Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning COVID relief and corruption.

You've no doubt heard by now that the "stimulus" bill Congress has agreed to pass includes the return of the 100% three-martini lunch tax break. These are truly irredeemable people "representing" us in Congress -- who looks at millions of jobs lost and millions of folks without health insurance and millions of folks about to get evicted and says hey, I know what'll fix this: let's max out the three-martini lunch tax break? Actually, we do know one person who says that: our soon-to-be-ex-President; it sure is nice to see him locking in on the important things as 300,000-plus Americans lay dead. I say call your Reps and Senators (using the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page, or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) and tell them to reject this "stimulus" bill until the three-martini lunch tax break is removed like the cancer on our society it is. Don't worry that "people will get hurt." The only people who'll get hurt by such a rejection will be the Reps and Senators who'll have to stick around until they get this bill right -- which they could do, as I've said more than once over the last seven months, simply by passing the HEROES Act.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt also heard that almost half of the more than $1.25 billion raised by our soon-to-be-ex-President's re-election campaign somehow got diverted to a shell corporation run by our soon-to-be-ex-President's daughter-in-law and Vice President Pence's nephew. This diversion just so happened to help the campaign dodge campaign finance disclosure rules, which is a shame, since the few individuals who know where the money all went sure are tight-lipped about it. You'd be tempted to think this is the thing that finally weans his supporters from him, but of course you'd be wrong again, not that I'd blame you for hoping. No, nothing, not even him stealing their own damn money, will ever prompt our soon-to-be-ex-President's votaries to reject him; he makes them feel so good about the pain they inflict on others, after all. But Public Citizen helps you tell the campaign to reveal exactly where that money's going. They don't care, especially now, but when we confront people over their wrongdoing, we always win, at the very least by exposing their evil to the light.

I expect I'll be posting much less until the new year, and so I wish all my readers a happy, prosperous, and peaceful holiday season. I'm grateful to you for reading, but I'm more grateful to you for being the best Americans you can be; keep it up, because your country will need you more than ever in 2021.

UPDATE. I wrote this post before both Houses of Congress rammed through the stimulus bill mentioned in the first paragraph, but go ahead and call them and tell them to strike the offending provision anyway. It never hurts to let them know how you feel.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, Administration incompetence, and our "liberal" media.

You've heard, perhaps, that Congress is thisclose to passing a COVID relief deal -- and you've likely also heard that this "deal" will contain no money for states and localities and stimulus and unemployment relief amounting to half of what we got under the CARES Act, while bringing back all of the CARES Act's corporate welfare. Here's what we should do in response: call our Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act! Now that was a stimulus bill, and our House passed it seven months ago (remember that the next time you hear your right-wing uncle cry that TEH DIMOCRATZ AREZ HOLDINGZ UPZ TEH BILLZ!!!!), and the HEROES Act would fund states and localities, fund COVID testing and tracing, fund unemployment benefits at the level of the CARES Act, repeal the big hedge fund manager tax cut given out by the CARES Act, and give working Americans bigger stimulus checks than the CARES Act. Bigger than whatever this Congress tries to pass this week, too! So don't think you just have to take whatever Congress dishes out, and certainly don't act like you do.

Meanwhile, you've likely also heard that states are getting many, many fewer doses of the Pfizer vaccine than they thought they were getting, and our Administration, being the very embodiment of leadership and accountability, apologized for getting that wrong. Nah, I kid -- this Administration has not accounted for itself to the states, but our HHS Secretary has blamed Pfizer for the foul-up, which naturally they deny, saying they have millions of doses ready to go but have heard nothing from our Administration, whose nominal head seems to spend most of his time on Twitter savaging fellow Republicans and spreading even more lies about "voter fraud." This, as more Americans die from COVID each day than died from the 9/11 attacks, which were, as I recall, a Damascus moment for a whole generation of right-wingers! Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our Administration to get its act together and get folks the vaccines they need. Yeah, I know, this Administration doesn't ever seem to listen when we tell them to do their damn job, but they ignore us in the hope we'll go away. But after they're gone, we'll still be here.

Finally, you may have heard, from our "liberal" media, that Venezuela has fallen upon economic hard times -- but you may not have heard, from our "liberal" media, that one of the main reasons good Venezuelans have it so bad is that our government has imposed sanctions upon them for years! One of FAIR's recent email missives catches the New York Times doing this very thing earlier this month, describing how Venezuela's midterm elections went yet again for the United Socialist Party to which Messrs. Chavez and Maduro belong (again, after opposition parties boycotted the election; maybe our Republican party will start getting similar ideas in America?) and describing the "deep economic challenges" Venezuela faces without mentioning American sanctions as one of them. Make no mistake: just as our "liberal" media seemed sanguine toward Brazil's irredeemable asshole of a President because he'd be "good for business," they hate folks like Mr. Maduro because they won't turn over their economies to multinational corporations. The link above helps you encourage the Times to correct the record.

Action: concerning government spying and bird-killing.

Reps. Gabbard (D-HI) and Massie (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 8970, the Protect Our Civil Liberties Act, which would repeal both the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, two laws which dishonor us and injure our civilization every day they're left on the books. H.R. 8970 would also ban retaliation against whistleblowers who expose government spying and ban the kind of "back doors" our government is always pressuring software developers to build into their privacy software. Getting a warrant from a judge was good enough for over 200 years, but then an incompetent Administration (George W. Bush's, this time) took over and failed dismally in its duty to protect good Americans from terrorist attacks; their attempts to "fix" their mistakes haven't just made us less safe, they've made us less free, and Osama bin Laden laughs at us from beyond the grave. So call your Reps and Senators and tell them to undo these injuries and pass this bill; they'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, our soon-to-be-departed Administration has proposed gutting the long-standing Migratory Bird Treaty Act by letting corporations off the hook whenever they "incidentally" kill birds with their drilling and construction practices. If you've ever seen birds get electrocuted by high wires or trapped under fishing nets, you know this is a real thing, and if you question whether big corporations should really be punished for killing birds when they don't actually intend to kill birds, note well that involuntary manslaughter is a crime in America and that polluters who don't "intend" to befoul our air and water still face punishment. And, you know, this Administration wasn't very good at changing the rules when they had all the time in the world; what's the chance they'll be good at it now that they're rushing? Environmental Action helps you tell our Fish and Wildlife Service to reject its own proposal to let big corporations off the hook yet again for their unlawful damage to birds.

Around the table: Nothing Ever Ends, part 322.

British farmer Martin Crawford describes (in a short NatGeo video running less than three and a half minutes) how agroforestry could help save the world from starvation and drought brought on by climate change. "What we think of as normal in terms of food production is actually not normal at all," he says, and he ain't lying -- the way big ag corporations do it (one crop on one slab of land, lots of pesticides) suits them more than it suits human beings. Mr. Crawford's also written a book, Creating a Forest Garden: Working With Nature to Grow Edible Crops, though you'll have to hunt around for it a bit.

Former Health and Human Services advisor, if you can call him that, advocated creating "herd immunity" by infecting "Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc.," adding "(w)e want them infected," in case you missed it the first time. Admit it -- you thought this was A Modest Proposal for a minute, didn't you? Except I don't think Mr. Swift would have used the word "fastly" even as a wink to his audience. This Administration was quick to say this fellow's ramblings had no sway over their policies, although our soon-to-be-ex-President wouldn't STFU about "herd immunity" all freaking year.

Nathan Bernard at Mainer describes "How Sara Gideon Lost to (Susan) Collins the Day After She Entered the Race," but I bet you could replace Sara Gideon's name (and Susan Collins's name!) with their counterparts in Iowa, Kentucky, and North Carolina and have more or less the same article. Spoiler alert: Ms. Gideon lost by taking big Democrat money and taking big Democrat advice, resulting in a campaign that was "ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns." And note well that Jared Golden got re-elected easily in a right-of-center House district "despite" supporting Medicare-for-All while Ms. Gideon lost by seven percentage points statewide after her six-figure consultant advisors all told her not to support it. (But read the whole thing, not least for the damning, and laugh-out-loud, testimony of one Alex Steed.)

What's the worst thing about Republicans' entirely manufactured outrage that Joe Biden's campaign manager referred to them all as "fuckers" in an interview? No, it's not that Republicans have spent four years excusing or pretending not to hear all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's cuss words, but that our "liberal" media will tell us this is the reason Mitch McConnell blocks everything Joe Biden tries to do, which would disregard 14 years of evidence telling us Mitch McConnell blocks everything any Democratic President (or House!) tries to do just because he can. Hey, they called us fuckers! I call them evil; I think that's worse.

Finally, when confronted with the news that our soon-to-be-ex-President's future neighbors in Florida don't want him there and would cite the terms of his own 1993 post-bankruptcy legal maneuvering to keep him out, I couldn't blame you for being quite amused at watching him get some of his own -- after all, hasn't he been clogging up the courts with far more frivolous lawsuits the last few weeks? Sadly, I bet this story ends with him getting some crony in the state legislature to help him out -- with a law aimed at "letting people live where they want" regardless of the legal agreements they've made, perhaps? If so, that sure would be conservative of them.

Action: concerning political appointees and poll worker safety.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell President-elect Biden to fire all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's right-wing appointees to federal positions, then Progress America still helps you do that. Too harsh? Not "bipartisan" enough? Not "helping America heal" enough? How can America heal if all the people in our government who live to destroy our government are still there? How can our Post Office get back on its feet if Louis DeJoy still runs it? How can Social Security serve seniors and disabled Americans if Andrew Saul gums up the works? How can our CFPB protect good Americans from financial predators if Kathy Kraninger won't even let our CFPB issue regulations? How can our IRS catch tax cheats if Charles Rettig acts so obviously like a Presidential crony? How can we root out government wrongdoing if our Inspectors General are all Presidential loyalists? If President Biden can't root out this evil in our government, we're going to have a long four or eight years, folks. But my Spider-sense tells me he won't even try unless he hears from us, in numbers that cannot be mistaken.

Meanwhile, early voting on the two Senate runoffs in Georgia began this week, and Georgia poll workers, naturally, face increasing online threats -- some find their addresses published online (for informational purposes only, and certainly not so anyone can beat them up or kill them wink-wink), while others find nooses with their names on them outside of their houses. Nobody serving our democracy should have to put up with that crap, so Color of Change helps you tell Facebook to ban poll worker harassment. Why Facebook? Because everyone's on Facebook, and bad actors use the info they get from Facebook to harass poll workers! And Facebook knows online harassment is a problem, otherwise they wouldn't protect politicians and journalists more than they protect regular folks. Facebook, of course, also lets its algorithms help Nazi wannabes find each other, which greatly increases the possibility that good Americans get beaten up merely for exercising their actual First Amendment rights. So, stop me if you've heard this before, but Facebook needs to do better by us.

Action: concerning various forms of racial and religious oppression.

H.R. 6210, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, passed the House by an impressive 406-3 margin; the bill would impose sanctions on China for its government's human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (or XUAR), and would prevent that government from exporting goods made from Uyghur slavery to the United States. China's repression of nearly 2 million Uyghur Muslims into slavery camps is well-known by now, as is the complicity of American corporations (cough Amazon Apple cough) in that repression, and not coincidentally, the bill would also require big corporations to tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) if they've taken any sort of part in this noxiousness. 406-3 is a pretty nice margin, but not too many years ago, our Senate couldn't even pass a bill passed unanimously in the House (that would be the Email Privacy Act), so we shouldn't get complacent about this bill, either. Hence Rethink Trade helps you tell your Senators to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act -- without the kind of poison-pill amendments some Senators used to sink the Email Privacy Act.

Meanwhile, Charleston (SC) Councilmember Harry Griffin held a rally with the so-called Proud Boys last week; the Proud Boys are a notorious group of Nazi wannabes, though of course they prefer the term "Western chauvinist" like they're post-modern or something. Our FBI, excuse me, even this FBI has designated the Proud Boys an "extremist hate group," and good Americans have captured their violent doings on camera, so there's little wiggle room for on-the-other-hand silliness when discussing them. (Yes, their current Chair is a person of color, and their founder married a person of color, but such phenomena, to be frank, aren't as uncommon as people think.) Anyway, Change.org helps you demand that Councilmember Griffin resign his job. Are we really going to demand his resignation over one mistake? Of course we are! Murderers commit "one mistake," and we don't blink at putting them in jail; we're not even putting Mr. Griffin in jail for associating with known racists, and a career in politics isn't a Constitutionally-protected right. Actually, it's the very definition of a privilege.

Finally, our soon-to-be-ex-President is rushing to do many favors for his corporate cronies before he leaves office, and one of these favors is a mining contract in the Oak Flat district of Arizona, which is also home to lands sacred to several Native American nations. Do you recall Arizona's two then-Republican Senators ensuring that the 2015 defense appropriations bill rolled back a prohibition on mining in those areas declared by none other than President Eisenhower? Do you recall that one of those Senators (Jeff Flake, far too well-congratulated for his opposition to our soon-to-be-ex-President) used to work for the corporation that would mine Oak Flat? Do you recall Apaches travelling 2,000 miles from Arizona to Washington, D.C. in 2016 to protest the taking of their sacred lands? And it's not just about not screwing Indians even further, or protecting actual religious freedom -- it's also about the pollution mining would unleash upon the region's land, air, and water. And for what? For more gilded plumbing in some mining executive's 19th vacation home? Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to save the Oak Flat region of Arizona.

Around the table: in which the "white supremacy" zombie shows less resilience than "voter fraud" zombies.

I'm not sure why this excellent article from Sonali Konatkar bears the title "How to Cure America's Vaccine Paranoia," since it doesn't really offer a cure, but it does describe pretty thoroughly how we got to be so paranoid about vaccines, and the root causes don't come exclusively from the right -- liberals hate big pharma, "liberal elites" "priz(e) natural remedies over chemical ones" even when doing that doesn't work, and "Black and brown communities" are wary due to "historical government-sanctioned medical abuse." There's hope in that Americans accept the idea of a COVID vaccine more than they did -- but then our soon-to-be-ex-President still has over a month to screw things up even more than he's already done.

From DJ Cashmere at Yes! magazine we learn about Shannon Foley Martinez, a former neo-Nazi who now helps white supremacists get out of the white supremacy gig. Chief insight, if you needed it, is that white supremacists typically have some kind of "unhealed trauma" in their past -- could be rape, could be abuse suffered at the hands of an adult. The article also reminds us how right-wing politicians threw a tantrum about the spectre of right-wing terrorism that helped delay any kind of federal law enforcement response to it for about a decade -- though I'm less willing to imagine that these politicians have any kind of "unhealed trauma" in their past, unless not creating drama counts as "trauma."

Wondering why Mitch McConnell has this jones for a "liability shield" for corporations that injure good Americans through their COVID-related negligence? Sarah Jones at New York magazine tries to explain. There's been no "wave" of COVID-related lawsuits, and they're actually hard to file (let alone win!) in the first place, but you know big corporate lobbyists, always looking for an opportunity to push their preferred policies on the populace, and this pandemic has been one big opportunity, and who loves big corporations more than Mitch McConnell, who has literally spent his entire career trying to make them more powerful? A lawsuit shield is not only unnecessary, but (in its potential deterrent effect) harmful to actual sufferers with actual grievances.

Yes, that was Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert wondering out loud why there were no Republican electors casting votes at Colorado's state capitol building on Monday when Colorado went for Mr. Biden by nine points, but no, she's not stupid -- she's hoping other people are either stupid or too rage-addled to think straight. Hey, it's worked for her so far. Democrats might reasonably counter her by running a candidate who looks like they might actually fight for their constituents, instead of a candidate who "fits the district" by "not supporting radical ideas," many of which, you'll have noticed by now, are popular ideas (and not particularly radical -- certainly nowhere near as radical as QAnon, which Ms. Boebert has both embraced and rather unconvincingly un-embraced).

The Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez finds our soon-to-be-ex-President "looking for fraud in all the wrong places," by which he means "voter fraud." Long story short: swing states have actually updated their voting machines -- and introduced paper trails -- while a lot of other (mostly red!) states still use electronic machines that don't create paper trails, and these are much more vulnerable to actual vote manipulation. "In other words," he writes, "voter anxiety about election security is being stoked in states that have behaved responsibly, while states that have been less responsive to expert advice get a free pass, because highlighting their shortcomings does nothing to advance a partisan narrative." (Also, paragraph 11 does the best job I've seen of debunking Dominion-related "vote switching" rubbish.)

Finally, speaking of stupid "voter fraud" tales, the Center for Media and Democracy spots the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) at the heart of efforts by Pennsylvania state legislators to overturn election results there. So the next time some corporate ALEC member claims they only affiliate with ALEC because of economic issues and not all those controversial issues, you could respond but you support overthrowing a democratically-elected government. If you're feeling ornery, you could also respond you are objectively anti-democracy.

Action: concerning the minimum wage, car safety, and corporate donations.

Fight for $15 helps you demand that Congress enact a $15/hour minimum wage in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. When they tell you that a $15/hour minimum wage causes unemployment or destroys the economy, demand proof. Demand the scientific studies that "prove" that higher minimum wages kill jobs or jack up prices (they almost all say the opposite!). No, it's not "common sense" that higher wages "kill jobs" or "jack up prices"; it's actually more common-sensical to say that higher incomes for lower-wage earners actually stimulate economies (low-wage earners pretty much have to spend their money, after all) or that higher minimum wages actually create jobs in local economies (since that money's more likely to be spent locally). If you do describe studies that refute their fears, don't be surprised if they talk over you like they're Sean Hannity or if they go on about $40/hour minimum wages no one has proposed or how they're not actually conservative like anyone gives a damn. Just declare the argument won and walk away. Right-wingers don't learn until we set boundaries.

Meanwhile, Consumer Reports helps you tell your Senators to pass good auto safety legislation. A number of good bills in our Senate would do that, and the House-passed H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act, includes automatic braking and blind-spot warning devices on automobiles among its multitudinous reforms, and, you know, it's not like safer cars is unpopular or something. You may be old enough to remember how much like pulling teeth it was to make cars put seat belts in! As a youth, I was in the front seat, unbelted, of a car that got into a fender-bender going no more than 10 MPH, and my head hit the windshield; that was all the instruction I needed to belt up every time I got in a car afterward, but a lot of folks have died before learning such a lesson, and why should we allow that? If we can cut car crashes in half now, then why wouldn't we do it? Because it'd "kill jobs"? People will be working jobs redesigning and rebuilding the safer cars, right? Too often right-wingers say it'll "kill jobs" when they actually mean "it'll cost executives money." Put that in the front of your mind, and you'll see things a lot more clearly.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President-elect Biden to reject big corporate contributions toward his inauguration, then Demand Progress still helps you do that. This shouldn't be that tough a lift, given how thoroughly corporate inaugural contributions appear to have compromised our current President, and also given how scaled-down the Biden inauguration would have to be, given the pandemic, but if we say nothing and "trust" them to do the right thing, they'll take that as approval of doing the wrong thing. I'll admit it is a bit unnerving, I'll admit, to be reminded that Barack Obama rejected big corporate contributions to his 2009 inaugural, given how corporatist his Administration proved to be, but that only means we must apply pressure at all points in time. I know people are tired of fighting, more so now than in 2008, even, but I think we have to consider a bit more carefully whether our politicians are so terrible to us precisely because it leaves us too tired to fight them. I've thought about that a lot, and I'm pretty sure it's the truth. And I don't know about you, but contemplating that truth only makes me fight harder.

Around the table: in which we continue to chronicle the right's decades-long implosion.

Claire Kelloway at The Intercept, in a thorough report that repays re-reading, calls Tom Vilsack's apparent return as Agriculture Secretary "Everything That's Wrong With the Democratic Party." Even his one good work at the Obama USDA proves this thesis: his improved school lunch nutrition standards got relentlessly (and stupidly!) attacked by Republicans while approximately zero Democrats rushed to their defense, even though "keep our children away from junk food and thus obesity and diabetes" seems to me good politics as well as good policy. And, you know, they say Mr. Vilsack "gets" rural areas, but he's actually the kind of big ag corporatist who's been helping Democrats lose rural areas over the years, as evidenced by his being zero help in winning his home state of Iowa for Mr. Biden. Turns out rural folks' priorities differ from corporate ones, just like everywhere else on Earth.

This is an interesting result: our Supreme Court leaves in place a 10th Circuit ruling striking down that Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship before voting. Our Court has blessed bad vote suppression schemes before, but won't go out of its way to bless this one? You'll recall that this was the case Kansas's then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach lost at the District Court level so badly that the judge actually ordered him to take continuing education classes so he could argue cases less stupidly, and no judge really wants to be the first to say hey, the village idiot had a point!

I'd heard that a White House official (the director of the White House's security office, as it turns out) got COVID so bad he needed to have half his right leg amputated, which is absolutely awful, but I did not know that a friend started a GoFundMe page to help him pay his medical bills! Which makes it even worse! The GoFundMe page has raised $30,000 so far, though I can't tell if that'll cover his bills or not. In any case, it appears that our soon-to-be-gone Administration reserves the ONLYZ TEH BESTESTZ!!!!! treatment for our soon-to-be-ex-President and his closest cronies. Is it time for Medicare-for-All yet?

Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times says what we're all thinking: that in refusing to (in Mitch McConnell's 2016 phrase) "accept the results," our soon-to-be-ex-President has "concoct(ed) an animating cause for his post-presidency: a grievance-fueled campaign against Biden and the Democrats he accuses of stealing the election -- as well as against any Republicans who didn’t bend the rules the way he wanted." Thus he still rules the party, and if you're thinking these BS grievances over an obvious electoral loss will really animate the next generation of rage-fueled Republicans, consider that a) rage is a hell of a drug, b) Congressional Republicans will obstruct Mr. Biden the way they did Mr. Obama, and c) Democrats will largely capitulate to them, and we have learned that when all these things happen (cough 1994 2002 2010 2014 cough), any rage-fueled asshole can win an election.

Speaking of which, Texas GOP Chair Allen West responds to the controversy over his "secession" remarks the only way you'd expect -- by calling his critics "ignorant" and playing the Greg Brady Exact Words game. Did you see the word "secession"? I don't see the word "secession"! So how does he expect "law-abiding states" to "form a Union" without seceding from the one we've already got? He has no answer but to (again) resort to projection, calling the four states named in Texas's absurd lawsuit the "real perpetrators of secession," which also means, I suppose, that defying the will of Dear Leader automatically makes you a "secessionist." Long story short: waaaaaaah! And let's never speak of him again.

Finally, in a completely unexpected development, our Attorney General is leaving his post, to "spend more time with his family," we're told. But our soon-to-be-ex-President has lately screamed and yelled a lot about Mr. Barr, who said his office couldn't find significant voter fraud, and who also didn't disclose an actual investigation into Joe Biden's son Hunter (this lack of disclosure conforming with Justice Department rules). This latter item means that, in at least one respect, William Barr was a better public servant than James Comey. Of course, as usual, we're talking about the difference between a mound of dung the flies have found and a mound of dung they haven't found yet.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, COVID vaccines, and pollution.

You've been hearing for weeks now that our Congressfolk are "negotiating" a COVID stimulus bill, that some want to include stimulus checks and some don't, that some want to get it done before the end of 2020 and some don't, but, really, all they have to do to get good Americans the relief we deserve is pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act, so go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to do that. The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, states and localities suffering from lost tax revenues, and our Post Office, plus it would repeal that notorious tax-cut-for-the-rich they snuck into the CARES Act and would cut working Americans another stimulus check (a bigger one than the CARES Act did). Really, if you want your Senators to pass the HEROES Act, best thing to do is to say the HEROES Act will cut us bigger checks than anything you're proposing now. And don't get caught up in thinking we have to do something now, because that's how they get you to settle for less than you deserve. You deserve the HEROES Act -- at the very least!

Meanwhile, Pfizer's new COVID vaccine stands to make them a crap-ton of money, but a big reason for that is it's damn expensive -- it sold 100 million doses (which would inoculate 50 million people) to our government at $20/dose, and maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, but let's see what it charges retail, and remember that in a lot of the world, folks don't make $20 a day, and they do have other things to buy besides a COVID vaccine. Like, you know, food and shelter. Astra-Zeneca, which is a bit behind Pfizer and Moderna in putting a decent COVID vaccine together, has already pledged to sell its vaccine in lower-income nations at a massive discount. You'd think Pfizer would do the same, having just raked in $2 billion from our government and more from others, but apparently not, hence Sum of Us helps you tell Pfizer to (guess what) put people over profits and supply their vaccine to lower-income countries for less money. It's really for all of us -- if richer nations get everyone vaccinated but poorer nations don't, then we haven't really beaten COVID, have we?

Finally, the big banks say they won't fund oil or gas drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, but our Office of the Comptroller of the Currency aims to put a stop to that: they've proposed a rule that would force banks to fund customers (like fossil fuel drilling corporations) solely on the basis of those customer's "individual risk," and not some "categorical exclusion," like, you know, whether the project will promote pollution. Some folks have called banks' refusal to fund fossil fuel drilling "discrimination," and others have even compared it to redlining. Compare, if you can, "refusing to fund a big fossil fuel project" with "not letting black folks move into your neighborhood." You can't. Our politicians love "free" markets right up to the point it stops working to their liking -- or, more precisely, their big donors' liking. And they also think good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR is "terrorism." Hence Environmental Action helps you tell our Office of the Comptroller to reject this wrong-headed plan to force banks to fund fossil fuel projects.

Penny Rants for Sunday, December 13, 2020: special "everyone who sucked last year still sucks" edition!

From the "We Kinda Always Knew This, But It's Good to Have Confessions" file: a lengthy Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting investigation finds that Monsanto and BASF introduced their versions of dicamba knowing it would damage competitors' soybean crops, and they released these products because they wanted to eliminate their competitors. It gets better: Monsanto deliberately undertested their dicamba product (since they couldn't control dicamba's drift onto other farms), and when they did test it, they tested it under conditions that were nothing like what actual farmers face every day. BASF even told folks that their dicamba wouldn't necessarily be safe even by applying it strictly according to the label. In a sane and moral society, Monsanto and BASF would be so broken by lawsuits they'd go out of business. In this sick, immoral, and decadent society, however, Republicans claim these failures require more of the "free" market medicine that enabled them in the first place -- and Democrats remain so hypnotized by the "promise" of "technology" that they sit on their hands.

Another day, another reminder that a crap-ton of full-time workers at fast-food and retail corporations don't make enough money to stay off of federal assistance like food stamps and Medicaid, this time from a Government Accountability Office (or GAO) study. And here you thought if you work full-time, you should be able to provide for your family and guide your children to a better future -- let alone be able to provide for your family without having to rely on government assistance. Which you've already paid into with your taxes, so don't blame yourself or imagine you're some kind of leech; that's what they want you to think -- and right-wingers are so quick to say just get a better job like they're not busy trying to outsource all the good American jobs so that American executives can gild the plumbing on their 19th vacation homes. Oh, and here's the kicker: our GAO did this study before the pandemic hit; one can only imagine how much worse it is now, with over 14 million more uninsured and our U-1 unemployment rate still close to 7 percent (the more instructive U-6 rate, which counts part-timers who want to work full-time and unemployed folks who've given up, is 12 percent).

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post lists every single Republican House Rep and state Attorney General who signed on to that ridiculous Texas lawsuit aiming to overturn our election, saying "they are laying the predicate for a contentious new phase of American democracy, if it can continue to be called that, in which election results -- after appropriate recounts and audits and certifications -- are no longer accepted. Instead, they merely open the door for a second phase of legal and political guerrilla warfare in which no tactic, no lie, no baseless claim is off-limits." Note well that these Republicans' loyalty to our soon-to-be-ex-President will most likely go unrewarded, not just because there'll always be a crazier right-winger to swordfight (just ask Scott Tipton!), but also because it only takes one deviation from Dear Leader's Holy Will to become a permanent outcast (just ask Bill Barr!). I did wonder -- because unlike these Republicans I do have the capacity for shame -- if we bore any blame for talking about Voter ID and Interstate Crosscheck, but no, we don't, not just because we always had evidence, but because we always said vote suppression happened before the vote.

Around the table: in which we confront another secessionist tantrum.

Our Supreme Court, citing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, unanimously rules that Muslims can sue FBI agents for monetary damages for placing them on a no-fly list as a way of coercing them into informing on other Muslims. I think the ruling is fairly narrow -- our Court didn't rule on whether folks could sue under the RFRA for injunctive relief, because our government took the original plaintiffs off the no-fly list about a year after they originally sued -- but it's still welcome. And remember what Paul Craig Roberts once said: if over a million people are on no-fly lists, why don't we have terrorist attacks every day?

More good news: after public pressure (and public likely includes you, if you read about it here), Bank of America has declared it won't fund efforts to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR), despite our soon-to-be-ex-President's most fervent efforts. We're not, as they say, out of the woods yet -- the Office of the Comptroller has proposed a rule that might force banks to look at "individual client risk" rather than effect broad exclusionary policies, which would seem, ah, problematic -- but, again, this is a welcome development.

Given how many times I've said we should "get in our elected officials' grills" about pressing legislative matters, you may wonder if I approve of anti-mask protestors banging on the door of a Boise, ID health official's house as she was meeting to mull new COVID-related restrictions. The answer is no: folks should "get in their grills" in public, not in private; that could mean banging on the doors of their office, but not their home. Going to someone's house to intimidate them may seem "courageous," but it's actually cowardly -- if you're that sure you're right, you'll do it in front of everyone.

Surprise, surprise, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), who'll face Georgia voters in a runoff race in less than a month, apparently sold his Washington, D.C. townhouse to a bankster lobbyist who had business before the Senate Banking Committee upon which Mr. Perdue sits. Their excuses are strained, as usual -- it was fair market price (although not everyone agrees about that, and another possibility would be no market price, if he didn't find another buyer), he didn't know the buyer (meaning he'd have been derelict in his duty on the Banking Committee!), and my personal favorite, the organization hasn't lobbied Mr. Perdue specifically, as if buying someone's house for $1.8 million isn't an act of lobbying itself! I'm old enough to remember when even the appearance of corruption ended careers, but in recent years I've seen too many people defy the rules and get away with it.

Finally, hot on the heels of our Supreme Court slapping down (by an apparent 7-2 margin) the Ken Paxton-led lawsuit attempting to overturn election results in four states, Texas GOP Chair Allen West suggests that maybe Texas should secede from our union. The last time Texas politicians threw a similar tantrum, in 2009, my reaction was more or less "don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya," and if I were playing *realpolitik* I might still say that, though we'd need to prepare for the fact (no, not the "possibility," the fact) that Texas would wage war on America sooner or later. But plenty of *good* people live in Texas, too -- after all, Mr. Trump only won it by 6 points, so Texas might only be one Stacey Abrams-calibre organizer away from flipping like Georgia did.

Action: concerning human rights in Iran, COVID vaccines, and media consolidation.

Iran released reknowned human rights lawyer/activist Nasrin Sotoudeh for three weeks due to her serious COVID-19 infection -- but now they've put her back in prison, even though she still has it and is still contagious! For a 38-year sentence, for the crimes of, let's see, "encouraging corruption and debauchery and providing the means," "propaganda against the system," "disrupting public order," and gosh let's stop, because we all know why she's really in prison: she's represented, among other folks Iran's government consider "undesirable," like women who won't wear a hijab in public, protestors against the obviously-stolen election of 2009, and folks facing a death sentence for they crimes committed while they were minors. In short: a snowflake government imprisons a fighter for justice on trumped-up charges. Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to drop charges against Ms. Sotoudeh and release her immediately. Time is short here -- and not just for her sake.

Meanwhile, we're going to have a hard time getting everyone a COVID vaccine (and not just because our current Administration decided not to get enough, amirite?), but we certainly don't need the World Trade Organization (or WTO) making it even harder. Some countries have proposed temporarily waiving WTO rules that give corporations monopoly protections for their putative intellectual property, but our Administration, naturally, opposes such a waiver. Big corporations make COVID vaccines with massive public investment, so we should get a say in this, and the families of the dead do not give one rat's hind quarter about intellectual property rights in the middle of a pandemic. And why should they? Our job on Earth is to help each other, not hide behind rules designed to help already-rich big pharma corporations maintain their unearned monopolies. Hence Rethink Trade helps you tell your House Reps to urge our outgoing President to reverse course on this matter and save a lot more lives.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) not to permanently waive media ownership restrictions in the New York market, then Free Press still helps you do that. I'm of the mind that no corporation should own any other corporation, let alone three media outlets in one market, but (guess who?) Fox owns WWOR, WNYW, and the New York Post, and if the FCC goes through with its plan, Fox gets to own them not on a "temporary" basis, but a permanent one, and I don't know about you, but I've sure had enough of Rupert Murdoch-created drama, even if his right-wing cable news channel is on the outs with our soon-to-be-ex-President and his votaries. Seriously, local news media is dying all over America, and media consolidation is the main reason why -- one corporate owner makes three or 10 or 300 news media outlets into cookie-cutter outlets, none of which reflect the diversity and uniqueness of the people they serve. As Americans, we deserve better -- and we must demand better.

Around the table: in which we confront yet another frivolous lawsuit.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asks Supreme Court to block Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan from voting in the Electoral College, alleging that pandemic-related voting changes in these states violated federal law. I would expect our Supreme Court to ask why Texas didn't file this lawsuit at the time the laws were changed, but we must also remember that, well, Mr. Paxton has plenty of reasons to distract us right now. Gosh, I wonder why state Solicitor General/fellow Republican Kyle Hawkins isn't arguing this suit before our Court. Please note that by "I wonder why" I mean "because he knows it's a frivolous lawsuit and wants to have a career after 2020."

Upon hearing that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has argued that her state is doing quite well handling COVID using "cherry-picked numbers," I kind of expected her to do some sleight-of-hand like saying OUR CASEZ AREZ TEH DECLININGZ!!!! when they're actually still increasing but at a lower rate. But no: her cherry-picked numbers describe how other states, that locked down more than South Dakota did, are handling COVID -- and she doesn't even get those right! When you're justifying your own actions by criticizing others' actions, you're on pretty shaky ground, but sadly, so many Americans are so intimidated by numbers that I don't expect her to experience very much of the shame she deserves.

Right-wing cable news outlet Newsmax beats right-wing cable news outlet Fox News in the ratings -- in one demographic in one hour of one day, to be sure, but the journey of a thousand miles, et cetera. And CNN's average viewership has been higher than Fox's over the last month, but since all cable news networks suck, none of this is really anything to celebrate -- unless schadenfraude is your only pleasure in life, which I hope it's not! After all, Fox might spend some time trying to chase its viewers who are running away to Newsmax and OAN -- or it might position itself as the "sensible conservative" alternative without changing anything it does, which would, you guessed it, help move the center further right, just like they all do. Give us a la carte cable packaging and this would all matter a lot less.

Don't get too excited about Sen. Romney calling a mooted House attempt to challenge the Electoral College vote "madness." His entire comment essentially legitimizes the nearly five dozen frivolous lawsuits our soon-to-be-ex-President has filed, and he knows as well as anyone else that no matter what happens in Georgia, Republicans will be able to obstruct a Biden Administration a great deal, just as they've been doing whenever they lose the upper hand. Also, too, if "(r)ecounts are appropriate," I guess he also thinks demanding a second recount from Georgia, or only recounting Wisconsin counties with a lot of black folks, are also appropriate.

Finally, our Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) and 40 U.S. states say Facebook has monopolized social media and should be broken up. I'm old enough to remember when quite a few social networks existed -- I enjoyed Tribe and Orkut an awful lot, and I sometimes wish I'd gotten more into MeetUp, LiveJournal and Flickr -- so breaking up Facebook wouldn't exactly "break the internet." It doesn't sound like they're going to break Facebook up very much, though -- merely taking Instagram and WhatsApp away from them wouldn't exactly destroy their monopoly. But Facebook pointing to the existence of TikTok and Parler as evidence they're not monopolists? That is to laugh.

Action: concerning the right to repair, pollution, and Arctic drilling.

You've seen COVID cases skyrocket lately, right? And you've heard that hospitals are starting to burst under the strain? And you remember the, ah, difficulties this Administration had in ensuring hospitals even had enough ventilators? One must wonder, then, why it should be so hard to fix a ventilator when it breaks down. And yet it is, as manufacturers put up roadblocks so that competent repair techs can't fix a machine (or, more precisely, so that the manufacturers' preferred techs can fix a machine). They hide behind "intellectual property" considerations, of course, but "intellectual property" doesn't mean a thing to a COVID patient who feels like she's breathing through a stirring straw; hence H.R. 7956/S. 4473, the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act, would remove a lot of these manufacturer-placed roadblocks so that good repair techs could fix critical machines. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your Senators to pass the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act.

Meanwhile, Wild Earth Guardians helps you tell President-elect Biden to undo all the damage our current Administration has done to the National Environmental Policy Act. What has this Administration done? Mainly, they've reduced public commenting on decision-making processes and prevented government agencies from taking climate change into account when issuing rules; I, for one, am deeply offended that our government would want less public input, not more, and I am also offended that some people are so sensitive to being told that we are polluting our planet to death that our government agencies would not be allowed to hurt their fee-fees. Our current Administration did these things not to "create jobs," or even to "streamline processes" -- they did them to make executives richer, and nothing else. It'd be nice to get a President in who doesn't suck up to bosses all the time -- but we should assume that Joe Biden will only be that President if we make him.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to leave a public comment opposing our current Administration's plan to lease the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR) to oil and gas drillers, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. Again, we confront a plan that doesn't create jobs or promote energy independence, but just gives oil and gas executives even more unearned money. Some folks would look at that italicized phrase and feel exactly zero shame -- you want to punish success, they'd say, and though of course we aim to punish greed and gluttony rather than success, the real question is this: why should we measure success exclusively by how much money you make? Why not measure success by, gosh, I don't know, how much good you do, for society and not yourself? Did you heal the sick, feed the hungry, clean the air and water? When we measure success by how many gold-plated plumbing fixtures you own, we don't just cast aside wilderness areas; we cast aside civilization.

Action: concerning lead in water, big inauguration donations, and war on Yemen.

A Virginia Tech-led study found that nearly 80 percent of homes across America have detectable levels of lead in their water, with 40% surpassing the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended limit, and 15% with enough lead to cause brain damage in bottle-fed babies. This is five years after the problems suffered by Flint, MI residents made national news. And lead accumulates in your body, so any amount of lead can cause you serious harm regardless of your age. Hence Penn PIRG helps you tell your U.S. House Reps to pass legislation that would fund the replacement of lead service pipes, which still serve at least nine million homes in America, even though they've been outlawed since 1986. It takes time and money to replace these things, it turns out, but not necessarily 34 years, and the money we'd spend on replacing them would create jobs for a lot of good Americans. Funny how often doing the right thing creates jobs, while the schemes of the politicians don't. So let's get to it.

Meanwhile, President-elect Biden's inaugural committee plans to accept donations of up to a million bucks from corporations and about half that from individuals -- this, even though we hardly expect the usual inaugural spectacle in the face of a pandemic. Need I mention that our soon-to-be-ex-President faced quite a bit of scrutiny over the $100 million-plus in donations his inaugural committee received? People don't give money to an inaugural committee out of the goodness of their heart; they give it so that our President will give them something back. No donation needs arrive with a specific quid pro quo attached; everyone knows how this works, and it leads to corruption. Perhaps more importantly, any big donation, of any kind, tends to drown out the real grievances of real Americans who deserve a hearing just as much as any rich person does. Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our President-elect to reverse course and refuse to accept this absurdly large donations.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject our Administration's proposed $23 billion sale of weapons to the United Arab Emirates, then the Friends Committee on National Legislation still helps you do that. Why? Because the UAE will use them in its war on Yemen, that's why, and we've gone into why that's a terrible idea more times than I can count -- it commits America to an unconstitutional war, Yemen is already on the point of famine, and the Houthi rebels targeted by the Saudi/UAE coalition are some of the best fighters against al-Qaeda in the world. Odd how we don't protect those folks, and I'm sure the Turkish Kurds, however many of them remain, will agree. You'll no doubt have picked up that our Administration isn't selling these weapons to Saudi Arabia; why, it's almost like they know that's a toxic PR move or something. But, hey, we're not stupid -- we know who'd benefit from this proposed arms sale, and it sure ain't the good citizens of Yemen. And it also sure ain't us.

Around the table: in which we, once again, confront the uselessness of moderates.

In case you were thinking to yourself "well, at least this President's foreign policy has been different," note well that this Administration has dramatically expanded the drone strike program and killed more civilians than even his drone-happy predecessor, Barack Obama. This Administration has also been rather more secretive about whom they're killing. And when you actually kill more civilians over than the Taliban or ISIS do -- as we did over the first three months of 2019 -- you don't get to call yourself a peacemaker.

No, Virginia, that video your friends and family are talking about on Facebook does not show TEH SUITCASEZ FULLZ OF TEH ILLEGULZ VOTEZ!!!!! in Georgia. Rule number one of thinking for your damn self is you ask why this is a clip and not the full video! And per the state's Republican elected officials, Georgia always uses these "suitcases" to carry ballots already opened and prepared for counting, and of course the full surveillance video shows this actually happening, and also shows workers counting the votes. And no one has validated the claim (strangely not made in affidavits filed by the two Republican organizers everyone keeps talking about) that observers were told or "forced" to leave. But, hey, rage is a hell of a drug.

In a peripherally-related note, Factcheck.org also runs down our soon-to-be-ex-President's 46 minute-long rant in which he repeats the same election fraud accusations that haven't withstood the least amount of scrutiny in court or in the minds of folks who can think. Note well that "the most important speech I've ever made" wasn't about the pandemic that's killed nearly 290,000 good Americans but was about himself and his trials and tribulations. This is why so many of us think of him as a whiny, diaper-loaded brat! Now, when you read about the Wayne County (MI) lawsuit that got slapped down, you have to wonder if our soon-to-be-ex-President made sure to put inexperienced election observers in place precisely because they'd be less familiar with the process and would simply decide everything they saw was fraud. I sure wouldn't put it past him.

Pennsylvania Republicans plan to introduce a Constitutional amendment that would force state appeals court judges to run in particular districts, rather than statewide -- so they can gerrymander the courts just like they've gerrymandered their own legislature. All together now: waaaaaah! Why a state Supreme Court should represent a particular "district" of Pennsylvania will not be immediately clear to you -- until you realize that five of the seven Supreme Court judges were elected as Democrats, and four of them can't be turned out of office until 2025 or later. Think maybe our state legislature will try to run out the clock on Constitutionally-mandated redistricting until then?

Finally, Jesus Mary and Joseph what is wrong with Senate "moderates" that they're trying to put together a $900 billion COVID relief bill without additional stimulus checks for working families? They're only giving Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri an opening to "fight" for stimulus checks; why, it's almost like that's the whole idea. If you're tempted to think Democrats are stupid because they didn't think of that first, well, actually, they kinda did, because they passed the HEROES Act (which has larger stimulus checks than the CARES Act did) back in May. Call your Senators and tell them to pass the HEROES Act, and maybe we won't have to appease "moderates" for a while.

Action: concerning COVID-19 relief, voting rights, and Social Security.

I've avoided passing along "please pass COVID relief now" action alerts, since settling for any COVID relief just about guarantees bad COVID relief -- like Mitch McConnell's "skinny"-ish "relief" proposal, which again includes three-martini lunch tax breaks and blanket immunity for corporations that let you get sick from COVID. And I wouldn't propose getting something done now so we can "go big" once Joe Biden takes over, either, because "going big" will be much harder if either Democratic candidate in the two Georgia Senate runoffs lose in January. But there's a simple solution to all the drama and chaos -- just call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act! The HEROES Act would fund COVID testing and tracing, fund states and localities (and a lot of the struggling ones are in red states now, right, Mr. McConnell?), and a bigger, better stimulus check for Americans who need it. So don't game out their "negotiations" -- just demand they negotiate with us.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: over 50 Republican state legislators have demanded that Pennsylvania's U.S. House Reps and Senators challenge that state's Electoral Votes later on this month. Why? Because (according to their complaint) Gov. Wolf and Secretary of State Boockvar "undermin(ed) the many protections provided under" the election reform law the state passed in 2019. But read their complaint and you will find that a) they don't say Messrs. Wolf or Boockvar broke the law; b) our state Supreme Court has already rejected at least one of their grievances; c) a government going above-and-beyond to resolve "deficient" ballots is quite a thing to complain about; and d) resolving these legislators' grievances the way they'd want would change only a few thousand votes, and last I looked conservatism was most pointedly not about applying extreme solutions to relatively small problems. So call your Reps and Senators and tell them to reject this desperate attempt to overturn the will of the people of the Commonwealth.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the incoming Biden Administration to reverse all of our soon-to-be-ex-President's attacks on our Social Security, then Social Security Works still helps you do that. You would specifically ask for the Biden Administration to a) fire all recent political appointees to the Social Security Administration and b) undo all of this Administration's rule changes and proposals that would take Social Security benefits away from us -- like making recipients re-establish their eligibility for Social Security Disability benefits every six months, which isn't "fighting corruption" but simple harassment. And don't put too much stock into stories about someone faking a disability to get benefits. Even before you verify such stories, you must ask: do individual stories mean we deny everyone the benefits they need to survive? As a civilized person -- hell, as a mature person! -- you would answer no, it does not.

Around the table: in which we, once again, contemplate Democratic cowardice and Republican malice.

Our House passes H.R. 3884, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE) Act, by a 228-164 margin on Friday, so congratulations to you if you told your Reps to pass this bill. I feel compelled to point out that House Democratic leadership delayed a vote on this bill in October at least partly out of a fear that it would hurt their members' prospects for re-election -- and then Democrats lost 12 incumbents (so far!) anyway, which suggests yet again that maybe avoiding "tough" votes doesn't help Democrats on Election Day. Certainly they'd have done better running on their passage of a real COVID stimulus bill in May.

Vijay Prashad and Carlos Ron provide a better primer on recent Venezuelan politics than you're likely to get from our "liberal" media, which did openly aid and abet a coup against its democratically-elected leader in 2019, after all. Messrs. Prashad and Ron document the right-wing reaction against the popular will in Venezuela since its people elevated Mr. Chavez in 1998; said reaction includes broad swaths of right-wing politicians boycotting elections because they're "rigged," in case you wonder where our soon-to-be-ex-President got that idea (and in case you wonder how our right-wingers would react if someone like Bernie Sanders ever became our President).

You've heard how unlikely it is that a COVID vaccine will get to poorer nations? Well, Olivia Goldhill and Nicholas St. Fleur at STAT describe how, even within a privileged nation such as ours, some folks -- including professional athletes, politicians, banksters, and other wealthy folks -- have more privilege than others. A lot of it turns on the definition of "essential worker"; be ready when the folks who declare banksters "essential workers" say it's really for the bank tellers who meet people face-to-face every day. Also be ready for the numbnuts who wonder WHY DOEZ TEH SMOKURZ GETZ TEH VACCINEZ BEFOREZ MEZ!!!!!, as if smokers don't have bad lungs or fight addiction, and (more importantly) as if reducing the number of people who get COVID doesn't help everyone generally.

Ryan Grim at The Intercept gives us the good news that President-elect Biden "has chosen someone more progressive and less entrenched in Wall Street than the same official under Obama" for nearly every Cabinet position he's announced so far. And you can attribute that directly to the agitation of liberals! Some moderates no doubt say appointing more liberal folks to Cabinet positions just opens us up to Republican attacks, but I must respond: have your eyes been open these last few decades? Republicans attack everyone to their left as a Socialist Communist Nazi Kenyan Anti-Colonialist; the best counterattack is to do good works for the people, advertise those good works, and call the attacks what they are: desperate.

Ho hum, Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin accepted over $300,000 in CARES Act corporate welfare handouts -- and then three months later slammed folks who support "socialized medicine" and other "handouts" for "foster(ing) dependency." Presumably she thinks that in a "truly free market devoid of government lockdowns and other mandates," businesses could stay open, and if (even) more people died, I guess that'd just be the "genius" of the "free" market. But, ah, who pays her salary as Lieutenant Governor? The taxpayers of Idaho, that's who, meaning she's just as much a "socialist" as anyone else.

Finally, Isabelle Morrison at Yes! posits an alternative to the music streaming corporation Spotify, where artists earn less than half a penny for every song streamed: a musician co-op called Resonate, where artists make 45% of profits. The exploitation of popular musicians is, sadly, a very old story, as Charles Shaar Murray's bio of John Lee Hooker has lately reminded me, and the big artists' response to that exploitation (like Jay-Z's Tidal or, really, the Eagles' 2007 label-free album) really only work for other big artists. You want to make music on your own and get paid like you should? Count less on getting Jay-Z's attention and more on Resonate's "stream-to-own" model, which pays artists in nine plays what they'd need at least 150 plays to collect on Spotify.

Action: concerning vaccines, pollution, and "conversion therapy."

The Hero Action Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to make any COVID-19 vaccine free for all Americans. Not just because life is precious, but because the more people get immunized, the quicker we'll kill this disease, and the big pharma corporations shouldn't worry -- I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll need a COVID vaccine. But, you know, Pfizer took a few hundred million Euros to make its vaccine, and Moderna only spent American taxpayer money on theirs, so we should, in fact, get to say what happens with these vaccines. One might respond that these corporations only made those vaccines so they could make money -- and given how little interest big corporations have ever shown in an ebola vaccine, one might be right. But civilized people cannot reasonably put money at the core of every single public welfare decision. That's what our government has done for decades now, and we need to change that.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf to reject the proposed Gibbstown, NJ natural gas export terminal. Mr. Wolf, as Governor, sits on the Delaware River Basin Commission (or DRBC) and has the authority to stop this project, which would receive liquefied natural gas transported over rail and truck from Wyalusing, PA and send it overseas, which sure is a strange way of promoting energy independence. Of course, it's also a bad way of promoting "a new energy future" -- a better way would be to go all-in on renewable energy sources, because even though (as Ralph Nader used to say) you can't own the sun, you can own the infrastructure that converts it into electricity. But shipping 3.5 million gallons of liquified gas every single day is an accident waiting to happen, and that accident will pollute our land, our air, and our clean water. So we know what we have to do.

Finally, Change.org provides two petitions which help you protect gay and/or transgender kids: one helps you tell Alabama legislators to reject HB 1, which would actually make it illegal to give health care services to transgender children, while the other helps you tell Pennsylvania legislators to pass HB 1293, which would ban "conversion therapy" there. It's pretty simple: the science tells us that "tough love" for transgender kids (which is what HB 1 supporters obviously prefer) only makes their anxiety, depression, and suicidal wishes much worse, and the science also tells us that "conversion therapy" (which HB 1293 would ban) isn't therapy, or even science. Hate to pile on, but Alabama does worse than most American states in providing mental health care to children to begin with, and "conversion therapy" includes such "therapies" as naked touching, re-enacting sexual abuse, and shock therapy, and why would civilized folks allow these things to happen?

Around the table: in which we contemplate foreign policy, elections, and our "liberal" media.

Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch nominates our soon-to-be-ex-President's greenlighting of Turkey's genocide against the Kurds for the dishonor of his "Worst Crime." "Tragedy on this scale blurs in people’s minds," it's true, and certainly we would do well to remember that our soon-to-be-ex-President's foreign policy has been little different from that of his predecessors, despite all the promises he made. I also feel compelled to point out that the Kurds have fought al-Qaeda as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who also, strangely, seem to be far down our government's list of favorite world peoples.

Former Obama acting Solicitor General argues, before our Supreme Court, against holding American corporations liable for depending on foreign child slavery to make their products, which sure does remind us how disappointing the Obama Presidency was, does it not? Though we can make too much of guessing how our Supreme Court Justices will vote based on how they respond to answers, none of them (not even Justice Barrett, the anti-judge) seemed to like his answers. Trouble is, they didn't like the plaintiff's answers, either. You'd hate to think justice could be so dependent on good lawyering.

So when I read about right-wingers having "very serious concerns" about elections after they watch poll workers actually count votes, I feel compelled to note that a) this is obviously the first time they've watched democracy in action and b) they all obviously think "their" candidate got ripped off and thus c) their rhetorical questions make them all sound five years old. And of course, if people complain a story makes them "look bad" without challenging any of the story's factual assertions, then you must consider the possibility that they're just whining.

You've been hearing all about how Republicans would hate the idea of Neera Tanden as OMB Administrator, but you may not have heard that a lot of liberals hate the idea, too. Ms. Tanden has, in the past, embraced Social Security benefit cuts and opposed a $15/hour minimum wage; her disdain for the Sanders campaign isn't particularly material to me, but is to a lot of other liberals. I am a little puzzled that so many "liberal" media outlets are missing out on this opportunity to highlight liberal opposition, since that would give them the opportunity to blame us for Democrats underperforming expectations again.

Barack Obama says the "defund the police" slogan alienates people who might otherwise be sympathetic. Six months ago I would have agreed with him! But then police killed George Floyd, and in the wake of massive public protests afterward even Mitt Romney said "black lives matter" out loud, and I was reminded, again, that two kinds of people get alienated by such "sloganeering": people who'll come around eventually, and people who can't be reached anyway.

Finally, Maria Bartiromo's exclusive-for-a-reason interview with our soon-to-be-ex-President, in which she cheered him on as he heaped absurdity upon absurdity, exemplifies what both liberals and conservatives hate about our media -- namely, that our media don't challenge the powerful. But the article's author seems, well, betrayed by this performance, and I can't imagine why -- remember that time Ms. Bartiromo asked Anthony Weiner why he wasn't on Medicare if Medicare was so great ("because I'm 45," he responded)? Yeah, that was 11 years ago.

Action: concerning good House bills, election ethics, and drilling on public lands.

Happy Wednesday, good peoples! Now call your Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 2, the Moving Forward 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. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission 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. 2214, the NO BAN 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; H.R. 7120, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. Remember: don't get discouraged, because that's how they want you to feel. Indeed, the only reason they have the power they do is because so many Americans are discouraged. But when we fight through our discouragement, and we act, we make good things happen.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell our Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for allegedly trying to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to throw out legally-cast votes in that state. Joe Biden won Georgia by a slim margin, as you know, but Sen. Graham sure seems to have done his part to contribute to all the tall tales about "voter fraud." How did Jaime Harrison raise $100 million and still lose to Mr. Graham by 10 points, huh? Should we take that result as evidence of actual voter fraud in South Carolina? Of course not (we should take it as evidence that Mr. Harrison wasn't such a good candidate!), so let's not imagine that any result we don't like must be "fraud," certainly not without evidence, which Mr. Graham has not provided. Our soon-to-be-ex-President sure does turn everything he touches to dung, doesn't he? Mr. Graham, once upon a time, was the first Senator to condemn the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but now he sucks up to a man he derided not too long ago.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President-elect Biden to keep his promise to ban fossil fuel drilling on public lands, then Wild Earth Guardians still helps you do that. Yes, Mr. Biden did promise to ban fracking and oil drilling on public lands, though not private lands; I suppose he could work around his promise by selling off as much public land as he can to oil and gas drilling corporations, but we'll deal with that if it comes to that. And certainly we should concentrate on renewable energy production, not fossil fuel production that pollutes our air and water. I would advocate that our government get back into the utility business by creating renewable energy utilities that can compete with the privately-held utilities that won't do what's necessary to fight pollution and climate change. Maybe Joe Biden doesn't want to do that; certainly Mitch McConnell doesn't want to do that. But when we make our will unmistakable, it doesn't matter what the politicians want. So let's get to it.

Action: concerning the HEROES Act, fuel efficiency, and police in schools.

Today's as good a day as any to call your Senators and demand they pass H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act. Tolerate none of this "skinny" stimulus bill crap from Republicans! All they would do is funnel our money down the gullets of their corporate cronies like they did with the CARES Act. Yeah, you got $1,200 from that (didn't you?), but that doesn't balance out big corporations like Ruth's Chris Steak House disguising themselves as "small businesses" to feed at the taxpayer trough. What would America get along with a bigger stimulus check from the HEROES Act? Funding for COVID-19 testing and tracing, funding for enhanced unemployment benefits, funding for states and localities, and funding for our Post Office, among other good works. What would Republicans want? Bigger tax breaks for three-martini lunches and blanket immunity for corporations from lawsuits when they expose good Americans to COVID. I wish I were making that up. Their priorities really are horsedoodle -- which is why we get up in their grills with our priorities.

Meanwhile, perhaps after reviewing last month's election results, the General Motors corporation has withdrawn its support for our soon-to-be-ex-President's proposal that would weaken EPA fuel efficiency standards, so now the Sierra Club helps you tell big car manufacturing corporations Toyota and Fiat-Chrysler to abandon their support for weakened standards as well. Cleaner cars mean what, good Americans? They mean cleaner air, obviously, but they also mean lower gas bills, as cars go further on a gallon of gas. Weakening those standards might mean cheaper cars -- and it might not! -- but whatever you save on car-buying day you'll give up over the years as it belches out more filth into our air. But shouldn't we get a choice? I can already hear right-wingers say. Silly right-wingers! With weaker standards you won't have a choice -- big corporations tweak their fuel efficiency now and then, but if we really want to save our planet, we're have to make them do more.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 7848/S. 4360, the Counselors Not Criminalization Act, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. Long story short, the bill would help get police officers out of schools and help get counselors, nurses, and social workers back in. You don't need to remember viral videos of cops bodyslamming students to support this bill -- you need only know that school districts that hire more counselors, nursers, and social workers see better attendance, higher grades, and fewer disciplinary incidents. Putting police officers in schools does not, in fact, "scare kids straight," as we would know if we took a minute to remember what we were like as students. World was our oyster back then, and nobody was going to tell us what to do! Seriously, I've said it before and I'll say it again: we must stop acting like "more cops" is the solution to every problem. Certainly "more people trained to deal with children" is the solution to problems children have.