Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: climate vs. weather, justice vs. contractors, you vs. data brokers, Shell vs. the Arctic Ocean, and paid sick leave vs. corporate greed.

"If Global Warming is Real, Then Why Is It So Cold?" asks Pierce Nahigyan. Short answer: because weather and climate aren't the same thing. Only slightly longer answer: average temperatures are going up (just as extreme weather events are increasing in frequency), but that doesn't mean it's supposed to be 72 degrees in New England in January, any more than accepting evolution requires us to accept that somewhere a monkey is turning into a human as we speak. Another way of putting it: what's in front of your face is not the whole world.

Justice Department files civil lawsuit against ex-Halliburton subsidiary and two other corporations for some of the, ah, work they did for our Army in Iraq. Said "work" included using a refrigerated trailer as a morgue freezer and as a potable ice freezer without cleaning in between. Enjoy that cola, brave soldiers! One question: why not have the Army freeze its own ice, rather than use a private contractor?

Julia Angwin helps you stop at least some data brokers from collecting all your personal information and selling it to other corporations. You know, so grieving parents don't get emails the week after their child dies, because that kind of stuff happens -- or just so that private corporations (not to mention identity thieves!) don't know every damn thing about you. It's not paranoia, it's privacy.

Good news, everyone! Shell Oil Co. is abandoning plans to drill in the Arctic for 2014. About this time last year, they were abandoning plans to drill in 2013, at least in part because they had some, er, troubles drilling in the cold; this year they're facing some financial reversals and, of course, the Ninth Circuit's ruling that our government had improperly sold drilling leases in the Arctic (during Tha Bush Mobb's rule, what a big surprise). But I'm sure the adverse PR coming from good folks like us had something to do with it, too.

Finally, more good news: Newark, NJ passes a paid sick leave law, mandating that businesses with more than 10 employees grant five paid days off a year. Newark becomes the second New Jersey municipality (after Jersey City), and seventh nationwide, to pass a paid sick leave law. But am I the only one wondering if a Mayor Cory Booker would've vetoed it? (He praised the law after it passed, but he's a Senator now, in a Congress that's won't get that bill done.)

Action: school vouchers, and "free" trade.

Did you know this week was National School Choice Week? Me neither. Well, apparently, the implacable foes of public education not that they want you to think that have been promoting school vouchers all week so they can divert taxpayer money away from public schools -- which makes public schools worse, which in turn amplifies the cries for "reforms" such as school vouchers. Those of us who've given the matter a few seconds of thought know the drill -- school vouchers don't pay for the full cost of a private education; a private school doesn't have to admit you just because you have a voucher in your hand; too many private schools are religious schools and shouldn't get taxpayer money -- but you may not know that too many vouchers don't go to kids who want to get into private schools, but to kids who are already in private schools, which kinda defeats the stated purpose of a school voucher, right? It's almost like that's the idea. We owe ourselves, and our posterity, more dedication to our public schools than that. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell your federal elected officials that you oppose school vouchers.

Meanwhile, President Obama delivered yet another well-crafted and well-received speech the other night, but during that speech he spoke about the need for "new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific," by which he means the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" -- not that he could call it by name, since that name is mud to everyone who knows it. Mr. Obama even had the gall to suggest that it would help "small businesses" "create more jobs," which was very Republican of him! Small businesses aren't going to get their cronies in government to shut down websites on the suspicion of copyright infringement, nor are they going to dump poisonous crap in the air and in the water and then try to avoid lawful sanctions by appealing to "investor-state tribunals" to strike down a nation's environmental laws. No, big corporations will do these things, and news flash! They're not going to create jobs, either, not if they can avoid it, which, once they have their "investor-state tribunals" in place, they can. The big corporations don't create jobs unless we make them -- by demand for their good products, preferably, but by strict regulations to bring them to heel, if need be. Public Citizen helps you oppose these nefarious "free" trade deals.

Action: the Farm Bill, campaign finance disclosure, and Frankenapples.

First things first. Congressional negotiators have finally put together a Farm Bill, and, as expected, it's not good enough: it cuts food stamps by $8 billion over 10 years, and though it ends farm subsidies, it moves a big chunk of that subsidy money into crop insurance, which essentially makes the crop insurance program another subsidy program. (The Times reports that the Farm Bill will cap subsidies, though it doesn't say what those caps will be like -- if they're not like Sen. Toomey's caps from 2012, they're probably not good enough.) Thus we make our will known, again: PennPIRG still helps you tell your Reps and Senators to end the gravy train of taxpayer money to big agricultural corporations, while Daily Kos helps you tell Congress not to cut food stamps while playing a shell game with subsidies. Noting that this Farm Bill supposedly saves $23 billion in spending over 10 years, one might wonder why $8 billion in food stamp cuts is even necessary. Of course we know why: so Republicans can claim a "win." But they're not supposed to win. The people are supposed to win.

I didn't mark the occasion, but the fourth anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC passed last week, and though President Obama once seemed kindly disposed toward having the Securities and Exchange Commission mandate disclosure of corporate campaign spending, the SEC has not only failed to issue regulations on the matter despite getting more than half a million comments demanding them to do just that, but has "disappeared" the matter from its 2014 agenda. After hearing what, exactly, from big corporate bosses? That disclosure isn't necessary to protect shareholders, or that shareholders don't care that corporations piss away their money trying to elect knuckle-draggers to Congress? I do not believe that shareholders care only about money, because that is cynicism, and I do not abide cynicism. Perhaps they've been telling the SEC that disclosure amounts to "bullying" -- this, coming from financial tough guys who've spent the last few decades doing the helicopter dance in front of us! -- to which I reply: go see a therapist already. So the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell the SEC to mandate disclosure of campaign spending by publicly-traded corporations.

Meanwhile, the USDA rather surprisingly extended its deadline for public comments on the "Arctic Apple." You remember the Arctic Apple? The apple genetically engineered, no, not to increase yields at orchards or even to resist corporate pesticides, but to not turn brown after it's been sliced? I'm tempted to say "who the hell thinks that's clever?" But I know that people who cherish "cleverness" in precisely that shallow manner don't actually have a whole lot of say in how corporations make decisions, even if corporations would like us (or them!) to think so. No, someone probably created this monster so that kids would eat more apples -- as if parents have absolutely zero say about that, as if an apple browning represents some elephantine injury to culinary aesthetics, as if our government doesn't make healthy food choice significantly harder by handing out all that taxpayer money to corn-syrup producers. Seriously, technology doesn't solve every problem. The USDA's new comment period ends tomorrow, so the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the USDA to reject the potentially unsafe and certainly unnecessary Arctic Apple.

Around the table: containing mostly not-terribly-surprising news.

Congratulations, good people: President Obama announced in his State of the Union address last night that good folks working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10/hour. His Executive Order will only apply to new federal contracts (which I expected, contracts being, well, contracts), but will likely help more than half a million federal workers. But could his spokeshack please stop using phrases like "the unique powers of his office," though? Let's not mystify the process here -- he gets to issue Executive Orders because the Constitution and/or an act of Congress say so.

Finally, a mere four years after the Affordable Care Act passed, three Republican Senators finally have proposed an alternative, perhaps optimistically-titled the CARE Act. But if Republicans think they can attract good folks scared of the ACA with a bill that makes less sense than the ACA, then they're out of their damn minds -- no one wants to go back to letting health insurance corporations discriminate against folks with pre-existing conditions, and I can't imagine screwing up Medicaid will give anyone a V-8 moment, either. It has other problems, too, not least of which is that it repeals the ACA, thus forcing some 3 million new policyholders back into chaos.

State and federal agencies investigating the West Virginia chemical leak have been getting their budgets cut for years. WV state corrections spending has been spared the "we're broke" talk, of course, but we haven't really won if we've kept murderers off our streets but don't have water we can drink, bathe in, and wash clothes with, clean water being the single most important health care innovation of the last hundred years. And anyway, we're not broke, no matter what the politicians say -- we're just not getting enough tax revenue from the real takers of our society, the super-rich.

David Sirota makes "The Economic Case for Paid Leave Laws." None of it will surprise you -- paid leave laws help reduce employee turnover (since it costs money to train new employees) and lowers health care costs (since folks would actually take care of their illnesses on time off rather than exacerbate them by trying to buffalo through another work day). Furthermore, Connecticut has mandated paid sick days, and most businesses surveyed there reported zero or low cost hikes, as well as reduced illness and increased morale. None of that matters, of course, to the CEO who wants all-the-money-right-now, and those CEOs still seem to have more say in everything than the rest of us.

Retired Army General and Fox News "analyst" tells Arizona Tea Party group that he could lead a coup against our government -- because "(w)e all love a good fight if it’s worth it, right?" -- though he'd of course prefer to surround the White House and the Capitol with a quarter of a million Marines and "negotiate" that way. Mr. Vallely's been mouthing off about Barack Obama like your cranky uncle for a while; I wonder when Fox News will finally find him too much of an embarrassment to keep on. Let's do our part, and never speak of him again here.

Finally, Reuters blogger asks "Why Are U.S. Corporate Profits So High?" And promptly answers: "Because wages are so low." Well, you know what they say: "omit needless words." But n.b. how Reuters, like most mainstream news outlets, shoves all its economic populism onto its blogs, which you may not know exist, whereas its regular news stories (which you do know exist) tend to parrot whatever CEOs want heard.

Action: mortgage modification tax relief, and GMO labeling laws.

In 2007, Congress (in an act of unusual generosity) passed the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, which gives homeowners relief from paying taxes on forgiven mortgage debt if they've managed to get their mortgage modified. Federal law counts forgiven mortgage debt as income, as you might imagine, but having a big chunk of debt you were going to pay off gradually forgiven all at once sure doesn't feel like income, nor does it function very well as income. The law expired at the end of 2013, and Congress, of course, hasn't extended it, perhaps because it's a tax cut that might actually help working families, versus a tax cut that helps rich donors. But folks are getting mortgage modifications now, as we speak, so they could get hit with a big tax bill if Congress doesn't act. Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) introduced HR 2994, the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act of 2013, back in August; the bill would extend homeowner relief from mortgage modification through the end of 2014, at least, and would retroactively apply to mortgage modifications occurring between the beginning of 2014 and the bill's passage. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Reps to support HR 2994.

Meanwhile, big food corporations have claimed that labeling of genetically-modified food is unconstitutional, citing Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that constitutionally-protected commercial speech "at least must concern lawful activity and not be misleading," and that a government must prove it has a "substantial" interest in restricting that speech and that a regulation doing so "directly advances" said interest. One could easily argue that a government has a "substantial" interest in forcing corporations to label their GMO food products, and that a label "advances" that interest about as "directly" as possible. But Hudson concerned a regulation restricting speech, not one compelling speech -- and the Supreme Court's ruling in Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio instructs us that the First Amendment allows such "compelled" speech as long as it's purely factual and serves a "legitimate government interest," which a "produced with genetic engineering" label, for example, is and does. Still, your state legislator may be swayed (or want to be swayed) by bad arguments, so Organic Consumers helps you tell your state Rep to ignore bad counsel about GMO labeling laws, and heed the wise counsel of their constituents instead.

Around the table: Richard Sherman is not a thug, and other obvious observations.

Guess which state has decided to end homelessness by giving chronically-homeless people apartments to live in and caseworkers to help them out? Utah, that's which state. One of America's most conservative states has decided it's actually cheaper to do that than to cover jail stays and ER visits, which is very fiscally-responsible of them. You know what would be even cheaper? Taxing millionaire income at 91% and closing corporate tax loopholes, both of which would force corporations to hire more workers and pay them more.

Tim Karr of Free Press warns that we are living through an "Information Counter-Revolution" right now, what with government surveillance and corporate smashing of net neutrality. But here's a thought: Americans are pretty well used to the internet the way it is, where they can pretty much go where they like when they like. If Verizon and AT&T really block or slow down sites that haven't paid tribute, we'll see a PR storm like we've never seen before -- and so will any government that sends ominous text messages to its citizens. Don't think Americans will get that angry? Then ask yourself what you did the last time a page took too long to load -- or thought the government might be behind it.

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) comes out against the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, after the EPA reports that the planned gold-and-copper mine would endanger the Bay's salmon population. And thus, also, the Bay's salmon farming industry. If you reflexively put "Alaska King" in front of "salmon," as I do, you know this is smart politics as well as smart policy. Meanwhile, the same corporation doing the "environmental review" on Keystone XL did one for the Pebble Mine, too. They, of course, find the EPA's subsequent review wanting, because it supposedly didn't highlight "the positive effects of cash income from employment on a community's overall subsistence-gathering capabilities." The "E" in EPA still stands for "environmental," right?

Sens. Bennet (D-CO) and Blunt (R-MO) introduce the Senate version of Rep. Delaney's corporate tax amnesty. This idea just won't die, so here we are, hacking away again: a lot of "offshore" profits are only "offshore" in a corporation's books, letting them "repatriate" the income at a lower rate will only encourage more "offshoring" later on, and corporations that "repatriate" such income typically don't use it to create jobs (in fact, many of the big 2005 tax amnesty benefactors cut jobs). Does Michael Bennet need reminding that he's only in the Senate now because Ken Buck was such a spectacularly awful opponent in 2010?

Finally, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman suggests that sports reporters call him a "thug" because they know they can't get away with calling him the N-word. I didn't notice at first, because a) I didn't see the interview, generally losing interest in a game after it's over; b) I don't read national sports reporting, which generally sucks even worse than national news reporting; and c) I only call politicians "thugs," and generally only when they act like thugs. But a star cornerback whose on-field celebrations annoy me still doesn't rate being called a "thug" 625 times in one day of television. I don't think Chris Christie got called a "bully" anywhere near that much the day after Bridgegate broke wide open.

Penny rants: from "free riders" to "fragile" people.

The fight over solar power comes to North Carolina! Did you know solar power is growing faster in North Carolina than in any other state except California? Hell, did you know there was a "fight" over solar power? Well, dig this: big fossil fuel corporations are trying to tell us that solar power users are free riders on the utility system and thus should have to pay exorbitant fees to the utility corporations. No, really -- Duke Energy's North Carolina operations president actually said that if you're producing your own power, and even selling back some of your excess power to utilities, you're not "paying your fair share." What disgusting arrogance! Ask anyone who's put solar panels on their roof whether taking out that five-digit home equity loan in order to do it makes them feel like a "free rider"! No, as usual, utility monopolies like Duke Energy are the "free riders," and if I were inclined toward psychoanalysis, I'd say they were merely projecting their inadequacies on folks who make their own power. (And if you catch that faint fecal smell of ALEC in Duke's proceedings, you're not alone.)

I'm not entirely on board with Tom Nichols's essay "The Death of Expertise." Yes, I've said myself many times that merely having an opinion doesn't mean that opinion's any good or (even) that anyone else needs to hear it, and no reasonable person would disagree that some folks know a great deal more about some things than the rest of us -- my only real areas of expertise being Doctor Who production details up to 1989 and the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts up to 1983, I stand on the shoulders of giants every time I sit at the computer. And I won't lie: "children who should be instructed, not catered to" is more my worldview now than when I was an undergraduate, never mind how long ago that was. But plenty of "experts" also make arguments merely to please their financial backers, and actual experts often don't make enough of an effort to speak to the layman, persuasion perhaps being an entirely different area of "expertise." And though I'm not an expert in journalism, I don't need to be one to see that one big reason we have so few "gatekeepers" anymore is that media organizations fired them so their CEOs could make more money.

Peter Beinart argues in The Atlantic that, with Chris Christie's GW Bridge troubles in New Jersey, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is the real Republican front-runner for the 2016 Presidential nomination. Mr. Beinart makes some compelling points -- Rand Paul can raise millions of dollars over the internet at the drop of a hat, has organizing advantages in Iowa and New Hampshire, and appeals to the big business wing of the party better than his father (who once told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that corporatism is evil) ever did. I'd also argue that his "anti-interventionist foreign-policy views" won't hurt his chances, because his anti-interventionism has thus far amounted to zero legislative accomplishments, perhaps by design. But Rand Paul will get into trouble whenever he tries to reconcile his father's teachings with the wacky beliefs of primary voters, and he risks finding himself exiled to Bachmann/Cain/Perry country with a quickness. Remember, also, that Scott Walker can appeal to both elites and primary voters while sounding calm and reasonable.

Finally, Glenn Beck says he "played a role" in "tearing the country apart" during his nearly two-year run on the Fox News Channel. I'd have merely ignored that statement (crocodile tears, what else is new?) if he hadn't gone on and said: "I didn’t realize how really fragile the people were." What man routinely calls people who disagree with him "socialists" and "Communists," tells Democrats they should "shoot" perceived radicals "in the head," suggests that a Muslim Congressman "prove to (him) that you are not working with our enemies," says you should "run" from any religion that says it promotes "social justice" just like his own religion does, tells Katie Couric no one should be mad at the things he does because he's just a "rodeo clown" -- and then says people upset by the sheer aggressiveness of his nonsense are "fragile"? When you sling shit around like that, people aren't "fragile" if they feel some kind of way about the smell and the clean-up. With that, let us never speak of Glenn Beck again.

Action: a higher minimum wage for federal workers, carbon emissions regulations, and net neutrality.

The "liberal" media reports that President Obama's "State of the Union" address tomorrow will focus on ways he can "bypass Congress" and "unilaterally" act -- without noting, of course that Mr. Obama would act "unilaterally" with powers Congress has already granted him in previous legislation. For better and for worse, Congress doesn't write laws telling the President exactly what to do so much as they write laws telling him to figure out how to do what they want him to do, and Mr. Obama hardly needs to run to Congress for permission that they've already given. And one of the things Mr. Obama can do (since Congress has not heeded the will of its owners, the people, to hike the minimum wage) is raise the minimum wage for federal workers, at least, and he can do that with an Executive Order. Let the haters who sat silently while Mr. Bush wrote his multitudinous Executive Orders cry AMURRIKAN CAESAR!!!!! at Mr. Obama for giving poorly-paid federal workers something other than the back of his hand. Democracy for America helps you tell Mr. Obama to raise the minimum wage for federal workers.

Meanwhile, the dirty energy corporations continue to spew their filth about how Big Gummint regulations will hurt consumers and destroy the economy. What a bunch of damn whiners! Aren't these our best and brightest, the people who can conquer any obstacle, the people who can do anything? More to the point, it's a pack of lies -- regulations create jobs, for people who interpret new regulations and people who refit power plants to comply with regulations. And regulations also save money, in health care costs for people who breathe cleaner air and drink cleaner water and thus don't have to go to the doctor and miss work days all the time. Admittedly, regulations do not allow dirty energy CEOs to line their pockets with gold, but they don't get all the say about everything around here. So Public Citizen helps you tell the EPA to curb carbon emissions from new power plants. Hell, a planet that's heating up ain't gonna be good for anyone, either -- except those people who only care about making as much money as they can right now and say to hell with the future of anyone and anything else.

Finally, need another reason to push the FCC to reclassify broadband services as "communication services," so it can impose net neutrality regulations that put you (not some big corporation) in charge of what you see and do on the internet? Former FCC Chair Michael "the Lesser" Powell has threatened "World War III" if the FCC even thinks about reclassification -- as in Congress gutting the FCC's authority and budget. You'd think the son of a man who actually fought in Vietnam would know better than to compare political bullying to war, but Michael Powell is Bush Mobb through and through. Need any more locker-room bulletin-board material for your fight? Verizon claims its First Amendment right to free association permits it to slow down or block any websites from your computer. Never mind your First Amendment right to free association, good consumer! So the ACLU, Free Press, Demand Progress, Color of Change, and the Sierra Club all help you tell the FCC to preserve net neutrality by reclassifying broadband services. Certainly we want to avoid a future where we're forced to watch clips from TLC reality shows on the internet instead of checking out our favorite political blogs because those blogs didn't pay tribute to Verizon and TLC did.

Around the table: from the ultimate absentee slumlord to the fear of a "progressive Kristallnacht."

Alan Pyke at ThinkProgress describes a horrifying phenomenon borne of Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon -- that banksters have foreclosed on enough homes to become some of America's biggest landlords. The story begins "Anyone who has ever struggled to get her landlord to fix a broken appliance can imagine how much worse it could have been if she were paying rent to a faceless hedge fund based thousands of miles away." And the story gets worse from there, as these "Wall Street-based absentee slumlords" amass enough power in municipalities to force cuts to public services and start another round of toxic property-backed "securities." Moral: concentrated power anywhere is evil, not just in government.

Speaking of concentrated power in government, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has concluded in a report us that the NSA data-vacuuming program is illegal and must end. Which doesn't surprise anyone who recalls how many "secret court rulings" the Bush and Obama Administrations has used to justify the program. The Board has also concluded, not incidentally, that the NSA data-vacuuming has been of "minimal" value. What was the problem with getting warrants again? Oh, I remember: Tha Bush Mobb couldn't do that competently either.

Actual economist Dean Baker asks why the Wall Street Journal can't figure out why factories are "humming" but not hiring, and discovers that the answer is that factories are not, in fact, "humming." You'll note, from the first chart, that factories "hum" a lot less during recessions. It's almost as if the two factors are related, except in Republican minds, where the answers to every economic question are either "cut government" or "cut government more."

Ho hum, it looks like Congress plans to take another whack at the Affordable Care Act as part of some debt-limit hostage situation. Paul Ryan twists the "risk corridors" provision into a "bailout," but having voted for the actual 2008 financial services bailout, he doesn't get to call anything anyone else does a "bailout." (Having vehemently opposed the 2008 financial services bailout myself, I get to make these rules.) Also, it's not good strategy to have your Krauthammers and Pommurus write columns bragging that you could saddle people with higher premiums if you get your way.

Finally, some "venture capitalist" wonders whether the fight against income inequality will turn into a "progressive Kristallnacht." Replete with liberals killing banksters and hauling them off to concentration camps and breaking their shop windows and burning down their churches and hospitals -- and also with people calling Danielle Steel a "snob," since Kristallnacht apparently ain't what it used to be. Anyone ever heard of Tom Perkins before? Me neither. Now let's never speak of him again.

Action: closing Guantánamo, abortion coverage, and "free" trade.

Five long years ago, President Obama said he'd close Guantánamo Bay within a year. Needless to say, he hasn't done that. Sure, Congress got all not-in-my-backyard about housing detainees and withheld funding to close Guantánamo, but I say don't make the damn promise if you can't keep it. Now Guantánamo has a little over 150 detainees (though the Obama Administration has shipped quite a few detainees to other camps), of whom 77 have already been cleared for transfer to nations that have pledged to respect the detainees' rights. Either put the detainees on trial or let them go; why is this so hard? So Amnesty International helps you tell President Obama to shutter Guantánamo Bay and transfer those detainees cleared for transfer. Don't believe the hype that "half of these detainees go back to terrorism when they're released." That hype had bad science behind it -- though it's a wonder more detainees don't become terrorists after having eight or ten years ripped from their lives for no good reason.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives may soon vote on H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Now you may be saying to yourself: self, federal taxpayer dollars don't fund abortion now, and you'd be right, but this bill isn't really about that -- it's about preventing private health care plans from including abortion coverage, and it's also about preventing folks who need abortions from deducting them as medical expenses on their taxes. Well, actually, you could deduct it on your taxes -- if you can prove to the IRS that you were raped, or were in an incestuous relationship, or you needed the abortion to survive, or that the abortion itself caused you injury. I thought the Republican Party was all about lower taxes. I thought the Republican Party was supposed to be all about keeping the IRS off your back. See, it's really very easy to turn H.R. 7 on the Republicans. Both the National Women's Law Center and Planned Parenthood help you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 7.

Finally, Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk too oppose the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deal, as well as fast-track authority for said deal. Why does Food and Water Watch care -- you know, besides the fact that they're good people? Because the TPP threatens to overwrite (in addition to any other law our nation has passed) our food safety laws, or any GMO-labeling law we might get passed, or any law promoting local food sources, because any law that "threatens" corporate profits can be overturned in the TPP's extralegal "investor-state tribunal" regime. And corporations do love to argue that regulations hamper their profits. Of course, regulations don't hamper their profits, and none of these corporations would really like to live in their Wild West fantasy where no regulations exist to, say, enforce contracts between parties or make sure the roads they all drive on are safe to travel. Not only wouldn't they like their little Wild West fantasy, I'd go so far as to say couldn't survive such a world. Because they're weak, in case I'm being too subtle.

Around the table: somebody make this madness stop!

Daily Kos diarist Brainwrap explains how tax brackets really work. Long story short: making one dollar over the limit for the 39% tax bracket, for example, doesn't mean all your income gets taxed at 39% -- you still pay 10% on your first $10,000 of taxable income, 15% on your next $20,000 of taxable income, 25% on your next $50,000, and so on. Some members of our "liberal" media still use the old well-I'll-just-stop-working-on-my-400,001st-dollar saw, so we still need to explain how it really works.

PR Watch reports on two more corporations that have cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. That makes 72 corporations that have voluntarily cut ties with ALEC since we intolerant liberals inflicted our clearly very Hitleresque technique of shaming corporations with such ties. But every silver lining has a dark cloud: one of the two corporations who've cut ALEC ties, Xcel Energy of Minnesota, still pursues an ALEC-esque program of promoting onerous utility fees on solar rooftop owners. You know, because solar panel owners are "free riders" on the grid, despite putting upwards of $20,000 into putting panels on their roofs in the first place. Who knew being a "free rider" could be so expensive?

David Callahan at Demos asks why rich folks (according to several surveys) don't think of themselves as "rich." Short answer: because they all know someone who's richer, and more precisely, they're competing with those people. I would think, though, that knowing all that would help you not become a freaking vampire just to get rid of that gnawing feeling of (relative) poverty.

Speaking of vampires, alleged New Yorker Sean Hannity threatens to leave New York in the wake of Gov. Cuomo's comments suggesting that extreme conservatives "have no place" in New York. One is tempted to say oh, go already, especially after he says he'll take all the jobs that depend on him with him, too, and suggests that some of those who work for him won't have any work to do when he's gone. What intolerable arrogance, to think you're the lynchpin of that many lives -- or to think you're so irreplaceable when there are plenty of right-wing drama kings who could do your radio and TV shows just as well.

Finally, Amazon patents technology for "anticipatory shipping," whereby it ships items to its shipping hubs, and even to customer's addresses, based on analyzing such data as previous searches, wish list items, and even how long a cursor hovers over an item. The patent talks about "building goodwill" this way, but I expect shipping unasked-for items to folks' homes will backfire in a big way -- nobody needs to take time out of their busy day to return a package to avoid getting charged for it. I wonder why they didn't think of that.

Action: unemployment benefits, and fairness for pregnant workers.

Thought I forgot about long-term unemployment insurance, did you? Not when America still has close to three unemployed workers for every job opening, and our corporate titans still think labor is a bigger drag on their profits than their own lack of imagination and initiative. But the Senate (which is, as you recall, just one house of Congress) couldn't pass either of two proposed unemployment extension bills a little over a week ago, supposedly because Republicans couldn't offer any amendments. No, Republicans are saying that -- apparently they don't even know when they sound like whiners anymore. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell Congress to extend long-term unemployment insurance already; NETWORK also helps you find a town hall your Rep might be hosting this week, since they're out of session. (Spoiler alert: apparently, only 19 House Reps, out of a possible 435, will hold town halls this week. I guess the rest are busy doing something.)

Meanwhile, while we live in a wonderful land, too often we find women put on unpaid leave or fired simply because carrying an extra few dozen pounds around for nine months makes you more tired and more prone to injury. But H.R. 1945/S. 972, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, would fix that, by forcing employers to accommodate their pregnant workers the way they accommodate their disabled workers. Not by doing anything outlandish, either -- by being flexible with scheduling, or letting them sit on a stool at a cash register, or letting them carry a water bottle. Yet I can hear the don't-tread-on-me crowd yelling: well, if you didn't want to get fired, you shouldn't have been born with a uterus! The day men can get pregnant, morons such as these will get on board with the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. But the National Women's Law Center helps you, sentient life form, get on board with it now by telling your Senators to support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Action: campaign finance disclosure, a higher minimum wage in Pennsylvania, and net neutrality.

The Securities and Exchange Commission still hasn't put campaign finance disclosure on its 2014 agenda -- this, after over 600,000 good Americans told the SEC to mandate that publicly-traded corporations disclose their political spending. Remember back in the day when politicians didn't want campaign finance reform but said disclosure would be enough? Now those same politicians have moved the goalposts and don't want disclosure. Some of them say disclosure would be like fascism (an insult to those who've lived under actual fascism), and others say disclosure would be like bullying. Have pity for those poor, poor people with millions of dollars to spend on their very own knuckle-dragging politicians! If such folk really feel "bullied" by the American people -- or, more precisely, their shareholders, since the SEC's mission is to protect them -- then they can always see a therapist. I can't wait for the day when our elites just throw away any pretense of civilization and start calling disclosure "terrorism." So Demos joins with MoveOn to help you tell the SEC to shine a little light on corporate campaign spending.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Pennsylvania state legislators to raise the state's minimum wage to $10.10/hour. Getting our federal government to raise the minimum wage has been rather like pulling teeth, even though nearly two-thirds of Americans want it; thus we're putting state legislators on the spot, for which they'll no doubt thank recalcitrant federal legislators who seem to think the minimum wage is like Hitler, or the TV idiots who love to tell stories about how they used to work for $2/hour back when $2 had the buying power of $10 but they didn't tell you that part. Pennsylvania's state minimum wage is, like the federal wage, $7.25/hour, but you're not going to find a two-bedroom apartment at that salary and have very much left over for things like food and electricity. Giving over a million Pennsylvania workers a nearly three-dollar-an-hour boost will not only help them make ends meet, it'll help our economy, too -- working folks tend to put most-if-not-all of their money back into the economy, and only pumping up demand is going to get this economy going again.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FCC to save network neutrality, then both CREDO and Common Cause still help you do that. Without net neutrality -- that is, without the principle that you, not some big corporation, should control your internet experience, the principle that big telecom corporations shouldn't be allowed to speed up or slow down or block any web content just because of where it comes from, who owns it, or where it's going -- the internet will become like cable TV, that magical land where the most decadent reality shows are on a channel called The Learning Channel, where cable news shows never disclose the multitudinous conflicts-of-interests their "experts" have, where the lived experience of minorities and women and Southerners are still underrepresented on 500 channels. You want your internet to be like that? Hell no you don't! But if the big telecoms get their way, your internet will be like that -- a pay-to-play wonderland where some corporation's imagined "right" to "new revenue streams" ruins your right to free speech and freedom of association.

Action: restoring the Voting Rights Act, and ending dragnet government surveillance.

As we noted late last week, H.R. 3899/S. 1945, the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, would amend the Voting Rights Act so that our government can still keep states and municipalities from placing undue burdens on good folks' right to vote -- a duty circumscribed by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder last year. The Voting Rights Amendment Act answers the Court's objection to Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (long story short, that it used outdated criteria to deny states the right to change their own laws) by setting new criteria that could apply to any state, and not just the nine Southern states originally covered under Section 4. Ari Berman summarizes the bill's changes here; the main change is that states and municipalities which have broken federal election law five times in the past 15 years would be covered under Section 4, and the bill also makes legal challenges under Section 3 easier. Both Common Cause and People for the American Way help you support the Voting Rights Amendment Act.

Meanwhile, President Obama gave yet another well-received speech last Friday, this one about proposed changes to the NSA's dragnet surveillance program, and his proposals contain some concessions to the American people, which I suppose is welcome after eight years of Mr. Bush claiming unconstitutional Executive surveillance powers and Mr. Obama expanding them. But now is not the time to accept half-measures -- Mr. Obama did not say, at any point, that he'd end the NSA practice of collecting the phone metadata of all citizens, whether they're suspected of a crime or not. And H.R. 3361/S. 1599, the USA FREEDOM Act, would actually prohibit the NSA from collecting phone data from Americans except under certain circumstances (like, you know, getting a warrant), and would roll back National Security Letter authority to its pre-PATRIOT Act state, among other absolutely necessary checks on Executive power. Thus the ACLU helps you tell your Reps and Senators to end the NSA's data-vacuuming program.

Around the table: from water pollution to the "difficulty" of determining husband-wife rape.

Sue Sturgis at the Institute for Southern Studies tells us why the West Virginia chemical spill illuminates "another, often-overlooked hazard associated with coal power: the chemical-intensive process used to clean the fuel after it's mined and before it's burned." Meanwhile, Freedom Industries, the corporation responsible for the spill, declared bankruptcy late last week, amid revelations that Freedom owes at least $3.6 million to creditors and $2.4 million in back taxes. I feel compelled to remind everyone that since the bankruptcy law "reform" of 2005, corporations have a much easier time declaring bankruptcy (and getting back to work) than good folks like you and I do.

Zack Kopplin at Slate finds a charter school program currently operating over 60 campuses in Texas teaches bad science and bad history in its textbooks. No, "in the beginning, God created heaven and Earth" is bad science, because we can't test it, and creationism doesn't "compete" with evolution as a scientific theory because creationism is not a scientific theory. And these charter schools waste our tax money, too -- which makes them even worse than the post-Brown v. Board of Education segregation academies in the South, many of which at least put up their own money.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court judge strikes down state's "voter ID" law, in a lengthy opinion finding, among other things, that the law doesn't address a palpable problem, that it places an undue burden on elderly and low-income voters, and that the state botched its $5 million voter ID "information" campaign. The state will probably appeal to the state Supreme Court, but the case may never reach the U.S. Supreme Court (since it's being fought in state courts) -- unless Justice Roberts gets it in his head to commit another act of judicial activism like Citizens United v. FEC.

Speaking of IDs, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) would like food stamp recipients to produce a photo ID card every time they buy food. A solution looking for yet another virtually non-existent problem! Guess what many food stamp recipients don't have? That's right, photo IDs! And guess what's not as easy to get as our elites want us to think? That's right, photo IDs! This "solution" would only satisfy people who get angry at all the wrong people to begin with.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) will retire at the end of 2014, two years before his current term ends. He damaged his reputation with his food safety bill hold at the end of 2010, but I still find him vastly preferable to whatever corporate shill (Republican or Democrat) takes his place. And I doubt he's resigning because he's about to be indicted, as some folks are speculating, but his statement announcing his retirement (it's not because of recurring prostate cancer? And leaving two years early fulfills his obligation to serve only two terms better than serving two terms?) doesn't help quash that speculation.

The Salt Lake Tribune finds that 48% of Utahns approve of same-sex marriage, with 48% disapproving. Think about that for a minute: gay marriage gets virtually 50-50 numbers in Utah. Ask if they approve of civil unions or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, and almost three in four Utahns approve. Breakdowns by age, gender, and political affiliation are more or less what you'd expect -- and nearly a third of Mormons also approve of same-sex marriage. Mind: boggled -- but in a good way.

Finally, the potential Republican candidate for Virginia's 12th U.S. House district said, some 10 years ago, that it's really hard to "validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape, when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie and so forth." Boy, he's got the George W. Bush gift of gab! If Democrats are smart, which is always an open question, they'll run ads touting Dick Black (no, he's not a character in a Family Guy episode) as the "one true conservative" in the race, just like they did to Todd Akin in Missouri in 2012. As for the rest of us? Let's never speak his name again.

Action: net neutrality, tailpipe emissions, and "free" trade.

Now both CREDO and Color of Change help you tell FCC Chair Tom Wheeler to ensure that internet service providers don't censor websites or let you see some websites faster than others. "Imagine Comcast penalizing subscribers for accessing news sources not owned by its NBC subsidiary," Color of Change's Rashard Robinson writes. "Imagine AT&T shutting off access to T-Mobile's customer service website, or Verizon charging you -- and the school you're attending -- extra for you to access classroom resources online. ISPs are now legally permitted, and more financially incentivized than ever before, to engage in precisely these types of predatory behaviors." By opposing net neutrality -- by hamstringing your ability to do what you want on the internet -- all that happens is they make more money, and they call the rest of us "free riders" even though we already pay them to use their services. If anything, the big telecoms are free riders, treating money they haven't earned as some sort of entitlement.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell President Obama to keep our air cleaner through strong tailpipe emissions standards. The EPA's proposed tailpipe emissions standards would simultaneously mandate improvements in auto engines (so that new cars pollute less) and require improvements in gasoline (so that older vehicles also pollute less); they would cut the amount of soot, sulfur, benzene, and carbon monoxide our cars put into the atmosphere, and thus also cut incidents of heart and lung disease. America's automobile manufacturers have long been onboard with stronger tailpipe emissions, so why hasn't the EPA finished the job yet? Apparently, because oil corporations aren't on board. But we've seen the danger of trying to get everyone to work together all the time. when some people refuse to work with anyone else, you don't keep trying to work with them. You work around them.

Finally, we've no doubt written our Reps and Senators about rejecting fast-track authority for "free" trade deals -- especially ones that subjugate our labor and environmental laws to corporate whim, that allow big corporations to censor anyone they like on the internet -- so Public Citizen helps you call your Reps and tell them to vote against fast-track. Congress needs to know that almost no one in America, no matter their ideological orientation, wants the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" to pass. Conservatives may or may not think much of environmental laws and labor laws, but they certainly do not want to see all our laws subjugated to the will of some "investor-state tribunal," nor do conservatives value freedom on the internet any less than liberals do. This Congress may well be known for doing nothing except transferring the people's power to the corporations. You'd think they'd want history to treat them better than that. It won't, unless they do our will.

Around the table: how much is enough?

Sen. Leahy (D-VT), Rep. Conyers (D-MI), and Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) plan to introduce a Voting Rights Act fix that'll respond to the Supreme Court's invalidation of the pre-clearance formula. Per Mr. Leahy's press release, the bill would cover any state or municipality with "repeated voting rights violations" over the last 15 years, and would give states and municipalities a way to escape such coverage after 10 years. I'm glad (and unsurprised) to see Mr. Sensenbrenner aboard, but I wish the Senate's ranking Judiciary member, Charles Grassley of Iowa, was aboard as well.

Dan Roberts at The Guardian notes that Congress's budget agreement cuts funding for both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, apparently the price exacted by Republicans in exchange for giving up on (even) further food stamp cuts. Shame that our Congressfolk treat all these as Democratic/Republican issues to be "negotiated" and not American issues they should negotiate with us. Shame, also, that corporate welfare can never be cut in a "bipartisan" agreement.

Federal regulators revise "Volcker rule" regulations to allow banks to hang on to a particular kind of security, though the Volcker Rule aims to get banks out of the securities business. Bankers said they wanted the rule change to protect smaller banks, but the rule change actually allows any bank to hang on to a security as long as that particular security is backed by less than $15 billion in assets -- leaving open the possibility that a big bank could circumvent the spirit of the rule by buying up a bunch of small securities. And when did $15 billion become "small"?

Citizens for Tax Justice notes that notorious tax break-receiver Boeing apparently argued before the IRS that it needed research tax credits in order to conduct rigorous safety testing of its planes. Sounds like a classic hostage situation to me -- give us our tax breaks, or all our planes will crash! Boeing, of course, has paid next to nothing in taxes for a decade, while making billions in profits; how much is enough?

Sen. Jim Inhofe (E-OK) reiterates that he's a climate change denier mainly because climate change would cost so much to fix. Of course, he also thinks the science is bad, mainly because of a few emails circulated years ago and not because he's in tune with what actual scientists think, but mainly it's the cost to "businesses." The cost to people from complete inaction on climate change interests him a lot less. Seriously, he must think no one keeps track of what he says.

Media Matters dutifully finds Fox News much less interested in the George Washington bridge lane closure story than CNN or MSNBC -- apparently, Fox devoted 15 minutes to coverage of that story the day it broke wide open, versus two hours each for CNN and MSNBC. But I feel compelled to note that two hours is still approximately 22 hours less than the coverage they gave to Miley Cyrus the day after she shook her butt on a music awards show.

Action: net neutrality WHICH IS NOT DEAD, and other pressing matters.

It's no use going bananas over the D.C. Appeals Court striking down the FCC's 2010 net neutrality rules, because the D.C. Court had already done that in 2010, for the same reason they did it yesterday -- that the FCC didn't classify the big telecoms as "common carriers" (the way they classify phone companies) under Title II of the Communications Act, and thus didn't have the authority to regulate them as it regulates the phone companies. So we're more or less where we've been, fighting to keep big telecoms from telling us where we can go and where we can't go on the internet, fighting to keep them from imposing their innovation-smothering "tiered" systems that would ensure that their big telecom partners get their pages to your computer faster. So Free Press helps you tell new FCC Chair Tom Wheeler to reclassify internet service providers as a telecommunications service, and thus preserve net neutrality. Will the former telecom lobbyist do such a thing? I wouldn't bet on it. But duty is duty.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3189, the so-called Water Rights Protection Act, would prevent the Departments of Interior and Agriculture from setting any "conditions" on water permits filed by private corporations. Go ahead and read it on congress.gov; it's real short. Wondering what's the big deal? Here's the big deal: our government might actually have good reason to set conditions on water permits -- like, that ski resorts and factory farms don't suck up all the water out of a river and kill everything in it, "everything" including endangered species that live in the water. And yet H.R. 3189 has stealthily received a favorable committee vote (19-14 in the House Natural Resources Committee), and as you can see here, it also received no less than three hearings during the October government shutdown! Venality never sleeps! But American Rivers helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 3189, and preserve our rivers and the wildlife that depend on it, because justice never sleeps, either.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the President of Uganda to veto the gay-hating bill its Parliament passed, then Amnesty International still helps you do that. Formerly known as the "Kill the Gays Bill," the bill Parliament passed last month differs from a kill-the-gays-bill only in that it doesn't actually mandate the death penalty for homosexuality anymore, but that's like telling the difference between a mound of dung the flies have found and a mound of dung the flies haven't found yet, for the bill still mandates life in prison for "aggravated homosexuality," plus it still puts folks who offer HIV counseling or officiate same-sex marriages in jail. So, great job sanding the edges off that one, Ugandan Parliament! But we've stopped this bill before, by speaking out and shaming anyone who'd consider inflicting such a monstrosity on the world, and we can do it again, because there is-so such a thing as bad PR.

Action: phone privacy, a lousy Farm Bill, and fracking in California.

It's not just the NSA that violates our privacy when we're on the phone: our own cell phone providers do it, even going so far as to sell your personal information to the CIA. Think about that -- your cell phone provider actually makes more dough violating your privacy, and it's not like the CIA merely aims to flood your Facebook page with pro-CIA ads. You'd think something like this would be against the law! But, apparently, it's not, because the FCC doesn't know how what to do about it and requests your help figuring that out. This should be a no-brainer, except that so many folks in Washington have less-than-no-brains. Common Cause helps you tell the FCC to protect your privacy on your phone from your cell provider and your government. Before I forget: no, it's not true that "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear." If your government wants to take you down bad enough, it'll pretend everything you do is suspicious.

Meanwhile, word on the street is that Congress has just about finished hammering out a new Farm Bill, one that cuts about $9 billion from food stamps over the next decade -- rather more than the Senate Democrats proposed last year -- and still preserves all of the big corporate agricultural subsidies that no actual conservative or liberal in America likes. If that sounds like a fairly precise perversion of what a Farm Bill should be in America, Daily Kos helps you tell Congress not to cut food stamps in the Farm Bill. Daily Kos seems hopeful that a left-right coalition can stop this Farm Bill from becoming law, which would mean that Congress would be forced to extend the most recent Farm Bill (and thus delay the nefarious food stamp cuts) for another year, as they've already done twice. I'm less hopeful -- I think the putatively implacable Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is ready to play ball on this and other issues. Still, duty is duty.

Finally, Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) -- who once famously said that governing is like navigating a canoe, in that you paddle a little to the left, then paddle a little to the right -- has issued weak regulations governing hydrofracturing, or "fracking," as it's popularly known even to non-Battlestar Galactica fans. Too many of our elected officials (hello, President Obama!) think that since natural gas is the wave of the future, we should encourage fracking wherever possible. Of course you see the logical problem with that premise: that encouraging natural gas extraction does not demand in and of itself that we encourage hydrofracturing. If the gas industry can come up with a way to get at the gas without pumping noxious chemicals into our drinking water or pumping greenhouse gases into our air, I'll listen. But fracking is just a way for gas corporations to deliver more profits to their CEOs. So Friends of the Earth helps you tell Gov. Brown to ban fracking.

Action: "free" trade and government spying.

Food and Water Watch also helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject "fast-track" authority for the Trans Pacific "Partnership." You can predict why they'd want to tell you that -- the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" would let corporations sue our government to overturn our laws and regulations for the crime of threatening the corporation's profits. You want to stop fracking? A corporation could just say no. You want your organic food unspoiled by Frankenseed? A corporation could just say no. I mean, we all enjoy rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but no one has a right to trample over everyone else's rights to these things, which is what corporations will do if we sign a "free" trade agreement allowing them to pollute our air and water at will because PROFITZ!!!!! But no American should tolerate this "free" trade agreement. Certainly right-wingers wouldn't want some "investor-state tribunal" to overrule the laws of the land they love. I hope that's true even if our democratic process occasionally turns out results they don't like.

Meanwhile, President Obama will announce the changes he'd like to make to our government's snooping apparatus this week. I expect he'll give a long speech full of initiatives that sound better than they really are; recall that this is the guy who ran hard against warrantless wiretapping in 2007, only to vote in favor of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act in 2008 and then grab even more power for the Executive than Mr. Bush dared over the next five years. And I would hope we've learned by now not to wait for Mr. Obama to take care of matters for us -- we must take care of matters, because this is our government. Hence Free Press helps you tell Mr. Obama to support the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end our government's program of collecting metadata about any American citizen, at any time, without so much as a warrant. The bill currently has 20 Senate sponsors, including three Republicans, and 125 House sponsors, including 61 Republicans. Wouldn't Mr. Obama know bipartisanship when he sees it?

Around the table: concerning dirty water, premature celebrations, and other matters.

Chemical spill in West Virginia turns water blue-green and "smelling like licorice," making it unsafe for drinking, bathing, or doing laundry. Die-hard don't-tread-on-me types, take note: a calamity caused by the negligence of a private corporation has left the citizens of Charleston, WV dependent on their government for bottled water for the time being. Sane people, take note: this calamity will cause us to equate the phrase "bottled water" with "safety" even more than we already do.

Howard County, MD will supply the NSA with treated wastewater to cool the NSA's yet-to-be-built Fort Meade computer center, where, we presume, a lot of our government's surveillance magic will happen. Dig how they call it an "environmentally friendly" solution (because Howard County won't be dumping the wastewater into a river), without mentioning what the NSA will do when they're done with the wastewater. Also dig this sentence: "Ulman and NSA officials say they have heard no criticism of their agreement, which has been in the works for a couple of years but has received little publicity." Golly, I wonder why they've "heard no criticism," or why their initiative has "received little publicity"!

Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal tells us why moving the unemployed to places where unemployment is low might not be such a hot idea. Long story short: the unemployment rate doesn't exactly tell us how many jobs are available -- you'd have to hope a President Marco Rubio wouldn't send a thousand folks to a place with 4% unemployment that has only a hundred total jobs to begin with. Also, places with low unemployment tend not to experience a lot of turnover.

David Callahan at Demos explains why civil fines don't necessarily keep corporations from doing more wrong. Basically, the fines typically don't represent a big chunk of a big corporation's profits; shareholders pay the fines, not the people who actually did wrong; corporations can pay fines over a number of years, making them less painful; corporations can deduct fines (as "expenses") from their taxes; fines tend to be one-day news stories that don't damage a corporation's reputation; and, well, our government doesn't always collect the fines. Hence Mr. Callahan suggests prison time might be a better deterrent, as (you'd think!) any law-and-order believer would.

Daily Kos diarist touts a New York Daily News editorial calling the GW Bridge scandal "Christie's Waterloo," suggesting the New Jersey Governor could be a "lying thug," a "man of low character," and a "monster," all if he's not stupid. I wish we wouldn't celebrate this reversal so much, because it makes a Scott Walker Presidency all that much more likely, and Mr. Walker is the worst kind of monster: one who can con everyone into thinking he's a nice guy.

Justice Department says federal government will recognize the same-sex marriages that occurred in Utah between the point the state Supreme Court ruled Utah's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court's stay of that ruling. Which is entirely proper -- the Obama Administration recognizes the marriages for the purpose of providing federal benefits. If Gov. Herbert of Utah wants to deny those couples state benefits, that's his purview. But then, most rageheads squealing AMERICAN CAESAR!!!!! only believe in states' rights when it gives them the answers they want.

Robert Reich claims the Republicans' "divide-and-conquer" strategy, pitting the working class against the poor, is "starting to backfire." Now, I'm the optimistic sort, but I hope folks don't start doing victory laps, because paradigms are pretty hard to kill -- as long as large swaths of the working class imagine that poor folk are somehow different from them, they likely won't notice that they're actually not.

Finally, Illinois Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner flip-flops at least twice on raising the state minimum wage. And you won't believe his claim that he was "flippant" and "short" when he proposed cutting Illinois's minimum wage a month ago after you read his original remarks. It's like a fresh breath of Mitt Romney!

Action: "free" trade and unemployment benefits.

And now, it begins: the so-called Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014, introduced by Rep. Camp (R-MI) and Sen. Baucus (D?-MT), would give the President "fast-track" authority to ram a "free" trade bill through Congress and, by extension, down the throats of the American people. If it has the word "bipartisan" in it it's almost certainly a pile of dung, but don't take my word for it: read the press release at the Senate Finance Committee's website, if you have the stomach. "Boosting U.S. exports" blah blah blah "creating jobs" blah blah blah "a robust trade agenda" blah blah blah "the challenges of today’s competitive global economy" retch. You'd never know this was really all about ramming through a "free" trade agreement that would subjugate our laws to investor-state tribunals, or about shutting down internet sites corporations don't like. Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to vote against fast-tracking "free" trade deals.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Senate to pass a damn long-term unemployment extension bill already, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you do that. Word on the street is that some of the handful of Republicans who graciously allowed debate to start on this bill want the three-month extension "paid for." And no, it can't be paid for by asking the rich to contribute a few tenths of a percentage point more in income taxes, or by closing corporate tax loopholes, but by (sigh) more spending cuts, because that's proven so immensely persuasive with the American people over the last few years. Meanwhile, at least two proposed amendments would "pay for" the bill by denying the Child Tax Credit to children from immigrant families. CHN estimates that 5.5 million low-income children would suffer as a result, and that number includes 4 million children who are already U.S. citizens. Why we have to be cruel to children in order to pay for not being cruel to adults is beyond me.

Around the table: New Jersey x 2, Scott Walker x 2, and another bogus Affordable Care Act "horror story."

New Jersey state Assembly passes bill requiring law enforcement to get a warrant before using a drone to investigate a crime. What a shame a bill has to spell that out -- and what a shame the state Senate version of the same bill has no such requirement.

In other New Jersey-related news, turns out a deputy Chief of Staff to Gov. Chris Christie ordered those George Washington bridge land closings back in September, and exactly for the reason speculated by his enemies -- to exact retribution on Fort Lee's Mayor for his non-endorsement of the Governor. The trail of slime doesn't reach the Governor himself just yet, and I suppose he's handled the aftermath about as well as he could, but this kind of pettiness just doesn't look Presidential. I suppose it's early enough for everyone to forget.

Surprise, surprise: another ZOMG OBAMACARE HORROR STORY!!!!! with not a whole lot of there there. And it's the result of bad journalism, no less -- where reporters don't fact-check (maybe due to time and work constraints, or maybe not) and editors lie about their obvious biases. These are the days of miracle and wonder.

Gov. Scott Walker (E-WI) wants to have a year-long conversation about getting rid of the state income tax. Why do I think it might not work out as well for him as that year-long conversation Barack Obama had about making the rich pay more income tax did? Because Mr. Walker would almost certainly have to hike sales taxes to make up for the budget shortfall -- and Wisconsinites could wind up paying a 13.5% sales tax if he can con them into giving up the income tax. Why do I suspect Mr. Walker will start a hundred other conversations in the meantime and then, when he wins, declare a mandate on this one?

And speaking of Scott Walker, "Recall is not the Wisconsin Way" ads opposing Mr. Walker's recall in 2012 turn out to have been funded mainly by out-of-state groups. That's some Wisconsin way there! And the ads' sponsor, the Coalition for American Values Action (it's fun, it's healthy, it's word salad!), "did little before the recall elections, and has done little since," and might have broken state campaign financing laws. I imagine the good folks in Wisconsin would find all of this appalling, if it were on the nightly news or anything.

Action: prison privatization, handouts for frackers, and "free" trade.

Color of Change helps you tell corporations to stop investing in private prisons. Why? For any number of reasons: private prisons charge by the prisoner, which doesn't exactly motivate them to rehabilitate prisoners and which does motivate them to lobby our governments for longer and harsher sentences. And private prisons also like their profits, which doesn't exactly motivate them to pay people who care for prisoners. (Yes, prisoners deserve to be cared for while they're in prison. Yes, I've had this argument within the last six months. Yes, I'm stunned that we argue this matter, ever, in a civilized society.) And of course private prisons don't exactly help us become a nation that doesn't racially profile black folks. My main objection to the private prison industry, though, is that housing prisoners is our government's job, which means it's our job -- and when have we ever benefited from letting corporations do our job for us?

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Senate still mulls SB 411, which would open up a massive new loophole in the state's "Good Samaritan Law" so that corporations could take abandoned mine water, sell it to gas drilling corporations for fracking, and enjoy immunity from prosecution. Can you say welfare handout, children? The Good Samaritan Law aimed to get corporations to clean up mine wastewater, but SB 411 would let corporations simply sell that water to frackers, without cleaning it up. And that wastewater would then pollute the water you drink and wash and bathe with, and then you couldn't sue for damages -- even if their wastewater turns your drinking water brown and gelatinous or gives you cancer. Only a legislature that cares for nothing but mammon could do this -- or think that we wouldn't notice what they were doing. Food and Water Watch helps you tell your PA state legislator to reject more handouts for frackers.

Finally, the People's Email Network still helps you tell Congress not to fast-track the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade "deal." You know who likes "free" trade deals that subjugate our labor and environmental laws to corporate "investor-state tribunals," who will be able to void laws at will when we try to hold some corporation to account for polluting our air and water? You know who likes "free" trade deals that will allow corporations to shut down internet sites on suspicion of copyright infringement? Almost nobody, that's who. Unfortunately, most of the people who like "free" trade deals in America seem to be serving in Congress at the moment, and these fools seem determined to force Congress to take a simple up-or-down vote on the TPP, without any debate. Why do you suppose they wouldn't want to debate it -- or even let Americans know what's actually in the "agreement"? What could they possibly be afraid of? Here's what they should be afraid of: the shame and humiliation they earn for hurting us.

Action: garment workers in Haiti, police cameras, and unemployment benefits.

The Worker Rights Consortium has found that the garment corporation Hanes (you know, underwear, T-shirts, like that) has been exploiting its Haitian garment workers, who make rather less than the minimum wage. Hanes will tell you they're not doing anything wrong, that it's their suppliers, the garment factories, that are shortchanging their workers. But who put a gun to Hanes's head and made them deal with only crooks? And why did they lobby our State Department to try to kill the Haitian government's plans to raise the minimum wage to a mere $5/day if they're so blameless? As it happens, later this week, two Hanes competitors (Gildan and Russell) will meet with labor advocates and union reps to hammer out how they're going to pay Haitian workers fairly, but Hanes, so far, isn't going along. You know what that means, right? It means it's time to administer the hammer of Bad PR! Sum of Us helps you tell Hanes to make sure its suppliers pay its workers better.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature mulls SB 57, which would allow police to use body-mounted cameras whenever they like. Again, I'm stunned that legislators find getting a warrant to be such a quaint concept. Do I oppose the use of body-mounted cameras in all conceivable instances? Of course not -- the evidence a camera gathers can help convict criminals and expose police misconduct. But I want reasonable controls the use of these cameras, and I don't want police to determine that almost entirely on their own. I don't want police to be able to hang onto whatever they film for as long as they like, and I don't want them to be able to switch off cameras while an incident is going on, so the public doesn't ever see them pepper-spray people. I don't ask that much! The ACLU of Pennsylvania helps you tell the state Senate to vote down SB 57, and ensure better privacy protections for the Commonwealth's citizens.

Finally, the Senate voted by a filibuster-proof majority yesterday morning -- to start debate on a long-term unemployment extension. I had thought Senate rule changes early in January (not the recent ones ending filibusters on Presidential nominations, rule changes I still disagree with) got rid of the filibuster-on-starting-debate; apparently, I was wrong. The idea that you need 60 votes in the Senate to even agree to discuss a legislative matter shows us how sick, immoral, and decadent a society we've become. But recall that extending unemployment benefits is a relatively popular matter politically, regardless of what our decadent elites and their "liberal" media lapdogs would have us think. Republicans still haven't been properly punished at the ballot box, despite actively campaigning against unemployment benefits since 2010. What does that tell us? It tells us we haven't hit them with our will hard enough. Daily Kos helps you tell the Senate to approve a long-term unemployment benefits extension.

Around the table: Medicare, the War on Poverty, NSA spying, and the Good Word on birth control.

Medicare proposes rule changes allowing it to kick out doctors who abuse their prescribing power and to make doctors formally enroll in Medicare's Part D program if they want to prescribe to its users. Next up on Fox News: Obamacare Run Amok: Big Brother is Watching Your Doctor! I wish it were satire, but too often these days what used to be satire is now just the news. Or, more precisely, "news."

Michael Tomasky reminds us that the War on Poverty -- roundly decried as a failure by luminaries such as Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio -- actually worked. In fact, it actually cut poverty almost in half in a mere six years. Like me, you may not like what welfare eventually became, but (also like me) you may find that a relatively small sticking point, and it's hard to dispute that community colleges, community health clinics, and infrastructure projects pulled a lot of folks out of poverty and into the middle class and the American Dream. What a shame we haven't really fought a war on poverty in over 30 years.

"NSA Can Hack and Spy on Any iPhone Any Time," says this Mac Observer article. While the article doesn't actually nail that point shut -- it presumes that since the NSA was able to install Dropout Jeep on iPhones they could actually get their hands on five years ago, and because they aimed to one day do it remotely, then they must have done it by now -- we could do worse than assume the NSA can remotely install spyware on our iPhones, and then demand our Congressfolk protect our privacy the way actual public servants would do.

Finally, Elissa Strauss takes to task the very notion that the Bible condemns birth control -- quite interesting, given that so many argue that a CEO's religious beliefs trumps their employees' religious beliefs vis a vis covering birth control in health insurance plans -- by citing the text and its historical contexts. Wonder why no one thought of that before. And by "wonder why no one thought of that before," please understand that I mean "because that might edify the public, rather than enrage it."

Action: unemployment benefits, "natural" Frankenfoods, and justice for Albert Woodfox.

Congress passed a budget agreement without including an extension of long-term unemployment benefits, cutting off 1.3 million Americans. Is there a point where we should think about ending long-term unemployment benefits? Of course there is! And that point is not now, when job openings still average three applicants each, when a sizable portion of our workforce in its 50s and 60s will likely never find work again, when the U6 unemployment rate still hovers around 13% -- and, needless to say, when our government still does next-to-nothing keeping our rich-and-powerful from running roughshod over the rest of us. The Senate will mull a mere three-month extension, and they'll pretend that their constituents are all tired of those people still getting "handouts," but while some folks do feel that way (and I suspect what they really feel is I'm not getting enough handouts!), unemployment benefits are actually quite politically popular, even, apparently, in swing districts. Both the Campaign for America's Future and Moms Rising help you tell Congress to extend unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile, the big agricultural corporations are still pestering our FDA to allow them to call their genetically-modified food products "natural" or "all-natural." That shouldn't even be a debate, except perhaps to post-modernists, who I suppose will argue that since people are "natural," then anything they make is "natural," but then that's the kind of thinky-think horsedoodle that doesn't help anyone make a useful decision about anything in life. If you think, as many reasonable people think, that genetically-modified seed can cause harmful effects, you ought to be able to make the decision not to buy them at the markets for your damn self -- and then, in a truly free market, the damn Frankenfood would either stand on its own or not. Sadly, for corporations, a "free" market" means freedom for them, not for you. So the Organic Consumers Association helps you tell the FDA to prevent big corporations from calling their Frankenfood "natural" or "all-natural."

Finally, Albert Woodfox has spent over 40 years in prison (most of that time in solitary) for allegedly murdering a prison guard. Just so happens no physical evidence links Mr. Woodfox to the crime, and also just so happens Mr. Woodfox was a Black Panther agitating for better conditions at the prison -- like, you know, less rape and less violence and less segregation. No one thinks the prison experience shouldn't have shame and humiliation, but what civilized society thinks treating activists with solitary confinement and rape is OK? Only a sick, immoral, and decadent society, one that values vengeance over justice and rage over reason, thinks that. Mr. Woodfox's conviction has now been overturned by three federal courts -- the most recent being the federal District Court in New Orleans last March -- but the state of Louisiana keeps trying to keep Mr. Woodfox down. Amnesty International helps you tell the state of Louisiana to abandon its efforts to oppress Mr. Woodfox further.

Around the table: climate change, conservative job ideas, Chris Christie, Cambodian garment workers, and Mitt Romney.

As right-wing hot-air balloons (like Donald Trump, let's never speak of him again) do victory laps whenever a snowstorm arrives in winter, Chris Mooney reminds us that singular incidents don't obliterate trends. It's a shame anyone needs to be reminded of that, but the work of citizenship isn't always uplifting. Meanwhile, a study published in Nature magazine tells us that dwindling cloud cover will make climate change even worse. Next up on Fox News: the liberal bias of Nature!

Jamelle Bouie at The Daily Beast reports on conservative initiatives to fix our ongoing jobs crisis -- and how little enthusiasm Republicans seem to have for any of them. If you've long believed Republicans are reactionary-not-conservative, you won't be surprised. Nor will you be surprised that some of the initiatives described therein (infrastructure spending, unemployment spending) sound Obamaesque, while others (work sharing, moving workers to where the jobs are) are only slightly to his right. Some "Socialist."

Daily Kos diarist says the Chris Christie "Bridge Story Gets Legs." Did Gov. Christie really did order lanes of the George Washington Bridge closed back in September because Fort Lee's Mayor didn't endorse his re-election? Maybe, maybe not -- the Bergen Record story cited doesn't actually advance the story very far. But before we break open the champagne, n.b. that a wounded Chris Christie makes a 2016 Scott Walker coronation more likely -- unless the various "John Doe" probes in Wisconsin finally get somewhere, which I'm not counting on.

Cambodian military police kill at least three in clash with striking garment workers. Cambodian workers make stuff for Adidas, Puma, and H&M, among other famous Western brands, just so you know; they're striking for a $150/month minimum wage (that's right, month; currently they make $80/month). If you're tempted to thank God that stuff doesn't happen here anymore, remember that it used to happen here all the time back in the day, and could happen again if our venal, corrupt elites get too much more power.

Finally, Mitt Romney tells Fox News Sunday that he wishes he could "turn back the clock and take another try" at winning the 2012 election, a desire I do not believe even very many of his fellow Republicans share. He adds that "history is in the past," a statement which may also irk some of Fox News Sunday's viewers.

Around the table: banksters, whiners, fools, and war hawks.

FAIR finds the "liberal" media curiously uninterested in figuring out why more banksters aren't going to jail for what they've done. Many of them have taken the "failure isn't illegal" line, curiously ignoring the "their failure ruined our economy" line, not to mention the "packaging up dung securities and calling them meatloaf securities is actually illegal" line. They also curiously ignore the fact that some folks do get life in prison for far lesser crimes that hurt far fewer people.

Ho hum, Home Depot founder suggests that Pope Francis's anti-greed rhetoric might alienate some rich Americans, citing exactly one person he knows who might not donate seven figures to the Catholic Church after all. Anecdotes: even when you can't verify them independently; they're so much better than scientific evidence! Mr. Langone then suggests the Pope really ought to be more "positive," which is what they all say when they know they're not convincing anyone of a damn thing. It's amazing how often so-called conservatives whine these days.

Right-wing blogger touts North Carolina's falling unemployment rate, without noting that unemployment rates also fall because people get discouraged and stop looking for jobs -- let alone that North Carolina's falling unemployment rate is almost entirely due to such discouragement and thus almost entirely not due to people actually getting jobs. Said right-wing idiot also claims North Carolina's unemployment rate has dropped by a staggering 8 points, which is bunk, of course, but unfortunately some pundit extra-eager to serve his or her corporate paymasters will repeat it on TV and then it'll become a "fact."

Daniel Larison at The American Conservative points out the logical flaw in Congressional threats of new sanctions on Iran. Here it is: "(o)ne would think that hawks would be the first to understand that the foreign government’s predictable response would be to dig in its heels and refuse to make concessions under duress, since that is a normal reaction to repeated expressions of hostility, but instead they assume that all other governments can be compelled to yield and engage in what hawks would inevitably call appeasement if our government did it." Of course, hawks just want us to think they're tough. They're not. That's probably why they act out so much.

Around the table: approximately evenly divided between good news and bad news.

French Constitutional Council gives go-ahead for a 50% income tax on income over a million Euros -- though the same Council kills other proposals aimed at curbing tax evasion. UK Reuters would do better to curb their obvious pro-business bias -- President Hollande's "2012 supertax election pledge" can't be that unpopular, or he'd have lost the election. And why do I care that soccer clubs might go on strike, or that Gerard Depardieu threw a tantrum and left the country?

John Randall at the Roosevelt Institute explains why Comcast's "Internet Essentials" program doesn't benefit low-income families the way they'd like you to think it does. Long story short: Internet Essentials speeds are horrendously slow, very few folks even qualify for the program, and the program doesn't actually force Comcast to build out new network infrastructure, meaning it's "pure profit" even at $9.99/month. That's what we get when we leave it to the corporations to solve everything. Well, that's not all we get -- we also get the monopolies that kill actual low-cost alternatives to Comcast.

After some public pressure, Medicare plans to take some steps to halt prescription drug abuse in its Part D program -- including referring doctors with suspicious prescribing patterns to state medical boards. Still, I'd like to see our government actually run Part D, rather than private insurers -- you can do more about the fraud your governments commits or enables than you can about the fraud some big pharmaceutical corporation commits or enables, because that corporation sure feels no obligation to you. Maybe not even if you're a shareholder.

Finally, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone notes that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will join with the Republican establishment to stop the party from nominating "fools" in House and Senate races. But Mr. Taibbi also reminds us that the same "establishment" that wants to keep people like Ted Cruz from winning primaries "practically invented the politics of stupid" during Tha Bush Mobb years, mocking the regular folks who protested "the invasion of the wrong country in retaliation for 9/11" (italics in original) as being from the "reality-based community." The subsequent invention of the Tea Party was a drama, of course, as is this "civil war" among Republicans -- it's all so they can sell corporatists like John Boehner as "moderates."