Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, the quality of mercy, and robocalls.

S. 309, the For the 99.8% Act, would lower the threshold at which estates would face the Estate Tax from $11 million to $3.5 million -- which is still high enough that it won't ensnare any family farms or small businesses -- and would create several new brackets so that larger estates face a higher tax rate. In other words, Republicans would repeal the Estate Tax entirely, while Sen. Sanders would raise it on the wealthiest estates -- gosh, it's like a Goofus and Gallant strip. And the Estate Tax is most emphatically not a "death" tax, or everyone would pay it; currently only 1,900 folks pay the Estate Tax annually, comprising less than one-tenth of one percent of all the folks who die in a given year -- meaning that the next time you're in a room with a thousand zombies in it, you might not be able to see the one zombie who paid the Estate Tax. Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to support fair taxation by passing the For the 99.8% Act.

Meanwhile, you know about "banning the box," in which employers stop asking (via that ubiquitous box on job applications) if potential employees have a criminal record, so that folks who've already paid their debt to society can more easily get jobs and make a contribution to society. But you may not know that some District Attorneys have pledged to expunge the criminal records of folks who've served time for things those DAs won't prosecute anymore, like marijuana possession charges. In the event your right-wing uncle protests that these DAs are essentially imposing unconstitutional ex post facto laws upon us, you can remind him that American jurisprudence only forbids ex post facto laws that make punishments for crimes worse than before. Certainly you'd be hard-pressed to imagine our Founders actually intending to outlaw mercy. Color of Change helps you tell America's DAs to automatically expunge criminal records for those good folks who deserve it.

Finally, the technology already exists to stop scammers from "spoofing" phone numbers so you think the call's actually coming from your bank, power company, or loved one, and our FCC has already said they actually think corporations should use this technology, but naturally our FCC has a certain attitude toward government's role in a "free" market, to the point where they want phone corporations to be "free" to voluntarily install this technology before the end of the year, which leaves criminals "free" to continue to try to steal your money in the meantime. How many times must I tell these pimps! Corporations don't do the right thing until you make them! They say "doing the right thing" just costs too much money, but that's not even true -- doing the right thing might cost the boss some money, but the boss probably already makes too much money. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell our FCC to help protect consumers by forcing corporations to stop "spoofed" robocalls.

Around the table: unexpectedly with more political analysis than usual.

House passes "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify the "national emergency" declaration our President has used to fund his vanity border wall, but with only 13 Republicans joining virtually the entire Democratic caucus, which means the House doesn't have enough to override a veto. The resolution might pass the Senate, too, with at least three Republicans saying they'll vote for it at this writing, but squeaking to a 51-49 victory won't override a veto, either -- which means it'll probably die in court, at approximately the moment a judge contemplates an emergency that the President himself said he "didn't need" to declare, but declared anyway so he could build his vanity wall more quickly.

Let's not get too anxious about Gallup's finding that "Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States," not just because the most "conservative" states tend to be the least populous (New York state, for example, has a higher population than Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina combined) but mainly you're asking people whether they think of themselves as "conservative" or "liberal." For instance, how many of these self-described conservatives support Medicare-for-All health insurance, which our "liberal" media constantly tells us is a "far-left" position? Given the majority-to-supermajority that Medicare-for-All gets in most polls these days, quite a few.

Poll finds more Democratic and Democratic-leaning partisans wanting their party to move in a "moderate" direction than a "liberal" direction, which you'll find as meaningless as I do if you're invested less in the direction of some political party and more in the direction of our country. You'll find it even more meaningless when you find that close to six in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaners want their party to move in a more conservative direction, like they all enjoy all the swordfighting their standard-bearers have been doing over "who's more conservative."

Some pundits think that Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) would have an easier time beating Beto O'Rourke (who hasn't yet declared his intentions for any 2020 race) than Ted Cruz did, because the "spread" between Mr. Cornyn's favorable and unfavorable ratings is larger than Mr. Cruz's in a Quinnipiac poll. I say they're wrong. First Read doesn't spell out that Quinnipiac has Mr. Cruz's favorable rating at 51%, much higher than Mr. Cornyn's 43%, which tells me that Mr. Cruz is the more formidable opponent despite his unfavorables (40% to Mr. Cornyn's 26%), because people would always prefer to vote for someone. Mr. Cornyn will skate to victory anyway if Democrats don't nominate someone people want to vote for; perhaps Mr. O'Rourke would have the best chance at simulating such a person.

Finally, the estimable Nathan J. Robinson at Current Affairs advises us to "Ignore All Arguments About What Is 'Politically Feasible.'" If you were as sick as I was of hearing Democrats refuse to do anything bold because of the "landscape" -- they were talking about the "landscape" when they had a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority, you recall! -- you'll find this article quite sympathetic, even though its truths ("predictions tend to assume that the range of possible outcomes today is going to be the same tomorrow," "(e)ven from a purely pragmatic and compromising perspective, aiming low is irrational") transcend particulars. But you'll also find it sympathetic if you've been watching Republicans consistently ignore what's "politically feasible" and win.

Action: concerning war in Venezuela, food stamps, and pollution.

H.R. 1004 is, like a lot of recent anti-war bills, quite simple: it would prevent our President from spending any money on military force in Venezuela unless specifically authorized by Congress, as mandated by our Constitution and the War Powers Act. Too often, over the years, Congress has just rubber-stamped anything our President wanted to do overseas; perhaps the ascension of a clearly unqualified individual to the Presidency has galvanized Congressional somewhat. But if something bad were to happen in the world, you know this newfound resolve would dissipate -- unless we demand otherwise. Hence Just Foreign Policy, Roots Action, and Win Without War all help you tell your Congressfolk to restrain our President from wanton war-making in Venezuela by passing H.R. 1004. Even if you support yet more American interference in Venezuela -- which sure didn't work out in our government's favor in 2002, amirite? -- you can still urge your Congressfolk to do it the right way. We have laws for good reason, after all.

Meanwhile, our Department of Agriculture has proposed some nefarious changes to our food stamp program; they would restrict the number of Americans who would qualify for food stamps, and hamstring states' ability to grant waivers for those restrictions. Citing the low U1 unemployment rate and the growth in GDP kinda misses the whole point of food stamps -- it's supposed to be there for the folks who need it. Hence when Agriculture Secretary Purdue says it "belies common sense" that three quarters of Americans on food stamps weren't working in 2016, well, actually, the opposite is true. It's a shame that we have to spell this out to anyone. It's also a shame that we don't fully understand, as Americans, that we all pay into the system with our taxes and that any of us might need it at any time, if bad fortune befalls us; thus it's not a "handout" but insurance. So Moms Rising helps you tell our USDA to abandon its efforts to make food stamps less accessible to those who need it.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to abandon its efforts to roll back regulations protecting us from mercury emissions from power plants, then Environment America still helps you do that. Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin, and as such can do serious developmental damage to children; it used to be enough of a problem that just about every state in our great union warned against eating the fish you fished out of your local lake or stream, such was the problem with mercury contamination from coal plants. Of course, our incoming EPA Administrator is a former coal lobbyist, and our President often seems to think coal CEOs are his one true constituency. Would that he were even as good a boss as a coal CEO! I could fault coal CEOs for their greed and their inability to change with the times -- I can't believe coal CEOs simply never had the money to broaden their portfolio to include renewables -- but our President certainly takes greed and shortsightedness to a whole new level. That doesn't mean we have to, though.

Action: concerning taxes, domestic violence, and patent trolls.

Both Moms Rising and Americans for Tax Reform help you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the 2017 "tax scam." The Moms Rising tool also helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen the Earned Income Tax Credit (or EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (or CTC), since these are tax credits that actually help working families make ends meet, or even get ahead. Unlike all those corporate tax loopholes Congress loves waiting until the end of the year to extend because they know they're too unpopular to extend at any other time! But the 2017 tax "reform" -- which more and more Americans, however accurately, now regard as a "tax scam" because they're not getting as much back at tax time as they did in previous years -- not only gave us near-trillion-dollar deficits, but handed out welfare to corporations and rich folks. They say the wealth will trickle down to us "little folks"; I say something's trickling down, but it sure ain't wealth.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act already. Yup, they let it expire again, just like they did in 2012, but at least then they got hung up over stupid crap; this time, they let it expire because, you know, why bother governing when you could be posturing? The Violence Against Women Act has done America a great deal of good -- before Congress passed it in 1994, domestic violence survivors generally thought they were at fault for what happened to them, and most Americans agreed; now, at least, most folks will keep their victim-blaming to themselves, and blame the attackers for taking out their insecurities on their partners. This is no small thing, helped by the many programs (including the National Domestic Violence Hotline) VAWA has created. But we've got more work to do, and the Violence Against Women Act helps us do that work, so let's get to it.

Finally, you've heard of "patent trolls," who patent relatively common pieces of software and then sue anyone who uses that relatively common piece of software as part of a considerably more innovative product, thus cowing such actual innovators into giving them money for not actually doing any work. Naturally, the U.S. Patent Office -- in the Administration of the President who has, more than any other American, excelled at conning folks into giving him money for not doing any work -- wants to make it even easier for patent trolls to operate. Such is our Administration's blind hatred for regulations, particularly regulations that actually help good Americans. So the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell our Patent Office to apply, not narrow, our Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, which held that you can't just patent any old thing because you can now do it on a computer.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, the war on Yemen, and discrimination.

As you probably know, Sen. McConnell (E-KY) won't hold a vote on H.R. 1, the For the People Act, whenever it passes the House (with more than half of House members as co-sponsors, you'd have to imagine they'll pass), so Common Cause helps you demand that the Senate hold a vote on the For the People Act after it passes the House. You might also do well to call Mr. McConnell and demand that he allow a vote; his D.C. phone number is (202) 224-2541; you can find phone numbers for his Kentucky offices if you scroll to the "Office Locations" section of his Senate website. It's not enough to win the argument with a bill that would improve voting rights and campaign finance reform in America -- we have to be in their grills every day, because that's the only thing that gets their attention. We got in their grills over health care and they utterly failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act despite having all the advantages. We get in their grills the same way over H.R. 1, and they'll have no choice but to pass it. We can do that; we need but act.

Meanwhile, H.J.Res. 37, the War Powers Resolution that would end American involvement in the war on Yemen, passed the House by a 248-177 vote; the "yea" vote included at least a dozen "Freedom Caucus" members, meaning it only took about eight years for the Tea Party to earn a very small part of its reputation for foreign policy iconoclasm. H.J.Res. 37 now goes to Senate, where the companion resolution -- S.J.Res. 7 -- has one Republican co-sponsor, Mike Lee of Utah; the Senate approved a similar resolution last year by a 56-41 vote, but they took that vote when they knew it would do no good; they'll only approve it now if we demand it, and if our President vetoes it, then we'll just have to get after them again for the override. So use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to vote to end our logistical and weapons support for the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen.

Finally, the Tennessee state legislature plans to take up HB 563 this week; HB 563 would prevent Tennessee state and local governments from enacting policies against corporations that discriminate against certain populations (i.e., gays) for "religious" reasons. Its supporters call it the business anti-discrimination bill, which is to laugh, since it essentially prevents governments from doing anything about businesses that discriminate! Folks who think governments should be able to refuse to provide taxpayer funding to organizations that participate in the BDS movement in re Israel and Palestine really have no business supporting HB 563, since HB 563 would prevent governments from doing the same thing to businesses that discriminate against gays. Of course, rageheads don't care about consistency, but if you do, you can let the Tennessee Equality Project help you tell Tennessee state legislators to reject HB 563, the "Business License to Discriminate" bill.

Around the table: another reminder that you, good citizen, are *not* "far left."

Amihal Glazer at The Conversation reminds us that New York City ought to be glad Amazon pulled out, given the failed promises of job creation other corporations have made to other states and localities. Let's see: there's GE vs. Boston, GM vs. White Marsh, and Foxconn vs. Wisconsin, plus a few dozen studies demonstrating that corporate welfare does not, in fact, reliably lead to either higher job creation or increased tax revenues, and now you know another reason that poll finding that most New Yorkers approved of the deal isn't particularly instructive -- the poll essentially asked whether $3 billion for 25,000 jobs was a good trade, but what if you don't even get the 25,000 jobs? Foxconn promised Wisconsin 13,000 jobs and now is looking for an out after creating a total of 178 jobs.

Ho hum, CNN anchors call Medicare-for-All and the Warren wealth tax "very far left" and "far left of center," despite these proposals getting majority and even supermajority support in polls. I've been saying this for over a decade now: what Our Glorious Elites call "extreme," you and I call popular. Funny how that works. Remember that when they tell you Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown can't win because they're "too far left."

When we confront the fact that our "liberal" media can't seem to identify austerity policies as the cause of misery in Europe even when the evidence stares them in the face, we are reminded that Greg Palast taught us that the whole point of a one-continent currency is to prevent any one country from stimulating its economy by printing more money, which (again) suggests that Greece would do better to leave the EU than Britain would (the U.K., you recall, has been using the pound the whole time it's been in the EU!).

Now here's an interesting headline: "FBI Scientist's Statements Linked Defendants to Crimes, Even When His Lab Results Didn't." And then we read about "image analysis," and how it's not as scientifically sound as it's cracked up to be on, say, The X-Files. Would it be too harsh to call Richard Vorder Bruegge, who has "single-handedly built a body of case law that has kept the FBI unit's testimony admissible in the courts," the Andrew Wakefield of image analysis? Why, it's even possible that Mr. Vorder Bruegge has done more harm, and given all the otherwise intelligent people Mr. Wakefield has helped convince to stop immunizing their kids, that's saying something!

We learn that our Administration's Labor Secretary once cut a deal to get a billionaire sex-trafficker off light without telling any of the sex-trafficker's victims. For the QAnon crowd, of course, this news is just more proof that our President is that much closer to smashing the worldwide child sex abuse ring that is his putative reason to exist -- I'm sure there's a lot of he put Acosta close to him so he could draw out his evil! on the message boards as we speak, though I'm not going to make sure. Again, this is why we leave our President's votaries to God.

Finally, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo wonders "What's the Point" of our President's new climate change panel -- you know, given that our President just ignores everything he doesn't want to hear anyway. It's a valid question, but I don't think it's just "a sort of global owning the libs" -- maybe our President really wants government-approved legitimacy for what he already wants to do, so he can claim he really "drained the swamp." Sooner or later he's gonna have to give an example, after all, and all the clean air and clean water regulations he's actually failed to change won't be enough.

Around the table: our Supreme Court does a good thing, plus a lot of other people do bad things.

Our Supreme Court unanimously rules that states and localities must adhere to our Constitution before they can indulge in asset forfeiture shenanigans. To be sure, their ruling won't end asset forfeiture, but it will give defendants a way to argue that seizing their property without being able to convincingly tie them to an actual drug funding network violates our 8th Amendment protections against excessive fines. Maybe one day we'll be able to get our Supreme Court to recognize that seizing property without convicting someone of a crime is itself an excessive fine, but the arc of history surely bends toward justice even when it looks less like an arc and more like a plank.

I'm not sure saying that our "liberal" media have been busy lately "erasing" the positive effects of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela gives us the whole picture, because it sure seems to me that our "liberal" media have never acknowledged these gains! The Chavismos have definitely reduced poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, and even racism; does that make it OK for the late Mr. Chavez to have demanded (and received) "rule-by-decree" power in 2000 and 2007, for example? No, of course not. But painting the works of the Bolivarian revolution the way our "liberal" media do sure doesn't tell us the whole story, and not least because they all forget to mention U.S. sanctions on Venezuela as the main contributor to Venezuela's economic woes.

Another day, another report showing big corporations getting hundreds of millions of dollars in tax rebates despite making hundreds of millions (or billions) in profits. And another day, another "expert" asserting that corporations should never pay more taxes than they owe because they're supposed to please their shareholders, when the issue is actually that we don't make them owe enough in the first place! Seriously, that statement has almost everything I hate about right-wing argument in it -- the gaslighting, the changing of the goalposts, the tacit admission that they can't win on the merits.

Surprise, surprise, our President talks tough about stopping migrant smugglers while undermining actual efforts to do that. Typical. To be sure, this state of affairs results (at least in this Administration) from overzealousness in one area (deportation) resulting in neglecting another (attacking smuggling rings), but when a man spends so much time talking about how super-awesome he is, you do tend to be less forgiving of his faults, and who could blame you? Besides a ragehead, that is.

When you encounter a poll indicating that Sen. Mitch McConnell's poll numbers are seriously underwater just 20 months before he goes before the voters again, you may remember we were at this point in 2013, also, and he went on to paste his opponent -- you remember his opponent, Alison Lundergran Grimes, the one who refused to say whether she voted for Barack Obama for President? Lesson: if Democrats won't put up someone people will want to vote for, then Mob Boss Mitch will cruise to another term, no matter how little Kentuckians seem to like him.

Finally, with his Administration's own climate change assessment and intelligence community having the temerity to tell him things he doesn't want to hear, our President is putting together another climate change panel, to be headed up by an unregenerate climate change denier who has said -- sit down for this one! -- that the "demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler." Just like! Remember how we kicked carbon dioxide out of our schools, segregated it into its own ghettoes, boycotted and vandalized its shops, made it wear yellow Stars of David, and then froze its property and assets when it tried to leave for other lands? When they say a little learning makes a man dangerous, this must be what they mean.

Action: concerning "free" trade, recycling, and net neutrality.

As you may know, our Administration's new trade pact with Mexico and Canada, the USMCA, would dramatically curtail the use of the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) system that allows foreign investors to nullify our clean air, clean water, and labor laws. But the USMCA also extends monopoly rights for new medicines, which essentially gives big pharma corporations a massive welfare handout. It also keeps drug prices high, which causes people to stay sick and die -- if you don't believe me, contemplate the diabetics who respond to the high cost of insulin by rationing it, and sometimes die as a result. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to demand that the USMCA eliminates these handouts to big pharma corporations. Don't let big pharma's but-how-can-we-find-new-treatments-if-we-can't-make-obscene-money excuse sway you -- not just because research is already a tax-deductible expense, but because they're really protecting their executives' "right" to gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation home.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia residents, take note: you've been dutifully separating your recyclables from your trash for years now, right? Well, thanks largely to incompetence, your city has lately sent about half of your recycling as trash to incinerators for a few years now. (Don't get distracted by reports of "contamination rates" -- or the rate of dirty items or trash items in recycling bins -- being a little over 19% in 2017, not just because 19% ain't close to 50%, but because waste management corporations process those items out as part of their contracts.) Most of the city's excuses don't wash -- they complain they can't get long-term waste management contracts in an industry that actually desires long-term waste management contracts, for example -- but they've made a promise to us, one that we've paid taxes to maintain, no less, and whining about how difficult it is to deliver on your promises is not the American can-do spirit. So Penn Environment helps you tell Philadelphia's Mayor and City Council to fix the city's recycling program.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject three so-called "pro-net neutrality" bills circulating through Congress, then Free Press still helps you do that. Net neutrality, as you know, is the principle that you should get to determine where you want to go on the internet, without some big corporation having the ability to herd you into some junk news ghetto, and thus internet service providing corporations should deliver all internet traffic with the same urgency, rather than prioritizing some traffic over others. And you know how reasonable that all sounds, unfortunately, by the number of bills pretending to uphold its principles while actually destroying them! The bills in question -- H.R. 1006, H.R. 1096, and H.R. 1101 -- would let corporations slow down traffic and censor other traffic, and of course they'd also prevent our FCC from ever regulating net neutrality again; if that doesn't sound like net neutrality to you (and it shouldn't!), then get with your Congressfolk right quick.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons, pollution, and paid family leave.

Our Administration plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which has kept intermediate-range nuclear missiles from proliferating for over 30 years, and at least one result of that, the latest email missive from Just Foreign Policy reminds me, is "yet another corporate welfare gravy train entitlement for the Pentagon-industrial complex," and I count at least three instances of turning right-wing tropes against the right wing in that phrase alone. But a "corporate welfare gravy train entitlement" will result if and only if Congress funds said gravy train, hence H.R. 1249, which would prohibit spending on any weapons that would violate the treaty, and which its main sponsor, Rep. Gabbard (D-HI), says she'll force a vote upon if it gets enough support. Hence Just Foreign Policy and Change.org help you tell your House Reps to stop our President's efforts to nullify a treaty that's done us, and the world, a considerable amount of good by passing H.R. 1249.

Meanwhile, our EPA will be taking comments until March 25 on its nefarious plans to roll back mercury pollution standards from power plants. It's like they've never heard the phrase "mad as a hatter," or know that it derives from the use of mercury in hatmaking, or know that mercury causes serious developmental disabilities in children, or know that mercury used to be so prevalent in our fish that just about every state told its citizens not to eat local fish! It often seems, in fact, like our Administration doesn't know anything about anything except how to cripple our government's ability to work on the people's behalf. That being said, our EPA is at least aware that they have to take public comments on its regulatory proposals (or, should I say, anti-regulatory proposals), and Penn Environment helps you tell our EPA to protect our health, rather than executive bank accounts, and leave mercury standards the way they are.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to create a real paid family leave program in America by passing S. 463, the FAMILY Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The FAMILY Act would fund 12 weeks of paid family leave for all workers (including part-time and self-employed workers) from an 0.4% payroll tax, half borne by the employer and the other half borne by the employee. Thus a worker making $50,000 annually would pay $100 annually, or less than $2 per week, for the peace of mind of knowing that they'll still be able to pay the bills if they have to take a few days off to care for sick kids or sick parents. That's certainly better than Sen. Rubio's profoundly offensive plan to pay for family leave by using future Social Security benefits! Seriously, if you love freedom, and believe that a lifetime of hard work ought to earn you a dignified retirement, you have no business supporting such a noxious idea. The FAMILY Act is far, far better.

Around the table: more tales of corruption, lies, and cowardice from our political class.

You already know our current Administration is, shall we say, ethics-challenged, but the Campaign Legal Center's complaint describing several Department of Interior appointees giving inside info to their former employers may still shock you -- particularly when you recall that this Administration's own ethics pledge requires appointees to refrain from communicating about specific policies with former employers for two years. And then there's the part where an Interior official actually meets with a Koch-affiliated group about two lawsuits the group had filed against Interior -- one of which got settled in a manner said group found very satisfying. Our President would probably call that "deal-making," but the rest of us would call it corrupt.

This article alleging that liberals may have committed a "gaffe" by "scaring" Amazon out of New York City should strike you as a skimpy article given that five of the article's seven-only-seven paragraphs have nothing to do with the Amazon deal. And if the poll finding that a majority of New Yorkers (including a supermajority of black and Latinx respondents) approved of the deal gives you pause, click through to the poll's crosstabs and find that the Amazon question only discussed tax breaks and job creation, when objections to the Amazon deal also included Amazon's general propensity to destroy small businesses wherever it goes and its pointed refusal to let its New York workers unionize.

FiveThirtyEight provides a useful public service by telling us exactly where every Republican Senator stands on our President's "national emergency" declaration. At this writing, eight Republican Senators oppose it, 15 more have "doubts," and we've got some, ah, surprises in the undecided column, including Arkansas's Tom Cotton, who's never seen a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria he didn't like, and Arizona's Martha McSally, whom you'd think would have a more settled opinion about the matter just due to her home state. Naturally, these folks saying they oppose it or have "doubts" about it is a long way from doing something about it. I bet Kentucky's Rand Paul, for example, votes to block it at approximately the moment he figures out it'll make no difference either way.

Our Administration's nominee for U.N. Ambassador, former Fox News talking head/State Department spokeshack Heather Nauert, withdraws from consideration for the job "in the best interest of my family" after Bloomberg reports that Ms. Nauert once hired a nanny who didn't have proper authorization to work (though she was in the country legally). And then Secretary of State Pompeo pushed her right out the door; gosh, he sure learns quick! Sadly, other Administration possibilities for the post seem to have even bigger problems than Ms. Nauert had, and the one person who would likely sail through Senate confirmation (who is, that's right, currently the "acting" U.N. Ambassador) seems not to be a favorite of the Administration. Maybe Lindsey Graham can recommend someone.

Oh, but our Administration isn't the only organization hiring TEH BESTEZT PEEPULZ!!!!!: CNN has hired a Republican spokeshack with approximately zero journalistic experience to "coordinate" their 2020 campaign coverage. Which provides us with yet another useful reminder that just because Our Glorious Elites look like they're fighting doesn't mean they're actually fighting! And don't make any hay out of the fact that our President supposedly "hates" her, for the same reason.

Finally, buried deep in this Philadelphia Metro piece describing a study finding that getting rid of cash bail for more than three-fifths of criminal charges has not actually resulted in mass rapes by zombies is the notion (voiced by a reporter, apparently) that getting rid of cash bail might cause the murder rate to spike. Yes, the murder rate in Philadelphia has gone up lately, but seriously, does anyone think to themselves well, I wasn't going to murder anyone today, but now I might, because folks who get arrested for pissing in public don't have to post bail anymore? But that's the right-wing mind, where literally anything they don't like can be said to cause literally anything else they don't like, and to hell with reason, or even persuasion.

Action: concerning the war on Yemen, toxic pesticides, and family separation.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the Saudi/UAE war/humanitarian crisis in Yemen, then Amnesty International still helps you do that. Close to 11 million good Yemenis stand on the verge of famine, and plenty of other countries have cut off their arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of that, but our President yells that "(t)he world is a dangerous place!" (exclamation point in original) and thus justifies any and all evils in which we might be complicit. I'm sure I'll hear from a few cynics that other countries don't have the "responsibilities" we have, and can thus more easily do the right thing with regard to Yemen. To that I could only say how often such cynics seem to regard the most powerful country on Earth as completely powerless. If we can't use our power to demand more civliized behavior from our allies, then why have power at all? Really, power without good works is useless.

Meanwhile, the EPA recommended a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos back in 2015, but then a certain very damaged individual unexpectedly ascended to the Presidency, and he decided that all regulations that protect our health are evil because they prevent some CEO, somewhere, from gilding the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. Hence H.R. 230, the Ban Toxic Pesticides Act, would force the EPA to ban the sale and use of chlorpyrifos, including chlorpyrifos residue on food. Scientists have linked chlorpyrifos with brain damage in children and various autoimmune disorders, among other ills; indeed, the EPA banned chlorpyrifos for home use back in 2001, and that was Tha Bush Mobb's EPA, for frack's sake. Why not for agricultural use, then? I'm sure they'd say "less exposure per capita," but that's unconvincing if "less exposure" still makes us sick. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Ban Toxic Pesticides Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase to "break up" with private prison corporations, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. Investing in prison privatization is bad enough -- I'm old enough to remember when governments actually took care of government functions! -- but investing in prison privatization that aids in our Administration's efforts to separate immigrant parents and children is far worse, and you would think that big banksters like Wells Fargo and Chase would want to avoid all the bad PR that comes from investing in that. And we should absolutely "break up" with banksters that invest in evil crap, and encourage others to do the same -- at least until our Supreme Court finally rules that telling others to abandon big corporations isn't free speech but "terrorism" of big corporations. Don't laugh -- if I thought of it, you know they have.

Action: concerning unlawful detainment, the school-to-prison pipeline, and Social Security.

The government of South Sudan arrested Peter Biar Ajak in July after he criticized that nation's government, which I'm sure are two completely unrelated events, though South Sudan hasn't exactly been helpful in clearing that up by detaining and utterly failing to charge him with something for six months. Didn't they do the extra reading for Totalitarianism 101? You're supposed to manufacture a bunch of BS charges when you arrest political enemies -- "insulting the leader," "undermining security," like that. Mr. Ajak's life should be a movie -- he came to America as a refugee, one of the "Lost Boys" of South Sudan in 2001; he settled in Philadelphia, attended LaSalle and then Harvard, and was about to finish his Ph.D. in philosophy at Cambridge, but now he's in South Sudan's notorious "Blue House," kept from contact with his lawyers and loved ones (including his wife and children). Sounds like some country's got something to hide, and the Big Stick of Bad PR can beat it out! Change.org helps you demand that South Sudan release Mr. Ajak.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell New York Mayor Bill deBlasio to stop using heavy-handed police tactics in public schools, including arrests and summonses. They must have thought that being "tough" on schoolkids would "scare them straight," but it doesn't -- it actually makes it more likely that those kids will go to jail again and again when they're adults, and surprise, surprise! Black and Latinx kids are the ones more likely to find themselves in the "school-to-prison pipeline." Turns out having a police officer serve a summons to you in school is not the kind of thing that gets young people to trust police officers! You've no doubt seen smartphone-captured video of police bodyslamming students in classrooms, and you may have wondered why that was ever necessary, particularly after learning that most of the time police come to school to settle decidedly minor disputes. If you want school to teach folks to be civilized again, getting police out is one step.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1170/S. 478, the Social Security Expansion Act, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. Our Glorious Elites constantly act like privatization and cutting benefits are the only ways to keep the promise of Social Security -- which is, to review, that all Americans who work their whole lives and pay into the system deserve to enjoy a dignified retirement -- but we know, likely because our livelihood doesn't depend on not knowing, that we could lift the cap on payroll taxes so that income over $132,800 can be taxed into the system, and we also know that we could expand benefits thereafter so we can create, shall we say, a more perfect retirement for Americans. And who would oppose that? Folks who think that only folks with money should continue to have money, that folks with money are somehow better than the rest of us? Well, this is America, and they don't get all the say around here.

Action: concerning expanded democracy and "national emergencies."

First things first. H.R. 1, the For the People Act, would enact a series of reforms in voting rights, redistricting, campaign finance, and ethics. You may know it as "the bill that would make Election Day a national holiday," but H.R. 1 would do a great deal more than that. Among many other things, it would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew in the Voting Rights Act by empowering our Judiciary Department to go after states and municipalities when they suppress voting rights. H.R. 1 would also create redistricting commissions for every state, so that state legislators wouldn't be able to gerrymander districts toward the benefit of one party or the other, and H.R. 1 would also create a public campaign finance system and shine sunlight on big campaign donors. All of these things will help good Americans participate more in the democracy that belongs to them and should work on their behalf, so when Mob Boss Mitch or his ilk call it a "power grab," just remember that these folks have spent their lives engaging in actual power grabs. Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to support democracy by passing H.R. 1.

Meanwhile, our President has declared a "national emergency" at the border so he can get the money to build his vanity border wall there, and he has already shot himself in the foot by saying, out loud, to reporters, that he "didn't need" to declare such an emergency but just wanted his little wall "done faster." The courts will probably suspend or strike down his order shortly, but that ain't enough for this loser: the American people should also rise up and squash his "national emergency" like a bug, so Public Citizen, CREDO, and Amnesty International all help you do that. Congress can do that by passing a "resolution of disapproval" which would nullify our President's little Executive Order, but far too many of them are far too cowardly to do it without the people lending steel to their spine. Also, if you want to join a "President's Day Protest" against this "national emergency," then MoveOn, CREDO, and Win Without War help you find one near you; protests will occur at noontime today. This "national emergency" doesn't just insult our democracy, it insults our intelligence, and we should let our President know we won't let his insults stand.

Finally, in a related note, we should also send a message to the corporations thinking of building this vanity border wall for our President that maybe there'll be a PR price to pay if they do that, so Sum of Us helps you tell Nissan to cut ties with contractor W.G. Yates and Sons if the latter won't abandon its efforts to build this vanity wall. You know, it's just occurred to me that if some Nissan spokeshack responds well we can't know what all of our contractors are doing, then maybe the correct response is I just told you! Not even if you can't know things like this about your contractors maybe you're doing business wrong -- just I just told you! Although, truth be known, if they can't keep track of such things, then at the very least they need to hire more people to do that -- or accept that they're just too big to be allowed to survive in a civilized society. How often do you or I get away with "I can't keep track of everything" in our daily lives? Not nearly as often as big corporations do, I can assure you. And we should try to put a stop to that.

Around the table: tales of corporate welfare and political folly.

Amazon scraps plans to build a second headquarters in Queens after facing fierce backlash over its planned collection of some $3 million in corporate welfare in order to build there. Folks who support the growth of Amazon's tentacles seem to have a hard time understanding that giving the biggest, richest corporation on the planet more money so they'll build there is the height of absurdity. Also, too, Amazon kills small businesses wherever it goes, so why would you want it in your hometown? Because you literally can't imagine a way to "create jobs" besides giving the rich even more money?

In a related note, Amazon doubled its profits to over $11 billion in 2018 and paid zero dollars in income taxes. Because of the aforementioned corporate welfare and executive stock option tax breaks, which argues for outlawing stock options as well as anything else does. Also, too, why do corporations need all these tax breaks when they don't pay taxes on their expenses to begin with? They don't pay taxes on the money they pay workers, either, because it's an expense, for frack's sake. If we taxed them as hard as we did in the '50s, they'd create jobs right quick.

Not even a full calendar day goes by before our President says, out loud, to reporters, that "I didn't need to do this" ("this" being "declare a national emergency over his vanity border wall") but "I would rather do it much faster." I can't even see Chief Justice Roberts rubber-stamping this reasoning -- I mean, if you don't "need" to declare an "emergency," how is it an "emergency"? Of course, you have to consider that maybe our President wants this effort to fail, so he can keep diddling the rage glands of his votaries all the way to re-election. No, his votaries won't remember that he shot himself in the foot, although that is always the risk when you "shoot from the hip." Or, you know, from wherever.

This may surprise you: McClatchy interviews with over 30 Democratic strategists reveals widespread fear that a Joe Biden Presidential campaign would fail, with one saying he'd be "a significantly weaker candidate than Hillary." Naturally, some Biden dead-enders see such widespread fear as evidence he'd be a great candidate! There's an elephant in this room, of course: being Barack Obama's Vice President for two terms makes him part of the problem, that problem being power rotating between malicious Republicans and weak Democrats, and a lot of voters are fed up with all of that. It'll be quite the learning experience for quite a few Democrats, not just Mr. Biden, when primary voters won't simply flock to "the candidate who can win." I mean, look where voting for "the candidate who can win" got America in 2016. (Hate to pile on, but maybe the reason Evan Bayh lost in Indiana in 2016 isn't that Democrats can't "bring back voters who haven’t backed Democrats in years," but that voters are generally sick of frauds like Evan Bayh.)

Finally, South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- who, like 293 others, is running for the Democratic nomination for President -- says the epithet "socialist" has "lost its ability to be used as a kill switch on debate" and says folks today would rather know if a potential solution works than whether or not it's "socialist." I'd like to think he's right about all of that, but he definitely won't be right if we don't point out -- every single time it happens -- that folks throw the word "socialist" around when they can't win arguments on the merits.

Action: concerning Social Security, conservation, and paid family leave.

The Social Security Expansion Act (for which Congress.gov has no entry at this writing) would lift the payroll tax cap so that Social Security can tax income over $132,900 into the system. That would allow Social Security to expand the benefits it pays and meet the budgetary shortfalls that might afflict it decades from now should wages never, ever go up again. If your right-wing uncle bellows about liberals always wanting to spend money and never telling you where it comes from, remind him that lifting the payroll tax cap describes exactly where the money's going to come from. If he then objects that rich folks should therefore get six-digit Social Security checks every month when they retire, remind him that Social Security's objective is to ensure that all Americans can retire with dignity, not so that some retirees can buy a new Rolls Royce every month. Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to help more good Americans retire with dignity by passing the Social Security Expansion Act.

Meanwhile, to my amazement, the Senate has passed S. 47, a giant public lands bill that (among other good works) just so happens to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund forever, by a staggering 92-8 margin. Let's not go praising the Great God of Bipartisanship, though, because I'm pretty sure the fact that we have been agitating for a more permanent Land and Water Conservation Fund for several years (Congress let it lapse in 2015 and then let it lapse again late last year) has a significant amount to do with the Senate's good work here. So now the bill goes to the House, and you might think it's not a big lift to remind your House Reps that the Land and Water Conservation Fund gave us some of our most iconic public landmarks, but you never really know with these politicians, do you? Someone could get a bee in their bonnet that they can hold this popular bill hostage to some obscure lump of poison they've been trying to enact for years, so the Wilderness Society helps you tell your House Reps to pass S. 47 and protect the Land and Water Conservation Fund forever.

Finally, Sen. Gillibrand has reintroduced S. 463, the FAMILY Act, which would create a national paid family leave program in America -- you know, like the ones nearly every other nation on Earth have! Being without a paid family leave program is not something to shout WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!! about, after all. The FAMILY Act would provide for 12 weeks of paid family leave for all Americans -- whether it's because they're sick or they need to care for someone in their family who's sick -- and would pay for it with a minuscule payroll tax of four-tenths of one percent, half paid by the worker and half by the employer, such that a person making $50,000 annually would only pay $100 annually toward the program. And if your right-wing uncle says there won't be enough people working to pay into the system to sustain it, remind him to look at the phrase "12 weeks" again; that leaves 40 weeks (and usually more!) to pay into the system. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to support working families by supporting the FAMILY Act.

Action: concerning transparency, drug prices, and the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.

You remember how reporting on the Standing Rock protests exposed police abuses? Well, North Dakota's state legislature is going to fix that! SB 2209 would restrict public access to state records relating to "critical infrastructure," which of course would include the Dakota Access pipeline that prompted all those protests and all that police brutality in the first place; the state Senate has already passed the bill, and now the state House is mulling it. And here you thought these legislators would want their bosses, the good people of North Dakota, to know what's going on with their "critical infrastructure"! A few legislators say it's all about "cybersecurity," but if it were, you have to wonder why so many more legislators aren't running with that; it sure looks like they're just trying to ram a bad bill through without anyone knowing about it. But you can call North Dakota House leadership using this page; just click on a member and get their office phone number. And call legislators from both parties, because this is a bipartisan mess.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1046, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act, would let Medicare negotiate drug prices on behalf of its recipients. You may recall that when Congress created the Medicare Part D drug benefit during Bush the Lesser's first term, they forbade Medicare from negotiating for better drug prices, because BIG GUMMINT!!!!!, and you may also recall how little the Obama Administration talked about Medicare drug price negotiation during the Affordable Care Act process. But if you understand how much negotiating power Medicare would have -- negotiating on behalf of some 44 million Americans, most of whom are seniors, who are (as you might imagine) the biggest consumers of prescription drugs by far in America -- you also see that such power could help bring drug prices down, by almost $85 billion annually, so says even the Koch brothers-funded Mercatus Center. Hence both Social Security Works and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to support Medicare drug negotiation by passing H.R. 1046.

Finally, the Bureau of Land Management (or BLM) plans to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, which of course we've been fighting to prevent for decades, not just because the ANWR is a unique wilderness, but because scientists tell us there won't be that much oil to get out of it to begin with! Luckily for us, the BLM must take public comments on the matter before proceeding, hence Penn Environment helps you tell our BLM to keep oil and gas drilling out of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Is it worth it to try, you may ask? I wouldn't blame you for asking, since this Administration really doesn't seem to care about the people's will at all. The answer is yes, you should try, not just because doing the right thing is always better than doing the wrong thing, but because if enough of us speak out against it and our BLM fails to do our will, we might be able to nail them for law-breaking in court. Indeed, that's all that's stopped this Administration's pro-pollution agenda so far.

Action: concerning war on Yemen, family separation, and clean water.

The House may vote this week on our involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, and Stop the War helps you tell your House Reps to vote to end our involvement in that war. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think we do very much good when we interfere in other nations' affairs, and I would rather we declare wars the Constitutional way than let our Presidents do whatever they like. Too many good Americans are afraid of what'll happen if we don't, but is it really American to make so many decisions based on fear? Particularly when one could more easily argue that those same decisions actually help bring about the terrorist attacks we fear? The history of the world over the last century or so is the history of big nations trying to plunder small nations for their resources, and we've sadly been one of those big nations. But we could be an actual big nation by taking care of business here in America and then dealing with other nations on a more equal footing.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell big banking corporations Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase to stop financing private prisons for detained immigrants. This Administration loves privatizing everything and causing harm to diddle the rage glands of its votaries, so we're putting pressure on big banks to do the right thing. Luckily, big banks could use all the good PR they can get, after all, and refusing to finance our Administration's family separation policy sure would give them some good PR. In signing this petition, you would also be pledging to "break up" with Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase and encourage others to do the same. If you long ago moved your banking to credit unions (and why haven't you done that yet? You won't find the membership requirements as restricting as you might think!), you can still encourage others to do the same. And you can avoid that Chase or Wells Fargo ATM next time you see it.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell our FDA to stop food producing corporations from using contaminated water on their crops. Congress mandated back in 2011 that the FDA set limits on bacterial contamination in irrigation water, but of course they haven't gotten around to actually setting those limits yet, and though this Administration's executive agencies do love to stall, fact is the Obama FDA wasn't any better on this matter. And what happened during all this delay? Two E.coli outbreaks in Romaine lettuce this year alone! They were all over the news! Folks who argue that "this Administration really clamps down on needless regulations" should attend the fact that these are the regulations that keep you from dying of kidney failure from E.coli in your salad. And pro-business "moderates" should attend the fact that a corporation will never save more money by using contaminated water than the rest of us will spend in increased health care costs.

Action: concerning net neutrality, government shutdowns, and William Barr.

First things first. Three fake net neutrality bills just debuted in Congress, these being H.R. 1006, H.R. 1096, and H.R. 1101. Republicans have been pumping out "pro-net neutrality" bills for years, bills that pretend to protect your right to go where you want on the internet without worrying about being herded into junk news ghettoes by big corporations, but their bills are full of loopholes that would let those big corporations throttle traffic and block websites, and their bills also try to reclassify broadband so that our FCC can't ever regulate net neutrality again. So why these bills now? Could Republicans be a bit nervous that our FCC's 2017 net neutrality repeal -- you remember, the one where the FCC came out and said it ignored most of the public comments it got -- is about to die in court? Whatever the reason, Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject these fake net neutrality bills and fight only for the real thing.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to insure that federal contract employees, and not just employees who work directly for our government, also get back pay from our most recent government shutdown, then Moms Rising helps you do that. And if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government you don't want either another shutdown or a vanity border wall, then a group of good-government organizations still helps you do that. Our government has already provided for back pay to public employees, but contract employees don't work directly for our government; they work for private corporations that have contracted with our government, so even though taxpayers pay them, their bosses won't -- unless we make them. Of course, if we just stood up to our President every time he had a tantrum over his vanity border wall, we wouldn't have these shutdowns in the first place. See? Fixing one problem fixes the other!

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as Attorney General, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Mr. Barr's career has been one long lesson in believing folks when they tell you who they are -- he has been quite public with his animus toward Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act, and the God-given rights of LGBTQ folks in America. And that's in addition to all the other reasons we should oppose him: he thinks the President should have more power than the Constitution grants, he thinks our government should let more contractors rip off the public, he's been far too cagy about whether he'll let the Special Counsel do his work, and he helped President George H.W. Bush pardon a crapload of folks who were neck-deep in Iran-Contra. If that doesn't sound like law-and-order to you, you need to tell your Senators with a quickness.

Around the table: legislators try to thwart the people's will, part 273.

Utah's voters approved a Medicaid expansion in November, so naturally state legislature are working to subvert their will via a scaled-back Medicaid expansion. With a bill that would be more expensive and cover fewer good Utahns, no less! I'm reminded that South Dakota's voters approved a campaign finance reform initiative at the polls in 2016 only to see their legislators repeal it in 2017. Legislators all over America seem to think they know better than their bosses, the people; I wonder how long the people will put up with that.

If, indeed, the "total mess" at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya really does turn into another Benghazi, don't expect our Congressfolk or our "liberal" media to take a critical attitude toward this Administration the way they did toward the Obama Administration. Certainly don't expect them to look into whether privatizing our security services at our embassies is really a good idea (spoiler alert: it's not), not when it's far easier to demonize workers striking over wage theft.

Our Supreme Court rejects an Alabama death row prisoner's request to be executed with an Imam at his side, because the prisoner took too long to make his request, or something. Alabama prisons employ Christian chaplains who can fulfill such requests for Christian death row prisoners, but the state claims having an Imam with a prisoner presents "unacceptable safety concerns," because of course they do. How many times must I tell these pimps! Everyone has rights! And yes it is civilized to allow even a man who raped and murdered an underage girl to die with a modicum of dignity! Doing so shows that we're a civilization worthy of outlasting our rapists and murderers! It's sad that I have to say any of this out loud.

This Venezuela coup must not be going so well, because now our Secretary of State says we're in Venezuela because Iranian terrorists have "active cells" there. But if that were significant, or even true, wouldn't we have heard about it weeks ago? Continually this Administration takes weeks to come up with these kinds of excuses for what it does, which I guess would be heartening, if our "liberal" media didn't just lap it all up.

Finally, Matthew Yglesias explains "Why Millions of People Are Getting Hit With a Surprise Tax Bill This Year," i.e., why folks aren't getting the refunds they've come to expect. Long story short: our federal government has withheld less tax money this year than in previous years years, which might actually qualify as a good work, though of course that wouldn't justify all the tax "reform"'s multitudinous evil works. But I still find it hilarious that the 2017 Republican tax "reform" stands to become even more unpopular by this April, and that this President may well go down in history as the one who "raised our taxes." It might even be as hilarious as the Obama Administration actually designing a tax cut so that good Americans wouldn't notice it.

Around the table: more stories of Republicans supporting all the wrong people.

Surprise, surprise, our Administration's CFPB has proposed slashing Obama-era rules regulating payday lenders. After all, who is more popular than a lender who traps you in a cycle of debt with 300% interest rates? Upon hearing that "(t)he industry feared the new regulations would force many of them to close their doors," I wouldn't blame you for reacting, we can only hope! That might also be an appropriate reaction if I were to suggest that the courts are probably going to strike down this new rulemaking process, too. (Nobody give me the "but where else will poor people turn when they need money" spiel. The U.S. Postal Service could do the job, as it did until the late 1960s, if Congress had the political will to allow it.)

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, informs us that "the so-called popular uprising" in Venezuela "is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor." I don't know that the white supremacist in the White House thinks of any Venezuelans as white, but Venezuelans who count Europeans as their ancestors sure do, and they also think of Mestizos as lesser human beings, if they think of them as human beings at all. One hopes the Mestizos rise up and beat back this coup, as they did in 2002.

Our Supreme Court issues another stay of Lousiana's infamous anti-abortion law, while Justice Kavanaugh -- the only Justice to write about the stay, which of course he opposed -- busies himself trying to find the loophole that'll let our Court strike down the Texas law and let the nearly-identical Louisiana law stand. "Louisiana's four doctors getting hospital admitting privileges" ain't it, not when our Court also struck down Texas's law because it required abortion clinics to be "mini-hospitals," but that might not matter if our Court is bent on causing jurisprudential mayhem.

House Republicans have taken to spreading hysteria about violent crimes by undocumented immigrants, though by their logic we could just as easily cherry-pick 16 anecdotes from 16 Congressional districts over a 19-year period describing crime-by-citizens and justify building a wall to keep Americans out of America. Why, Rebecca Solnit provides five examples of white men committing murder and plotting terror in America just from the last two weeks of January, which by House Republican logic means we should build a wall to keep white males out of America. Oh, did I mention 16 crimes over 19 fucking years? It's like Republicans are trying to see how badly they can do science.

Finally, South Carolina police lobbyist and asset forfeiture defender actually comes out and says that, without the ability to forcibly take property from folks before they've been convicted of a crime, "what's the incentive to go out and make a special effort?" I'm old enough to remember when saying such a thing out loud would make you afraid to face your friends and neighbors; not so now in our sick, immoral and decadent society, where folks confuse cynicism with knowledge and think they're better than everyone else because they're more jaded than everyone else.

Action: concerning internet privacy, endangered species, and conservation funding.

You've heard all the news stories about social media corporations failing to protect our private information, and yet so many in politics would prefer that these corporations get to "police themselves"! When people screw up on the level that these corporations have screwed up, do we let them "police themselves"? Of course not! Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass strong legislation protecting our private information online. That might seem like an uphill climb, particularly if you remember that our FCC did enact decent internet privacy regulations toward the end of 2016, only to see our Congress repeal those regulations in a "resolution of disapproval." Surely they've learned their lesson, right? We should never assume that our Congressfolk learn any lessons unless we've taught them those lessons again and again. But that's why we're here.

Meanwhile, Avaaz helps you tell our world leaders, in advance of a global wildlife summit, to add giraffes to the list of animal species the multilateral CITES treaty protects. Almost half a dozen African nations have already proposed adding giraffes to the protected species list, almost certainly because the world's giraffe population has gone down close to 40% over the last 30 years, putting them at risk of extinction. And a big reason their numbers are down? Illegal hunting, of course. Because giraffe steaks make good eatins for folks who might otherwise starve to death? Well, no -- because well-off folks like to hunt animals. Frankly I'm gobsmacked that anyone who's ever seen a giraffe would want to kill it for sport, and I'm even more gobsmacked when I hear testimonials from folks who've worked with giraffes and found them intelligent and gentle. I guess some folks are just that empty inside and need something, anything, to fill the void.

Finally, Congress still hasn't reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which expired last September 30, and no all the shutdown drama is no excuse, not just because reauthorizing a popular conservation fund isn't exactly a heavy lift politically or logistically, but because this program actually pays for itself, via oil and gas drilling royalties. And you like the Delaware Water Gap? The Appalachian Trail? The Flight 93 Memorial? Well, the Land and Water Conservation Fund created all of these, and many more of our most popular and significant monuments. Of course, our current President only cares about the present -- certainly not the past, and certainly not the future. But those of us who do care about the past and the future can let Penn Environment helps is tell our Congressfolk to get off their duffs and reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund already.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons, antibiotic abuse, and the minimum wage.

You've no doubt heard that our President has declared that he'll withdraw the United States from the famous Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (or INF), and we've already advocated against that foolish move. There is some doubt that a President can simply nullify a treaty, since it becomes law upon Senate ratification, but we can fight on other fronts, too, as both Roots Action and Win Without War help you tell your Congressfolk to stand for nuclear disarmament by supporting S. 312, the Prevention of Arms Race Act, which would prohibit funding of nuclear weapons banned by the INF. The bill would only allow funding and development of weapons that would violate the INF if our President jumped through at least seven flaming hoops (for example, he would have to prove that we simply have no INF-compliant weapons that could adequately defend our country); of course, our President's impatience with negotiating the finer points of law has already cost him virtually every significant effort to rewrite our clean air and clean water regulations, so if he interprets it as an outright ban, I wouldn't mind.

Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell pizza chain corporation Domino's to get antibiotic abuse out of its supply chain. Why Domino's? Same reason as "why McDonald's" -- because it's the biggest, and if it sources its meat more responsibly, others will follow. And Domino's has already committed to getting antibiotics out of its chicken supply; now it must follow with the meat we're all more likely to put on pizza, that being beef. In a land where seven out of 10 antibiotics go, not to sick people or animals, but to healthy animals so they can beef up (so to speak) and better endure the squalid conditions of factory farms, we have the right and the duty to attack the problem any way that'll work, and giving Domino's another good PR opportunity is certainly one of those ways. It is sad that we don't have a federal government that'll attack the problem, and that's been true regardless of which party runs things. But we're Americans, which means we're not prisoners of our government's inaction, either. So let's get to work.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 582/S. 150, the Raise the Wage Act, then Progress America still helps you do that. The Raise the Wage Act, as you know, would raise the minimum wage gradually to $15/hour over the next five years -- which right-wingers wailing about the "shock to small businesses" should duly note -- and would also raise the wages of tipped and disabled workers so that they ultimately achieve parity with the minimum wage for everyone else. The bill would also mandate annual increases to the minimum wage in line with increases in national median income, though it wouldn't allow the minimum wage to fall if median income also happens to fall. The current minimum wage of $7.25/hour, as you know, actually represents a wage cut from 50 years ago, when the $2/hour minimum wage actually had over $13.50/hour in contemporary purchasing power, so raising it to $15/hour not only wouldn't wreck our economy, but it would give our working families more of a fighting chance in making better lives -- the kind of fighting chance baby boomers had.

Around the table: Medicare-for-All won't kill the economy, and other lessons.

Dean Baker reminds us, once again, that installing a Medicare-for-All health insurance system is not going to break anyone's bank. In fact, upon hearing that corporations pay about $2,700 per citizen for private health insurance in America, that employer-side payroll tax looks even smaller (and, ah, those co-pays that have been coming out of your check might even stop coming out of your check). The main problem, of course, is that "we pay twice as much for everything," but with Medicare negotiating on everyone's behalf, we could bring a lot of those prices down. Better that than throwing up your hands or intoning the words "free markets" ad nauseam.

Aw, poor wittle Howard Schultz doesn't wike being called a "billionaire." I call you what you want to be called when you're part of a historically oppressed group, but no reasonable person would find billionaires "oppressed." And, seriously, "people of means"? Clearly I need to amend what I said the other day about Mr. Schultz maybe stealing more votes from Republicans than Democrats in a Presidential race -- I mean, sure, the super-rich might prefer Mr. Schultz to our President, and maybe convince a few other folks to do so, but "people of means" is a phrase guaranteed to offend Presidential votaries.

Netflix somehow made over $800 million in profits last year but paid zero dollars in federal taxes. Less than zero, actually -- they got a $22 million rebate. Nice work if you can get it! So whomever tells you that the Republican tax "reform" made it harder for corporations to get goodies from loopholes can explain how Netflix paid 13.6% on their profits over eight years and then paid a negative 2.6% rate the first year after the tax "reform" passed. BECAUSE TEH RATE IS LOWER STOOPID LIBRULZ!!!! is not the answer, not when they told us for years we could lower the corporate tax rate and close loopholes at the same time.

Surprise, surprise, our intelligence apparatus is starting to get sick of briefing our President, so often does he act like an entitled brat, and they've even stopped telling him things he doesn't want to hear, which admittedly doesn't look particularly courageous but then we haven't been banging our heads against the wall for upwards of two years. So I guess when terrorists attack, he'll just say THEY NEVERZ TOLDZ MEZ TEH THINGZ!!!!! But you know what we'll say? We'll say, you failed to protect our country.

Finally, and ho hum, our President squeals about TEH ILLEGULZ VOTINGZ!!!! by using statistics that don't tell anything close to the whole story. When Mr. President complained about "58,000 non-citizens voting in Texas," he forgot to add "over a 22-year period" because of course he did, and that's important, not just because Texas's lists of potential non-citizen voters hasn't actually revealed even one actual citizen non-voter, but because the lists certainly don't take naturalization into account, and over 180,000 folks became citizens in Texas between 2016 and 2018 alone. Also, Florida's Republican government tried to pull similar shenanigans in 2012, whining about TEH 180,000 ILLEGULZ VOTINGZ!!!, and then the number actually turned out to be "100." Which is, I feel compelled to remind you, 100 more than Texas's Republican government has found so far. But why wait for actual facts, when there are rage-addled votaries to be set off?

Action: concerning wealth taxes, animal trafficking, and paid family leave.

Sen. Warren (D-MA) has proposed an "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" aiming to tax not merely income but wealth, specifically the wealth of folks who have more than $50 million in net worth. The tax would be small -- a 2% tax on wealth between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 3% tax on wealth over $1 billion. That's two percent and three percent, not "20%" and "30%," "liberal" media! Two University of California economists estimate that the tax would raise $210 billion annually even though it's mere percentage points, and $210 billion every year could do a lot of good. The "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" proposal would also increase the IRS's budget (which should have been done, like, years ago) and would impose a sizable "exit tax" on folks who try to renounce their citizenship so they don't have to pay the wealth tax. Ms. Warren hasn't yet introduced a bill codifying these principles, but why wait? The tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) will help you call your Reps and Senators and tell them to support the Warren proposal to tax wealth.

Meanwhile, H.R. 864, the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act, would turbo-charge wildlife trafficking enforcement in America, by incentivizing whistleblowers worldwide to report animal trafficking crimes, strengthening laws that go after traffickers, and dedicates all financial penalties toward wildlife conservation. Wildlife trafficking actually isn't an easy thing to go after, particularly in poorer areas of the world, so we should absolutely give folks more incentive to report these crimes. So I wonder what the far right in America will have to say about it. Actually, I don't: it'll be MORE TEH FRIVULUZ LAWSUITZ!!!! at one end and GOD GAVEZ UZ TEH ANIMULZ TO DOMINATEZ!!!! on the other, and while I do find Dominionist beliefs noxious, they're certainly not worse than the "frivolous lawsuit" crowd, who might better be described as the "protect unearned corporate CEO salaries" crowd. Anyway, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight animal trafficking by supporting the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to enact paid family leave in America by passing the FAMILY Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. If the FAMILY Act from this Congress is like past iterations from past Congresses, it would fund 12 weeks of paid family leave for all workers (including part-time and self-employed workers) from an 0.4% payroll tax, half borne by the employer and the other half borne by the employee. And again, "liberal" media, that's four-tenths of one percent, not "4%" or "40%." Journalists who get this kind of thing wrong should get fired! It's basic math! And here's some more basic math: if you make $50,000 annually, your contribution to the family medical leave fund, annually, would be $100, or not even two dollars a week. If some right-winger tells you it's too expensive to pay for family medical leave for everyone, just remind them that the cost of one cheap cup of coffee simply isn't a whole lot to ask for everyone to have the same peace of mind that workers in just about every other nation have.

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, voting rights, and government shutdowns.

Perhaps in response to Senate Republicans' latest push to abolish the Estate Tax entirely, Sen. Sanders has introduced S. 309, the For the 99.8% Act, which would actually reform the Estate Tax. S. 309 would subject estates worth over $3.5 million to the tax (the low threshold is currently $11 million thanks to the 2017 tax "reform"), and would not only bring back the 77 percent rate on estates over $1 billion, but would create several new brackets (for example, estates over $50 million would face a 55% tax) that would make the Estate Tax more progressive. These are all marginal tax rates, of course -- an estate worth $50,000,001 would only face the 55% tax on that last dollar, since it's the only dollar over $50 million. And no the Estate Tax doesn't kill family farms! People who tell that lie should be ashamed of themselves! Tools for calling your Reps and Senators are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone).

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, then Common Cause still helps you do that. If you've been hearing that "Mitch McConnell calls a bill proposing to make Election Day a federal holiday a 'political power grab,'" well, that's H.R. 1, and making Election Day a federal holiday is just one thing it would do -- H.R. 1 incorporates excellent (but sadly unpassed) bills like the Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Fair Elections Now Act, and the DISCLOSE Act, all of which have deserved our support in the past. Mr. McConnell should consider whether a federal campaign finance system is really a "power grab," or whether disclosing the names of big campaign donors in ads is a "power grab," or whether patching the hole our Supreme Court blew open in the Voting Rights Act -- a hole that's allowed a lot of vote suppression in America -- is a "power grab." I mean, the man whose entire career represents a power grab from the people really has no room to talk.

Finally, federal funding runs out at the end of next week, with our President threatening to declare a "national emergency" if Democrats won't give him his border wall funding, so Demand Progress (among other good government groups) helps you tell your Congressfolk that you don't want our government shut down over our President's vanity border wall. Our President will yell that he's "keeping a campaign promise" -- and that's the most generous thing I can say about his stubbornness -- but which is more important? Keeping a campaign promise that induced no more than 46% of the electorate to vote for you, or doing the people's will? Polling consistently shows a majority of Americans don't want our government to shut down again and don't want a border wall; it's really as simple as that. Of course, if you watch a lot of cable news, you're likely too conditioned to think in terms of "winners and losers" and "this is my team" to remember that a democracy is supposed to serve the people's will. Still, I'm happy to remind you of that, as often as you need it.

Action: concerning the war in Yemen, tampons in public schools, and tax credits for electric cars.

H.J.Res. 37/S.J.Res. 7 is the new War Powers resolution that would end our participation in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen; Reps. Khanna (D-CA) and Jones (R-NC) are the main cosponsors in the House, and Sens. Sanders (I-VT), Murphy (D-CT), and Lee (R-UT) are the main cosponsors in the Senate. The Senate passed a similar resolution late last year by a wide margin, but they did that knowing that the House would put the kibosh on it in their Farm Bill; since then Democrats have retaken the House, but when have you ever known Democrats to be significantly less deferential on foreign policy to our President than Republicans? Really, it is like they've all gotten this Constitution thing exactly backward: Congress is supposed to make war-related policy, while our President is supposed to execute that policy. You know, as the leader of the executive branch? Anyway, H.J.Res. 37/S.J.Res. 7 merits a phone call to your Congressfolk; the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) will help you find your Congressfolk's phone numbers.

Meanwhile, one Matthew Kirby, of Wilmette, IL, has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell our Education Secretary to require all public schools to provide free access to products like tampons and pads. Currently only three states provide that access, in a world where all girls of reproductive age need them, and they need them when they need them, too, and not only when they can get to the store or the house to get them. Don't be the one who says this is a slippery slope to free condoms in our schools! Do you see the words "free condoms" anywhere in that petition? No, you do not. Also don't be the one who says "why should government have to do this for people?," not when state governments are perfectly happy to make it harder to get these products by levying regressive sales taxes on them. And certainly don't be the one who giggles at the mere prospect of free tampons in schools like you're 14 years old or something, not if you don't have the experience of bleeding uncontrollably from your genitals. Seriously, empathy is not a cuss word.

Finally, you may know that our Administration has a hard-on for ending the tax credit for electric cars, because if it might improve our lives but also cost some boss some money, it's evil and must die a humiliating death. Am I not describing our Administration's attitude correctly? Have I failed to be appropriately generous to them? The answers are "yes" and "hell to the no," respectively -- when evil people show you who they are, you'd best believe them, since being all post-modern about it could hurt you and the country you love. Anyway, Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to stop making it harder to get and drive electric cars. A lot of right-wingers will say why should big government make it easier for you to get electric cars? And a reasonable answer to that would be: why the hell not? Folks who respond TEH BIG GUMMINT!!!!! to every mild proposal are really telling you they can't win the argument on the merits. And where are they when big fossil fuel corporations get subsidies they don't need? Nowhere, that's where. So they don't get all the say around here.

Around the table: starring jobs that create jobs! Which are not boss jobs.

If you thought about it for a minute, you'd realize that yes, manufacturing jobs actually create even more jobs simply because of all the jobs folks need to have to support them, but it's still nice to have some data behind it. When you think that auto workers not only support the jobs that make the tires and the windshields but also the jobs at the restaurant where they go after work -- not to mention the taxes all those workers pay! -- then you know that when bosses say "American workers make too much money," you can just tell them "that's the price you pay for American workers creating jobs."

Surprise, surprise, an anonymous-of-course Democrat has been talking about ginning up a primary challenge for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). That'll show her! Even Ms. Ocasio-Cortez couldn't care less if she gets primaried next year, but I gotta say that talking about all the "numerous council people and state legislators who’ve been waiting 20 years for that seat" sure ain't winning talk. A seat in Congress is no pearl of great price, but it still goes to the one who seizes the moment more than the one who "waits their turn."

Alan McLeod at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media define "'the Venezuelan people' as a term that exclusively means "anyone who agrees with US policy." Remember that when you read individual letters-to-the-editor claiming they "speak" for those Venezuelans who returned Mr. Maduro to office at a higher clip than anyone did for our last two Presidents, and remember, also, when they show you photos of anti-Maduro protests, they're not telling you about the sizable pro-Maduro protests, let alone the polling information showing that the Venezuelan General Assembly (headed by Venezuela's putative savior, Juan Guaîdo) is about as unpopular as Mr. Maduro. Also, too, how much good has American intervention done lately? Besides for American corporations, I mean?

Former CEO/independent Presidential hopeful Howard Schultz says Elizabeth Warren asked him for a donation once but he wouldn't do it because he thinks her policies would "lead to socialism." I'm sick of people who throw the word "socialism" around to describe whatever they don't like. I'm even sicker of people who once depended on public housing (not to mention everything else taxes pay for!) throwing the word "socialism" around. But you know what I'm most sick of? People who call things "socialism" and then, when mildly pressed on whether that's what they really mean, retreat to calling them "a level of socialism." The world would be a much better place if folks would just keep their mouths shut when they don't know stuff.

Our Supreme Court temporarily stays a Louisiana anti-abortion law from going into effect until later on this week. I thought they'd either let it go into effect or stop it entirely, but I should have considered that they might issue a temporary stay and let the drama go on another week -- as a prelude toward issuing a ruling that would let the Louisiana anti-abortion law go into effect permanently, though it differs little from the Texas law our Court struck down. I guess I should have figured that Chief Justice Roberts would want to peruse every definite article in a law to make sure it's the "same" law they already struck down.

Finally, there's Kellyanne Conway, the pride of Atco, NJ, saying that if Sen. Booker "were a Republican running against (declared female candidates), they immediately would call him a sexist for running against these women in the Democratic field." Just like we called every single male Republican candidate in 2016 a "sexist" for having the temerity to run against Carly Fiorina? Wait, we didn't do that? Of course we didn't do that. We might have called them sexist because they were being sexist, but not for running against a woman for the nomination. Stupid people need to go away.

Around the table: featuring the continuing misadventures of President Manchild.

Although I think telling big Democratic donors they need to pay more attention to getting the message out in rural areas is not where we should concentrate our efforts, certainly Democrats should attend the fact that advertising in rural areas is a lot cheaper than in urban ones, and unions ought to think outside "we're giving to the Democratic candidate" as the solution to most political advocacy problems. Knowing Democrats, though, I bet they blow their rural ad budget on ads trumpeting "entrepreneurship" and "innovation," rather than tax-funded college and trade school and treatment for drug addiction, which we know rural folks would rather talk about.

Our Glorious Administration spent valuable time during the shutdown gutting an Obama-era regulation requiring employers to submit detailed reports on workplace injuries to our government. Because they only care about bosses, not workers! It's a shame I even have to say it out loud! Of course, given our Administration's track record in trying to gut regulations, this'll probably die in court, too -- though if you get seriously injured on the job in the meantime, that probably won't be as much comfort to you.

And now, another reminder that just because we hate our President doesn't mean we should love our FBI: they investigated a California antifa group as a "terroristic threat" after one of its members got stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally. The FBI sure put on its kid gloves talking about the KKK, too, actually saying that "some perceived" the KKK's agenda "to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda." "Some perceived"! That's not tough-cop talk, is it? In fact, it's very post-modern of them to suggest that lynchings and assaults and murders and cross-burnings and actual terroristic threats on black folks' doorsteps are justd a matter of perception.

Gunar Olsen at FAIR catches our "liberal" media worrying about a "quick exit" or a "rushed exit" from Afghanistan. Yeah, I guess 17 years isn't that long a time -- especially when you consider how long it took for us to decimate the Native American population! I'm not kidding; one "liberal" media pundit -- Max Boot, who gets unearned plaudits from folks for hating our President as if that's some big accomplishment -- actually referenced our 300-year effort to destroy the American Indian as justification for suggesting that, hey, wars take a long time if you do them right. Our war in Afghanistan has now gone on a full decade longer than World War II.

Now our President says his intelligence chiefs told him they were "totally misquoted and totally taken out of context" -- quite a feat, to be both at the same time! -- when they contradicted him on virtually every cornerstone of his foreign policy as evidenced by transcripts just about anyone can find on the internet. I really thought he'd go the "fake news" route before he went the "those people who work for me suck at their jobs" route; I just got the order wrong, then. And so did he -- if he just went the "fake news" route, he'd still be a jerk, but he might not have shown the entire world, yet again, that he's the worst boss anyone has ever had the misfortune to work for.

Finally, in a peripherally-related note, Administration Press Secretary-still Sarah Sanders says God "wanted" our current President to be elected President. And this might be true! Just as it might also be true that God chose him in order to a) make us, at last, completely sick of the drama that surrounds such men and b) make us, at last, stop admiring people merely because they've accumulated a lot of money. I mean, if God chooses you for something, you'd best not do a victory lap about it, because you don't know how the story's supposed to turn out.

Action: concerning our Estate Tax, antibiotic abuse, and William Barr.

It begins again: Senate Republicans have apparently read the mandate handed down by the voters in November to read "let's repeal the Estate Tax!" You'd be tempted to say "they never learn," but of course learning has nothing to do with it: Mob Boss Mitch knows that if you placate every whiny desire of wealthy donors, you'll get more campaign money from them, and thus you'll keep getting elected. To what end? So you can finally get hemp farming legalized after 34 years in the Senate? Not likely -- the only end Estate Tax repeal really serves is the end of democracy. Seriously, you have a better chance of one day paying the Estate Tax if you actually support a robust Estate Tax on estates over $1 million. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to reject Estate Tax repeal.

Meanwhile, virtually everyone in America wants to see fewer antibiotics in farming, but of course our Administration knows better than everyone else, as our EPA has recently approved a plan to expand spraying of antibiotics on Floridian citrus trees. Sick trees, healthy trees, how can we tell from up here? One more time: using antibiotics on plants and animals that aren't sick gives bacteria a better shot at adapting to them, and thus renders antibiotics useless a whole lot faster. Who will be sitting around the campfire in a hundred years saying the next cut any of us get could kill us, but at least our government was able to con good Floridians into delivering their electoral votes to the Republican Presidential nominee in 2020? The answer, of course, is "no one." Particularly if we let Penn PIRG help us tell our EPA to help preserve good Americans' health by rejecting its planned expansion of antibiotic spraying.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of William Barr as Attorney General, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Why? Let us count the reasons: his work helping George H.W. Bush pardon half a dozen participants in the Iran-Contra scandal before Mr. Bush himself could be hauled into court, his belief that Presidents ought to be able to do pretty much what they like without very much constraint from the legislative or judicial branches, his apparent hostility to our Special Counsel's continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election (and Administration culpability therein), his persistence in believing the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional years after our Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they are -- did I miss anything? Oh, right: he's a fellow who thinks incarceration solves every problem.