Thieves in the Temple.

Action: saving an Afghan interpreter, and punishing corporate climate change deniers.

First things first: Jeramie Kenyon of Huntsville, AL has started a petition on Change.org with which you can tell our government to help her friend Sayed (no last name given, for reasons which will become obvious), who has interpreted for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan for six years and has applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, come to the United States. Whatever we may think of the "war on terror," Sayed helped our war effort in Afghanistan for the best of reasons: he lived under the repressive Taliban regime there, and wanted to help his country change for the better. Sayed has apparently saved countless lived and survived two IED attacks himself, despite getting seriously injured each time -- but, as you might imagine, he is unable to return home, lest Taliban marauders kill his family, as they have threatened to do. And with American soldiers finally leaving after 15 years, soon he's going to be out of a job. I never said we might as well stick out these wars since we were already there, because that's hostage reasoning. But we owe it to those folks who've helped us that we should help them escape oppression.

And now, here's a novel petition from CREDO, one which helps you tell President Obama and the Justice Department to prosecute ExxonMobil for its decades-long campaign to deceive the American public about the seriousness of climate change. Turns out there's precedent for such a prosecution: our government prosecuted tobacco corporations under the RICO (or Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations) Act, and that prosecution revealed that the tobacco corporations knew all about the deleterious health effects of their products, but lied about it. Likewise, we know that ExxonMobil not only knew fossil-fuel pollution is a main cause of climate change, but actually helped scientists learn about climate change during the late '70s and early '80s. Does that make this a slam-dunk case? Not by itself, no -- Exxon's leadership has changed enough over the years that I suppose they could defeat a suit by claiming their ignorance is just that. Still, I certainly think there's enough here to start an investigation. Jim Inhofe won't like it, but he doesn't get all the say around here.

Around the table: from the Trump tax plan to the actual will of small business leaders.

Don't be swayed by soft "liberal" media coverage: Donald Trump's tax plan is a big fat turd that mainly helps the super-wealthy. Also, don't be swayed by the promise to close hedge fund tax loopholes, or by vague promises to close other corporate tax loopholes, and certainly don't be swayed by the promise of no taxes for folks who make less than $25,000 (which is, thanks to the EITC and the CTC, already happening!) -- note well that Mr. Trump would slash the top rate from 39.6% to 25%, would slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%, would repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Estate Tax, and would allow corporations to repatriate offshore profits at 10%, which will only encourage more offshore tax sheltering.

Rick Cohen at Nonprofit Quarterly finds redlining still alive and well in America. Key quotation: "it is kind of remarkable how much of the public has slowly bought into the notion that the problems of, for example, mortgage foreclosures have been largely due to borrowers making silly or stupid decisions about how much debt they could carry and not about banks selling more expensive loan products in minority neighborhoods and lenders engaging in often nefarious, even fraudulent practices." Yes, we are too quick to criticize the folks who've been victimized by evil, and very slow to criticize the folks who do the evil.

NASA scientists declare that Mars must contain liquid water, after finding water molecules in the salt deposits on Martian mountainsides. No one has observed water actually flowing on Mars yet -- the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observes the surface once a day, at the hottest point of the day, which is what I'd do if I wanted to be sure Mars had water -- but more vigorous observation may yet find it.

Ho hum, Jeb Bush releases his energy plan. So, is there anything good about it? Well, let's see: it would gut federal regulations on coal and fracking, punt a lot of responsibility and accountability to the states, allow us to export oil and gas which won't lower energy prices but which will make oil and gas CEOs wealthier, and would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, so no, no, no, and no. Oh, but it would also impose a strong 40%-by-2040 renewable energy standard, because we've got to find new ways to create energy! I kid, of course -- Jeb Bush doesn't care about renewable energy, because renewable energy CEOs aren't his people.

Finally, Good Jobs First points us to a study from the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation, suggesting that most small business leaders think state laws and programs benefit large corporations more than small businesses. Which you already knew, but, as always, it's nice to have some data behind it. And anyone who complains that the survey includes responses from only 41 business leaders had better complain just as loudly when pro-big corporate articles include responses from single business leaders. Spoiler alert: they won't.

Action: the government shutdown, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and the "revolving door" between Congress and lobbyists.

Shutdown day is tomorrow, and both Americans for Financial Reform and USAction help you demand that Congress keep more corporate welfare handouts for Wall Street banksters out of the government funding bill. They'll happily do it, especially since the "liberal" media's eyes are trained exclusively on Planned Parenthood funding in House and Senate funding bills. Should we fund Planned Parenthood? Of course we should -- they do a lot of good things for poor women, and our government already doesn't fund abortions. But should we allow Our Glorious Elites to divert our attention from the far more harmful things Congress might do to permit another round of useless financial speculation that could crash the economy? Hell no! And could some of my brethren on the right stop for a minute and realize they feel just as used as I do, that our Congressfolk hold us hostage to get things passed that would never pass if we shone light on them, that vigorous financial regulation doesn't "kill jobs" but protect consumers from corporate greed? Hope does spring eternal with me, you know.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census released data last week showing that, sadly, women still make 79 cents on every dollar men make, on average. And adjusting for similar experience, qualifications, etc. doesn't up that figure very far -- certainly not to a dollar-for-a-dollar. Hence H.R. 1619/S. 862, the Paycheck Fairness Act, would help close that wage gap by limiting the factors employers can use to pay women differently to "bona fide factors" including education, training, and experience, and would force employers to prove those factors really do justify wage gaps. The Paycheck Fairness Act would also prevent corporations from prohibiting employees from discussing their pay with their co-workers, since such discussions are often the only way workers find out they're getting shorted. Why have Republicans consistently blocked these reforms? Because "it just helps trial lawyers," they say -- implying that it doesn't help women, which claim they don't, of course, even try to prove. One way to keep lawyers away: stop discriminating against your female employees. Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support S. 1959, the Close the Revolving Door Act, and prevent Congressfolk from becoming lobbyists after they leave Congress, then Rootstrikers helps you do that. Last time I posted about S. 1959, a reader objected that employers generally can't control what employees do after they leave their employers, unless it's written in their employment contracts. That might exempt Congressfolk who retire before the bill becomes law (and then again it might not -- who is a Congressperson's employer, anyway?), but once you stand for re-election and gain re-election, you'll essentially have a new "employment contract." And we the people certainly have an interest in keeping our Congressfolk from ever becoming lobbyists -- it gives them a major financial incentive to serve mammon, rather than people, by knowing they can exploit their vast network of connections inside government to make money tenfold once they get out, if they just play the game. Congressfolk should avoid such temptations, of course, but if they need our help to do that, we're more than happy to give it.

Around the table: Shell abandons Arctic oil drilling, and other stories.

This is a surprise: Shell announces it will abandon plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean. The Times credits cheap oil and the resulting falling profits for industry's unwillingness to embark on big projects like drilling in the Arctic; Obama fans no doubt figure that he let Shell move forward on its existing drilling leases knowing they'd abandon them, but that's a hell of a thing to count on, and I certainly wouldn't discount all the bad PR generated by drilling opponents (bad PR helped along by Shell's previous misadventures in the Arctic).

The Justice Department orders Hudson City Savings Bank (which serves the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas) to pay over $30 million to stop "structuring its business so as to avoid majority-Black-and-Hispanic neighborhoods." That "structure" includes not putting branches in such neighborhoods, working with brokers there, or making customers close on houses all the way up in Fairfield, CT. The Rand Paul Freedom Brigade would tell us that you should be able to sell to whatever customers you like. But the rest of us would ask why that should result in segregation, and assert that the freedom of black folks to live wherever they like is more important. Redlining is real, folks, and any program that would end racism must destroy redlining.

John Boehner, now on his farewell tour, warns against the "false prophets" who "whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know...are never going to happen," a criticism apparently directed at his far-right flank. Anyone else think it would be rich for the man who owes his entire Speakership to his far-right flank to "warn" anyone about them? Seriously, this guy would still be bumbling along as Minority Leader if Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, et al hadn't "whipped people into a frenzy" in 2009 and 2010.

Ho hum, Jeb Bush thinks Pope Francis I should clam up about climate change, because he's "not a scientist." We could debate whether the Pope's several years working in a food lab before seminary school, or his secondary school diploma in chemistry, make him a "scientist" per se, but, ah, what's Jeb Bush's scientific expertise, exactly? Jeb Bush's scientific expertise derives from the same source as the rest of his "expertise" -- whatever his big corporate donors tell him. Having to keep big campaign donations coming really makes you much less free.

Finally, The Nation profiles John Fetterman, the Mayor of Braddock, PA who is also running for the 2016 Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. You know the road to hell is paved with the skulls of folks who say "I'm not focus-grouped, I'm not poll-tested" and don't deliver on that promise -- and you're also witnessing a Presidential candidate who perhaps isn't as focus-grouped or poll-tested as he should be! -- but Mr. Fetterman seems to know how to talk to people who don't start out agreeing with him, and that's a good thing. It might even help get him past the Establishment figure the Establishment hates (Joe Sestak) and the Establishment figure no one cares about (Katie McGinty) in the primary.

Action: funding government, punishing polluters, and reversing exorbitant drug price hikes.

Our federal government isn't funded after Wednesday, and John Boehner's resignation as House Speaker presumably makes a government shutdown less likely. But I think it also makes a bad government funding bill more likely -- the "liberal" media, as you know, has obsessed about whether the House will defund Planned Parenthood, and I think that's what Republicans want, so they can slip other nefarious policy riders into a government funding bill, riders that would defund financial regulatory efforts and net neutrality enforcement and campaign finance oversight. We know these things could happen because they have already happened -- Sen. McConnell used the 2014 "cromnibus" to defang financial regulation and campaign finance reforms, and Rep. Crenshaw (R-FL) slipped an anti-net neutrality provision into an appropriations bill earlier this year. But our will is still our will, so Public Citizen still helps you tell Congress to pass a clean budget bill that doesn't include bad policy initiatives the public would fight if not for the hostage crisis of a deadline.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state House just passed SB 875, which would grant immunity from prosecution to corporations that give treated mine waste to frackers, but the House amended it, meaning the Senate has to vote on it again. Why we would immunize polluters from the full force of the law is beyond me. Well, it's not beyond me why someone would do it -- someone might have a legitimate-but-misguided concern about "job creation," or might merely want to keep those campaign dollars coming -- but it is beyond me why someone would do that and then insist they're still civilized people. And substituting fresh water with treated mine waste in fracking operations won't do all that much for us once that mine waste gets into the water table, thus polluting the clean water we all rely upon for drinking, washing, and bathing. So let's not force ourselves to choose between clean water and jobs (or, more precisely, clean water and even more exorbitant CEO salaries) and let the Sierra Club help us tell the Pennsylvania state Senate to vote down the latest version of SB 875.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the notorious "pharma bro," Martin Shkreli, to completely reverse his more-than-5000-percent price hike to Daraprim, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. The outrage over Mr. Shkreli's actions (an outrage even Donald Trump shares!) has centered mainly around the use Daraprim has for AIDS and cancer patients, but Public Citizen reminds us that pregnant women also use it, and folks even use Daraprim to treat or prevent malaria. We also know that toxoplasmosis (the parasitic infection Daraprim treats) doesn't go away with one pill; even before Mr. Shkreli's pricejack, treating toxoplasmosis typically ran about $1,000. And as far as Mr. Shkreli's assertion that the price is necessary to justify new research, development, and innovation: one, everyone takes innovation hostage to profits, and two, pharmaceutical corporations have not only been notoriously tight-lipped about how much money they actually spend on R&D, they've even squashed legislative efforts at such disclosure. You have to wonder what they have to hide.

Around the table: law-and-order matters, health care imbroglios, Kim Davis does the completely unexpected -- and what seed vaults can do for civilizations.

Southern District of New York federal court rules that a moron writing obscenities on a speeding ticket is still exercising his First Amendment free speech rights in doing so. Question: how could anyone call that "harassment"? Unless it's repeatedly targeted at a specific town official, it looks like an occupational irritant to me. Unless, I suppose, you believe your government must never, ever be questioned, and that anyone who ever does so must hate all government, and therefore all civilization. (And some folks who think they're not like that should replace the word "government" with the word "police" in the previous sentence and see how they feel about it.)

Ho hum, Rand "I'm such a freethinker" Paul says that 20 percent of British Muslims were "okay" with the British subway bombings of 2005 -- except that a study found that less than one percent were "okay" with it, and the 20 percent number represents the number of Muslims who sympathized with the "feelings and motives" of the bombers. This is a fairly important distinction that far too few of our politicians and pundits make; I wonder why that could be. And I don't just think Ron Paul would never have said that, I know Ron Paul would never have said that.

Gregg Gonsalves, writing at The Nation, reminds us that "Martin Shkreli is Just a Tiny Part of a Huge Problem," that being the fact that Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world, and the big pharmaceutical corporations kill any drug pricing reforms that would keep their CEOs from gilding the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. When even Hillary Clinton takes flak from big pharma, you know it's bad. But you know, single-payer/Medicare-for-all health insurance would cure this problem.

Ashlee Kieler, writing at The Consumerist, tells us how higher-than-expected medical bills still plague Americans. The problem is with the "in-network/out-of-network" issue: you might use an in-network hospital to get surgery, but that hospital might use an out-of-network doctor, anesthesiologist, or lab, all without your knowing, and any of those would drive up your prices. Again: single-payer, Medicare-for-all health insurance would end this madness. (In the meantime, Consumer Reports offers tips that could help you avoid "sticker shock" from your medical bills.)

Lizzie Wade, writing at Wired, tells us "That Arctic Seed Vault Isn't Just There for Doomsday" (i.e., a nuclear catastrophe), but also to restore native plants to war-torn areas. It's also for research and development, of course -- one might better adapt to the ravages of climate change if one can study and procure seeds that grow well in warmer climes, for example.

Finally, in a loss Democrats across America must be ruing, Kentucky county clerk/non-job doer Kim Davis has switched to the Republican Party. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the numerous famous Republicans who've sucked up to her over the last few weeks. (But I'd caution against suggesting she's one of those ancestrally-Democratic Southerners who just never got around to changing her registration -- though their fortunes there are clearly on the wane in Kentucky these days, the Democrats have only had a strong presence there since the days of Wendell Ford.)

Around the table: Donald Trump, John Boehner, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Vladimir Putin.

Jeffrey St. Clair, writing at Counterpunch, reminds us that Donald Trump's "noxious nativism" is "a grandiose hypocrisy": "(h)is father Fred boasted that his empire of suburban shacks was constructed by laborers 'right off the boat,' untainted by union membership. Donald followed the same reasoning at his own construction sites and in the low-wage jobs at his casinos and hotels." He also reminds us of the target audience for Mr. Trump's nativism: the same "Reagan Democrats" who have been pushed to the economic edge by thirty-plus years of Reaganism.

You may have heard that a certain Speaker of the House whose name rhymes with "John Boehner" has resigned. The headline here, "John Boehner May Have Been the Only Thing Standing Between America and Madness," is a little overheated. More likely, the next House Speaker will be a little to Mr. Boehner's right, and the "liberal" media will undeservedly label him a "leader" and a "moderate," as they did for Mr. Boehner, and thus move the "center" of American politics even further right. And we could fix the Constitutional "flaw" of having different parties control different branches of government by making independent commissions, not state legislators, redraw House districts. If Democrats would do something for America while they're in power, that would also help matters.

Jeb Bush tells a questioner at a South Carolina town hall that Republicans can win Black votes not with a "message" of "division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff," but an "uplifting" message "that says you can achieve earned success." Question: if your taxes pay for "stuff," how is it "free"? I wonder how long it'll be before Mr. Bush starts making town hall attendees sign loyalty oaths.

Marco Rubio proposes giving corporations a tax credit for giving their employees paid sick and family leave. Because if there's anything corporations just don't have enough of, it's tax breaks. Plus it still caps employee benefits at $4,000 annually, whereas the boon to corporations (a 25% tax credit?) will obviously be much larger. Is there any policy initiative Mr. Rubio can't drag through the mud?

Daily Kos diarist Puddytat says Scott Walker pulled the plug on his campaign because he listened too much to national Republican advisers and because it was hemorrhaging money. The lunchbags with Walker campaign logos on them is truly priceless irony. I must admit that I had forgotten that Wisconsin doesn't term-limit Governors, so Mr. Walker could run for a third term in 2018. But the damage he's done to Wisconsin should be so obvious to everyone by then that he'll again be "called" to quit.

Finally, the Russian government fails in its plan to crack the Tor network (upon which users can surf the net anonymously), as the corporation contracted to accomplish the deed has now committed to spend twice the money the Russian government gave them just to get out of the deal. Well, like your parents always said, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself -- and not contract it out to private corporations, particularly when FOUR MILLYUNZ RUBLEZ!!!!! doesn't go as far as it used to. Seriously, though, yay privacy!

Around the table: the endless folly of right-wingers.

Hillary Clinton releases plan to slow rising drug costs. Like her student loan debt plan, it's as unwieldy as Obamacare and, also like Obamacare, will probably do some good. Here's a campaign slogan: Jeb give you wankery, but Hillary gives you wonkery! But, ah, you know what else would stop runaway drug prices? Single-payer health care, that's what.

Ho hum, Marco Rubio thinks Pope Francis's "moral authority" only extends to things like abortion and "the importance of marriage" and certainly not economics. Mr. Rubio wants you to believe that more tax cuts for the rich alleviates poverty, but wanting you to believe that "morality" has only to do with the narrow buttons Republicans always push is even worse than that. At least he's having a public spat with Donald Trump, which lessens the possibility that Mr. Trump will pick him as his running mate, and having Marco Rubio as the VP nominee (I don't think he's quitting the Senate for any other reason!) is almost as bad as having Scott Walker as the VP nominee.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones evaluates Jeb Bush's claim that it's just too hard to start a business in America, and finds it wanting. Those of us who started a business in one day already find Mr. Bush's claim surprising, of course, but read the piece anyway, so you can be reminded that (for example) it's bad to generalize about an entire country by using data from two cities, and it's also bad to cite "authorities" if their science is bad.

Martin Shkreli is so hated in America that even Donald Trump piles on, calling Mr. Shkreli "spoiled," "smug," "disgusting," and a "disgrace," concluding, also, that "(h)e is zero. He is nothing." And that, folks, is why Donald Trump has led in polls for so long -- because he talks about Martin Shkreli the way a lot of folks would talk about him. I'm not terribly motivated to be polite about Martin Shkreli, either.

Finally, Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe got very, very upset when folks described a man he invited to testify at a committee hearing as a "white supremacist." Mr. Metcalfe insisted the man was actually a "white nationalist," and added that "(t)o say somebody is a nationalist and for the independence of their country and a patriot to (sic) defending their country, is a lot different from saying somebody is a racist," leaving us to wonder exactly which white nation Mr. Metcalfe's guest hails from. Or should I say heils from?

Action: fair drug prices, and country-of-origin labeling laws.

You've heard about Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund bankster who bought the rights to a drug that treats toxoplasmosis and promptly jacked up the price of the drug from $13 a pill to over $750 a pill? Who then said the new price was still too low, really, and said "I think profits are a great thing"? Real peach, that one. He has since declared that he'll lower the price of the drug "to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit,” adding, perhaps optimistically, "(w)e think these changes will be welcomed.” You know what change I'd welcome? Reversing the price hike entirely, which Sum of Us helps you tell Mr. Shkreli to do. Daraprim helps immunocompromised folks, like those who have HIV or cancer, fight a fairly common parasite that can wreak absolute havoc on the immunocompromised, and beating it when your immune system isn't at its best is not something you do with one pill. There's hope for civilized society, I suppose, since Mr. Shkreli has already begun to shrink before all the public shaming he's received. But we don't have justice yet, so don't let up now.

Meanwhile, you may recall that the World Trade Organization ruled that American country-of-origin labeling laws (or COOL laws) for meat violated the TBT and GATT agreements, and put other nations' meat producers at a disadvantage. This is exactly the kind of thing we've warned about with "free" trade agreements -- that bodies unelected by Americans could essentially nullify American laws that good Americans demanded, and we have been agitating for COOL laws for years, because we'd like our meat-sellers to be bound to our communities, and also because we'd like to use as little fuel as possible in transporting our meat, and thus cause less pollution. But of course the U.S. House didn't move to withdraw from "free" trade agreements that violate our democratic processes, but promptly repealed America's COOL laws in H.R. 2393. The Senate hasn't acted on the bill yet, but they could at any moment, preferably without any warning, since that's what it'll take to pass the bill. So CREDO helps you tell the Senate to preserve our country-of-origin labeling laws for meat. If it means we have to bow out of "free" trade agreements, well, gosh, what a shame.

Action: better wages for WalMart workers, and GMO food labeling.

CREDO helps you tell WalMart to pay its workers $15/hour. Folks tempted to say LEAVE WALMART ALOOOOOOONE!!!!!! should recall that while, yes, WalMart did raise its minimum wage for its hourly workers earlier this year, it only did so after years of protests, strikes, and bad publicity, and WalMart has followed this pay hike by cutting jobs and hours for many of its employees, while its executives continue to plow corporate profits into stock buybacks, a strategy our government used to frown upon back in the day, out of a fear that it would influence free markets unduly. So we're not only looking at one-step-forward-three-steps-back behavior from WalMart, we're also looking at a corporation that needs intense public pressure to take that one step forward to begin with, and at a world where no corporation changes its behavior without pressure. Contemporary "free" marketeers should remember that concentrated power anywhere, not just in government, must be checked by the people -- and corporations have now concentrated more power than they've had at any time over the last 80 years.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to support legislation requiring food product labels to tell you whether or not those products contain genetically-modified organisms (or GMOs), then Consumers Union still helps you do that. You may point out in your missive that "legislation supporting food labeling" most emphatically does not include H.R. 1599, the so-called Safe And Accurate Food Labeling Act, which pre-empts state efforts to force GMO food labeling and which also creates yet another voluntary labeling system like the one we already have where no one labels their GMO foods. "Legislation supporting food labeling" would more precisely include H.R. 913, the Genetically-Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, which would actually prohibit the sale of GMO food unless it's labeled as such. H.R. 913 even contains sensible exceptions, i.e., for farmers who try to grow organically but find their seed contaminated by genetically-modified seed that blew in from a nearby "experiment." Really, what do big ag corporations have to hide?

Around the table: from one Bush to another.

Perhaps overconfident now that Scott Walker is out of the race, Jeb Bush says getting rid of those pesky Big Gummint regulations will spur growth and hike wages. "3 percent GDP growth" and "6 percent wage growth" over 10 years aren't impressive figures, since even Obama-era GDPs increase a couple of points every quarter, and naturally the regulations he really wants to kill concern things like carbon emissions, Dodd-Frank, and net neutrality. No word from Mr. Bush on whether, say, the savings in health care costs from clean air and clean water regulations will ever figure into his thinking. I'm starting to think he started wearing glasses because he knew once he started campaigning, people would want to punch him in the face.

Paul Krugman tells us why the banksters are constantly complaining that the Federal Reserve's prime rate isn't high enough. Long story short: they're greedy assholes. Long story somewhat longer: they whined that low interest rates would lead to a death spiral of inflation, and now, after several years of that not happening, they're whining (and I don't know how they can do this with a straight face) that low interest rates cause bubbles. As if bankster schemes don't cause bubbles! And they're still filthy rich! How much is enough for these people?

Surprise, surprise, Sam Brownback's Kansas "experiment" in far-right economics isn't going so well, what with the state actually losing over 8,000 private sector non-farm jobs in July and August. I'd quibble with the notion that good Kansans really wanted to see this experiment through, though -- when Kansas Democrats' mantra is let's phase in new budget-busting tax cuts for the rich a bit more slowly, rather than let's repeal Sam Brownback's entire record, one shouldn't be surprised when voters throw up their hands and fall back on the party that at least agrees with them on abortion.

Ben Carson has stepped in it so bad that even Ted Cruz points out that the Constitution explicitly bans "religious tests" for public office. But he can't help but point out that "I am a constitutionalist," which is obnoxious -- as if he has all the expertise about the Constitution, or as if you can't actually have valid opinions about the Constitution unless you slap such a label on yourself. And he still thinks we should just exclude Syrian Muslim refugees from coming here, as if no vetting of refugees ever happens before arrival.

Finally, we learn that George P. Bush's first year as Texas Land Commissioner has seen the mass uprooting of long-time leadership officials and their replacement with George P. Bush cronies, most of whom got their jobs without the positions being posted. That last item violates state law, by the way, but laws are for little people like us. Other allegations include "creating an atmosphere where all of the employees are hunkered down, waiting to be fired," "demanding loyalty oaths," and "weekly purges." Taking corruption and call it "reform": it's Tha Bush Mobb way.

Christmas in September.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has lately polled consistently in the low single digits, has suspended his Presidential campaign -- and in dropping out said he's "called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field," and urged other Republican candidates to drop out as well, so that the party could coalesce behind a nominee who is not a certain very loud billionaire who embarrasses them by saying the things out loud that they only say at country clubs. This is, of course, par for the course for a political animal who combines the inarticulate cunning of George W. Bush with the messaging skills of Karl Rove -- if he can call corporate welfare "job creation" and getting goodies for his cronies "winning for the people," why not call quitting "leadership"?

But in a world where repeatedly spewing forth racist and sexist garbage is apparently no longer a serious impediment to political success, it can be hard to see exactly what Scott Walker did (or failed to do) to lose the nomination. Of course he's not as scintillating as Mr. Trump, but neither are the other 154 remaining candidates, and Mr. Walker didn't win three statewide elections in four years because he's scintillating -- rather, he cuts the figure of a man who knows his stuff and doesn't get rattled when he's challenged, and voters respond to that as surely as they respond to a billionaire with a bad attitude. As far as I can tell, Mr. Walker only made two mistakes that Democrats would have mentioned in campaign ads: he out-Romneyed Mitt Romney by taking three-count-'em-three positions on birthright citizenship within a week, and he suggested that the British government didn't like President Obama's "leading from behind" in foreign policy, which earned that famously terse retort from the Cameron camp: "(t)he Prime Minster did not say that and does not think that."

You might find that assessment a surprise, if you've attended the steady drumbeat of stories about Walker missteps (like the Philly cheesesteak "gaffe," ugh) and sound bites from other Republicans (who knew Tom Coburn attended the party's pulse so well?) describing Mr. Walker as "not ready for prime time." You may be tempted to respond that folks who think Mr. Walker wasn't "ready for prime time" haven't watched Marco Rubio try to explain anything, but you'd be better off attributing Mr. Walker's demise not just to Mr. Trump, who sucks the oxygen from any room he's in, but also to that infamous right-wing chimera, the "liberal" media. Not that the "liberal" media had very much to say about Mr. Walker's destruction of public unions or his embrace of "right-to-work" laws, or his patent refusal to do either of these things while he was campaigning. But Mr. Walker too often showed contempt for reporters, especially when they asked tough questions. Aside from one frank assessment of a New York Times reporter on a mic he didn't know was hot, how much contempt for the "liberal" media did George W. Bush show in 2000? And who was the "liberal" media's favorite in 2008? The "liberal" media may not remember much, but they remember when they've been disrespected.

So now what? Mr. Walker, in "suspending" his campaign, could always come back, I suppose, but I doubt he will, since we don't live in that universe where Gary Hart won two terms as President. My heart swells at the prospect that Mr. Walker will have to go back to Wisconsin and face the mess he's made, and ultimately leave office in 2018 as disgraced as Mr. Bush did a decade earlier, but there is another, horrifying prospect: Mr. Walker could wind up as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, not on a ticket with Mr. Trump, of course, but maybe with John Kasich or Chris Christie. Having Mr. Walker as your running mate would be like getting a good campaign manager for free, and once he's largely relieved of the responsibility to talk about himself or his own record, his considerable political skills could help propel the Republican nominee to victory.

I'm not going to lie to you, though. Scott Walker dropping out of this race is Christmas in September. He'd have been that horrible a President. And now we're very likely spared that catastrophe for at least eight more years.

Action: safe oil drilling, and corporate taxes.

Sit down for this one: in August, the Canadian Environment Minister approved Shell's plan to drill off the coast of Nova Scotia, and, incredibly, would allow Shell to take 21 days to cap an underwater blowout. By comparison, their neighbor to the South (i.e., the United States) requires oil drilling corporations to cap an underwater blowout within 24 hours. Imagine a Deepwater Horizon-type spill off the coast of Nova Scotia and Shell waiting three weeks for the capping equipment to arrive from Norway, South Africa, Scotland, Singapore, or Brazil. Anyone else think it'd be better if Shell had the equipment, you know, close at hand? And I will brook no silliness about Shell being unable to compete with other oil drillers if our governments made Shell clean up its messes in the way we would expect children to clean up their messes. Thankfully, Canada's Environmental Minister doesn't have the final say -- the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board does, and Sum of Us helps you tell the CNSOPB to reject Shell's drilling application unless it cleans up its act.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Etsy to abandon its international tax avoidance schemes, then SignHereNow.org still helps you do that. To summarize: Etsy, the online storefront where artists and craftsfolk can sell their wares, has lately created a subsidiary in Ireland. Why Ireland? Because so many Etsy customers and workers are there? Well, not exactly -- Ireland's corporate disclosure laws are actually rather weak, and Etsy could well do the dance so many other corporations do, where they pretend money made here in the U.S. was actually made somewhere else, so they don't have to pay U.S. taxes on it. Worse, Etsy struts around about being a "socially responsible" corporation. Etsy can be green and gay-friendly all it wants, but it will never achieve "social responsibility" as long as it aims to avoid its obligations to the American commons. If we all have to pay for the services we get from our government, and big corporations constantly skimp on their duty to pay their fair share of those taxes, we can hardly call those corporations "responsble," can we?

Around the table: meet the biggest jerk in America today! And other stories.

What has two thumbs and is the world's biggest jerk? This guy, who used to run a hedge fund and who just bought the rights to the 62-year-old drug Daraprim, which treats toxoplasmosis, and who promptly raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. Hedge fund managers sure do a lot for civilization! Mr. Shkreli, who has already left quite the trail of slime in his 32 years, says he'll use the profits from the inflated price to develop better drugs for toxoplasmosis, though at least one scientist says there's no need for that and, hey, maybe there are better ways to raise money toward that end than gouging AIDS patients?

Nurses at a Swedish retirement home go from an 8-hour workday to a 6-hour workday -- and their work gets better, they like their jobs more, and turnover goes down. The employer had to hire more people (and I wonder if their employers classify them as "full-time" anymore, though that might be a bigger deal in America), but, hey, aren't we trying to figure out how to create jobs? Walter Einekel's entire last paragraph is worth reading, and savoring.

Surprise, surprise, a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary apparently violated the economic sanctions in Iran while Republican Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was HP CEO. And Ms. Fiorina wants you to think she just didn't know it was going on! But "vote for me because I can competently run a business" can't magically transform into "well, how do you expect me to know everything that goes on in a big business?" (And yes, I noticed that Ms. Fiorina didn't actually say she didn't know about it, but that the SEC concluded she didn't know about it. There's a difference, and I'm sure Chris Wallace noticed it, too.)

I hate to bring this guy up, but Ben Carson has been doing well enough in Republican Presidential polling that I have to deal with him. Mr. Carson says Muslims shouldn't be President, even calling the idea of a Muslim President "unconstitutional." Like those who thought John F. Kennedy would literally call the Pope before making big decisions, Mr. Carson conflates private faith with public service. I wonder why he can't tell the difference. (Stay until the next-to-last paragraph, though, and you'll see how Rand Paul can make anything worse. When is his dad going to take him out to the woodshed?)

Chris Christie, after being reminded that the Secret Service name he chose during that 26-hour-long debate last week is also the name of a Care Bear, declares that he'll be President if people find him "huggable." I think Mr. Christie actually performed a bit of sorcery there (not that newspaper headlines will tell you that), but still, he's got to be kicking himself for not running in 2012. He was the only Republican who could have beaten Barack Obama, but now he watches Donald Trump swing his attitude in our faces and says, "that was supposed to be me, except I can govern!"

Finally, Lebanon, New Hampshire citizens fight Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) efforts to kill their Tor relay, and win. Tor, as you may know, allows citizens to surf the internet anonymously, which helps (among other folks) survivors of domestic violence abuse and journalists who report honestly on oppressive governments. But no, getting good intelligence and then getting warrants isn't good enough for DHS -- they need to be able to interfere with everyone's privacy. (Personal to those who say don't complain about privacy in a public place ha ha snort: you're perfectly fine with people looking over your shoulder? And can everyone afford broadband at home?)

Action: campaign finance disclosure, and the minimum wage.

Over five years ago, the Supreme Court issued its nefarious decision in Citizens United v. FEC, contending that corporations have, at the very least, enough of a First Amendment right to make certain unlimited political donations. And our government has failed to stem this tide of money-not-speech at every turn -- Republicans repeatedly filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, Democrats did nothing to move the Shareholder Power Act even when they had a Senate supermajority, and the SEC keeps failing to issue regulations requiring publicly-traded corporations to disclose their political donations, despite over a million comments supporting such rules. And President Obama has failed to issue an Executive Order mandating federal contractors to disclose their political contributions. He's a lame duck now, so maybe he'll do it. I kid, of course: none of them ever do anything good without pressure from us. So Public Citizen still helps you tell President Obama to order federal contractors to disclose their campaign donations. They're spending our money, after all, so we get to know where it's going.

Meanwhile, CREDO still helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 3164/S. 1832, the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. Folks who constantly complain that raising the minimum wage will KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! should note that Australia has a $15/hour minimum wage and enjoyed 5% unemployment rates during those years our unemployment rates were above 7%. They should also note that the city of SeaTac, Washington, has seen its unemployment rate continue to fall (from 5.8% to 4.5%) since enacting a $15/hour minimum wage early in 2014. I mean, if minimum wage hikes kill jobs the way right-wingers say it does, then it should be happening everywhere the wage is high or goes up, but clearly it doesn't. Why does a higher minimum wage really bother right-wingers? Because it prevents CEOs from gilding the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. And since, as the saying goes, America is full of people who consider themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires, I figure right-wingers don't oppose minimum wage hikes on behalf of CEOs, but on behalf of themselves.

Around the table: cheating automakers, venal Republicans, and other bad actors.

Nearly 60 law professors urge Congress to pass legislation banning SLAPP lawsuits, or lawsuits designed to stifle free speech that might embarrass someone. Bills that would curb SLAPP lawsuits do attract bipartisan support, yet they just don't attract the fervor that bills curbing class-action lawsuits do. I wonder why. And please understand that by "I wonder why" I mean "because curbing class-action lawsuits pleases Congressfolks' corporate paymasters, whereas curbing SLAPP lawsuits would only help people."

EPA orders Volkswagen to recall almost half a million cars after Volkswagen installed software that induced certain of its models to reduce emissions only during emissions tests, meaning these cars have been polluting the atmosphere for years. Right-wingers who use this incident to claim that GUBMINT RULEZ DOEZN'T WORKZ!!!!! should note that a) all the cars involved are diesel cars, which hardly comprise a majority of cars on the road, or even Volkswagens on the road and b) Volkswagen got caught. In any case, someone had better go to jail over this.

Sens. Heller (R-NV) and Heinrich (D-NM) introduce bill repealing the "Cadillac" tax in the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the Medical Device Tax and the various Medicare taxes affecting only high-income earners would be dumb ideas, but repealing the "Cadillac tax," which affects high-end health insurance plans starting in 2018, would not be, because the folks with better health care plans aren't necessarily the most well-off individuals. Of course, you wouldn't have to jump through hoops like this if we just had a single-payer health care plan like Canada's.

Ho hum, Irving, Texas police also violated Ahmed Mohamed's rights by keeping him from contacting his parents while being fingerprinted and questioned. Let me say that racism and Islamophobia aren't the only factors compelling school officials and local police to act like utter circus clowns throughout this incident -- I think "zero tolerance" and "tough-on-crime" mindsets are as much to blame. But if Ahmed Mohamed lost all trust in adults for the next few years, I wouldn't blame him.

Liz Stinson at Wired describes a "Smog-Free Tower" in Rotterdam that stands close to 23 feet tall and purifies one million cubic feet of air per hour. That may be less impressive than it sounds -- Ms. Stinson tells us that would purify the equivalent of a Madison Square Garden every 10 hours, but most cities are much larger than that, and polluters keep on polluting, as you know. Still, if it can be scaled up, it might be quite the revolutionary device.

Finally, in case you missed Ice-T's livetweeting of last week's Republican Presidential debate, Factcheck runs down the lowlights. Key moments: Mr. Trump apparently making up a figure to describe the economic burden undocumented immigrants supposedly cause, Ms. Fiorina conflating several disparate bits of "testimony" in the Planned Parenthood videos into an image that doesn't actually exist therein, and Sen. Rubio assuring us that doing something about climate change would be "absolutely" useless as if doing the right thing and polluting less is ever useless. As a bonus, we get more vaccine-related stupidity ("anecdotes ARE TOO science!" from Mr. Trump, and "even if the science tells me I'm wrong, I still have the right to do my children harm, because freedom!" from Mr. Paul, who is still not his father.)

Action: bad land management policy, and the "revolving door" between banksters and government.

Sen. Hatch (R-UT) has sponsored S. 1783, which would replace Sec. 1977(b)(2)(A) of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 -- which currently mandates the Secretary of the Interior to, "in consultation with appropriate Federal agencies, State, tribal, and local governmental entities (including the County and St. George City, Utah), and the public, identify one or more alternatives for a northern transportation route in the County" -- with text mandating the Secretary to "ensure that the travel management plan — (i) designates a northern transportation route in the County that follows the route depicted on the map entitled ‘Washington Parkway’; and (ii) provides that the designation and construction of the route is not subject to additional restrictions or requirements from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service." You'd be suspicious of any bill that would reduce public involvement in governmental decision-making by now, I hope, but you'd be more suspicious if you knew that this "Washington Parkway" would run straight through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, home to many threatened and endangered species. Is Utah that small, that we can't come up with an alternative route? Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Mr. Hatch's attempt to work around the democratic process and ram a highway through a protected area.

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 Public Citizen still helps you do that. The bill would slow the "revolving door" between Wall Street banking corporations and government regulatory jobs by banning "golden parachute" pay packages for executives who take said regulatory jobs, by forcing regulators and their senior staff to recuse themselves from regulatory matters concerning a corporation that had employed them within the last two years, and by keeping regulators from taking lobbying jobs for two full years after they leave their federal agencies. Sen. Warren (D-MA) has said that "any Presidential candidate should be able to cheer for" this bill, and indeed, three Democratic Presidential candidates (Messrs. Clinton, Sanders, and O'Malley) have embraced it, while Republican Jeb Bush has embraced the principle of slowing the "revolving door," though not necessarily this bill. Of course he's a Bush and therefore can't be trusted to keep promises like this, but I'm sure plenty of rank-and-file Republican citizens want to fight corruption, too, and for the moment, he helps give them a voice. I just hope they use that voice with their Congressfolk.

Around the table: scare numbers, corporate welfare, private prisons, ransomware, and shouty-caps.

Well, that was quick: an economist whose research was cited by the Wall Street Journal in its scare-number piece on Bernie Sanders has hit back, saying that single-payer health care would save Americans nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. The Journal, you may remember, said ZOMG SANDURZEZ PROGRAMZ WOULD COST TEH 18 TRILLYUNZ OF DOLLARZ!!!!! not too long ago. Further, "(t)hese financial savings would be felt by businesses and by state and local governments who would no longer be paying for health insurance for their employees; and by retirees and working Americans who would no longer have to pay for their health insurance or for co-payments and deductibles." Of course, Americans would be "paying for it," with their taxes, and corporations would be paying less, not nothing, but they're still trenchant points.

Ho hum, the House Ways and Means Committee votes to make some $38 billion in annual corporate tax breaks permanent. They've had trouble passing this mass of corporate welfare for more than two years at a time -- possibly because when ordinary Americans hear that these tax breaks enable big corporations to pretend their profits are all overseas but their expenses are all here in America, they hate them.

Sen. Sanders proposes a national ban on private prisons, which federal, state, and local governments would have three years to accomplish. Mr. Sanders would also bring back the federal parole system -- abolished in 1984 by men who feared everyone would find their penises inadequate -- and ending the minimum on how many immigrants the ICE must detain at one time, a quota that sure sounds like a way of making some crony corporation money. And unlike Messrs. Clinton and O'Malley, no one will be able to accuse Mr. Sanders of suddenly turning on a notion that's benefited his career for years.

Kim Zetter, writing for Wired, explains "ransomware," where evil bastards can lock you out of your computer if you don't pay them a ransom. The individuals who allege that you possess child porn and then ask for a few hundred dollars to make the charges go away really deserve their own circle of hell. How to defend against them as best you can? Use anti-virus software and back up your files somewhere off-net. Oldheads already know this, of course.

Finally, also from the "ho hum" file: Bristol Palin blogs that President Obama "needs to STAY out of" the Ahmed Mohamed case, and adds that Mr. Obama's invitation for Mr. Mohamed to come to the White House is a "childish game()" that "invites more racial strife." Never mind the people who actually create racial strife -- a bold person like Ms. Palin has the vision to blame those who "invite" their behavior, as if folks creating racial strife are simply powerless to stop their behavior on their own! And someone who employs shouty-caps should know all about "childish games." I wonder where she learned about them.

Action: education for girls, auto-loan discrimination, and truck fuel efficiency.

The Global Partnership for Education will meet in December to see whether it should continue with its mission of getting girls basic education worldwide -- or go bigger and try to get girls secondary education (up through 12th grade) worldwide as well. Now Malala Yousafzi helps you tell the GPE to strive for the goal of getting secondary education for girls all over the planet. You may well ask: given the resistance some folks in this world have to girls getting education under any circumstances (Mr. Yousafzi herself, you will recall, got shot in the head by Taliban soldiers because she advocated girls' education), should we really push this matter, especially given that the GPE didn't originally expect to achieve its goal in primary education until this year? The answer is yes -- not just because we never bow to evil, especially when evil goes around shooting people, but also because you don't get what you need unless you ask for more of what you want. If the GPE doesn't go for the bigger ring here, they'll still have heard from us, and they'll be more likely to go for it next time.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1737 soon goes before the full House. What would H.R. 1737 do? It would rescind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent rules cracking down on auto loan-issuers who discriminate against minority borrowers -- including African-, Hispanic-, and Asian-Americans, who seem to pay higher interest rates on their auto loans than other Americans do. The bill would also force the CFPB to jump through a few extra hoops before issuing such rules in the future, and I don't object to public commenting periods, obviously, but I do object to auto-dealing corporations acting like treating all their customers fairly is some unconscionable burden, and I also object to making the CFPB study the "effect on small businesses," because a) there won't be enough of one to justify the mandated effort and b) big corporations really need to stop using small businesses as human shields. So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 1737, and preserve justice for minority auto-loan borrowers.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the EPA and the DOT to issue the most vigorous freight truck fuel efficiency regulations possible, then the Union of Concerned Scientists still helps you do that. Question for the folks who claim that we should just let the market raise fuel efficiency rates for freight trucks, since the big corporations that haul stuff around the country would benefit from the resulting lower costs: if all that's true, then why hasn't it happened? Freight truck fuel efficiency standards haven't changed in 40 years, and, surprise, surprise! Neither has their fuel efficiency. Big corporations would rather just fire workers to cut future costs than actually spend money to cut future costs, even when spending money, in this case, would be a one-time expense. And we're not even asking freight trucks to get 40 MPG -- we're trying to raise their efficiency from six MPG to eight MPG. When freight trucks comprise 7% of the vehicles on the road but use 25% of the fuel, two extra MPG makes a big difference. Even if it costs some CEO some money.

Around the table: scare numbers, Bernie Sanders's speech at Liberty, "childlike" policy proposals, the Brill Building v2.0, and the further troubles of Scott Walker.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post debunks a Wall Street Journal claim that Sen. Sanders's programs will cost $18 trillion. You know the first thing I'm going to say: it's a scare number! And how is it a scare number? Well, the WSJ, like everyone else, doesn't say right off that it's $18 trillion over ten years, and gets that figure by including the supposed $15 trillion cost of a single-payer health care program, without noting (as Mr. Sargent does) that we currently spend $42 trillion a decade on health care now, and would spend rather closer to $15 trillion if we implemented the Sanders plan.

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, D.D. Guttenplan at The Nation describes how Mr. Sanders's address at Liberty University went. Long story short: not bad, considering. Mr. Sanders deserves our praise for going to Liberty and not trying to pander to them; I thought the Liberty crowd would be more responsive on economic issues, but I didn't expect them to respond on racism. As pleased as I am to see less vestigial racism in far-right evangelicals here, I still find it frustrating that they still think banksters are just people who work hard, when banksters just redistribute the income of people who work hard upward to themselves.

Dean Baker finds a New Yorker writer calling new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's populist-left economic proposals "childlike." We could just as easily call Republicans' devotion to tax-cuts-for-the-rich "childlike"! The difference? We could also point to the failure of Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts and the Brownback "experiment" in Kansas, as well as the rise in federal revenues following the return of the 39.6% tax bracket in 2013. But all right-wingers have is the name-calling.

Nathaniel Rich, writing in The Atlantic, pulls the curtain on the virtual unknowns who write almost every song in this week's Billboard Top 40 countdown. If you want to persuade people that today's popular music is all crap (you know, the way every older generation, mine included, likes to do), you could do worse than point to the big hit songwriting now being so concentrated in so few hands. Of course, there's so much music out there now, and so many different ways to consume it, that you can also expend far less effort ignoring the Top 40 than you used to.

Finally, Scott Walker can't name a single time he's stood up to a "conservative special interest" on CNN. He instead talks about how many small donors he has, but if you're running for President, you should answer the question put to you, and then extrapolate. You know what else? "Unintimidated" is the worst word to describe him, because it's easy to act like your opponents don't "intimidate" you when you've got all that Koch brothers support at your back. In fact, given that Mr. Walker's devotion to corporate welfare programs hasn't exactly made him rich, you have to wonder if he has been intimidated -- by corporations.

Action: bankster welfare, "free" trade, and work schedules.

You still remember the financial services meltdown of 2008, right? Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) often seems to have forgotten, as they're currently mulling a rule change that would "streamline" the process by which corporations that have actually admitted to crimes would still get "trusted institution" privileges, like less regulatory scrutiny when they raise capital. Does that sound like the kind of process that needs "streamlining"? It sounds to me more like a process that needs to be thrown out entirely. But the rule is now up for public comment, so CREDO helps you call the SEC and tell them you oppose the rule. SEC Chair Mary Jo White has said she prefers giving treating law-breaking banksters this way because failing to do so "could destabilize a large financial services firm." To which I respond: we can only hope! After all, Americans do like making money and doing business, and if a great banking house falls, a hundred small ones will fill the hole. Why would anyone want us to believe differently, I wonder?

Meanwhile, Trans-Pacific "Partnership" negotiations have momentarily stalled -- maybe because the people of the world hate it and because its defenders' arguments have become absurdly desperate? Perhaps. But we must steel ourselves for that moment when our government starts peddling booga-booga about China and empty promises to get "free" trade right in the next "free" trade deal. You recall that the notorious "free" trade "fast-tracking" bill forbidding trade deals with nations that routinely use or permit human slavery? And you recall, also, that the State Department elevated Malaysia's status on its human trafficking scale, despite little evidence that Malaysia's government gives a damn about the matter? The story's even worse: the illegal palm oil trade in Malaysia, which already depends on slave workers and already displaces indigenous peoples, has caused enough deforestation in Malaysia that the Sumatran rhino just became extinct, and other rare species may follow. The Sierra Club helps you demand answers about Malaysia's human trafficking status and about the TPP.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass H.R. 3071/S. 1772, the Schedules That Work Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Schedules That Work Act would help low-income, hourly-wage workers get that measure of stability from their work schedules that we all deserve, by permitting workers to request a change in their terms of employment and requiring employers to grant such requests if they relate to health or caregiving matters, unless the employer has a "bona fide business reason" for denying it. Note well, also, that the bill would help higher-income employees, too, since their employers frequently make them stay on-call 24/7 when there's no reason to do that except for managerial paranoia and/or incompetence. No doubt Republicans stand at the ready to tell us that the bill would do nothing for anyone but trial lawyers. Silly Republicans, saying the words "trial lawyers" like they're bad words to anyone but a corporate ideologue! If Republicans and their paymasters want to keep trial lawyers out of their lives, they might try treating workers better.

Around the table: President Reagan vs. his votaries, and other tales.

On the eve of the latest Republican Presidential debate at the Reagan Library, Think Progress reminds us that the putative heirs of Ronald Reagan would profess to find much of his program revolting. You know, raising taxes every year but one, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, occasional compromise with Democrats. This reminds me of the time someone called into the Rush Limbaugh show to tell him that President Reagan did-so raise taxes, and Mr. Limbaugh demanded to know the source of that info, and then said he thought the caller's source might be Media Matters, because, you know, MEDIA MATTURZ BAD!!!! That's all right-wingers have left anymore: personal attacks.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals insists that corporations can't compel video services to take down videos that allegedly violate copyright without first making a good faith effort to determine whether the video constitutes "fair use." You'd think this would be common sense, but to big corporations trying to extract unearned money wherever they can, it's apparently not. And Universal Music really stepped in it, first saying they did-too determine fair use, then saying that having to determine fair use could slow down their anti-piracy efforts boo-freaking-hoo. I don't think it's that hard to tell the difference between piracy and fair use -- unless, again, you're trying to leverage your copyrights to redistribute income from other folks to yourself.

Michelle Chen, writing at The Nation, describes how bad the "sharing economy" can be for workers -- and lists some actions workers can take, including using the Big Stick of Bad PR whenever Uber or Lyft has you working 15 "flexible" hours in a row. Oddly enough, I just received an offer from one of my credit card providers promising a "rewards upgrade" -- and one of those upgrades just so happens to be a 20% statement credit on Uber rides through April. Needless to say, I won't be taking them up on that offer, because that's is how the big corporations get you to act against your interests, and the interests of other working families.

Study suggests that "Racial Diversity in Alternative Press May Be Declining." They're doing better with women and LGBTQ populations than folks of color, which, sadly, doesn't surprise me. You'll also be sadly un-surprised to learn that a lot of folks who do the hiring at alternative presses say they "reach out to everyone" or "look to the best candidates regardless of race," which is much too similar to what people say when they don't care to make the effort.

Finally, Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall calls Scott Walker a "Dead Man Walkering," given his Trump-aided plunge in recent polling. The truth is there's nothing wrong with Scott Walker's campaign that $900 million in Koch Brothers money can't fix. Still, a man can hope that a happy side effect of the Trump ego trip is that Mr. Walker can't find the spotlight again, so he has to go back to Wisconsin and face the consequences of the corporate welfare state he's created there.

Action: preserving Mt. Gariwang, and paycheck fairness.

The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and despite the Olympic Committee's stated wish that the 2018 Olympics be a "green Olympics," South Korea is, as we speak, cutting down a Mt. Gariwang forest that's home to centuries-old trees and several rare and threatened species, including the flying squirrel -- all so they can build Olympic-caliber ski slopes. Mt. Gariwang was a federally-protected reserve as recently as 2012, but South Korea revoked that protection in the hopes of winning the Olympic bid; the provincial Gangwon government says they'll replant the trees when it's all over, but that'll cost more money, and that counts on Gangwon's government being willing to uproot the ski slopes (some of which will be paved). So Avaaz helps you tell the South Korean government and the International Olympic Committee to stop destroying the Mt. Gariwang forest from development. Folks who talk about the "economic gains" a region sees when it hosts the Olympics should remember that most of those "gains" go to people at the top, and that that once you've built a massive Olympic infrastructure and the Olympics are over, the tourism boom is pretty much over.

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor late last week issued a rule banning federal contractors from retaliating against workers who talk about their pay with their co-workers. This is often the only way workers getting shafted over by sexist pay practices ever find out about it, and corporations that aren't federal contractors can do what they like -- unless we tell Congress to pass H.R. 1619/S. 862, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which the National Women's Law Center helps you do. I worked at a company with one of those don't-talk-about-your-pay rules back in the day, and no one could reasonably explain to me why the bosses had that rule. The explanation they were avoiding: that they don't want to get sued over paying someone less than someone else. If it seems to you that the best way to do that is to pay people fairly, you're not alone, and if someone tells you that the Paycheck Fairness Act "prohibits" people being paid according to their value, remind them that the bill allows differences in pay based on "bona fide factors" including experience, training, and education. That argument may not sway everyone, because haters gonna hate, but right is right and duty is duty.

Around the table: the trouble with Not Being Trump, and other stories.

Scott Walker proposes a giant dung sandwich for working families -- making the entire country "right-to-work," eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, and replacing overtime with comp time, all of which he calls "reform" and "modernization." I thought he'd at least pretend he wasn't such a bastard, but apparently the pressure that comes with Not Being Donald Trump is too much to bear. If he gets the nomination, and tries to pull an Etch-a-Sketch on the electorate, he'll need a lot more "liberal" media help than Mitt Romney got.

Buried in this fluff piece about Great and Awesome American Real Super-President Mitch McConnell is his rather absurd claim that "(b)usiness leaders" have told him they have "a hard time finding people to do the work because they’re doing too good with food stamps, Social Security and all the rest." You're tempted to respond that science is more than just collecting anecdotes, but you might also contemplate the possibility that these "business leaders" can't find people to fill positions because they're trying to pay them in dung pellets. (Hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but why does he think "the most successful people" are the people who make the most money?)

Casey Quinlan at Think Progress asks "Why Graduates Of For-Profit Colleges Are Struggling To Pay Back Student Loans." Long story short: for-profit schools promise rather more in the way of career prospects than they deliver and commit a good bit of fraud, and of course the financial services meltdown made everything a lot worse. But it sure is a good thing Marco "Corinthian is my constituent" Rubio would get rid of the "elitist" college accreditation system so that even more Americans can enjoy endless debt.

It's not just the for-profit college students who have trouble: ProPublica reports on the large amount of debt low-income NYU and UCal students pick up. Their job prospects are better than if they went to some Corinthian college, but still. We also learn that low-income Vassar College students leave with very little debt, thanks in part to its "need-blind" admissions policy and its reliance on grants instead of loans. (NYU's response has its slimy arguments, like the one ProPublica takes apart in paragraph 18. But at least NYU didn't step in it the way the Harvard official does at the end.)

Finally, Citizens for Tax Justice studies Jeb Bush's tax "reform" plan, and surprise, surprise, the top 1% get over half the relief from Mr. Bush's tax cuts. Oh, and it would eliminate the Estate Tax and the now-patched Alternative Minimum Tax. You just keep partying like it's 1999, Jeb!

Action: voting rights, clean water, and child nutrition.

Common Cause helps you tell your Reps and Senators to support H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Renewing and strengthening the Voting Rights Act used to be a bipartisan cause, but the bill just got its first Senate Republican co-sponsor, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. And the Supreme Court, as you know, struck down a significant part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. I dare Republicans to say, well, the Supreme Court spoke, and we have to follow their will -- not just because they tend to say the exact opposite when, say, a Kentucky county clerk decides she's not going to issue any marriage licenses to gay folks, but also because the Supreme Court all but invited Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act in a way that would satisfy their concerns. The Voting Rights Advancement Act does that, by applying pre-clearance formulas to any state or municipality that establishes a pattern of voting rights violations, not just Southern states. But clearly we'll need to tell Congress to do the right thing, perhaps many times. Of course, we're Americans, so we're up for that.

S. 1500, the so-called Sensible Environmental Protection Act, would allow corporations to dump certain pesticides in our waterways without a permit. "Certain pesticides" only include those "authorized for sale, distribution, or use" under federal law, but don't feel better, because S. 1500 doesn't say how much of an "authorized" pesticide a corporation can dump without a permit, and this is a fairly important matter to consider when determining how to protect our waters. Sadly, S. 1500 bill has a certain "bipartisan" sheen -- five of its 15 co-sponsors are Democrats, leaving a mere 41 who might filibuster the bill. And one of those five is North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, who just swore off a run for state Governor in 2016 and thus will need, ah, help getting re-elected to the Senate in 2018. None of that is our concern, of course -- protecting clean water from pollution is our concern. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to actually be sensible about the environment and reject S. 1500. (Like how they re-define "sensible" to make your concerns look "insensible"?)

Meanwhile, the Child Nutrition Act expires on September 30. You recall that one of the few things the USDA has done well under President Obama is improve nutrition standards in school lunches -- which, naturally, has resulted in the House repeatedly trying to roll back this standard, by promoting legislation letting lagging school districts "opt out," instead of telling them to get with the program, as civilized people would do. And their arguments in favor of this absurdity? That some indeterminate number of kids throw away their school-provided apples instead of eating them, and that government is tyrannical because it sets standards for food provided in public schools, instead of just letting kids eat whatever they like. Because the only thing that says "freedom" more than letting kids pursue the ephemeral sensations offered by junk food without the distraction of discipline? Letting them get obese and suffer from intractable health problems well into adulthood! The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to protect child nutrition standards.

Around the table: meet the new Bush, same as the old Bush! And other stories.

Ishmael Hossein-Zadeh writes about "The Age of Finance Capital and the Irrelevance of Mainstream Economics." Sadly, you'll find this a familiar story: the finance sector used to "grease() the wheels of the economy" when they got stuck, but now "buying and selling of ownership titles, instead of producing real values, has become the primary field of investment," and "(n)ot only has this slowed down the traditional flow of national savings (through the banking system) into productive investment in the real sector of the economy, it has, indeed, reversed that flow of funds into productive investment." All is not hopeless, of course -- Henry Ford used to complain about banksters, too.

"After 25 Years," says Patricia Schaefer at Nonprofit Quarterly, "Teach for America Results Are Consistently Underwhelming." Long story short: the organization that finds teachers for distressed urban and rural areas makes a lot of money, but can't argue persuasively that it really does any good for the students there, or that it delivers teachers who'll stay in the profession. One of the drawbacks of taking school reform efforts out of our public schools is that you, the public, can't extract very much accountability from private concerns.

Ho hum, Jeb Bush has a tax "reform" plan that cuts taxes for rich folks, cuts taxes for corporations, and "limits loopholes" in such a way that rich folks benefit while working families don't, plus it does some new, just-as-harmful things. But you remember how this went last time: deficits shot up, and corporations didn't use their largesse to create jobs. Still, he's got some cojones talking about getting government off your back and then using government to put corporations even more on your back. Be sure to visit Jeb Bush's campaign website at nochance2016.org.

A Mennonite discusses what a "religious objection" might really look like, versus what Kim Davis's "religious objection" to issuing marriage licenses for gays looks like. "Living out your faith doesn’t mean always getting your way without consequence," she says. "And, subsequently, it isn’t always easy or comfortable." Also notable is this quotation from a right-winger at the Washington Examiner: "a death penalty opponent doesn’t have the right to a job as an executioner, and a conscientious objector has no right to a career in the military."

Finally, Radley Balko again reminds us that there is no "war on cops,", as police deaths from firearms remain very, very low, and felonious killings of police per 100,000 officers is at its lowest level in 25 years. Mr. Balko also debunks some scare numbers and reminds us that some folks say there's a "war on cops" merely because cops get criticized, which Mr. Balko rightly notes is tantamount to "saying that exercising constitutional rights and participating in democracy are in and of themselves acts of violence." But please, right-wing rage heads, don't listen to an actual conservative like Mr. Balko; just keep hopping from one rage to another. The "liberal" media will still enable you.

Action: asset forfeiture, GMO labeling, and retirement advisors.

The Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Reps and Senators to repeal the asset forfeiture laws that make it much easier for state and local law enforcement agencies to take money from folks who haven't been proven guilty of a crime. This is yet another remnant of the I'm-tough-on-crime-because-I-have-very-small-testicles era -- law enforcement wanted to stop suspected drug dealers from moving money around, so they concocted a way to seize it, and who could have predicted that they would one day become so financially dependent on the practice that they'd abuse it? Besides anyone who thought about it for a minute, I mean. Asset forfeiture not only constitutes an abuse of government power against innocent-until-proven-guilty citizens, it's also an act of profound cowardice -- if state and local governments have trouble funding police forces, they should have the guts to raise taxes, or, at the very least, stop giving out welfare handouts to corporations in the form of tax breaks. I mean, if you don't have at least that amount of courage, you really should be in another line of work.

Meanwhile, Congress is back in session, and the House passed H.R. 1599, the absurdly-named Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, before the break -- a bill that actually prevents accurate labeling of genetically-modified organisms (or GMOs) in our food by preventing states and localities from mandating such labeling, and which "compensates" for that by permitting a "voluntary" labeling regime for GMOs, just like the "voluntary" regime we have had for over two decades that no one uses to label GMOs. (Those four-digit PLU codes you see in the produce section? If anyone wanted to label their GMO-laden produce, they'd start the code with an "8." Ever see one? Of course you haven't.) It's only safe for the big agricultural corporations that seem to get all the say about everything, even with supposed GMO-labeling proponent Barack Obama, who will surely add this to his list of broken promises, probably in the name of "bipartisanship" (when, like, hello? support for GMO labeling is actually bipartisan!). Just Label It helps you tell your Senators to support honest food labeling by rejecting H.R. 1599.

Finally, the Department of Labor is finishing up rules that would require retirement investment advisors to adhere to a "fiduciary duty" to put their customers' needs ahead of their own. Sound commonsensical to you? Of course it does! And you know what that means: Wall Street banksters hate it and are trying to scuttle it. They're not completely stupid, of course, so they say that of course they look out for their customers' best interests, so why do they need regulations forcing them to do that? (Though if you are, in fact, looking out for your customers' best interests, regulations mandating that you do that shouldn't really bother you.) They also say the rule will close off investment advice to large portions of Americans -- as if there will ever be a shortage of customers looking for retirement investment advice, or a shortage of professionals looking to earn money giving it! OK, I take it back: they are completely stupid. Americans for Financial Reform helps you support the Department of Labor's retirement advice rules.

Around the table: R.I.P. *National Geographic*, and other stories.

The National Geographic Society essentially turns over its "media assets," including its flagship magazine, to 21st Century Fox. And the National Geographic Society's Chief Executive called the deal "bold"! Doesn't he know that "bold" is the word Our Glorious Elites use to mean "something unconscionably stupid that will befuddle the inattentive while making us even richer"? I'd rather not watch Rupert Murdoch turn National Geographic into a mountain of dung, which he'll do -- I mean, Fox helped give us the National Geographic cable channel, and is that worth your time? At least I've got their first 127 years on disc and on my bookshelf, so I can remember when they did great work.

Warren Buffett, everyone's favorite rich man, praises Bernie Sanders for the campaign he's running. But remember when Mr. Buffett said Elizabeth Warren was too "angry" and "violent" when she criticized Wall Street banksters? Now that he seems more sanguine about a male politician who stands to Ms. Warren's left and whose tone toward the banks is about the same as hers, I'm more inclined to think Mr. Buffett was being sexist back then.

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, a Manhattan College history professor reminds us that the "liberal" media calls his positions "left" when they're actually supported by a majority of Americans. If you remember how the "liberal" media called opposing the Iraq war a "far-left" position after it had become the majority position, then you know that's how they do it -- they take the things most people want and they call them "left," or "liberal," or "extreme." Or "un-American." If they can just convince you that the things you want are things those people people want, they can win. But don't let them win. They don't deserve to win.

PR hack runs campaign purporting to show small businesses affected adversely by minimum wage hikes -- but the Center for Media and Democracy finds that several of the small businesses depicted in the campaign actually favor minimum wage hikes, and are none too happy about being misrepresented. When America's small businesses finally get tired of being taken hostage by right-wingers ("don't raise taxes on rich people, or this small business gets it!), then we will truly have progress in America. In the meantime, I'll do my part to remind small businesses that they're tired of it.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the FCC's rule helping consumers block robocalls. They act like "consent" from a consumer is so hard to get (it's only hard when you're trying to trick people into giving it!), and that's not very can-do of them. Seriously, though is there any cause so unpopular that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce won't support it? Next, I guess they'll tell you that you should always let your neighbor's dog poop on your lawn, because TEH GUBMINT OVERREACHEZ!!!!!

Finally, this really did have to be said, and I'm glad James O'Malley at The Independent said it: Syrian refugees are not somehow "unworthy of our help" if they happen to possess smartphones. Mr. O'Malley makes at least a dozen good points (like, hey, they're not fleeing Syria because they're poor so much as because their government is shooting them). But do people who point out refugees with smartphones (or poor Americans with debit cards) really not understand how easy it is to get a smartphone with very little money down (particularly, as Mr. O'Malley, reminds us, an older model)? Or are they just jerks who need to prove how smart they are, or who like to hit people when they're down? This probably won't surprise you, but I think they're just jerks.

Action: clean government budgeting, help for underwater homeowners, and "banning the box" for federal contractors.

Congress is back to work this week (please take a moment to boo), and naturally they haven't finished spending bills yet, so Public Citizen still helps you tell House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to pass clean budget legislation, without the nefarious policy riders that would wither and die if exposed to sunlight. Politicians frequently treat "must-pass" appropriations bills as a means to pass riders defunding climate change efforts or financial regulation efforts or campaign finance efforts (to name three of Mr. McConnell's pet projects). If Congress tried to pass legislation doing these things on their own, they run the risk of exposing their heartlessness, and they might even lose their jobs next November. But use a must-pass bill as a hostage and you can strap all kinds of bombs to it, and our President too often compromises with hostage-takers so he can look like he's governing. I don't care about looking like I'm governing; I only care about good government, so I'll keep agitating against nefarious legislative aims, and I hope you will, too.

Meanwhile, seven years after Wall Street banksters took a massive crap all over our economy and put millions of families underwater on their mortgages, our government -- you know, that "socialist" government that hands out everything to everybody all the time -- has done just about nothing to help those underwater homeowners. Even the filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority couldn't get a simple majority of Senators to support a bill allowing good Americans to renegotiate their mortgages in court -- this, even though our law currently allows people to do that with their second homes. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency (or FHFA) has the authority to help borrowers reduce their principal, and now that Edward DeMarco is gone as FHFA head, they really have no excuse. (Mr. DeMarco considered principal reduction a "moral hazard" -- always blind to the moral hazards of letting banks do what they like and then protecting them from the consequences of their actions, his kind are!) So Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell the FHFA to use its power to help underwater homeowners.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Obama to issue an executive order forbidding federal contractors from asking job applicants if they've ever been in jail, then Color of Change still helps you do that. If the prospect of having co-workers who've been in jail skeeves you out a bit, consider that said folks have already paid the price society demanded of them, and it would be unlawful to keep making them pay, or to let employers keep making them pay. If their families want to keep making them pay -- in lawful ways, such as ostracizing them -- that's their affair. But allowing employers to discriminate as a way to keep punishing them for their crimes? That's not their job. And it also greatly increases the possibility that those folks who just got out of jail will go back to jail, since having a job is, I've found, a very good way of avoiding the sorts of temptation that land you back in jail. Of course, our private prison-industrial complex likes people who wind up back in jail -- and if they're black, they probably call that a bonus! But civilized people don't feel that way.

Around the table: terrorism, encryption, morality, religious "freedom," and the Iran nuke deal.

A study finds that most "lone wolf" terrorists "broadcast their plans to commit violence" before they do it. Why? Because they're drama hounds! They are, in fact, the worst kind of drama hounds. And some right-winger, somewhere, will angrily dismiss the findings because the study included white terrorists.

Justice Department officials express frustration that tech corporations like Apple "appear to be winning" "the public relations fight" over encryption. Interesting analysis! But, ah, are the American people winning this battle? How quickly we get disappeared from these decisions! Particularly when, you know, encryption appears to benefit the people, and strike a blow against wanton government spying.

Robert Reich surveys the growth in corporate power and the growing gap between rich and poor and calls it "a crisis in public morality" -- you know, versus the "private morality" of the bedroom that seems to obsess Republicans more. But that dichotomy kind of gets in the way: morality is morality, and "telling the truth" and "keeping your promises" remain more compelling moral values than "hate the gays" and "keep women from getting birth control," let alone "let corporations do whatever they want because freedom." But at the end, Mr. Reich himself cuts the dichotomy with the what-happens-in-boardrooms-not-bedrooms meme, and that meme is weapons-grade PR.

Rasmussen finds that some 66% of Americans think Kim Davis should, you know, follow the law regardless of her "religious convictions." The first rule of Rasmussen applies: if Rasmussen finds the number at 66%, then the real number is probably even higher. But I wonder what number pollsters would have found fifty years ago, before the advent of the whining religious bigot getting massive TV time. (Personal to Rasmussen, though: "gay marriage spat"? Only one side's spatting over this, last I looked.)

Speaking of Kim Davis, Judge Bunning has let her out of jail -- but her lawyer says she'll very likely continue to block gay couples from getting marriage licenses. Which nobody could have predicted! Seriously, you can't just say I FOLLOWZ TEH GODZ LAWZ!!!!! and then say "well, unless it means I have to go back to jail." Can you? I guess we'll find out.

Finally, an AIPAC official says he really, really wishes AIPAC hadn't signed on to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech in front of Congress -- you remember, the speech he arranged without telling President Obama -- because it alienated potentially sympathetic Democrats and turned the Iran nuke deal into a "partisan" issue. Sadly, you can't always count on the stupidity of your enemies, nor can you count on their hysterics always meeting with the contempt they deserve.

Action: corporate taxes, and corporate land giveaways.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader-in-Waiting Charles Schumer of New York has joined with Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman to propose a "territorial" tax system, under which corporations would pay a much lower tax rate on profits made outside America. Sounds commonsensical, right? It's not -- corporations, as we know, already exploit plenty of loopholes to shift profits overseas even if that money gets made here, and the "territorial" system would give a competitive advantage to the big corporation, which surely doesn't need any more advantages than our tax code already gives them, and thus screw over the small business. We have lately witnessed Burger King turn itself into a Canadian corporation just to avoid American taxes, though it didn't uproot all its franchises and move them north of the border in the process. Taxing offshore corporate profits at a lower rate is no way to induce corporations to stop shifting their profits overseas -- it's a way to give welfare handouts to corporations, nothing more. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the Schumer-Portman "territorial" tax proposal.

Meanwhile, Arizona's two U.S. Senators have successfully slipped a massive mining corporation land grab into a defense appropriations bill. We've heard about this before -- the Oak Flat area, in the Tonto National Forest, is a sacred area for Apaches, who hold coming-of-age ceremonies there, and it has enjoyed federal protection since the Eisenhower years. But it's also been a target of the Rio Tinto mining corporation for at least a decade, and Rio Tinto has not only been a major financial contributor to the McCain and Flake campaigns, but Sen. Flake himself was a lobbyist for Rio Tinto before being elected to the House. But H.R. 2811, the Save Oak Flat Act, would simply repeal the section of the 2015 Defense Appropriations Act that gave up Oak Flat. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Save Oak Flat Act. As we speak, the land hasn't transferred over to Rio Tinto, and the McCain/Flake rider only made it into the defense bill because it was, you know, very last-minute, and didn't enjoy the positive benefits of public scrutiny. But it's not too late to fix that.

Around the table: paid sick leave, media posturing, an embarrassing video, a law-bomb, and another "religious freedom" suit that should fail.

President Obama signs executive order mandating corporations that contract with our government give its workers at least seven paid sick leave days. Cue the Republicans shouting AMURIKAN CAESURZZZ!!!!!, though they led the cheering for warrantless wiretapping and NSA spying. And if they want to claim that he's "circumvented the legislative process," they'll have to show, exactly, where Congress hasn't already delegated authority to the Executive branch to set such standards for federal contracts. Bet they don't.

Ho hum, Fox News punditoids denounce Mr. Obama for ignoring the shooting of a police officer who was just filling up his damn gas tank -- for several days after Mr. Obama condemned the shooting. He even called the officer's widow, but apparently living in the modern world means that if you're a media punditoid, you never have to admit you're wrong.

Conservative party candidate/appliance technician in Canada bows out of Toronto-area parliamentary race after video of him urinating in a customer's coffee cup surfaces. In America, you could get away with this, because plenty of punditoids would happily go on TV afterward and say, well, maybe the customer deserved it, and we've all wanted to do that to a customer, amirite? -- as if peeing into someone's mug is ever acceptable behavior, from anyone.

And now, for more from the government-is-incompetent-and-we're-gonna-prove-it-by-being-incompetent crowd in Kansas: the state's entire court system will be defunded, per a 2014 law restricting some state Supreme Court powers. How? The law states that if any court struck it down, the whole state court system will be defunded as a result -- and a district judge just did that. What do we call that, kids? A hostage situation. We also call it petty. And if any liberal ever attached the legislative equivalent of an IED to a law, the "liberal" media would suddenly see it exactly as I do.

Muslim flight attendant files suit after being suspended by her employer for refusing to serve alcohol to her customers, because of her "religious beliefs." I find folks who fervently oppose alcohol fairly sympathetic, and the co-worker who filed the complaint against her may be a better target for a lawsuit than her employer, but the same logic holds for this situation as it does for pharmacists who won't fill birth control scripts and county clerks who won't issue gay marriage licenses: consuming alcohol is legal (if you're over 21), consuming alcohol generally doesn't violate the religious beliefs of your customers, and if your "conscience" leads you to oppose doing that part of your job, you need to find another job.

Action: the minimum wage, and corporate tax loopholes.

In Pennsylvania, legislation hiking the minimum wage has stalled in both houses of the legislature, while nearly 30 other states have hiked their minimum wage over the last few years. You could surmise that a minimum wage hike could never get through two Republican-held houses, but that's too easy -- the minimum wage actually quite popular with our brethren on the right (enjoying the support of no less a person than the last Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney), and Pennsylvania Republicans are cut from a somewhat different cloth than national Republicans, but, more to the point, the decision isn't theirs so much as it's ours. Hence Keystone Progress joins with MoveOn to help you tell the Pennsylvania House and Senate Labor and Industry Committees to push minimum wage legislation through their committees with a quickness. You won't just be telling them to hike the minimum wage, though; you'll also be telling them to hike it to $10.10/hour, index it to the cost of living, and include tipped workers, just so they don't pass some weak-tea wage hike and declare they listened to you.

Meanwhile, Etsy, the internet corporation where you can sell your art and handcrafted items, claims to be a "mindful, transparent, and humane" corporation promoting "global business practices that are sustainable, responsible, and profitable," and perhaps in some ways it is, but it's also just created a subsidiary in Ireland, and you probably know what that means: it means Etsy can pay less in taxes, and financial disclosure laws are relatively weak in Ireland, so we won't necessarily know it. As one Irish economics professor put it, "(i)f companies are not disclosing, you have to ask why not? Is it to hide things that they’d feel embarrassed about?" And there's nothing "sustainable" about goosing up your profits while avoiding your obligation to help fund the roads, bridges, police officers, firefighters, and schools that benefit all of us. So 13 separate organizations (including the National Priorities Project, Americans for Tax Fairness, and People for the American Way) help you tell Etsy to live up to its ideals and abandon its tax-avoidance schemes.

Around the table: various sillinesses concerning the deficit, Syria, federal contracting, and the "war on terror," plus a short summary of the Donald Trump Problem.

C. Robert Gibson at Occupy.com reminds us that, with Fed interest rates still near zero percent, we could be spending more money rebuilding our infrastructure. I maintain that the perfect tonic to right-wing squealing about Teh Deficit is to pay for infrastructure with a 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, just like in the old days, and though right-wingers will continue to squeal, they'll only be defending the super-rich when they do.

FAIR reminds us that when we hear "liberal" media pleas to DO SOMETHING!!!!! about Syrian refugees, they tend to forget (or, more precisely, "forget") that America is already "doing something" in Syria -- like funding Syrian rebels to the tune of $1 billion annually. And, of course, noting that we're already "doing something" in Syria opens us up to charges of doing the wrong or ineffective thing in Syria, which is a much more difficult thing to cover than the myth that we're doing nothing. Still, doing the difficult thing builds character.

PR Watch finds one of the world's largest temp agencies (Manpower, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you can bet they heart Scott Walker and he hearts them back) agitating against President Obama's recent executive order requiring our government to take labor violations into account when awarding federal contracts. Specifically, PR Watch finds that a Manpower executive just so happens to sit on the board of a trade association advocating against the Obama order -- and Manpower has accumulated over $13 million in fines and settlements so far this millenium, while vacuuming up over $10 million in federal contracts just since 2013. Nope, nothing to see here.

And now, from the "actual frivolous lawsuits" file: two Montana state Senators sue to stop two Native American nations from taking over the Kerr Dam, because it could lead to terrorist attacks. No, really: because "the Turkish government and Turkish-American organizations have looked to establish business and cultural exchanges with Native Americans," and Turks are Muslim, there could be terrorists in there, and THE DAMN GOES BOOM! But please, right-wingers, tell me again how class-action lawsuits are inherently "frivolous."

Finally, I said I wasn't going to talk about Donald Trump anymore, but he's demonstrated enough staying power at the top of Republican Presidential polls even after saying all that racist and sexist crap that I feel compelled to weigh in. Mr. Trump's populism is certainly ironic (coming, as it does, from a billionaire), but it also appears unmediated -- that is, he sounds like he's talking off the top of his head. What consultant would have advised him to say, for example, that hedge-fund managers "get away with murder"? But this is a man who would never have gotten so rich back in the day when we taxed the rich hard and regulated markets for the common good, and his populism is all attitude. And I think his act is just the latest establishment Republican ploy to regain the Presidency -- sure, establishment Republicans sound like they hate him, but when have they ever told you the truth?

Around the table: forget it, Jake, it's Marco Rubio! And other observations.

U.N. report says Gaza could be "uninhabitable" by 2020, given blockades, Israeli military operations, and the incompetence of Gaza's own government. Has no one learned by now that running a people into the ground just creates martyrs and terrorists? Or is that the plan?

Robert Borosage reminds us, in the wake of Friday's job figures, that while unemployment may be going down, so are inflation-adjusted wages. Noting that Congress will likely try to zero out Planned Parenthood funding rather than funding infrastructure jobs or doing something about student loan debt, and that the Fed is mulling whether to raise short-term interest rates by one-quarter of one percent, he concludes: "(n)o wonder Americans are increasingly disgusted with politics as usual." No wonder, indeed.

Ho hum, Catherine Rampell tells us that Congress's plans to slash the deficit will more likely add to the deficit. How? By cutting programs (IRS tax collection, family planning funding, fighting disability fraud) that either save our government money or make our government money -- or, to put it more precisely, programs that either save or make the taxpayer (i.e., you) money. Again, it's almost like that's the plan.

College prep-test corporation Princeton Review charges families more according to their zip code -- which just so happens to result in Asian families paying more than others. Regardless of whether Princeton Review intends it this way, the result is racist. And I'm not so sure of their good intentions, either -- surely they've heard of redlining?

Ain't no controversy so bad that Marco Rubio can't make it worse, and so it goes with his opinion on the Kentucky county clerk who won't issue marriage licenses to gays: "(w)hile the clerk’s office has a governmental duty to carry out the law, there should be a way to protect the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals working in the office." I guess "there should be a way" to get every American family a unicorn, too, but it ain't gonna happen. (Also, as Kerry Eleveld notes, "there already is 'a balance.' It allows Davis to practice her religion according to her beliefs on her own time as a private citizen.")

Finally, Caitlin Huey-Burns at Real Clear Politics suggests that Scott Walker has fallen the farthest among Republican Presidential candidates. Remember when I said the way to beat him was to repeatedly call him cold and soulless? Well, Republican operatives won't describe him like that, but "he's coming off as an opportunistic candidate who doesn't know who he is" and "(e)vangelical voters here are looking for conviction" and "one thing (the caucus process) does is it smokes out inauthenticity" do the job just as well, not that we should get complacent. (Kudos to Ms. Huey-Burns, as well, for noting that Mr. Walker "has also been in politics in Wisconsin for almost all of his adult life." Any fool can get elected, but a real adult can get and keep a job.)

Around the table: from reduced rape kit backlogs to the ever-changing moods of America's worst Governor.

First, some good news: the city of Detroit has tested more than 9 out of 10 rape kits, some of which had been waiting for over 30 years to be tested. At least three years of investigations will follow, according to the Wayne County prosecutor, but justice is at last a hope for some of these victims. It would have been hard to do, of course, without a few million dollars in state and federal help -- but that is, of course, the kind of funding right-wingers try to kill because GOVMINT DUZN'T WORK!!!!! If only they'd be so zealous about corporate welfare.

Jim Hightower confesses to wanting to "tear out my hair" after reading some former PR firm chair suggest that his fellow CEOs would pay their employees more if they just got subsidies from our government to do that. I sympathize with his frustration (though I sure wouldn't tear out my own hair because someone else acted like a moron), and of course he's right to remind us that higher pay for working families is in no way "charity," but I'm a bit surprised that he didn't remind us that these corporations already get massive welfare handouts from our state and federal governments. They sure got some cojones asking for more.

The incomparable Dave Zirin tells us why, as union-lovers, we should celebrate Judge Berman's decision rescinding Tom Brady's four-game suspension from the NFL. Long story short: even though the NFLPA's contract with the NFL allows Commissioner Goodell to essentially arbitrate grievances over player punishments he has issued, the law still demands a certain amount of fairness, which Mr. Goodell -- by failing to allow Mr. Brady the opportunity to examine evidence, among many other things -- didn't demonstrate. Yes, if it weren't Tom Brady, we'd probably see the worker rights issues a lot more clearly. That's just one reason we shouldn't think of politics the way we think of sporting events.

It had to happen sooner or later: right-wingers promote the Kentucky county clerk who still won't issue gay marriage licenses an "anti-gay Rosa Parks." It isn't just that people want to be black without doing the hard work that comes with being black, or that Ms. Parks broke a law anyone not heavily-invested in the status quo could have seen was unconstitutional in 1955, or that her freedom to sit somewhere other than the back of the bus oppresses no one else -- it's also that Rosa Parks couldn't walk away from being black, but Kim Davis can walk away from being a County Clerk. And resigning her job because she won't do her job isn't some unconscionable hardship, either -- Ms. Davis would certainly get to suck at the teat of wingnut welfare forever.

Radley Balko administers a spanking to Scott Walker after Mr. Walker suggests that heightened scrutiny of police officers has made the job more dangerous than it was when he was a kid. The facts, as you might expect, turn out to be precisely the opposite: whereas more than 30 officers per 100,000 were murdered in 1975, that rate had fallen to five officers per 100,000 in 2013. "Moreover," Mr. Balko adds, "you’d think that someone who professes to believe in limited government would welcome more oversight of a government institution." And if Mr. Walker doesn't welcome that, we might conclude that oversight gets in the way of funneling taxpayer money to cronies.

Finally, speaking of America's worst Governor again, Mr. Walker now claims he has "never talked about a wall to the north," though his statement that a border wall with Canada "is a legitimate issue for us to look at" is well-documented. Watch the whole clip; Mr. Walker's stories have more wiggle in them than a plate of jello in an earthquake. Seriously, there are two rules about word games: 1) people absolutely hate them, and 2) unless they come from a particular politician to whom they are absolutely devoted. I think Mr. Walker has overestimated the devotion the electorate has for him, or could have for him. Of course, if he had a soul, he'd know all of this already.

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

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

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

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

Around the table: the so-called "Ferguson effect," and other follies.

The state of California agrees to move close to 2,000 inmates out of solitary confinement as part of a lawsuit settlement. California has long used solitary to control violent gangs, supposedly, but anyone who thinks about that for a moment knows that's not what solitary's for -- to the extent we use it at all, we should use it to punish stuff prisoners actually do in prison, not for having the wrong tattoo or based on another inmate's say-so.

FAIR finds the "liberal" media wondering whether a "Ferguson effect" is causing a "murder wave" in America. Funny that the "liberal" media would never think to attribute, say, a rise in harassment of black folks by police officers to a "Ferguson effect." Anyway, long story short: the "murder wave" may or may not exist and may or may not have begun before Ferguson, and the "liberal" media buttresses its case with incomplete data supplemented by scare numbers and bait-and-switch argument. They should be ashamed to call themselves "journalists."

Speaking of people who should be ashamed of themselves, dig the rhetorical contortions Texas history books now employ just to try to make out that slavery isn't so big a deal. Bad as this is, I'm old enough to remember that history textbooks used to be a lot worse, when they pretended the antebellum South was a Golden Age and its demise a crime against memory, and obliterated black history altogether. We should not excuse "history" like "some slaves reported that their masters treated them kindly" -- as if "some" equals "all," or as if such testimony could never be compelled from someone who literally has no rights! -- but we ought to note the progress we've made as well as the work we still have to do.

U.S. District Court judge places Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who still refuses to issue marriage licenses to gays, in federal custody. In case you were wondering (as I was!), no, the state can't just fire her for refusing to do her job -- the state legislature has to impeach, convict, and remove her, and none of that looks likely, not when the state Senate President attends rallies in your support. Unless good Kentuckians pressure their legislators, of course.

Finally, Bernie Sanders tells DNC politicos that he's a candidate "who can substantially increase voter turnout all across the country." I think he's right -- the things he's talking about, and the way he's talking about them, resonate with folks across the spectrum, regardless of what the "liberal" media thinks -- but a note of caution: turnout will continue to be an issue in states with Voter ID laws, or states using the "Interstate Crosscheck" database.

Action: mining waste in water, antibiotic abuse in feed animals, and coal corporations in national treasures.

The Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of the Interior and the Office of Surface Mining to finalize a vigorous rule protecting our water from mining pollution. Our government has been working on a rule that would do more to hold mining corporations more accountable for the filth they spew forth into our streams and rivers, it does not give good citizens the right to sue mining corporations in court when said corporations make their water too toxic to drink or wash with or bathe in. Let me guess how dirty energy corporations will respond: nyah nyah, our right to gild the plumbing in our 17th vacation homes is more important than your right not be poisoned by the water you depend on! OK, maybe they won't say "nyah nyah," but whenever they talk about higher energy prices or killed jobs, they're really talking about the money their CEOs would make if they just didn't have to be careful about the mess they made. And we are committed to an America where money doesn't end all arguments and get all the say about everything, however Quioxtic the cynical may find that commitment.

Meanwhile, as you have likely already heard (from sources other than this humble blog, I hope!), Consumer Reports found that an astounding one in five samples of conventionally-raised beef contained bacteria resistant to at least two common antibiotics. Naturally (pun intended), more sustainably-raised beef suffers much less from this condition, but in a nation where we use four out of every five antibiotics on healthy feed animals, versus sick people or animals, of course sustainably-raised beef won't be able to get that number down to zero, because the bad bugs are everywhere now. So Consumers Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1552, which would seriously curtail the use of antibiotics in feed animals and preserve them for their intended use in sick people and animals. The factory farms won't like it, because cramming animals into small and dirty pens and then pumping them full of antibiotics so they can bear it better makes them more money. But if we're all dead from superbugs, who will be around to celebrate the superior cunning of factory farm corporations?

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration to protect the Bryce Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah from exploitation from coal mining corporations, then Friends of the Earth still helps you do that. Alton Coal operates its Coal Hollow mine (did they think how that name would sound?) a mere ten miles from these natural wonders, and now wants to expand that operation, to the tune of 50 million more tons of coal over the next quarter-century, which would vastly increase air, water, and noise pollution -- a fact our government knows, as evidenced by its most recent environmental impact statement. Would it be piling on to mention the Native American cultural sites that could be destroyed? I mean, religious freedom is for everyone, right, and not just for the proverbial emptiest wagons of our national discourse? And archaeologists also operate in these areas. And I can guarantee you that whatever they find will long outlast whatever Alton Coal can pull out of the Earth.

Around the table: forced arbitration, Katrina's legacy, the "Cadillac tax," Medicare drug prices, and bad energy policy.

Dish Network customers, take note: Dish has updated its terms of service to force you to settle all grievances with Dish in either binding arbitration or small claims court, plus you won't be able to band together with other Dish users in a class action. Pretty sneaky, eh? It's like they're afraid they'll do things they don't want exposed in a court of law. However, you have 30 days from the day you received an email from Dish announcing the new terms of service to opt out of the agreement. Best get on the stick about that.

Here with the perfect tonic to all the vapid yay-us cheerleading about the 10th anniversary of the Katrina disaster is America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, who reminds us of the real culprit in the storm that killed New Orleans: "the oil industry...who, with greedy abandon, chopped and slashed away dozens of miles of Nature’s protective barrier of bayous which once kept the Gulf from entering the city." You'd think Our Glorious Elites would be more upset that a city has not even 80% of its pre-storm population a decade later, but of course it's more a matter of whom those elites wanted out of the city.

Richard Eskow reminds us that the Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac tax" goes into effect in 2018 -- just in time for Democrats to take yet another midterm shellacking! -- and within a decade it will hit nearly half of all employers, and thus, I would imagine, a considerably larger share of employees. "The notion was that employees, as well as employers, would be more discriminating 'shoppers' for their own medical care if they had to pay more for it" -- in a land that thinks forcing health insurers to charge less is "un-American," that is to laugh.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) plans to introduce legislation permitting Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices. Which, as you know, the plan George W. Bush rammed through back in 2003 doesn't allow, because, again, giving our government the power to reduce costs while not reducing benefits is somehow "un-American." Good for him, though -- let's have the bill's opponents try to explain why they don't want government to run more efficiently, or spend less money for the same services.

Finally, Sen. Marco Rubio describes his plan for energy policy in the event we go insane and elect him President. He'd lift the ban on crude oil exports -- though that doesn't provide for our own energy needs very well, I'd think -- and he'd kill the EPA's climate change rules, because TEH REGULASHUNZ IZ ALWAYS BADZ!!!!, and he'd let the states regulate climate change, even though the EPA's Clean Power Plan actually gives states a lot of leeway oh forget it it's Marco Rubio, the man who thinks "innovation, not regulation" is clever because it rhymes (whereas "regulation spurs innovation" is clever because it's true).

Action: curbing government overreach, keeping kids safe from fracking, and getting overtime protections for more American workers.

California residents, take note: SB 178, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, would prevent the state government from forcing internet service providers to provide customer data, and would require police officers to get a warrant before searching your digital data, including your emails, texts, and location data. Sounds common-sensical, no? Not in our post-"war on terror" America, where only our politicians are bold enough to ignore the checks against state power that have always promoted freedom! If a police officer has to get a warrant to search your house, searching your cell phone should be no different -- even the U.S. Supreme Court has said so. The bill lately passed the state Senate unanimously, and the Assembly is considering it now. So the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell your California Assembly member to support SB 178, and thus support freedom and privacy for all Californians. If you're not a California resident, you can't use the EFF's action tool -- though nothing prevents you from getting your friends in California to call their Assemblyfolk.

Meanwhile, Penn Environment helps you tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to mandate a one-mile "setback zone" separating schools and fracking sites. Currently frackers can operate within 500 feet of a school, and thus pollute the nearby air that children breathe and the water they drink and wash with, and given what we know about the dangers of fracking (which rather exceed the dangers listed in the EPA's recent report), we need much more of a buffer. Of course, demanding this of Gov. Wolf doesn't mean we stop fighting the ill effects of fracking in other spheres -- it means we fight everywhere and take victories wherever we can. With even Philly-area Republican state Senators slipping a Delaware Water Basin fracking moratorium into the 2012 budget, we know we can win -- and we know that our legislators know we can win. As one Pittsburgh-area mother said: "If you can contain your water contamination, to your property, I’m fine with that. Make as much money as you want. But when my kids breathe it — I think that’s where my rights begin and yours stop." Pretty much.

Finally, time's running out on the commenting period for the Obama Administration Labor Department's new overtime rules (the commenting period ends Friday), so if you still want to comment on them, the Economic Policy Institute helps you do that. Current federal overtime rules mandate that employees making less than $23,660 annually must be paid time-and-a-half for every hour worked over 40 in a week; the Labor Department's new rule would raise that threshold to $50,440, which will affect over 13 million workers. Word on the street is that big corporate lobbyists' strategy isn't so much to argue against the new overtime rules as to delay their implementation as long as humanly possible -- hopefully until a new Republican President can scuttle them for good. And I can see their problem, because arguing that more overtime would "kill jobs" is a fool's game. Having to pay workers time-and-a-half means businesses will eventually hire more workers that they can pay at their standard rate. Like most of what we did during the New Deal era -- tax the rich, tax corporations, spend on infrastructure -- the overtime rule means job creation.

Around the table: including deep thoughts about racism and job-killing corporations.

The Nation asks "What a Band of 20th Century Alabama Communists Can Teach Black Lives Matter and the Offspring of Occupy." Long story short: for the Depression-era Communists Robin D.G. Kelley wrote about in Hammer and Hoe, the struggle against out-of-control capitalism and the struggle against racial oppression were "inseparable." "State violence" does come down on both social and economic justice movements, after all -- and usually uses the former as misdirection against the latter.

West Point law professor (for about a month!) declares that legal scholars who oppose the "war on terror" constitute a sort of "fifth column" and can be legally attacked by our government -- "so long as attacks are proportional," he declares, which I'm sure he regards as an elephantine act of generosity. Hate to resort to ad hominem attacks, but Mr. Bradford has misrepresented his credentials to get a job more than once.

Whoa: the Moody's Analytics election model now predicts a decisive Democratic Presidential victory in 2016, with Ohio, Florida, and Colorado now leaning Democrat. Why the change? Apparently, Moody's (which bases its model strictly on economic factors) expects considerably lower gas prices, thanks to "(p)lummeting prices and changing dynamics in global energy markets from Chinese weakness and the Iranian nuclear deal." Expect further swings as we move on through the election season.

Apparently bowing to the pressure to keep stock prices as high as possible, WalMart has begun to cut staff after moving to raise its minimum wage. Because, you know, stock buybacks are more important than customer service, or making sure your employees can afford groceries. Seriously, this is the road to ruin: corporations think the only way to make money is to "cut costs," which usually means killing jobs. The way to make money is to spend money. And they call our entrepreneurial class "bold"!

Finally, Markos Moulitsas, the "Kos" in Daily Kos, thoroughly demolishes a Wall Street Journal hack job that criticized Consumer Reports for grading a new Tesla car so highly. Read the whole thing, since it will (among other things!) remind you that "even if you are using fossil fuels to power your Tesla, you're getting the equivalent of 87 MPG," and that writers shouldn't bemoan "taxpayer subsidies" for electric cars while being silent about all those other corporate welfare handouts, let alone oil subsidies.

Action: justice for Vietnamese prisoners of conscience, and due diligence for drug and medical device testing.

Tomorrow, Vietnam plans to release a lot of prisoners -- but Amnesty International helps you tell the Vietnamese government to release prisoners of conscience as well. After all, you'd hate to see 17,000 prisoners hit the streets and think it was all for show, wouldn't you? I mean, we all know that every country puts a lot of pretty undangerous people in jail, for a variety of reasons good and bad, and if we didn't see, say, Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly among them -- he being the principle author of the Bloc 8406 manifesto, calling for (among other things) a multiparty state in Vietnam -- we might start to think it was all for show. I know, the families of the soon-to-be-released prisoners will disagree, but we would still have every right to think the Vietnamese government was using them as pawns. Naturally, the Amnesty alert above cites two other bloggers it would like to see released, since blogging is, in some parts of the world, an activity the state fears greatly. What could such states be afraid of?

Meanwhile, H.R. 6, the so-called 21st Century Cures Act, passed out of the House last month, and presumably the Senate will take it up soon, since the bill reauthorizes National Institutes of Health funding through 2018. And, as you might expect, the bill holds this funding hostage to bad ideas, like forcing the FDA to evaluate drugs and medical devices for "serious conditions" much more quickly. When folks hear that a drug or medical device could cure the hated disease of a loved one, guess which part of that formulation they're least likely to hear? No one wants sick people to die, but suggesting that the FDA dithers merely by ensuring the safety of drugs and devices is quite manipulative, and there's another name for getting new drugs and devices to market science-be-damned: corporate welfare, since big pharma corporations will, after all, make lots of money from these drugs and devices. So Consumers Union helps you tell your Senators to defend science and reject corporate welfare by passing a much better bill than H.R. 6.

Around the table: renaming Mt. McKinley, tracking undocumented immigrants with FedEx, and other stories.

The Economic Policy Institute reports on "What Families Need to Get By," complete with a budget calculator that can tell you (if you live in one of 618 locations) how much money your family needs to make to meet an adequate standard of living in your zip code. You can enter up to two adults and up to four children to see how much you'd need. Key point: whatever the minimum figure is where you are, it's likely considerably higher than the federal poverty standard (let alone the minimum wage!). Also, child care costs exceed housing costs in over 80% of the locations studied.

President Obama announces that America's tallest mountain, Mt. McKinley, will be renamed Denali. Which is what most Alaskans (including the state's senior U.S. Senator) call it anyway, but cue the right-wing whinefest -- a whinefest defending William McKinley, a President who acted like corporations were the only Americans with a voice and who dragged us into war with Spain even after our diplomats had negotiated an agreement to avoid it. He not only makes George W. Bush look like a socialist; he makes George W. Bush look like a peacenik.

Chris Christie says we should get FedEx to track immigrants, since they do so well tracking boxes with barcodes that can't move on their own. He went on to say that it's just another example of how the private sector does everything better, but all I could think was he got that from Newt Gingrich's book Real Change! And it sounded utterly stupid then, too! When Chris Wallace has to remind you that "people aren't packages," it's bad. And, ah, it's not like FedEx delivers that many packages -- many, many packages fewer than the U.S. Postal Service, which has satisfied this customer rather more than FedEx has.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says we ought to consider building a wall on the Canadian border, too, because "some people" he's talked to in New Hampshire have "raised some very legitimate concerns," which he then went on to describe at length. I kid, of course -- he talks and you accept, just like the rest of them. But I wonder if Stephen Harper is still his BFF.

Finally, Steve Wasserman at The American Conservative bemoans the "phony populism" that "den(ies) Americans the joys of serious thought," and tells us that the internet age has, like the television age before it, made us less patient with serious criticism or, indeed, with anything we don't "get" right away. You can think of a hundred moronic internet comments as easily as I can, and I miss the days when Dick Cavett interviewed writers as much as anyone. But if Americans don't strive for "(t)he ideal of serious enjoyment of what isn’t instantly understood," one might also interpret that as an impatience with bullshit, and I sure hope Mr. Wasserman would count bullshit-detection among those critical thinking skills that "strengthen" the mind "as a workout tones the muscles."