Thieves in the Temple.

Action: fighting bankster handouts, apps for kids, and FBI targeting of black protestors.

S. 2155, the so-called Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, would roll back some key Dodd-Frank protections that Congress passed after banksters crashed the economy. Its supporters claim that by by raising the asset level at which a bank receives additional regulatory scrutiny from $50 billion to $250 billion, S. 2155 would "protect community banks," but that's a pile of rubbish, unless we think big entities like American Express are "community banks." I've said it before and I'll say it again: the small bank's greatest enemy isn't our government; the small bank's greatest enemy is the big bank. And if we want small banks to flourish again in America, we need to stop obsessing about BIG GUMMINT!!!! and start enforcing antitrust laws again. Hell, I'd prefer a Constitutional amendment forbidding one corporation from ever owning another! In the meantime, Rootstrikers helps you tell your Senator to reject the pro-bankster and pro-bailout bill S. 2155.

Meanwhile, Facebook has lately begun an app for kids under 13 called Messenger Kids, and if you're of the mind, as I am, that kids shouldn't be playing around with social media apps before the proverbial "age of reason," you'll be quite appalled at the idea. I can already hear my younger self telling me that I should be more trusting of kids' ability to navigate new things, but my younger self remains in the past for more than one reason! Being a grown-up, I don't want to rewire kids' brains so that they experience their entire childhood through a screen, well before they actually meet and interact with other kids in real time and space, and I'm certainly not into visiting depression and self-loathing onto kids, since that happens an awful lot when kids go on social media before they're ready for it. So the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell Facebook to abandon its plan to indoctrinate children into social media far, far earlier than is healthy for them.

Finally, Free Press helps you tell the FBI to stop using the so-called "Black Identity Extremist" label to go after black anti-racism activists. Even if you could convincingly argue that anti-racists routinely alienate people with their stridency (and you can't), that circumstance would not demand that we use law enforcement to single out folks who protest racism and police violence without committing a crime. I mean, if you think it's a crime, or should be a crime, to criticize police for killing black folks, then you might be better off living somewhere you might be more comfortable, say, an actual police state like Iran. And if you think Black Lives Matter protests are "violent," you may be confusing the police response with the protest. And why is this Administration so gung-ho about getting black protestors but so blasé about white racist protestors who openly advocate separatism and/or overthrow of our government? You have to wonder about their priorities.

Action: poisonous pesticides, and national parks.

Knowing that Arkansas is dominated by Republicans only makes it more heartening that their state government has fought Monsanto's dicamba, a herbicide scientists link to shortness of breath, muscle weakness, and vomiting -- but it's only banned dicamba use during the warmest parts of the year, since dicamba aerosolizes (and makes people sick) far more efficiently in warmer air. Hence Penn PIRG helps you thank the government of Arkansas for its partial ban of dicamba and encourage them to make their ban year-round. Should I bother mentioning that Monsanto manufactured dicamba for use on its own genetically-engineered crops? Yes, I should bother mentioning it again -- especially since Monsanto will no doubt tell you they do what they do to increase yields or end hunger, two goals that seem much too big for them to comprehend. I mean, making money off crops, they get, but doing so in a way that doesn't hurt people they're not anywhere near as good with. It sure is a good thing we're here to help them with that.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration's drill-everywhere-fuck-the-consequences plan continues unabated, as they now plan to sell fossil fuel drilling leases near Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. You may remember stopping fracking in Chaco Canyon back at the end of the Obama years, but, as they say, that was then and this is now, and "now" means nothing so much as big fossil fuel executives making as much money as humanly possible right away. That's Donald Trump for you, though -- he doesn't care about anyone but big boss-men like himself. Naturally, the Chaco park holds thousand-year-old artifacts from the Ancient Pueblo civilization, and good folks belonging to today's Pueblo nation find the area sacred, but again, "religious freedom" only means something to Trumpholes when you're a boss trying to deny women birth control. So CREDO helps you tell the Bureau of Land Management to reject proposed fossil fuel leases near the Chaco park. After all, oil and gas are temporary, but history is forever.

Around the table: the last refuge of pro-Trump scoundrels, and other lessons.

Mark Karlin at TruthOut interviews America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, about vote suppression in general, and the shutdown of the Trump Administration's Voter Integrity (sic) Commission in particular. Why does Mr. Palast think the Commission shut down, with its "mission" to be taken up by the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic)? You won't like the answer: "Kobach also bought lists of [Latino] voters. The purpose is clear: Match any José Garcia on voter rolls with José Garcia on deportation orders and purge an American for the crime of having a common [Latino] name." Deporting American citizens so you can win elections! It's what people do when they can't win arguments on the merits!

Ho hum, Matthew Gardner at ITEP reminds us that Disney's $125 million in employee bonuses is a little over one-tenth of its expected total haul from the Trump tax "reform." And those bonuses are a one-time thing -- I mean, only the boss's bonuses ever get repeated from year to year! -- while Disney's $1.2 billion haul from the (permanent, you remember) corporate rate tax cut will magically appear every year. I guess it'll lose its novelty after the first year, and they'll set about getting corporate welfare in other ways, but $1.2 billion every year is still $1.2 billion every year.

John Nichols at The Nation chronicles Gov. Scott Walker's continued crusade against democracy in Wisconsin -- including his refusal to call special elections for a vacant state Senate seat and a vacant state Assembly seat. All because "the legislature won't be that busy," when in fact the Governor has already called a special session for several thorny issues! This couldn't possibly be because a Democrat just won a special election in a previously Republican-held Senate seat by 11 points, could it?

EPA suspends its plan to allow mining in Alaska's Bristol Bay area, home to one of the world's largest and most profitable sockeye salmon industries. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt sure talks a good game about "the abundant natural resources" that deserve "the utmost protection" from the "unacceptable" risk of a Pebble Mine, but note that the EPA is still taking mining applications for the area, which could mean they're just fishing for the right crony investors. And if that takes a few years and we get complacent in the meantime, all the better!

Finally, with things going so well for the Trump Administration, quite a few right-wing punditoids are officially calling for people to be tried and convicted of treason. If patriotism isn't the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Dr. Johnson said it was, then calling your enemies traitors surely is. These idiots -- many of whom work for basic cable stations, which we all pay for whether we want to or not -- deserve nothing so much as a spanking. Unless, of course, they enjoy that sort of thing.

Action: net neutrality, and human rights.

Worried that the courts won't stop the FCC's net neutrality repeal? Bummed that Democrats have had trouble finding a 51st vote in the Senate to help stop it? Well, Roots Action helps you tell your state legislators to mandate that state and local governments get internet services only from corporations that respect net neutrality principles. You've heard, no doubt, that the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal would prevent states from creating their own net neutrality laws (because right-wingers so love states' rights!), but Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has mandated that any corporation doing internet business with the state must respect basic net neutrality provisions, and that's plainly not the legislature making a law. Folks who would cry AMURKIAN CAESAR!!!!! at Mr. Bullock's order should consider whether Montana state law specifically empowers -- oh, why bother? These are the same people who excoriated Mr. Obama's orders but applaud Mr. Trump's.

Meanwhile, given the ongoing imbroglio in Honduras -- whose government has been beating the snot out of protestors for two months after quite possibly ascending to power via massive election fraud -- Witness for Peace helps you tell your Senators to withhold security-related aid from Honduras as long as it oppresses its citizens and tell your Representatives to support H.R. 1929, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act. Both these actions would help ensure that American taxpayer money doesn't help Honduras beat down its citizens in the streets, but can we take a minute to applaud these good citizens? They're still out there, even as their government has killed some 30 folks and injured hundreds more; as with the good Iranians taking to the streets after the very suspicious re-election of Mr. Ahmedinejad in 2009, we should remember that, in some parts of the world, you literally risk your life to do the right thing.

Around the table: what stands in the way of a Democratic wave, and other lessons.

If you're already gushing at the possibility of a Democrat victory in the coming midterms, Ari Berman at Rolling Stone cautions that Republican-held states have devised a lot of nefarious ways of suppressing the vote. Mainly Mr. Berman concentrates on Wisconsin, once the home of great American public servants like Bob LaFollette and William Proxmire, but now a right-wing swamp of extreme gerrymandering, vote suppression, and dark money political contributions. But here's a ray of hope: maybe the Supreme Court heard about 2011 Republican lawmakers saying "ignore the public comments" while mulling the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

Here's another corrective to your enthusiasm: Ryan Grim and Lee Fang at The Intercept describe how actual populists in U.S. House races have to run against the Democratic establishment before they can run against (beatable) Republican incumbents. You'd think Pennsylvania state Democrat poobahs, in particular, would have far less credibility after their lousy showing in 2016 (seriously, who could possibly care about getting Katie McGinty's endorsement?), but they're still around, saying Democrats have to appeal to Republican moderates who will never vote for them rather than the left-leaning and left-behind economic populists who otherwise wouldn't vote for anyone. What's the definition of insanity again?

Bill McKibben at The Nation presents "Three Strategies to Get to a Fossil-Free America," wryly adding that "none of them rely on Washington to do anything useful." Here they are: getting states and localities to move to renewable power; blocking new fossil-fuel projects like gas and oil pipelines and fracking wells; and stop the flow of bank money to fossil-fuel projects. I laughed out loud at the part where folks actually installed fields of solar panels on Keystone XL's path.

In a peripherally-related note, The Straight Dope describes the phenomenon of the "fatberg," or the massive, dense blob of cooking oil and other waste that tends to block off sewer lines. The biggest culprit in the creation of the "fatberg" isn't that turkey grease you dumped down the sink (though it doesn't help!), but the massive amount of used cooking oil restaurants dump into sewers. Sadly, the only idea advanced to stop the fatberg -- converting cooking oil into energy -- is over a decade old already, and some enterprising small-town or big-city mayor should already have made it the great work for which they'll always be remembered.

Finally, Araz Hachadourian at Yes! magazine describes the "time bank," where good Americans who might be short on cash trade hours of services instead. Folks might swap mowing the lawn for a good food dish, for example -- and no money changes hands. Some 500 of these banks exist across America, and I suppose today's "conservatives" would decry them as TEH SOSHULIZM!!!!, even though they consist of people signing and fulfilling contracts with each other without the assistance of some governmental body, which would ordinarly sound like something after a conservative's own heart.

Action: "free" trade, and infrastructure.

NAFTA negotiators are meeting in Montreal as we speak, and since our President has already faltered before the challenge of demanding an end to the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" mechanism in NAFTA, and our Commerce Secretary thinks the hated TPP would be a wonderful guide to renegotiating NAFTA, it's up to us to act. So Public Citizen helps you demand that any future NAFTA deal put people before corporations. Corporations have the decided advantage, of course, since they're able to take a peek at NAFTA negotiations and we're not, even though we're, you know, the owners of government. And "free" trade deals have not only subjugated workers to corporations, they've overthrown American law -- recall that the World Trade Organization recently struck down a law mandating country-of-origin labeling for chickens as a violation of two of the more obscure "free" trade deals! And a more corporate NAFTA would do more of that. So let's get to it.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that Axios published a leaked outline of President Trump's infrastructure plan, and it's as awful as we've feared. The plan, you recall, would use some $140 billion in corporate welfare handouts to lure $1 trillion in private investment, but already you see the problem: private investors won't invest in a project unless it makes money, which makes it more likely they'll skimp on vital services to the people who need them just so they can make more money. And where's the money coming from? From oil and gas drilling in public parks, naturally. Of course we'd be better off simply reversing the recently-passed corporate tax cut, which offers a boon to corporations much larger than the infrastructure plan's $140 billion price tag, every year. So Food and Water Watch helps you tell our President to abandon his privatization-centered infrastructure program. He won't care, but duty is duty.

Around the table: new developments in government spying, corruption, solar power, health care, scholarship, and pimp-slapping.

This is a scary development: MIT researchers have developed a "visual microphone system" that can reconstruct sound from silent video. Of course some things are better sound reproducers than others (foil chip bags are terrific, plants rather less so), but given that it essentially allows folks to listen to sound without actually capturing the sound on tape the traditional way, this is the kind of thing that could really do a lot of damage in the wrong hands -- and by "the wrong hands," I pretty much mean "our surveillance-happy government." (I will say that the comments, averse as most of them are to discussing the spying implications, are considerably more intelligent than in most comment sections.)

Ho hum, the newly-Trumpholed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped an investigation into a lender charging triple-digit annual interest rates. Because BIG GUMMINT BAD!!!!!, I suppose. It gets better: the lender in question just so happened to give a few grand to CFPB director Mick Mulvaney's various re-election campaigns in the House, which suggests that Congressfolk really, really can be bought much too cheaply. Oh, and they're going to try to overturn the CFPB's payday lending rule; when I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Consumer Reports instructs us that the Trump Administration's solar panel tariff shouldn't discourage folks from going solar. Regardless of how much money the tariff would cost consumers (Consumer Reports says not much -- it's not like President Trump can put a tariff on installation and labor!), and regardless of the fact that solar subsidies won't be around after 2022 (absent further action from Congress), this much is certain: now is always the right time to do the right thing.

We learn from Diane Dewar at The Conversation that "Medicaid Work Requirements Could Cost the Government More in the Long Run." Long story short: when folks can get coverage through Medicaid, they're more likely to go to the doctor before their health problems become intractable; with Medicaid work requirements shoving over 6 million folks off the rolls, our government will ultimately spend more money, as folks now without Medicaid forego medical treatment until it becomes an ER visit.

Michelle Nickerson -- author of Mothers of Conservatism, which I highly recommend -- interviews Stacie Taranto, author of Kitchen Table Politics, a book about conservative Catholic suburban women's activism in '70s New York state. The '70s saw the first Conservative Party U.S. Senator from New York (James Buckley, brother of William F., Jr.), as you know, so clearly these women had a significant effect on the times, and it's good to be able to understand why some women rejected feminism and the liberalization of the Catholic church. (As an aside, it's a damn shame folks ever thought lowering taxes would "make it less likely that a second income (their own) would be needed," since the two-income family has pretty much been a staple of America since the first Reagan tax-cuts-for-the-rich.)

Finally, former RNC Chair Michael Steele had this to say to "evangelicals" like Tony Perkins who keep giving President Trump "mulligans" and "do-overs" for his misbehavior: "Just shut the hell up and don’t ever preach to me about anything ever again. I don’t want to hear it...After telling me how to live my life, who to love, what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do and now you sit back and the prostitutes don’t matter? The grabbing the you-know-what doesn’t matter? The outright behavior and lies don’t matter? Just shut up." I recall Mr. Steele arguing against gay marriage in 2009, among other things, but even if his newfound fierce streak is as calculated as his appeasement of extremists was back in the day, his new posture might help awaken like-minded folks, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. There is really nothing "moderate" about letting extremists kick sand in your face, after all.

Action: concerning discrimination and marijuana policy.

As you may know, the Trump Administration has created a new office, called the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division. This office would, naturally, be situated within the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights, meaning that HHS's Office of Civil Rights would have a sort of sub-office designed to justify denying people their civil rights because some health care CEO thinks his own "religious beliefs" (or "moral" beliefs, mind you) are more important than their duty not to discriminate against good Americans. The Trump Administration sure loves these little Orwellian ironies, but if you don't, or if you merely don't want to see good Americans get discriminated against because religious bigots don't like them or approve of them, then the National Women's Law Center helps you tell the Trump Administration to scuttle its latest effort at discriminating against good folks in the name of the Lord.

Meanwhile, S. 1689, the Marijuana Justice Act, would better reflect the priorities of good Americans than our Justice Department is doing at present, by ending the federal prohibition of marijuana, establishing a fund to invest in communities ravaged by the war on drugs, and by cutting federal taxpayer assistance to local enforcement entities who, ah, arrest a disproportionate number of nonwhites on pot charges. Attorney General Jeff Sessions really, really wants you to think his irrational hatred of marijuana is all about "the damage pot does," but no scientist thinks pot's as damaging as other Schedule I drugs, and anyway it's not about that -- it's about continuing the 40-plus years of the "war on drugs," which was always a war on anti-war and black protestors. Don't just take my word for that, of course -- take the word of the Watergate co-conspirator who said as much! Hence the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to promote sensible marijuana policy by supporting S. 1689.

UPDATE. I excised a paragraph concerning Mr. Azar's nomination to HHS Secretary because the Senate confirmed him yesterday. I apologize for the error; usually, I'm more on the ball than that.

Action: internet freedom, and offshore drilling.

I still don't have a bill number for the proposed "resolution of disapproval" that would repeal the FCC's recent "Restoring Internet Freedom for Corporations and Certainly Not for You Little People" rule (which, as you can probably tell from my exaggerated title, itself repealed the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules), but you should still get on the horn with your Senators and tell them to support such a resolution. The resolution reportedly has 50 votes -- all 49 Senate Democrats plus Republican Susan Collins of Maine -- and only needs one more to pass the Senate. You can find phone numbers for your Senators using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or beneath this post, if you're on a smartphone) -- and you can also find tools for those Republicans Senators you hope might join the struggle, a thin hope, to be sure, but John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) occasionally get it in their heads to piss off the Trump Administration. Send Mr. McCain a get-well wish if you call him, since he's not presently well enough to even vote on bills.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to send a public comment to the Trump Administration demanding that they reverse their plan to open up all the coasts except those of their cronies' to expanded oil and gas drilling, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. What does expanded oil and gas drilling do? It gives us more oil and gas, in theory anyway, but we hardly need more of that choking off our clean air and muddying our clean water -- we need more renewable energy development in America, even as renewable energy sources like solar and wind are starting to become competitive price-wise with oil and gas. And if you responded to that sentence with a ha! If they're competitive, why do they need Big Gummint's help? Ha ha ha you liberals suck!, well, congratulations, because you're the moron who just told my audience why oil and gas don't need all the Big Gummint handouts, either. Thanks for playing, though, and remember to wipe off your screen.

Around the table: our President isn't crazy but enables craziness in others, and other lessons.

President Trump slaps 30% tariff on imported solar panels, because of course he did. Yeah, I'd prefer to make solar panels here too, but I don't see him moving this quickly on the Chinese steel he uses in his own buildings, and it sure looks like he got up in the morning and asked around the office for the best way to piss off liberals -- which is an understandable political strategy, I suppose, if the only "liberals" you know are the Democrats in Congress. As policy, we'd best interpret his move not as a "pro-worker" move (what, he thinks robots install solar panels?) or even as an "end to corporate welfare" for solar corporations; we'd best interpret is as actual corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal, three industries that are losing ground to solar.

I approve of data showing the income gap between rich and poor across the planet, but comparing the "1%" to everyone else, even when the 1% makes more than 80% of the world's income, just isn't the most effective comparison, even if it rolls off the tongue more easily. Try the 0.1%, since you're just not in the same club as Rupert Murdoch if you make $450,000 a year -- nor do you do the same amount of damage to civilization. It is, after all, all about restraining the most powerful from running roughshod over everyone else's rights, even if right-wingers call the most powerful "job creators"! (In fairness, the "just eight people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the planet" is the better comparison.)

Execrable "evangelical" right-winger Tony Perkins announces that evangelicals have given President Trump a "mulligan" and a "do-over" when contemplating the President's extramarital affairs and general vulgarity, as long as he "delivers" on evangelical policy preferences. That may be taking the Parable of the Prodigal Son too far. I presume, also, that Mr. Perkins means evangelical elites, not your evangelical friends and neighbors, have been handing out these "mulligans," since a lot of them already know that if you keep handing out mulligans to folks like Mr. Trump, you'll just have to keep handing them out. (Read the whole article, though -- the work of defending Mr. Trump makes Mr. Perkins, and others, sound utterly unhinged.)

Florida voters will get to vote on a constitutional amendment guaranteeing most felons the right to vote this November. I sure hope those voters do the right thing, which is give back what their government took away, and deal another death-blow to the notion that folks who commit crimes should just keep on paying even after they've completed their sentences and reintegrated into society, all so some politician or other can make everyone watch his balls swing. (But I still think murderers and sex offenders still deserve the right to vote -- rights are either for everyone or they're not really rights.)

Finally, one of the male Trump offspring says the recent government shutdown "is a good thing" for the Trump Administration politically. I don't presume to disagree with his assessment so much as I presume to excoriate a society that tolerates such cynicism openly expressed, a society that encourages folks to think of life and death matters as sporting events where one side is up and the other down, a society that too rarely evaluates events in terms of the harm they do to people. In other words, we live in a sick, immoral, and decadent society.

Action: press freedom, school lunch nutrition standards, and redistricting.

Amnesty International helps you tell the Burmese government to release two Reuters journalists investigating that government's ongoing extermination of its Rohingya minority. And what bogus charge do these two intrepid journalists face? The Burmese government says that by procuring "important and secret government documents" -- it's a good thing they said the documents were "important" and "secret"! -- they've broken the Official Secrets Act, but legal experts inform us that Burma rarely-if-ever prosecutes anyone under this law, a relic of British colonial rule. And even the Trump Administration has demanded the release of the two journalists; surely the Nobel Peace Prize-winner heading up the Burmese government doesn't want to be outclassed by the Orange Menace just so she can avoid even more PR hits from the genocide she's currently allowing her military to conduct. At least, that's what I'd imagine, as a reasonable, civilized person.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Trump USDA to abandon its effort to roll back school lunch nutrition standards, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "school lunch nutrition standards" would get laughs from kids and adults alike, but the standards the Obama Administration put in place back in 2014 have actually helped kids get more fruit and vegetables in their diet and have actually helped get junk food out of schools. Of course you already know the key word in the previous sentence for the Republican party is "Obama," and anything with Mr. Obama's name on it must be erased from history. That's not just the Trump Administration's problem, either -- Congress has been hot to repeal the standards since they regained full control in 2015, even though doing so would make them look, you know, objectively pro-childhood obesity. But they don't get all the say around here -- we do.

Finally, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court ruled that the state's Congressional district map "clearly, plainly, and palpably" violates the state constitution, and gave the legislature about 2 1/2 weeks to submit a new map -- so now's as good a time as any to let Common Cause help you to tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to pass HB 722/SB 22, which would reform the state's redistricting process. If the politicians have proven anything, it's that we can't trust them to draw legislative districts that put the people's needs over their own -- but taking it out of the legislature's hands and putting it into the hands of an independent commission (as HB 722/SB 22 would do) would give us a better chance at avoiding the evil of gerrymandering. We shouldn't let legislators draw districts that split counties and cities apart (let alone districts that exclude single houses and sides of streets!) out of their greed for continued and undeserved power.

Action: voting rights, bad federal judges, and the government shutdown.

CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2978/S. 1419, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would essentially restore the Voting Rights Act to full power. You recall that the Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act partly because they now constituted discrimination against the South. But the Court all but invited Congress to pass legislation that would both achieve the ends of the Voting Rights Act and answer the Court's objections, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act does that: it wouldn't subject certain areas of the South to DOJ preclearance whenever they want to change their voting laws, but would rather subject any area of the country with a history of voting rights violation to that preclearance. Really, that should satisfy anyone wringing their hands over "what's been done to the South in the name of racial justice." Unless, of course, rage is the only thing that satisfies them. We can't do anything for people like that, except outvote them.

Meanwhile, speaking of Southern vote suppression, President Trump has renominated one Thomas Farr to the federal judiciary, though he couldn't clear the Senate last year (Democrats showed some spine, for once, and revoked unanimous consent after Mr. Farr's nomination cleared Judiciary). Mr. Farr has a long and troubling history, not just in working for the infamous Sen. Jesse Helms, not just in helping Mr. Helms suppress the black vote in North Carolina during the 1980s, but in lying about it to the Senate last year. And Mr. Trump has some chutzpah claiming that "judicial emergencies" have forced him to renominate Mr. Farr. This U.S. District Court seat has been empty for 11 years, but that doesn't mean you put just anybody in it -- and Mr. Trump's justification for doing so sure seems like rhetorical hostage-taking to me. Color of Change helps you tell your Senators to oppose the renomination of Mr. Farr to our federal judiciary.

Finally, as you know, our government shut down late last week, and though Mr. Trump famously said years ago that we should consider a government shutdown the President's fault because of, you know, leadership, of course this week he's saying it's the Democrats' fault, though Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress, and though the final Senate vote (50 nay, 49 yea, with Sen. McCain again not voting due to health issues) included five Republican nay votes. Now I wouldn't have insisted, as Democrats did, on putting the DREAM Act in a budget bill, but they might have been politically adept, for once, in doing so -- I can imagine a lot of center-right Hispanic-Americans throwing up their hands for the last time. Regardless, we don't play 13-dimensional chess; we only want our government to pass good legislation, hence Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass both the DREAM Act and CHIP reauthorization, which seemed to be sticking points in the budgeting negotiations.

Around the table: conservatism's ongoing decay, and other sad developments.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy provides us with yet more helpful data demonstrating that outsourcing the IRS's debt collection function is a terrible idea. The IRS spends about $3 on private debt collectors for every $1 they bring in, which won't surprise you if you have, well, virtually any life experience at all. Strange that today's "conservatives" push for privatization, then do nothing when the private corporations deliver bad results. Aren't conservatives all about making government more efficient and saving the taxpayer money? Or is that just what they told us?

Gov. Walker's little corporate welfare deal with Foxconn will now cost Wisconsin taxpayers $4.5 billion, instead of the $3 billion he previously said it would cost. I wouldn't put it past Mr. Walker, who's as politically astute as he is evil, to try to get some insulation from the backlash by letting President Trump announce the Foxconn deal last year, but this imbroglio remains a major opportunity for Democrats to finally find bipartisan hatred of corporate welfare sexy enough to run ads about. Of course, these are Democrats we're talking about.

Not quite two weeks after passing the massive tax "reform" bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan gets $500,000 in campaign contributions from Charles Koch (of Koch brothers infamy) and his wife. I won't say you could prove a quid pro quo in a court of law, but I'd be a schmuck to say the two events are completely unrelated. I've become convinced that the future of campaign finance is the small contribution, and that big campaign contributions like this will become massive PR headaches for donors. But I wouldn't mind the future being now, of course.

Ho hum, West Virginia's plan to drug test welfare applicants has caught exactly four people in its web over the first three months. One shouldn't compare number of welfare applicants who fail drug tests to the number of folks who use drugs in the population as a whole, but to the number of folks who fail drug tests in the population as a whole. But proponents of this sort of thing have failed to make the case that welfare drug testing is fiscally responsible, which is, again, the sort of thing we thought conservatives cared about. Of course, I'd also argue that punishing addicts is far less fiscally responsible than treating them.

Finally, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor/RNC Chair Michael Steele says the Republicans are entirely to blame for the current government shutdown. I never enjoyed watching Mr. Steele, an obvious moderate, run as far right as he could to appease the rest of the party -- you remember him popularizing the phrase "drill, baby, drill" at the 2008 Republican convention? And you remember his apology for his very mild criticisms of Rush Limbaugh the next year? -- but if he's really as fed up as he sounds these days, he might do some good for this great nation after all.

Action: net neutrality, train safety, and Social Security.

Word on the street is that the proposed resolution of disapproval that would reverse the FCC's recent decision to kill off net neutrality -- and kill off your internet freedom with it! -- now has 45 co-sponsors, including Republican Sen. Collins of Maine, and per the Congressional Review Act, the resolution would need only 30 co-sponsors to force a vote in the Senate. So Moms Rising helps you send an email to your Senators demanding that they vote to restore net neutrality and therefore internet freedom to all Americans, not just the big actors who can pay-to-play, but you may want to make this a phone call, too, so they take you more seriously. And don't flinch before the prospect of this resolution failing in the House (or getting vetoed by the President): if it passes in the Senate, it will deliver a massive PR black eye to FCC Chair Ajit Pai's efforts, and it could even help discourage big telecoms from randomly blocking and throttling your favorite websites.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration wants to roll back an Obama-era rule requiring more advanced pneumatic brake systems for trains carrying crude oil across our great land. Always Mr. Trump tries to destroy anything with Mr. Obama's name on it; he's worse than Kylo Ren confronting Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, amirite? And always Mr. Trump says TEH REGULASHUNZ HURTS TEH BIZNIZZIZ!!!!!, when these same regulations protect people -- I mean, is the meaning of being an American really all about having to put up with living near oil trains derailing and blowing up and polluting our air and water? After all, nearly a third of Pennsylvanians (for example) live within a half-mile of a train line which carries crude oil, so this isn't something that "happens to other people." Penn Environment helps you tell the Trump Administration to scuttle its plan to let oil trains roam the land with substandard braking systems.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop slashing the budget of the Social Security Administration and instead fund it so it can give seniors the help they need, then CREDO still helps you do that. What right-wingers hope you don't get about "reducing the size of government" is that government provides services to us, services we have already paid for with our taxes. If they can convince you that your government is an obstacle rather than a tool, then they win -- particularly when Democrat politicians play this me-too-but-smarter game they've been playing for almost 40 years. But I digress. The notion that there's just no money to pay for good services from the Social Security Administration is utter horsedoodle -- Congress just cut corporate taxes and rich people's taxes dramatically, so the money is there; Congress is afraid (at best!) of forcing their biggest donors to pay their fair share. So let's help them face their fear.

Around the table: the Democrats' peculiar position on government spying, and other follies.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that "The Same Democrats Who Denounce Donald Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers." And since a significant number of Republican House Reps actually opposes warrantless government spying, Democrats could have unified and killed the bill. But they didn't. Remember that the next time someone tells you that electing more Democrats is the only way to get things done.

Remember back when President Trump "saved" all those jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana by giving Carrier a boatload of corporate welfare tax breaks? Well, a lot of Carrier workers are getting laid off now, and have had it up to here with Mr. Trump's "promises.". The deal was never that good in the first place -- over 500 Indianapolis workers got laid off, and Carrier completely closed its Huntington plant and moved the jobs to Mexico -- but that didn't stop a lot of obnoxious right-wingers from whining that TEH LIBRULZ HATES TEH JOBZ!!!! Are any of them sorry about that now? I kid, of course -- being a Trumphole means never being sorry, or accountable.

Ho hum, the Republican mania for cutting the IRS's budget will lead to an IRS workforce that won't be able to implement the Republican tax "reform" with any skill or efficiency. Why, it's almost like that's the whole idea! Congress has slashed the IRS's employee training funding by almost 75% over the last eight years, which I'll admit is likely the envy of the corporate world vis a vis training workers, which they regard as yet another drag on profits. I wish I could say corporations that refuse to train their workers will fail -- I mean, they should, but Our Glorious Elites always seem to fail upward in this sick, immoral, and decadent society.

Julia Kassem at TruthOut finds corruption and mismanagement of public water in the Middle East to be even more damaging than in other parts of the world, leading, of course, to privatization of those resources, and thus also to more corruption and more lousy service. You see this everywhere: governments promising to "make sure" private corporations handle the public's resources properly, then being missing-in-action when those private corporations foul up. Again, it's almost like that's the whole idea.

Finally, some bad news: the number of folks without health insurance in America went up by over 3 million people in Mr. Trump's first year in office. I'm sure Mr. Trump will blame all of that on the Democrats, but nobody put a gun to his head and cut off subsidies, nobody put a gun to his head and reduce the exchange sign-up period to 45 days, and certainly nobody put a gun to his head and told him to repeal the individual mandate. I guess it's Democrats' fault because they wouldn't "work with him," by which he means capitulate to him. See? He is a real Republican!

Action: CHIP, offshore drilling, and antibiotic abuse.

As you know, Congress spent almost all of last year cutting taxes for corporations and the rich and trying to destroy our health care system, but they did not extend the Children's Health Insurance Program, which helps states insure some nine million children. CHIP's funding authorization expired on September 30, and some states are starting to run out of money! All of this really should be a devastating campaign ad all by itself, but Democrats would have to run them, and I suspect Democrat consultants are already telling all these upstarts running for Congressional seats that they should be "civil." But why should we be "civil" to people who do nothing but hurt people? Because we might have to "work with them"? When you encounter people who won't work, you work around them. Moms rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize CHIP already. But feel free to phone your Reps and Senators instead, and add that we won't forget what they've done.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has announced their plan to open almost all of America's vast coastlines to offshore drilling (except in Florida, of course, where they aim to burnish Gov. Scott's rep ahead of a possible Senate bid). But, as Penn Environment says in their latest email missive, "when you drill, you spill" -- there's no sense squealing that spills happen zero point zero zero eight percent of the time or whatever when one spill can wreck an ecosystem (not to mention the economy that depends on it!) for decades. And developing solar and wind power remains anathema to President Bigballs, who no doubt finds wind and solar executives too small-time for his taste. Still, no one will one day say we lost our clean air and clean water, but at least a few CEOs got to live even higher on the hog for a while!, so Penn Environment helps you tell the Trump Administration to abandon its plans for expanded offshore drilling.

Finally, the fast food corporation McDonald's has, commendably, declared it would source its chicken only from farms that only give animals antibiotics when they're sick. But McDonald's has not committed to sourcing their beef from similarly sensible farms, and we know McDonald's for its hamburgers more than its chicken sandwiches, amirite? As we know, factory farms tend to use antibiotics on animals to fatten them up and help them endure their squalid living conditions a little better, to the point where four out of five antibiotics in America go to nominally healthy feed animals. Thus we now we risk a civilization where superbugs could render antibiotics useless and the next cut you get could kill you, just like in the 19th century. But PennPIRG helps you tell McDonald's to do the right thing and gets its beef from antibiotic-free sources. If they did it, it'd be a big deal -- a lot of people eat McDonald's hamburgers, after all.

Around the table: the challenge of being crazy in a crazy time, and other issues.

Trump Administration allows states to start imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. No use arguing that including various forms of "community engagement" in these requirements gives these Medicaid recipients a soft landing, because if you're too sick to work, you're too sick to take care of someone else who's sick, too. Also, most Medicaid recipients do work -- they just don't make enough money to afford private health insurance, because their bosses don't pay them enough, though they sure do pay themselves well enough. So Medicaid is not an "entitlement" -- and you or I might be a catastrophe or two away from needing it ourselves.

The next time President Trump calls some country that gives us a lot of immigrants a "shithole" country, he might do well to remember that to the degree that "Haiti and African nations" are unable to provide for their citizens to the degree that our government does, it may be because our government is among the many Western governments that have spent centuries plundering them. Yes, it's an unpleasant truth, but facing unpleasant truths is what helps folks grow and mature. Didn't conservatives used to say that all the time?

In the middle of a House vote rubber-stamping more government spying on good Americans, President Trump took positions both for and against the bill on Twitter. First he wondered if the Obama Administration had used these spying powers to go after him, then he said the bill was really about "foreign guys" on "foreign land" (which, uh, no) and that "(w)e need it!" Republicans have no standing to accuse anyone else of "flip-flopping" ever again -- though, having no shame, of course they will.

Good news, everyone! The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC) has unanimously rejected the Energy Department's plan to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants. The Energy Department proposed subsidizing these plants, supposedly as a way of making the electric grid more reliable, but -- as the article says repeatedly in a remarkable display of message discipline -- this was really a "coal bailout." I would have added that this was "our government trying to pick winners and losers," since solar and wind are starting to get competitive price-wise. A lot of Trump voters think this is the kind of bailout that's OK, because it'll put them back to work. But if we were to put them to work building out a renewable energy grid, they'd more likely see it for what it is.

Finally, infamous former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, now running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, still says Mr. Obama's birth certificate is a "forgery (sic) document" and that Congress should pass a "law" or a "regulation" requiring a background check of Presidential candidates. The most famous and obnoxious birther of them all may be President, but Mr. Obama has been out of office for almost a year now, and I'm not sure Mr. Arpaio will get people riled up enough merely by rehashing his greatest hits. You have to find new crazy, after all. Maybe Mr. Arpaio's past it.

Action: immigration, media consolidation, and "free" trade.

As you know, President Trump recently revoked TPS (or Temporary Protected Status) for some 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants -- who have nearly 200,000 children, many of whom, having been born in America, are American citizens, so that could mean a lot of divided families. If you're tempted to respond America can't do everything for everyone, well, the TPS program actually isn't that -- it's a program that helps good folks from other nations that are no longer safe for them, whether that's due to armed conflict or natural disaster. And other nations tend not to recover from armed conflict or natural disaster very quickly, which is why so many TPS recipients have American children now. The Trump Administration says El Salvador has rebuilt to the point where TPS recipients can return, but I wonder what the courts will say about how they determined that! In the meantime, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to help Salvadoran TPS recipients stay in America.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FCC Inspector General to investigate whether FCC Chair Ajit Pai made corrupt "sweetheart" deals in order to get the proposed Sinclair/Tribune merger through, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. Specifically, you'd ask the Inspector General to investigate whether he did anything corrupt during his two meetings with the Sinclair Broadcast Group early in 2017 -- this, after Sinclair, a notoriously right-wing corporation, showered favorable coverage on the Trump campaign and then met with President Trump specifically to discuss potential FCC rule changes! As you know, this Trump Administration is really corrupt and really stupid about it -- the FCC's recent killing of internet freedom could die in court in a half dozen ways! -- and Mr. Pai sure seems like a Trump kind of guy, so an investigation may well turn up something substantial. But only if we demand it.

Finally, we've learned that trade deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China have actually worsened during Mr. Trump's first year. With anyone else, we'd nod and say well, it takes a long time to turn around a cruise ship, but not with Mr. I-Alone-Can-Fix-It. And will any of our intrepid "liberal" media reporters ask Mr. Trump why the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico is widening? Nah, probably not -- he'll just shriek TEH FAKE NEWZ!!!!, and though I can't entirely blame a reporter for not wanting to deal with that, duty is still duty. And speaking of duty, Action Network helps you tell your House Reps that any replacement for NAFTA must put people ahead of corporations. I can't say I'm hopeful about that, since Mr. Trump didn't want to get rid of the "investor-state dispute settlement" system that always puts corporations ahead of people. But he and his corporate cronies don't get all the say in America, so let's get to it.

Action: drug pricing, pot prohibition, and automatic voter registration.

Sign for Good helps you tell the Senate to investigate HHS Secretary nominee Alex Azar's role in insulin price gouging while CEO of big pharma corporation Eli Lilly. We know that Eli Lilly jacked up the price of insulin over 300% while Mr. Azar was there, and when your right-wing uncle says BUT OVER FORTY CORPORATIONS MAKE INSULIN YOU LOSE HA HA SNORT, you can remind him that Eli Lilly is one of the three biggest corporations that control, between them, over 90% of the market. You may also remind him that diabetics need insulin to survive, and that the world is becoming more diabetic all the time, thanks to all the sugar and other carbohydrates we ingest (a problem our government doesn't exactly help by subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup). So, in sum: greed is bad, monopolies are bad, corporate welfare for monopolies is bad, and you can't natter on about a "free market" for life-saving drugs. And if you do natter on about it, you may have a heart of stone.

Meanwhile, as you know, Attorney General Sessions recently rescinded the Cole memo, promulgated under the Obama Administration, which limited federal interference in states that had loosened laws against marijuana. And this proves, among other things, that "states' rights" mainly means "whatever best oppresses black folks" -- I mean, a real conservative would say the facts don't justify pot being on Schedule I, so the states are a good place to see if loosening pot prohibition really works, but then Jeff Sessions isn't a real conservative. Anyway, he doesn't get all the say around here -- the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Congress to defund all efforts by the Justice Department to meddle in states that have legalized marijuana. Congress has defunded DOJ efforts to meddle in medical marijuana states, so this wouldn't be a long walk.

Finally, H.R. 5779/S. 3252, the Automatic Voter Registration Act, would mandate state election boards to ensure that everyone who's eligible to vote in that state is also registered to vote, except for folks who decline registration. The bill also mandates that a citizen's information can be transferred directly from a state agency to the election board without any further action from said citizens, which, of course, is not the same as your government spying on your emails without a warrant, or your local police department disguising a spying device as a cell phone tower -- automatic voter registration would ensure that information citizens have already volunteered gets to the election board. After all, the only reason someone would think voting should be hard (and some folks say this out loud!) is that they can't win a vote, or an argument, on the merits. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support voting rights by supporting the Automatic Voter Registration Act.

Action: fighting budgetary hostage-taking, government spying, and failing to fund kids' health insurance.

As you may know, Congress has only funded our government through January 19, so difficult is the task of repeatedly making the good citizenry swallow garbage. But that doesn't mean they won't keep trying! So Public Citizen helps you tell your Senator to block any anti-freedom garbage from the next must-pass spending bill. You know what Mitch McConnell loves to do with must-pass spending bills? Loosen campaign finance restrictions, that's what. You know what other lunkheads in Congress would like to do, right? Repeal the Johnson Amendment, and in doing so let churches become money-laundering operations for big donors. (That church-state wall we always talk about? It protects the church, too.) But we're Americans, dammit, and we deserve better than a Congress that constantly takes us hostage so it can pass odious bills that would otherwise wither in sunlight, and we should put it to our Congressdolts like that. If that hurts their fee-fees, they can go get a real job.

Meanwhile, Congress also aims to extend Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, that section of federal law that allows our government to Hoover up your electronic communications without a warrant. Our Constitution would have our government get a warrant to do such things, but who cares about our Constitution when ZOMG TEH TERRURIZTZ!!!!!! Seriously, our Founders must be spinning in their graves watching our government act more or less like the government they revolted against, all in the name of "security." But real security comes from honoring your values, and adhering to them, even when it's difficult or inconvenient. And who suffers the most from government spying? Our government's political opponents, of course. So if you think Section 702 would be a good way to stick it to protestors and immigrants, just remember that the next Administration could always turn it on you. Both Roots Action and Free Press help you tell our government to reject the reauthorization of warrantless spying on Americans.

Finally, Congress still hasn't funded the Children's Health Insurance Program (or CHIP), though (per the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission's July assessment) most states will have run out of CHIP money by March. And dig the excuses coming from Republicans these days! Sen. Hatch (R-UT), who co-wrote the original CHIP law back in the day, says "the reason CHIP's having trouble is because we don't have money anymore." And certainly not because Congress just blew a $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit with its tax bill handouts to corporations and the wealthy! A bill Mr. Hatch shepherded through the Senate, no less! Maybe shame over this hypocrisy explains why he's not running for re-election; at least, I'd like to think so. Anyway, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize CHIP, and without poison pill amendments that would, for example, injure Medicare.

Around the table: from welfare for the wealthy to the continuing follies of our current President.

Ho hum, Bloomberg analysis finds American CEOs paid much more generously than foreign CEOs. I'm sad to learn that the income gap between CEOs and workers isn't that much better in Germany or Australia than it is here. But I'm happy to learn that the Conservative government in Great Britain has proposed CEO-worker pay-ratio disclosures -- though, to be fair, they're probably being pulled leftward by a revitalized Labour Party.

The flesh is willing, but I'm not sure the tax scam will "doom" Republicans at the ballot box in the 2018 midterms. I mean, I could be wrong, especially given that Americans are so much smarter about cutting taxes for the rich than when Tha Bush Mobb was cutting taxes for the rich, but, really, those health care "reform" votes are what should doom Republicans in November. Taxes are still a little abstract for people (though maybe not this time next year, amirite?), whereas losing your health care is quite real. Still, Democrats, bash the bill. It deserves it.

First folks got all excited that President Trump dissolved his odious Voter "Integrity" Commission, and then folks got all unnerved that the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) would be taking over at least some of its work, but many observers think DHS won't "want to be the second person to jump on a live grenade," as put by a Loyola law professor. And yes, it is true that we'll attend whatever the DHS decides to do with its new mandate, but dig, if you will, Mr. Trump's statement whining about the "endless legal battles" the commission faced, as if you have some sort of right not to be sued when you do evil.

Mike Ludwig at TruthOut discusses how much damage Attorney General Sessions can do in ending the Obama-era effort to leave states with legalized marijuana alone. Long story short: "Sessions can't stop the inevitable, but he can harm a lot of people trying," and those people are most likely going to be the same people always harmed by the "war on drugs": black and brown people. The good news? Congress might simply refuse to fund any DOJ effort to meddle with the pot trade as it's legal in California, Washington, Colorado, and other states.

Department of the Interior now requires staff to ensure that anyone who gets a grant from the department "promote(s) the priorities" of the current Administration. Why, I can only guess how many laws that breaks! And, naturally, Interior has halted at least two studies (one about the health effects of coal mining, the other about fossil fuel inspections) that don't line up with the President's "priorities." But why do we talk about his priorities, and not ours?

Finally, let's not get too excited about the possibility of Oprah Winfrey running for President. She's obviously more substantial and accomplished than The Rock, let alone the White House's current occupant, but if you remember that the Roman Republic started going downhill when generals started becoming consuls, you won't really want an America vacillating between this mogul or that one as President. Yes, anyone can be President in America, but that doesn't mean everyone should be President.

Action: fighting for better tax policy, less cruelty in the Middle East, and better drug pricing for seniors.

CREDO helps you tell Congressional Democrats to commit to repealing and replacing the Trump tax bill. Find such talk "counterproductive"? Consider that Republicans whined about repealing-and-replacing the Affordable Care Act, a far less offensive bill, for nearly seven years, and their reward was the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress. Sure, they couldn't actually repeal (let alone replace!) Obamacare, but they sure have done a lot of other damage. And my guess is that a lot of working families would like their tax deductions back, and polling tells us that they know cutting corporate taxes doesn't "create jobs" any more than cutting taxes on the wealthy "creates jobs." You know what creates jobs? Taxing the rich such that they face a choice of paying most of their millionaire income to our government or actually investing that money in jobs, salaries, and production. Indeed, that's how it used to work, back in the country that teabaggers always say they wish this country could be.

Meanwhile, our government still enables Saudi oppression of Yemen, but it sure ain't popular -- even 47 U.S. Senators voted to stop giving military aid to Saudi Arabia so it can continue its war against Yemen. This war has not only resulted in epidemics and starvation, but has put America in the peculiar position of helping al-Qaeda! The Saudis are going after the Houthi rebels, after all, and the Houthi rebels fight al-Qaeda better than almost anyone else does. Can you see Mr. bin Laden smiling from beyond at our folly? Well, how would you like to wipe that damn smile off his face? Let Just Foreign Policy and Change.org help you tell your Congressfolk to keep the Executive branch from refueling the Saudi warplanes that bomb Yemen. After all, it's not like the Executive branch even has authority from Congress to get involved in this quagmire. (Remember, the 2001 AUMF doesn't give the President a blank check to do what he likes.)

Finally, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4138/S. 2011, the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act. H.R. 4138/S. 2011 would do as its title says: it would let Medicare negotiate drug prices on behalf of seniors using Part D. Letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would result in seniors getting the same benefit for less taxpayer money, which you'd think would be attractive to fiscal conservatives. The bill would also force big pharma corporations to offer low-income working families rebates on prescription drugs. Now, a similarly-titled bill -- H.R. 242/S. 41, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act -- would also enable Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but that's about all it would do; I might settle for that in a sincere negotiation with Republicans, but I think the Cleveland Browns will go to the NFL playoffs before a "sincere negotiation with Republicans" will happen, so certainly let's not pre-emptively settle.

Action: protecting our earned benefits and our earned internet freedom.

Congress is back to work, such as they do, and House Speaker Ryan has been saying for weeks now that he wants to "rein in" Medicare costs, which, as we know, is right-wing code for "destroy Medicare." Other right-wingers have expressed glee at the thought of destroying Social Security and Medicaid, too. Having just blown a $1.5 trillion hole in the federal deficit with their latest corporate tax cut giveaway, they got some cojones coming to us and saying they can't give us the benefits we've earned with our hard work. And when I talk of earned benefits, I include Medicaid, too -- if you get laid off by your Ayn Rand-worshiping CEO and suddenly find yourself faced with a choice between no job and a low-paying job, you might need Medicaid. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut or privatize or otherwise hurt Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. Because when they hurt those things after all, they hurt us. And you can't just keep hurting us and get away with it.

But Congress has another way to injure Social Security, by cutting the Social Security Administration's budget. They've been hacking away at it for years, all while President Obama nattered on about the need to compromise with political "realities," but in cutting the Social Security Administration budget, we're depriving our seniors -- and we're all going to be seniors one day, right? -- of the good services they deserve, services they've worked for and paid into all their lives. Here's a better idea: hire enough folks to ensure that our seniors don't have to wait in line all day, or wait on the phone all day, or wait years, sometimes, to get a ruling on a claim. And WHEREZ WILLZ YOU FINDZ TEH MONEYZ!!!! is a question no one who supported that hateful tax bill has any standing to ask. So Action Network helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop cutting the Social Security Administration's budget.

Finally, as you know, the FCC repealed its 2015 Open Internet order last month, thus paving the way for big telecomm corporations to start blocking and throttling your favorite websites, or exacting tribute from you to see those websites -- but we don't have to sit back and take it, as Rep. Doyle (D-PA) and Sen. Markey (D-MA) are preparing a "resolution of disapproval" that would reverse the FCC's decision to repeal its own net neutrality standards. I still don't have a bill number for either iteration of the bill, but word on the street is that 29 Senators have already signed on as co-sponsors, and per the Congressional Review Act we only need 30 to force a vote on the matter. Now, even if the bill passes both Houses, and that won't be easy, since President Trump would still have to sign it, which, given his evil proclivities, isn't likely. Still, it's our duty to do the right thing, and to pressure our government to do the right thing, so Free Press helps you tell your Senators to support a "resolution of disapproval" that would overturn the FCC's recent decision to restrict our freedom on the internet.

Around the table: vampire elites fear sunlight, and other truths.

Theo Anderson at In These Times suggests, and I hope he's right, that economic populist candidates on the left "don't need the establishment anymore." Admittedly, similarly rosy assessments drew on a rather narrower body of information (a city council race here, a special state election there) than the Virginia and Alabama elections have since furnished. And I rather suspect that anyone who adapts the small donor model can either outraise corporate-funded candidates or fool corporations into wasting even more money on candidates no one really likes.

Ho hum, Durham County (NC) aims to require 48 hours' notice before "spontaneous" protests. In a sane and moral society, proposing such a thing would end the career of whomever proposed it -- how "spontaneous" can you be if you give two days' warning, after all? -- but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, it may take a few days for good Americans to say what do you have to fear/ and you really want your Confederate statues so badly you're willing to urinate all over the First Amendment? before county officials back down.

Good Iranian citizens take to the streets to protest their country's government -- at great risk to themselves, I should add! -- but our "liberal" media uses the event as an excuse to talk to the same morons who always want America to drop a crapload of bombs to "liberate" other countries. These "experts" don't indulge in a whole lot of let the Iranian people decide their own fate, I notice! Think that might be a way of suggesting they're "incapable" of doing so? I suppose I am a bit amused that Our Glorious Elites didn't see these protests coming, just like they didn't see the 1979 revolution coming.

Louise Matsakis at Wired tells us why we should be skeptical of folks squealing ZOMG TEH RUSHINZ WILL DESTROYZ TEH INTERNETZ BY CUTTING TEH UNDERWATER CABULZ!!!!! "One of the estimated 428 undersea cables worldwide is damaged every couple of days," she reminds us. "Nearly all faults aren’t intentional. They’re caused by underwater earthquakes, rock slides, anchors, and boats." Even if someone could cut literally every one of these cables at once (which is what it would take, since cutting one cable merely causes traffic to be re-routed through another one), that still wouldn't affect internet transmissions within nations. Lesson: fight the real enemy -- like, say, Mr. Pai's FCC, which would actually take your internet freedom away from you.

Good news, everyone! Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down key parts of Idaho's "ag-gag" law as unconstitutional. I'm startled to learn that Idaho passed this law after an undercover operation at a dairy corporation uncovered, among other things, sexual molestation of animals by dairy employees. You'd think legislators wouldn't want to be caught in the position of making it harder to uncover sexual molestation of animals by food processing corporation employees. And you'd think more of them would start to get disgusted with having to serve evil all the time. Sadly, this is a little like turning around a cruise ship.

Finally, we learn that worker-owned cooperatives are making a stand against "platform" monopolies like Uber. (A "platform" monopoly controls data in a particular economic sphere -- i.e., Amazon is a platform monopoly in online sales.) You'll not only be reminded that over a third of America gets its banking services via a credit union and over a tenth gets electricity from a co-op, but you'll also learn about no less than eight co-ops making a difference -- including Ace Hardware, which likely has a store near you, and has actually expanded over the past year, unlike other corporations closing stores as they redistribute worker wealth upward to themselves. Why, it gives one hope!