shame what good people will do when they're insecure about the worth of their own institutions and freedoms. And Jesus Mary and Joseph even the Washington Post has come out against this bill, saying it uses "the kind of tactic that Russia and China have used to squelch dissent." Ouch! Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell Congress to speak out against this retrograde effort at Israeli "security."

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to designate the Grand Canyon as a national monument and so protect it forever from uranium mining, then CREDO still helps you do that. Hard to believe that anyone would want to mine for uranium in the Grand Freaking Canyon -- one of the world's most beautiful places and no looking at photographs will not prepare you for how awesome it is -- but some folks have no shame. Some folks are not appropriately attentive to the fact that the Colorado River runs through the Canyon and provides drinking water to seven states, either. Now, it's not out of the question that President Obama would do it -- his former Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, proved to be rather receptive to environmental issues concerning his home state (he's from Colorado) and issued a 20-year moratorium on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area. But it's still our duty to communicate our will to our President, particularly when local politicians, perhaps looking to make big donors richer, have challenged the moratorium.

Action: "free" trade, Grand Canyon development, and antibiotic abuse.

Word on the street is that the House plans to bring up "trade adjustment assistance" again this week. What has changed between Friday afternoon and now, you ask? I'm at just as much a loss to answer that as you are, though Rep. Pelosi (D-CA) has called for Democrats to demand transportation appropriations reauthorization as part of any new "free" trade deal, which seems to me like that notorious Democratic pastime, giving up a lot to get a little. Anyway, the time to keep the pressure on is, as always, now, so both the People's Email Network and NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, help you email your Reps to oppose any "trade adjustment assistance" bill that would grease the skids for "fast-tracking" "free" trade agreements. You can also call your Reps using the toll free number, 1.888.410.0619, or you can find your Rep's phone number using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page. Indeed, this battle merits a phone call, if you're, you know, not already working three jobs and deciding which bills you can pay this month because the last couple of "free" trade deals took your well-paying manufacturing job away.

Meanwhile, as you may remember, Gruppo Stilo USA plans a massive development project in the small town of Tusayan, AZ, population 576, and a very thirsty 576, since they're having enough trouble getting enough water for themselves due to the massive drought which has dried up the Colorado River quite a bit. But Gruppo Stilo's development would build three million square feet of commercial space (including timeshares, a spa, and a dude ranch!) just a mile from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, plus it would add 2,000 homes. Some of them would be low-income housing, granted, but that's an act of altruism that'll go unremembered if nobody has any water to drink, since Stilo apparently hasn't figured out how to meet the water needs of thousands more people in an area where the water needs of hundreds of people go unmet. Would it be piling on to mention that this is sacred ground to the Havasupai, or that the wildlife in the area need water to drink, too? The Sierra Club helps you tell the U.S. Forest Service to reject further development in the Grand Canyon/Kaibab National Forest area.

Finally, USPIRG joins with MoveOn to help you tell the FDA to require that meat labels disclose whether the meat came from animals raised with antibiotics. You've seen some corporations voluntarily tell you their meat came from antibiotic-free animals, but "some" ain't enough, certainly not when nearly four out of every five antibiotics in America go not to the sick people or the sick animals who need it, but to healthy farm animals so they can survive their squalid living conditions and produce more meat (and thus more money for the CEO). The FDA has lately mandated more accountability from factory farm veterinarians, and I won't say that's worthless, but considering the stakes -- the "post-antibiotic era" the WHO has warned about -- and considering, also, that the vast majority of Americans want factory farms to stop abusing antibiotics, the FDA's moves have been far too incremental. This move would be incremental, too, but at least two increments are better than one. And I wouldn't worry about "rising food prices," not if the alternative is a world where the next cut you get could kill you.

UPDATE. Late last night the House voted to extend their deadline for considering the "free" trade package to the end of July. But we should keep the pressure up on them anyway; they'll most likely try to strike when no one's looking.

Action: government spying, campaign finance disclosure, and uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area.

And just like that, the House passed the USA FREEDOM Act, now watered down beyond our ability to tolerate it as free people, now a bill that actually makes certain intelligence practices a court just struck down legal again, a bill that makes it all but impossible to challenge unconstitutional surveillance in the courts, a bill that (like the nefarious FISA Amendments Act!) grants not just immunity but compensation to the corporations that help our government spy on us. Hence CREDO helps you tell Congress to let critical parts of the PATRIOT Act expire in early June, and Roots Action still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the far superior H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, instead of the USA FREEDOM Act. H.R. 1466 would repeal both the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act -- meaning our government would have to get a warrant from a judge to investigate Americans for alleged terrorism -- and even makes it a little easier for whistleblowers from within the ranks of intelligence agencies or their contractors to submit complaints about our government's wrongdoing. President Obama won't like that, but he doesn't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, the SEC still hasn't issued rules mandating that publicly-traded corporations reveal their political contributions, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of public comments supporting the notion, despite the fact that these corporations are really spending someone else's money -- their shareholders' money -- to elect candidates who support more unearned tax breaks for large corporations. And when we say "shareholders," we don't just mean people who invest directly in corporations, go to shareholder meetings to vote on resolutions, and the like -- we mean just about anyone who has invested in a 401(k) or a pension fund, since those funds also invest in corporations. So justifying the public interest in such campaign finance disclosure is quite easy, whereas justifying the corporate interest becomes increasingly difficult -- while even our right-wing Supreme Court Justices wonder aloud why disclosure isn't enough, Senate Majority Leader McConnell likens disclosure to bullying. Both Roots Action and Public Citizen help you tell our government to support campaign finance disclosure for publicly-traded corporations.

Finally, Sum of Us helps you tell our government to close uranium mines in the Grand Canyon region. Didn't we do this already, you may be wondering? And the answer is yes: thanks in part to our pressure, former Interior Secretary Salazar issued a moratorium putting the Grand Canyon region off-limits to new uranium mines for the next 20 years. Trouble is, that order apparently didn't assess the possibility that corporations would re-open old mines and start up again, and Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., plans to do just that in mid-June, which would make its mine the first operating uranium mine within six miles of the Grand Canyon in 20 years. Now, it isn't just that, hey, this is the Grand Freaking Canyon we're talking about here -- uranium mining contaminates groundwater, and this mine not only threatens the basins that provide the indigenous Havasupai people with their one and only source of clean drinking water, but all the water in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies drinking water to over one out of every eight Americans. A little short-term profit doesn't justify that.

Action: the Robin Hood tax, the Grand Canyon, and coal mining on public lands.

H.R. 1464, the Inclusive Prosperity Act, would impose a financial speculation tax (better known as a "Robin Hood tax") on stocks, securities, and derivatives, and the bill would also exempt folks who make less than $50,000 annually ($75,000 for married couples) from paying any taxes on their financial transactions. Banksters think folks should have more "skin in the game"? You know, when they're not busy figuring out which bills to pay this month? Well, that latter tax break would help accomplish that. I think H.R. 1464's tax rates are too low, and taxing derivatives less than stocks and other securities strikes me as backward, and I would also raise the exemption for married couples -- I know your bills don't double when you get married, but $75,000 still seems a bit low to me, and it's no wonder Republicans got so much mileage out of the "marriage penalty" meme back in the day. Generally, though, H.R. 1464 is on the right track. So Friends of the Earth helps you voice your support for H.R. 1464 and the principles contained therein. Their action tool lets you advocate for a stronger bill, like I've done above.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell property developers to abandon plans to build a big shopping mall in the Grand Canyon, then Sum of Us still helps you do that. That's right, Confluence Partners plans to deposit malls and hotels and fast-food eateries and the like into the middle of America's largest national treasure (not to mention Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni holy sites). Does the Grand Canyon really need a mall? Have Americans decided that looking into the Grand Canyon has ceased to be a profound and humbling experience? Has tourism fell off so badly that Americans just need more to occupy them when they're in the Canyon? Of course not -- all that's happened is that some private corporations decided they wanted to get in on the action; in essence, they aim to be parasites feeding off the great body of the Canyon. But though right-wingers might call me "quaint," there really are some things more important than mammon. One of these things is holding onto our national treasures so that future generations can know where we came from and where we're going. And a big fancy IMAX theatre doesn't do that.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior has actually noticed that our government charges a pittance in royalties to coal developers who mine on public lands -- a pittance that amounts to, well, we could call it any number of things, like a tax break, a welfare handout, or even a bailout. No, seriously: when coal corporations effectively pay about half the mandated royalty rates on coal, they're getting more than they deserve, and they're only getting it because they already have the money to lobby our government into doing their will and not ours. You know there'll be right-wingers who oppose closing the loopholes because ZOMG TEH GUBMINT INTERFEREZ IN TEH MARKETZ!!!! Yet it's exactly that government interference (at the behest of corporations, remember) that opens these loopholes that cost we-the-taxpayers money. So Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell the Office of Natural Resource Revenue to close these loopholes. Wild Earth Guardians does say closing these loopholes will "keep the coal in the ground," but even if we don't pursue that as a policy goal, closing the loopholes is still the right thing to do.

Action: prison privatization, national parks, and smog regulations.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Watchdog.net helps you tell our Governor and our state legislators to end prison privatization in Pennsylvania. The news hook? The 2013 conviction and 28-year sentence of Mark Ciaverella, Jr., who abused his position as a juvenile court judge to send a lot of folks, including children as young as 10, into a private prison whose owner bribed him to the tune of over $1 million between 2003 and 2008. Sure, it's old news, but private prisons still operate in Pennsylvania, siphoning money from taxpayers (that means you and me) while delivering questionable-at-best results. I don't mean to assert that privatizing our prisons was the sole cause of the Kids for Cash scandal -- the greed of the two convicted judges can't be overlooked -- but the judges would have had a much tougher time sending kids to juvie for mocking their principals on social media if not for the avarice of private prisons. No use asserting that private prisons come about because public prisons can't handle Kids Today, because the answer to that is to make public prisons handle kids more effectively, because that's what civilized people do.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans would like very much to enact H.R. 330, the so-called Marine Access and State Transparency Act. Why is it called that? Because it spells MAST! Clever, eh? But what H.R. 330 would really do is make it much harder for the President to designate national monuments -- the President would have to go to Congress for approval before designating any national monuments, and in addition would have to go to state Governors and legislatures for approval before designating any maritime monuments. But Congress has already delegated authority to the President to designate national monuments in the Antiquities Act, and supporters of H.R. 330 really need to explain why they find national monuments so odious that we should have fewer of them -- which ultimately means fewer Grand Canyons and fewer Chimney Rocks. I sure hope they don't say that national monuments are "job-killers," because national monuments tend to attract a lot of tourism, which makes money, just not for corporate CEOs. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the House's anti-national monuments bill.

Finally, Penn Environment helps you tell the EPA to issue the most vigorous smog-prevention standards possible. Specifically, the EPA asks if it should hold the ozone limit (since ozone particles are a major component of smog) down to 60 parts per billion, as most doctors recommend. Imagine that, our government actually consulting with doctors on health issues! It's enough to melt a man's heart. On bad smog days, everyone's asthma gets a lot worse, and kids have a lot more trouble breathing while they're playing outside. And since scientists have observed significant spikes in respiratory-related hospital admissions on the worst smog days, you know higher smog standards will save all of us a boatload of money in health care costs. In short, a vigorous smog rule would complement EPA efforts against coal pollution and tailpipe emissions, giving us the cleaner air we all deserve. Naturally, big corporations will oppose these regulations, since (for example) all the health care savings won't go directly into their pockets. But they don't get all the say around here.

Action: "free" trade, despoiling national treasures, and oil drilling.

You've heard of NAFTA and CAFTA? Well, meet TAFTA, the Trans-Atlantic "Free" Trade Agreement. They might as well call it SHAFTYA, since that's all these "free" trade deals do. TAFTA is yet another pact negotiated behind closed doors because no reasonable person would ever stand for it, yet another "free" trade deal that would outsource good American jobs to foreigners powerless to organize for more than slave wages, yet another "free" trade deal that would subjugate American laws (and thus American environmental, labor, and financial protections) to the whims of "investor-state tribunals." There ain't nothing law-and-order about any of that; hell, there ain't nothing American about any of that. You like being safe from contaminated food? Some corporation will be able to ensure you never eat safe food again, by simply arguing that our nation's laws "hurt" said corporation and suing our nation for redress in some extralegal court stacked in favor of the plutocrat and against the citizen. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject nefarious "free" trade deals that poop all over our freedoms.

Meanwhile, at least two major development projects threaten one of our greatest national treasures, the Grand Canyon. Both would actually build stores, hotels, and entertainment within the Canyon, and both would, of course, also siphon off water from the already-challenged Colorado River. The putative brain behind one of the projects claims that the Park Services provide nothing more than a "drive-by wilderness experience" for Americans visiting the Canyon, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say is precisely the opposite of the experience of any American who has ever visited the spot. People who worship money will say just any old thing to get more of it, won't they? And they'll desecrate any temple to get more of it, too. (The Grand Canyon happens to be holy ground for the Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo nations, not that worshipers of mammon will ever care.) The good news? We've helped stop uranium miners from getting their grubby hands on the Grand Canyon, so we should be able to beat back developers, too. Hence American Rivers helps you tell our government to reject these short-sighted and offensive development projects within the Grand Canyon.

Finally, Public Citizen helps you tell our federal Department of the Interior to establish a Citizens Advisory Council to help oversee Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling. Some benighted souls would call such a Council another layer of bureaucracy, as if "bureaucracy" is a dirty word, but those same souls often call anything that actually helps people a "bureaucracy," particularly a "bureau" that might have ordinary citizens on it, ones who actually know something about preventing spills, planning effective responses, and overseeing the oil industry. And not only is deepwater oil drilling very, very dangerous, you shouldn't believe the big oil drilling corporations when they say they've fixed all the things that went wrong in the 2010 Spillageddon in the Gulf, because you know what? You can't fix greed. Greed caused BP to cut the corners it cut that caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and greed will cause the next spill, and the one after that, and the one after that. Will we ever rid the world of greed? Perhaps not. But does that mean we should ever tolerate greed? Hell no!

Big news out of the Senate: the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 15-7 in favor of S. 815, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. 12 Democrats and Republicans Murkowski (AK), Kirk (IL), and Hatch (UT) all voted in favor. That's right, Orrin Hatch, who struggled to survive a primary challenge from his right in 2012. I'm old enough to remember when nobody stood to the right of Orrin Hatch. The rather sizable vote bodes well for a full Senate vote on S. 815 -- but let's not get complacent. A phone call to your Senators would build momentum. I wonder what manner of foolishness any recalcitrant Senator might employ to justify voting against ENDA. Perhaps they'll say TEH LAWZ PROTECTZ THA GAYZ ENUFFZZZ!!!!! when, actually, most states can still fire someone just for being gay. Or they'll yell SPESHUL RIGHTZZZ!!!! when ENDA very carefully avoids creating new affirmative action programs and preserves an employer's right to fire someone for cause. Really, our opponents ain't got no case. That never stopped them before, but it sure doesn't have to stop us.

Meanwhile, our last Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, actually outperformed expectations in protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining corporations -- but let's not get complacent about that, either. The Sierra Club helps you tell President Obama to make the Grand Canyon a national monument. What's that, you say? The Grand Canyon isn't already a national monument? No, it is not. And what would Mr. Obama's opponents say if he designated the Grand Canyon a national monument? That he's caving to evil environmentalists? That he values ancient trees and Native American historical sites more than he values our energy independence? Oh, dear, all of that does actually sound like something they'd do, with absolutely no sense of how they'd be coming off to sane and reasonable people. But you can't control the behavior of pricks; you can only outvote them, and outshout them if necessary. And point out, of course, that letting uranium mining corporations run amok in the Grand Canyon will not only despoil a national treasure but pollute the drinking water of at least seven states.

They call H.R. 1406 the "Working Families Flexibility Act," though it would give employers, not workers, "flexibility" -- specifically, it would allow employers to give out comp time instead of overtime pay to employees who work more than 40 hours in a week. Trouble is, employers would have to let you use that time off, which, in my experience, employers don't do very well -- and your emergencies don't necessarily follow your employer's schedule. And managers don't need the "flexibility" to give out comp time instead of overtime -- in fact, the threat of having to pay out overtime gives managers the incentive to put their workers in a position to get the work done in the time allotted, because if managers authorize too much overtime, their superiors will notice, believe me. Putting your workers in a position to succeed ain't that hard. The bill also doesn't prevent managers from giving more overtime hours to workers who choose comp time, nor does it protect workers whose employers go out of business. Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 1406.

Speaking of going out of business, Bain Capital (you remember them!) has been doing its best to put Guitar Center out of business, by slashing workers' pay, commissions, and insurance -- because that's how you make money in the new economy, by making corporations work badly and then selling them off. But Guitar Center workers are fighting back, by trying to unionize, with the help of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. And good for them -- if anyone needs unions in these troubled times, then certainly vulnerable retail employees do. Bain has been slashing sales staff commissions, cutting sick and vacation days, cutting non-sales workers back to minimum wage, refusing to give part-timers health care benefits -- and (get your surprised face ready) forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings. But Sum of Us helps you tell Bain Capital to deal with its workers honestly. Because there is-so such a thing as bad PR, and Bain Capital has already put up with a lot of it just because of Mitt Romney's tenure there, and maybe, just maybe, they'll want some good PR for once.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior declared a moratorium on uranium mining in and around the Grand Canyon, and that was a wise choice -- the Grand Canyon holds the Colorado River, and if there's one thing you don't need if you get your drinking water from the Colorado, it's uranium. Yet the U.S. Forest Service has given a corporation named Energy Fuel Resources permission to open a uranium mine on the Canyon's south side -- because Energy Fuel Resources procured mining rights in 1986, and the Forest Service looked at the safety study EFR conducted back then and decided it was kosher. A safety study from 1986! Well, it's not like we've learned a lot since then or anything. Seriously, what part of "moratorium" does the U.S. Forest Service not understand? What part of "don't muck with the drinking water of eight Western U.S. states" does the Forest Service not understand? What part of "don't shoot radioactive pollutants into the air around one of America's most famous tourist sites"...oh, hell, let's just make them understand, as CREDO helps you do.

Finally, you may have heard that Egypt's government has been trying to slap around its comic critics lately, including Bassem Youssef, whose satirical TV program al-Bernameg (or The Program) draws 30 million Egyptian viewers and whom Egypt has arrested for "insulting the President." Gosh, you know how many times I'd have been locked up for insulting the President if America did such things? Approximately once per time I've mentioned the President, and not just during Tha Bush Mobb years, either. I know Egypt just had a revolution and all, and that what revolutionaries used to call tyranny becomes "necessary" when they take over, but now is definitely not the time for thin skins. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell Egypt to stop arresting its comics and critics. The Egyptian government arrested 32 other Egyptian comics, including video blogger Ahmed Anwar, whose trial has already begun. Good luck to him, and good luck to all those good citizens who continue to fight the good fight in Egypt.