Thieves in the Temple.

Action: seeds and elephants *also* want to be free.

Sum of Us helps you tell the Monsanto corporation to abandon its scheme that traps Indian farmers in a cycle of debt, to the point where over 200,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves. Farmers in India used to save seeds and plant them the following year -- a practice pretty much every farmer in human history has embraced -- but Monsanto patents its seeds, and our government allows these patents to go through, which means if you, as a farmer, save seeds either by harvesting them out of the resulting fruit or simply not planting the extras, you're "violating" Monsanto's "rights" -- this, even though you can't really patent something you can just as easily find in nature, and "exercising its rights," for Monsanto, means trampling all over the rights of farmers everywhere else on Earth. Making farmers buy new seeds every year, just so you can keep the cash rolling in? Not as important as farmers being free to practice the conservative value of thrift. Versus, you know, the "conservative" value of letting big corporations do whatever they want.

Meanwhile, the African elephant is in trouble -- the Wildlife Conservation Society estimates that an African elephant gets killed about every 15 minutes, so it could be extinct, except in captivity, within the next 10 years -- and though laws all over the planet either ban or restrict the trade, the black market in elephant ivory still thrives, and in the most unlikely places, like Craigslist. That's right, the place where you bought that bicycle, sold that laser printer, or made that horrific date! Craigslist has formally banned ivory sales on its pages, but hasn't moved to enforce that ban, by, say, going after and taking down ivory sales posts or reporting the posts to law enforcement. Some folks will say, gosh, how can they do that when they have over 50 billion pages and over 80 million new posts daily? Well, a big website brings big responsibility, and if Wikipedia can keep nonsense off its entries, then maybe it's not so impossible a job. Avaaz helps you tell Craigslist to do more to stop illegal ivory trading on its site, and thus help fight the illegal killing of African elephants.

Action: human trafficking and "free" trade, coal royalties, and Arctic drilling.

As you know, the State Department decided, in its annual "Trafficking in Persons" report, to bump Malaysia up from Tier 3 (reserved for the worst offenders) to Tier 2. Why? Because Malaysia has woken up to its human trafficking problem and has taken concrete steps to stop it? Alas, no -- given that we're still finding mass graves of migrant workers in Malaysia, given that refugees from other lands still find themselves forced into slavery, we must conclude that the State Department acted to head off legislation offered by Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) aiming to prohibit "free" trade deals with Tier 3 nations from getting fast-tracked. And Malaysia, naturally, is a signatory to the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deal. The Obama Administration has spoken: corporations are not only more important than a nation's laws, they're more important than human freedom. But this also gives our normally cowardly members of Congress a reason to suddenly declare their opposition to the TPP, so Public Citizen helps you encourage your Congressfolk to reject the TPP as they reject human trafficking.

Meanwhile, the Wilderness Society helps you tell the Department of the Interior to end the era of "sweetheart deals" for coal corporations when they extract coal from public lands. The last time our government set royalty rates for coal extraction from public lands, Warren G. Harding was President; hence, royalty rates -- which is the rate at which coal corporations pay us to mine our land, remember -- have been rock-bottom for nearly a hundred years. The pro-pollution crowd will squeal ZOMG TEH ELECTRIC BILLZ WILL SKYROCKITZ!!!!! When folks say that, pay attention to what they're ignoring saying -- like, say, corporate pay packages. If coal corporations have to pay more to extract coal from the ground, they don't have to charge consumers more -- they could just as easily pay their executives less. Those who say that just isn't possible need to answer this question: should we-the-taxpayers tolerate having our energy bills taken hostage every time we try to get what we deserve? Whether they like it or not, the war-on-coal crowd's answer to this question is always "yes."

Finally, though the Department of the Interior has banned Arctic drilling, President Obama has approved Shell Oil's plan to drill for oil there -- because Interior's ban doesn't apply to corporations that already had drilling leases in the Arctic, like Shell. But S. 1794, the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act, would (as the title suggests) prohibit the Secretary of the Interior from issuing any more oil or gas drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean. And why? Because we don't know enough about the Arctic to drill there safely, and what we do know -- that the inevitable massive spill would be even harder to clean up in frigid Arctic waters than in temperate Gulf of Mexico waters, and that drilling would endanger Alaska's vaunted salmon industry, among other things -- should further dissuade us from drilling. Cheaper oil, as always, is no argument when contemplating further fouling of our air and our water -- nor is domestic oil, as if we can only wean ourselves off Middle Eastern oil with more oil. So the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your Senators to support the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act.

Around the table: includes tales of Republicans, "governing"!

You know that highway infrastructure reauthorization bill that Mitch McConnell is supposedly working so hard to get done, so he can prove Republicans can run Congress without everything falling apart? Well, among its problems is that it shields certain kinds of public safety information from disclosure via Freedom of Information Act requests. "Risk to public safety is exactly the type of information that FOIA is intended to prevent being shielded from the public," writes Sue Udry, but you know, it's only accountability to the people, so you can see why Mr. McConnell doesn't care.

Speaking of that highway bill, Scott Klinger says we should fund the Highway Trust Fund in ways other than what the Senate has proposed in its legislation, like closing the corporate offshore profits loophole. As an aside, the Senate is actually proposing outsourcing tax collection to private tax collectors as a money-saving idea again. It didn't work last time, as anyone who thought about it for a nanosecond could have predicted. But hey, look at the Republicans, governing!

Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post reminds us that Jeb Bush owed his "success" at "rejuvenating" the Florida economy to a massive housing bubble. Which, when it burst (after Mr. Bush left office, of course), left Florida way worse off than most other states. Next time he says "I know how to do this," remember that anyone can "rejuvenate" an economy with unsustainable speculation.

Leon Neyfakh suggests we can live without air conditioning -- which at least one scientist estimates adds the equivalent of 10,000 car-driving miles per household of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Ignore the notion that "civilization was humming along just fine" before air conditioning arrived -- I'd want to see stats concerning heat-related hospitalizations and deaths before and after A/C before buying that -- but attend the notion that it's silly to cool down offices so folks can wear uncomfortable business suits, or the notion that modern architecture has forgotten a lot of very useful information.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck uses her valuable time on Earth playing devil's advocate about cops beating up Sandra Bland (who later died in police custody) during a traffic stop. "But, what if, I mean, there are times, I'm sure, someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer, maybe chucked it at him, pushed it at him." Number one, speak English! Number two, the officer had at least two far more powerful weapons than a lit cigarette. Let's do ourselves a favor and never speak of Elizabeth Hasselbeck again.

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stopped in at both legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak stops on Tuesday. Chiding Mr. Walker for ordering American cheese and no onions is so stupid I shouldn't even have to waste space calling it stupid, but chiding him for cutting in line and leaving trash behind is entirely appropriate. And those protestors held up such asinine signs I can't dismiss the possibility that the Walker campaign planted them.

Action: fighting for regulations that fight for us.

Like a zombie that just won't go down no matter how many bullets or arrows you put in it, H.R. 427, the REINS Act, is back, and the House will vote on it this week, because the most important thing Republicans can do for the economy is to make sure our government can't protect workers, can't protect the air, can't protect the water, and can't protect all of us from another bankster-caused financial crisis. The REINS Act would force Congress to approve all regulations coming from the executive branch -- and if Congress doesn't hold a vote on a particular regulation, the REINS Act would treat that as a "no" vote, and strike the regulation down. Congress has already delegated extensive regulatory powers to the Executive branch, and has a "resolution of disapproval" process for trying to stop regulations it deems excessive; why does it need even more power? Because the corporate paymasters of Congressfolk don't want any regulations telling them what to do. It's like they're all 12 years old or something. Public Citizen helps you tell your House Reps to reject the REINS Act.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to ensure that Enbridge's Alberta Clipper pipeline expansion gets the appropriate and lawful regulatory scrutiny before it proceeds, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. What business does our government have telling Enbridge it can't expand its pipeline? Our business, that's what -- we the people have an interest in ensuring that shoving more oil through a pipeline, or building an entirely new branch of the pipeline, doesn't pollute our air and water, since, you know, we all breathe air and drink water. This is the part that regulation-haters pretend not to get -- that this government is ours, and that we must make it act in our interest, and kneecapping its ability to act in our interest is not in our interest. Sadly, the State Department seems to be kneecapping itself here, by failing to complete the reviews the law mandates. But we don't have to sit back and take that from them, any more than we have to sit back and take it from corporatists in Congress.

Finally, four executives in the public relations firm Edelman (the world's largest PR firm, I'm told) have resigned in protest of the firm's work for the fossil fuel industry, and just because they're relatively wealthy executives doesn't mean we shouldn't value their courage -- these folks may not work as executives, anywhere, ever again, and any other field of employment would regard them with some suspicion. You may well be saying to yourself, self, who am I to tell Edelman whom to represent? You are an American, with a voice, that's who, and it's not like Edelman isn't selective -- the corporation now does not work with tobacco corporations or gun makers (and, in the second case, that's further than I'd go!). And among Edelman's clients over the last year are TransCanada, currently trying to build the Keystone XL pipeline despite its lousy pipe safety record, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), still pushing lousy pro-pollution bills at the state level in America. So CREDO helps you tell Edelman's remaining executives to lay down the gauntlet about doing PR for polluters.

Around the table: tales of right-wing swordfighting and Democrat cowardice.

State Department bumps Malaysia and Cuba up a level in its annual "Trafficking in Persons" report -- which just so happens to ensure that Malaysia will be able to sign the TPP. As stunning as it is that the Obama Administration has affirmed that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" is more important than human life and human freedom, it's also stunning that Cuba can get a bump up a level despite, in our government's own words, not recognizing its forced-labor problem. We know why that's happening, too, but really.

FAIR's Janine Jackson interviews the Center for Media and Democracy's Brendan Fischer about the campaign finance issues surrounding Gov. Scott Walker. Long story short, from Ms. Jackson: "it sounds as though the charge was that Walker actively sought to skirt finance laws and that the (Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent) ruling is: Yes, he did, but it’s OK." Also n.b. the part where the Washington Post calls breaking the law a "workaround." That's our "liberal" media at work.

Lou Dubose at the Washington Spectator finds plenty of right-wing swordfighting going on at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference last month. This Republican Presidential candidate has a moment of silence, the next one does a three-minute prayer; this one says he knows how to deal with ISIS, the next one says he'll be a "wartime President"; this one says he'll protect the unborn, the next one says he signed a law outlawing abortion at 20 weeks, this one says he's against gay marriage, the next one flat-out makes up entire Supreme Court arguments to demonstrate he's more against it -- it's all quite ridiculous, and no, this never happens on the left, mainly because most liberal politicians are too timid to actually do anything.

Don't give the Boy Scouts of America too much credit for repealing the ban on gay Scout leaders at the national level, because BSA will still allow local Boy Scout chapters to ban gays. For religious reasons, of course. These folks better hope nobody ever starts a religion that demands that we all oppress Republicans. Oppress for real, I mean, since they seem to think that not getting everything they want all the time equals "oppression."

Finally, Franklin "the Lesser" Graham says we should end all immigration of Muslims to the U.S. until we can "settle" the "threat with Islam." Rev. Graham has apparently decided that getting more attention for himself and parading his manhood around are both more important than his charity's relationships with the countries it serves. And if his charity does suffer, he won't say it's God's will -- he'll just blame the liberals.

Action: GMO labeling, cybersecurity, and treating children as adults in the criminal justice system.

H.R. 1599, the so-called Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, passed out of the House late last week by a 270-150 margin -- short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, but should we count on a veto from President Obama, whose USDA has been an even greater friend to GMOs than Mr. Bush's was? H.R. 1599 would prevent states from labeling GMOs in food, would make FDA efforts to label GMO food more difficult, and would even allow corporations to slap the word "natural" on products with GMOs in them, and no I'm not going all semiotic on the meaning of the word "natural." Now the bill goes to the Senate, which may be anxious to pass it, to "help small farmers" or some rubbish. If small farmers rely on GMO seeds, that's because the big corporations make them, and any Senator who really cares about small farmers would do something about that state of affairs. In the meantime, both USPIRG and Food and Water Watch help you tell your Senators to reject efforts to curtail GMO labeling.

Meanwhile, S. 754, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (or CISA), would help corporations share huge slabs of customer data with our government. Warrant, no warrant, who cares? Warrants are so 18th century already! Of course, if our government really wanted to stop cyberattacks, it would make corporations embrace encryption, stronger passwords, and multifactor authentication, and the notion that "corporations will embrace these reforms in time" won't comfort you if a hacker steals your credit card number before then. But our government cries wolf about jihad and ISIS and demands new powers, when vacuuming up all that data won't help protect us from terrorists -- and CISA would also allow the FBI and NSA to use the data for purposes other than counterterrorism and grant immunity against lawsuits to the corporations that hand over the data. So the Bill of Rights Defense Committee helps you tell your Senators to preserve privacy, reject government spying, and vote against CISA.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Justice Department to investigate the widespread practice of trying children as adults and putting them into adult prisons, then CREDO still helps you do that. It is tempting, I suppose, to throw up your hands and say the kids just get crazier every year, until you realize that folks have always been saying that for, like, forever, and until you remember that we are, all of us, defenders of civilization, and we have a solemn duty to pass that civilization on to our descendants. I would hate to think our descendants will think it's just normal to put kids on trial as adults at a time in their lives when they're simply unable to think like adults, or put them in adult jails where they'll be abused by bigger, stronger prisoners -- all of which will make their rehabilitation a lot more difficult. Of course, future generations might also think it's normal to leave kids in front of some computer screen all day while the parents go work one of their three jobs. But preventing that is also our job as defenders of civilization.

Around the table: Homeland Security spies on police brutality protestors! And other surprises.

Surprise, surprise, Homeland Security has been monitoring protests against police brutality (and other events that might involve large numbers of black folks). Of course, protestors aren't terrorists -- if they were, they wouldn't be out in public protesting. Worried that today's protestors will throw up their hands tomorrow and start bombing police stations? Then let's not have police officers kill so many black folks.

Hillary Clinton has been attacking the "short-term" thinking of our bankster elites, but Robert Borosage finds her actual proposals "underwhelming" -- no Robin Hood tax, no closing the "carried interest" loophole for hedge fund managers, no breaking up too-big-to-fail banks, and weak (or classically overcomplex) proposals elsewhere. Remember, folks, stuff just ain't that deep, and if it takes too long to explain your sliding scale capital gains tax scheme, it's probably crap.

Paul Krugman reminds us that Medicare isn't "actuarily unsound," as Jeb Bush said the other day -- its costs have always risen more slowly than private health-care spending, and with the Affordable Care Act, these costs have risen even more slowly. The lesson? Even when you meet Republican arguments head-on, they wilt. If the rest of the "liberal" media would figure that out, we might have more of a chance avoiding the privatization of Medicare "for our own good."

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress tells us about a lawsuit filed in Indiana that asserts, essentially, that the folks who would make county clerks give out wedding licenses to gay folks despite their "sincerely-held religious beliefs" are the real bigots. Mr. Millhiser, quite generously, calls this argument "clever," but I maintain that people who claim they're being "discriminated" against by laws preventing them from discriminating against other people are just whiny diaper-loaded brats. I've gotten too old to value the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I "cleverness" of weaklings.

Finally, the reactionary U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend buku bucks in House primaries taking out the Republicans who have been holding up their big-corporate priorities. Ms. McCarter reminds us that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce helped bring this state of affairs about, by lurching far to the right upon the ascendance of Barack Obama. I'd go further and say whatever "anger" the Chamber has at "intransigent" teabaggers is fake -- the more "mainstream" Republicans they'd support were too far-right just 10 years ago, so the "anger" is just their way of pushing the mainstream ever further right.

Action: fighting bankster influence, and ensuring freedom from discrimination.

H.R. 3065/S. 1779, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, would help stop the "revolving door" that seems to operate between Wall Street banksters and government regulators, a state of affairs that should, to a sentient being, present a number of obvious conflicts of interest. The bill would ban "golden parachutes" to bank employees who take federal regulator jobs overseeing those banks, because that sure doesn't entice future regulators to work on the people's behalf. One might even say it entices the opposite. The bill would also force regulators to recuse themselves from working on matters involving their former employers and/or clients of former employers, and would prevent them from taking jobs with banking corporations for two years after they leave our government. None of that seems particularly onerous to me. Tough-on-crime politicians have no business opposing these reforms, and those who say in public that bankers don't need a nanny state will reveal themselves as morons. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3185/S. 1858, the Equality Act, would amend the Civil Rights Act so that it offers protection from discrimination to gays. Though gay marriage is now the law of the land, gays still have to live in a very gay-friendly state in order to avoid discrimination at their jobs or when they look for a place to live -- or even when they take their kids to the doctor's, lest they run into someone who thinks denying someone their rights just because they're gay is "an expression of my religious freedom." But there's no reason gay folks in, say, Nebraska can't enjoy the same freedom from discrimination as the rest of us -- certainly protections from discrimination don't force other people to be gay (claims of ZOMG TEH GAYZ WANTZ TO MAKEZ US ALL TEH GAYZ!!!!! being bereft of evidence). The bill would also ensure that women don't face similar discrimination, like some crusader refusing to fill a birth control prescription. So both the National Women's Law Center and Keystone Progress help you tell your Congressfolk to support the Equality Act, and thus enhance freedom from discrimination for our most vulnerable citizens.

Around the table: how Scott Walker will *fit right in* in Washington, and other stories.

Stephen M. Walt argues that if ISIS actually succeeds in establishing a state, our best course of action is containment. Right-wingers who find that the idea of containment doesn't adequately arouse them should remember that their hero, Ronald Reagan, never asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Soviets, who were a more powerful enemy than whatever Iraq-sized nation ISIS establishes will be -- especially if, as any reasonable person would expect, ISIS finds statecraft to be a lot harder than blowing crap up.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, provides a comprehensive report of how badly Scott Walker's baby, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has run. You'll experience the shock of recognition when you read about the folks who donated six figures to Walker campaigns and got millions of dollars in tax credits, because that sort of thing happens in Congress all the time -- big corporations make millions in donations and get billions in tax breaks. See? Scott Walker will fit right in over in Washington, D.C.

FAIR catches Politico announcing that "Tennessee is the Capital of American Jihad," based on, literally, two incidents of domestic terrorism in the Volunteer State six years (and hundreds of miles!) apart. Two incidents -- why, it's an unstoppable juggernaut of an argument! Best part? FAIR makes up a fake Politico cover featuring two white Southern terrorists, with similarly histrionic headlines.

Kentucky gun-store owner bans Muslims from her place of business. Then whines about how, as a white person, she has no "freedom" anymore, and asserts that putting the sign up is only "freedom of speech," which certainly isn't true when you enforce the sign. You'd think gun-lovers would want to associate with other gun-lovers, but not this one. She also says her store will go out of business at the end of the month; I wonder why.

Finally, NASA's Kepler spacecraft finds another planet that could support life -- its year being only a little longer than ours, which puts it in the zone where it could support life, though there's still a lot we don't know, because the planet is 1,400 light years away. Presumably the natives, if there are any, also don't call it "Kepler-452b" like we do.

Around the table: our elites descend further into barbarism -- but a woman built a successful girls' school in Afghanistan.

An elderly woman at a Jeb Bush townhall in New Hampshire is America's greatest citizen today, for questioning Mr. Bush's stated desire to "phase out" Medicare. With "I paid into that for years and now you want to take it away?" and "It's not an entitlement, I earned that," she says the things I wish everyone would say to anyone who wants to kill Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid! (You pay into that last one, too -- and you might need it one day.) And n.b. that when Jeb's on the ropes, he retorts that Medicare is "actuarially unsound," a phrase sure to resonate with the right-wing rageheads he needs to win primaries.

The House of Representatives passes H.R. 237, which would revoke your passport (or deny its renewal) if you've ever "aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped" terrorists. And what constitutes "help"? Read the bill as many times as you like, and you still won't know. Again: the Constitution defines treason, in Article III, Section 3, as "only in levying War against them (i.e., the United States), or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." But our government wants to keep lowering the bar until it can oppress you for supporting its own enemies, not America's enemies. There's always a difference.

It sure looks like Face the Nation's John Dickerson, in his questioning of Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Energy Moniz over the proposed Iran nukes deal, wants everyone to know how big his testicles are. Showing skepticism of Administration statements is his job, but he's not doing his job here -- civilized people shouldn't treat Mr. Netanyahu's criticisms like they're not hysterical, and how would Mr. Dickerson like it if Iran insisted on anytime-anywhere inspection of any place in the U.S.?

Boeing President says it's important to renew the Export-Import Bank's charter because Boeing needs to compete with foreign airline corporations on a "level playing field." ITEP Director Matt Gardner finds that funny, because Boeing hasn't paid one dime in federal or state corporate taxes in over 13 years. I guess by "level," Boeing's President means "completely tilted in my direction so I can obliterate all competitors."

Finally, Kristin Moe and Nathan Tobey interview Razia Jan, who built a girls' school in rural Afghanistan not only without getting herself killed, but by patiently working to get the support of the men there. No spoilers, because some of the material in here is quite moving -- it'd make a great film. And there are lessons for us, as liberals, as we try to make the world better in the face of right-wing opposition.

Action: voting rights, and the minimum wage.

Common Cause helps you tell Presidential debate moderators to ask candidates if they support fixing what the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act. That's every candidate, too -- it wasn't that long ago (2006, in fact) that a Republican-controlled Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with veto-proof majorities, and certainly asking all 719 Republican Presidential candidates the same question about the Voting Rights Act would provide a welcome respite from all the right-wing swordfighting about who's going to throat-punch more poor people and who's going to send more undocumented immigrants back to Mexico in boxes and who's going to put the most women in chastity belts that give off electric shocks whenever they have an impure thought. And if Republicans pretend that nobody really has any problem voting in America or that voter fraud is some kind of national epidemic -- or that passing Voter ID laws while simultaneously closing DMVs all over the state, as Scott Walker did in Wisconsin, isn't a total jerk move -- then at least we'll have them on the record.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to raise the minimum wage, Moms Rising helps you do that. You may recall that four pretty red states (Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota) voted to raise the minimum wage in that awful Republican wave year of 2014. Now H.R. 2150/S. 1150, the Raise the Wage Act, would raise the minimum wage to $12/hour by 2020, and would instruct the Secretary of Labor to raise the wage annually after that, by matching increases in the median wage of all workers (which could really work in some years and really not work out in others, but you can address that in your letter). The Raise the Wage Act might not be quite as good as previous minimum-wage bills, but when you consider that the minimum wage of the late 1960s went a lot further than today's minimum wage does, you begin to see the wisdom of giving those at the bottom a little more help. And no the minimum wage will not "kill jobs." Paying people more money creates jobs. And I bet folks who can't make ends meet now working 40 (or 80!) hours a week won't be swayed by the threat of "killed jobs."

Around the table: includes more Scott Walker flatugasma.

Whoa: Scott Walker suggests that the next President (i.e., him) might have to take "aggressive actions, including military action" on his first day in office -- in the context of dealing with Iran, of course. Not enough, anymore, to merely oppose the deal; not enough, even, to say you'll "tear it up on your first day in office" as Mr. Walker has already said -- now you have to be ready to bomb Iran on Inauguration Day without consulting with Congress first as the Constitution mandates. All this right-wing swordfighting will get us all killed one day, and Jeb Bush is mistaken to think rage-filled primary voters will prefer a more "mature" way of killing the Iran deal.

Mr. Walker has also made the news by fielding a provocative question from a 13-year-old daughter of an apparently undocumented immigrant: "why are you trying to break my family apart?" But despite that easy, unflappable tone that lulls many a "liberal" media pundit to happy dreams, Mr. Walker talked like a politician-not-a-person, arguing without persuading and sniping at the press when they pressed him the way they're supposed to. Most telling: when her younger brother asks whether Gov. Walker really wanted the boy to come home and see his dad deported, he responds, "that's not what I'm talking about." The correct answer is "no, I would not want that," regardless of whether or not you feel you have to do that, and Scott Walker would know that, if he had a soul.

From the "Jesus Mary and Joseph This Crap Again?" file: just as he's announcing that Waller County (TX) will treat Sandra Bland's "mysterious" death in custody "like a murder investigation," Waller County's D.A. hastens to add that Ms. Bland "was not a model person." The next time I hear such speculations about the character of a white person who gets killed by police will be the first. More to the point, you shouldn't have to be a "model person" in order to avoid getting killed by police -- they're not rights, after all, if you have to be a "model person" to enjoy them.

Martin Levine at Nonprofit Quarterly tells us what we should learn from the closing of Alameda County (CA)'s FAME charter school. When these schools can get their charter from an entity other than the local school board, it turns out, oversight becomes a lot more difficult. Still, for someone who seems comfortable with charter schools' continued existence, Mr. Levine documents a lot of incompetence and greed at the FAME school.

Finally, because we need some good news, a New York state government panel recommends that New York City pay a minimum wage of $15/hour to its fast-food workers by the end of 2018 -- a recommendation the state's acting labor commissioner will enforce, unless a right-wing parasite takes over his mind and body very shortly. It ain't all huzzahs, unfortunately: the owner of Tropical Smoothies (three cafés on Long Island) says she sees the wage hike forcing her to "cut() labor, hir(e) less people, hav(e) less people per shift." But is that how a real entrepreneur thinks? Or does a real entrepreneur think of all that extra money in working families' pockets and thus all those extra mango magic smoothies she could sell?

Action: net neutrality, energy efficiency, and job application fairness.

You remember how the House's Financial Services/General Government Appropriations bill contained a rider defunding FCC efforts to enforce its new net neutrality regulations until three lawsuits could be settled? Well, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a companion bill apparently doing somewhat less damage than the House bill on net neutrality, but the Senate doesn't get a damn cookie for that. So Demand Progress helps you call your Senators to reject any anti-net neutrality riders in appropriations bills. Feel free to remind them that riders defunding FCC net neutrality efforts are a crappy way of doing something about "rate regulation," just as using a sledgehammer is a bad way to kill an ant. With over four out of five Americans supporting net neutrality -- a number including a higher proportion of Republicans than Democrats -- I think the people have made their will clear. Now our Senators should do their job and listen to the people, instead of holding our will hostage to government shutdowns. The good news? President Obama has noticed these shenanigans, though he hasn't threatened a veto. I presume that'll be our next task.

The Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 2567/S. 1516, the Power Efficiency and Resiliency (or POWER) Act. What would the POWER Act do? The POWER Act would expand tax credits for developing combined heat-and-power (or CHP) and waste heat-to-power (WHP) systems, which capture wasted heat from various industrial processes (including paper and chemical manufacturing) and use it to heat buildings or create more electricity. Wasted heat makes up half of the energy many industrial processes use, so we might as well put it to use if we can. And who would oppose such a thing? Big fossil fuel energy corporation CEOs, that's who -- the people who say things like how can I make money off of that? when they actually mean how can I gild the plumbing on my 19th vacation home off of that? I'm old enough to remember when you could make money by making better products and designing better processes, rather than just funneling campaign contributions to Congressfolk until you got your way. But big fossil fuel CEOs don't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, on the heels of President Obama's historic visit to a federal prison in Oklahoma last week -- he was the first sitting President ever to see the inside of a federal prison, prompting historian Rick Perlstein to comment, "damn you, Gerald Ford!" -- the ACLU helps you tell Mr. Obama to mandate that federal agencies and federal contractors to get rid of the "criminal record" box on job applications. Mr. Obama did just call for private corporations to do just that, so he might as well put his money where his mouth is. The "criminal record" box on job applications doesn't have very much to do with how well someone does a job -- I suspect that mainly the box helps job screeners make difficult decisions about whom to hire, but I don't believe in using arbitrary criteria to make decisions less difficult than they should be. I also don't believe in making it harder for folks coming out of jail to get work -- if they can't get work because no one will hire them, they're more likely to wind up back in jail. Private prison corporations might celebrate that cycle, but I don't, and they, too, don't get all the say around here.

Action: more corporate shenanigans concerning banksters and Comcast.

You may have heard that former Attorney General Eric Holder, known for his toughness defending voting rights and his more laissez-faire attitude toward prosecuting banksters, has lately rejoined the securities firm Covington & Burling -- which reportedly kept a corner office waiting for him. Furthermore, Mr. Holder has recently purchased a $1.5 million condo a mere 300 feet from Covington and Burling. Given these startling coincidences, and given Mr. Holder's propensity to avoid investigating banksters during his tenure -- including many banksters C&B represents in criminal cases -- CREDO helps you tell the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to subpoena any and all communications between Mr. Holder and the firm while he was still Attorney General, since he may well have broken the law. Congressional committees have lately been quite happy to investigate the tragedy at Benghazi ad nauseam, but they may need prodding from the people to investigate potential conflicts of interest relating to the financial sector. Thankfully, we're happy to do that prodding.

Meanwhile, Comcast plans to triple internet speeds for its highest-tier customers at no additional cost to them -- but Comcast's "Internet Essentials" program, which purportedly delivers broadband internet to low-income families, will still deliver internet content at one-fifth the speed mandated by the FCC for broadband. Of course, "Internet Essentials," much like that "discount plan" for seniors in St. Paul we discussed on Monday, isn't really a way to help out poor working families so much as it's a way to make Comcast look like it's helping out poor working families, so that it can get favorable treatment during franchising negotiations. It gets better: even people who use Internet Essentials find it slow and balky. Comcast can't make anyone happy! Of course, as monopolists, they have no incentive to do so -- they just offer whatever service they like (better service to their wealthier customers, of course) and Hoover up the cash from captured consumers. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Comcast to improve service for all its customers.

Around the table: six more tales of our divided nation.

Former NATO General/Democratic Presidential candidate Wesley Clark suggests that America should have internment camps for "radicalized" Americans. Busts out a Nazi analogy, too, which reminds us that we're not actually at war with anyone right now, at least not as the Constitution dictates. (The "war on terror" doesn't count.) This "get(ting) tough" he proposes, of course, could not possibly be used against an administration's political enemies.

Democrats are apparently offering to allow Confederate flags to be sold at national parks in exchange for consideration of the Voting Rights Amendment Act. Needless to say, as a sanctimonious purist, I'm not going to waste any of your time with any action alerts I might get supporting that stratagem. And I don't if Republicans will go for it -- Confederate flag only really matters to them insofar as it reminds the ignorant to vote for them, and I think they've accomplished that much with their flag-related shenanigans already.

Elliot Berkman says that "Studying Human Psychology Turned Me into a Political Liberal." It's full of good insights, but it's always seemed to me that arguing the primacy of "enlightened self-interest" makes no logical sense -- there are plenty of "enlightened self-interests" to choose from, and more to the point, there are even more unenlightened self-interests that folks mistake for "enlightened self-interests" to choose from.

The Hill finds that both parties are using "too big to fail" banksters as a punching bag in the 2016 races. And though Carly Fiorina gets off the best zinger against "too big to fail," we don't learn what Republicans say they would do about it, meaning we don't get to evaluate their proposals against Democrat proposals. And if Republican proposals all turn out to be "Democrat proposals are lame," then certainly the "liberal" media should make Republicans work harder than that.

Venture capitalist collects enough signatures (at least until all the Dick Hurtzes and Heywood Jablomes get tossed out) to put a question on the 2016 ballot aiming to divide California into six states. I see two blue states, two red states, and two purplish ones as a result, and perhaps six Republican Senators and six Democratic ones, instead of the two Democratic ones we have now (which would in theory give Republicans their magic 60 to cut off filibusters, pending rule changes and 2016 election results, of course). But California voters already oppose the initiative by a roughly 6-4 margin, and I don't see how you change enough minds to win, since hippie-punching really only goes so far.

Finally, a Louisiana parish bans sagging pants. Sagging pants look stupid as all hell, but civilized people don't bring out the big stick of government for that -- civilized people poke fun at people who dress stupid as all hell. Really, we don't have to make every manner of dopiness against the law. And, ah, yeah, I doubt the white kids of Terrebone Parish who wear their pants all down at their ankles and everything will get stopped or fined very often for it.

Action: oppression of women and Christians in Sudan, workplace scheduling in America, and land-grabbing in Arizona.

First things first. In late June, the Sudanese government arrested 10 students outside their church for "indecent dress," and nine of these women now face 40 lashes as a punishment. "Indecent dress" in Sudan, apparently, includes pants for women, and the Sudanese authorities exclusively punish women, not men, for "indecent dress." It gets better: the 10 women arrested were all Christians, who are a very small and very oppressed minority in Sudan. So we have another vaguely-written law that the Sudanese government uses exclusively against women and Christians (since it's not actually unheard of for other Sudanese women to wear trousers) -- a law that just so happens to contravene its own constitution, though not, apparently, the desire of the Sudanese President to impose a far-right Muslim ideology upon his people. Anyway, public pressure has already resulted in one of the women no longer facing punishment (though she was, perversely, still convicted of the "crime" of "indecent dress"), so more public pressure should do more good. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Sudan to drop all the charges and repeal the "indecent dress" law.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3071, the Schedules that Work Act, would help protect workers from the kind of workplace scheduling practices that make workers feel like they're on-call 24/7 and can't take care of their families. If you've ever worked retail or food service, you know what I'm talking about, and H.R. 3071 would make more employers give their workers more notice of their schedules and also give those workers more say in how their work schedules affect their lives. Hopefully I won't hear too many right-wingers intone about the moral hazard of these ideas, as if writing schedules almost randomly with no regard to a worker's needs somehow isn't a moral hazard. And I certainly hope I don't hear them exclaim that if corporations have to give their workers adequate notice of their schedules they'll just fire people and hire workers with fewer family members to take care of, because a) that would describe a rhetorical hostage situation and b) firing people because they have familial obligations is immoral. So the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Schedules that Work Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to reverse the giveaway of sacred Apache land in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona to copper mining corporations, then CREDO still helps you do that. Arizona's two Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, snuck the giveaway of Oak Flat land -- land the Apache use for coming-of-age rituals, land scholars tell us is a treasure trove of Apache archaeological data -- into a defense appropriations bill at the end of last year, but the giveaway has become such an unpopular slab of corporate welfare that even this Congress might run from it. And it turns out both Senators have, get your surprised face ready, received campaign contributions from the corporation that now controls the Oak Flat land, and one of them (Mr. Flake) even lobbied for a subsidiary of said corporation before getting elected to Congress. Nice work if you can get it! You know what's better work? Working on behalf of all of your constituents, not just the ones who give you the most campaign money. You'd think Mr. McCain, especially, would take that a little more seriously.

Penny rants for Monday, July 20, 2015: featuring the bad behavior of Scott Walker and Comcast.

Lost in the controversy over Scott Walker suggesting that raising the minimum wage is a "lame" idea (so many Americans want it, it must be lame!) is his statement that "we need to talk about how we get people the skills and the education and the qualifications that they need to take on the careers that pay far more than the minimum wage." And how has he done that as Governor of Wisconsin? With a government website that matches Wisconsin residents up with jobs that are too frequently out-of-state? With a privatized economic development corporation so plagued with waste and cronyism that he is no longer its chairman? With his zeal to turn the state's vaunted university system into little more than a vocational school feeding worker bees to big corporations? Hell, if he's so great at "skills and education and qualifications," why is Wisconsin's economy lagging behind the rest of the country? But don't count on Democrats raising such objections during the campaign, since they learned during Tha Bush Mobb years that it's impolite, treasonous even, to tell everyone the Emperor's not just stark naked but doing the helicopter dance in front of you.

Comcast allegedly offers St. Paul (MN) seniors and economically-disadvantaged folks a 10% discount, but their commitment to that plan may be a bit suspect, as Comcast reps tell callers inquiring about the plan to stop asking for "handouts," allege the discount plan is only good in California or Puerto Rico, or just plain seem unaware of the plan's existence. The discount plan does sound like something big corporations put together to claim they're community-friendly when they never intend to do the hard work that would make it effective -- and I also suspect municipal governments tolerate that state of affairs, so they can give off a similarly-unearned "business-friendly" veneer to other corporations. The moral thing to do, of course, would be to hold corporations to their promises, especially when their franchise agreements seem to depend, at least in part, on such promises. Comcast, for its part, has apologized and said it'll re-train its workers about the discount plan, but that also sounds like an old song-and-dance. Well, it sure is a good thing the "free" market always provides alternatives to monopolists! I kid, of course -- Comcast is the only game in St. Paul.

Action: net neutrality, voting rights, and chemical safety.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to stop its cowardly backdoor attacks on the FCC's net neutrality rules, then CREDO still helps you do that. You may recall the story: a financial services/general government spending bill contained a section effectively preventing the FCC from enforcing net neutrality regulations until three lawsuits against net neutrality had been settled -- a process that, with appeals and all, could take years. We called over a dozen House Reps on the Appropriations Committee to see if we could get that section struck, but the Committee passed the bill with the offending provision; now it gets a full House vote (probably this week), and then a full Senate vote, and then it goes to the President, whom we may have to convince that net neutrality is a legacy-calibre issue. By then, of course, the appropriations process may be so gummed up that he'll give it up in order to get something done. Though I'd let the government shut down over that odious net neutrality provision, I'd prefer that we communicated our will to our Reps in force, so that doesn't become necessary.

Meanwhile, CREDO also helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, so we can fix the hole in the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court blew wide open in Shelby County v. Holder, if you haven't done that already. Or if you have -- sometimes you gotta tell someone until they're sick of hearing about it, especially if that "someone" is a Senator who'd prefer to listen to his or her big donors over martinis rather than listen to their actual bosses, their constituents, over the phone or at their offices. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would require states or municipalities to pre-clear any changes in their voting rights laws for 10 years if 15 or more voting rights violations occurred there over the past 25 years -- and that number would go from 15 to 10 if the state itself committed the violation. That pre-clearance formula would presumably satisfy the Supreme Court's objection to the Voting Rights Act's original formula, even if a fairly-applied VRAA just so happened to list the same states for pre-clearance.

Finally, Jennifer Beals has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell four prominent dollar stores to stop stocking items containing toxic chemicals. With Congress about to pass a crappy chemical regulation reform bill, we're stuck, for the moment, with telling the corporations to get the toxic chemicals off our shelves, but they're all susceptible to the Big Stick of Bad PR. And dollar stores often wind up being a frequent stop for folks in impoverished communities, even more so than WalMart -- I know plenty of folks who buy groceries at dollar stores. But the Campaign for Healthier Solutions has found that four out of every five items in dollar stores contained toxic chemicals, the kind scientists have linked to learning disabilities and cancer, among other things. So let's help them do the right thing, and don't be swayed by folks saying making dollar stores sell safer stuff will hurt impoverished communities that depend on them, when making folks sicker hurts them more.

Around the table: with bait for white racists and tales of two Governors named Walker.

Nate Silver informs us that black folks are not just eight times more likely to be murdered than white folk, they're about as likely to be murdered as people in actual war zones are. I expect there'll be underreporting of such crimes in war zones, but still, take that, "white lives matter too" crowd. "Eight times more likely to be murdered" pretty much obliterates whatever advantage white folks, in their bitterness and self-pity, imagine black folks have.

Lest we forget the original occupants of the bottom rung of the Great Chain of Being: CDC/National Center for Health Statistics data tells us that Native Americans are almost as likely to get killed by police as black folks are. At a considerably higher rate than white folks, again, if the average of all races is 1.2 per million folks and Native Americans just from the ages of 25-34 is 6.6 per million. It's hard to imagine how "the minorities" get "all the advantages" in life, when it'd be more accurate to say they get all the advantages in death.

Paul Mason says "the end of capitalism has begun," and that the "sharing" economy (which, to be fair, he defines more broadly than the "sharing economy" that deserves our enmity) is our escape hatch. Don't be intimidated by the article's length and breadth -- it may be full of historical insights, and yes it's always hard to imagine the precise equilibrium that emerges from chaos, but I still think that unless we enact some good old-fashioned tax-the-rich and clean-the-water, the biggest actors will still bend the new equilibrium to their will.

Scott Walker puts out a fundraising email aimed at religious-right voters claiming that his Presidential run is "God's plan." Thankfully, the email doesn't say whether him winning is God's plan. Seriously, though -- "(m)y decisions are guided by my relationship with God -- not by what might win me a few votes"? From the man who only makes decisions based on what'll win him a few votes? And talking about "my decisions" is a way of saying the people don't have very much to do with his decisions, which is certainly paternalistic, if not autocratic. So I guess he knows his audience, then!

Hillary Clinton keeps pushing corporate "profit-sharing," and supports giving corporations who share profits with their workers a tax credit. But once a corporation disburses such money to its workers, seems to me it's not "profit" anymore but "expense," so they'd hardly need a tax break on top of that. And the corporate tax loopholes they'd close to pay for the tax credit? Unidentified, naturally. You know what would deliver worker earnings back to workers? The 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, that's what.

Finally, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) says he'll expand Medicaid for good Alaskans even though the state legislature doesn't want to. Which, all by its lonesome, makes him the best Governor named Walker in America. Maybe he could be the Gallant to Scott's Goofus.

Action: Iran's nuclear capabilities, GMO food labeling, and real chemical safety.

Nine nations reached a deal that would reduce Iran's nuclear capability in exchange for a relaxation of economic sanctions against it, and naturally the American right is pooping its pants over it -- when a putatively "moderate" Republican Senator accuses the President of wanting Iran to get nuclear weapons, you know it's bad. But the real problem right-wingers have with the deal is that it doesn't give them an opportunity to parade their testicles in front of everyone like the "war on terror" does -- international inspection regimes, after all, don't get them hard. (I see no need to gender-equivocate here.) Five of eight non-Iranian nations would have to agree to reinstate sanctions if Iran fails to comply, which (as Igor Volsky explains) removes the veto power China or Russia would have preferred. Hell, it even sounds like democracy, and you know how right-wing warmongers feel about democracy -- at least, about democracy that doesn't give them everything they want. So the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell Congress not to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Committee passed H.R. 1599, the so-called Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, out of committee this week. H.R. 1599 would, as you know, keep states from enacting GMO labeling laws, since the "states' rights" doctrine apparently only extends to keeping black folks down, and would also make GMO labeling voluntary, as if it's not already voluntary -- and worse, as if a voluntary GMO labeling system doesn't already exist. You know the four-digit numbers on stickers on your produce? Ever see a five-digit number on a label beginning with "9"? No, you haven't, because that's the label indicating the produce has been grown with genetically-modified organisms, and no one's using it. Because they wouldn't sell anything if they did. Why don't the big food corporations try convincing people GMO food is fine, rather than trying to buy laws from Congress or fearmonger about food prices and "frivolous lawsuits"? The Organic Consumers Association helps you tell your House Rep to oppose the anti-GMO labeling bill, H.R. 1599.

Finally, Breast Cancer Action helps you tell your Senator to vote against S. 697, the so-called Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Why? Because the bill that bears the late Senator's name insults his memory -- he authored far better chemical safety reform legislation before his passing. And though Congress last tackled chemical safety regulation nearly 40 years ago, this bill wouldn't force our government to evaluate chemical safety on any realistic schedule, wouldn't allow states to pass stronger chemical safety laws, wouldn't adequately fund chemical safety regulation efforts, wouldn't target "hot spot" communities that suffer from more chemical exposure, and wouldn't allow our government to take swifter action against more dangerous chemicals -- let alone force chemical corporations to prove their chemicals are safe before they reach the market. Do we not deserve these things, as good Americans? And do we not deserve leaders who will accomplish these things in our name, instead of leaders who let chemical corporations have all the say about everything?

Around the table: where being President means never having to say you're sorry until long after it means a damn, and other lessons.

Video alleges that Planned Parenthood sells "aborted baby parts," but the video has obvious edits. I don't mean edits that you and I can see just by watching attentively, I mean edits that any moron can see by looking at the video's timestamp. However, I hear that the "liberal" media has been reporting on this video with virtually no scrutiny. You'd think they'd have learned from that ACORN pimp video from 2009 -- unless you think they don't really want to learn, which is a distinct possibility.

FAIR cleverly calls NPR's political news coverage "Some Things Considered, Mostly by White Men." You should be able to throw a rock and hit women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as David Brooks -- and it shouldn't be tough to find women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as E.J. Dionne, either. If NPR is even interested in politics, that is -- apparently their commitment to political commentary has rather withered over the years.

Some Texas counties have stopped issuing birth certificates to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. They're really too obsessed with stopping the next President Obama, aren't they? Personal to those who state that it's only the American-born children of undocumented immigrants who get treated this way: how is that better?

Scott Walker gets caught saying gays shouldn't be Boy Scout leaders in order to protect the children, then says he meant protecting them "from politics." He blames the media (and not his own mouth) for causing the mess, and he apparently doesn't know that men commit the vast majority of pederasty against girls. But using the word "politics" like it's a dirty word? That's some cojones from a soulless man who does nothing for any reason other than politics.

Finally, former President Bill Clinton now admits that signing that 1994 tough-on-crime bill for which he's famous had some consequences he doesn't agree with now, specifically all the absurdly long sentences for minor crimes. Well, it sure is nice to be in a comfortable enough position to "admit" that you helped ruin the lives of so many people over the last two decades.

Action: improving the EPA's fracking analysis, and keeping Nestlé from taking more of California's water.

Food and Water Watch helps you tell the EPA to redo their notorious recent draft study alleging that fracking doesn't cause "widespread and systemic" harm to drinking water. Not because it didn't give us the results we want -- for why would anyone want to be right that fracking destroys drinking water? -- but because we can demonstrate actual problems with the EPA's report. The EPA could not get gas drilling corporations to cooperate, which means the EPA couldn't actually do very much testing -- they certainly couldn't test drinking water before, during, and after fracking, which is kind of how you'd go about establishing whether there are "widespread and systemic" harms. And the 2005 energy bill allowing gas drillers to keep fracking chemicals secret also hampers the EPA from conducting a rigorous study of fracking's ill effects. And the EPA didn't even consider the ill effects of underground wastewater injection, even though a lot of frackers get rid of their waste in this way. The Obama EPA has generally done a good job, but I think it's back to the drawing board on this matter.

Meanwhile, California still suffers under a horrendous drought, yet Nestlé still extracts water from the state to sell it mostly out of state. And when confronted about the moral implications of what Nestlé is doing -- moral implications that drove Starbucks to move its bottled-water operation all the way to Pennsylvania -- Nestlé Waters's CEO, one Tim Brown, took a cue from Tha Bush Mobb's Manual of Good Management Practices and doubled down: "(i)f I could increase it, I would." Take that, you bleeding-heart liberals! Plus "(i)f I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand" (maybe one that isn't drying out an already-dried-out state even further?), and "(i)t's driven by consumer demand" (as if corporations didn't come up with the idea of bottled water and create the "demand" themselves!) and "we’re very happy they are doing it in a healthier way" (which is typical rhetorical hostage-taking: don't make me stop bottling water, you liberals, or you'll force all these good citizens to drink Coke instead!) So CREDO helps you tell this numbnut to stop taking water from folks who need it, just so he can make a profit from it.

Around the table: Scott Walker's consistency problems, and other conundrums.

Surprise, surprise, Pennsylvanians who live near fracking sites report health problems, including skin and breathing problems. Those fools tempted to say HAHAHAHA ONLY 87 REPORTS IN FOUR YEARS HAHAHAHA!!!!! would be advised to remember two things: 1) not everybody knows to report a fracking-related issue to the PA Department of Health and 2) PA Department of Health workers were under orders not to talk to citizens about fracking-related complaints, which could, you know, lead to underreporting.

Prominent Iowa Republican writes that Scott Walker makes Mitt Romney look like "a model of consistency." And that's how you hit him -- plus you add that he's inconsistent because he has no soul and no record to defend. The only thing wrong with Sen. Jauch's assessment of Mr. Walker ("He has an altar boy's appearance. But Darth Vader writes his policies") is that saying "Darth Vader writes his policies" might lead people to believe that Mr. Walker somehow isn't his own man, when we know he is. His own soulless man, that is.

President Obama will commute the sentences of 46 federal prisoners, 14 of which had received life sentences for non-violent drug offenses. The President's critics on the left (ahem!) won't be that pleased, since he's been pretty stingy with his clemency generally -- but of course the right will squeal ZOMG TEH PRETENDER WILL FREEZ ALL TEH BLACKZ FROM TEH JAILZ BY 2016!!!!!!, because what's more important than blind partisan hatred, after all?

Dent County, MO will lowers its flags to half-mast for the next calendar year in order to "mourn" the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. In a related development, Dent County's stores have observed a sharp rise in the sale of adult diapers since the ruling. And speaking of "blatant judicial overreach," what county in America lowered its flags to half-mast for a year after Citizens United v. FEC? (Hint: its initials are "no county.")

Finally, a University of Texas/NIH study finds that one dose of an inhaled ebola vaccine can neutralize the virus in monkeys. Of course we don't know if it'll work in people, but good job, researchers.

Action: human trafficking, and criminal justice reform.

One of the lesser-known bits in the nefarious "fast-track" deal was the part preventing our government from "fast-tracking" "free" trade deals with the worst human trafficking violators among nations. But it just so happens one of the potential signatories of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," Malaysia, is a nation the State Department's Trafficking in Persons report puts in Tier 3, reserved for the worst offenders. But President Obama is seriously mulling bumping Malaysia down to Tier 2, just to get the TPP done -- when Malaysia has shown literally no interest in controlling its slave trade. Are we a civilized nation, or are we not? Do we shun evil only when it's convenient, or do we shun evil whenever duty calls? If you know the answers to these questions, then NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your President and your Congressfolk to uphold our values as civilized people and reject any shenanigans with the TIP report. If a human rights issue winds up scuttling the TPP, people might start thinking that doing the right thing actually makes it easier to keep doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, Reps. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Scott (D-VA) have introduced H.R. 2944, the Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective Justice Act, a.k.a. the SAFE Justice Act; a fairly massive and ambitious bill, it would prevent politicians from applying mandatory minimums to anyone but drug kingpins and crime organizers at the highest level, which is always how it should have been. H.R. 2944 would also give judges more flexibility to sentence criminals below the mandatory minimums for drug and gun possession crimes, and allows judges to take drug addiction and/or mental illness into account when sentencing for those crimes. And H.R. 2944 would make these reforms retroactive, meaning folks already in prison who fit the criteria could get some mercy, which would in turn reduce overcrowding in prisons and cut the cost to the taxpayer. It will also necessarily deplete the bank accounts of private prison corporation CEOs, but hey, everyone has to make sacrifices for progress. So Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your House Rep to support H.R. 2944, and thus support a wiser criminal justice system.

Around the table: stories about cybersecurity, Scott Walker, health care, and religious "persecution."

Elizabeth Goitien explains "Why Surveillance Won't Prevent Cyber Attacks." Long story short: a cyberattack that would "bring America to its knees" is so hard to pull off as to be unlikely, and successful cyberattacks work mostly because corporations haven't embraced encryption, stronger passwords, and multifactor authentication. In that context, claiming you need more power to spy on Americans because of cyberattacks sure sounds like a bait-and-switch.

To celebrate Scott Walker's official entry into the Presidential race, Alice Ollstein presents this admirably compact survey of the wreckage Mr. Walker has wrought as Governor of Wisconsin. Key takeaway: under Mr. Walker, Wisconsin lurches from one budget crisis to the next, and his solution is always to take from the people, never from corporations. "Fight and win for Americans" my ass -- he could only beat a weak Democrat, though that's, you know, a distinct probability.

And John Nichols at The Nation reminds us that Mr. Walker has also basically killed the weekend, by repealing the law (because that's what budgets are for, after all!) guaranteeing that retail and factory workers get "24 consecutive hours of rest for every seven-day stretch." Should be a bumper sticker: Unions gave us the weekend; Scott Walker took it away. Think Democrats will run ad after ad pummeling Mr. Walker for killing the weekend? Just kidding: these are Democrats we're talking about, after all.

ProPublica finds the widely-used blood thinner Coumadin causing deaths and injuries in nursing homes. The problem? Coumadin really has to be monitored very, very carefully -- ever have a relative on Coumadin suddenly show up with a black eye after not having been in a fight? Then you know. The article cites the coordination problems between doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and labs as a source of the problem, but I also suspect Coumadin doesn't get monitored very well at understaffed nursing homes by underpaid workers.

Ho hum, the uninsured rate in America has fallen nearly seven percentage points from its pre-healthcare.gov high of 18% to 11.4% now. That's only down three percentage points from the first quarter of 2008, but it's still impressive. How will Republicans run against that? By cherry-picking the high figures from, say, mid-2013, I would think. Ted Cruz did something similar about Hispanic unemployment just last week, as you may recall.

Finally, Benjamin Dixon unfurls 11 glorious paragraphs about the "Christian Persecution Complex." Key quotation: "they have convinced themselves that not being able to force through law their faith onto others who do not wish to willingly abide by it is in itself a form of persecution. So the fact that they cannot persecute non-believers to them is persecution. The oppressor can no longer oppress and therefore he believes he is oppressed." And then we get to actual oppression of Christians elsewhere on Earth (i.e., beheadings), and it rises to an awesome fury. Read the whole thing -- but skip the comments; they'll just anger up the blood.

Action: fracking, animal abuse, and ALEC.

Roots Action helps you tell Gov. Jerry Brown to end fracking and "extreme oil extraction" in California. Why? California provides almost half of America's fruits and vegetables, and is, as you know, enduring a protracted drought, yet while Gov. Brown has mandated that citizens use less water, he has not asked gas and oil drillers to curtail their activities, though their activities also impact California's water supply. And not just by putting carcinogenic fracking chemicals into the groundwater, either -- California regulators have caught oil corporations pumping wastewater right into the state's water supply, and scientists have caught oil corporations selling their wastewater to farmers to irrigate crops. Enjoy those strawberries! It'd be different if oil and gas drillers would take better care of the water that belongs to all of us, but they won't -- it cuts into a CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home, you know. Corporations won't act responsibly until we make them, and making our government act on our behalf is our best tool toward that end.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2016/S. 1081, the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act, would forbid our government from using "body-gripping traps," like snare traps and steel-jaw traps, in our National Wildlife Refuge areas, because, well, how would you like your leg caught in a steel trap? I can almost hear right-wingers squealing ZOMG HOW DO WE CATCH TEH ANIMULZ IF WE CAN'T USEZ TEH TRAPZ!!!! Perhaps not surprisingly, actually reading S. 1081 will answer that question: Section 2 specifically says "any cage or box trap or suitcase-type live beaver trap" is OK to use in Refuge areas. Refuge workers mostly trap small animals, as it happens -- and even trapping a larger animal, like a bear, might only require a larger cage or box trap and/or tranquilizer darts. Consider, also, that traps like steel traps will snap shut on any animal who happens upon it -- they're not "smart" traps that only shut on the animal you're trying to catch. So a Change.org petition helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight animal cruelty by supporting the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act.

Finally, over 100 corporations have cut ties with ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, as their nefarious legislative projects at the state level (including Voter ID bills, "sun taxes," tort "reform" bills, and ag-gag bills) have become more well-known -- and this has helped deplete their operating budget, a much better way of describing "starving the beast" than you'll hear from the right. Still, over 400 corporations continue to associate with ALEC, and one of them is State Farm, so the Sierra Club helps you tell State Farm to cut ties with ALEC. Why? Well, several big corporations have lately left ALEC over ALEC's opposition to doing anything about climate change, and State Farm has promoted its own sustainability efforts on its official website, and with climate change causing more and more severe weather events, State Farm could one day soon be paying out rather more to compensate damage due to natural disasters than they take in. You'd think they'd be far-sighted about this matter, but corporations seem to care more and more about the short term these days, so they may need our help.

Around the table: the Greek government aims for surrender, and other stories.

And now the Greek government prepares to squander the advantage the people handed to them in last week's referendum, by signing a bailout deal that's no better than the one the people rejected. I'd advise Alexis Tspiras to ask Democrats how well capitulation has worked for them at the polls, but most Democratic politicians aren't self-aware enough to give him a useful answer.

Hillary Clinton lays out her economic plan. Long story short: it's not as good as Bernie Sanders's economic plan (which is still a bit too nonspecific for my taste, I'll tell you what), but it'll do some good -- if she actually plans to act on any of it, that is. Which she can, no matter how many seats Republicans have in the House and Senate after 2016.

Doctor gets 45 years in jail for giving chemo treatments to folks who didn't actually need them. His monstrosity ran the gamut -- he gave chemo treatments to folks who didn't have cancer, overtreated other cancer patients, and gave the wrong treatments to still others -- all of which killed a not-insignificant number of his patients as it fattened his bank account. And yet too many right-wingers will go to their graves obsessing about black kids in hoodies, rather than real monsters like Dr. Fata.

Facebook has finally given its users the ability to prioritize what shows up in their news feed. I've been using custom lists almost exclusively on Facebook for years, and though I expect the news feed still won't show events in chronological order (as my custom lists do), this is a welcome, if very overdue, development.

Finally, Scott Walker formally joins the Presidential race. "Government that is closest to the people is best," "Americans deserve a President who will fight and win for them" -- that's some cojones from the man who fights and wins for the wealthy, whose government stands further from the people's will than any other. Yeah, he's won three elections in four years, but a real populist Democrat could have beaten him easily.

Action: overtime pay, truck fuel efficiency, and Social Security.

The Department of Labor is taking public comments on its proposal to expand the ceiling for overtime pay to $50,400 annually, and CREDO helps you leave that comment. You can change and/or expand the comment CREDO has pre-written for you, if you think we should raise that ceiling even further, so that workers making less than $69,000 annually are eligible to earn time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours in a week (or eight hours in a day). If we raised the ceiling that high, we'd come close to getting as many workers eligible for overtime as were eligible in 1975. And why not demand more than you think you'll get? Just because President Obama doesn't do it doesn't mean we can't, and (as any Republican will tell you!) it's about the only way to get real progress in America. You can also ask the Department of Labor to close loopholes that allow corporations to evade paying overtime to their workers -- like the loophole that allows fast-food corporations to classify their workers as managers even though they spend the vast majority of their time at a cash register and certainly don't make manager money.

Meanwhile, the EPA and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (or NHTSA) have proposed stricter fuel efficiency standards for the trucks that haul food and other products across America, and the Pew Charitable Trusts help you tell the EPA and NHTSA to enact the most vigorous standards possible. This should be a no-brainer, since greater fuel efficiency in the trucks that haul all our stuff cross-country means lower fuel bills for the corporations that sell that stuff. Naturally, the oil industry will tell you differently -- that the auto manufacturers who have to redesign and refit the trucks so that they're more fuel-efficient will pass the costs of doing so on to the corporations that buy those trucks and ship our stuff, which means they'll pass those costs on to you. Do you recognize that argument? Yes, you do: it's a manufactured hostage crisis, where the oil corporations say don't make trucks more fuel-efficient or the low prices get it! Of course, buying trucks is a one-time cost, whereas fueling them isn't, so corporations will save money every time they fill up -- but saying so would ruin a hostage situation, wouldn't it?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to expand, not cut, Social Security benefits, then CREDO still helps you do that. Your Congressfolk, who like telling you that something you've worked for and paid into your whole life as a "handout," will no doubt tell you that that with the economy and all this is no time to talk about expanding Social Security benefits, and their "liberal" media enablers will no doubt agree. But, as my grandmother might say, they're all completely full of soup. We could expand Social Security benefits simply by applying the payroll tax to income over $119,000 annually -- certainly we wouldn't need to destroy the disability end of Social Security, which is the Republicans' preferred goal. Don't buy their divide-and-conquer games, either -- Social Security fraud isn't rampant, and saying those people are making all that money because their back hurts! is just a way of obscuring that we are all one serious accident away from needing Social Security disability ourselves, at which point, presumably, we'll be more sanguine about the other people on it. If we're not decadent, that is.

Around the table: from government spying to liberal politicians failing to learn the real lessons of their defeat.

Micah Lee at The Intercept reminds us that our government is collecting all our internet data, and that this is "many orders of magnitude more invasive" than collecting phone metadata. And though you and I know what "collected" means, the NSA doesn't consider this data "collected" until an analyst queries it. At least their justifications for their illegal, immoral actions are getting worse.

Lost in the controversy over Jeb Bush's statement that "people have to work longer hours" to get the economy rolling again is this reminder from Alan Pyke at Think Progress: that American workers are already substantially more productive than we were even a dozen years ago, but still can't get ahead, because our wage gains over that time have been basically flat. Of course, Jeb Bush wouldn't get that, because he's always been a boss, and never been a worker.

FactCheck.org catches Republican Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz alleging that the Hispanic unemployment rate has "gone up" under President Obama. It's gone from 10.1% at Mr. Obama's inauguration to 6.6% now, so he's simply wrong. Maybe "simply wrong" can be his campaign slogan. Or "I meant it's gone up at various times during the Obama years," a virtually useless statement when describing broad trends.

Denmark found itself able to produce 140% of its energy needs solely through wind power on Thursday; it was an especially windy day, but Denmark's turbines weren't even operating at full capacity, so that's still quite an achievement. It sure is a good thing Our Glorious Elites here in America know that wind power just can't work, because dirty Birkenstock-wearing hippies ha ha ha.

Finally, across the Atlantic, the interim leader of Great Britain's Labour Party tells her caucus they shouldn't vote against the Tories' plan to cut tax credits for working families. "We cannot simply say to the public you were wrong at the election," she says -- but, sadly, she does not add, "we can say to the public that we were wrong for failing to give you a populist alternative to the Tories, an alternative that would fight for your struggle to make ends meet," though that would be true.

Penny rants for July 12, 2015: tales of education and homelessness.

And there's Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) again, trying to differentiate himself from other Republican Presidential candidates by calling for the dismantling of the "cartel of colleges and universities." Just like the rest of them, Mr. Rubio identifies a problem and offers solutions that'll make it worse -- "teaming" up students with investors will make those students do what investors want them to do, and we give the wealthy more than enough control over our future -- or he offers "innovative" solutions that have already been tried and have already succeeded. You may also recall that Mr. Rubio also wants to get rid of those "elitist" accreditation associations so that for-profit college chains (like his former "constituent," Corinthian Colleges) can get on the same footing as America's state-supported and private universities. But we think of some institutions as second class because they are second class -- particularly the ones that promise education and employment and instead saddle you with debt. Marco Rubio's "populism" doesn't shame our elites so that future generations do better -- it shames our elites so that even more undeserving elites can take their place.

Shafaq Hasan and Ruth McCambridge tell us what should make us uneasy about our celebration of a homeless man whose playing of "Come Sail Away" on a piano on the street earned him some 12 million views (and tens of thousand of dollars in donations): "the underlying assumption that homeless people are without skills, histories, or essential worth and that when you find one that is skilled, that person is some kind of anomaly." When you think about it, it's not a surprise -- most of us view the homeless as just people who bother us for money, or people who constitute a "burden" on the taxpayer (though, of course, we know that a little pre-emptive generosity would both help the homeless get back on their feet and save the taxpayer money). And to think that Mr. Gould would still be utterly marginalized if not for a) a Florida nonprofit placing pianos all over downtown Sarasota so good citizens can play them and b) someone with a cellphone. And under a President Scott Walker, who thinks corporations should determine everyone's worth and every activity's utility, America will shove so many more marginalized folk further into darkness.

Action: voting rights, world hunger, and bankster power.

The Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to fix the Voting Rights Act. Which the Supreme Court broke, you may recall, when they ruled that the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance formula had become outdated, because it relied on "40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day," a statement which, judging by the number of states that rushed to restrict voting in the months after the Shelby v. Holder County ruling, can most charitably be described as an overstatement. Yes, we have made progress, but we say a "more perfect" union because we know how glacially slow justice comes, even with our best efforts. And the Court all but invited Congress to come up with a more "modern" formula, which H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, would provide, by establishing an even stronger pre-clearance formula than was in the original Voting Rights Act -- and one which would more likely survive a Supreme Court challenge, since its pre-clearance formula would apply to states and municipalities with a pattern of recent voting rights violations.

Meanwhile, hot on the heels of a law passing in France that would force supermarkets to donate unsold food to the needy, Avaaz helps you tell the world's governments to take aggressive action to limit the amount of food supermarket chains waste. How do supermarket chains waste food? By imposing standards upon food so strict they lead to unnecessary waste, or by placing an order for food and then canceling the purchase. This is a sad reminder that food isn't grown to be eaten, but to be sold -- and it's very sad when the size of cellophane packaging, for example, leads to food being wasted that could go to the needy. But it has never been difficult for anyone to draw a line between the amount of food that gets thrown out in the world to the number of people who go hungry -- I vividly remember John Steinbeck describing this phenomenon in The Grapes of Wrath. What will the corporatists say in order to avoid feeding hungry people, I wonder? That laws forcing them to donate unsold food violate their deeply-held religious belief in the "free" market? Well, let them look like soulless bastards if they like.

Finally, Sens. Warren (D-MA) and McCain (R-AZ) have reintroduced S. 1709, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, which would put up a firewall between banking functions and securities functions so that banks serve their customers more than they serve their bottom lines, and Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support that effort. You still remember the financial services meltdown of 2008, right? Nothing more and nothing less lay at the heart of that mess than the bankster obsession with ever-more obscure financial "instruments," which did not spur lending to small businesses so that they could bring innovative products and processes to the American people, but instead spurred a massive redistribution of wealth upward to themselves, a robbery we still haven't recovered from as a culture. Personal to those who argue that the fall of Glass-Steagall didn't really cause the financial services meltdown because of other factors: is it right that banks should work on behalf of their customers rather than their CEOs? And would it help to keep banks from being tempted by conflicts of interest?

Around the table: "how to manufacture an anti-government 'crisis,'" and other tales.

Here's a painful but necessary reminder from Dave Johnson, in the context of the trouble the U.S. Postal Service is in: "how to manufacture an anti-government 'crisis': cut funding for a government service and put people who want to kill the service in charge of managing the service. Generate lots of press coverage of the resulting failings of the government agency involved. After a while the service is performing poorly and the public is getting upset. Declare a 'crisis' and say that government doesn’t work so 'reform' is needed. Of course the 'reforms' involve gutting the service, privatizing it, corporatizing it – anything but serving the public."

Good news, everyone: a Senate amendment to the education bill allowing low-income students to spend as much as $2,100 in taxpayer money each on private schools. Those of you saying ZOMG TEH POOR KIDZ NEEDS TEH PRIVATE SKOOLZ!!!!! need to ask yourself how much of a private school $2,100 pays for -- and note well that $2,100 comes out of our public schools. And though this amendment went down, that doesn't mean there won't be others.

Former Maryland Governor/current Democratic Presidential aspirant Martin O'Malley promises he'll crack down hard on Wall Street banksters. I count four separate policy initiatives in the article, all good, but none are as robust as the Brown/Vitter bill that would prevent banks from having more than 10% of all deposits. Maybe he could posit himself as the "sensible" liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton -- and then confound the "liberal" media by putting actual economic populist/gun lover Jim Webb on the ticket.

Surprise, surprise, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds that student loan corporations aren't following the law with their military service members. Of course, since it doesn't involve sending our troops into harm's way, bet that Republicans, despite controlling both houses of Congress now, do nothing about it -- or (as with the Post Office) make the problem worse in an effort to prove that government doesn't work and only their cronies can fix it.

Finally, Jeb Bush sure is taking a lot of flack for suggesting that "people need to work longer hours" for the economy to grow. Even if he really did mean that we should get more part-time workers working full-time -- which isn't obvious from the quotation -- there may not be a worse way to say it. "People need to work longer hours" sounds exactly like a boss hectoring his employees in order to divert attention from his own incompetence. Of course, he's Bush Mobb, so maybe he knows all about that.

Action: protecting public education, and keeping children out of adult jails.

Congress is mulling reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (or ESEA), which they have to do every few years -- the last reauth of ESEA, you may recall, is better known as the No Child Left Behind Act. And high up on the right wing's wish list for ESEA is, you guessed it, private school vouchers, which, as you know, divert taxpayer money we spend on public schools to private schools -- which too often are religious schools. Vouchers have other problems, too -- they don't guarantee admission to private schools, they don't guarantee full payment of tuition at private schools, and private schools haven't demonstrated they can do a better job. And the ZOMG TEH PUBLIK SKUULS ARE TEH FAILZ!!!! hysteria isn't, of course, based on fact -- as Dean Paton explained to us over a year ago, the seminal Reagan Administration study from 1983 that helped launch the education privatization movement was plagued by "statistical misread." And we've been paying and paying for that since then. So Americans United for the Separation of Church and State helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject money-wasting vouchers in education legislation.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the ever-more widespread practice of trying and then jailing children as adults. If you're familiar with, well, morals and ethics, you already know that holding children responsible for adult crimes is a fool's game -- if a child does something heinous, that means we have failed, as adults and as a civilization. And if you're the optimist you should be, you also know that children can overcome their mistakes more easily than adults can. But now we also learn that imprisoning children like they're adults doesn't actually do any good -- kids who wind up in adult prisons are far more likely to go back to jail than kids who go to juvie. Well, I guess it does some good -- for the politicians who desperately need to prove they've got big cojones by pushing kids into adult jails. Retorting that kids are worse than they used to be, which we've been hearing forever anyway, is irrelevant. We need to go back to being the society that was there for our children, and stop being the society that's too busy for them.

Around the table: four trifles, plus one uplifting tale.

Ho hum, Kansas Governor Brownback issues an executive order protecting religious weaklings from Teh Gay Cooties. After noting that the order will have, ah, incompatibility issues with state and federal law, the Executive Director of Equality Kansas assesses it thusly: "it's a tantrum."

"Should Hotels Be Required to Include Mandatory Resort Fees in Published Room Rates?" asks the Consumerist. Philosophically speaking, yes, they should, and so should any other fee a hotelier can make up. Paying a "resort fee" at a hotel is like paying a "meat fee" at a steakhouse.

Big pharmacy chain CVS, which has been a visible opponent of smoking lately, quits the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber opposes anti-smoking laws. I was going to say, "I wish they'd quit over everything the Chamber is and does," but opposing anti-smoking laws is unusually rank. And the Chamber knows it, because they're so defensive about it.

Scott Walker spokeshack admits to "provid(ing) input regarding" proposed changes to Wisconsin's Open Records law. But she suggests the legislature started the whole process, though she avoided adding, "suckers!" Seriously, we may one day mention Laurel Patrick in the same breath as past prevaricators like Ari Fleischer.

Finally, Muslim groups have raised over $30,000 to help rebuild black churches that have been burned down in the South. Throw that in your Tea Party uncle's face the next time he complains that Muslims never do anything about terrorism! It's like a two-fer.

Penny rants for July 8, 2015: on Greece, Confederate flag-loving black folk, and how to beat Scott Walker.

Paul Krugman compares the "self-styled technocrats" pushing Greece to vote "yes" on the EU bailout deal to "medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding." Everybody but our elites knows you have to, in Eric Cantor's words, take a risk to get sluggish economies moving again -- but that means you have to spend money, which means you can't hoard it if you happen to have most of it when the economy goes south. Mr. Krugman also reminds us that "Greece’s debt problem reflected irresponsible lending as well as irresponsible borrowing," which makes a total of one member of the "liberal" media who has mentioned the irresponsible behavior of German and French lenders. Mr. Krugman also says he doesn't know for sure that abandoning the Euro would work out well for Greece, though debt relief surely would, especially when one of Greece's creditors has come out and said that Greece can't pay back what it owes, which scenario would, I suppose, be the dream scenario for banksters.

Thanks to the Washington Post, we meet some black defenders of the Confederate flag, most of whom live in the South. ZOMG THE TABLES HAVE TURNED!!!!! TEH WHITEZ WHO OPPOSEZ TEH FLAGZ ARE TEH REAL RACISTZ!!!!!!! Well, not exactly -- America is a big place, with some 330 million people, big enough that you'll encounter pro-Confederate flag black folks sooner or later. I don't presume all of them want extra credit for opposing slavery and only being friends with folks who feel the same, nor do I presume all of them can't explain coherently why they think slavery is a "choice" or how preventing state houses from flying the flag actually oppresses a person's own right to fly the flag or think about the flag however they like. I also presume that not all Confederate-flag loving black folks think you are "not entitled to commentary on which flag waves in our humid Southern breeze," though such "commentary" would also be First Amendment-protected speech. But, for better or worse, that's who we meet here -- another bunch of folks who can't distinguish between being oppressed and being shamed in public.

Finally, I've talked a lot about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's political survival skills, but I think I've finally figured out how to beat him. As always with formidable politicians, it involves turning his strength into weakness. What is his strength? His absolute unflappability through whatever chaos and disorder he's fomented; the kids would call him "cool," I suppose, or "chill." And what would we better call him, in order to defeat him? Cold. The man is unflappable, we would say, because he has no feelings about anything at all. And how do we know his hollowness? Because he has shown us he will say anything, at any time, to gain an advantage -- he tells the Tea Party he's against Big Gummint welfare while telling Iowans he's for ethanol subsidies, and he said he wouldn't try to kill public unions or pass right-to-work laws when he was trying to win elections, but he did both those things after he got elected. You can't trust anything the man says, because for him, you are not people; you are mere instruments of his victory, and men like that can never be trusted with power. I'll likely have to refine or expand upon this thesis in time, but that'll do for an opening.

Action: government spying, toxic chemicals, and payday loans.

S. 754, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (or CISA), would allow corporations to share citizens' data with our government without our government needing to get so much as a warrant for it -- and would immunize such corporations from ever being sued for any damage they might do in sharing that data. It gets worse: CISA would automatically allow all that data to get shared with the FBI and the NSA, and would specifically allow those agencies to use that data for purposes other than cybersecurity-related investigations. You'd think folks in the FBI and the NSA would rather not get swamped with data irrelevant to their investigations or their missions -- though you probably won't hear about it, such is the Obama Administration's manic hatred of leaks and whistleblowers. One more time: we do not make law enforcement do things a certain way so that more guilty people can get away, but so that more innocent people don't get put away. I mean, a lot of politicians don't even have the mercy the Old Testament God had. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee helps you tell Congress to protect freedom and privacy by rejecting CISA.

Meanwhile, with Congress's recent efforts at chemical safety reform proving quite unsatisfactory, good Americans must look elsewhere to keep carcinogenic products out of our household products, and by extension, out of our air and our bloodstreams. But the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the power to keep unsafe products out of our homes, too, so Friends of the Earth helps you tell the CFPB to keep toxic flame retardants out of our products. What's that, you say? Isn't a "flame retardant" a good thing? Well, it would be, if it didn't cause more harm than good -- but as a CFPB test showed back in 2009, "flame-retardant" furniture burns rather more easily than advertised. And when that furniture burns, it gives off fumes full of the toxins that contribute to breast cancer in adults and learning disabilities in children -- and so those fumes also present a danger to firefighters, as well. Chemical corporations cite flame retardants as a major factor in the reduced number of house fires over the last four decades, but those years have also seen the rise of smoke detectors and self-extinguishing cigarettes, which I'd imagine have contributed more than flame-retardant furniture that still burns.

Finally, coinciding with the occurrence of the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week bloc of programming, National People's Action helps you tell the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to protect good American working families from another kind of shark, the payday loan provider. We know the drill by now: taking a payday loan sets you up to pay absurdly-high fees and interest rates and get hit automatically-renewing loans, and the folks who are most likely to resort to payday loans are, naturally, the poor and credit-free. Of course, you wouldn't be asking the CFPB to set rules that would put payday lenders out of business -- you would merely be asking for rules that would stop payday lenders from exploiting people. But if certain payday lenders' business model is exploitation, we're certainly under no obligation, as a civilized society, to enable them. And a truly "free" market wouldn't be a market that lets its wealthiest actors write all the rules -- a truly free market would help the most people become the most free. It might seem ironic to a libertarian-flavored mind that rules restricting payday loans help people become more free, but they do.

Around the table: thoughts about Greece, Scott Walker, and gay marriage.

Dave Lindorff exults that "The Greek People Have Voted No to Austerity and Economic Blackmail." "Blackmail" does adequately describe what the EU is trying to do, after all, and so does "hostage-taking" -- kill those pensions and sell off those public utilities, or the country gets it! Paragraph 8 allows us to dream of an America that had national referenda, and the final paragraph suggests that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras could well meet with an "accident."

French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us that Germany has "no standing" to lecture Greece about repaying its debt, noting that plenty of other nations, including Germany, have had considerably worse debt at various times over the last few centuries, plus Germany never paid debts incurred from two World Wars. By the time he calls their putative "moral uprightness" "infantile," I'm reminded that we do hear very little from the "liberal" media about irresponsible lenders.

Wisconsin's legislature sought to gut its vaunted Open Records law last week, before a public backlash forced them to backtrack, and now some folks wonder if Gov. Walker was really behind the effort to gut the law in the first place, since he's personally under investigations relating to Open Records requests. Really? This is a question? Sure, if we tried Mr. Walker in court, we'd need more evidence, but elections only require that we reject candidates who do horrible things that just-so-happen to benefit them personally.

In other Scott Walker news, right-wing economist Stephen Moore claims Mr. Walker assured him over the phone that he hasn't gone "nativist" on immigration -- and then Mr. Moore "clarified" that he hadn't actually talked to Mr. Walker over the phone, but someone in his organization had. So I suppose the Walker and Moore camps hashed out a story making Mr. Walker look like he might be less extremist on immigration while not utterly discrediting Mr. Moore. That's the sort of thing people do when they possess a lot of cleverness and no soul.

Mike Huckabee, clearly backed into a corner by recent events, says the problem with marriage today is that we see it as a "selfish means of pleasing self, rather than a committed relationship in which the focus is upon meeting the needs of the partner," and adds that the "redefinition of love as something that is purely sentimental and emotional has been destructive." I find the sentiment behind the first quoted part agreeable to a point, but, ah, the "redefinition of love"? Is he acquainted with any works of classic Western literature?

Finally, clerks in five Kentucky counties have stopped issuing any marriage licenses so that they don't have to issue them to gay couples. One says, "I respect their position — the gay community's — that that is how they want to live...but I would ask for for the same respect for my decision." Ah, no: "how they want to live" is the law now, and your "decisions" don't deserve the "same respect" because you're a public servant, not an only-the-public-I-approve-of servant. And not issuing marriage licenses but sending a heterosexual couple to another county to get one? That's cheating, and God sees when you cheat.

Action: protecting Medicaid, and fighting pollution in both the Appalachians and Utah's national parks.

Congress is trying to cut Medicaid, because freedom! And Big Gummint! And bootstraps! Seriously, Congress can perhaps go after Medicaid a bit more easily than Medicare, since we all aspire to be seniors one day and thus we'll all need Medicare, whereas too many good Americans still look at Medicaid as something Those People get. But we should avoid thinking of Medicaid as something you get and think of it instead as something we give -- we all pay taxes to fund Medicaid, after all, and any one of us might need to use it someday, since too many good Americans are one catastrophe away from becoming one of "those people." Currently nearly 70 million Americans -- that's right, more than one out of every five of us -- use Medicaid, and that number includes children, mothers, folks with disabilities, and seniors (for whom Medicare doesn't cover everything, particularly nursing home costs). And in a time when the "free" market still ain't providing enough jobs, working families don't need another punch to the gut. So Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to reject cuts to Medicaid.

Meanwhile, H.R. 912, the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act (or ACHE Act), would ban mountaintop removal coal mining until the Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that it's safe -- which certification, given what we know of elevated levels of lung cancer and birth defects around areas where mountains have been blown up in this manner, would likely only come from a most unscrupulous HHS Secretary. And in the event a President Scott Walker does install some coal corporation crony as HHS Secretary, H.R. 912 would also require extensive NIH research on the health effects of mountaintop removal mining (since you can never really have too much science), and would mandate that HHS continue to monitor air, noise, soil, and water pollution even after permitting mountaintop removal mining to occur. So if an HHS Secretary fails to do that, they'd be breaking the law. So ignore corporate bellyaching about the "war on coal" and concentrate on the war on human health. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the ACHE Act, and thus support better health for their constituents.

Finally, speaking of coal, the Alton Coal corporation wants to strip-mine about 2,700 football fields' worth of public land in the great state of Utah, a mere 10 miles from the Bryce Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, and thus befoul the air and water around both of these national treasures. Not to mention contribute to escalating carbon emissions, at a time when we're trying to cut them. Do not brook any silliness about how Alton's planned expansion would "create jobs," partly because it won't create very many jobs -- corporations are always trying to do as much as they can with as few workers as they can get away with, and the thing most likely to get "created" by this effort is more money for Alton's CEO -- but also because Bryce Canyon and the Grand Staircase (sounds like a '70s lite-FM band, doesn't it?) already creates jobs, and brings in millions of dollars in tourist revenue and gooses up the incomes of all the folks who live nearby. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the Bureau of Land Management to deny coal-mining permits to Alton Coal.

Around the table: the courage of the Greek people, and other stories.

The Greek people reject the EU's latest austerity bailout by a resounding 61-39 margin. I'd express hope that the pollsters who had this race neck-and-neck for the last week won't be able to find work as pollsters again, but servants of power can always find work. We should applaud the courage of the Greek people, who have already endured so much, and will endure much yet. But I hope the folks who squealed ZOMG THE EU WILL KICK TEH GREEKZ OUT!!!!! will one day realize that wasn't exactly a threat.

Sarah Kaplan and Justin Wm. Moyer explain "Why Racists Burn Black Churches." Long story short: black churches have been centers of black culture since even before they were legal (they weren't, for slaves, before 1865) -- places to find community, to learn to read, to resist oppression -- and racists have been burning them down since they got started, until Birmingham, AL became known as "Bombingham" during a particularly bad KKK wave of terror.

Senate Intelligence Committee approves appropriations bill requiring social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, et al) to report any content posted by "suspected terrorists" to our government. Which power could never be turned on someone's political enemies! What's wrong with getting warrants from a judge again? Oh, right -- because someone (cough George W. Bush cough) was too incompetent to stop a major terrorist attack, we have to crap all over our Constitution to stop the next one. Sorry, I forgot.

Paul Buchheit reminds us that, contra a recent Stanford study, there's plenty of evidence that charter schools don't do squat for kids. You don't necessarily need to know that the Stanford study ignored data that might have disproven its findings -- you need only know that charter schools can admit or dismiss whomever they like, so they should be able to "perform better." That they generally don't, even with their built-in head start, should be cause for concern.

ProPublica reminds us that though we're learning more about Big Pharma's payments to doctors, we know little about their payments to nurses and physician's assistants. These are important people, who, perhaps not coincidentally, tend to make rather less money than doctors. Someone at Big Pharma thought they were a genius for coming up with the idea of getting to them, but BFD -- I only think you're a genius if you do something useful, and delivering money upward to your CEO isn't useful.

Finally, all of the county clerks in Decatur County, TN resign over having to hand out gay marriage licenses. Good riddance -- it's not like just anyone can be a county clerk, but America's a big place, and in Decatur County, I'll bet there are plenty of people actually willing and able to uphold the law, since civilized societies need people willing to uphold the law even if it's not convenient for them. Yes, I said "convenient" -- no one's forcing county clerks to enter into gay marriages themselves.

Action: land thievery, redistricting, and "ag-gag" laws.

Arizona's two U.S. Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, snuck a rider into last year's National Defense Appropriations Act handing over a big chunk of the Tonto National Forest -- a part of the Forest that the San Carlos Apache use for its religious rituals, including coming-of-age celebrations -- to mining corporations. If you're wondering what exactly mining has to do with defense, you're not alone -- but if you're noting what big corporate campaign contributions have to do with the lawmaking process, you're ahead of the game, for the Tonto National Forest has enjoyed protected status (and been threatened with attempts to hand it off as corporate welfare) for over half a century. Stunning thing is, even this retrograde Congress appears to be reconsidering the McCain/Flake gambit, ahead of Apache leaders' planned cross-country trip from Arizona to Washington, D.C., and so Avaaz helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the legislative rider that took sacred Apache land away from them and gave it to mining corporations. After all, it can't just be Christians who have religious freedom in America, can it?

Meanwhile, hot off a victory in the Supreme Court for independent redistricting commissions and against big-donors-take-all gerrymandering, Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2173, the Redistricting Reform Act, which would take redistricting out of the hands of state legislatures and into the hands of independent commissions more responsive to the will of the people. What have we learned about the redistricting process? That the folks who gerrymander districts can now exclude individual streets and even individual homes from districts just to ensure their paymasters' victory, and that when political parties control the process, they'll make the districts that'll get their party more seats in Congress -- not just in Republican-held legislatures like Pennsylvania's, but in Democratic-held legislatures like California's. And those who contend that H.R. 2173 is a mere "Democrat power grab" would do better to argue that independent commissions themselves are somehow anti-democracy. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're not prepared to make that argument.

Finally, you remember the Bob Barker-narrated video from the other day, showing animal abuse in factory farms? Quite harrowing, that thing was -- and in a state with an "ag-gag" law, if you'd shot that film, you could be heading off to jail. Because freedom! Freedom for big agricultural corporations to continue doing whatever-it-takes-no-matter-how-cruel to make more money for its CEOs, that is. "Ag-gag" laws are, as you might expect, largely a creation of the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), which used to promulgate "stand your ground" gun laws and anti-minority "voter ID" laws until they became politically unpopular. ALEC no doubt anticipates that folks' feelings about eating meat are more ambiguous, but you don't need to be a vegetarian to know that slamming chickens' heads against walls isn't a good way to deliver meat to your dinner table -- that raising animals yourself is the best way, and dealing with a local farmer you know and trust is the second-best way. CREDO helps you tell Congress to outlaw "ag-gag" laws at the state level, so that we can be a more humane civilization.

Around the table: the source of greed, revealed! And other stories.

A mere three days after the New York Times revealed the existence of Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program, our government released an assessment of the "damage" the Times report supposedly did to our intelligence efforts. Their conclusion? That now terrorists would try to "evade detection" -- an effort to which they apparently devoted no effort before!

Erica Hellerstein at Think Progress reveals how the abstinence-only crowd is trying to sell their snake oil these days. None of it will surprise you -- they call it "not just abstinence," they call it "research-based," they link to official-sounding right-wing medical organizations. And our government funds this silliness! Can you say "corporate welfare handouts," boys and girls?

Buried in an NPR ombudsman's response to FAIR's analysis of a quite unbalanced "free" trade report is this nugget: the reporter's assignment, apparently, was "to explain how the business lobby had turned an apparent defeat into a win for its side," like that can't be explained in three words (psst: they bought it), and that the story was sort-of "a counterpoint to an earlier report...on organized labor’s success in temporarily derailing the administration’s trade agenda" -- a report which just so happened to ensure that pro-"free" trade forces got quoted! Our "liberal" media!

The city of Chicago expands existing taxes to include online streaming services like Netflix and Spotify and database services like LexisNexis. Lost in the debate over whether this is fair or unfair to the internet (which has always had the advantage of building up without very much taxation) is the real problem, which is that we don't tax the wealthy enough and wouldn't have to resort to regressive taxes like these if we did.

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb announces his run for the Democratic nomination for President, and Max Rosenthal summarizes some of his positions. Naturally he elides over Mr. Webb's economic populism, makes too much of Mr. Webb only being a Democrat since 2006, and spends too much time on controversies from his books (though Mr. Webb's statements about the Confederate flag on Facebook will probably doom his campaign. As commenter number one says, "this should be low-hanging fruit for you to be on the right side of.")

Finally, an upstate New York farmer decides to buy her town's struggling Post Office in order to save it and preserve what had long been community space. I note this article mainly for this quotation, which works in or out of context: "The key to happiness, and a major component for sustainability, is to recognize abundance when it presents itself, rather than fixating on scarcity. A scarcity mentality makes people greedy. It makes them frightened. An abundance mentality makes people feel secure, and that leads to generosity. We need more of that." Indeed, we do.

Penny rants for July 5, 2015: special "anti-gay bigots still suck!" edition.

West Tennessee hardware store owner/Baptist minister/moron puts up "no gays allowed" sign in his store, and then, after the inevitable backlash, replaces it with a sign saying "(w)e reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion." Meaning he wants to keep Anthony Kennedy from shopping there? Or does Mr. Amyx really believe that gay folks violate his rights merely by trying to buy a box of nails in his establishment? You'd think, as a nominal businessman, he'd want to sell a box of nails to anyone -- at least, that's the kind of judgment right-wingers always tell us businessfolk have when those right-wingers are trying to gut clean air and water regulations. Mr. Amyx also says "I'm going to take more persecution than them because I'm standing for what I believe in," by which I guess he means gay folks don't stand up for what they believe in. And as far as persecution, well, he's got a long way to go before he's ever as persecuted as someone who risked being abandoned by family or getting the crap kicked out of them by peers just because they dared to be themselves.

From the "even when he's right, he's wrong" file: David Brooks instructs us that "those of us who were delighted" by the Supreme Court's pro-gay marriage decision should "show civility and respect" to our opponents and avoid "polariz(ing) the debate" and "call(ing) people bigots." So, upon our invasion of Iraq, Mr. Brooks certainly exhorted his political bedfellows to show civility and respect to the multitudinous Americans like myself who opposed the war because we love our country but who had endured repeated public taunts of "terrorist!" and "traitor!", did he not? No, he did not -- clearly, it was the furthest thing from his mind. So why is he now so concerned for the tender feelings of bigots? Oh, because it'll "be counterproductive for any kid in a rural area who wants to come out. He'll find himself in the middle of a very angry and polarized atmosphere." Setting aside the hostage-taking (don't call bigots bigots, or this closeted kid gets it!), does he really imagine kids won't want to come out of the closet to any significant degree because their defenders are too strident? No, I suspect they're more afraid of the bigots who'll beat them up, the same bigots who never show "civility and respect" to their opponents.

Around the table: it's the time of the season for terror warnings! And other stories.

Adam Johnson wonders why the "liberal" media still listens to FBI terror warnings, given their utter lack of predictive power (the FBI is, apparently, zero for its last 40, and their terror warnings haven't actually predicted very many actual terror attacks, including these). I've always said there's some utility to preparing for the worst, but these "terror warnings" don't actually help you prepare for a terrorist attack -- only living a civilized life helps you do that.

Conservative political analyst Charlie Cook says that recent events concerning the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and the Confederate flag suggest that Republicans "need to do some soul-searching about their future and their relationships with voters of generations to come." It's a sincere, reasonable argument, but it may not be true: as long as Republicans have money and Democrats are weak, they've always got a shot at winning all the marbles.

Grenada County (MS) court clerk resigns rather than hand out marriage licenses to gays, citing her "core values as a Christian." I'd quarrel whether those "core values" are all that Christian, but I applaud her for resigning. Too many right-wingers think they can have their jobs while not doing their jobs, like there's no "public" in "public servant."

Two special prosecutors in Texas apparently plan to charge state Attorney General Ken Paxton with felony securities fraud. Which leads me to believe his recent comments about refusing to provide marriage licenses to gays was just a bit of a distraction. I wish the moral values crowd would wise up to such things.

Hunting enthusiast confesses, in the Washington Post, that "I Own Guns. But I Hate the NRA." Hear, hear! Too many pro-gun advocates spend most of their time swordfighting ("no, I'm the most conservative person in this room! The rest of you suck!"), and it makes those of us who remain skeptical about gun control efforts look bad for no good reason.

Finally, Viacom-owned TV Land pulls The Dukes of Hazzard from its lineup, ostensibly over its depiction of the Confederate flag. But I'd prefer they continue to air the show and viewers discuss how some folks think the Confederate flag is harmless enough to put on the top of their car (like Charlie Cook's discussion of his feelings about the flag in the link in the 2nd paragraph above, or like this one).

Action: cruelty in the Dominican Republic, and inhumanity in factory farms.

The Dominican Republic, as you may or may not know, has been stripping good Dominican citizens of Haitian descent of their citizenship and expelling them to Haiti. Imagine if our government started deporting American citizens of Mexican ancestry to Mexico! Well, actually, some Americans do have wet dreams about that possibility, but it would be illegal and immoral to do so, since citizenry does imply certain rights, like the right not to be kicked out of your own country. Lately the Dominican government has announced a new round of expulsions, so Amnesty International helps you tell the Dominican President to work to reverse this cruel policy and let Dominicans of Haitian descent resettle in the Republic. Will he heed our call? Not at first, I'd expect, but justice can take a long time. And don't let yourself think that maybe we should let them do it because these are poor countries and they need to do what they can to get by -- cruelty is never an option for anyone, and, as Amnesty instructs us in copious detail, the DR violates both international law and its own law with what it's doing.

Meanwhile, Mercy for Animals has started a petition on Change.org which helps you tell the American Humane Association to stop certifying factory farms as "humane." The accompanying video (narrated by Bob Barker, with a total time of 3:16) shows scenes at one Foster Farms, a factory-farm poultry producer; it'll break your heart, but when you consider how much chicken is on your grocery shelves, and then how many groceries there are in America, what you see won't really surprise you. And if you've worked enough repetitive, volume-heavy jobs (ahem!), you also won't be surprised to find workers who occasionally take our their frustrations on their work (in this case, the ones who punch chickens in the head needlessly or defeather them cruelly). As I always say, moving work at this volume may make CEOs rich, but it makes us a cruel people. And you don't absolutely need to stop eating meat to fight animal cruelty -- you can buy your meat from local producers who don't need to resort to slaughterhouse methods, or even raise animals yourself.

Around the table: a "three strikes" law for banksters, and other ideas.

Katherine McFate at the Center for Effective Government wonders why we can't have a "three strikes" law for banksters who repeatedly abuse the public trust. Working that out would be a challenge (you'd have to relocate a lot of customer deposits, for example), but yes, bankster crimes are worse than most of those that land individuals in jail for life these days, and yet for some reason they attract so little rage from law-and-order types.

Department of Labor proposal would expand overtime protections to salaried workers making not more than $50,400 annually, meaning all those workers would be paid time-and-a-half for time worked over 40 hours in a week (or eight hours in a day). We agitated for raising that threshold to $69,000 earlier this year, but that's why you demand what you want, instead of settling for what you think they'll go for: so you get more than they'd otherwise give you.

The incomparable Dean Baker catches the New York Times confusing "lending" and "spending," as in, "(t)hat gargantuan sum of money is what central banks around the world have spent in recent years as they have tried to stimulate their economies and fight financial crises." Banks generally expect to get their money back in due time. That the Times would make such a mistake signals that they know making Greece endure more austerity at the hands of the EU is indefensible -- just as the "liberal" media signals its knowledge that arguments supporting "free" trade are indefensible by ventilating hysterical booga-booga about China.

Fast food CEO claims that the social safety net "can lock people into poverty." And here I was thinking that paying your workers in dung pellets locked them into poverty, but must be incapable of the kind of bold thinking that makes folks rich these days! I wonder if Mr. Pudzer knows that he pays people so little that they have to get food stamps oh never mind of course he knows and he's just a jerk.

Finally, Jack Jenkins at Think Progress tells us about all the mainstream religious leaders who are actually celebrating the Supreme Court's recent ruling legalizing gay marriage across America. But since these leaders don't act like brats and don't surround themselves with drama, I expect the "liberal" media will continue to ignore them. After all, good people doing good things in America is so squaresville.

UPDATE. I originally treated the overtime proposal as a done deal, and should have known better. Error corrected above.

Action: country-of-origin labeling, student debt processing, and antibiotic abuse on factory farms.

The House passed a bill repealing country-of-origin labeling (or COOL) laws for beef, chicken, and pork earlier this month, and now that bill (H.R. 2393, the innocuous-sounding Country of Origin Labeling Amendments Act) goes to the Senate for consideration. For a body of legislators that can't get anything done, the House sure did act right quick to get rid of the COOL laws we've been agitating to get for years, so that we can know how far their meat had to go to get to our dinner table. And I expect the Senate will do the same, since their big donors told them to. Why now, though? Because the World Trade Organization recently ruled that our COOL laws put other nations' meat producers at an economic disadvantage in violation of the TBT and GATT. This is exactly the sort of thing we've been warning about for, like, ever when discussing the harm "free" trade deals do -- they circumscribe our freedoms, including the freedom to give consumers the choice of buying local food or food from far away. Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Senators to reject H.R. 2393 and any other attempt to undermine our country-of-origin labeling laws.

Meanwhile, cumulative student debt now tops $1 trillion, as you know, and the corporations handling debt processing aren't doing the job as well as they should -- so Public Citizen helps you tell the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) to protect students and hold bad corporate actors accountable for how they mishandle student loans. The student loan servicing sector remains pretty much unregulated, since, for right-wingers, regulation apparently equals fascism and they get all the say around here as long as they whine and stamp their feet, but the lack of oversight by our government, working on our behalf, causes real harm to students trying to better themselves. And when loan servicers reject payments improperly, hike interest rates incorrectly, or fail to apply payments appropriately, they actually hurt all of us, since the student loan industry is fairly heavily-subsidized by guess who? You, the taxpayer. At the risk of piling on, but student loan contracts tend to include forced arbitration agreements that prevent students from redressing their grievances in court, as is their right. So let's make everyone do their job, as civilized people do.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1552/S. 621 and thus prevent antibiotic abuse on factory farms, then Food and Water Watch still helps you do that. You know the drill -- four out of every five antibiotics in America go, no, not to sick people in hospitals or sick animals in vet's offices, but to nominally healthy feed animals, partly to help them endure the squalid conditions of factory farms, and partly to make them meatier. But abusing antibiotics virtually ensures that bacteria will grow stronger, until antibiotics can't kill them, which means the next cut you get could kill you instead. Most folks agree with everything I've just said, and probably would even agree with it after Big Ag corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars carpet-bombing the airwaves with crap about "frivolous lawsuits" and "higher food prices." Neither one of these things will happen. No, not even the second one -- the only thing factory farms do at a lower cost is deliver more money to their CEOs. And your local farmer can better provide good food at low prices without the boot of Big Ag on their throats.

Around the table: three more Supreme Court decisions and lots more right-wing gasbaggery.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that the EPA did not "lawfully" consider cost to polluting corporations when writing its air toxics rule, meaning they should've considered that cost much earlier in the rule-making process than they did. But Justice Scalia should not suggest that the health benefits of clean air amount to "a few dollars," since that's inaccurate and it's his job to know better.

However, Justice Scalia also authored a Supreme Court ruling striking down the federal "three strikes" law, writing that the law's definition of "violent felony" is too "shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison for 15 years to life." That's stirring -- of course I was tempted to say he has a lot of compassion for white supremacists (like the plaintiff in the case that prompted this ruling), but he's been against the "violent felony" provision for years.

The Supreme Court also upheld Arizona's independent commission for redrawing Congressional districts, ruling that, while Article One of the U.S. Constitution specifically states that state legislatures determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives," when the people vote on a ballot initiative (such as the one that created the commission), they essentially become a legislature. This is no small victory -- if the Court had interpreted "legislature" more literally, they could have wound up hampering ballot initiatives all over America.

Texas's Attorney General says county clerks can refuse marriage licenses to gay couples based on their "religious objections." Again, I'm not seeing how that's different from refusing to issue licenses to interracial couples based on "religious objections." It's enough to make a man wish President Obama would send in the National Guard to enforce the ruling. (Yes, I'm well aware of the difficulties in doing so; that's why I said "wish.")

Obama Administration lifts requirement that marijuana research protocols receive a "Public Health Service review" before proceeding. No other Schedule I drug (which pot shouldn't even be) needs this kind of review before research on it can proceed, and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum (including some who oppose legalization!) have advocated lifting that review process. So we have another instance of small government working.

Finally, Jeb Bush said he'd consider getting rid of the Senate filibuster in the context of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster mightily and cried like brats when Democrats (inadvisedly!) ended the filibuster for Presidential nominations in 2013 -- which Republicans had just tried to do in 2005! -- but whatever; this is just more right-wing swordfighting. We should just bring back the actual filibuster, and get rid of this absurd and cowardly version where Senators signal a filibuster and then go out for martinis.