Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, clean water, law and order, and corporate welfare.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Now call your U.S. Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. The HEROES Act is actual good stimulus legislation that would help fund states and localities, fund contact tracing so we can get a better handle on this pandemic, expand tax credits for working families (and repeal a massive corporate welfare handout for hedge fund managers), fund our Post Office so it can continue to do the good work it does which could very well include delivering your votes on Election Day, extend enhanced unemployment benefits for the tens of millions of Americans who will likely still need it after it expires at the end of next month, and provide bigger stimulus checks for good Americans making less than six figures. What is the reason for not passing this bill? It sure ain't THE DEFICITZ!!!!!, because our President proved with his 2017 tax "reform" that he can blow up deficits quite well, thank you very much. And that was before the corporate welfare-laden CARES Act passed! So let's spend our money on some good things for once.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that Consumer Reports found an awful lot of arsenic in Whole Foods-manufactured bottled water brand Starkey Spring Water -- it almost had the federal limit of 10 parts of arsenic per billion, and if you're saying, "well, it's still under the limit," remember that a) getting just under the federal limit for some poison or other is no reason to high-five oneself and b) all the other bottled water brands Consumer Reports tested finished with fewer than three parts per billion. Of course, any bottled water testing high for arsenic is quite ironic, since the big corporations have been telling us for years that bottled water is "healthier" than tap water; that the biggest health food chain in the nation sells it is just gravy. Now, I'd rather bottled water didn't exist at all, but if we must have it, it really shouldn't make us sick. Hence Consumer Reports helps you tell Whole Foods (and its parent corporation, Amazon) to protect its customers and stop selling Starkey Spring Water.

In other news, Moms Rising helps you tell your Mayors and Governors to help break the "school to prison pipeline" by getting police officers out of our public schools. As I've said, we use police officers as the Swiss Army knives of our civilization -- we put cops in schools before we put counselors in schools; we put cops in schools before we put social workers in schools; hell, we put cops in schools before we put nurses in schools! And no police officer, no matter how great, can wear that many hats. The science instructs us that schools with actual professionals like the three I listed above not only have fewer disciplinary incidents and suspend and expel their students less; they also show higher academic achievement and higher graduation rates, both of which you kinda want from a school. Not for nothing, but the kids in these schools also have less fear that a police officer will pre-judge you based on school and harass you repeatedly when you get out of school. So let's do the right thing, both for kids and for cops.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 6707/S. 3611, the Resources for Workforce Investments, Not Drilling (or ReWIND) Act, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. The ReWIND Act would impose a moratorium on new gas and oil leasing (and drilling permits), prevent any banks that fed at the CARES Act trough from embarking upon new fossil fuel-related investments for the next two years, and ban our President from hoarding unneeded oil at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill would also roll back our President's recent drilling royalty cuts; these cuts mean the American people get less money from big fossil fuel corporations in exchange for the privilege of drilling on public lands. Our President casts this as a way of "stimulating the economy," but you'd be more accurate describing it as "corporate welfare" -- or, more pungently but no less precisely, as "our President taking food out of our mouths." Too harsh? Too bad: the truth is always harsh, though it always leaves us as better people.

Action: concerning Israel and Palestine, COVID-19 testing, police brutality, and food stamps.

First things first. In less than a week, Israel plans to annex parts of the West Bank, virtually ending Palestine's prospects for realistic statehood; it's bad enough that some 25 miles separate the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but to turn the West Bank into a kind of Swiss cheese makes it considerably worse. Hence Avaaz helps you tell European leaders use their power to stop this annexation, while Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop military funding for Israel. If you think all of that is "not being a friend to Israel," then navigate away from this page right now, because being an actual friend, in real life, means standing up to your friend when you think they're doing wrong, and Israel is doing wrong here, and not even insuring its own security. When you occupy someone else's land, after all, you make a lot more problems for yourself, not least in the people of that land retaliating against your rule after you've demolished their homes and moved your own citizens in. Then again, for some "thinkers," keeping chaos going is a feature, not a bug. We need to move past that as a civilization.

Meanwhile, you've seen COVID-19 cases spiking over the last few days, right? Listen only to our President and you'll think it's because WE DOEZ TEH MOSTESTZ TESTZ EVAHZ!!!!!!, but though we may be doing more tests than any other country, we also have more people than almost any other country, so bragging about "doing the most tests" -- rather than, say, doing the most tests per million citizens, where we currently rank a bit outside the world's top 20 countries -- is meaningless, since you're not trying to win a race but control a pandemic, a task made easier when you test enough people. And if that's harder because America has a lot of people, well, you don't become the greatest country on Earth by making excuses! Anyway, although our President's votaries are falling all over themselves asserting that he didn't really ask "his people" to "slow down the testing," our President is defunding over a dozen test sites, which is the difference between a mound of dung the flies have found and a mound of dung they haven't found yet. Hence both Demand Progress and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to stop the closure of these testing sites.

In other news, Progress America helps you tell your local politicians to ban police use of tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protests. And if you're asking what if protests become violent, remember that the answer is "powerful people want protests to become violent!" And sending police to a protest with riot gear doesn't exactly cut down on violence! We are starting to see, I think, that a lot of our "solutions" to law-and-order issues over the years have created most of our actual problems, the main "solution" being "insisting on solving every single problem in society with a police officer." I bet a lot of police officers are sick of that, and I also bet they're sick of the paradigm that says the only way to deal with protestors is to crack their skulls -- or put their eyes ou, as rubber bullets have been known to do. And let's not fall for the rubbish that the anti-mask protestors armed with assault rifles got on better with the police because they were "more peaceful." Black folks who protest police brutality try to change the system; armed white dudes who whine about having to wear masks are the system.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Senators to increase food stamp and child nutrition funding during this pandemic. Because working families ain't working! And that'll still be true even if our President decides to masturbate in public over our economy adding another few million jobs this month, when he was blaming everyone but himself as it lost over 30 million jobs because he blew off dealing with a coming pandemic. Really, it is a testament to us, the American people, that we're doing as well as we are, and we're doing that well in spite of our President. But I digress. When all these good Americans can't work during a pandemic, that's the time our government has to step in and help folks out. With our money, of course -- I mean, that's what food stamp money is, since we paid into the system designed to help us out during hard times. And if you still think of food stamps as something "those people" get -- rather than something you could get if you fall on hard times! -- well, I guess you don't understand the whole concept of community.

Action: concering various law and order matters and conservation funding.

Public Citizen helps you tell your U.S. House Reps to impeach Attorney General William Barr. If we'd had our way, he'd never have been confirmed as Attorney General in the first place, and he hasn't exactly risen above our low expectations since then -- he acts like he works for our President and not for his real bosses, the American people. Earlier this week, a former Justice Department prosecutor testified before our House that our Justice Department weakened its recommended sentence for Presidential crony Roger Stone, and though he didn't come out and say Mr. Barr ordered that reduced sentence, well, we're not schmucks. (That sentence was for one count each of obstruction of justice and witness tampering, and five counts of making false statements, and not "nothing," as I'm sure right-wingers are yelling as we speak.) Of course, before that, he forced out a U.S. Attorney who was getting too close to some other Presidential cronies and tried to drop perjury charges against Michael Flynn to which he'd already pled guilty. And there's his lying about the Mueller report, and his defiance of Congressional subpoenas -- your law and order Administration, ladies and gentlemen!

Meanwhile, the ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban facial surveillance technologies. Yes, we can tell our government to ban things that hurt us! Yes, we can tell our government that some technologies simply aren't good enough to continue to exist! And facial recognition technology, to put it bluntly, sucks -- it can't tell black people apart any better than your right-wing uncle. And "letting the market work out its problems" is a horrible idea, since it hurts good Americans now -- really, the reasonable, moderate thing to do would be to ban it unless and until its designers can actually make it work so that it can't be used simply to harass black folks and protestors. Then again, I suspect that's a feature, not a bug -- facial recognition software really exists not to find criminals, but to harass those who represent a "threat" to Our Glorious Elites, and if such harassment results in (say) a black man waiting 30 hours in jail before law enforcement figures out that he looks absolutely nothing like their suspect, well, I guess they call that gravy. I mean, I do prefer to believe the best about people, but they're making that damn hard.

Finally, Congress hasn't fouled up every conceivable legislative initiative this term -- Congress has not only authorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanently, so that it doesn't just expire every few years and we let our public parks wither and die, but our Senate has, in passing S. 3422, the Great American Outdoors Act (and by a veto-proof 73-25 tally), permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and also created a National Parks and Public Lands Legacy Fund to address specific repairs in our public lands. Now the bill goes to the House, and you'd like to think our House would pass this bill with a quickness, particularly since it did so well in a Republican-held Senate, but you never know with politicians. Who's going to try to use a must-pass bill to get some unearned goody for some crony, one wonders? Like I said, you never know. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell your House Reps to pass the Great American Outdoors Act with a quickness. Let's try to pass it with a two-thirds majority, too, because you never know what nefarious bee is about to enter our President's bonnet, either, and we do best when we make Presidents unnecessary.

Action: concerning good COVID-19 policy and better plastics legislation.

You may have noticed that new coronavirus cases have spiked lately (which means spikes in coronavirus deaths likely aren't too far behind). You may also have heard our President suggest at that Tulsa rally that he asked "my people" to "slow the testing down please," ostensibly to make "his" numbers look better though of course they're not "his" numbers but ours. He's also said that more testing leads to more cases -- though more testing obviously doesn't automatically lead to the higher percentage of positive tests we're now seeing in Texas, Arizona, and Florida -- and he's also said "(w)e are leading the world in testing," which BFD, because we have over 300 million people; both Iceland and Denmark are testing almost twice as many of their citizens per million as we are, for example, and perhaps not coincidentally, those nations both have fewer cases and deaths per million citizens than we do. Anyway, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Senators to demand more funding for COVID-19 testing. Be sure to let them know that you don't believe the President's hype, and also feel free to tell them why.

In a related note, S. 3677, the COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act, would compel our Occupational Safety and Health Administration (or OSHA) to issue emergency regulations (since COVID-19 is only recently emergent, after all) that would protect health care employees, first responders, and other workers who face an acute threat of COVID contamination. Such regulations would at least work around the nefarious actions of our President, who has responded to the COVID-19 threat by rolling back safety regulations and enforcement and by keeping food processing plant workers at work whether they're safe there or not; I'd say "when all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail," but saying this President even has a hammer would be an unwarranted act of charity. I know, I know, what are the chances "his" OSHA will issue good regulations? We'll fight that battle when we get there; for now, let's insure they actually issue the regulations in the first place. Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect our workers by passing the COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act.

Meanwhile, you've likely heard that debt collectors have been snatching up some folks' stimulus checks from the CARES Act before they can even see it! To those pedants who would say well, you should expect that when you've got debt, I would say only two things: 1) slap yourself, and 2) the whole point of a "stimulus" check is to stimulate the economy, which a stimulus check won't do if it goes right back into the pocket of some bankster or other, amirite? But along comes S. 3841, which would prohibit creditors from doing this sort of thing, and if I read the bill correctly, it would apply to any other stimulus checks Congress might issue this year. S. 3841 comes from Republican Sens. Grassley of Iowa and Scott of South Carolina, plus five Democratic co-sponsors because the Republican caucus is so irredeemably decadent you can't even get more than two of them to sign onto a common sense idea like this! In any case, US PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep creditors from taking away your stimulus check before you've had a chance to stimulate the economy with it. It is your money, after all.

Finally, Congress is contemplating handing out a billion dollars in corporate welfare to the plastics industry -- but there's a better legislative option than that! H.R. 5845/S. 3263, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, would actually start getting us off our utter dependence on plastics by (among other things) increasing the amount of recycled material plastic products must have, phasing out single-use plastic products starting in 2022, mandating that our EPA establish a national recycling standard for plastics, and limiting how much plastic trash we can export. With all the PFAS chemicals winding up in our drinking water and all the plastic trash winding up at sea, I'd say the clock's ticking. I will say I do not support taxes on plastic shopping bags -- those are exactly the kinds of taxes that hurt working families way more than the corporations that make the bags! -- but programs that refund consumers who bring back plastic containers is a good idea. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight plastic pollution by passing the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act.

Action: from good House bills to bad hunting regulations.

Happy Wednesday, good Americans! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. These are all good bills: the Voting Rights Advancement Act, for example, would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act that our Supreme Court knocked out, while the Save the Internet Act would reinstate the FCC's pro-internet freedom net neutrality rules as the law of the land again. So tell your Senators to pass these bills, with no excuses.

Meanwhile, H.R. 7221, the Prohibiting Law Enforcement Use of Chemical Weapons Act, would (as its title suggests!) prevent police from using tear gas as a weapon. If you're of the mind that reforms such as these would "keep cops from doing their jobs," please think about it: how many crooks do police apprehend with tear gas? It is an enormously cumbersome and imprecise weapon, much more so than a handgun or a taser. Of course, crooks don't get apprehended with tear gas -- but peaceful protestors sure do! And that's who the tear gas is really for. You would also want to consider why police would need a weapon soldiers haven't been able to use since 1997; I would discard answers that include the phrase "because the streets are so much more dangerous now," because a) that's not true and b) I just said that tear gas is a bad weapon to fight crime with. No, really, people do pretend to be that stupid. Anyway, the Other 98 helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect peaceful protestors from police violence by passing the Prohibiting Law Enforcement Use of Chemical Weapons Act.

In other news, Amazon has stepped up its feel-good PR campaign -- you saw the ad with the deaf single dad? Yeah, they'll fire his ass, too, if he walks too slowly in the warehouse -- almost like they know they achieved their position as the world's number one online retailer mainly by doing evil! Amazon has also lately imposed a one-year moratorium on police use of its infamous (and pretentiously-titled, don't think any of that Kraftwerk coolness rubs off on you!) Rekognition software. You remember Rekognition, right? The facial recognition software that's almost as bad at telling black folks apart as your right-wing uncle is? A one-year moratorium is exactly the kind of thing that's designed to make people feel good about using Amazon again -- and then quickly forgotten once the PR storm passes over, as it will for a lot of Americans, though not for a lot of black Americans who still have to face random police brutality. Anyway, MPower Change helps you tell Amazon to cut all of its ties with law enforcement. They're still providing cloud computing services to ICE, after all; think that helps out anyone but Amazon?

Finally, our National Park Service finalized rules in several Alaska national parks allowing hunters to kill bears and cubs while they hibernate and shoot wolves and coyotes while they're with their pups; the rules also allow hunters to shoot coyotes from motorboats and lure bears out of their dens with donuts so they can shoot them. Well, that all sounds very sporting, doesn't it? It doesn't sound like "good Americans ritualizing how their forebears used to survive"! It doesn't even sound like "an excuse for a bunch of guys to hang out and get drunk," as one hunter described hunting's purpose to me years ago. No, the word we're looking for here is cruel, though Alaska's Congressional delegation supports the change, claiming that it -- hey, not my words, but Sen. Murkowski's! -- is a "matter of states' rights"! Who knew the "right" to own slaves was at play here? And on federal land, no less! So, in short: it's not just cruel, it's also bad law-making. And since our Administration wants to do this to other Alaska national parks, the Alaska Wilderness League helps you oppose similar cruelty in other federal parks in Alaska.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, Juneteenth as a national holiday, misspent tax money, and government spying.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today's as good a day as any to call your U.S. Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. The HEROES Act is that rarest of animals, actually good stimulus legislation that would actually help states and localities survive the absence of tax revenues these past few months, and fund our Post Office so it can continue to do the good work it does, and extend enhanced unemployment benefits for the tens of millions of Americans who will very likely still need it after it expires at the end of July, and repeal another odious tax-cut-for-the-rich that was accidentally-yeah-sure passed in the CARES Act, and provide bigger stimulus checks for good Americans making less than six figures than the CARES Act did. Of course Republicans want to include "blanket immunity" from lawsuits for corporations that open up in defiance of state and federal guidelines. If that doesn't get your goat, just say the words "blanket immunity" in the same voice that South African diplomat said "diplomatic immunity" in Lethal Weapon II. Say it over and over again in your head. Then make the call.

Meanwhile, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to make June 19 -- popularly known as "Juneteenth" and commemorating the day Union soldiers took over the last Confederate slave state -- a national holiday. Please don't be the whitesplainer who says BUT TEH DELAWAREZ AND TEH KENTUCKIEZ STILLZ HAD TEH SLAVEZ UNTILZ TEH DECEMBURZ!!!!!, because June 19, 1865 was the last day anyone could say maybe slavery's not really going to end in America, and really, who are we to argue with the millions of black folks who have been celebrating Juneteenth for over 150 years? Now, plenty of Americans would oppose the idea of a Juneteenth national holiday out of "patriotism" or something -- why do we always celebrate what America does wrong? they might say. I don't look at it that way, of course -- I look at it as a way of celebrating making a wrong right, which is more an American tradition than pretending you never did anything wrong in the first place. I'd say it's more patriotic, too.

In other news, it ain't just "small business" money this government seems to have aggressively misappropriated lately -- it's also over $100 milllion Congress directed to be spent on "consumables and medical care" for immigrant children held in various detainment centers, but which Customs and Border Protection (or CBP) spent instead on such "consumables and medical care" as all-terrain vehicles and computer upgrades. And I guarantee you the very same people who squealed like pigs about SOLYNDRA!!!! will shrug about this corruption. They might even say IT'Z ONLYZ TEH HUNDREDZ MILLYUNZ!!!!, and it's true that $100 million ain't much in the context of over $4 trillion in federal spending, but for any immigrant who got denied health care and died because someone at CBP spent money intended for their care on a motorcycle, it would be literally everything. Years ago I'd have said that even the most anti-immigrant American would blanch at such a state of affairs, but not now. Hence the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to punish CBP for redirecting money meant for immigrant health care.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to stop our government from being able to spy on our internet activity without a warrant, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. The WAR ON TERRURZ!!!!! crowd can carefully attend the three words "without a warrant" before getting their shorts in a bunch -- if our government can convince a judge they've got a better-than-50% chance of getting a conviction if they look at an American citizen's browser history, then they get to look at that history. Trouble is, governments aren't doing the work required to get to that level! Sympathetic folks on the right who try to explain the warrantless spying power they oppose tend to imagine that folks who want that power are merely trying to "do something" about terrorism. I'm not going to say they're wrong -- in fact, I'm sure they're right about at least some individual bureaucrats -- but I'm also going to go after warrantless-spying efforts as if they're just doing it because they enjoy doing evil, because they are doing evil, regardless of their good intentions.

Action: concerning various law and order matters.

Happy Monday, good Americans! Both the ACLU and the Friends Committee on National Legislation help you tell your Congressfolk to address police brutality and racism in legislation. The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the COPS and 1033 programs which bloat police forces and give them military weapons, respectively, and the FCNL helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the 1033 program and pass H.R. 7120, the Justice in Policing Act. As you know, the Justice in Policing Act would (among other things!) crack down on racial and religious profiling, limit police officers' "qualified immunity" in lawsuits, and require body cameras for all police officers. It's not "anti-police" to demand these things -- if anything, it's pro-police, because these reforms would keep police officers working, and would make them work more effectively. Don't settle for police officers telling you how can I do my job if these bills pass? Not just because everyone complains about procedural changes keeping them from doing their job, but also because you know how that particular complaint really translates: "how will I ever do my job if I can't impose a death penalty upon black people without even charging them with a crime?"

California residents, take note: with price-gouging on medical supplies still a problem during this pandemic -- and folks who say and you're surprised by that? really need to just slap themselves, because the problem we all have isn't that it's a "surprise" but that it's morally wrong -- SB 1196 would give California's price-gouging law a much-needed update, by closing a loophole that allows new sellers to engage in price-gouging without penalty (I wonder who thought that up!) and by extending protections for consumers against price-gouging beyond the current 30-day limit, which is surely inadequate to a pandemic that's been going on for over three months. Regardless of where California's numbers are right at this moment! Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida have all seen surging infection numbers this past week, so clearly the heat ain't killing it, and if it's alive somewhere, it could spread anywhere, even to places that had it under control. No, COVID-19 is going to be with us for a long time -- and, sadly, so will people who take advantage of it. Strike a blow against them by letting CALPIRG help you tell your CA state legislators to protect consumers from price-gouging by passing SB 1196.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International helps you tell our Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) to protect immigrants and asylum-seekers by freeing them from ICE concentration camps and local jails. What are we protecting them from? Getting COVID-19, of course, since you can't exactly "socially distance" in a jail or a concentration camp -- indeed, the name "concentration camp" does suggest that very inadequacy. Personal to those who get their shorts in a bunch over the hint of freeing immigrants from detainment: they have not been found guilty of a crime. They have not even been charged with a crime. So many people beat their chests (or whatever, amirite?) about "law and order," but cannot recall that our Founders revolted from the British Empire over such matters as detainment without charge. Of course, such folks also generally believe immigrants to be natural criminals, a belief enabled not just by their President but by decades of right-wing pundits yammering about immigrants and crime. Actual data doesn't support the notion that immigrants commit more crimes than American citizens, but data matters little to people who constantly masturbate to their unquenchable rage.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect we-the-taxpayer from using the CARES Act to loot our hard-earned money, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. Yeah, "loot" is the right word! And it's about time we paid more attention to the looters taking our tax money than the looters who make protestors look bad maybe on purpose. Our government said it'd "help out small businesses" with the Paycheck Protection Program in the CARES Act -- and then our President removed the acting Inspector General who might actually have done a good job overseeing the program, and then a couple of big corporations got caught taking PPP money although it'd be easier to sell a bridge in Brooklyn than sell the American people on the proposition that they were actually "small businesses" that "needed" the money, and then our Treasury Secretary, the Artist Formerly Known as the Foreclosure King, said that he wouldn't tell the people who was taking PPP money because that info was "proprietary" and "confidential." Which was exactly the opposite of what he told us before Congress passed the bill! Jesus Mary and Joseph these crooks aren't even good at being crooks.

Action: concerning Medicare-for-All, CARES Act transparency, and offshore drilling.

Two million COVID-19 cases and over 100,000 deaths in America with no end in sight argues well enough for a different approach to health care than LETZ TEH MARKETZ DOEZ ITZ!!!!! But you know what else argues well enough for a different approach? Stories of folks who survive COVID-19 and get slammed with million-dollar medical bills! Which we all knew would happen, even with "assurances" that health insurers wouldn't do it! So Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk to "cut through the red tape" and enact Medicare-for-All health insurance. Like how Social Security Works flips the script there, to tell us that private health insurance corporations are the real purveyors of "red tape"? I do enjoy having the right's memes thrown back in their faces. If your right-wing friends and neighbors persist in asserting that folks who survive COVID only to get million-dollar bills somehow get what they deserve, you may go ahead and assume that said right-wing friends and neighbors have never had to deal with a huge medical bill. I wouldn't wish such a thing on anyone! But if someone got big medical bills and then changed their perspective on the "free market" as a result, I wouldn't complain, either.

Meanwhile, our Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin -- notice how our President hasn't soured on him? That must mean he's truly evil! -- told Congress last week that our Administration wouldn't release the names of the corporations who got loans under the Paycheck Protection Program because that's "confidential" and "proprietary" information. And of course he said the exact opposite back in April when they were ramming the CARES Act down our throats! Talk about looters! Today's looters (a lot of whom are agents provocateur aiming to make protestors look bad) are pikers compared to this Administration! So the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to demand that our government account for how it spent our money. Accountability: it ain't just for liberals! You may protest that "we don't know" that big corporations are using the PPP to steal money from the taxpayer (i.e., you and I!), but we're also not schmucks, and we also know that quite a few not-very-needy big corporations did get PPP money, and we also know that promising transparency and then snatching it away when you think people have forgotten your promise is a pretty good way to loot the taxpayer.

Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our Interior Department to impose a moratorium on all offshore drilling leases. Of course, our Interior Department has already leased a few hundred thousand acres off the Gulf of Mexico to oil drillers -- and right in the middle of a pandemic, too, almost like that's the whole idea -- but no law of physics mandates that we can't tell them to stop. And offshore drilling is awfully unpopular these days. How do I know that? Not just because Florida's Republican elected officials tend to fight offshore drilling there, and not just because I remember the Spillageddon in the Gulf from (checks calendar, takes deep breath) over a decade ago, but also because our Administration plans to start drilling offshore in Florida after the election, which is a hell of a thing to tip us off about before the election! Did we learn this through our Administration's incompetence or through the heroism of fed-up Interior bureaucrats? We'll leave that to historians to decide. In the meantime, matters like opening up Florida's shoreline to massive pollution is a matter for us to decide, so let's make the right decision.

Action: concerning defense spending and Social Security.

In light of recent events, Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to move money away from military spending and toward the kind of spending -- on education, science, fighting pollution, et cetera -- that actually sustains a civilization. Reps. Lee (D-CA) and Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have proposed moving $350 billion and Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed moving $74 billion, and in a nation that spends more than half of its discretionary budget on its military, either proposal would do us all a lot of good. If your Tea Party uncle retorts with we ain't free without soldiers, remind him that the above-described proposals don't zero out military funding, and that military spending is, really, a band-aid solution to problems that smarter investment in our future -- as investing in education and clean air/clean water regulations most assuredly is -- could have prevented in the first place. Yes, ensuring that good Americans get the good services they deserve from their own tax money does prevent a lot of problems. Certainly it's better than dreaming up ways to convince us that giving more of our tax money away as corporate welfare is somehow good for us.

p>Meanwhile, despite taking over a year just to form a government, Israel still schemes to annex about a third of the West Bank, and our government plans on helping them in this nefarious end. (If you fly into a rage whenever someone criticizes Israel, just navigate away from this page. Seriously! I have no time for people who see everything as an opportunity to start a pissing match.) Naturally, our Congressfolk would like to help Israel out via S. 3176, though Americans are fairly ambivalent toward Israel these days and Israel's let's-get-tough act sure hasn't made it secure. Could the failure of Mr. Netanyahu to form a government for over a year signal that Israelis themselves are more than ready for real change? Possibly from a potential leader who isn't merely Netanyahu-Lite like Benny Gantz is? I like to be optimistic, but, you know, I've been disappointed before. Hence Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Israeli annexation of Palestine by rejecting S. 3176. I don't know who ain't got the memo yet, but Americans ain't putting up with the limited choices Our Glorious Elites have been offering anymore. And that'll be true even if our President gets re-elected.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject our Administration's so-called "Eagle" plan to give Americans money today in exchange for reduced Social Security benefits in the future, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. I bet you know someone who says so what? Shouldn't we let people make their own decisions? You need only answer that question with another question: "so if a burglar breaks into a house and offers one of the residents a few bucks in exchange for letting them steal stuff from everyone, we should just let them make their own decisions?" The "Eagle" plan would give some people a little money now in exchange for reduced benefits later, but where's this "now" money coming from in the first place? It's coming from us, just like those stimulus payments ultimately came from us, just as (by definition!) all taxpayer money comes from us. If they ultimately decide to take that "now" money right out of Social Security Trust Fund or via the payroll tax cuts our President won't STFU about, well, that'd just be icing on the cake, wouldn't it? Let's act now, so we're not thinking about all that when we're 80 and living in a cardboard box.

Action: concerning all those good House bills, anti-renewable energy desperation, and statehood for D.C.

Happy Wednesday, good folks! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. No we must not give up on all of these good works, which would protect voting rights, fight discrimination, make our internet free again, ensure minimum wage workers can better make ends meet, and help protect protections for pre-existing conditions -- among many other things! So don't let them tell you only one thing at a time matters! That's what they want you to think so you forget to fight for all the things that matter!

Meanwhile, an alleged nonprofit called the New England Ratepayers Association (or NERA) has filed a petition with our Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC) that could destroy the practice of "net metering," by which home solar users sell their unused power back to their local utility. Specifically, NERA claims that our federal government, not the states, should regulate net metering, because net metering is somehow by definition a "wholesale sale" (even if users get retail prices for their unused power, apparently) and only our federal government gets to regulate wholesale sales. That will baffle anyone acquainted with the defintion of the word "wholesale," to wit: "being sold in large quantities to be retailed by others." Solar users do sell their unused power literally "to be retailed by others" (since the power goes to the utility corporation), but the idea that solar users sell "in large quantities" is laughably absurd. Clearly NERA is counting on this Administration, which hates renewable energy with a passion bordering on the murderous, to destroy solar power for them. So Penn Environment helps you tell our FERC to reject NERA's desperate petition asserting that net metering is a "wholesale sale."

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunties to tell your Congressfolk to make Washington, D.C. our 51st state, then the Daily Kos Liberation League still helps you do that. I didn't think of this, but the Daily Kos Liberation League points out that our President deployed federal soldiers in D.C. neighborhoods to round up a few hundred peaceful protestors; when you consider, also, that our President displayed disgusting indifference in teargassing protestors out of his way so he could do a photo op at a church, you, too, might consider that making D.C. a state, which would have a Governor, might provide a useful check against future Presidential obnoxiousness. All the other arguments against D.C. statehood, in a word, suck -- D.C. can't be "too small" if it has more people than three actual American states, and if you're worried that they'll just elect two more Democrats to the Senate, then be a Republican who earns their vote. Sheesh, it's not that damn hard, and Republicans don't need any more welfare from our laws than they already get.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, Chaco Canyon, the quality of mercy, and working families.

If you've missed previous opportunities to call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act, then you can still use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Senators' phone numbers. I know, it's been weeks since the House passed that bill, and all kinds of other things are happening right now, but guess what? No law or social more compels you to attend only one thing at a time, and to the exclusion of all other things! Our Glorious Elites pretend only one thing at a time could possibly matter to anyone, but we're still seeing over 20,000 cases of coronavirus every day, and a crapload of good Americans will still need unemployment benefits after the end of July, and we still need to fund a Post Office past the end of September, and states and localities still deserve assistance thanks to all the reduced revenues of this recession, and at least one big tax-cut-for-the-rich still deserves repeal and oblivion, and another round of increased stimulus checks for all of us sure wouldn't hurt, so get on the stick and communicate your will to your Senators before they imagine you've forgotten all about the hard work they still need to do.

Meanwhile, our Interior Secretary has actually extended a comment period concerning opening up the Greater Chaco Region of New Mexico to even more fracking. And you know what that means! It means he didn't get enough pro-pollution comments from the fracking lobby! I mean, this Administration never wants to hear more from the American people, since good Americans generally oppose all the things this Administration does! Even the 2017 tax "reform" suffered from so much opposition from the people that they could barely pass the damn thing! And that cost Democrats exactly nothing in the 2018 midterm elections -- this, after Our Glorious Elites have been saying for years that opposing "tax cuts" is "political poison"! But I digress. Food and Water Action helps you tell our Bureau of Land Management to halt its plans to drill for gas in the Greater Chaco Region. Why? Well, not just because drilling tends to pollute our air and water (and, of course, drillers will pay less in royalties to us because that's how our 46% President wants it!) -- the Greater Chaco Region also includes land sacred to the Navajo. Our Administration cares so much about religion -- just not when it's Native American religion!

In other news, Willie Simmons committed a $9 robbery back in the 1980s -- and has served 37 years for it! How did this happen? Mr. Simmons had three other offenses (all nonviolent, naturally) on his record, and thus got a life sentence under Alabama's "habitual offender" law. I don't need to tell you that Mr. Simmons served our country in the Army or that drug addiction may have figured in his "crime spree" -- I need only reiterate, with the italics hammer, that he's serving a life sentence for stealing nine freaking dollars. If you know any supposed devil's-advocates who'll say if you can't do the time don't do the crime or he should've gotten a lawyer to help with his appeals, just ask them: is it fair to give someone life in prison for stealing nine dollars? Any answer other than "no" -- and that most definitely includes "no, but" -- deserves no further engagement; just let your little Glaucon go with God, because God might be their only friend at the end of the line. In the meantime, let's try to do some damn justice and tell Alabama Gov. Ivey to commute Mr. Simmons's sentence, as Change.org helps you do.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Walmart to give its workers a seat on its corporate board, then United for Respect still helps you do that. Because why the hell not? Are other CEOs the only people who know anything about running a corporation? Actually, given how badly so many corporations do at anything other than redistributing worker income upward to executives, I suspect most CEOs know just about nothing about running a corporation! And, in my lengthy experience as a worker bee, I've found that the people who actually do the work know more about how to do the work than the folks who bloviate all day about "the challenges ahead," which are always challenges for you, not for them! In any case, Walmart's situation is unique, and not just because it smashes any unionization effort with a frightening malice -- Walmart has been making a crap-ton of profits during this pandemic, but its executives have been dragging their feet ensuring their workers are safe at a store where it's almost impossible to socially-distance. So let's help our sisters and brothers help themselves! That's what a conservative would do, right?

Action: concerning various law and order matters.

H.R. 7120, the Justice in Policing Act, would ban chokeholds, allow police to use deadly force only as a last resort, crack down on racial and religious profiling, limit police officers' "qualified immunity" in lawsuits, require body cameras for all police officers, limit police departments' access to military weapons, and criminalize lynching at the federal level -- among many other good works. I'd eliminate "qualified immunity" and police departments' access to military weapons myself, but H.R. 7120 is a good start. And when right-wingers call all that "socialism" or something, just remind them that plenty of good Americans want to abolish the police entirely, so maybe they need to get on board with this reform. And when they proclaim their love for "law and order," ask them if it's lawful that police murder black folks in their sleep, as they did with Breonna Taylor back in March. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to start reining in police misconduct by passing the Justice in Policing Act.

Let's not stop there, though: the ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the 1033 program that gives police military weapons and the COPS grants that give us too many police officers. Once upon a time more cops might have seemed like the answer, but not now -- we've avoided solving problems and instead turned police officers into the Swiss Army knives of our civilization. If we were to focus on rehabilitating drug addicts instead of putting them in jail and forgetting about them, for example, there's a big swath of work we've just taken off our police's hands. Someone's still got to serve warrants and arrest corporate criminals, but must every conceivable 911 call involve police? If you're still afraid of "defunding" police, note well Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)'s answer when asked what "defunding" the police looks like: "It looks like a suburb. Affluent white communities already live in a world where the choose to fund youth, health, housing, etc., more than they fund police." I think we're looking at the winning argument here, folks.

Meanwhile, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is another public figure saying all the right things about "racial equity" ("equity"? Gosh, does the moneybrain ever turn off with these people?) but still failing to put his money where his mouth is, by continuing to fund the New York City Police Foundation that helps NYC police buy military weapons! And yes, that would be the same NYPD currently teargassing and driving trucks into protestors! So, so many of our so-called "best and brightest" think they can just "share from the heart" and be done with it, but those of us who have been doing our damnedest to maintain a civilization know that the work is never done, and certainly not done with a few choice words likely written by some hired PR hack. And what does BlackRock do in the first place? They do the kinds of "risk management" we used to call speculation, and when The Economist, a magazine never seriously mistaken for a liberal rag, calls BlackRock the world's largest shadow bank, remember that "shadow bank" isn't necessarily a compliment. You know, like "bankster." Hence Color of Change helps you tell Mr. Fink to stop funding the New York City Police Foundation.

Finally, while we're still peripherally on the subject of toxic white supremacy but I repeat myself, you may have heard all of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pablum about "free speech" lately and about how it's not really his job to prevent it. But you may not know that, per a whistleblower complaint, that Facebook still auto-generates pages that allow white supremacists to recruit new members! And not to bond over their mutual love of knitting or Doctor Who! We can be reasonably sure that white supremacists try to connect with others of their nefarious ilk so they can find people to help them commit crimes against non-white folk. You can be a white supremacist in America without going to jail, of course, but if you go around actually trying to create your white ethnostate by, say, killing black folk or Hispanic folk or Muslim folk, well, you've broken a bunch of laws right there. Hence the National Whistleblowers center helps you tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to take the appropriate action against Facebook for its failure to stamp out white supremacist organization.

Action: concerning good House bills, genocide in Burma, and carbon regulation in Pennsylvania.

Happy Thursday, good Americans! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. They've been avoiding passing these bills because they would actually do good things for Americans -- like protect voting rights, health care, and internet freedom -- instead of redistribute good Americans' wealth upward to corporate cronies, which is what politicians tend to prefer to do. You know what we prefer to do? Communicate our will until they can't ignore it.

Meanwhile, you may recall that the Burmese army has done its damnedest over the last few years to exterminate the Muslim Rohingya population, resulting in nearly a million Rohingya (i.e., almost all of them) fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh. But S. 1186, the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, would do a few things that would improve this situation. The bill would aid humanitarian efforts and reinstate certain trade restrictions, for one, but it would also prevent any taxpayer money from flowing to Burmese security forces until our State Department can certify that the Burmese military are behaving in a more civilized behavior -- admittedly a statement this State Department would rush to certify without evidence if our President decided it might make him look good, but maybe not the next one. The bill would also prevent our government from handing out visas to folks who've committed human rights violations in Burma and sanction any corporations controlled by such folks -- even if our President calls them "very fine people"! Hence the International Campaign for the Rohingya helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight genocide by passing the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: our state legislature is chomping at the bit to prevent our Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) from issuing any climate change-related regulations whatsoever! Oh, HB 2025's executive summary says it aims at carbon emissions regulations that impose a carbon tax, a matter about which reasonable people may be ambivalent, but Section 4(a) of the bill clearly prohibits Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection from enacting any climate change-related regulations, whether they come with a carbon tax or not! That is what we call a bait and switch, folks, and you have to wonder why our state legislators felt the need to lie to us. And by "you have to wonder," I mean "because lying is all you got left when you can't win the argument on the merits." There's really no excuse for opposing climate change action now -- no reasonable human being believes it's a hoax, and the only people saying it's a hoax are people who make money saying it's a hoax. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your PA state legislators to protect our planet by rejecting HB 2025.

Action: concerning gerrymandering, contact tracing, and health care funding.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Fair Districts PA is conducting a "day of action" today, in which we would tell our state Reps and Senators to support fair redistricting in the state by passing HB 22 and HB 23, and Fair Districts PA's website will help you do that. I sure had a lot of trouble accessing Fair Districts PA's website as I was writing this post, and that sure does seem a bit suspicious, doesn't it? I mean, after the shenanigans the legislature has pulled over the last few years in their efforts to avoid passing legislation that would (as the saying goes) let the voters choose their legislators instead of letting legislators choose their voters, it's a question worth asking. Still, you can always use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to find your state legislators and call them and tell them to pass HB 22 and HB 23, so that we can prevent more absurd gerrymandering by the legislature. And remember: if they don't do it now, it'll be very, very tough to get them to do it before they redraw districts again next year.

Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell your U.S. Senators to fund contact tracing so we can stop the spread of COVID-19 now and in the future. "Contact tracing" is what it sounds like, a process by which we find out who's come into contact with folks who have COVID-19 and test them, and then find the folks who've come into contact with them and test them, and so on and so on. It's hard, unsexy work -- I think I've just described two reasons why this Administration doesn't want to do it! -- but we've been doing this with diseases for decades, and you may not know that we didn't eradicate smallpox for good until we did contact tracing (though certainly universal vaccines against smallpox helped). Really, we shouldn't have to tell our government to do this, since it's the right thing to do and it's what governments have been doing for over half a century, but, you know, duty is duty. Of course, if the Senate just passed the HEROES Act, which would already fund contact tracing, they could solve the problem in a jif; I won't complain if they figure that out, too.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to restore American funding to the World Health Organization (or WHO), then Daily Kos still helps you do that. Let's not get bogged down in arguments about foreign entanglements, because we're not talking about some alliance that commits us to doing evil, nor are we talking about some "free" trade deal that outsources our jobs and nullifies our laws -- the World Health Organization has done a good job helping the world's people deal with this pandemic, and our funding helps them do that good job. Of course, it's the "good job" part that most likely led our President to terminate WHO funding -- the WHO's competence was showing up his own arrogant ineptitude, and nobody does that to the Drama King without paying the price! But the President doesn't get all the say about this matter -- Congress can simply budget the money and tell him to spend it, and ain't a damn thing he can do about it, except whine and stamp his feet. Which he's good at.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, law and order, and public lands.

If you've missed previous opportunities to call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (or HEROES) Act, well, now's as good a time as any! Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to find your Senators' phone numbers; you might want to program all of your Senators' phone numbers (including their local ones) into your cellphone. No, seriously, sometimes I make 10 calls before anyone answers the phone, and that's when there's no pandemic! While you have them on the phone, you might also want to tell them to reject any effort to give "blanket immunity" from lawsuits to corporations relating to the pandemic, since that's the only thing Mitch McConnell seems to want to do. If it's truly a "frivolous" lawsuit, it'll die in court; what's the big deal? And be sure to mention all the good things the HEROES Act would do, like help fund states and localities, fund our Post Office, extend higher unemployment benefits, expand working family tax cuts, repeal a big hedge fund manager tax cut, and issue another round of (bigger) stimulus checks.

Meanwhile, the law nominally lets us sue public officials, including police officers, when they trample over our rights, but our Supreme Court has spent the last half-century-plus blowing a Mack truck-sized hole in the law in creating the doctrine of "qualified immunity," whereby courts can throw out lawsuits against government officials merely because the court hasn't heard such a case before, which sure takes "respecting precedent" to an unwarranted extreme. But H.R. 7085, the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, would prevent courts from dismissing cases against police officers after divining their' "good faith" or "reasonable" belief that their unlawful conduct was lawful, and it would also prevent them from throwing out cases merely because the defendants allege that "rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution or laws were not clearly established at the time of their deprivation by the defendant," since, actually, they are. Should we excuse evil merely because of good intentions? Of course not. Hence both Public Citizen and Defending Rights and Dissent both help you tell your Congressfolk to restore law and order by passing the Ending Qualified Immunity Act.

Finally, S. 3422, the Great American Outdoors Act, would not only fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund but would also establish a National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund to help preserve our public lands. That's been a bigger deal to a lot of good Americans these last few months, as public parks are now often the only places still open if you feel like getting out of the house. As we all do! A man could look at the list of 59 Senators (out of 100) co-sponsoring this bill and be heartened that 15 of them are Republicans; 15 plus 47 in the Democratic caucus equals a filibuster-proof majority in favor of the bill! But alas, it's not a veto-proof majority, and if Mob Boss Mitch doesn't bring the bill up for a vote then it'll get zero votes, so Penn Environment helps you tell your Senators to support our public lands by passing the Great American Outdoors Act. Our President didn't veto the bill permanently establishing the Land and Water Conservation Act, but then again, the Senate passed that bill 92-8 and the House passed it 363-62. We might need those kinds of numbers again, and we won't get them if we sit on our hands.

Action: concerning actual law and order matters in America.

You've heard our President's grandstanding about the "thousands and thousands of heavily-armed soldiers" he planned to sic on protestors, not long after using rubber bullets and tear gas on protestors in D.C. so he could do a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church. And our President also deployed a thousand "mystery troops" in our nation's capitol who would only say they were with the Department of Justice! Nothing to see here, amirite? But the fact is, our Governors have also put National Guard troops in our streets, supposedly to stop violence, but we all know that some of these looters we've been hearing about are agents provocateur out there to make protestors look bad, and, ah, some of these National Guard troops are causing the violence themselves! You could ask David McAtee, shot by National Guard and Louisville police in Kentucky a week ago and left in the street for half a day, except he's dead now. Win Without War helps you tell your state Governors to pull National Guard troops off our streets now and stop militarizing our public spaces.

Meanwhile, Congress failed to pass a PATRIOT Act reauthorization last week, even though they'd twisted it into the kind of freedom-killing bill they love to pass under the guise of TEH NASHUNUL SECURITIEZ!!!!! Hence we have another opportunity to tell our Congressfolk to pass legislation stopping our government from spying on our internet search and browser histories without a damn warrant, as Demand Progress helps you do. No, really, it's simple: if an Administration can convince a judge to allow law enforcement to snoop on our browser histories and we have no complaints, but they better not do it on their own. And I do appreciate Demand Progress's reminder that our President tried to get the IP addresses of over a million people who committed the heinous crime of visiting a website that opposed him! You know, because someone broke a window on Inauguration Day. You've heard that you shouldn't give government more spying powers because you don't know what a bad government would do with that power? You know now.

In other news, you may have heard the story of Anthony Swain, paralyzed from the waist down and suffering from cystic myelomalacia, who sat in jail for four years until he got the coronavirus like so many other prisoners have. So what did he do? Nothing! Literally nothing, because he hasn't been put on trial yet! That's right, police arrested him on drug charges in 2016, and then the judge set his bail at $650,000, and since like most people he doesn't have $650,000 lying around, he was trapped in prison. This is why we fight cash bail, and sadly, when folks like Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner make moderate reforms to the bail system, a lot of police officers complain they can't do their jobs anymore! If your job relies on putting paraplegics in jail for four years without them even getting a chance to face their accusers like it's a damn Kafka novel, then maybe you should get a new job. Color of Change helps you tell Florida's Attorney General to let Mr. Swain out of his damn cage already. You know, before they kill him.

Finally, Fight for the Future helps you tell your Mayors and City Council members to end all partnerships between Amazon and police departments. In the old days we imagined that our government would push surveillance on us, but we welcomed corporate surveillance into our homes willingly! We welcomed Amazon's Alexa into our homes, and let Alexa record our conversations; we bought Ring doorbells, and let Amazon record whatever was happening in front of our homes, and then Amazon developed their nefarious Rekognition (with a "k," how fucking pretentious!) software that can hardly tell black people apart, and now they furnish police departments with that data, warrants be damned. And Jeff Bezos calls himself a libertarian! Of course Amazon is trying to win the PR battle by saying that they, too, believe that black lives matter! Given their record, one could reasonably ask: how about acting like it? And you can do that, by letting Free Press help you tell Amazon to cut its ties with law enforcement, including local police departments and the notorious Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE).

Action: concerning police brutality and "free speech."

First things first. As you likely know, our President used rubber bullets and tear gas on protestors outside a church on Tuesday evening so he could hold up a Bible in a photo op. And House Speaker Pelosi responded swiftly by introducing legislation that would prevent our President from ever doing something like that again! I kid, of course -- did the "swiftly" give it away? So Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would prevent our President from deploying our military against the American people, while Adhila Akbar has begun a petition on Change.org that helps you tell your Congressfolk to forbid law enforcement from using tear gas for riot control purposes. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 outlaws the use of tear gas in war, so why is it OK to use it on protestors? Or do governments value their enemies more than they value their own people? It's a question worth asking! Don't come at me with WELL WHAT ABOUT TEH LOOTERZ!!!! Do you believe looters are literally worse than your enemies at war? Either the answer is no, in which case you're wrong, or it's yes, in which case you're evil like our President.

Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been flailing about lately trying to explain why he hasn't tamped down on our President's naked exhortations to violence. He started out saying that it was about "free speech," which we know to be rubbish because we know our First Amendment protects us from our government, not Facebook; then he pivoted to "it's not so bad," which we also know to be rubbish because our President has perpetrated violence against American citizens this very week. Hence Free Press helps you tell Facebook to ban users who fail to follow Facebook's own policies against hate speech and promotion of violence. Yes, Facebook actually does have those policies, which is yet another reason we know Mr. Zuckerberg's gyrations are full of soup. Jesus Mary and Joseph even Twitter -- as in #Twitterisforracists, which was the last thing I ever said on Twitter before leaving -- has started to brandish its power against some of our President's more absurd utterings. Surely Mr. Zuckerberg doesn't want to be outclassed by Mr. Dorsey? (Sorry, I'm not sure how to reach a billionaire, other than to assume he relates to the world more or less like a 12-year-old boy.)

Finally, if you missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to end the 1033 program that gives police military weapons, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, and Roots Action all help you do that. Plus the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to support that goal and others, including the PEACE Act, the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act, and the Eric Garner Excessive Force Prevention Act. And please don't let your friends and family act like only liberals want to stop all this "tough on crime" posturing -- the first folks to introduce me to Families Against Mandatory Minimums were Libertarians, conservative Radley Balko has done some of the most powerful writing about the folly of "tough on crime" policies, and Matt Purple at The American Conservative (founded by Pat Buchanan, you may recall) not only calls for the end of the 1033 program, but reminds us that where police tend to fire gas canisters at protestors who call for an end to racist policing, they sure were nice to whiny-ass anti-lockdown protestors who arrived with assault rifles. Liberals and conservatives agree: this shit has got to stop.

Action: concerning good House bills, corruption, and worker safety.

Happy Wednesday, good Americans! Now call your Senators and tell them to protect voting rights, health care, public lands, higher wages, and many other good things by passing H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. And remember: every call you make moves the needle in our direction, and every call you make exposes our so-called "leaders" for the spineless and/or malicious tools they are, and even when it doesn't look like it's doing any good, all your good works do add up.

Meanwhile, with all the corporate welfare our government's been handing out in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen far too many attacks on the federal Inspectors General who would be overseeing these handouts and making sure they don't abuse the taxpayer. Seriously, when you put it like that, how can anyone reasonably support our President's efforts to get rid of Inspectors General? He removes the Inspector General who handled the whistleblower complaint that led to his impeachment; he removes Glenn Fine from his position overseeing the "Paycheck Protection Plan" after Mr. Fine forges a career exposing actual corruption in our government; he removes the Department of State IG after he starts looking into whether that $8 billion-plus Saudi arms deal was really legal. Recall that our President wanted to fire all the Inspectors General upon taking office (because getting 46% of the popular vote is surely a mandate for that!); cooler heads talked him out of it then, but clearly he's had them in his sights all along, and why? Because he knows they can get him. Hence the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to better protect our Inspectors General from removal by obviously corrupt Presidents.

Finally, Walmart workers have been doing their job throughout this pandemic, but getting their management (which is making record profits, of course!) to ensure worker safety and offer paid sick leave has been like pulling teeth! Hopefully not too many Americans are still saying things like "how hard can it be to be a Walmart worker? How much skill can it take?" Remember that we said similar things about manufacturing workers fifty years ago -- we said they were mere machine jockeys, not "real workers" like the folks who built furniture with their bare hands -- and now that they're almost all gone, and we're a lot more used to the idea of machines making things than we were back then, we lionize them. Now we have so many more service workers than we used to have, and I hope we won't wait until we struggle with inattentive and unsubtle automated "workers" to appreciate them! Hence United for Respect helps you tell Walmart to give its workers a seat on its corporate board, so workers can communicate their needs more effectively to their bosses. What on Earth could be the harm in that? That executives make a little less money and have to do better by their workers? Oh, the horror!

Action: concerning police brutality and Social Security.

First things first. You've heard that good Americans are protesting police brutality against black folks in general and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in particular -- and you've also heard some Americans are using the protests as cover to loot and destroy property. You may even have heard -- and from our "liberal" media, no less! -- that quite a few white folks are looting and destroying property, and at least some of these folks may be agents provocateur. But if you're not protesting, you can still fight police brutality. H.R. 4359, the PEACE Act, would require that federal law enforcement officers can only use force against Americans only when "necessary" -- not merely when "reasonable," which is the current (and obviously quite inadequate) standard -- and would also require training for officers when they deal with more vulnerable populations. And the bill would prevent officers from justifying killing someone if their own "gross negligence" made the death "necessary." So Peace Action helps you tell your House Reps to help protect vulnerable folks from police brutality by passing the PEACE Act.

While we're on the subject, Sen. Schatz (D-HI) has announced that he'll introduce an amendment to the upcoming defense authorization bill that would end the sale of military equipment to local police departments, and so now would be a good time to call your Reps and Senators and tell then you would support such an effort. Perhaps depriving police departments of weaponry as looting is going on sounds counter-intuitive, but I would respond that military weapons don't help police departments fight crime -- you don't need a grenade launcher to break up a meth ring, you need boots on the ground in communities making connections and asking questions -- and that when you do give police military weapons, well, they tend to use them, and not against criminals! They tend to use them against protestors, and, ironically enough, often against protestors who speak out against police brutality. Maybe "ironically" is too good a word there; the word better describes things we can't or don't anticipate. Too much of this world makes too much sense; I wish that prompted our leaders to help us create a better one.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject any Administration effort to weaken or destroy Social Security -- including their so-called "Eagle" plan to let folks collect money now in exchange for a later retirement -- then Social Security Works still helps you do that. In the above link, you will also tell your Congressfolk to reject our President's proposed payroll tax cuts and/or holidays -- which are, of course, efforts to destroy the very mechanism by which we fund Social Security! -- and you will also tell your Congressfolk that, if anything, we should expand Social Security. How can we expand Social Security? Easy: simply start taxing income over $132,700 into the system. Currently the payroll tax that funds Social Security only applies to income under $132,700, and, well, as you know, a lot of folks make a lot more than that in a year -- hell, a few folks have made billions just during this pandemic! -- and if we get that money into the system, then we might be able to silence all this pablum about SOSHUL SECURITIEZ IZ RUNNINGZ OUTZ OF TEH MONEYZ!!!!! Hope springs eternal, after all.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, the Dakota Access pipeline, and voter registration.

Our House passed the HEROES Act almost a week and a half ago, but our Senate still hasn't moved on it, so let's start off the week by calling our Senators and telling them to pass it already. You can find tools for finding your Senators' phone numbers in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or on the bottom of this page, if you're looking at it on your cellphone). You probably know the reasons we should pass the HEROES Act: because it would give funding to states and localities, because it would fill shortfalls in our Post Office's funding, because it would expand tax credits for working families, because it would roll back corporate welfare for certain very well-off individuals, and because it provides another one-time stimulus check to Americans who don't make six figures. But in your phone call, you may also want to ask them to strike a provision allowing defense contractors to bill our government rather more than they need to in order to keep their workers afloat. The provision allows those corporations to bill our government for executive pay and marketing expenses, and we don't need to accept that as the price for doing good works.

Meanwhile, a federal district judge ruled in late March that our Army Corps of Engineers (and stop me if you've heard this one before!) did not "adequately discharge() its duties" when expediting permits for the infamous Dakota Access pipeline in 2017, and thus ordered the Corps to conduct a more thorough review as required by law. As Rep. Grijalva (D-AZ) put it, "(i)ndustry needs to learn that if you throw in with (this) administration, you will bear the costs of its reckless incompetence." Given the number of regulatory changes courts have already thrown out because our Administration thinks the law is for little people like us, you'd think corporations would have learned their lesson by now. I guess that means they're not good actors, either! We might better be able to influence our Army Corps of Engineers, however, since they're required by law to listen to us, hence Environmental Action helps you tell the Corps not to grant any new permits for the Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline, of course, leaked upwards of five times just in 2017, including a 200,000-gallon-plus spill in November, so I would say it ain't just the people who have spoken on this matter.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to make online voter registration available to all Americans in advance of the November election, then Common Cause still helps you do that. Online voter registration won't necessarily help folks who can't get online (and there are quite a few of those!), but it would help those who have internet access and who can't get to the local DMV or the local election office because COVID-19 has shut them all down. I presume our President's votaries will squeal TEH VOTERZ FRAUDZ ALL TEH DEADZ DUM-O-CRATZ DOINGS TEH VOTINGZ!!!, but if you look over actual research on the matter -- you know, versus hysterical collections of accusations, insinuations, and things-you-just-know -- you will find researchers have a very, very hard time finding actual incidents of voter fraud. A Loyola law professor found 31 credible incidents of voter fraud out of one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014; even Tha Bush Mobb looked very hard for voter fraud between 2002 and 2007 and managed to convict a grand total of 86 people. As Mr. Bush himself might have said, there's just no there there.