Thieves in the Temple.

Action: toward a non-stupid Congressional budgeting process, and better protections for Pennsylvania gays.

Congress comes back to work after Labor Day, though I wish they'd just stay home, we're headed for some truly awful budget-making and hostage-taking over the next few months. I wouldn't focus too much about Planned Parenthood being defunded; I don't want that to happen, of course, but that's not where the real battle will be -- the real battle will be over the policy riders they want to put into budget bills, riders that would defund clean air and clean water regulation enforcement and defund net neutrality enforcement and defund bankster regulation enforcement and roll back campaign finance law enforcement, that have a much better chance of making it through the process and become law. These are all policy riders, mind you, that would amount to nothing more and nothing less than corporate welfare handouts for Congressfolks' big donors. And there ain't no constituent of no Congressperson who demands more corporate welfare handouts. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to pass clean budget legislation this fall.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Pennsylvania Fairness Act (HB 1510/SB 974) would update the state's landmark Human Relations Act of 1955 to extend protections against discrimination to gay and transgender Pennsylvanians. What sort of protections? Protections against being fired on the job for who you are, protections against refusing to serve gay folks in your place of business just because they're gay, and protections against being turned away by banks, real estate agents, and landlords if you want to rent or own a house in a particular area of the state, among others. And no, other people's "sincerely-held religious beliefs" do not constitute a freedom-to-discriminate card. And If your teabagger uncle demands to know why THOSE PEEPULZ GETZ TEH SPESHUL RIGHTZ!!!!!, remind them, gently or otherwise, that what's equal rights for us ain't special rights for them. The whole phrase "special rights" really is one of the most dishonest and dishonorable phrases right-wing smartypantses ever came up with. Keystone Progress helps you tell your PA state legislator to support the Pennsylvania Fairness Act.

Around the table: stupid debt games, stupid Katrina analysis, stupid health-care horror stories, stupid public servants, and a crucial development in cancer research.

"Countless Consumers Are Paying Off Someone Else’s Debt Because Of Default Judgments," announces the Consumerist. How does that work? Debt-buying corporations file lawsuits to collect debts, but don't always (often?) have accurate records of who exactly owes the debt; the person who "owes" the debt doesn't get contacted about needing to show up in court to file the lawsuit; the judge declares the debt in default, the "debtor" never challenges it (because why would you challenge something you don't know about?), and in time, the debt-collector starts garnishing wages. If that sounds to you like someone wanted it all to work that way, you're not alone. The good news? The forces aligned against the "debtor," like the banksters who robosigned numerous documents, are often quite stupid.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans, FAIR recounts various "liberal" media punditoids not merely declaring that crisis-was-opportunity but that the "success" of various right-wing policy prescriptions (i.e., charter schools) in the wake of the hurricane was actually "(w)orth the 1,800 people killed and the 100,000 African-Americans permanently ejected from the city." By the time you get through David Brooks's "silver lining" article from 2005, you'll wonder why anyone on Earth doesn't think he's a complete asshole. But the litany of assholes, of course, also includes our current Education Secretary.

Ho hum, FactCheck catches Sen. Marco Rubio spinning a rickety hypothetical story about how bad Obamacare is for small businesses -- because he can't find any real examples of this phenomenon, apparently. The Obama Administration should take some of the blame for not properly communicating to everyone that the ACA doesn't mandate health care coverage for businesses with less than 50 employees -- but not as much blame as Mr. Rubio should take, not only for being unable to cite a real instance of ACA harm to small businesses, not only for rigging a "hypothetical" example to stand in for actual evidence, but for letting that hypothetical collapse like a house of cards. In a sane and moral society, this would end his campaign.

Kentucky county clerk says he'll "die for" his right to deny gay couples marriage licenses. I'm tempted to say, "well, who am I to stop a patriot from fulfilling his duty?" -- except that I also know that Casey Davis "dying for" something also means other people dying for it, too, even if he's too much a coward to say so. And seriously, "we don't have rights anymore"? I must have missed the part where he was pulled over and beaten nearly to death for Driving While Christian. And they say liberals whine!

Finally, Mayo Clinic scientists may have figured out a way to "hit the brakes" on cancer-cell replication, essentially by restoring microRNA function to cancerous lung, breast, and bladder cells. They've only achieved this feat on individual cells in the laboratory (versus cells actually growing in the human body), but it's still an exciting development, one that could ultimately lead to cancer treatments that don't have to use chemotherapy or surgery, both of which present obvious risks.

Around the table: internet privacy, worker rights, food safety, voting rights, and one audacious hombré from Maine.

New U.N. privacy chief says we need a "Geneva convention" for internet privacy. He's right, though of course we need protection from corporations (which buy and sell our info) as well as governments (which gobble it up to use against you later). Key quotation: "at least Winston (Smith, of George Orwell’s novel 1984) was able to go out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined."

National Labor Relations Board rules that its previous definition of "joint employer" wasn't broad enough, raising the possibility that temporary employees and employees of subcontractors and franchises can redress grievances with the parent corporations, rather than the "middle men." Naturally Congressional Republicans have already announced they'll attack this decision through the appropriations process -- because they somehow find it unconscionable to give working families more tools to fight an unnecessarily obscure employer-employee relationship that redistributes worker wealth upward to corporate CEOs.

Consumer Reports finds bacteria resistant to at least two antibiotics in nearly one out of every five samples of ground beef. Sustainably-raised beef fares substantially better as far as antibiotic-resistant bacteria are concerned (though not necessarily other bacteria), but you'll still find it there, likely because you found it somewhere else first. Could we, maybe, you know, stop pumping healthy animals full of antibiotics now? Factory farms aren't so old, after all, that we need to get all Russell Kirk about protecting traditions and such.

You remember the Wichita State scientist who has found that the Republican share of votes seems to increase as precincts get larger in Kansas (and elsewhere)? Well, she's sued the state of Kansas for the hard copies of votes in order to check her data, and Kansas's Secretary of State has asked a judge to block that request. Mr. Kobach is, you might have guessed, a Republican, one who won re-election in 2014 though polls had him on the skids for a moment. But until the data convinces me otherwise, I'll continue to assume Mr. Kobach won mainly because his Democratic opponent didn't offer enough of an alternative.

Finally, Maine Governor Paul LePage says he might challenge Independent Senator Angus King in 2018. Gov. LePage is perhaps hoping (and perhaps in vain) for another three-way election, since those are the only kinds of elections he can win. But while Mr. LePage's gubernatorial term ends in 2018, circumstances might well free him to campaign extensively before then.

Action: the blockade of Gaza, the Endangered Species Act, and more humane work scheduling.

After last year's war between Israel and Gaza, thousands of Palestinian children still sleep in rubble, still face bombings at their schools, and still can't get health care because all the clinics got blown up, all because Israel still maintains its seven-years-and-counting blockade of Gaza and basic rebuilding materials can't get in, to the point where Oxfam thinks it could take a century to rebuild Gaza at its current rate. Don't be one of those who think Israel should do just anything to defend itself -- sometimes the things you do to defend yourself wind up making you more insecure, and forcing a neighboring population to live in utter squalor is one of those things. Hence Avaaz helps you tell Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza. No need to remind me that Palestinian politicians have been shuffling their feet on rebuilding their own land -- lifting the blockade would give Israel the moral upper hand for once, and if politicians in Palestine are too cynical to take the help they'll get as a result, sunlight will surely find them.

Meanwhile, the last year has seen numerous attacks on the Endangered Species Act, whether through "reform" legislation, attempts to defund, or premature delisting of animals. Why? So that Congressfolk's big donors (whom they no doubt consider their true constituencies) can drill for gas and oil and mine for coal and cut down forests for wood with no regard for the species already living there or for what we'll be leaving for future generations. Oh, sure, they talk about "protecting the environment," but we know them by their actions, and when they try to make the regulatory process more convoluted, or give regulators the option of just ignoring scientific research, then we know their hearts. They also talk about "jobs," but the Endangered Species Act creates jobs -- highly-skilled jobs, in fact, for folks who plan to save species and implement those plans. And while gas and oil and coal and wood exist to be made into things, but habitats and species are forever. The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell Congress to stop endangering the Endangered Species Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5159/S. 2642, the Schedules That Work Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. Far too many lower-wage working folks get schedules that make no damn sense, and they too often don't get their work schedules with very much advance notice, so they can't plan their child care, schooling, or whatever second job they need to help pay the bills. Folks who worry that passing this bill will result in ZOMG TEH EMPLOYEEZ GETZ WHATEVER THEY WANTZ THE COMPANEEZ BE DAMNEDZ!!!!! should consider that the bill specifically allows employers to deny unlawful employee requests. Also, union employees with contracts that cover scheduling practices would be exempt from the act. And higher-paid employees more commonly called "talent" by their (pretentious as hell!) bosses should attend the fact that the Schedules That Work Act covers time spent on-call as well, since, as Robert Reich told us last week, a lot of bosses seem to think workers should be ready to work at any moment, like they got nothing else going on. Of course, people do have lives beyond their jobs, whether they're called "talent" or not.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the nexus between adultery and copyright law, among other things.

Chauncey DeVega suggests that "Christianity hinders racial justice." We could quarrel about that, I suppose, though I suspect that quarrel also hinders racial justice, but I agree that the automatic forgiveness white folks seem to expect from black folks after yet another murder certainly hinders racial justice. And who expects forgiveness from white people whenever a white person gets murdered? I have to say I've never heard that come up.

Ho hum, the "liberal" media keep flogging discredited anti-Iran nuke deal propaganda days after they're properly discredited. How did "inspections of military sites will respect Iran's military security needs" turn into ZOMG IRANZ WILL INSPECT ITSELFZ!!!!!!? Because haters gonna hate, that's why. And if a lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes, the "liberal" media spreads lies around the world before the truth gets out of bed.

Kate Cox at the Consumerist instructs us that Ashley Madison (the dating site for adulterers) may not be able to legally prevent people from looking over all the client info that got hacked last month, despite their best efforts. Ashley Madison seems to think it has copyrighted all of that client info, but generally, as Ms. Cox says, "you can copyright original works, but not lists of facts." Will Ashley Madison claim that these lists are unique enough that they represent narratives, and thus are "original works," in a sense? I guess that would be interesting.

Bryce Covert reminds us that the Monday morning stock market plunge would have wreaked absolute havoc on Social Security if our government had privatized Social Security -- as Mr. Bush wanted to do in 2005 and as several Republican Presidential candidates still want to do now. But they're so criminally insane they'll probably use the Monday morning stock plunge as proof of privatization's necessity. (Ms. Covert also points out that most smart investment is actually counterintuitive -- folks want to sell when things start to go bad and buy when things start to go good, but these are pretty much the wrong things to do at those times, if you think about it.)

Finally, an SEI report finds that some two-thirds of a particular kind of carbon-trading (Joint Implementation, where one country finances a carbon-reducing project in another country, instead of just trading credits) "are unlikely to represent additional emissions reductions." In some cases, JI projects simply created more carbon emissions so they get carbon credits for "reducing" them, and in others, the carbon-reducing projects simply didn't exist, though people still made money off them. Hence yet another reason I prefer good old-fashioned regulation to carbon-trading schemes.

Action: the "revolving door" between Congress and lobbying firms, and the Iran nuke deal.

Sens. Franken (D-MN) and Bennet (D-CO) have introduced S. 1959, the Close the Revolving Door Act, i.e., the "revolving door" between Congress and lobbyists. How many Blue Dog Democrats did we learn would not attempt to reclaim the seats they lost in 2010 once we learned they had accepted positions in some lobbying corporation or other in 2011? It sometimes seemed like more of them became lobbyists than had actually lost their seats! But S. 1959 would ban Congressfolk from ever doing any lobbying on anyone else's behalf after they leave office -- which is not a violation of the First Amendment, since that guarantees your right to redress your own grievances, not the grievance of some corporation that's paying you -- and would ban lobbyists from getting jobs in Congressional offices for six years. We make a lot of fun of Congressfolk, but we shouldn't have to -- we should be able to respect these people, and if we have to use the law to change them into people who earn our respect, so be it. Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Close the Revolving Door Act.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support the framework of the Iran nuke deal, then the Friends Committee on National Legislation still helps you do that. Frankly, the noise coming from people who oppose this deal is quite appalling, and not just flatugasma like Scott Walker's suggestion that he might have to bomb Iran on his very first day as President. People actually say they oppose this deal because "you can't trust Iran." Hello? The deal doesn't require you to trust Iran, at all -- it requires Iran to present its nuclear facilities for inspection 24/7, and allows us to inspect suspected new facilities based on new intelligence. And personal to the folks running those ads bemoaning that we didn't use the negotiations to get four hostages out of Iran: you need to get used to the idea that you don't get everything you want (or even everything you burn for) in negotiations. And what prevents you from writing to the government of Iran and embarrassing them by demanding they release hostages from unjust imprisonment? Are your hands broken?

Around the table: stock drops, government spying, American socialism, charter schools, the minimum wage, and campaign financing.

In the wake of a thousand-point drop in the stock market early Monday morning, Dean Baker does us a great service by reminding us that "the stock market is not the economy." I'd go so far to say the stock market is an anti-economy, one that now has only to do with further enrichment of banksters and very little, if anything, to do with the work of a civilization. And if we were an economy that made stuff, sold stuff, and saved money -- versus an economy that routinely buys stocks with borrowed money -- we certainly wouldn't have to worry about Chinese stock bubbles.

USA Today reports that police officers in Baltimore now use an anti-terrorist surveillance tool called a "stingray" to catch petty criminals -- and officers in over four dozen other cities may be doing the same. I'd be more sanguine about this development if a) everyone got a warrant before using the device and b) everyone agreed to avoid searching all the irrelevant data they're vacuuming up and then destroy that irrelevant data at the first opportunity. But stingray users have been so closed-lipped about even using them that I doubt they'd adhere to such conditions, at least not without pressure.

Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee reminds us that, when contemplating Bernie Sanders's socialism, we should remember that America is "kind of a socialist nation" -- especially when we consider the massive corporate welfare handouts our government routinely gives. And also Social Security and Medicare, sure, but a quick answer to someone ranting about Bernie Sanders's socialism could also be "don't drive our roads" or "don't call the police" or "don't go to the library," since our government provides these services, and we pay for them (collectively!) with our taxes.

Any liberals still impressed with Ohio Gov. John Kasich? Here's another tonic: under his administration, the state's charter school system has become a "national joke." Remember that our taxes pay for charter schools just like they pay for public schools, and not only does money diverted toward charter schools deprive public schools of what they need, money diverted toward charter schools is more likely to get stolen than money used in public schools. All so politicians can reward cronies without having to raise taxes. Cowards.

The battle to extend minimum wage protections to home health care workers is now being fought in the courts, and the forces of good won the latest round, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Fair Labor Standards Act does, in fact, give the Department of Labor the authority to get home health-care workers a minimum wage. Really? Home health-care corporations challenged that? They'd have been better off just paying their workers better.

Finally, toward the end of yesterday's Daily Kos "Morning Elections Digest," we learn that Google sponsored a study finding that three-quarters of all campaign finance spending on U.S. House races in 2014 was "wasted," because it wound up targeting viewers in media markets who couldn't actually vote in the relevant elections. (For example, ads in the Philadelphia market would have reached numerous viewers in southern New Jersey and suburban Philly who couldn't vote in Philadelphia's two House elections.) But the authors remind us that such ads do reach folks who don't spend much time online, which is presumably also the logic of organizations still raising money through junk mail in the email/Facebook era.

Action: fracking science, and media consolidation.

As you may remember, the EPA put out a report on the health effects of fracking back in June, a report fracking proponents said justified their support, but a report which also failed to get data from oil and gas drillers (because why would they provide information that could prove their works pollute our air and water?) and was also hamstrung in its information-collecting efforts by that notorious 2005 energy bill that allowed frackers to keep the chemicals they use a secret. But now the EPA wants to know how it can improve its methods in evaluating the dangers of fracking, and the the Union of Concerned Scientists and Food and Water Watch help you tell the EPA to study the health effects of fracking with more scientific vigor. If nearly 10 million Americans live within a mile of a fracking well, as the EPA tells us, then it shouldn't be that hard to get someone's cooperation to test water before, during, and after gas and oil drillers frack in their neighborhood. Indeed, I'd bet quite a few folks would be very enthusiastic to help. Much more so than oil and gas drilling corporations, certainly.

Meanwhile, Comcast has withdrawn its plan to buy Time-Warner Cable after a massive backlash from the American public made the whole idea toxic -- this, after at least one Comcast lobbyist labored to convince everyone that folks who opposed the merger were stupid and that Comcast's real competition came from wireless, an idea anyone who's ever used wireless would find laughable -- but now America's fourth-largest big telecom corporation, Charter, wants to buy Time-Warner (as well as Bright House Cable), and thus become the second-largest cable corporation behind Comcast. Perhaps Charter thinks it can slip underneath the radar since a lot of folks who only have Comcast in their neighborhoods have never heard of Charter (whereas just about everyone's heard of Comcast), but this deal would allow Comcast and Charter, between them, to control two out of every three broadband accounts, with neither Comcast nor Charter particularly well-known for outstanding customer service. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to block the Charter/Time-Warner merger.

Action: forced arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts, and conflicts of interest between banksters and regulators.

Guess who else faces forced arbitration agreements buried in service contracts? Families who place their loved ones in nursing homes, that's who. And because you're likely at the end of your rope when you place a loved one in a nursing home, the corporations running nursing homes will often stick you with a forced arbitration agreement depriving you of your rightful day in court your loved one gets neglected, injured, abused, or even killed. Oh, and the corporation picks the arbitrator, and they're not likely to pick one who'll rule against them all the time. Corporations typically don't abandon forced arbitration agreements unless one of two things happen: a) our government makes them; or b) something so terrible happens, and the arbitrator handling the matter handles it so badly, that forced arbitration agreements become toxic. Do we really want to wait until someone gets hurt or killed for that to happen? Public Citizen helps you tell the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the government entity that runs Medicare and Medicaid) to ban forced arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3065/S. 1779, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. What would the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act do? It would slow the "revolving door" between the big Wall Street banksters and our government, by banning the bankster practice of handing out "golden parachutes" to executives who leave to work as regulators in our government. Surely serving the American people doesn't require all that extra incentive -- and surely all that extra incentive might prejudice a future regulator in a certain way. The bill would also extend the wait for federal employees to join lobbying firms from one year to two, and would mandate that regulators recuse themselves from matters concerning their former employers. Personal to those who insist that only banksters should be regulators because only banksters understand banking: not only do plenty of people in academics also understand banking, but the system is only opaque because the banksters want it that way. How about we not make that problem worse?

Around the table: from a Presidential candidate determined to do it wrong to a police department determined to do it right.

Surprise, surprise, Jeb Bush opposes encrypting data. "If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job -- while protecting civil liberties -- to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst." He almost forgot to say "while protecting civil liberties," didn't he? Every advance in communications technology brings these challenges with it; how does Jeb Bush think we got this far without terrorists tearing us apart?

"Joe Biden Said to Be Considering One-Term Presidency," Politico tells us. Who said this? Famed journalist Carl Bernstein, who added that Mr. Biden would use his one term to "unite Washington" because he's "dealt with the Republicans in Congress all (his) public life," though you'd think Mr. Biden's six-plus years as Vice President would have helped "unite Washington" by now. Mr. Bernstein's reporting on the Watergate break-in helped take down an American President when he was just 30, as you know, so he doesn't care what I think. But his analysis sounds like typical Beltway wankage.

Now that an Avian flu outbreak has caused Iowa farmers to euthanize over 30 million birds, organic farmers say we should avoid looking at vaccines as the solution to the problem and look instead toward "organic, regenerative" farming. Farmers don't have to be organic, really, but they do have to be small-scale operators that care more about the land and the animals than about profits (since without the land and the animals, you don't even have profits). Certainly we should stop worshiping at the altar of "efficient" factory farms, which produce a lot of sick, miserable animals and only do one thing "efficiently" (that is, deliver wealth upward to CEOs).

Scott Walker, speaking at a New Hampshire VFW, suggests that only a "handful" of Muslims are "reasonable" or "moderate." Gosh, what if a Presidential candidate said only a "handful" of Christians are "reasonable" or "moderate"? Our Glorious Elites would throw a collective tantrum, that's what. His spokeshack does the best she can with it, I suppose, basically by pretending Scott Walker doesn't really believe what he says. So how will he appear more "moderate" for the general election? I don't know, but he sure won't be troubled by the task, because such a task would only trouble a man with a soul.

Finally, Gloucester, MA police chief decides that "the war on drugs is over, and we lost," and starts helping drug addicts get clean. Gloucester is a small town, but one out of every six folks the Gloucester police help come from out of state. I eagerly await the studies suggesting that (just as providing homes for the homeless is actually cheaper than providing them expensive services on an emergency basis all the time) concentrating on helping addicts rather than just punishing them actually saves the taxpayer money. In the meantime, I wish Chief Campanello and his department the best of luck.

Around the table: voting rights, the Iran nuke deal, "free" trade, "religious freedom," and a potential breakthrough in neurology.

President Obama writes a letter to the New York Times asking that Congress restore the Voting Rights Act. This may not be as effective as his net neutrality video, since that only had to influence one person (FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, until then trying to have it both ways on the matter), but then again, when Presidents speak, it still means something -- George W. Bush did almost singlehandedly keep climate change denialism alive, you recall -- and his opponents will be forced to assert that holding the debt limit hostage is more important than fighting racism, or to say something hysterically dumb like Sen. McConnell did, like the South has changed, really it has!.

FAIR reminds us that both sides of the Iran nuke deal seem to be assuming that the only alternative to their preferred position is war. If Iran gets caught trying to make a nuke, I've assumed that the first alternative is reinstituting sanctions, which even Sen. Toomey (R-PA) says brought Iran to the negotiating table. But, please, let's have more hysteria about this debate, because hysteria has brought so much of importance to every policy debate we have.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) puts hold on Obama trade appointee to broadcast his displeasure with the secrecy surrounding Trans-Pacific "Partnership" negotiations. I share his disgust with "free" trade secrecy, but I don't think he should be obstructing a nominee to make a point. I'll bet the "liberal" media howls about this obstruction, though, after covering the far more multitudinous instances of Senate Republican obstruction during the Obama Administration as if it were a normal part of the landscape.

Actress Ellen Page confronts Sen. Ted Cruz (as he's cooking pork chops, now there's a man's man!) to tell him he's "discriminating against LGBT people" and to ask whether he'd apply the same "religious discrimination" argument in favor of segregation. "Now I'm happy to answer your question," Sen. Cruz said, before launching into a lengthy and thoughtful exegesis about how he couldn't use such an argument to reinstitute segregation even if he wanted to, which of course he doesn't! I kid, of course -- he didn't answer her question, and said he didn't want to get into a "back-and-forth debate" with her, by which he clearly meant he wanted to do all the talking. Doesn't a Harvard education buy more than this?

Finally, Ohio State University researchers have apparently used human skin cells to create, in their words, "the most complete human brain model yet developed." It's very small, resembles the brain of a five week-old fetus, and would need a sort of artificial heart (and blood vessels!) to grow into something more fully-developed, but this little brain could do the world a lot of good -- not just for Alzheimer's patients or brain-traumatized soldiers, but for environmental researchers looking to discern the long-term neurological effects of pollution. I wish the researchers the best.

Action: toward healthier families in Burkina Faso and in America.

The African nation of Burkina Faso, formerly known as Upper Volta and controlled by the French until 1960, has had a long uphill climb toward self-determination, like most nations emerging from decades of Western colonialism. And its women have had a tougher climb than that -- perhaps one in six women there use any form of contraception, which is one of the lowest rates on Earth, and many of these have to hide it from their families (since you have to get permission from a man to get it in Burkina Faso), and it's no accident the nation has one of the world's highest rates of maternal mortality. But the guard may be changing, as a youth rebellion late last year swept away the nearly three-decade rule of President Blaise Compaoré, who had reversed many of the progressive reforms of his predecessor (a former ally he deposed in a coup). So Amnesty International helps you tell Burkina Faso's government to ensure their women have the same rights as their men, including the right to self-determination. No this does not mean women will never have babies again in Burkina Faso -- but having choices means they'll have healthier and happier families.

Meanwhile, corporations like Netflix have made the news lately by expanding paid family leave, and though you're right to be skeptical about their actual generosity (Netflix's expansion only applies to "talent," and not, for example, the folks who actually process your DVDs, who surely have families to care for, too), it's as good a news hook as any to tell Congress to create a solid paid family and medical leave insurance program, as Moms Rising helps you do. If your Congressfolk tell you the economy's just too shaky right now to give working families a break, ask them why the economy never seems too shaky to give corporations more welfare handouts. If your Congressfolk tell you the program will cost too much money, remind them that H.R. 1439/S. 786, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (or FAMILY Act), would levy a mere 0.4 percent tax (that's four-tenths of one percent, not four percent), divided evenly between employee and employer, to pay for a program giving all Americans the means to take time off to care for themselves and/or their families. If that bothers them, it's time to vote them out.

Around the table: torture, free speech, body cameras, small businesses, and the gang that couldn't shoot or think straight.

Steve Benen informs us that no less than four Republican Presidential candidates have embraced torture as a viable option when dealing with terror suspects, not that they use the word "torture" or anything. Jeb Bush, naturally, parrots his brother's it's-not-torture-if-I-say-so line of dung, but Mr. Benen is right to point out that if President Obama had prosecuted torturers during his Administration, Republicans wouldn't be as quick to embrace torture as they are.

Scott Klinger at the Center for Effective Government reminds us that ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment. You don't need to be a vegan to think so, either -- especially not if you already know that laws against libel, slander, and destruction of property already exist. What could the big ag corporations be so afraid of?

The title of this article, "The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras," turns out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch: the "dystopian danger" turns out to be from using body cameras in other, obviously less appropriate ways, like to spy on students, but these are boundaries civilized people have to draw, every day. From there we move on to surveillance methods that are not body cameras; I was really hoping to at least be challenged on my support of body cameras, but I wasn't.

FCC rules that satellite TV corporation Dish can't apply some $3.3 billion in small business credits toward its purchase of government airwaves. You should be hitching on the notion that Dish could have received small business credits; apparently its subsidiaries have received the credits. Just as it occurs to me that a small business shouldn't have more than 50 employees (let alone the 500 employees the Small Business Administration uses as its cutoff), it also occurs to me that a small business shouldn't be owned by a big corporation.

Finally, we learn that one of the fellows guarding a "Muslim-free" gun shop in Oklahoma accidentally shot himself in the arm after dropping his gun on Tuesday. It's nice to know that some people who can't think straight also can't shoot straight, I guess, but it's still not a thing to count on.

Action: preventing banksters from manipulating credit report errors, and ending predatory long-distance rates for prisoners.

S. 1773, the Consumer Reporting Fairness Act, would protect good Americans from many of the consequences of credit report errors -- which could well include getting denied housing, a job, or a mortgage, or merely being forced to prove you've paid off debts that credit reports still list on your record -- by forcing the banks to report when debts have been discharged, including during bankruptcy proceedings (when the fact of your bankruptcy remains on your record but the debts themselves don't). And this could be you, too, since the FTC tells us that almost one out of every five Americans had an error on at least one of their last three credit reports. It gets worse: some of the biggest banksters only agreed to update discharged debts more vigorously after they were sued, since they were trying to collect on already-discharged debts. Seriously, there should be a circle of hell for such people. So CREDO helps you tell Congress to support the Consumer Reporting Fairness Act, and thus make sure folks who've paid down or otherwise discharged their debts don't get unfairly hammered when they try to put their lives back together.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell the FCC to crack down on the practice of charging prisoners predatory long-distance calling rates. To think that some smartass, somewhere, believes himself a genius because he came up with the notion of charging prisoners more than a buck a minute for a long-distance phone call. "You see, the prisoners need to call their families, and what are they going to do about it if we make them all use the same carrier? You might say it's a captive market! Get it, 'captive'? High-five!" The FCC has lately capped long-distance phone call prices, but state and local governments still award exclusive contracts to certain long-distance carriers -- and I bet if you followed the money, you'd find a lot of donations going to the politicians who award those contracts. But a conservative would say that prisoners should enjoy the benefits of free-market competition as much as anyone else. (If your nominally conservative uncle responds that prisoners don't deserve anything, you may challenge his credentials as a conservative. Don't feel bad about doing that, since he probably does that all the time to people who don't shout as loud as he does.)

Around the table: Bernie Sanders says the most interesting thing a politician will say this year -- while the Republican Presidential candidates clown on in their clown car.

It may go unnoted as such, but when Bernie Sanders said "do you have serious questions?" when asked about Hillary Clinton's hair vis a vis his own, we witnessed the collision between serious cultural criticism (the reporter was trying to get Sen. Sanders to say it's sexist that the "liberal" media pay so much attention to Mrs. Clinton's hair) and serious political discussion ("we're the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people," and yet we're talking about hair). I guess it wouldn't have killed Mr. Sanders to say the media is sexist in addition to being frivolous, but actually hearing a candidate say the hair obsession is frivolous is itself a major step forward.

Another day, another member of the "liberal" media, in this case Steve Rattner, claiming that manufacturing job losses haven't fallen to trade deficits but to the alleged inevitability of "productivity growth." Ah, no -- American corporations are, in fact, paying foreign workers in dung pellets to make products consumed by Americans, and no allusion to "productivity growth" can change that. When people like Steve Rattner (the fellow who oversaw the destruction of autoworker jobs and pensions during the 2009 automaker corporation bailout, you may recall) tell you something is "inevitable," they're trying to take the fight out of you. Don't let people do that to you.

Mike Huckabee says Dr. King would be "appalled" with the Black Lives Matter movement if he were alive today. Because, of course, "all lives matter." But context is important here -- the "black lives matter" slogan occurs in the context of a society that too often acts like black lives don't matter, and folks who retort "all lives matter" typically have never had to worry that their next police contact might be the one that kills them.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (E-WI) proposes an Affordable Care Act "replacement" plan, one that would give sliding-scale tax credits to folks without insurance based on age. By coupling tax-credits-which-are-not-insurance and the "sliding scale" concept, Mr. Walker's plan is dumb and eggheaded at the same time, a feat usually only Democrats accomplish. But the "liberal" media will no doubt call the eggheadedness intelligence, since, you know, Scott Walker is bold and rides a Harley.

Finally, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), still running for President as of this writing, says birthright citizenship is a "bad practice" that he'd work to end. Why is it a "bad practice"? Because of anecdotal evidence of "birth tourism"? Also, it's not changing a "law," as he puts it, but changing the Constitution -- specifically, the 14th Amendment. I'd wondered if Republicans would get into a big swordfight over who wants to repeal the 14th Amendment fastest, but not all of them have taken the bait -- I guess the really big swordfight is for 2020! If Scott Walker thinks he's getting away with that non-answer, though, then maybe he's not such a skillful politician after all.

Action: the Iran nuke deal, and student privacy.

The Senate will take up the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran when they get back from their month of fundraising their working vacations with their constituents, and the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell them to support the framework of the Iran nuke deal. It's going to be an ugly, ugly battle, full of misinformation and irrelevant information, the latter including ZOMG THEY STILL CHANTZ TEH DEATHZ TO TEH AMERICAZ IN TEH STREETZ!!!!! It doesn't matter how Iran feels about this deal. Hell, it doesn't matter how anyone feels about this deal. It only matters whether this deal will keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and this deal will do that, with its rigorous inspection schedule and the threat of reinstituting economic sanctions against Iran if they violate the agreement. And people who think that only war with Iran will keep us safe are the same people who said Iran should unilaterally give us everything we want as a precondition to negotiations, and people like that don't understand what negotiation is.

Meanwhile, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood joins with the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy to help you tell Congress to enact vigorous legislation to protect kids' privacy in our schools. The vast majority of schools now use cloud services for things like classroom instruction, bus route planning, and testing, which means that a lot of personal student data -- names and addresses, Social Security numbers, test scores, et cetera -- sits out there where hackers and corporations can exploit it. The solutions the CCFC and the PCSP propose? Notifying parents before disclosing (or re-disclosing) any personal student info to third parties outside the school district; complete bans on selling student information and advertising within instructional materials; stronger encryption standards for student info; and vigorous enforcement, including specified punishments for violations. That all sounds common-sensical to me, but Congressional efforts to protect student privacy have been weaker, likely to "protect" big corporate donors. But they ain't the boss of us.

Around the table: from Social Security hit jobs to more vaccine "skepticism."

Dave Lindorff absolutely eviscerates a Katie Couric video purporting to explain Social Security, a video peddling even worse myths about Social Security than the "liberal" media normally peddles. Mr. Lindorff also provides actual solutions that would shore up Social Security, including two I hadn't heard before -- making employers pay a larger percentage of payroll taxes than workers (which workers will notice, and employers won't) or applying the payroll tax to capital gains (which should not be taxed as low as it is in America anyway).

Prison Education Reduces Recidivism by Over 40 Percent," Michelle Chen asks in The Nation, so "Why Aren’t We Funding More of It? Because recidivism makes more money for private prison corporations, that's why! The good news? People both left and right have been coming around to the idea that putting people in jail over and over again just isn't good for anybody. The bad news? President Obama's pilot plan to restore Pell Grants for incarcerated folks, though it "costs basically the equivalent of a budget rounding error," faces Republicans who hate him.

Robert Reich instructs us that we should take new paid-leave policies offered by corporations such as Netflix with "a grain of silicon." For two reasons: one, policies like that of Netflix only apply to "talent," i.e., well-paid and highly-placed employees (as if sorting through all those DVDs efficiently isn't a talent!), and two, folks who happen to be "talent" simply aren't taking the time off because it seems you can't afford to take time off if you want to get ahead. You might want to tell some of these "talented" folks to stand up to their bosses (since you'd think "talent" would have some leverage), but if you do, you also need to tell their bosses that work-life balance is a good thing.

Steve Singiser at Daily Kos Elections asks if Republicans have successfully gerrymandered themselves into a "semi-permanent majority." I'm tempted to respond that gerrymandering isn't something so big that a few courageous Democrats can't handle it. In other words, I'm tempted to answer "yes," and the main reason I don't is that I'm an optimist.

Hannah K. Gold asks "Why Did the FBI Spy on James Baldwin?" You might respond, well, because he was black, gay, and active in the civil rights movement, but then you have to ask why his FBI file is nearly seven times larger than Richard Wright's and nearly half as big as Malcolm X's. And naturally, confronting the FBI file -- which Ms. Gold says reads like "a long, poorly-written novel" "riddled with inaccuracies," including, at one point, a description of Mr. Baldwin as white -- doesn't by itself clear up that mystery.

Finally, Carly Fiorina suggests she'd oppose mandatory vaccination of children, saying "(w)hen in doubt, it's the parent's choice," particularly where "religious freedom" is involved. I guess we're supposed to applaud Ms. Fiorina when she says public schools should still get to keep unvaccinated kids out, but that's a barn-door-horses-out problem. It sure is a good thing the vast, vast majority of people are not in "doubt" about the massive good vaccinations do, or about the consequences of foregoing them.

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

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

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

Around the table: Birthers Gone Wild! And other stories.

SEC Chair Mary Jo White admits, under questioning from Sen. Baldwin (D-WI), that the SEC isn't monitoring stock buybacks. Corporate executives used to avoid buying back their own stock out of fear they'd be punished for trying to manipulate the market -- since stock buybacks tend to drive up stock prices -- but today executives buy back their own stock instead of investing in facilities or paying their workers more, and they call that the "free market," when it's actually income redistribution.

U.S. Justice Department admits that it uses "predictive assessments," rather than evidence of terrorist activity, to put folks on their "no-fly" lists. since you can "predict" pretty much anything. Using a formula even more complex than the NFL quarterback-rating system, right? The Obama Administration won't say, because of the potential (say it with me now) "damage to national security." But our Constitutional freedoms either mean something or they don't.

ProPublica chronicles the long-standing "partnership" between the NSA and AT&T. If you remember how eager AT&T was to give Tha Bush Mobb customer info after 9.11, you won't be surprised. I had forgotten, though, that AT&T used to be a monopoly, which of course made it a natural ally with our government against the people. (And yet folks still promulgate the myth of the "beneficial monopoly." But maybe fewer folks will do that after reading ProPublica's article.)

Group led by Gaza physician develops 3D-printed stethoscope that apparently outperforms a $200 stethoscope and costs a mere 30 cents to produce. Of course the 3D printer itself costs a lot, but that's a one-time cost, and the process could work for other medical equipment (like EKG machines) that developing nations need and lack. Peer-review is still to come, but I wish Dr. Loubani and his team the best.

Finally, now the "birther" crowd suspects four Republican Presidential candidates might not be Americans, either. And three out of four of these candidates (Messrs. Jindal, Rubio, and Cruz) just so happen to be nonwhite -- and they would have called the fourth (Italian-American Rick Santorum) nonwhite a mere half-century ago. Just in case you thought birthers were being fair, or clever, or "zealous." (Read the article; it'll demonstrate how far some folks will go just to defend fervent beliefs that don't hold up to critical scrutiny.)

Action: stronger overtime protections, and stronger clean air protections.

Moms Rising helps you tell the Department of Labor to hold fast against big corporate whining about changes to our overtime standards. The Department of Labor has proposed making corporations pay their workers time-and-a-half for any hours worked over 40 in a week if those workers make less than $50,400 annually; currently we only guarantee overtime for workers making less than $23,660 (which Tha Bush Mobb raised from its long-overdue-for-an-update figure of around $8,000, so let's give them credit for one of the literally-a-handful of good things they did). We asked for more, of course -- I've long held that we should triple the threshold Labor set in 2004 -- but you get more when you ask for more. Would it be too much to ask that we do not hear evidence-free assertions that stronger overtime protections would "kill jobs" and "put businesses out of business"? The worst it'll do to corporations is do what it's designed to do, which is force them to hire more people -- and that's a victory for all of us, not just the millions of workers who will be able to get overtime pay for the first time.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to include the Brunner Island coal plant in its new anti-smog rules, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Why would the state of Pennsylvania exclude the Brunner Island plant from anti-smog rules? The reasoning defies logic: Brunner Island hasn't updated its smog-reducing equipment like other coal plants across the state have, so it essentially gets a "grandfather" rule so it can keep operating. I guess our state government thinks no other coal corporations would delay installing modern equipment just so they can get grandfathered in, too! Those who promulgate war-on-coal hysteria need to answer this question: why do corporations who pollute our air deserve to continue operating? I mean, that's not very free market now, is it? Unless "free market" means "free from the people's will," or "free from the people's right to breathe clean air." Everyone deserves clean air, and that includes the folks in the vicinity of Brunner Island -- which is, actually, a lot more Pennsylvanians than you might think.

Around the table: the horrible truth about manufacturing job losses, and other stories.

Ho hum, the Economic Policy Institute reminds us that trade deficits, not increases in productivity, are responsible for job losses in the American manufacturing sector. How do we know? Because productivity increased at about the same rate during Tha Bush Mobb era as they did during the Bush the Better/Clinton era, but manufacturing absolutely hemorrhaged jobs during Tha Bush Mobb's tenure -- which also saw a huge spike in trade deficits (though, to be fair, those deficits started to rise substantially in 1998). What does Our Glorious New Economy do more efficiently than the ones your parents worked in? Redistribute wealth upward to CEOs, and that's all.

Per CDC figures, America's uninsured rate has fallen below 10%, for the first time since the CDC started keeping these figures in 1972. You may recall that Gallup also found a drop in the uninsured from 18% in late 2013 to 11.4% this year. But (begin sarcasm) you know what we really need in this debate? More right-wing BS about the Affordable Care Act, since any opinion is exactly as good as any other and the "liberal" media must give more time to bad ones so they can avoid the appearance of "bias" (end sarcasm).

And on cue: new great Republican hope Carly Fiorina says ER visits are up "over 50 percent" since the ACA passed, and Factcheck.com can't find any documentation for that alleged statistic. I'd be skeptical off the bat, since more insured people should mean less having to go to the ER for the sniffles, and also, of course, since the Fiorina campaign hasn't produced evidence to back their candidate's claim. But then they probably think being asked to produce evidence for their arguments is sexist.

Good news, everyone: USA Discounters -- which not only marketed overly expensive appliances to our soldiers, which not only handed out spiral-of-debt loans to our soldiers, but sued them in a Virginia court, making them fly to Virginia from wherever they were serving to fight the suits -- seems to be going out of business. First came a name change (because what else do you do when your name is mud?), but then swiftly came everything-must-go -- very soon, if the "70-95% off" prices are any indication, though they'd also indicate there's not much left there to pick.

Finally, Kevin Wong says that the more space Snoopy got in Peanuts strips over the years, the worse the comic got. I'll certainly agree that Snoopy-centric strips feel like showstoppers -- when Snoopy took center stage, the other characters dispersed, and once a show's all show-stoppers, it ain't much of a show. I still liked Snoopy as a kid, but Linus was my One True Homey, then and now.

Action: the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and fighting cat declawing.

The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell Congress to renew and fund fully the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The LWCF, as you probably know, has been around for 50 years, buying land for parks, forests, and wildlife areas that all Americans can enjoy, but the LWCF expires next month, and though it enjoys bipartisan support -- the current reauthorization bill before the Senate lists North Carolina Republican Richard Burr as its chief sponsor -- you know any must-pass bill can be held hostage at any time by any Congressperson who gets it in their head that the LWCF is intolerable socialism. And at least one corporate front group, the Property and Environment Research Center, has argued that the LWCF should do more to maintain federal lands (as if no other sources of funding are available for that task!) before buying up new lands for conservation. Of course, if our government spends less money buying lands, that's more land available to PERC's big funders for development, drilling, and mining -- and less land available to us for our use and enjoyment. PERC isn't that much cleverer than your average right-wing think tank.

Meanwhile, Julianne Collins has started a petition on Change.org helping you tell Banfield Pet Hospitals, the biggest privately-owned veterinary chain in America, to stop declawing cats in their facilities except if the cat has a serious medical issue that declawing would help, undoubtedly figuring if Banfield takes the lead, others will follow. Ms. Collins tells people the same thing I've been telling them for years: that declawing a cat is like cutting off the tips of a person's fingers at the first knuckle -- except, of course, it's even worse, since you and I don't have retractable knives in our fingers. And a housecat without its front claws may never have to kill prey to feed itself or defend itself against a larger animal, but it will still be an unhappy, insecure cat. If a cat scratches me, I don't demand amputation of its claws; I just try to figure out how to approach the cat better next time. And if a cat scratches your furniture? Put up a couple of scratching posts! Preferably one with sisal rope wound around it. In the unlikely event your cat still prefers scratching up your couch, you still have options, behavior modification chief among them. Nothing worth doing is easy, after all.

Around the table: from Presidential debates to roll-up TV screens.

Gary Johnson, the former two-term Republican Governor of Mexico who was the Libertarian Party's Presidential nominee in 2012, has sued the Commission on Presidential Debates to open up said debates to third-party candidates. If he can prove the CPD has been "very open and, frankly, arrogant in their intent to exclude candidates other than the Republican and the Democrat," then he has a shot at winning. His solution (to include all candidates who are able to get on enough states' ballots) is a good one; I wish him luck in his effort (and if I get suitable action alerts about the matter, I'll pass them along).

Hackers cut a Corvette's brakes wirelessly, to demonstrate that it can be done. In the most general terms: once your car gets too computerized, and uses a Wi-Fi network for some functions, you're vulnerable (though the brake-cutting problem only occurs at low speeds; other safety functions, presumably also computerized, kick in at higher speeds). Specifically, the problem here is a device that enables insurance corporations to track your driving habits. How on Earth did insurance companies ever succeed before such intrusive devices?

In a shocking special election result, a Democrat doesn't just pick up a heavily Republican seat in Georgia's state House, he crushes his opponent by 10 points. One can presume some special factors were at work (the district tends to be socially liberal, the Democrat in question used to quarterback Georgia Tech's football team, the Republican had a bizarre sexual harassment scandal hanging over him) -- and one can also presume that when a Democrat takes a courageous stance (against these "religious freedom" laws right-wingers want to use to discriminate against gays), voters respond positively.

Oh great, now the "liberal" media is fluffing up Ohio Governor John Kasich as a "compassionate conservative." It's like nobody remembers George W. Bush, who ran as a "compassionate conservative" and governed as neither. As Bush the Lesser himself once said: "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, don't get fooled again."

Finally, LG Display showed off an 18-inch flexible TV panel in Korea earlier this week, one you could roll up and stow away without damaging it. LG also showed off a 55-inch screen, less than a millimeter thick, which can be attached to a wall with magnets (but not rolled up, presumably -- at least, not yet). No word on prices or consumer availability; I might wait until someone comes out with paint-on TV screens (which could conceivably replace windows, not that you'd want to do that if you didn't have to).

Action: freedom of the press, and solar power for working families.

One day after the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death, St. Louis County filed charges against two journalists originally arrested while covering the Ferguson protests. The charges? Trespassing and interfering with a police officer, officially, but really for covering protests and continuing to film police officers after being ordered out of the McDonald's in which they were working. In Veracruz they kill reporters who oppose the government, but American politicians who twist the law to silence reporters shouldn't congratulate themselves for being so much better. At least one of the reporters works for the Washington Post, which raises the possibility that the "liberal" media might actually get upset about it. In the meantime, Free Press helps you tell Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecutor, drop the charges against the reporters. You remember that name? That's right, he's the same county prosecutor who somehow couldn't file any charges against the officer who shot Michael Brown. So the chances are pretty good he doesn't care what you think. Tell him anyway.

Meanwhile, H.R. 3041/S. 1713, the Low Income Solar Act, would expand financial assistance (via loans and grants) to low-income homeowners, affordable housing projects, and community solar facilities (though more than half of the assistance would go to low-income homeowners). The bill's price tag is a bit low for my taste -- $200,000,000 annually for the next 15 years, and if the "liberal" media describes that sum as ZOMG THREE BILLYUNZ OF TEH DOLLARZ!!!!!, that would still be one billion dollars fewer than oil corporations will receive in corporate welfare handouts just this year. Still, it's a good thing to direct some money to the kinds of folks who simply don't have money lying around to pay the start-up costs of converting to solar power -- and these folks also include, by the bill's reckoning, folks in rural areas, Appalachian areas, Native American nations, and areas with little sunlight. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Low Income Solar Act, and bring more energy independence to working families.

Around the table: yeoman work from five actual journalists, plus Jeb Bush blames Obama and Clinton for Iraq.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, gives us a thorough exposé of Scott Walker's ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC, the lobbying organization responsible for so many horrible bills at the state level). You'll see the same theme, over and over again: Scott Walker breaking promises of more legislative transparency, instead springing right-wing legislative surprises on the people of Wisconsin, though they're not surprises to him or his ALEC buddies. Remember that when he tries to seem "moderate" after he gets the nomination.

And Steve Horn and Michael Aria, writing at Nation of Change, introduce us to the multitudinous lobbyists who benefited from Gov. Walker's $250 corporate welfare handout to the Milwaukee Bucks for a new stadium. Warning: a lot of these nefarious folks are Democrats, including Tom Barrett, who lost to Scott Walker in gubernatorial elections twice in a two-year period. In case you were wondering how Scott Walker keeps winning: a big part of it is that his Democrat opponents are corrupt weaklings.

Amanda Frank, writing for the Center for Effective Government's The Fine Print blog, debunks the "Texas Miracle" myth of low government regulation leading to a boom energy economy. Actual facts: not only does fracking pollute good Texans' drinking water, and not only do more than half of Texas schoolkids go to school near hazardous chemical facilities, but Texas still has a lot of poverty, a lot of uninsured, and a lot of good folks working full-time who still need taxpayer assistance to make ends meet. Come to think of it, pushing Rick Perry's "Texas Miracle" might do for Republicans in 2016 what Michael Dukakis's "Massachusetts Miracle" did for Democrats in 1988. Think they remember?

Jeff Gelles, writing at the Philadelphia Inquirer, tells the story of one Matthew J. Hartigan, who has spent nearly two decades trying to convince a multitude of creditors that he's not the Matthew J. Hartigan who's skipped out on property taxes in Northeast Philadelphia -- which he couldn't be, since he would have been 12 when the other Mr. Hartigan bought those properties. Good news? He's beaten back all comers so far. Bad news? Not everyone has the good fortune of being legally unable to purchase a property at the alleged time.

Finally, there's Jeb Bush, actually blaming Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the rise of ISIS. Haters will of course agree with Mr. Bush, but actually ISIS, too, is all George W. Bush's fault -- we can blame Mr. Obama for launching another unconstitutional war, one that will fail to eradicate ISIS no less, but no doubt Mr. Bush just thinks the President isn't killing enough people, even if he's hesitant to say so right now.

Action: murdered journalists in Mexico, medicines from Cuba, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Mexico risks becoming known the world over as the place where journalists go to die after the murder of Rubén Espinosa nearly two weeks ago. Mr. Espinosa is the 13th journalist to die in the state of Veracruz, in the southern part of Mexico, since 2011 -- when Veracruz's governor, who has been in the habit of threatening reporters, came to power. A Veracruz state official may have even threatened Mr. Espinosa directly -- "stop taking pictures if you don't want to end up like Regina," the official supposedly said, referring to another murdered journalist, Regina Martínez. Yet thousands of good Mexican citizens have not been afraid to take to the streets in protest of these murders, so Avaaz helps you demand that the Mexican government investigate the deaths of Mr. Espinosa and the four others who appear to have been tortured and murdered along with him, and also that they investigate the Governor of Veracruz. There is no hope for freedom of the press in Mexico -- or, indeed, freedom -- if politicians can murder journalists without paying the price for their crimes.

Meanwhile, the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba means that Americans can now bring back $400 in goods from Cuba, including $100 in cigars and rum, when traveling. However, Americans can't bring back medicines with them, and Cuban scientists have apparently been rather innovative over the years -- over 150,000 patients worldwide have received the Cuban drug Heberprot, which could do a lot to help restore gangrenous tissue in diabetic patients, and thus help them save limbs that would otherwise have to be amputated. Meanwhile, the one FDA-approved drug for this purpose, Regranex, rarely gets prescribed because it might well cause cancer. So Roots Action helps you tell President Obama to allow the FDA to test Cuban drugs and, if the FDA approves them, to allow good Americans to import them into the United States. Note well that we're certainly not asking for Cuban medicines to be imported into America willy-nilly -- the medicines should only come here if we can verify they're safe and effective. That's what civilized societies do, after all.

Finally, the good news out of Australia is that the Federal Court of Australia has overturned the Australian Environment Minister's approval of the Carmichael Coal Mine, on the grounds that the approval didn't properly account for two endangered species found in the area, so the Sierra Club helps you tell Australia's Environment Minister to reject the Carmichael project once and for all, and thus protect the Great Barrier Reef from further destruction. Approving the coal mine doesn't end at allowing the mines to be dug, as you know -- it also involved dredging Great Barrier Reef waters, which would have damaged the one-of-a-kind reef and the fragile ecosystems that depend on it. Despite its far-right bent, Australia's government has some incentive to reject the project now -- it was depending on America's Export-Import Bank to provide much of the funding, but Congress hasn't been able to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank, so the money may not come, which could give the Australian government a free pass to appear greener than they really are. But I care less about short-term victories than about the space to win long-term ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: campaign finance reform, and voting rights.

The People's Email Network helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.J.Res. 22/S.J.Res. 5, which would amend the Constitution to permit our federal and state governments to "set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates to influence elections." So now that we have a candidate on the Republican side who can literally buy his way into the Presidency without the help of SuperPACs and dark money and the like, a candidate who repeatedly embarrasses the Republican Party by saying the stuff in public that they only say in private, might we have some campaign finance reform now, please, Congress? Might we have fewer BS arguments about how money equals speech, less hysteria about how campaign finance reform would "silence the pastors" and allow incumbents to silence their opponents, neither of which occurred under the McCain-Feingold regime? Nah, we won't see mass converts of politicians to the cause of campaign finance reform -- not as long as big corporations pay for their campaigns and their perks. We will simply have to make them convert.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, then the League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth, and CREDO all still help you do that. You may recall that Great and Awesome and Thunderous Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell has lately suggested we don't need the Voting Rights Advancement Act because of "how different the South is now." Yet the Voting Rights Advancement Act doesn't even target the South -- it targets any state or municipality that has a record of voting rights violations. Now, if all those states and municipalities happen to be in the South, what would Mitch McConnell say then? Just kidding; he doesn't care about making sense the way civilized people care about making sense. And even if states and municipalities don't indulge in poll taxes or literacy tests anymore, they still pass Voter ID laws, get rid of early voting periods, and move voting machines out of low-income neighborhoods into wealthier ones. So let's not put up with any of that.

Around the table: starring a famous Governor's brother terrorizing his neighbors.

Hillary Clinton pitches her college affordability plan, which Bloomberg says could "do the same thing for higher education that the Affordable Care Act did for health care." And you know what? It'll probably work. But it's not the plan you pitch as a candidate -- it's the plan you settle for, if you have to, once you're President. And when voters get a choice between a super-complex plan that can't be explained in one sentence and her opponent's plan, which will likely be COLLIDGE KIDZ PULLZ UP TEH BOOTSTRAPZ!!!!!, no one should be surprised when voters pick the latter.

Paul Krugman notes the relative absence of Obama-bashing during the prime-time Republican Presidential debate last Thursday, and surmises it must be because "President Obama just keeps failing to fail." Of course, President Obama has run the country more or less as a moderate Republican would, raising taxes on the rich just a bit, passing a health care reform first pitched by the Heritage Foundation almost a quarter-century ago, and blowing the mandate the voters clearly gave him in 2008 to stop letting stupid people have all the say about everything. But no, it hasn't been the disaster Republicans forecast.

Hey, liberals who liked John Kasich after that debate? Dig this: Gov. Kasich says, in re climate change, that "(w)e don't want to destroy people's jobs based on some theory that's not proven." Apparently he prefers destroying people's jobs based on some theory that's been proven wrong, like laissez-faire economics.

Rand Paul says, in re his flat tax proposal, that "income inequality is due to some people working harder and selling more things" than those other people. In an era where banksters suck the equity out of corporations like the vampire squids they are, and no longer care about lending money to worthy businesses that improve products and processes, that's some cojones right there.

Finally, for some truly depressing reading, Gov. Sam Brownback's brother Jim has apparently been terrorizing his neighbors in the rural Brownback homestead of Parker, Kansas. Jim Brownback has, apparently, done it all -- threatened his neighbors, stolen their livestock, shot at their houses, and (I really shouldn't put this last) became a deadbeat on child support and on several six-figure loans, all while throwing around the Governor's name so he doesn't get in trouble. Warning: by the time you get to the part where he leaves a bull to die on the ground in pain for several days and says his insurance will take care of it, you may be in a fighting mood yourself.

Action: the Iran nuke deal, and "ag-gag" laws.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Senator to support the Iran nuke deal. My state's junior Senator opposes it, of course. "At the heart of the issue is whether Iran has truly given up in its 30-year quest for nuclear weapons," he writes. Ah, no: at the heart of the issue is whether we can keep them from getting nukes whether they want them or not; their intentions are moot, and thus invoking the hostages and "wiping Israel off the map" and suchlike is also moot. Sen. Toomey also repeats the zombie lie that we're "left...to trust Iran." Is that why we got the power to conduct inspections of their nuclear facilities 24/7, or the power to inspect new areas based on new intelligence? That's "trust"? But worst of all is his assertion that President Obama won't actually enforce the agreement, because "enforcement leads to termination" of the agreement. But termination would reinstitute sanctions -- which Sen. Toomey already said were effective in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. Anyway, right-wingers used to negotiate with their enemies. I wonder what changed.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to stem the tide of "ag-gag" bills at the state level and protect whistleblowers exposing animal abuse. Remember that Bob Barker-introduced video you saw here a few weeks back, the one depicting the inhumane slaughter of chickens (and the abuse of their chicks) at factory farms? Shooting that video would be against the law in many states now, and too many state (and federal) legislators consider videos exposing the ill treatment of feed animals tantamount to terrorism. You always hoped that governments wouldn't call anyone who might make the redistribution of wealth upward to CEOs a bit harder a "terrorist," but your hopes were dashed, because once a government claims power, it doesn't give it up easily. But there are already laws against libel and slander; why do corporations also need laws that treat their accusers as if they're terrorists? Could it be that these corporations have something to hide? Things like stressed-out, overworked factory workers punching and kicking pigs and slamming chickens' heads into the ground?

Around the table: the Colorado River spill, drug-sniffing dogs, swordfighting about abortion, and police officers vs. cell phone cameras.

EPA workers accidentally release a million gallons of mustard-colored mine sludge into the Colorado River. Which really, really doesn't need the hit -- not just because of tourism, but because the river supplies a lot of states with clean drinking water. EPA talking heads have been a bit slow to say what needs to be said, which is: We fouled up. It's unacceptable, and we'll fix it.

Radley Balko bemoans a U.S. District Court decision allowing continued use of drug-sniffing dogs that might only be "barely more accurate than a coin flip." Key finding: drug-sniffing dogs aren't just trained to sniff out drugs, but also to please their handlers, which means they'll sniff out a lot of false positives -- especially when handlers give treats every time dogs signal the presence of drugs, instead of every time they actually find drugs. Read the whole thing, though -- Mr. Balko anticipates and refutes a lot of objections one might have.

Marco Rubio gets asked about his no-exceptions abortion stance, and, like the born swordfighter he is, doubles down. He even says "when asked to make a decision between two very hard circumstances, I personally reached the decision, if I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of life." Ah, "to err on the side of life" when the mother's life is in danger? He might actually be as stupid as he seems.

And swordfighting begats more swordfighting: Scott Walker says "medically there's always a better choice than choosing between the life of an unborn baby and the life of the mother." And when pressed on what "better choices" are available, his spokeshack made a long, detailed list of the medical options! Nah, just kidding -- she basically said ZOMG TEH GOVNUR IS 100% PRO-LIFE LEAVE HIM ALOOOOOOOOONE!!!!! Seriously, this will damage him, and eventually saying he really "meant" to say "there has to be a better option," which we all wish for, won't cut it, not when you're running for President.

Finally, Rohnert City, CA police officer pulls gun on a man recording him on his cell phone. The city promptly placed the officer on administrative leave, and hastened to add that "the incident portrayed on the video is not a typical interaction between our public safety officers and the public" -- which may be true, but will be of no comfort to anyone shot dead under such circumstances.

Around the table: featuring stories about crime, taxes, and paid leave.

Big oil corporation Shell has severed ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), saying that ALEC's climate change stance "is clearly inconsistent with our own." Yeah, they're doing it to get good PR for themselves, but they're also depriving ALEC of contributions ALEC needs to continue its nefarious operations, so good for them. And good for you, for pressuring them and others like them.

In light of the various tax proposals floated by Republicans at their debates the other night, Kelly Phillips Erb provides a good summary of the progressive income tax, the so-called Fair Tax (which is a national sales tax), and the flat tax. I'd quarrel with her suggestion that our current tax code is convoluted because it's progressive -- it's convoluted because big corporations keep buying themselves tax breaks, and because cowardly Democrats keep tweaking the system so they can increase revenue without seeming to increase taxes -- but thank God she got the rate of the national sales tax right; it's 30%, not 23%, as Fair Taxers have long claimed by doing the math wrong. (But BTW: tithing is charity; paying taxes isn't, since we receive services in exchange for taxes.)

Netflix adopts a new paid leave policy allowing new moms and dads to take the entire first year of their child's life off, if they like. That only applies to the first year, of course -- they're not going to get a full year of leave to be spread out over, say, the first five years -- but the new policy won't apply to low-paid DVD distribution center workers, and Netflix has a notorious enough workplace culture that the salaried workers might be a bit scared to take the time off. But policy is policy, and I'd think Netflix would open themselves up to lawsuits if they discriminated, even for perceived work shortcomings.

From the "nobody could have predicted except everybody" file: four police officers in San Luis Obispo County (CA) get arrested for abusing children at a week-long boot camp. I will smack any pimp who claims that criticizing or charging these officers is "anti-discipline," as if the only two alternatives to any problem you might have with children are abusing them and doing nothing -- or as if the word "discipline" only means "beating people up" (as looking up the Latin root will instruct you).

Finally, The Straight Dope tries to discover if "any one crime" (i.e., drug use) is the main reason for the skyrocketing imprisonment rate in America. Long story short: it's not so much the "war on drugs" as the whole "tough-on-crime" ethos that has pervaded law enforcement since 1970 -- an ethos that has lately been unraveling, though rather too slowly for my taste.

Action: oppression in China, slavery in Malaysia, and airline carbon emissions everywhere.

Amnesty International helps you tell the Chinese government to stop cracking down on activists there. Apparently the Chinese government has put at least 20 human rights activists in detention over the last month -- for what, exactly, I'm sure they'll figure out later -- and has targeted 200 more. A lot of these activists are lawyers -- think of what this country would be like if a President Scott Walker suddenly started arresting scientists. We may have a way to go before we get to that point, but when we do, our government's excuses will likely be just as laughable as the Chinese government's, which has announced that it's targeted a "major criminal gang" that has -- what, run massive amounts of drugs? Shot good Chinese citizens? No, this "gang" has merely been pounding the drum about "sensitive cases." You'd better be able to accuse a "major criminal gang" of a hell of a lot more than that if you want to run a police state. Thankfully, even the Chinese police state is susceptible to the ravages of bad PR from all over the planet.

Meanwhile, the good news out of Maui is that Trans Pacific "Partnership" negotiators ended talks at the end of July without a TPP deal. Of course President Obama's Trade Representative tried to put his best face on it, but the fact that they haven't scheduled new talks as of yet probably tells us more. And President Obama has suffered one of his worst PR hits with the news that the State Department promoted Malaysia from its human trafficking blacklist, though Malaysia certainly hasn't earned such a promotion -- all to stop a legislative effort to stop fast-tracking of trade deals with nations with horrible human trafficking records. You can go ahead and say that President Obama essentially looked at Malaysia's record of contemporary slavery and just shrugged. Well, we certainly don't have to put up with that, so Friends of the Earth helps you tell President Obama that it's plain wrong to downplay slavery just to get "free" trade deals done. He probably doesn't care what you think, since you're just a "sanctimonious purist." But I wear that label with pride when Our Glorious Elites act like morals are for little people.

Finally, the EPA may be taking our government's most vigorous action ever on carbon emissions from power plants, but there's at least one other important front upon which they haven't acted, and that's controlling carbon emissions from airplanes. Think about it for a minute and you'll see the problem -- if the commercial airline industry were its own country, it would rank seventh in the world in carbon emissions unleashed, just after Germany. But the EPA would rather let the International Civil Aviation Organization take care of it; I know the EPA is a bit tired from all the work it's been doing (and, under President Obama, it's mainly been doing good work), but that doesn't mean the problem's going away. And there's no use saying gosh EPA regulations just won't work if other countries won't do it, because how is that the American can-do spirit? Don't we pride ourselves on how well we lead the world? Or do we only do that when we bomb foreigners? So Friends of the Earth helps you tell the EPA to issue the most vigorous airline carbon emissions standards possible for airplanes.

Around the table: starring eight folks who shouldn't be running for President -- and one who's going to speak to Liberty University.

C. Robert Gibson profiles "Eight Democrats and Republicans Who Shouldn't Be Running for President." Gut reaction: only eight? Dominant theme: a lot of these fools are experts in corporate welfare handouts and nothing else, and not just Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal either, but also the putatively compassionate John Kasich and the putative Democrat Martin O'Malley, the latter at this moment trying to figure out how he can be the "sensible" liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton. "Not giving away taxpayer money to corporations" might have made him that alternative.

At freaking last, the SEC finally (after two years!) passes a rule requiring corporate disclosure of CEO-to-median-worker pay. And the arguments opposing the rule are painfully desperate -- that it might accidentally spur corporate boards to pay their CEOs more (though pretty much anything does that!), that it would make workers obsessed with how their salaries relate to everyone else's (which might, ah, expose more wage discrimination), that it would cost corporations money to do all that tabulation (because monks with quill pens do that, not computers!), and that corporations would be "shamed" (we can only hope!).

The Consumerist covers the International Trade Commission's 2012 ruling that a largely unknown plastic retainer-manufacturing outfit violated Invisalign's patent on the device -- not by importing not actual plastic retainers, but by importing the computer files used to make them on a 3D printer. You can see why this could be a good thing (we should prevent crooks from using the but we didn't import the actual thing ha ha snort! excuse to avoid just prosecution) and you can also see why this could be a bad thing (as one advocacy group director points out, the ruling could lead to "all telecommunications, including phone calls, audio streams and television broadcasts" becoming "articles of importation").

In an unorthodox and brilliant move, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination, will accept Liberty University's invitation to speak there. Liberty University is the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's creation, you may recall, and here we will begin to test a theory I've long held is true -- that the marriage between evangelicals and right-wing corporatists is one of convenience rather than conviction. I wish Mr. Sanders luck -- but he won't need as much of it as the "liberal" media would have you think.

Finally, Great and Awesome and Holy Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell accuses President Obama of "demoniz(ing) (his) opponents" by saying hard-line Republicans and hard-line Iranians have the same aim, i.e., to scuttle the Iran nuke deal. Don't like being told you're "with the terrorists"? Well, welcome to my world! He also said we don't need to update the Voting Rights Act because of "how different the South is now." The South is more subtle about its racism now, nothing more -- and the Voting Rights Advancement Act wouldn't target the South per se, but areas demonstrating a pattern of voting rights violations, and if those areas all happen to be in the South, tough toodles.

Action: tax relief for working families, a higher minimum wage, and an end to the "revolving door" between banksters and our government.

NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your Senators to expand and make permanent both the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. Why? Because, unlike the multitudinous tax credits corporations get for doing nothing or doing things they're already doing, the EITC and the CTC actually help working families, and in helping working families they help the economy as well. It may be no coincidence that Pope Francis is coming to town in mid-September, right about when Congress will be deciding matters concerning tax relief; I doubt that Congress has heard and digested the Pope's repeated criticisms of world poverty, but it'll be nice to have him around, spreading the word -- especially if right-wing haters start spouting off about how 47% of American don't pay any taxes due to the EITC and CTC. All of those Americans pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, state income taxes, and the like, but why tell the whole truth when you can punch some poor people? (NETWORK also advises you to call 1.888.410.0619 and actually speak to your Senator's office about the matter; certainly they'll take more notice if they get a phone call.)

Meanwhile, H.R. 3164/S. 1832, the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour over the next four years, and would provide for further annual increases based on increases in the median wage of all Americans (which, as I said before, would be really good some years and really bad in others; I would still prefer indexing the increases to inflation). The bill would also hike tipped employees' wages, though rather more gradually than everyone else's; perhaps the bill's authors (Rep. Ellison in the House and Sen. Sanders in the Senate) included that part as a concession to restauranteurs, though of course I wouldn't make such concessions until, you know, negotiations have actually begun. Still, the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act is considerably better than the Democrats' other offering on the minimum wage, the Raise the Wage Act (H.R. 2150/S. 1150), which would gradually raise the minimum wage to $12/hour over the same period. I guess it's good that they're shooting higher. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3065/S. 1779, the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The bill would slow the "revolving door" between the financial sector and our government, by preventing corporations from handing out bonuses or other compensation packages to employees who go off to work for our government, since that seems the very definition of the "conflict of interest." If you know that Citigroup paid Jack Lew a $1 million bonus for getting a government regulatory gig in 2009, you know this is a problem -- after all, banksters don't hand out bonuses like that because they expect you'll be extra hard on them when matters concerning them come before you. Naturally, the destroy-all-regulations-at-all-costs crowd will smile and tell us that banksters are the only people who understand the system, therefore they're the people you should put in charge of regulating it. You recognize that, right? It's a hostage situation -- put the fox in charge of the henhouse, or the hens get it!

Around the table: "free" trade hurdles, Scott Walker's money problems -- and a victory against "ag-gag" laws.

The New York Times actually seems rather concerned that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deal (which concluded a recent round of negotiations in Maui last week, without scheduling another one) won't get done. To which I say: we can only hope! Trouble is, if the TPP gets dashed on the rocks because, say, Republicans insist on giving American pharmaceutical corporations more handouts, the "liberal" media will still report it as "the deal died because the hippies all screamed."

David Cay Johnston writes a comprehensive account of how corporations have hidden more and more of their profits offshore to avoid taxation in America. And, apparently, repealing one section of the giant 1986 tax reform law would do the job -- it would bring back at least $6 trillion in cash that's just sitting overseas doing nothing right now, and that could finance a lot of good projects. But Congress won't do it, because socialism.

U.S. District Court for Idaho rules that the state's "ag-gag" law is unconstitutional. Key quotation: "an agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter. Food and worker safety are matters of public concern. Moreover, laws against trespass, fraud, theft, and defamation already exist." Fairly succinct, and portends future good works.

Scott Walker's financial disclosures reveal that he has two credit cards running $10,000 of debt each, and is paying over 27% interest on one of them. Everyone struggles with credit card debt at some time or other, but not everyone's selling their ability to shepherd the people's money well as their President. And Mr. Walker is also one of the poorest Republican Presidential candidates -- rather like Max Baucus, long a lackey of the big banks and never an even remotely wealthy Senator -- and I think I actually like it less that Mr. Walker seems to believe so sincerely in shoveling the people's money to corporate welfare queens that he refuses to benefit from it.

Finally, on the occasion of the Obama Administration issuing its final climate change rules, Media Matters profiles over 20 "grassroots" organizations dedicated to killing the new carbon emissions rules dead. You'll recognize the gnarled hands of the Koch brothers in most of them. Some of them sound all reasonable and citizenly ("Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy," for example), but, as a famous philosopher once said, "you can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face."

Action: automatic voter registration, car insurance pricing, and fuel efficiency in trucks.

The state of Oregon recently enacted a law making voter registration automatic -- every time a good citizen of Oregon gets a state ID card or a driver's license (including renewals!), that citizen is automatically registered to vote, and if they don't want to be registered to vote, they have to go through the trouble of opting out. Seems like every state could do that, and California legislators are trying to do that as we speak. So Roots Action helps you tell your state legislators to make voter registration automatic. What will the haters say in response? They may say it violates the privacy rights of citizens (ah, more than getting a driver's license does?) or exposes the personal information of domestic violence victims (which it doesn't). Other haters will say it's already easy enough to register to vote, which certainly doesn't argue against making it easier, and certainly doesn't serve the nominally conservative aim of streamlining bureaucracy. But forget the haters, and just pray the good Lord has mercy on their souls so they don't die bitter and angry, because the Lord's mercy is all that'll prevent that.

Meanwhile, Consumer Reports has researched how American car insurance corporations really set their rates, and their findings may surprise you. Long story short: your credit means more to insurers than your good or bad driving habits, insurers will charge you more if your consumer data suggests you won't notice, discounts are pretty good in some places and not others, and loyalty to one insurer, also, has varying effects (from discounts to actual premium hikes) depending on where you are. All that has one striking result: you won't pay into the insurance pool according to how much stress you cause everyone else in accidents, DUIs and property damage, but you'll pay into the system pretty much in whatever manner makes corporations the most money, which isn't the aim of a civilized society and, at least as far as corporations charging you more if they think you won't notice, is also illegal. Hence Consumers Union helps you tell state insurance commissioners to ensure that we get charged based on our driving, and not on unrelated matters.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to make new trucks at least 40 percent more fuel-efficient over the next 10 years, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. Freight trucks may account for only seven percent of all vehicles on American roads, but they account for around 25% of all auto fuel usage in America -- probably because they haul around 70 percent of all American freight. We're not asking these trucks to suddenly get 40 miles per gallon -- I'm sure that technology is a ways off -- but currently trucks get around six miles per gallon, and if we want to reduce our use of fuel, reduce pollution, and reduce our carbon emissions, and we want to do all three of these things, then getting better fuel efficiency out of the sector of our transportation fleet that does most of the hauling around seems like a no-brainer. To politicians with less than no brain, of course, or their selfish paymasters, it's just another regulation that crushes them. But where's their entrepreneurial, can-do spirit? Surely they don't need or want our government to coddle them so they may succeed?

Around the table: Republicans fail to defund Planned Parenthood, Scott Walker gets punked and good, and other stories.

Democrats filibuster Republican bill that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding. I guess it's nice to know Democrats will still fight for something. But it'd be nicer to know that maybe, just maybe, putting out deceptively-edited videos isn't the recipe for success it was just six years ago -- though it should never have been a recipe for success anywhere, anytime, and has only succeeded due to "liberal" media laziness.

FAIR notes that the "liberal" media hardly ever covers when a politician slurs Iranians as "evil," "liars," or "animals." But here's an analysis of the problem I don't often hear: "(s)ome argue this is the inevitable product of the US right-wing constantly making ridiculous statements. At this point, they claim, we should simply expect conservatives to make absurd remarks." I've never heard someone actually say that, but I know everyone thinks it, though we all know racism is racism and bad behavior is bad behavior, and each of these demands a response.

Unlike those Scott-Walker-lives-in-my-butt protestors in south Philly last week, protestors in New Hampshire pulled off a good stunt on Scott Walker on Monday -- by posing with the candidate and a friendly sign, only to flip the sign to reveal a fake check for $900 million made out to Mr. Walker and signed by the Koch brothers. Yes, the photo is pretty glorious, and no, these folks are definitely not Walker campaign plants.

No doubt disappointing dozens of Americans, former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich has decided not to run for the Republican Presidential nomination after all. But the real story here isn't that he was a Republican who actually decided not to join the other 219 candidates; the real story is that he really thought anyone was waiting for his candidacy in the first place.

There's just no end to Teh Stupid: Charles Koch now flogs his alleged commitment to criminal justice reform as a way of trying to bamboozle good folks into thinking he's really not so bad. As with his brother's alleged support of gay marriage, it means nothing if he's going to continue to support politicians who just so happen to be tough-on-crime jerks. You know, as the "price" for supporting "fiscally conservative" politicians.

Finally, the incomparable Dave Zirin reports on the horrible water quality in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the 2016 summer Olympics will take place -- yes, with swimmers and sailors and the like. You know it's bad when sailors get sick after a few hours, and at least one scientist says athletes who actually go into the water have a 99 percent risk of infection. Say it with me: clean water is our most precious natural resource. And it won't stay clean unless we keep it clean.

Action: banksters, "trophy" hunting, and the minimum wage for New York City fast-food workers.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed five years ago -- but federal agencies (including the SEC) still haven't written many of the rules that Dodd-Frank mandated. You'd think after the banksters took a massive dump all over our economy and put millions of people out of work, our government would pursue the matter with more urgency, but they listen too much to the anti-regulatory blather of America's coddled-and-enabled financial class. News flash: the banksters still aren't popular, even if the fury the American people have toward banksters has subsided, and with laws come responsibilities -- responsibilities like writing regulations and enforcing them. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell the SEC to finish the job Dodd-Frank gave them already. SEC Chair Mary Jo White, another one of Barack Obama's post-partisan appointees, may have done the worst job of anyone in his Administration, and that's saying something when this Administration that's had Tom Vilsack and Timothy Geithner in it. But, like all of them, she responds to public pressure -- if we do our jobs.

In the wake of the trophy killing of Cecil the Lion -- who had been coaxed off national park land in Zimbabwe (where he could not be legally killed), and then left to suffer for more than a day and a half by the Minnesota dentist who ultimately killed him -- Sum of Us helps you tell airline corporations to ban the transportation of "trophy" animals from their planes. Dead animal "trophies" wouldn't get very far if airplanes didn't transport them, after all, and that means there'd be less of a market for them. As of yesterday, 10 airlines have answered the call, including British Airways and Delta, but most American airlines haven't done so yet. Perhaps they're afraid of Republican swordfighters who extoll the "free market" above all other things. But trophy killing doesn't fulfill any of the functions of a civilized society -- it doesn't feed people, it doesn't prevent invasive animals from upsetting ecosystems, it doesn't even preserve traditional hunting practices, but just serves to delude cowards into thinking they're courageous, and no "free market" should be obliged to coddle cowards.

Meanwhile, you know that the wage board convened by Gov. Cuomo in New York state recommended a $15/hour minimum wage for New York City's fast-food workers -- but the state Labor Commissioner still needs to approve the recommendation. We've figured that was a done deal, but really, nothing is a done deal until we do it. So Fight for $15 helps you tell the New York state Labor Commissioner why fast-food workers should make at least $15/hour. You can bet the anti-worker forces will be bending the Labor Commissioner's ear, with loser BS about "killing jobs." I call it "loser BS," not just "BS," because the entrepreneur who worries about bottom lines whenever thinking about a minimum wage hike -- instead of all that extra money going into potential customers' pockets because they just got a raise -- is a loser, frankly. And we just witnessed how Gravity Payments' $70,000 minimum wage "forced" them to hire 12 more workers to process the resulting new business and respond to all the emails and social media postings following the announcement. Is it too much to ask that these zombie "job-killing" lies stop getting up after we've put them down?

Around the table: featuring tales of Republican Presidential aspirants and their would-be kingmaker.

President Obama unveils the finished EPA carbon emissions rules, which would cut carbon emissions from power plants by a third from 2005 levels. Mr. Obama showed some moxie, too -- "if we don't do it, nobody will" is not a statement Mr. Bush copyrighted, after all, and as for referring to "war on coal" hysteria as "scaremongering," well, it's about time. Hillary Clinton did him one better, though, calling Republicans "defeatists." I expect Republicans to whine about it like they never called Democrats "defeatists" during Tha Bush Mobb years.

Charles Koch says he hates corporate welfare, reports David Sirota, but his corporations have taken over $160 million in corporate welfare over the years. And in a sane and moral society, such hypocrisy would finish a man, once exposed -- but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, we'll have to bring this up a hundred times before the "liberal" media covers it, and then maybe another hundred times before they cover it well.

Also at the Koch brothers' notorious weekend retreat for Republican Presidential candidates, Charles Koch compared his political work to the civil rights movement -- even dropping the names of Frederick Douglass and Dr. King -- revealing him as just another fool who wants to be black without doing any of the hard work that comes with being black. And to hear a Koch talk about a "level playing field" when the Koch brothers started out with gobs of inherited money is, well, pretty rich.

At that very same conference, Jeb Bush changed his position on raising more tax revenue to solve budgetary problems. It's not much of a flip, though, from demanding $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases to demanding zero tax increases ever. It does bring him back in line with House Republicans, though, who consistently demanded a deficit-reduction plan consisting entirely of spending cuts -- and who occasionally even threw some tax cuts for the rich in there.

Finally, eighth-grade student Rebecca Freid refutes a scholar over whether "No Irish Need Apply" signs ever existed in America during the 19th century. Adjectives like "hero" and quite extraordinary" do certainly apply to Ms. Fried, soon to be a first-year student in high school, but only in a society this sick, immoral, and decadent do we need to constantly refute "scholars" who deny what's right in front of their damn faces.

Action: slave labor, campaign finance disclosure, and reining in bankster power.

First things first. Sum of Us helps you tell Canadian mining corporation Nevsun to stop supporting slave labor in Eritrea. Slave labor at Nevsun mines in Eritrea, that is -- though the Eritrean government calls it "national service," which will make me think less benignly on the term the next time John McCain calls for it. "National service" in Eritrea doesn't just mean forced labor, it also means rape, torture, and execution. But Nevsun pays over a billion dollars a year in royalties to the Eritrean government, meaning they're likely making a lot more, so when they tell us that the U.N. report exposing their role in Eritrean slave labor didn't rely enough on Nevsun's own assessment, you could be forgiven for thinking they might have some self-interest in saying so. Also, they claim it's out of their hands, because the workers are "subcontracted." That's some cojones right there: slavery as "subcontracting." And again: "national service" by working as a slave for foreign corporations! There may be something less popular in the world, but I'm having trouble thinking of it right now.

Meanwhile, Common Cause helps you tell the IRS to close loopholes allowing superhuge political groups to hide their donors, which action will help us find out who's paying out the wazoo to influence our elections. How do groups like Crossroads GPS keep their donors' identities a secret? By calling themselves non-profits, which, by law, must spend most of their money on "social welfare," not political advocacy. But the IRS may well define "political activity" more precisely, so that (hopefully!) the unscrupulous are less able to argue that such activity is really "social welfare" activity. Republicans, naturally, think all of this infringes on "free speech." How many times must I tell these pimps! Money is not speech -- money is property, and laws can regulate property. And, again, this is disclosure we're talking about, which Great and Awesome Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell used to support, until disclosure looked like it might happen, when he started calling it "bullying." Disclosure is really not too much to ask.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to support S. 1709, the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, which would force banksters to either provide traditional banking services or engage in casino-economy speculation but not both, then Americans for Financial Reform still helps you do that. Why? Because banks hold your money, and if we allow them to indulge in hifalutin "securities" with your money, they will be far less careful with your money, which exemplifies a conflict of interest. So what do you say when some pedant says "the repeal of Glass-Steagall didn't really cause the financial meltdown, because the Treasury Department had already broken down that wall"? You say, banks hold your money, and if we allow them to indulge in hifalutin "securities" with your money, they will be far less careful with your money, which exemplifies a conflict of interest. Yes, I copied-and-pasted that, because you don't need to go through a lot of trouble to smack a pedantic argument down.

Around the table: from the "backlash" against Gravity Payments to new developments in hedge fund taxation, worker-owned cooperatives, and tiny housing.

The New York Times describes a "backlash" against Gravity Payments, whose CEO recently hiked his workers' minimum wage to $70,000 annually, but it's not much of a backlash. Gravity has had to hire more folks to handle a spike in new business and in "emails, Facebook posts and phone calls -- which were "mostly positive," so how is that, or the new business, "backlash"? Also, some of the CEO's CEO friends felt ashamed or shown up, boo hoo. And "a few customers" took their business elsewhere -- but most came back, which we don't learn for 14 paragraphs. And two-count-'em-two employees left, complaining about those other people who make the same money they do now just punching a clock, like there's just no other way on Earth to fix that. And the CEO's older brother has sued over other grievances, which does threaten Gravity's existence, but sounds like it would have happened anyway. Verdict: this is the news trying to make the news.

IRS moves to prevent hedge fund managers from classifying their management fees as "capital gains" so they can avoid paying taxes on them. I suppose Republicans will get out their swords, if they're not already out, and claim this is more IRS tyranny that must be remedied through legislation -- and don't bet on the "liberal" media pointing out that, hey, these are hedge fund managers Republicans are trying to coddle.

With regulators cracking down on payday loans, some corporations are offering alternative products that can be just as bad. A lot of states cap the fees that corporations offering installment loans can charge, but a lot of states don't, and it's the same story with open-ended credit (including those cash advances on your credit cards that you should avoid like the plague). Again, this does not mean we throw up our hands and say "government doesn't work." It just means we work harder, and we accept that the price of civilization, and of democracy, is eternal vigilance.

Cecilia Garza at Yes! magazine describes how worker-owned textile cooperatives have helped soften the blow of nearly 90% of clothing corporations in North Carolina moving out between 1992 and 2012. Memo to Republicans: this is what a "small business" looks like. And Republicans will kill efforts like these if they can, because they stand in the way of big corporate profits, and thus the campaign donations that keep Republicans in office.

Finally, Slovakian firm Nice Architects has designed an egg-shaped, solar- and wind-powered Ecocapsule, which also collects rainwater, has a kitchenette and shower, can be situated pretty much anywhere you can get sunlight, and sleeps two, as long as they don't bring all their vinyl records along. It'll be pricey (Nice hasn't said how pricey yet), but the price'll come down when enough of them sell, and if it comes down enough, it could also be a pretty good solution to the homeless problem (think Occupy's Tiny House project for the homeless in Madison, WI).

Penny rants for Sunday, August 2, 2015: "I see weak people!"

David Barton whines that putting a woman on the $10 bill proves that liberals "literally want to erase our history." After all, it's not like the other bills all have men on them or anything! But that wasn't the stupidest thing he said on July 27, and neither, amazingly, was his invoking of our Founders, as if he's not the guy who attributes all kinds of right-wingy quotations to the Founders without sourcing them. Here's the winner: "(t)hey want to remake this country; in fact, as Obama said, to transform America, and you don't transform America from what it was without trying to erase what it was." You know who thinks "transformation" can never, ever build on tradition or honor the past? Two kinds of people: 1) a simpleton, and 2) someone pretending to be a simpleton in order to turn emotionally-vulnerable people into right-wing rageheads. I don't believe you'll find very many simpletons in America, I really don't. But you'll find a lot of pretend simpletons -- or, as better folks than I have called them, "useful idiots" -- and they're very well-paid in our sick, immoral, and decadent society.

Sen. Cruz (S-TX) suggests he'd shut down the government over continued funding of Planned Parenthood. You know, over that stupid video that the "liberal" media is somehow covering as if it's not a badly-edited hit job, even though, you know, they're supposedly full of "journalists" and stuff, a lot of whom actually took classes in college about how editing creates reality, even! You'll recognize the threat as more right-wing swordfighting -- Ted Cruz can't just have a vote over defunding Planned Parenthood like Rand Paul, but has to shut down the government over it. (And then, of course, Mike Huckabee suggested he'd send in federal troops to stop abortions, which proves that someone always thinks they have a bigger sword.) But, ah, Politico? That headline is profoundly offensive -- Planned Parenthood wouldn't "shut down the government"; obnoxious politicians would shut down the government. I guess if Republicans threw a similar tantrum over, say, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, Politico's headline would read "How Black Voters Could Shut Down the Government."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), currently vying for the Democratic Presidential nomination, says he will not run as an independent candidate if he does not get the Democratic nomination, for one simple reason: "I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States." Memo to Sen. Sanders: you would not be responsible for electing a right-wing Republican as President if you were to run as an independent. Who would be responsible? The right-wing Republican Presidential candidate, obviously, for successfully lying to the American people about what he plans to do (cough Scott Walker cough), and also to the people who voted for him though it wasn't in their interest to do so -- and also to the spineless Democrat politicians who accomplish nothing when they have power and thus give no one any positive reason to vote for them. We liberals get enough guff for "always blaming the wrong people" that we should actually, you know, blame the right people when bad things happen.

Around the table: terrorism, cowardice, dishonesty, handouts, abortion, and renewable energy.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that we don't commonly consider the racist murderer Dylann Roof a "terrorist," but our laws do commonly consider animal rights activists "terrorists." Only a sick, immoral, and decadent society prioritizes like this -- and it'll get worse under a President Scott Walker, who'll be such a stooge to big agricultural corporations he'll make that big corn subsidy champion and breaker of GMO-labeling promises, Barack Obama, seem like a granola-eater. Why, it's almost like that's the idea.

Alan Pyke at Think Progress instructs us that Walter Palmer's trophy killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe makes hunters look much worse than they are. Luring a lion out of a national park to kill it isn't what hunters do, it's what cowards do; so is killing a lion who has a pride (whose cubs will be killed by the next male that takes over the pride), and so is failing to mercy-kill the lion for a day and a half. The good news? Walter Palmer is about the most unpopular man in America right now.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) not only invested in a fund that would have yielded massive returns if the U.S. had gone into default in 2011 during the debt ceiling crisis, but failed to disclose this holding in financial disclosure forms. In other words, he stood to benefit from a default, and didn't want you to know about it, lest you think he was in bed with the banksters -- or that his efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage to harmful and unpopular budgetary demands might have been, you know, selfish. It's enough to make a man wish we forbade Congressfolk from investing in anything at all.

The incomparable David Sirota, after noting that opposing corporate subsidies happens to be an actual bipartisan cause, reminds us that corporate subsidies is "a central part" of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's economic agenda. So yes, perhaps we should skip over "cronyism" when talking about the WEDC and instead just go right for the jugular: corporate welfare, as in "Scott Walker's economic plan begins and ends with corporate welfare." Maybe an ad with guys in monocles holding their hands out and crying would do the trick, though no Democrat has the cojones to do it.

Mike Huckabee suggests that he might send in federal troops to stop abortions. He cites President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as support, and an actual legal scholar reminds us that President Eisenhower, though not a great fan of desegregation, did send in federal troops to integrate schoolkids in Arkansas -- so it sure seems like a lot of right-wingers want to be black without doing any of the hard work that comes with being black.

Finally, Germany produced an astounding 78 percent of its energy needs on July 25 from renewable energy sources. That was a spike, obviously, as Germany produced a little over 25 percent of its energy from renewables in 2014 overall, but again, the big American polluting corporations will be more than happy to tell you that renewable energy doesn't work, when all that's really missing is commitment.