Thieves in the Temple.

Penny Rants for Sunday, March 31, 2019: concerning scare numbers and rhetorical hostage situations.

Dean Baker at Common Dreams reminds us that most Americans think huge amounts of taxpayer money go toward things like food stamps when, actually, they don't. People think we spend "20 to 30 percent" of our federal budget on food stamps and welfare when the actual figure is more like two percent. Mr. Baker essentially blames scare numbers: "(d)iscussing budget numbers in millions, billions and trillions is incredibly irresponsible reporting," particularly when reporters don't discuss these numbers in the context of, say, an annual federal budget of $4 trillion. Also, too, reporters regurgitate scare numbers about budgets without mentioning that they're budget figures over 10 years, and I'd be lying if I said that was solely a right-wing problem. And while some folks seem to think Americans are math-challenged, I don't -- I think Americans hate confronting the fact that they don't make enough money to pay their bills. We'd all be a lot better at math if we could make the math in our lives work.

When I first confronted the headline "Equality Act = Female Erasure," I said that of course it had to be written by Rod Dreher, the man who seems to think compassion and hysteria are interchangeable concepts. How would extending protections of the Civil Rights Act to gay and transgender folk "erase" "females"? By putting men in women's locker rooms, apparently. While it's true that women would fear a man in their locker room more than a man would fear a woman in theirs, women don't live very much of their lives in locker rooms, and locker rooms are not a law of physics unto themselves -- they're spaces that could be converted to single-person water closets with minimal difficulty. Anyway, leading with an anecdote about a transgender woman who acted badly in public (when will our laws ever protect property from destruction?) sure doesn't make it any more convincing. And the idea that men will call themselves women simply to win sporting events? Yikes, doesn't Mr. Dreher remember peer pressure?

When I first confronted the headline "The Liberal Case Against Bernie," I said that of course it had to be written by Eric Alterman, the man who hates Ralph Nader so much that he once dismissed his entire consumer protection legacy. And just as Mr. Alterman blames George W. Bush's Presidency on Mr. Nader and not, for example, on George W. Bush, he naturally blames Mr. Sanders for Mrs. Clinton's loss, and not Mrs. Clinton for her inability to defeat the worst Presidential candidate anyone can remember running. And he says the "take-no-prisoners" campaign Mr. Sanders supposedly plans to run would alienate the electorate? "Playing not to lose," by supporting candidates who don't mean what they say unless they say it to big corporate donors, actually alienates the electorate! This President's an ogre, but the professional hostage-takers on the left won't beat him. (I did click through to Mr. Eichenwald's summary of Republican oppo research on Sen. Sanders, but we all had worse on our President, and he still won.)

Around the table: featuring a series of unsurprising developments.

It may be surprising at first to contemplate a study concluding that social media usage actually has very little effect on folks' beliefs, but when you think about it, most of us seek out sources that we already more or less agree with (and can do so more easily than ever before). The study's author concludes that something else compels Americans to hold to ridiculous beliefs; I submit that cause is a Republican party that makes ever more desperate and hysterical arguments to hold onto power it hasn't earned.

Adam Johnson at FAIR reminds us that "Renouncing Violence is a Demand Made Almost Exclusively of Muslims." After all, can you remember CNN dragging a white nationalist on to renounce violence? More likely CNN will wring its hands over whether the KKK can "rebrand" after 150 years of murder! We should also remember that only folks with socioeconomic privilege have the option to renounce violence; George W. Bush never had to commit violence himself because he was able to get other people to commit violence on his behalf.

Our Supreme Court stops execution because Texas wouldn't allow a Buddhist cleric to attend, a far cry from last month's decision not to stop a different execution because Alabama wouldn't allow a Muslim cleric to attend. Boy, I really wish it were more complicated than this -- the word "Muslim" juices up a rage gland the way "Buddhist" doesn't. Didn't conservatives tell us that confirming their judges would ensure that judges wouldn't interpret the law however it suits them?

U.S. District Court Judge strikes down Administration plan to water down the definition of "Association Health Plans" so that virtually any organization or corporation could evade the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Requirements like, you know, making health insurers cover certain health conditions that everyone but this Administration and its cronies want to cover. Sometimes this Administration's animus -- in this case, toward pre-existing condition bans -- is really hard to understand. Except, of course, as wanton evil. But voters won't punish them, as long as Democrats keep putting up candidates who don't mean what they say.

Lisa Beach at Yes! magazine describes an Orlando, FL farmers market that helps fight teenage pregnancy, crime, and dropouts. Not just by "putting those ungrateful kids to work," but by putting them to work maintaining our civilization, as farmers markets most assuredly do, far more than, say, penny stock trading. And this farmers market just so happens to serve a primarily African-American community largely bereft of grocery stores. This would be a thing that would help stop school shootings, too -- as I recall from my youth, kids desperately need something to think about other than themselves, and running a farmers market would surely do that.

Finally, speaking of folks who clearly never thought very much about other people as a child, our President thinks the two FBI officials having an affair with each other and exchanging negative texts about our President while investigating his ties to Russia should be in jail for treason. How many times must I tell these pimps! Working with someone's political enemies -- and we'd still have to prove that Messrs. Strozk and Page actually did that! -- does not violate Article III, Section 3 of our Constitution, which requires an actual enemy, not just "someone the President doesn't like." File this, too, under "The President is Not America."

Action: concerning trade, energy efficiency, and clean water.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the USMCA trade agreement doesn't lock in all those super-high drug prices that help kill good Americans, then Replace NAFTA still helps you do that. No, "kill" is the right word to use in the previous sentence, because when life-saving drugs like EpiPen cost hundreds of dollars per dose, then folks with severe allergies can die, and when diabetics ration their insulin because it's too expensive, they die, too. I've said before that the USMCA does a lot of good and necessary things -- the ratcheting down of the notorious "investor-state dispute settlement" system, a system that nullifies our laws, is absolutely necessary. But no law of physics compels us to "take the good with the bad" in a trade agreement -- we're Americans, so we should insist on all the good we can get, and compel our representatives to do that on our behalf.

Meanwhile, so great is our Administration's hatred for regulations that actually do some good for America that they're actually trying to roll back energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. For decades now, right-wingers have gotten away with portraying us as anal do-gooders for trying to make light bulbs more efficient; why can't we do the same to them for insisting that light bulbs use more energy? Certainly we can do the same to this Administration for looking under every rock to find some regulation they can overturn for the benefit of the only people they care about, i.e., corporate executives. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell our Department of Energy to reject its own plan to roll back light-bulb energy standards. Seriously, I'm thinking an ad lampooning this Administration for going after light bulb efficiency standards would work well. It's just, you know, Democrats would have to run it.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency to limit all the PFAS chemicals in our drinking water. PFAS chemicals are the kind of thing you find in non-stick saucepans and firefighting foam, but they tend not to break down very well after use, and they could be lurking in the drinking water of a third of America, ready to contribute to higher incidences of hypertension, cancer, and developmental delays in children. The EPA has lately proposed restricting two kinds of PFAS chemicals, and listing them as "hazardous substances"; that ain't nothing, but it's also a reversal from their announcement not even a month before that they wouldn't limit any PFAS use, which got a lot of negative publicity, particularly from good Americans who live around military bases, which use a lot of PFAS chemicals -- enough, perhaps, to make them reverse their ground a bit. And that tells us we can get more out of them.

Action: concerning clean water, paycheck fairness, renewable energy, and social media monopolies.

The WATER Act is back, this time as H.R. 1417, and it would pay for restoring our water- and sewer-related infrastructure in America by raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 24.5%. I'd raise the corporate tax rate all the way to 55%, which is where it was in the America all those Tea Party folks grew up in, but financing water infrastructure with a smaller hike in the corporate tax rate is certainly worth doing. And what can Republicans say in response? That the corporate tax cut has created craploads of jobs which is to laugh? Seriously, the more folks get their taxes done this year, the more unpopular the 2017 tax "reform" will be -- and the more popular the idea of raising taxes on corporations so that folks can drink unleaded water will be. If we act, that is! Hence a group of good-government organizations helps you tell your Congressfolk to support clean water by passing the WATER Act.

Meanwhile, our House of Representatives plans to vote on H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, today (Thursday), so you can 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 find your House Reps' phone numbers and call them to tell them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act, as you know, would protect workers from retaliation if they discuss their pay at their job -- since that is, after all, the only way most folks find out they're victims of discrimination! -- and would also ensure that employers can't make hiring decisions solely on the basis of past salaries, since that'd be like penalizing people for the discrimination they've already suffered. Women's pay still hasn't achieved parity with men's pay, even after you adjust for factors like experience, so we need the Paycheck Fairness Act with a quickness.

In other news, our President's budget proposal (among its many, many other insults) zeroes out our Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (or ARPA-E), which operates within our Department of Energy and happens to be the agency that conducts R&D for clean energy. Because, apparently, the will of coal corporation executives means everything in America, and the will of the people means nothing! And also, apparently, coal simply can't survive unless this Administration strangles all other forms of energy in their crib. But solar and wind farms now cost less to start up than coal plants do, and solar and wind production have almost achieved parity in cost with fossil fuel production, so zeroing out ARPA-E (and trying to zero out virtually all other renewable energy funding in our budget) smacks of desperation. Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to preserve our government's investment in renewable energy.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) to break up Facebook, then Freedom from Big Tech still helps you do that. You know that Facebook has seemed awfully susceptible to actual "fake news" purveyors, and that Facebook had allowed Cambridge Analytica to misuse the data of 87 million users, and you also know that both of these problems are made much, much worse by the fact that you can't just punish Facebook for its mistakes by moving your entire social media life to another network these days. But add yet another scandal to your list: Facebook has apparently stored hundreds of millions of passwords, maybe including your password, as plain text on its servers. Too often it seems we need to rewrite the old saw "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" into "the bigger they are, the more damage they do" -- and we need to force our government to work a lot harder at making sure corporations don't get that big.

UPDATE. The House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act this morning, so Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to pass the bill.

Around the table: in which our politics range from incompetent to evil.

Our Administration declares in a legal filing that it supports the complete destruction of the Affordable Care Act, and not just the destruction of the (very popular!) provisions it has spent the last two years fighting. And I must ask: are these guys completely tone-deaf? If they succeed, not only will they reactivate the issue that drove voters to hand the House back to Democrats, they'll prompt even more Americans to support Medicare-for-All as a way of being done with all the headaches. Constantly diddling the rage glands of your votaries has to backfire sometime, particularly when your votaries comprise no more than 25% of the electorate.

Be sure you're sitting down when you read this Fortune/Kaiser Health News report about how our national push to move from written health records to electronic ones has too often resulted in bad software and missing information leading to illness and death. And then wonder if maybe we shouldn't have made all the electronic health record software private. I mean, today's "conservatives" would scream if our government simply hired all the people needed to make electronic software work, but that would more likely have headed off the whole our-software-just-loses-data problem -- and if not, you'd know whom to fire.

And stay seated: our Defense Department exempted some 5,000 pages of documentation describing Google's work on a government drone project from the Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that their work comprises "critical infrastructure security information." There are things we'd want to know, after all -- like whether Google's AI is any less sucky than anyone else's AI, how well it detects what it's supposed to detect, or whether we, as civilized people, should even allow it to do what the Pentagon wants it to do -- but to say that TEH PEEPULZ WILL DIEZ!!!!! if the information gets out, as yet another Administration official with "acting" in their title does, should strike you as more than a bit hysterical. Also, too, 5,000 pages!

In a peripherally-related note, Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell (E-KY) blocks vote on that resolution the House unanimously passed calling for the release of the Mueller report, citing unnamed "national security" concerns. Saying you won't do things like that because of "national security" is rather like admitting you can't win the argument without resorting to scare tactics. Mr. McConnell is running for re-election to the Senate in 2020; if Democrats can't beat him, they have no business calling themselves a major party.

Finally, in another peripherally-related note, our President has taken the Mueller report about as well as you'd expect -- by (among other things!) whining that "(i)t’s a shame that our country has had to go through this," and "(t)o be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this." One more time: the President is not America, and in a sane, moral, and healthy society, no one would give one rat's hind quarter about "what the President is going through," since the President signed up for the job. Our Founders must be spinning in their graves.

Action: concerning government spying, renewable energy, and food stamps.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Department of Homeland Security to stop spying on reporters and refugee advocates, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. As you likely know, our DHS has kept fairly detailed records on these folks -- even going so far as to collect make and model info on their cars! -- and handed over that data to Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (or ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (or CBP). So did DHS get the warrants, or did ICE and CBP get the warrants? I kid, of course -- this Administration doesn't need any stinkin' warrants! Spying on folks who are fighting or recording your slow-motion train wreck of a border policy does not exactly demonstrate a whole lot of confidence in your border policy, does it? So let's remind our government (again!) that its political opponents have rights just like everyone else.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 11 would amend the state's Alternative Energies Portfolio Standard -- which requires utilities to get some of their power from renewable sources -- to include nuclear power. Recall how hard it is for nuclear power plants to make money without massive government handouts and you'll already see why folks call this the "nuclear bailout" bill. But then the bill's lead sponsor, Rep. Thomas Mehaffie (R-106), cites two nuclear power plants that'll have to close if his bill doesn't pass -- and one of them is Three Mile Island! Gosh, "pass my bill or the poster child for nuclear meltdowns will have to close" has to be one of the dumbest attempted hostage situations I've ever seen. But Republicans dominate the state legislature, and Democratic Gov. Wolf is no great battler of corporate welfare, so, as usual, it's up to us. Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Pennsylvania legislators to reject HB 11.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our USDA to reject its proposed rule changes that would result in fewer folks getting food stamps when they need them, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. You'll recall our President saying that "good people need to stop paying for bad people," a statement of idiocy that rivals Paul Ryan saying "healthy people need to stop paying for sick people." You cannot reasonably divide a population into good and bad people on the basis of whether or not they receive food stamps! Why? Because everyone pays into the food stamp program with their taxes, and anyone could, at any time, hit a run of bad fortune that puts you in a position where you'll need food stamps to help make ends meet. Note well the words "everyone" and "anyone," both of which have received the blessings of the Italics Hammer, and let's stop with the real politics of division.

Action: concerning government spying, discrimination, health care, and internet freedom.

Both the ACLU and CREDO help you tell our FBI to stop classifying certain activists it doesn't like as "black identity extremists." You already know that whenever Our Glorious Elites call someone an "extremist," they're not in any way an actual "extremist" like Our Glorious Elites are, right? I mean, it's classic projection. But of course FBI spying on black activists is a long and notorious tradition in America -- note their spying on Dr. King and Malcolm X in the '60s. Today's Black Lives Matter activists (and I do feel sorry for you if you felt a shiver of rage just in reading those words!) battle police brutality all over America, so naturally our FBI takes that not as anti-racism but "anti-cop," which means spying on activists like they're criminals. Spying on folks for their First Amendment-protected activities is actually illegal, right now, so clearly our FBI needs our counsel.

Meanwhile, Tennessee residents, take note: two more anti-gay bills -- SB 1297, which would call it "indecent exposure" whenever a transgender person uses a locker room, and SB 1304, which would let private adoption agencies refuse to allow gay couples to adopt kids -- will get state Senate committee hearings today (Tuesday), at around 3 pm, so the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state Senators to reject both of these bills. People that afraid of a transgender person in their locker room really need to get over themselves, frankly, and people who won't let gay couples adopt should remember that the whole purpose of getting kids adopted is to get them good parents. It sure does seem like the Tennessee state legislature proposes a lot of anti-gay legislation, doesn't it? But it also seems like a lot of it dies without getting a vote, which is a testament to the Tennessee Equality Project -- and also to you.

In other news, our Administration has lately announced that it'll reduce fines to nursing home corporations that don't protect their residents' health, because law and order! For this Administration, "law and order" is clearly only for "little people" like us, not "big people" like corporate executives. Hence Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject these proposed changes with legislation protecting our seniors. When you hear that our Administration has reduced fines to nursing homes that didn't disinfect their equipment properly between uses, you may be reminded that the state of Florida cited our President's own "winter White House," his Mar-a-Lago resort, almost 80 times for health violations over a three-year period, and thus you'll also be reminded that our President's animus toward regulation is personal -- and making everything so personal is precisely the opposite of what real leaders do. America deserves better.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to promote real internet freedom in America by passing H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, then Stop the FCC still helps you do that. For this Administration's FCC, of course, "internet freedom" is only about "freedom" for big corporations to keep you away from websites they don't want you to visit; the Save the Internet Act would restore the 2015 Open Internet Order that codified net neutrality into law, thus allowing you, and not some corporation, to determine where you want to go on the internet. "Net neutrality," admittedly not the most resonant phrase ever conceived, describes the principle that internet service corporations should treat all network traffic the same, rather than prioritize some traffic over others. That means net neutrality is internet freedom -- for all of us! -- so we should pass the Save the Internet Act to bring it back.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, "national emergencies," and the Mueller report.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell Senate Majority Leader "Mob Boss Mitch" McConnell (E-KY) to hold a vote on the House-passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, then you can still call him at 202.224.2541. That's his D.C. office; if it doesn't answer, you can go right to his Senate website and find a suitable phone number if you scroll down past "Services for Kentuckians" and down to "Office Locations." I've said that it looks bad that Mob Boss Mitch has said that he won't hold a vote on H.R. 1 because "I get to decide what we vote on," but he should hold a Senate vote on H.R. 1 because it's a good bill, with many necessary reforms in voting rights, campaign finance, redistricting, and ethics. And if we're wrong about H.R. 1, and it's actually a bad bill, he and those who agree with him should be able to convince good Americans why, instead of simply saying there'll be no vote because Mob Boss Mitch is in charge. That ain't a good look in a democracy.

Meanwhile, as you know, Congress voted to pass a "resolution of disapproval" that would nullify our President's "national emergency" declaration, one he undertook so he could fund his vanity border wall -- and then, of course, our President vetoed the resolution. So now the resolution goes back to the House, and word on the street is that they'll vote on the override tomorrow (Tuesday), so People for the American Way helps you tell your House Reps to stand for law and order by voting to override our President's veto. There are still some folks in America who don't understand this -- or who only understand this when a Democrat's President -- so I'll say it again: the President is not America, and yes you can oppose the President and still stand for law and order. Indeed, our Founders anticipated that good Americans would have to do this again and again. And if our House Reps fail to do our will here, shame will find them no matter where they run.

Finally, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on alleged collusion by our President with Russia during the 2016 campaign (and related matters) to our Attorney General, and now both Public Citizen and People for the American Way help you demand that the Mueller report be made public. We paid for the damn thing, after all, and even Dastardly Devin Nunez has said the report should be made public, so what's the argument against it? "I won so I can do whatever I want"? "Fake news"? "No collusion!"? "WITCH HUNT!"? What a profound insult that last item is to the memory of those who died in Salem in 1692 and 1693, by the way. It's like he wants the cheap thrill of calling himself oppressed without doing any of the hard work of actually being oppressed! But then, he's never been one for hard work of any kind, has he? Anyway, let's all see the report, even if our President prematurely (ahem) declares that it vindicates him.

UPDATE. The House failed to overturn our President's veto on Tuesday, so the "national emergency" declaration will go to court, where it faces, shall we say, an uncertain future, since it was, after all, a "national emergency" declaration made by a President who said, out loud, that he "didn't need" to declare said national emergency.

Around the table: tabulating another reason why satire doesn't seem to work anymore.

You heard that wages went up 2.8% over the last year? Well, Patrick W. Watson at Forbes reminds us that inflation went up 2.7% over the last year, meaning that just about all that wage growth got eaten up before good Americans could benefit from it. Between this news and a weak March jobs report (only 20,000 jobs created), our Deal-Maker-in-Chief had better hope that the economy doesn't enter a recession while he's in office, because then the only reason to vote for him is racism. And even in America, that ain't enough.

In a peripherally-related note, February's federal budget deficit was an eye-popping $234 billion, a one-month record even President Obama's Great Recession-hobbled economy couldn't match. Of course, our Administration alternates between outright denying the deficit has gone up and blaming Democrats, neither of which exactly constitutes leadership. (Neither of these are even true -- the Republican-controlled Congress has handed our President many budget resolutions he didn't like.)

Alarmed that our "liberal" media is calling the Venezuelan opposition leader a "moderate"? Well, Alan McLeod at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media calls pretty much everyone it likes a "moderate" or a "centrist," at least as far back as Adolf Hitler, apparently! Also, too, our "liberal" media allows right-wingers to smear actual moderate centrists like Barack Obama as "socialists" without raising objections. I do wonder whether calling Mr. Guaido (and others like him) "social Democrats" is all that smart, though, given that our "liberal" media constantly excoriates "Democratic socialists," and that dichotomy invites unhelpful comparisons to the well-noted enmity between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.

Presidential hopeful Beto O'Rourke slams Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu, saying he has "openly sided with racists." I'm surprised to learn that he's made similarly unconventional statements about Israel in the past, but though I'd be happy to be wrong about this, I can't help but think he'll walk back such comments within 48 hours, thus demonstrating why he'd lose to our current President in a general election. People hate politicians who don't mean what they say, after all, and our President gives the appearance of meaning what he says even when he says stuff that flatly contradicts other stuff he's said.

Ho hum, right-wing news outlets treat as actual news a "satirical" story about a fictional Kamala Harris bill proposing that police get supervisor approval before shooting people. At least Blue News Network (where the story originates) doesn't claim to be a "news and satire website," like many actual fake news websites do. But their satire, frankly, isn't very good, not even in a Lindsay-Anderson-playing-it-close-to-the-chest sort of way, and it makes you wonder if maybe folks can't tell satire from truth at least in part because you can find so much more bad satire out there than you could in the old days. I haven't heard of anyone confusing an Onion story for truth in a long time, after all.

Finally, Igor Derysh at Salon reveals that our Administration has lost a staggering 94 percent of lawsuits over its regulatory changes, which isn't surprising to those of us who have been attending our President's apparent incompetence in following the law. You have to remember, also, that he's losing a lot of these cases before a federal judiciary that's mostly Republican-appointed over the last 40 years. I hope it won't be too much to ask that our President's "national emergency" declaration and his FCC's net neutrality repeal also die in court soon.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 494.

We learn from Dave Anderson at TruthOut that the alleged "$100 trillion" price tag of the Green New Deal is a made-up scare number. When the man who comes up with the number admits, out loud, on Twitter, that he really doesn't know how to count the cost of installing renewable energy, then you know the number is complete rubbish. Then again, if you've noticed the cost of renewable energy almost achieving parity, or coming close to achieving parity, with the cost of fossil fuel production, you already knew it was rubbish.

Of course Daniel Larison at The American Conservative is right that our President's declaration that the U.S. will recognize Israel's "claim" in the Golan Heights is "a mockery of international law" and a "pre-election gift" to Israeli Prime Minister/Drama Hound Binyamin Netanyahu, who goes before the voters on April 9. But what if our President doesn't even intend to recognize Israel's claim? It's not like that's past him, you know. If so, he's given Mr. Netanyahu his "gift" a little early -- there's still plenty of time for a backlash to form in Israel over this naked giveaway.

Dane County, WI judge strikes down a law the Wisconsin state legislature passed to hamstring that state's incoming Democratic Governor and incoming Democratic Attorney General, but I'm not sure this decision will stand, since it asserts that "extraordinary sessions" violate Wisconsin's constitution, when the state has had about two dozen of them since 1980. I am sure, however, that the judge's decision does not require him to strike down every single law passed in every other extraordinary session that's ever been -- not if nobody's suing about those other sessions, at least.

Our Administration concedes that the 2017 tax "reform" won't goose the economy the way they said it would, and of course they now say they'll need "additional rollbacks in labor regulations, a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and another round of tax cuts." Remember when they said corporate tax cuts would deliver $4,000 into every family's bank account? Good times! And now that their predictions aren't coming true, they're telling us that since eating shit didn't make us healthy, we have to eat more shit.

Our President says a lot of things, having none of the character traits a civilized person would value, but the sight of the 46% President criticizing his "enemies" like Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller because they "never got a vote" and saying "my voters don't get" why they're even relevant really takes the cake. Where to begin with this? With "innocent people never need to attack their opponents like this"? With "you're President of all Americans, not just 'your voters'"? With "waaaaaaaah"? It's hard to know where to begin, and it's almost like that's the whole idea.

Finally, Michael Corcoran at FAIR delivers yet another tour de force about "liberal" media coverage of Medicare-for-All. Don't you love how they call Medicare-for-All supporters "hard-line," which would lead you to think that the majority of Americans are "hard-line"? Par for the course for the "liberal" media that called pulling out of Iraq an "extreme" position when more than half of America wanted to pull out. (Trigger warning: you'll also see, in a sidebar, an anti-Medicare-for-All reporter saying, in a since-deleted tweet, that "it's super weird how people are blaming their diminished sense of well-being on the (present) Administration. Personal events determine my quality of life, not who's in the WH." Spoken like someone who was born on second base but thinks they hit a double!)

Action: concerning taxes, immigration, and discrimination.

H.R. 1516/S. 647, the Wall Street Tax Act, would (as its title suggests) levy an extraordinarily small tax (0.1% -- that's one tenth of one percent, not "10 percent," "liberal" media!) on all securities trading in America. I'd prefer a one percent tax myself, so that our "liberal" media can't lie about it as easily. Yes, it sticks in my craw that they routinely make these little math "mistakes" and don't get fired! If I ever got in a serious accident, I wouldn't want to find any of these clowns in charge of my morphine drip. "60 milligrams a day or 600, what's the difference?" Anyway, I digress: so, so much trading goes on in America -- too much, in my opinion, which is another reason I'd want the tax to be larger -- that even a 0.1% tax on trading would likely raise more than $75 billion annually, and that ain't small potatoes. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to start taxing Wall Street trades again. (Oh, and by the way, in case your Republican uncle is unusually attentive -- hey, it happens! -- Sec. 2 would exempt initial public offerings of stock from the tax.)

Meanwhile, you know our President has declared a "national emergency" to build his vanity border wall, and unless both the House and Senate override his veto of their resolution of disapproval nullifying this "national emergency" declaration, we have to presume he's actually going to get it built -- I mean, he might scheme to fail to build it and then blame everyone else, but that's not the way to bet. And if he's going to get it built, he's going to get private corporations to build it, since that's how our government does it these days, and one of those corporations is Caddell Construction. Hence Sum of Us helps you tell Caddell Construction to withdraw its bid to build our President's vanity border wall. If we can't shame our Congressfolk into doing the right thing -- and many of them are quite emotionally-crippled in their utter lack of capacity to feel shame -- then we have to turn the laser beam of shame elsewhere, and maybe Caddell doesn't want to be forever linked in the American psyche with family separation, Presidential vanity, and the like. We won't know unless we try, though.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5/S. 788, the Equality Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. CREDO also reminds us that our current Administration is one that has proven unusually hostile to civil rights for gay and transgender folks, but the Equality Act -- by amending the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act (among other laws) so that LGBTQ folks can also enjoy their protections -- would pretty much put a stop to that. Our current Administration is hostile to gay and transgender folks, of course, because that's about the only way to keep the far right pounding the saucepan for you, never mind that we all know actual conservatives in our lives who find all our Administration's posturing distasteful enough that no number of federal judges is going to bring them back into the fold. And it's no use citing that time our President said he was OK with gay marriage, because our President says a lot of contradictory crap by design (so that there's something for everyone!), and also because, well, we need to look at what people do more than what they say.

Action: concerning federal budgeting, internet freedom, and paycheck fairness.

Earlier this month, our President released his latest "hard power" budget or whatever; it would, of course, slash virtually every federal program that actually helps good Americans -- federal programs should help good Americans, of course, since good Americans fund them with their taxes -- while jacking up defense spending and of course hiking spending for his vanity border wall. In a Goofus and Gallant world, this would definitely be a Goofus budget. Our President's budget has virtually no chance of passing as-is, since Presidential budgets rarely do, but then that could be what our Administration wants us to think! They do tend to be more dangerous when you underestimate them, after all. Besides, our duty is to offer our counsel to our Representatives, so let's do that -- the more they hear about how much we hate this budget, the more likely they are to pass something closer to our will. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject our Administration's FY 2020 budget.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to restore real internet freedom by passing H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. The Save the Internet Act would restore the 2015 Open Internet Order -- you know, the one the FCC repealed in 2017 -- that codified net neutrality principles into law, so you, and not some corporation, can be in charge of your internet experience. Of course forces have aligned against us -- Michael "the Lesser" Powell calls the bill "a partisan death sentence for internet innovation," though of course he lost me at "innovation." But it ain't just corporatist dead-enders like him -- it's also a few recalcitrant Democrats in the House, who take campaign donations from big telecom corporations. But who on Earth thinks the voters put them in the House so they could suck up to Comcast? We put them in the House, and we put them there to do the right thing, so we need to remind them of that.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. The Paycheck Fairness Act would, as you know, help women fight for more equal pay by (among other things) toughening penalties for employers and keeping employers from using a worker's history of being underpaid against them when making hiring decisions; of course the forces of evil yammer on about how different workers have different skill sets without noting that H.R. 7 already takes that into account (in Sec. 3). But the last time Republicans filibustered the bill, they claimed that the Paycheck Fairness Act would scare employers into not hiring women! Thus do they reveal their low opinion of everyone who's not themselves! Look, Republicans, either these are our best and brightest and boldest entrepreneurs, or they're scaredy-cats who can't read a law. They can't be both.

Action: concerning discrimination and pollution.

The Tennessee state legislature's House Judiciary Committee plans a vote today on HB 836, the so-called Child-Placing Agency Religious Freedom Bill, which we can run through our Bill Title-to-English translator and find, give me a minute, ah, here: "let private adoption agencies refuse to place kids with gay parents because of the gay cooties." Some folks love making a big drama of crying in public over their "religious" "beliefs" being "violated" though literally no one forces them into a gay marriage and literally no one forces them to worship Liberal Gay-and-Muslim-Loving Jesus -- and no one even forces them to stop hating gays, women, and foreigners, though this hatred does seem to comprise the entirety of their "religious" "beliefs." But actual religious folks understand that the tension between religious belief and worldly pursuit is not only intractable but promotes religious growth, and that insisting on codifying "God's kingdom here on Earth" through law is an arrogance God would find intolerable. The Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee legislators to reject more pro-discrimination legislation by rejecting HB 836.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking public comments on mining development in Alaska's Bristol Bay area. If you thought we'd already chased away mining development there, well, yes, the Pebble Mine project in Alaska has had trouble attracting investors, and yes, even Scott Pruitt's EPA frowned upon mining development in Bristol Bay, but as long as one corporation wants to keep Pebble Mine alive (now it's Northern Dynasty Minerals, after Rio Tinto pulled out), then the Bay's clean water is in danger, and the world's largest sockeye salmon industry is in danger, and the Native American communities who also rely on the salmon are in danger. Hence Sum of Us helps you leave a public comment with the Corps of Engineers opposing mining development in Bristol Bay. You may well be feeling more than a little disgusted that we managed to chase away so many investors and yet we're still trying to save Bristol Bay. Who could blame you? But if we've learned one thing over the years, it's that the forces of evil never stop fighting -- and so neither can we, even after we think we've won. And, as they say, knowing is half the battle.

Around the table: the worst word in the English language, and other revelations.

John Mauldin at Forbes announces that "The Average American Can't Save Enough to Retire" -- and that's mainly because the average American doesn't make enough money. Take that, rich boss who looks down on everyone who's not like him! I can't really fault Mr. Mauldin for talking about retirement in terms of "cruises and golf tournaments," or bills only in terms of paying off your house or car, since I imagine that's how his intended audience at Forbes thinks about these things. And perhaps some of them will get the message, however muted, that they're not paying their employees enough to have a decent-sized IRA.

Fran Quigley at TruthOut warns us that big pharma corporations are trying to deflect from their role in pricing life-saving drugs too high by nattering on about middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers." Because what else can they do when you have them dead to rights on jacking up the price of insulin so much that some diabetics skip doses which diabetics cannot ever do? Just remember that big pharma corporations pay their executives tens of millions of dollars and report profits as high as 40%, and that the price of insulin has increased tenfold over the last 20 years, which is, to say the least, a lot faster than inflation. (Also, note that pharmacy benefit managers don't set a drug's list price.)

Buried in this account of how our President hates the idea of self-driving cars, not that he's doing anything about it, is the statement that Administration Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao faces a "challenge" to "manage safety concerns while promoting U.S. innovation." If a car isn't safe, how is it "innovative"? Are we "innovating" on the definition of safety now? To include, you know, stuff that's not safe? "Innovation" is really the worst word in the English language. You can safely decide that anyone who deploys it as an unambiguous positive is a fool.

Janine Jackson at FAIR reminds us, in the wake of the news that the Venezuelan government didn't blow up those aid convoys at all, that "Exposure of Another Pro-War Lie Doesn’t Make Media More Skeptical of Pro-War Claims." You have to wonder why our "liberal" media keep going to the same people who are always wrong about everything -- a phenomenon we've observed repeatedly, such as when folks who swore up and down that the Iraq war would be easy-peasy kept getting cited as "experts" in news reports -- but of course we already know why: because war makes big corporations money, and media outlets don't challenge money.

If you're wondering why this session's Medicare-for-All bill has fewer House Democratic supporters than last session's Medicare-for-All bill did, despite there being, you know, more Democrats in the House this session, you can take comfort in the fact that quite a few of last session's Democrats supported it because it had no chance of passing, and its chances of passing grow with the passage of time. You can take less comfort in recalling that Democrats sure do have a habit of sabotaging good ideas when they have the power to do so -- but you can take more comfort in knowing that our job isn't to elect more Democrats, but to make the politicians in power do our will.

Finally, in a related note, David Dayen reminds us that California Senator/Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris loves to celebrate her role in getting that $25 billion settlement from banksters over foreclosures, but that the settlement itself is nothing to celebrate. That goes beyond the fact that banksters were able to write that $25 billion off their taxes, and none of them went to jail, even though they obviously broke the law -- a lot of that settlement money didn't actually help anyone keep their home, though that was, ostensibly, its whole purpose. Think of that the next time someone tells you that you have to support Kamala Harris because she's "electable" or "sensible" or whatever -- in these times, these words mean "part of the problem."

Action: concerning media, consumer protection, and monopolies.

In the wake of, well, decades of generating fake outrage against civilized people so Our Glorious Elites could consolidate their own unearned power, but more recently in the wake of bad PR about Tucker Carlson's racist and sexist behavior, Free Press helps you tell corporations to stop advertising on the Fox News Channel. Again, Mr. Carlson's jokes/"jokes" about sex with underage girls is exactly the kind of thing we expect boys to stop doing once they become grown men, but Fox has deserved shame and shunning since the beginning, and in the absence of a law forcing cable providing corporations to offer cable channels to us a la carte, prompting their advertisers to drop Fox is the next best thing. Fox's natterers will claim they're being "oppressed," which the powerful always do whenever a hint of criticism crosses their filters, but we only have a First Amendment right not to be put in jail for our speech; we do not have a First Amendment "right" to get a cush job doing "journalism," nor does our First Amendment protect us from advertisers, activists, or customers. Professional self-pitiers won't hear any of that, but they don't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1500, the Consumer First Act, would reverse the changes made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) by former Acting Director/current Acting Chief of Staff/man who wears glasses so people don't punch him in the face Mick Mulvaney. H.R. 1500 would (among other things) bring back supervisory and enforcement powers for the CFPB's Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, would re-establish the student loan office that helped protect college students from being defrauded, and would ensure that the CFPB is properly-staffed, always a challenge when you're talking an Administration that believes not hiring enough people equals "small government." These are all common-sense restorative changes -- I mean, who thinks students shouldn't be protected from colleges that would prey upon them? Who thinks stripping a fair lending office of its power is a good idea? Only someone who thinks bosses are more important than anyone, and that's our President, right there. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect good Americans from financial predators by passing the Consumer First Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook, then Freedom from Big Tech still helps you do that. Why would we break up Facebook? Because it has a virtual monopoly of social media in America -- nope, using Messenger and Instagram and WhatsApp "instead" won't break that monopoly, because Facebook owns all three, and moving to another social media network won't work for you if your friends don't move there, too. Facebook has been known to be quite careless with your private information, and earlier this month, when Sen. Warren (D-MA) proposed breaking up Facebook in ads on Facebook, Facebook then blocked its users from seeing those ads -- and then reversed ground when Politico reported on it! The FTC is supposedly considering fining Facebook $1 billion over its privacy lapses, but that won't do any good, not when $1 billion is a few days' income for Facebook, and not when corporations still get to deduct fines from their taxes. If only our government remembered that breaking up big corporations for the public good is a fine, old tradition in America! Well, at least we're here to remind them.

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

Fresh off Congress's attempt to nullify our President's vanity border wall emergency, S.J.Res. 11 would prevent our President from starting a military campaign against the democratically-elected government of Venezuela without Congressional authorization -- which, for once, might not be coming! I mean, normally, Congress just nods its head and goes along with whatever Presidents want to do foreign policy-wise, which is a precise inversion of our Founders' will as expressed in our Constitution. I won't get too mad at Congress for only figuring out their Constitutionally-mandated role because it's this President; if I understand the Parable of the Prodigal Son correctly, it matters less when, how, or why you come to wisdom than that you come to wisdom. So Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep us out of an unconstitutional war with Venezuela by passing S.J.Res. 11. And you don't even have to reckon with all the one-sided reports on Venezuela coming from our "liberal" media to support this bill. After all, if it were your country, you wouldn't want to be invaded, would you?

Meanwhile, our USDA would very much like to prevent states from giving food stamps to folks who can't get a full-time job, even though food stamps is, you know, the kind of program that exists to help people through tough times. Gosh, it's like this Administration doesn't understand how anything works, though of course I know they would prefer to give you the impression they're stupid rather than the impression they're evil. No need for anyone to cite the 3.7% unemployment rate as proof that our Administration should do this, because the U6 unemployment rate -- the one that actually counts folks who've given up looking for work or who can only get part-time work when they're trying to get full-time work -- is still almost twice that, at 7.3%. Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell our USDA to reject its plan to cut food stamps for large numbers of Americans. If you're wary of this, you may want to remember that we all pay into this program with out taxes, and any of us could suffer misfortune and suddenly be in need of food stamps. I'm starting to think that having trouble imagining that happening to you is a character flaw.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to "repeal the Tax Scam," i.e., the 2017 Republican tax "reform," known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. (I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't magically transform any pile of dung into meatloaf merely by sticking the word "job" in its title.) You know, if I were a less spiritually-advanced person, I'd find it hilarious that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will go down in history as the "tax cut" bill everyone thought of as a tax hike bill! It's not just the many folks who rely on that four-figure check from the IRS every April who are now going to owe money because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed the withholding tables -- it's also the folks who can't deduct as much in state and local taxes anymore or the folks who can't deduct medical expenses anymore. Meanwhile corporations got a massive welfare handout from the bill, which supposedly helps them "create jobs," which is to laugh, since anyone knows if you give someone a big pile of money they're going to hoard it, but if you raise taxes on big piles of money, then the holders of that money will put it into the economy so they don't have to pay taxes. So it's time to repeal this pile of dung.

Around the table: "what looks large from a distance/close up ain't never that big."

The Senate passed the "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify our President's "national emergency" declaration by a 59-41 margin, which ain't enough to overcome a Presidential veto, but as a few of those 41 "nay" votes get more scrutiny, well, we've got a shot. Thom Tillis's sudden "nay" vote after declaring very loudly that he'd vote "yea" has been all the rage on Twitter, but dig Martha McSally's "nay" vote after our Administration assured her it wouldn't draw money for its vanity border wall from four defense projects in her home state. She'll say protecting these projects is just her job, but it sure looks like the kind of political deal-making most Americans despise. Ben Nelson went from being one of the most popular Senators in America to one of the most despised for less.

The Senate also passed the War Powers resolution aiming to stop military aid to the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen, but by a less-convincing 54-46 margin. Mr. Friedersdorf's 2020 analysis is a bit incomplete here -- sure, our President should be made to "own" this war, but it's not a certainty he'll run against a Democrat who's less hawkish than he, nor is it a certainty that Republican voters (let alone our President's most strident votaries!) will remember, or care, how this vote broke down. At least Todd Young's putting his money where his mouth is, and Steve Daines, who's up in 2020, might be slicker than I previously thought. (I suspect Susan Collins's embrace of actual independence here -- she's also up in 2020 -- comes far, far too late.)

Paul Street at Counterpunch watches MSNBC so you don't have to, finds the station full of "Red Scare Dems" who worry that the Democrats, in embracing popular/beneficial policy initiatives, will move "too far left." And one of them says that he would have to vote for the President he hates if Democrats nominate someone like (fill in any name, since they'll all be "too far left" for our "liberal" media anyway). So to sum: MSNBC employs putative liberals who constantly cry about "socialism," and it also employs Republicans who hate our President -- see, they're completely fair and balanced! (Don't be the one who complains that all this fake bipartisanship has given bipartisanship a bad name, because that's like turning off your living room light and then complaining that all of a sudden it's dark.)

Mehdi Hasan shows the world how to interrogate Administration cronies on his al-Jazeera program and what's the most telling thing about that? That the interview took place on a network virtually no Americans can watch? That Mr. Hasan showed up to a gunfight with a gun and Erik Prince didn't even bring a pointed stick? That American journalists are more likely to brag about which member of Our Glorious Elites they're in good with than about which poisonous elite they helped to bring down? That Our Glorious Elites are so far from our-best-and-brightest they'd need two buses and a train to get in the same neighborhood as our best and brightest? Really, it's a hard question to answer, and it's almost like that's the idea.

Survey finds that more than half of all victims of rapes, robberies, and burglaries simply won't report these crimes to the police. You'll be pleased to learn that some of these folks handle these matters themselves without resorting to additional violence, but folks who constantly yell at everyone for "not respecting our police enough" might want to wonder if police could do more to earn that respect. Also, too, that Reagan-era "finding" that our justice system is "biased" in favor of "criminals" would likely merit an it's-a-feature-not-a-bug statement from our Founders, as well as the you-don't-know-what-it's-really-like statement it merits from folks of color. Yeah, law and order is hard work, but we do it because civilization is worth it.

Finally, in the wake of our Justice Department charging 50 rich folks with paying millions to illegally get their kids into schools like Stanford and Yale, may I request that I never hear any more whining about the "unfairness" of affirmative action again? I used to remind everyone that folks of color need affirmative action just to get past all the legacy admissions of lifelong C students, but I clearly underestimated the scope of the problem. (And, please, if you've been whining about affirmative action all these years, don't up and say you're now just as concerned with what rich folks do to get their kids in college. I don't hear any affirmative action-complainers voluntarily talk about rich folks gaming the system. What you choose to fixate upon matters, you know.)

Action: concerning government spying, discrimination, and immigration.

Demand Progress helps you tell our Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) to stop spying on journalists, activists, and legal advocates. Did DHS get warrants to spy on these individuals? Ha, ha, that is to laugh -- if they'd tried to get warrants, a judge would likely have laughed them out of court, because then DHS would have tried to tie all these good folks to specific acts of violence at the border, and then, perhaps, try to convince a judge that trying to help folks navigate the asylum process and reporting on same is somehow "violent." Also, too, spying on individuals isn't part of DHS's mandate, even if it's handing the data over to ICE and Border Patrol; how utterly surprising that the Administration that struts around about how "law and order" it is constantly flouts the rule of law when good Americans use their Constitutional rights in opposition to this Administration's will. But we have to fight them here, or we're going to be fighting them everywhere.

Meanwhile, H.R. 5/S. 788, the Equality Act, would amend existing civil rights laws (including the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act) so that gay and transgender folks can enjoy protections from discrimination under the law. The fight for LGBTQ civil rights has won many victories over the years, but it has not yet won many basic protections under the law, for you can still be fired just for being gay, denied housing just for being gay, or rejected from school just for being gay, and let's not even get started about how tough it is for transgender folks to take a piss in a public restroom. Which reminds me: the Equality Act will not abridge "religious freedom." You will still be able to worship whichever God you feel compelled to worship. You just won't be able to impose your beliefs on other people, or use the "religious conscience" excuse to discriminate against people you don't like. Freedom for All Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to support freedom and equality for all Americans by passing the Equality Act.

Finally, H.R. 6, the Dream and Promise Act, would accomplish most of the goals the DREAM and American Promise Acts would have achieved if they'd been enacted -- it would help more immigrants brought here as children stay in the country they love (and likely the only country they've ever known), and it would also help more immigrants keep their Temporary Protected Status if they countries from which they've come still aren't safe enough for them to return. What a shame we would call this bill "progress," since what it mainly does is fix what our President broke, but, sadly, that's where we are. I suppose Republicans and their "liberal" media enablers will whine that the bill isn't "bipartisan" enough, even though most of us are old enough to remember when Republicans supported its aims. Of course, good Americans don't care about "bipartisan" government; they only care about good government. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support common-sense immigration policy by passing the Dream and Promise Act -- and without right-wing poison pills.

Action: concerning war on Yemen, tech monopolies, clean air, and the Grand Canyon.

Our Senate may vote soon on ending military aid to the Saudi/UAE coalition waging war on Yemen. I wish I could say that Congress's habit of delegating its Constitutional war-making duties to the President is a post-World War II thing -- it surely got worse after WWII, but we invaded central American nations many, many times (a tradition our President seems to want to continue in Venezuela) before that without getting formal declarations of war from Congress. The cynical would say that the previous sentence proves it's no use holding this Administration to any kind of standard, but cynicism is evil, and the time for doing the right thing is always now. Hence Stop the War helps you tell your Senators to pass the War Powers resolution that would choke off our military aid to the Saudi/UAE coalition. And certainly don't believe the hype that such a resolution would hurt the "war on terror." Our interference in Middle Eastern affairs, and our greed for their resources, has done more to spread terror than any effort to hold our elected officials to our Constitution ever could.

Meanwhile, Sen. Warren (D-MA) has proposed breaking up giant tech monopolies including Facebook, and has even advertised her proposal on Facebook -- at which point Facebook took the ads down, only to reinstate them after Politico reported on it. You'd think a confident social media corporation would allow folks to criticize it on their site! But it's almost like Facebook knows that gobbling up Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger isn't popular -- or that folks still use Facebook because they're basically the only game in town. (Oh, sure, you can "just join another network," but your friends would have to join it with you!) Even the Conservative British government has criticized Facebook's market dominance, but our Federal Trade Commission, like our President, hates any regulations that might do people good but cost some boss some money. The only thing that might change minds at our FTC is our raised voices. So Freedom from Big Tech helps you tell our FTC to protect consumers and foster competition by breaking up Facebook.

In other news, our Administration also wants to roll back the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, because, again, these standards might actually protect good Americans from the cancer and brain damage these pollutants cause, but some CEO somewhere needs to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home, so no nice things for America. Of course, with noted perk hound Scott Pruitt in charge of our EPA, our Administration's attempts at rolling back clean air and clean water regulations generally died a merciless death in court; now, with former Jim Inhofe lackey/fossil fuel lobbyist Andrew Wheeler firmly in charge of our EPA, they might actually do it -- unless we speak out, in numbers they can't ignore. Hence the Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell our EPA to protect good Americans from pollution by rejecting its own proposed Mercury and Air Toxics rollback. Forget the Democrats -- all that's stood between our Administration and its evil goals, so far, is us. And we'll keep standing.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep uranium mining corporations out of our Grand Canyon forever by passing H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act. The Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act would simply mark over one million acres of the Grand Canyon area in Arizona as off-limits to mining interests, and would extend similar protections to any adjacent land our government acquires as public lands thereafter. The Obama Administration, as you know, imposed a 20-year moratorium on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area, and for good reason -- uranium mining might make mining corporation CEOs rich, but it also pollutes the Colorado River, upon which good Americans in five states depend for clean water. That water will be polluted long after the last mining CEO spends his last unearned dollar, but of course our current Administration only cares about the short-term interests of the well-off few, the long-term interests of the many be damned. And that's why we need Congress to act.

Action: concerning "free" trade, ANWR drilling, and financial predators.

I've said that our Administration's USMCA trade agreement is a vast improvement over previous "free" trade deals, because it gets rid of the "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) system with Canada and curtails it with Mexico, and the ISDS system threatens to nullify our laws and outsource our jobs. However, the USMCA also locks in absurdly high prices for big pharma drugs, including many life-saving drugs, by extending big pharma corporations' monopoly rights for such drugs to 10 years, meaning they can block cheaper generics for that long, and folks shouldn't die before the altar of "intellectual property," particularly when big pharma all too often can't develop drugs without massive taxpayer investment. Don't think you have to accept big pharma monopolies to get the destruction of the ISDS system, because you are the boss of your government and you don't have to take any guff -- if you make your voice heard. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our government to cut the big pharma monopolies out of the USMCA agreement.

Meanwhile, you may recall that the 2017 tax "reform" bill opened up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) to oil drilling. But H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act, would simply repeal that section of the tax "reform" that permits drilling in ANWR. You might be able to recite all the good reasons we shouldn't drill in ANWR: that we're likely never going to get very much oil from ANWR anyway, that the porcupine caribou and the Gwich'in people who rely upon them merit the protection of the law, and that oil drilling in that region always carries with it the threat of air and water pollution, particularly in a region of the world that's rather difficult to clean up. And what are the arguments on the other side? "We needed Lisa Murkowski's vote on the tax bill" and "CEOs should have every opportunity to make more unearned money and everyone else be damned." Not that impressive, is it? So the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your House Reps to protect the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge by passing H.R. 1146.

Finally, the Fifth Circuit overturned the Department of Labor's fiduciary responsibility rule back in June. You remember the fiduciary responsibility rule, right? The one that would have required that retirement fund advisors put their clients' interest before their own? Naturally the new Administration fought that tooth and nail, since they believe all regulations that actually protect people from financial predators are bad. So now this Administration's Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) is making up new fiduciary responsibility rule -- and naturally the banksters love it! The SEC's proposal doesn't require retirement advisors to put their clients' interests first, nor does it crack down on the kinds of sales incentives that tend to prompt advisors to put their own interests first; common sense tells us a strong proposal would do these things. Hence Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our SEC to protect good Americans' retirement funds by creating a fiduciary responsibility rule with teeth.

Around the table: starring the usual cast of right-wing whiners and Democrat weaklings.

You should read Bess Levin every day, though you don't need her to tell you that our Administration's 2020 budget is a "next-level horror show" -- though, then again, maybe you do need her to help you confront the extreme BS coming from yet another "acting" member of this Administration, acting OMB Director Russ Vought, who thinks it's some kind of achievement for a President to "attempt to tackle the debt within eight years." "Attempt"? Really? I guess our President wants a participation trophy.

Uh oh: Administration claims that forces allied with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro set an aid convoy on fire, but video evidence shows that an anti-government protestor did it, although apparently by accident. I was going to say "and there's yet another reason this Administration isn't as bad as Tha Bush Mobb," but then I remembered that Tha Bush Mobb couldn't get Mr. Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, out of office even after literally staging a coup. Other Administration claims about Mr. Maduro burning food and medical aid have also changed subtly upon being confronted with contrary evidence. I bet we didn't see any of that on the TV news, though.

Did you know there was a "debate" over whether payday lenders gouge people? According to NPR, there is, and it's a debate that appears to have our CFPB, a handful of payday lending corporation spokeshacks, and literally one person who used payday loans on one side, and the rest of us on the other. If NPR is too "liberal," as inattentive folks often say, then it must be a Robert Frost kind of liberal -- you know, the liberal who's "too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."

White Pennsylvanian man puts up a billboard that says "whites have rights too" and calls possibly every politician of color he knows a "racist," then says he really only meant to "start a dialogue." "I just wanted to start a dialogue" is, as you know, the whine that emanates from everyone who talks without thinking, and did you notice he talked about how much he cares about "how you stand for my flag" and then corrected himself to say "our flag"? I sure did. All together now: waaaaaaaaah.

Finally, Rahm Emanuel gives his fellow-Democrats and us uppity liberals "advice" about how to beat our President in 2020 I won't tabulate my objections to Mr. Emanuel's piece, since they number approximately one per point made, but I will say this: nearly 100 million Americans didn't vote in 2016; what if even one-tenth of them are waiting for a Presidential nominee who might actually, you know, do stuff that helps people? The candidate who captures them will be unbeatable, "socialist" or not.

Action: concerning government spying, internet freedom, paycheck fairness, and the minimum wage.

We learned last week that (per the House Minority Leader's own national security advisor) our National Security Agency (or NSA) hasn't used the PATRIOT Act's Section 215 bulk phone data-collection program in six months. And the result of this serious inaction was a cascade of nesting 9.11-size terrorist attacks, right? Well, not exactly -- particularly since the Section 215 program has actually never thwarted a terrorist attack, which you wouldn't find surprising if you thought about the whole needle-in-a-million-haystacks nature of combing through all those phone records. Rep. McCarthy's spokeshack quickly said that his co-worker doesn't speak for Congress or the President, but that wasn't exactly a denial, and the program has, frankly, always been an invasion of privacy as well as an offense to law and order. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to promote freedom by letting the Section 215 bulk data-collection program expire.

Meanwhile, you've been hearing about all those fake net neutrality bills various Congressfolk have been flogging, the ones that would pretend to restore net neutrality while still letting big telecom corporations censor and throttle your data, but the Save the Internet Act (for which Congress.gov has no bill number at this writing) would repeal the FCC's net neutrality repeal of 2017, prevent them from just issuing another one just like it, and restore the 2015 Open Internet order that codified strong network neutrality principles into law. Don't believe the haters who say well, the internet ain't that much different than it was before, is it? Nobody expected the big telecoms to start censoring your favorite websites the day after the net neutrality repeal became law; freedom dies in degrees, because otherwise folks would notice its absence. Hence both Free Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Save the Internet Act.

In other news, the House may vote on H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, early this week; the Paycheck Fairness Act would toughen penalties for employers that pay their female workers less than their male workers without having a bona fide good reason (like differing skill levels, education, or experience). I thought for a moment I should just type that whole sentence again, in case someone wants to leap in with EVERYONEZ IZ TEH DIFFERENTZ!!!!!, but really, there's no need -- trolls are gonna troll no matter what you do. The Paycheck Fairness Act would also add some more teeth to the Fair Labor Standards Act by preventing employers from using wage history as a criterion for considering employment, and I trust you can see why: because employers can keep women underpaid by refusing to hire them based on their long history of being underpaid! So Moms Rising helps you tell your House Reps to help close the wage gap between women and men by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your House Reps to help working families by passing H.R. 582/S. 150, the Raise the Wage Act, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. The Raise the Wage Act would, as its title suggests, raise the minimum wage to $15/hour from its current $7.25/hour over the next five years, and would raise the minimum wage for tipped and disabled workers to the same level as all other workers after six years. After all, you wouldn't want employers to suddenly convert all their workers to "tipped" workers (or even figure out how to call them "disabled"!) merely to avoid the minimum wage. Hey, if I thought of it, I'm sure they have. Don't consider that a reason not to pass the Raise the Wage Act, because then you would hold yourself hostage to whatever imagined emergency opponents could come up with next. And anyone who thinks these wages would be "onerous" for small businesses clearly can't imagine workers spending their extra wages at small businesses.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, discrimination, war-making, and "national emergencies."

As you know, the House passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, late last week; H.R. 1 would enact broad and far-reaching reforms in voting rights, gerrymandering, ethics, and campaign finance -- or it would, if Senate Majority Leader McConnell would hold a vote on it. But he won't, because, and I quote, "I get to decide what we vote on." He's wrong as usual -- if we get in his grill enough, and we get in his fellow Senators' grills enough, they'll hold a vote on it whether they like it or not. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to vote on and pass the For the People Act. Our Glorious Elites don't seem to understand that most Americans don't consider (for example) automatic voter registration "radical," or campaign finance disclosure "socialist," but folks like Mitch McConnell really believe that the richest people in America are the best people in America and should thus have all the say about everything. I guess it's just our terrific luck that we get a seminar every single day from our President about how little wealth has to do with character or talent.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee state legislature will take up HB 836 -- the so-called Child-Placing Agency Religious Freedom Bill, and with a title that clunky, you know it can't be good -- as early as tomorrow. HB 836 would let private adoption agencies refuse to place children with gay couples if it violates their "religious" "conscience" -- well, actually, the bill words it "written religious or moral convictions or policies," but that might be even worse! You can easily imagine adoption agencies refusing to place children with Unitarians, Jews, Catholics, agnostics, or atheists, when they should just concentrate on finding good parents. I guess the bill's supporters will argue that forcing agencies to put their bigotry in writing is some sort of major advance for civilization, but I'm such a churl I prefer that civilization advance by refusing to let some folks use their bigotry to deny other people their rights. Hence the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state legislators to protect the rights of all their constituents by rejecting HB 836.

In other news, H.R. 1274 would repeal the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that each of the last three Presidents have abused in launching military campaigns without getting the necessary declaration of war that our Constitution mandates. You may recall that last year Congress tried to repeal the 2001 AUMF but replace it with a far worse AUMF that would have let a President start military operations without getting Congress's permission at all, unless Congress acted to end those military operations within 30 days of their start. But H.R. 1274, which is a very, very short read at Congress.gov, simply repeals the 2001 AUMF. Far too many politicians will protest that repealing the AUMF "puts our troops in harm's way," but that's a most disgusting form of rhetorical hostage-taking, and anyway I'll tell you what puts our troops in harm's way: sending them off to fight wars without doing the due diligence our Founders commanded and our Constitution requires. CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to help restore law and order by repealing the 2001 AUMF.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to pass the "resolution of disapproval" that would reverse our President's "emergency declaration" which enables him to fund his vanity border wall, then Moms Rising, Public Citizen, and People for the American Way all still help you do that. Our President's vanity border wall is surely a totem of stupidity and hatred, but you don't need to feel some kind of way about immigration or refugees to oppose his "national emergency" declaration -- all you need to know is that our President said, out loud, in the presence of reporters, not even one calendar day after issuing his declaration, that "I didn't need to do this" but "I would rather do it much faster." Few, if any, words in the English language carry the connotation of "need" that "emergency" does, but I guess our President is bold enough to ignore the common meaning of common words. But we sure don't have to take his guff, and we also don't need to take the guff of Senators too cowardly to oppose a man who's so wrong so much of the time.

Around the table: concerning government spying, taxes, private prisons, "right to work," and "socialism."

Apparently now our government is tracking journalists and refugee advocates with a secret database run by the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic), which of course doesn't have the legal authority to do such things. A Customs and Border Protection spokeshack says they're targeting these folks because of alleged violence at the border in November, and how do you know that's bullshit? Because that wasn't what they told NBC7 a mere five days earlier. Tha Bush Mobb would have given us the bullshit explanation right away, which is yet another reason they're worse than this clown car of an Administration.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy offers "Fairness Matters," a chart book showing who pays state and local taxes these days. Long story short: lower-income working families pay a bigger share of their income in state and local taxes than the rich do, and states that call themselves "low-tax" because they don't have an income tax tend to fill revenue shortfalls with the kind of regressive taxes and fees that hit working families a lot harder. Some rich folks think that's the way it should be, because they think they're better than you. But they don't get all the say in America.

Here's some good news: big banking corporation JP Morgan Chase has announced it will no longer underwrite bonds and loans for private prison corporations. If you have agitated for this very thing, go reward yourself a Buffalo chicken cheese steak, or what you will. (Also, too, you think this might have had something to do with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's call for oversight hearings on the relationship between banksters and private prison corporations? Of course it did, and there's another lesson in the importance of pushing to get people in office who'll do good, rather than merely settle for people who won't literally burn down your house.)

Kenawha County (WV) judge rules that West Virginia's "right to work" law actually violates workers' First Amendment rights to free association. It's similar to the Dane County (WI) judge's decision against Wisconsin's "right to work" law in 2016, which the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court reversed because of course they did -- and, lo and behold, the Republican-dominated West Virginia state legislature is at this moment trying to impeach every member of the Democratic-leaning state Supreme Court. It's like they can't win unless they set everything on fire. Why do we, as civilized people, tolerate such insanity?

Finally, when you hear Sen. McConnell (E-KY) suggest that the now-passed-in-the-House For the People Act is a "radical" and "socialist" bill, you are reminded that all they can do now is call what they don't like "radical" and "socialist." And when Mob Boss Mitch has to call it that -- rather than farm out the remarks to some hungry youngster like, say, Tom Cotton -- that means the forces of evil are even more desperate. I'd call that good news, except that we all know what desperate people are like -- they're the kind of people who throw nukes at Venezuela and Iran to keep power.

Action: concerning antibiotic abuse, corporate taxes, family separation, and H.R. 1.

Penn PIRG helps you to tell Burger King's CEO to eliminate antibiotic-dependent animals from his beef supply. Burger King is, as you know, the second-largest fast food chain after McDonald's, so if it gets the antibiotic abuse out of its meat, that'll have a tremendous effect on the market. But don't get swayed when the factory farms say things like we wouldn't want to stop antibiotic use in sick animals, because literally no one on Earth has called for that -- we have, rather, called for factory farms to stop using antibiotics to fatten up healthy animals, since that's where about four out of every five antibiotics we use in America go, and that makes antibiotics less effective and infections more resistant. Certainly don't get swayed by arguments asserting that your meat will be too expensive if you cut the antibiotic abuse out of the supply chain. Our descendents will not be sitting around a campfire musing well, the next cut you get on your hand will kill you now, but boy was the meat cheap for a while!

Meanwhile, Demand Progress's latest email missive begins: "You probably have more money in your wallet right now than what Amazon will pay in corporate income taxes this year." Amazon, as you may have heard, will pay zero dollars this year, out of over $11 billion in profits, and given that they just pulled out of building a second headquarters in New York City despite getting $3 billion in corporate welfare from the state of New York, that's not good PR for them. Hence Demand Progress helps you tell Congress that corporations like Amazon must pay their fair share of taxes. Note well that the recent Republican tax "reform," though it slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, ain't the whole problem here, since Congress has been handing out welfare to corporations for decades. Remember, also, that when corporations say they can't do research and development without these handouts, that research and development are expenses and thus already tax-deductible. What a shame I have to say that out loud.

In other news, H.R. 883/S. 271, the Families Belong Together Act, would essentially grant lawful permanent resident status to those families whom our Administration separated at the border. Feeling a little wary about that? Well, our Administration says it's just too hard to put children back with the parents from which they've separated them, so granting those children and those parents permanent resident status in America is just about the only way to have a fighting chance at fixing what our Administration broke. And note well that if someone you know is still banging the BUT TEH CHILDZ TRAFFICKURZ!!!! drum, note well that Sec. 2(1)(B) would actually exclude those children or adults from the possibility of getting permanent resident status if the Department of Homeland Security proved in court that "the parent or legal guardian was unfit or presented a danger to the child." So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to restore some basic human decency to the immigration process by passing the Families Belong Together Act.

Finally, the full House will vote on H.R. 1, the For the People Act, today; as we've discussed, H.R. 1 would enact a series of necessary reforms in voting rights, gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, and ethics. So you'll want to call your Reps and tell them to vote "yea" on H.R. 1; tools for finding your Reps' phone numbers are, as always, in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone). Good luck and God bless.

Action: concerning a Wall Street tax, Medicare drug price negotiation, and consumer protection.

S. 647, the Wall Street Tax Act, would impose a miniscule tax on Wall Street trading -- a 0.1 percent tax, to be precise, which amounts to 10 cents for every $100 of trading. To review: that's a 0.1 percent tax, or one-tenth of one percent, not "1 percent" or "10 percent," "liberal" media! Personally I'd go for the 1 percent, because that's the hardest one to lie about, but even a 0.1% tax on Wall Street trades would net us almost $80 billion annually, more than enough to pay for, say, state and community college education for all citizens, or a water infrastructure rebuilding program. These would be investments in the American people, not "investments" in gilding the plumbing in some CEO's 19th vacation home. Hence Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in our future by passing the Wall Street Tax Act.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1046/S. 377, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act, would a) let Medicare negotiate drug prices on behalf of our seniors, and b) let Medicare manufacture a particular drug if it's not able to negotiate a fair price on said drug. Even if a big pharma corporation has exclusive rights to that drug! Maybe we ought to manufacture our own drugs and just cut out the big pharma middleman entirely, but in the meantime, this bill, if it becomes law, ought to reduce drug prices dramatically -- by some $85 billion annually, according to a study done by a Koch brothers-affiliated institute. Yes, I said "Koch brothers"! And yet our President blunders on, insisting that Medicare is the "real price-fixer" just because a bunch of big pharma CEOs told him to, when Medicare is literally prohibited by law from negotiating drug prices! CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support lower prices by passing the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act.

Finally, Rep. Waters (D-CA) has introduced the Comprehensive Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act (Congress.gov has no bill number as of this writing), which would (among other things) ensure that any paid/settled medical debt doesn't show up on your credit report, give you a year to resolve complex medical bills before they show up on your credit report, and prevent credit reporting corporations from mixing up your credit info with someone else's. In a world where one out of every five credit reports contain errors of some kind, Ms. Waters's bill would go a long way toward preventing credit errors from ruining your life. What is the right's answer to that? That corporations should be protected from "frivolous" lawsuits exposing their mistakes and the damage they cause to real people? Don't laugh, because that was the Republican answer to the Experian identity theft scandal in 2017. Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect consumers from credit report errors by passing the Comprehensive Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act.

Action: concerning clean water, pollution, and internet freedom.

S. 611, the WATER Act, would finally provide funding for the upgrades our water infrastructure needs, and not just for the people in dry Southwestern states, or factory farm-polluted rural areas, or places where drinking water just got outright contaminated like Flint, MI. Fact is, our government hasn't properly invested in upgrading our water and sewer infrastructure for decades -- you know, because right-wingers say government should only funnel taxpayer money to corporate cronies, and never do anything that actually helps people! -- and the WATER Act would be a step in the right direction, by allocating $35 billion annually to water/sewer investment. Where's the money going to come from, you ask? Well, I can think of more than a few defense-related boondoggles that could provide the money, and more than a few tax hikes on the rich that could provide the money, but the WATER Act would close corporate tax loopholes to fund the upgrades. Hence Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to support clean, safe water by passing the WATER Act.

Meanwhile, our government is short an Interior Secretary, as you know, after former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rode out (maybe not literally this time!) on a wave of investigations into possible corruption on his part; our President dutifully installed his number two man, former fossil fuel lobbyist (heard this tale before?) David Bernhardt, as his acting Interior Secretary, and now he's nominated Mr. Bernhardt as the permanent (as permanent as they get with this guy, anyway) Interior Secretary. (Gosh, that was an awful lot of parentheticals. Some folks just demand snark.) Anyway, you probably know the drill by now: just as former fossil fuel lobbyist/Jim Inhofe lackey Andrew Wheeler was a bad choice for EPA Administrator (the Senate confirmed him anyway, boo Senate!), Mr. Bernhardt is a bad choice to administer our public lands, since we know he'll administer them on behalf of fossil fuel corporations and not on behalf of, you know, the public. Hence CREDO helps you tell your Senators to reject the nomination of David Bernhardt as Secretary of the Interior.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject a trio of so-called "pro-net neutrality" bills (H.R. 1006, H.R. 1096, and H.R. 1104), then Free Press still helps you do that. For many years now, net neutrality has been popular across the ideological spectrum, and why not? Conservatives hate being told where they can go on the internet just as much as liberals do, after all. And net neutrality is so popular that not only did the FCC resort to calling their anti-net neutrality regulation "Restoring Internet Freedom," but right-wingers in Congress have for years routinely introduced supposedly "pro-net neutrality" bills that, just like these three new ones, let corporations censor content and block and throttle websites and forbid the FCC from ever regulating the internet as a public utility again. Which makes them, right, not "pro-net neutrality." But your Congressfolk may need reminding of the difference.

Action: concerning H.R. 1, the Mueller investigation, and being behind on your rent as a "felony."

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Reps to vote for H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which would enact reforms in the areas of voting rights, redistricting, and campaign finance, then NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, provides a toll-free number, 1.888.496.3502, with which you may call your Reps. (Alternately, you can 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.) H.R. 1 would essentially codify a lot of good bills we've supported in the past into law. These bills include the Voting Rights Advancement Act (which would plug the hole our Supreme Court blew into the Voting Rights Act), the DISCLOSE Act (which would mandate disclosure of the identities of big donors), the Fair Elections Now Act (which would create a public campaign finance system), and the Redistricting Reform Act (which would make states redraw Congressional districts via more independent redistricting commissions). All these reforms are worthwhile, so let's get to calling our Reps.

Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell our Justice Department to publicly release the findings of Robert Mueller's Special Investigation into possible collaboration between our President's 2016 campaign and certain foreign individuals. I've never been very focused on Russia, partly because the ideas we support here transcend partisan politics and particular politicians, but mainly because once we tell law enforcement to do its job, it's up to law enforcement to do its job. But certain members of our Administration seem reluctant to account for their works to their bosses, the American people, and we must discourage such reluctance at every opportunity -- particularly when even GOP House Rep/notorious Administration stooge Devin Nunes (R-CA) says that disclosure of the results of investigations into alleged Clinton Administration wrongdoing set a precent for disclosure of this investigation. And it's really, really not a good idea to fight against accountability to the people.

Meanwhile, did you know that, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, you can get hit with a felony charge of "criminal theft" if you fall even one month behind on a rental payment? Because of big corporate reluctance to hire folks and/or pay them enough to live on, anyone who pays bills these days knows how hard it is to make ends meet, and you don't need a felony charge hanging over your head when you're trying to figure out how much of the rent you can pay while still making some progress on that electric bill. Those of you who think everyone should just pay all their bills all the time should honestly account for how often you've been able to do that yourself -- and then you ought to fight for bills like the Raise the Wage Act that would give more people the ability to meet their bills. Hence the ACLU helps you tell your Pennsylvania district attorneys to stop putting people in jail for the "crime" of being poor. Regardless of what pop culture might tell you, nobody "chooses" to be poor.

Action: concerning Medicare-for-All, pro-discrimination bills, and the minimum wage.

H.R. 1384, the new Medicare-for-All health insurance bill, currently has over 100 co-sponsors in the House; you always have to wonder how many of them have signed on in order to sabotage it, but that doesn't change our duty to tell our Congressfolk that we want a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health insurance program in America, as Public Citizen (as well as many other good government groups) helps you do. Certainly don't believe the like that three-quarters of Americans like their health insurance just the way it is, because you can be pretty sure that those folks haven't had to use their health insurance recently (or perhaps aren't, at present, among the approximately one-in-three Americans who've had cost-related problems getting health care in the last year). And certainly don't believe a Medicare-for-All program would cost TEH 32 TRILLYUNZ!!!!, because everyone who beats that drum forgets to tell you that America will spend $49 trillion on health care in the same period. After all, haters gonna hate, and haters don't get all the say around here.

Meanwhile, the Tennessee state legislature plans to consider HB 1152, a bill that would let private adoption agencies discriminate against potential parents based on that agency's "religious" views, which should irk you if you think kids deserve good parents first and foremost, and should irk you some more if you're wondering exactly how a thing (like an adoption agency) can have "views" about anything. What about the religious views of gay folks who want to adopt a child who doesn't have a family? Not nearly as important as the "religious views" of a corporation that would facilitate such an adoption, according to HB 1152. This is about folks hating gays, certainly, but don't forget that it's also about some folks thinking that rights are only for the "right" people, not for "little people" like us. Hence the Tennessee Equality Project -- which has been beating back anti-gay legislation in that state for years -- helps you tell Tennessee state legislators to abandon their efforts to encode discrimination into state law.

Finally, Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 582/S. 150, the Raise the Wage Act. You know the deal: folks who made $2/hour in the late '60s actually had a stronger minimum wage than we do now at $7.25/hour, because of a little thing called inflation -- what cost $2 in 1969 now costs well over $13 now, so clearly $7.25/hour hasn't been keeping up. And you also know what John Boehner always pretended not to know: that people aren't going to just cut minimum wage jobs if they have to pay their minimum wage workers more, because they're generally the kinds of jobs you can't just "cut," and when minimum wage workers have more money in their pockets, they don't just make ends meet and get ahead a lot better, they also put more money back into the economy. Why, you might even say that a higher minimum wage makes all of us richer. That argument won't impress people who spend all their time trying to make CEOs richer. But they don't get all the say about everything in America, either.

Around the table: describing a couple of false alarms about Medicare-for-All as well as some instances of Our Glorious Elites acting badly.

We shouldn't be surprised that Medicare-for-All has lost some support as those politicians who've only recently come out to support it don't know how to answer basic questions about it, but check out the Wall Street Journal's statement that "net support" for Medicare-for-All has fallen among registered voters in polling from 30% to 12%. What is "net support"? "Net support" is a figure you get by subtracting opposition from support in poll numbers, meaning that 12% more voters support Medicare-for-All than support it -- and it's also a figure you trot out if you want to associate Medicare-for-All with a much smaller number than, say, the number of voters who actually support it, since that number's just about always above 50%. You might even call it a "scare number," since people use it so they can scare you into giving up the fight.

And here's a news item that helps explain the previous one: the day Rep. Jayapal introduced the new Medicare-for-All bill, stocks in health insurance corporations dropped by almost five percent. You need to be ready for right-wingers telling you that "yet another reason" we can't have Medicare-for-All is that it'll cause "too much havoc on the markets." Worse, you'll need to prepare for a Democratic President we settle for (who is not to be confused with the ones we might fight for) saying the exact same damn thing, and thus insuring nothing but continued Democratic electoral losses at the federal, state, and local levels.

Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage says getting of the Electoral College would effectively keep white folks from becoming President anymore, which is fitting, coming from the fellow who always strutted around like everybody voted for him but who only won two terms (with 37% and 48% of the vote, respectively) because a third-party candidate drew a lot of support. It's also fitting that he struts around openly defending "white people" when he undoubtedly experienced hate from other Maine residents due to his Franco-American heritage. Remember, good peoples: don't forget where you came from, because you don't want to be like Paul LePage.

Ho hum, our President says he was "misinterpreted" after saying that he accepted Kim Jong-Un's assurances that the latter simply "didn't know" about the late Otto Warmbier's treatment while detained in North Korea, despite his original comments (the ones that provoked the Warmbier family into speaking out) existing on tape. I guess it really would kill him to admit he's wrong about something, but of course that isn't a demonstration of strength, as his votaries seem to think; it's a demonstration of weakness. Strong people can admit they're wrong, make amends, and move on. Our President can't. What a role model.

Finally, dig Sen. McConnell (E-KY) trying to blame the imbroglio in North Carolina's 9th Congressional district (where the election fraud perpetrated by a Republican operative was so pervasive that they have to do the election over) on Democratic refusal to support Republican vote-suppressions schemes. Of course Mr. McConnell (I watched his little speech so you wouldn't have to!) mischaracterizes complaints about Republicans' vote-suppression efforts as a "lack of concern" about vote suppression, and of course we all knew sooner or later Republicans would step up and claim that only they could stop the voter fraud they seem to be the ones getting caught doing. But am I being too optimistic to note that, once again, it's Mob Boss Mitch delivering a message better delivered by a junior Senator looking to make his bones?

Action: concerning "national emergencies," the death penalty, and national monuments.

As you know, the House has passed a "resolution of disapproval" which would nullify the "national emergency" declaration that our President is using to build his vanity border wall; now the resolution goes to the Senate, which by law must vote on it within 18 days, hence Moms Rising, Public Citizen, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass the resolution. You may want to remind your Senators that our President said, out loud, in the presence of reporters, that he "didn't need" to declare a "national emergency" but did so because he wanted to build his vanity wall "faster." You may also want to remind your Senators that tantrum-throwers shouldn't get their way, just like their mamas taught them. A few Republican Senators have already said they'd support the resolution, but not Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who has said our President was wrong to declare a national emergency over the Southwest border but says a "resolution of disapproval" is too "partisan" for him to support. All together now: waaaaaaaah! If Beto O'Rourke is contemplating another Senate run, he might consider this an opening.

Meanwhile, the state of Alabama plans to put an intellectually-disabled man, Rocky Myers, to death for murder, so the ACLU helps you tell Gov. Kay Ivey to grant clemency to Mr. Myers. The problems with Mr. Myers's impending execution don't end with the cruelty of putting a man to death who doesn't understand what's about to happen to him, of course -- in fact, if you've followed death penalty cases at all over the years, the additional problems will be all too familiar to you: a suspect with zero history of violence before his capital murder charge, the complete absence of forensic evidence establishing his guilt, conflicting testimonies given at his trial, a judge who overrode the jury's finding that life in prison would be a better sentence, a juror who referred to Mr. Myers with a racial epithet. Even death penalty advocates will tell you that putting someone to death is something you really ought to get absolutely right the first time, since there are really no takebacks. So let's all encourage Gov. Ivey to do the right thing here.

Finally, you recall that our President has lopped off big parts of the Bears Ears National Monument, apparently because a) Barack Obama created the monument and our President must urinate all over anything Barack Obama ever did as President and b) because a few fossil fuel corporate cronies would benefit from being able to drill on these lands. Well, along comes H.R. 871, the Bears Ears Expansion and Respect for Sovereignty Act, which would re-expand the Bears Ears monument to its former size, and CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to support public lands by passing the Bears Ears Expansion and Respect for Sovereignty Act. The "Respect for Sovereignty" part comes from the fact that five Native American nations share in the management of Bears Ears, which makes five Native American nations whose rights our President completely ignored when he slashed the size of Bears Ears. There's some controversy, of course, over whether our President can even legally slash the size of a national monument. But why not settle the matter with H.R. 871?