Thieves in the Temple.

taking tiger mountain.

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (or TRADE) Act now has 131 co-sponsors in the House and seven in the Senate -- and wouldn't ya know, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hates it. That's almost reason enough to support it by itself! But the TRADE Act (a surprisingly easy read for a Congressional bill) would demand that multilateral trade agreements respect the labor laws, environmental laws, food and product safety laws, public services laws, and financial regulations (to name a few) of each country party to the agreement. As we know, "free" trade agreements too often get used to "waive" such things in the name of "competition," by which of course "free" trade adherents mean "the right of the big honchos to stomp the little guy into dust." Laws and regulations don't "stifle" competition -- in fact, by restraining the most powerful members of a society, they actually promote competition. The House version of the bill (H.R. 3012, a Mike Michaud production) has been stuck in committee for six months, but the Senate version (S. 2821, a Sherrod Brown production) just got re-introduced this month, so maybe it'll move faster. Public Citizen helps you contact all your Reps and Senators.

Meanwhile, closer to home, T-Mobile has apparently engaged in an anti-union campaign so severe that the federal government has opened multiple investigations. T-Mobile is owned by a German company, Deutsche Telekom, which apparently has no trouble with its unions in Germany. They must have figured unionbusting "consultants" and intimidating workers plays better in America. I wouldn't want international corporations to get that impression, and neither would you, so American Rights at Work helps you let the big cheeses at T-Mobile know that worker intimidation isn't copacetic around here. The good news? Things are bad enough at T-Mobile that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and ver.di, the German telecommunications workers union, have joined forces to promote the plight of T-Mobile's workers. Now that's the spirit of cooperation! Here's hoping it yields boons.

Finally, just in case you wanted the bluntest and heaviest sledgehammer to bludgeon arguments that say that those "climategate" emails prove that we should pollute as much as possible, factcheck.org provides it. I find the prose almost pathologically restrained in the face of "climate skeptics"' claims about the emails: "We (factcheck, that is) find such claims to be far wide of the mark." Or "Climate skeptics are claiming that they (the pilfered emails) show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded." "Climate skeptics" are largely shills for big oil and the big corporations aligned with big oil; they have a far larger financial interest in denying climate change than the rest of us have in believing the science -- far larger, certainly, than the environmental groups who will never get rich sounding the alarm bells. I think folks like Glenn Beck should try Following the Money somewhere other than to their own bank accounts.

get down on it!

H.R. 4213, the Tax Extenders Act of 2009, passed the House yesterday by a 241-181 vote. Tax extenders bills typically extend tax breaks without necessarily paying for them, but H.R. 4213 does pay for extended tax breaks responsibly, in two very important ways: a) it cracks down on rich folks who hide their money offshore, and b) it closes the "carried interest" loophole. We've covered the carried interest loophole before, but since the loophole's designers meant it to be difficult to understand, we'll go over it again: private equity fund managers can make millions of dollars in compensation for their work, but pay income taxes at only 15% because their income gets counted as interest. If it got counted as income, which is in fact what it is, then it'd most likely be taxed at 33%, as it should be. The "carried interest" loophole allows rich people to be taxed at a much lower rate than regular folks like you and I, and that's not the way to keep the powerful from running over the rest of us. (Citizens for Tax Justice explains further if I've been unclear.) H.R. 4213 merits a phone call to your Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Finally, everyone's in on the pro-Consumer Financial Protection Agency tip: if you haven't emailed your House Rep already, you can use action tools from Consumers Union, PennPIRG, Public Citizen, or Keystone Progress. But you need to know about some, ah, new developments. Rep. Minnick (D-ID) has offered an amendment to strip the Consumer Financial Protection Agency from the bill, while Rep. Bean (D-IL) still wants to offer her amendment that would pre-empt states from passing stronger financial protection laws, though her amendment didn't make it out of committee. Blue Dogs: not "fiscally responsible," just pro-corporate. Period. On the plus side, Rep. Watt (D-NC) would close a loophole in the bill that allows car dealerships to run buy-here-pay-here operations without CFPA scrutiny. I'd tell your House Rep no on Minnick, no on Bean, and yes on Watt. They're debating the bill, so we'd better get down on it.

focus on sanity.

You may not know (as I didn't, until yesterday) that natural gas producers currently enjoy exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act. What does natural gas production have to do with drinking water, you ask? Well, natural gas producers usually extract natural gas via a method called hydraulic fracturing, in which millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemical agents get pumped into a well, and the pressure of said water/sand/chemical combo causes fractures in the shale beneath the ground, which frees the natural gas to be pumped up through the well. Sounds ingenious -- until you consider that the water, now tainted with chemicals, will find its way into the water table, meaning you'll be drinking it. H.R. 2766 (a Diane DeGette production) and S. 1215 (a Bob Casey production) were both introduced in June to close this loophole, but both bills are stuck in committee now (largely, I suspect, through the efforts of the what-more-can-we-do oil/gas corporations), so perhaps a few phone calls to your Reps and Senators are in order. Especially if they're on the House Energy/Commerce Committee or the Senate Environment/Public Works Committee. Hell, call those people anyway. Let them know we're watching. And if anyone asks if maybe we ought to be letting oil and gas companies do what they want so we can depend on foreign oil less, thank them for their concern, and then politely remind them that solar and wind are certainly viable alternatives.

Meanwhile, the fair-to-middling Estate Tax extension, H.R. 4154, did pass out of the House by a vote of 225-200, and now the Senate must act on it. Possibly some Republicans and right-wing Democrats (like Jon Kyl and Blanche Lincoln, respectively) will join together to propose a "reform" like the worst "reform" on the table, which, as you may recall, was H.R. 3905. So United for a Fair Economy helps you demand a better Estate Tax reform. There's nothing in any of Newton's laws that says you have to argue for a decent medium between H.R. 4154 and whatever monstrosity the Senate right wing cranks out. You may, as a citizen, unbeholden to any interest but your own sense of right and wrong, demand that Estate Tax reform more closely resembles Rep. McDermott's legislation, H.R. 2023. Mr. Obama needs a bill by December 31 or the Estate Tax will disappear for the entire year of 2010, but I don't do blackmail -- especially then the Estate Tax will snap back to its 2000 form in 2011, and Mr. McDermott's legislation actually represents a tax cut on smaller estates from the 2000 code. You may want to point all this out to your Senators.

Finally, we have a pair of Executive branch-related developments that might do us some good: the EPA has declared that greenhouse gases pose a danger to the environment and can thus be regulated under the Clean Air Act, and Mr. Obama has proposed diverting $200 billion from Bush's bailout to actual job-creation efforts. Now, these aren't slam dunk events -- the EPA ruling might only pressure the Senate into passing that crappy climate change legislation that came out of the House, and Mr. Obama can't just get whatever legislation he wants passed, even with his 60 Democratic Senators. And I have my own philosophical objections to both developments -- generally I prefer specific directions from Congress to the iron hand of the Executive branch, and I'd much rather have had a decent 2009 budget than either a Bush bailout or an Obama stimulus. Still, the world is what it is, and one must celebrate hope whenever possible, and then turn that hope into action. So, forward.

fighting war, fighting banks, fighting pandering.

I've received many alerts demanding a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but I haven't passed them along -- a timeline for withdrawal strikes me as a second or third or fourth choice, and I always ask for my first choice, which is (as I've said before): get bin Laden, get out. Funny things have happened lately, though -- Mr. Obama both ordered an escalation and announced a date for the beginning of withdrawal, which Bob Novak might say is like Solomon actually cutting the baby in half. Also, House Democrats and Republicans have been joining to make noises about ending funding for the war in Afghanistan. Afterdowningstreet.org thus spies an opportunity, and they're taking the opportunity in two ways: first, by providing a list of House Reps and how they've voted on Afghanistan funding so you can, er, encourage them to vote the right way, and second, by helping to organize an anti-war rally in D.C. on Saturday, December 12. Speakers will include Rep. Kucinich, former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, former Sen. Mike Gravel, journalist Chris Hedges, Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes, and many progressive activists including David Swanson. So mark it on your calendars. And, yes, I bet it outdraws the Teabaggers' 9.12 rally, and that the "liberal" media fails to note it.

Meanwhile, H.R. 4173 finally got out of the House Finance Committee last week, but that doesn't mean the banks have stopped their War on the People's Right Not to Be Screwed by Banks. H.R. 4173 does include the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which will not affect your relationship with your local butcher, no matter what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says. H.R. 4173 could be better, though -- it could get rid of exemptions for auto dealers and so-called small banks, for example, and give ordinary consumers the right to sue companies that harm them, and give states the right to pass tougher standards for financial products if they see the need to do so. You can see why the banksters wouldn't like all that, right? Public Citizen has one contact tool, and Americans for Financial Reform has another.

Finally, Sens. Hatch (R-UT) and Nelson (D-NE) will introduce an amendment to the Reid health care bill very soon, one that would (like the infamous Stupak amendment) restrict a woman's access to abortion far further than federal law currently does. The ACLU targets eight Democratic Senators (Bayh, Byrd, Casey, Conrad, Dorgan, Kaufman, Kirk, Pryor) who might be amenable to voting for the amendment -- two of the above are nominally pro-choice and two others have mixed records on abortion-related votes, but, as we know, 20 nominally pro-choice House Reps voted for the Stupak amendment. The ACLU provides the contact tool, if one of the above eight Senators belongs to you, so you can express your will that they vote against it. And, again, if abortion opponents want to outlaw abortion, they ought to try outlawing abortion, rather than playing games.

dare to struggle, dare to win.

Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed S.A. 2837, which would essentially replace Sen. Reid's health care overhaul bill (S.A. 2786 to H.R. 3590) with a single-payer health care system. Sens. Burris (D-IL) (finally, he's good for something!) and Brown (D-OH) have signed on as co-sponsors. Public Citizen helps you support the bill. The link above also argues against the far-right's favorite solution to every problem, malpractice "reform." The People's Email Network also provides a "Million Fax March" petition supporting single-payer. I think a phone call to your Senators is also in order. I think saturating their phone lines and fax lines and email accounts is in order. Let 41 (or more) Senators stand on the record as opposing a single-payer health care system that has had majority support in every poll I've seen since I can remember. We'll see how well that works for them.

Public Citizen also alerts us to Rep. DeFazio's efforts to create a "speculation tax" on certain stocks, derivatives, and other "financial instruments." Mr. DeFazio (D-OR) introduced H.R. 1068 back in February, with the aim of taxing Wall Street to recoup bailout money, but that bill got buried in committee; apparently the new bill (not up on thomas.loc.gov at this time) would raise a whole lot of money by taxing transactions at a mere one-quarter of one percent. Naturally the Obama Administration opposes it, particularly that idiot Timothy Geithner, but this ain't about What Obama Wants, it's about what we want. I think Rep. DeFazio's effort warrants a phone call to your Reps and Senators. They'll never see it coming. And no a one-quarter of one percent tax on speculation won't stop people from speculating and bring the economy to a halt -- people have this urge to get rich, you see, and a little tax like that won't stop them. Maybe it'll fund some good projects and pay down our debt, though.

In other news, Comcast and NBC Universal have announced that they're going to merge. How many times must I tell these pimps! The larger corporations get, the less responsive they are to the needs of communities. If one of the Big Four networks and one of the Big Two cable networks merge, you'll see more power over what you see and hear from the media concentrated in fewer hands -- not to mention jacked-up cable prices and more jack-off "entertainment." Free Press helps you oppose the merger. You'll be sending missives to President Obama, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission. You'd like to see some action from Mr. Obama on this, especially -- he's certainly talked the talk about media reform, but now he's got to walk the walk, lest he be outclassed by rank-and-file Republican Kevin Martin, whose tenure as FCC Chair rather exceeded expectations.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Sen. Sanders has also been busy placing a hold on Mr. Obama's renomination of Ben Bernanke to the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. It's not just Sen. Sanders, either -- Sens. Bunning (R-KY) and DeMint (R-SC) have also joined the side of the angels. Apparently yesterday Mr. Bernanke suggested to the Senate Banking Committee that we might have to repeal Social Security and Medicare in order to pay down our deficits. He also defended that idea by invoking the wit and wisdom of a bank robber. This is the experienced leadership we need to get us through a crisis? This is the leadership that got us into a crisis! CREDO helps you oppose his renomination. I suppose Mr. Obama could retaliate by nominating someone even worse. Or he could get a clue and see if Paul Volcker wants the job back.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), Public Citizen helps you tell Energy Secretary Chu to suspend taxpayer-guaranteed loans on EPR nuclear reactors in four American states. Their manufacturer, Areva, has been cited for serious flaws in its Instrumentation and Control systems by the nuclear power regulatory authorities in France, Finland, and England. I suppose right-wingers will tell us, well, that's Old Europe for you, except that those three governments have never joined for such a purpose in such a way before -- and Areva's Finland plant had some 3,000 construction deficiencies, is over three years behind schedule, and is 75 percent over budget. Want the taxpayers financing that kind of work? Me neither.

caught! Can I get a witness?

Congress wants you to think they're doing nothing all week but debating health care. But lo! This Thursday, the House will vote on the future of the Estate Tax -- you know, the inheritance tax levied on large fortunes first passed by Abraham Lincoln, the same tax right-wingers call the "Death Tax" even though only 1% of people who die pay it. Thanks to the first round of Bush Mobb tax cuts, the Estate Tax will disappear for the entire year of 2010, and then return to its pre-Bush Mobb tax cut level -- but, as you may have heard, our budget deficits have broken records lately, largely due to the Bush Mobb bailout of 2008. So we could do with a little more effort on the revenue end of things.

Three proposals compete for our attention. H.R. 3905, a favorite of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, would raise exemptions far too high and cut tax rates. H.R. 4154, which most resembles Mr. Obama's wishes, would freeze the Estate Tax in its weak 2009 form for all eternity. H.R. 2023, a Jim McDermott production, would lower the exemption to $2 million per person ($4 million for married couples), keep the 45% rate for smaller estates, and establish a 55% bracket for estates larger than $10 million. Obviously H.R. 2023 is the one I prefer. United for a Fair Economy provides a toll-free number, 1.800.830.5738, with which you may call your House Rep and express your support for a robust Estate Tax.

The rich have gotten away with not paying their fair share for far too long. And yes, their fair share is larger than yours or mine -- not least because they're getting rich off of labor much like yours or mine.

UPDATE. Citizens for Tax Justice has more, including a state-by-state accounting of Who Owes.

low-income housing, child support funding, and that dadgum Stupak amendment.

Did you know that today and tomorrow are national call-in days for the National Housing Trust Fund? Well, now we do. Congress created the National Housing Trust Fund in 2008 to fund the building and maintenance of housing for low-income folks. The relevant bills are H.R. 3766, the Main Street TARP Act, and S. 1731, the Preserving Homes and Communities Act; each bill actually diverts Bush bailout money to the Fund. Because welfare ain't for the rich; it's for folks who need it. Both NETWORK and Coalition for Human Needs direct us to a toll-free number, 1.877.210.5351, which will connect you directly to the Capitol switchboard -- or you can call your Reps and Senators directly, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, S. 1859, the Child Support Protection Act, would restore full funding for child support enforcement, by removing one fairly important restriction on said funding specified in section 455 of the Social Security Act. As we know, there are a lot of deadbeat parents out there, and they're depriving their children of money they deserve -- money which, not incidentally, would reduce said children's dependence on other forms of public assistance such as food stamps. So S. 1859 achieves the twin goal of getting child support money to kids and saving the federal government (and in America, that means you) money. In addition, S. 1859 is an actual bipartisan piece of legislation, with eight sponsors ranging along the ideological spectrum from Dick Durbin to David Vitter. NETWORK provides the contact tool.

Finally, as you may have heard, the Senate will take up health care legislation again this week -- a depressing prospect, to be sure, as they won't be instituting a single-payer system except maybe in bits and pieces. But another depressing prospect would be the inclusion of the Stupak amendment in the final product. The Stupak amendment to the House health care bill restricts the availability of abortion coverage for women more than ever before. I keep saying that if abortion opponents want to keep women from having abortions, they ought to make abortion illegal, instead of playing all these damn games. They also really ought to support birth control, which is legal, which is not evil, and which works much better than abstinence. Planned Parenthood has one contact tool, and the Center for Constitutional Rights has another.

free people! Free markets!

S. 1681, the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009, would end the antitrust exemption health insurance corporations currently enjoy. You can read the bill at thomas.loc.gov in about ninety seconds, and I don't see any catches in it. Of course I'd prefer that the McCarran-Ferguson Act be repealed in its entirety (and who joined Sen. Leahy in an unsuccessful effort to do just that many years ago? Trent Lott, of course!), but S. 1681 would do in the short run. I wonder what the hard-right "free marketeers" will say, once confronted with a Democrat-sponsored bill that does actually promote competition. They'll probably say the bill violates corporate rights or something, like they think corporations are supposed to have more rights than people! I don't have a handy email contact tool, but I think S. 1681 merits a phone call to your Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, the RNC rolled out a "resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" last week, which Political Wire quickly dubbed "the Conservative Purity Test." Commenter Chredon (scroll down) bashes it pretty thoroughly, but personally I'm struck by how conservative it's not. I guess I should be thankful that opposing gay marriage and abortion only comprise 20% of their platform. But they're against stimulus bills while pretending the Bush bailouts don't exist? How would Robert Taft react to "troop surges," particularly after watching his "conservative" colleagues force General Shinseki into early retirement because he wanted more troops in Iraq going in? And what are "market-based reforms"? They don't tell you, because if they did, they might have to come out and say "whatever corporations want." A real conservative would tell you that smaller communities make the best decisions on behalf of said communities, and proceed philosophically from there -- versus proceeding from "whatever Barack Obama wants is evil," as the RNC obviously does in its resolution.

being number one.

Next week will bring Congress back to work (boo!), and at the top of their agenda will be Sen. Reid's health care bill, superior to Sen. Baucus's, certainly, but not to Rep. Pelosi's. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed an amendment that would (like Mr. Kucinich's "disappeared" amendment) permit states to start their own single-payer systems. I don't have an email contact tool yet, but using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page, you can call your Senators and demand the inclusion of Mr. Sanders's amendment in the final bill. You might also state your displeasure with the lack of effective cost controls. The After Downing Street link above will help you do that.

Keystone Progress provides a contact tool supporting the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Wall Street stands against us, but what, exactly, is their moral appeal? Can they argue that the market knows best, after "the market" destroyed some $13 trillion of American household wealth? Can they argue that government regulation is somehow immoral, when it's our government, not some monarchy or dictatorship? Can they even argue that they're only using their own money to oppose the people's will? No, they cannot even do that -- some of the money they're using to campaign against the people's will comes from the Bush bailout, meaning it's coming from the people. "Kafkaesque" doesn't begin to describe our culture's sick, immoral, and decadent financial elites. I still hope that it won't come down to torches and pitchforks.

the rare light posting notice that actually precedes an expected period of light posting.

Congress won't be very busy this week -- which is always a cause for celebration! -- so I don't expect to get many action alerts in the near future. Therefore posting should be light for a few days.

In the meantime, please patronize the excellent links on the left- and right-hand sides of this page.

"constituents"?

The War on the Chamber of Commerce continues! The Chamber of Commerce opposes the Franken Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill (S.A. 2588 to H.R. 3326, respectively) that would prohibit defense contractors from inserting forced arbitration clauses into employment contracts on matters like sexual assault and discrimination, saying "it would set a dangerous precedent." A dangerous precedent like what? Justice? Here's the petition. And, for your further edification, here's Joshua Holland's report, provocatively entitled "Not Your Father's Chamber of Commerce: National Organization is Now a Tool of the Radical Right." Your jaw may hit the floor during paragraph nine.

dead peasants and dead presidents.

Did you know today is NETWORK's National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft? Well, now you do. Anyone collecting a paycheck these days knows that on payday, well, hours get "lost," overtime gets "lost," vacation time and personal time gets "lost." The less fortunate among us also know the pain of working for less than minimum wage, of being forced to work off the clock, of being "accidentally" classified as a consultant or independent contractor instead of an employee -- or, even, of just not being paid. Need I add that any corporation that indulges in these practices also cheats all of us, by not paying their fair share of taxes? H.R. 3303, the Wage Theft Prevention Act, would help workers immensely by extending the statute of limitations on wage theft violations, so that corporations can't just "run out the clock" on investigations. Sounds obscure, I know, but a lot of times the little things make all the difference. NETWORK helps you support the bill.

Meanwhile, Rep. Gutierrez (D-IL) has introduced H.R. 3669, which would prevent corporations from taking out life insurance policies on any employee making less than a million dollars a year. Now, given that executives like to hide their real income in bonuses and options, I'd prefer the bill be a bit more specific about the income threshold, but basically it's a good idea. Your employer may have taken a life insurance policy out on you without your knowledge; that's what we call "dead peasant insurance." Corporations began this practice as a way of protecting themselves against the death of their executives, but then (to paraphrase George Washington Plunkitt) they seen their opportunities and they took 'em, extending the practice to all their employees. It's not just another way of moving around large amounts of money in the shell-game economy -- it's also a clear conflict of interest, in that an employee might be worth more to a corporation dead than alive. The bill hasn't had a committee hearing yet, so go ahead and call your House Rep and ask them to support it (especially if they're on the Committee on Education and Labor). They'll never see it coming.

the dirty jobs.

This Friday, November 20, the New York City Council will hold a public hearing on a pro-net neutrality resolution (712A-2007) -- and Free Press decides that's as good an occasion as any to write your House Reps in support of H.R. 3458. H.R. 3458 would protect your right to surf what you want, when you want, without being told what's better for you by the big telecoms -- in short, H.R. 3458 would protect the very principle that's made the internet so terrific so far. Will the big telecoms pack the New York City Council meeting with astroturfers and keep real New Yorkers out? I suppose if I thought of it, so did they. They'd be better off spending their unearned largesse paying actual people to do actual work. Come on, we've got double-digit unemployment! Everyone's gotta make sacrifices! Even the rich!

The Senate should take up health care reform again soon, and Public Citizen takes this opportunity to help you advocate, no, not for a bill closer to the House bill that passed two weekends ago, but for single-payer, "Medicare-for-All" reform! Because, you know, I don't believe "the art of the possible" means demanding less that what's right. If anything, demanding what's right widens what's "possible." Meanwhile, FAIR alerts us to a Washington Post article about the health-care related "pressures" center-right Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AK) faces -- without noting that said "pressures" include over $300,000 in campaign contributions from the health care industry just in the second quarter of 2009, which number outstrips any Senator not named Harry Reid. The FAIR link includes contact info for the Post, if you think they care about anything you have to say. Seriously: train your puppy with some newspaper that deserves to have dog poop on it. Let me know if I'm not being clear enough about how I feel about the Washington Post.

food safety and low-power FM: momentum, momentum, momentum!

S. 510, the FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act, gets a hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee tomorrow morning beginning at 10 a.m. S. 510 would require yearly inspections of high-risk food processors, and would ensure that foods imported from foreign countries meet U.S. safety standards -- thus helping us prevent all the tainted food recalls of the last several years. I suppose right-wingers will object that a corporation's right to govern its own food production processes is paramount, and that they use foreign food precisely because there's less "red tape" involved. If someone wanted to mail photographs of children killed by tainted food to anyone who'd make such an argument, I wouldn't object. But for now, Consumers Union helps you contact your Senator, if your Senator sits on the HELP committee (which you can find out here -- and you can click on any name listed on the left-hand side for contact info).

H.R. 1147, the Local Community Radio Act, did pass out of committee last month, and may get a full House vote this week. But for some reason, some of our House members don't seem to understand why we need this bill. And by "for some reason" I mean "because the big telecoms tell them what to do." Free Press helps you email your Reps, or (if you like) broadcast info about the impending vote via facebook or twitter, but a phone call to your House Rep (using the tools in the upper left-hand corner) would also be in order. The magic phrase in all your contacts ought to be this bill draws broad support across the ideological spectrum, because it's true: the Religious Right wants greater access to low-power FM stations just as badly as we do. And why not? All I ask for is a level playing field -- and corporate power is the real enemy.

real bipartisanship (again!).

The Obama Administration has announced that 9.11 defendants will be tried in federal court rather than the Guantánamo military commissions -- and I must say that folks who fear that the 9.11 defendants might go free on "technicalities" show a tremendous lack of faith in the American justice system. Not to mention that said "technicalities" would more likely be due to Bush Mobb incompetence than that of Mr. Obama. Not to mention that, if all we wanted from anything were "guilty" verdicts, we'd be trying traffic tickets in military courts. Anyway, the Obama Administration won't be trying other detainees in the federal court system, so the ACLU helps you call for federal court cases for all detainees. We're either good enough to be both safe and free, or we're not. I know which side right-wingers come down on. I also know they come down on the wrong side.

Meanwhile, both Planned Parenthood and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State help you oppose the Stupak Amendment to the recent House-passed health care bill, which restricts federal support for abortion more than ever before. The Stupak Amendment doesn't just prevent the "public option" from covering abortion; it also prevents any health care entity that participates in the federal exchange from covering abortion, which, last I looked, was still legal. The net result? Millions of women who now have abortion coverage will lose it. If folks want to prevent women from having abortions, they need to make abortion illegal, period, end of story. They will fail in doing that in the short run, since the vast majority of Americans are now pro-choice. But you don't just throw random roadblocks in front of a woman's right to a legal medical procedure. Not if you respect the law, anyway.

Finally, S. 1789 would equalize crack and powder cocaine sentences; Families Against Mandatory Minimums helps you tell your Senators to support the bill. Also, you may be interested to know that Congress has required a review of mandatory minimum sentences as part of the recently-passed Defense Appropriations bill. I'm not surprised to see a fairly decent piece on mandatory minimums in the Wall Street Journal -- the Journal is fairly right-wing, economically, but many folks who are right-wing economically are fairly libertarian about criminal justice matters. I see another opportunity for real bipartisanship!

surprise, pimps! It's quick-action Saturday!

Public Citizen will hold a protest rally in Washington, D.C., this Monday, November 16, at noon, in front of Goldman Sachs's office on 101 Constitution Ave NW (close to Union Station). If you can make it, let Public Citizen know here; if not, you can still use this action tool supporting H.R. 3126, which would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, among other fine aims. The banksters are spending millions lobbying against any attempts to regulate them. You'd think they'd want to spend millions, you know, hiring people to help them undo the damage they've done. But no. The banksters don't think like you and I. They're bold, you know. They're doing "God's work," after all.

foreign policy Friday, plus the new Paul on the block.

Mr. Obama wants to close Guantánamo, but many members of Congress have a not-in-my-backyard attitude toward relocating detainees -- even though federal prisons already hold convicted terrorists without incident, and even though the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees aren't terrorists. So Common Cause provides an open letter to Congress supporting the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detainee center, which they rightly say the world associates with torture and tyranny. No, tyranny is not too strong a word for what's happened there. It's not too strong a word for what's happening at the Bagram holding facility, either, which threatens to become the new Guantánamo under Mr. Obama. When the "Close Bagram" alerts start arriving in my inbox, you'll see them here.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Obama takes his time figuring out what to do in Afghanistan, we can call him at 1.888.310.8637 and advise against escalating that conflict. My specific advice always goes like this: "get bin Laden, get out." A Bush-style "surge" will give America 20,000 to 40,000 soldiers' worth of breathing room, but we'd need many more than that to properly occupy a nation, and that's not the business we ought to be in. A more surgical application of soldiers/diplomats/intelligence agents would more likely produce the architect of 9.11. Now America's last reporter, Greg Palast, finds it inconceivable that a millionaire in need of dialysis is hiding out in the mountains of Pakistan. If so, that should make our exit that much quicker.

Finally, this Wall Street Journal blog piece interviews Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand "son of Ron" Paul. I'm pleased that Mr. Paul currently outpolls and outraises the Republican establishment candidate, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Greyson, but I'm less pleased that he, well, plays the game more than his father does. When Ron Paul opens his mouth, I know he's telling the truth as best he understands it regardless of the political consequences -- even when I don't agree with him, which is often. But when Rand Paul tells us that he sees similarities between his race against Mr. Greyson and Marco Rubio's "insurgent" campaign against the "established moderate" Charlie Crist, he lies three times -- first by suggesting that Mr. Rubio is a "conservative" and not a reactionary, second by suggesting that the not-terribly-moderate Mr. Crist is a moderate, and third by suggesting (though not stating) that even Mr. Greyson is some sort of moderate, though he's exactly the kind of boilerplate far-right-wing corporatist Republicans have been churning out all decade. His anti-war views are noticeably softer than his pop's, too. Maybe Rand Paul took his father's defeat in the 1984 Texas Republican Senate primary way too much to heart.

UPDATE. Spelling error corrected in paragraph 3. "Secoond" is not a word.

today's version of "I got nothin'."

I've had an unusually high number of outside commitments this week, so I apologize for the light posting. I plan to post an action-alert-with-penny-rant-tacked-on-at-the-end tomorrow, but it'll go up later in the afternoon than usual.

In the meantime, please patronize any of the excellent links I have on either side of this page. All of them will enrich you.

time and a word.

The House passed H.R. 3639, which froze credit card rates and sped up new protections for consumers to December 1, but now the Senate must act. I know why Democrats might avoid action -- Sen. Dodd (D-CT) has just introduced a massive financial regulation overhaul bill. But Republicans? They're so blindly corporatist they can't see the tips of their own noses. I can just hear Jim DeMint saying: why now? Because credit card companies have been jacking up rates, doubling minimum payments, and tacking on fees for actually paying balances off, all to beat the February deadline for implementation of new credit card reforms. That's why now. Anyway, the will of the Senate doesn't matter -- the will of the people matters. Consumers Union helps you make it so.

Meanwhile, the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 2460/S. 1152) allows workers to earn up to seven paid sick days per year (one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours of work, which can only begin to be used after 60 days on the job, per Sec. 5). The Family Medical Leave Act permits workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year, but the Healthy Families Act would help workers get paid days off for illness, care of a family member, childbirth or adoption, or recovery from sexual assault or domestic violence. Opponents no doubt wonder why, if so many businesses already offer paid sick leave (I get 12 paid sick days a year at my job), why bother? Well, to kick the butts of the businesses that don't, obviously -- like the food service industry, which doesn't give paid sick leave to four out of five workers. Nice job, guys. NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, helps you support the bill.

Finally, though the Obama administration has set modest goals of raising fuel efficiency standards to 34 mpg and lowering carbon dioxide emissions to an average of 250 grams per mile by 2016, the auto industry is fighting them tooth and nail. You'd never know the American auto industry just got bailed out, would you? Seriously, the chutzpah of corporations in this country is just astounding -- if most of us didn't have to work for corporations, we'd all be busting out the torches and pitchforks for them right now. Anyway, the EPA is accepting public comments about the rules, and Public Citizen helps you leave your comments. Which is preferable to busting out torches and pitchforks, of course. I sure do hope it never comes to that.

here, there, and everywhere.

In a not entirely surprising development, the uneasy truce between the democratically-elected-but-overthrown leader of Honduras, President Zelaya, and the usurper, General Micheletti, has fallen apart. Thus SOA Watch reminds us that Mr. Obama's phone number is 202.456.1111 (or 202.456.1414), and that State Secretary Clinton's number is 202.647.4000, and that we may leave messages with these individuals demanding that the U.S. government not recognize the illegitimate government of Honduras or the upcoming November 29 elections. Think about it: the usurpers have already attacked their own people. Do you think they'll conduct fair elections, now less than three weeks away? Hardly. You may also press for the reinstatement of Mr. Zelaya and punishment for those who have violated human rights.

In other news, House health care legislation (H.R. 3962) passed by a five-vote margin late Saturday evening, with one Republican (Joe Cao of Louisiana, exactly whom I expected) voting "yea" after the Democrats got their margin. H.R. 3962 passed with that awful Stupak amendment, but on balance it's a better bill than I thought: it still includes the individual mandate, but also mandates large employers to help provide insurance, and prevents health insurers from jacking up rates based on pre-existing conditions (or gender, I might add), which items a bill needs to have at the least if it's going to have an individual mandate. It also includes a not-particularly-robust public option. But the bill may one day achieve what single-payer could achieve more quickly -- if the Senate doesn't eviscerate it. Mr. Lieberman has already said he'll join a Republican filibuster against any bill with a public option "as a matter of conscience." Whose conscience, he doesn't say. Not the conscience of the people of Connecticut, I imagine -- which is the only "conscience" that should matter in his vote.

all in one day: the health care version.

The House debates their massive health care bill today -- which is unusual, since they normally have weekends off -- and hopes to vote by the end of the day. The bill they'll produce will be better than the one that passed the Senate Finance Committee. But they've done gone and angered up my blood. The House leadership apparently persuaded Rep. Weiner (D-NY) to withdraw his amendment, which would have essentially replaced the entire bill with a single-payer system like the one described in H.R. 676, but then permitted Rep. Stupak (D-MI) to proceed with an anti-abortion amendment. You can call your House Reps and oppose the Stupak amendment using the tools in the upper left-hand corner. And the People's Email Network provides a petition saying, simply: "pass Medicare for All, or pass nothing."

Am I a bad liberal for doing this? Hell no! What's my job as citizen again? To express my will -- not to express some watered-down version of my will that might make other people like me, and certainly not to go along with What's Best for Team Democrat. The Democrats are not my team. America is my team. And yes, I suppose the Democrats would risk losing their majorities in 2010 even if they did pass single-payer -- not because the people oppose it (because they don't, if every poll I've been reading for the last ten years is any indication), but because the corporations and their lackeys oppose it, and will spend tons of money lying about it, and thus help create an atmosphere where some other legislative mis-step will prove fatal. But at least then it would be worth it, because we'd have single-payer. And I maintain that the Democrats run a greater risk of losing both Houses if they pass this bill -- or, worse, if both Houses produce a compromise bill that they never vote upon because all their constituents know it's a pile of dung.

early in the morning.

OK, now I'm hearing that the House may vote either on H.R. 676, the single-payer health care bill, or the Weiner Amendment to the House leadership-approved health care bill that would essentially replace said bill with H.R. 676. Such a vote could happen literally any minute, so Public Citizen helps you tell your Rep to vote yes on this matter. Many Reps (mine included) have said they'd vote in favor of single-payer if it ever came to a vote; now's the time for them to keep their word. I'd follow up with a phone call, as well. Nothing like a little message force multiplication to keep the politicians on their toes.

Meanwhile, the Senate works on their version of ENDA, S. 1584, and some Senators are apparently making noises about broadening exemptions for religious organizations so they can discriminate against gays more. I'm willing to put up with the exemptions already in the House version of ENDA, because those exemptions conform with existing law -- only churches and non-profits would get those exemptions, because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act permits them. But now religious broadcasters are trying to get individual religious employers exempted as well, which would basically eviscerate the bill. Everyone's entitled to their own religious beliefs -- but not to an all-encompassing right to discriminate against people on the basis of said beliefs. I think opposition to this far-right lobbying effort merits a phone call to your Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has drafted a climate change action plan that calls for Pennsylvania to cut its emissions 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020. That's the biggest cut I've ever seen, and (so far) it doesn't involve any cap-and-trade games. I almost feel crass for mentioning this, but this effort would create a lot of jobs for people who can help houses, businesses, and transportation services meet the new limits. Of course, if the state doesn't hear from us, it could just pretend the plan never existed. But PennEnvironment helps you leave a comment so that, yeah, like, they'll have to listen. Or at least look bad if they don't listen.

time passes slowly.

I'm not interested in calling my Reps and Senators to support the House health care bill. It still contains the individual mandate, it still contains a not-particularly robust public option, and it doesn't even allow states to create their own single-payer plans if they like, a Dennis Kucinich brainchild that made it out of committee but, somehow, didn't make the final bill. But Brendan Skwire calls our attention to the Eshoo/Barton amendment in the House's health care bill dealing with biologics, or drugs made from living organisms. Those who use them swear by them -- or, should I say, those who can afford them swear by them -- but Eshoo/Barton gives corporations the right to tweak their biologic drugs in such infinitesimally small ways that far cheaper generics will never appear on the market. Reps. Waxman (D-CA) and Deal (R-GA) apparently had an amendment that would have permitted generics to penetrate the market more easily, but of course Mrs. Pelosi caved to the Blue Dogs and put the Eshoo/Barton amendment in. Because the Blue Dogs are all about fiscal responsibility, even when it costs more. I think the Eshoo/Barton amendment is a good thing to call your Reps about, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page. (In other news, that vote on the Weiner amendment? Not happening. This bill is a boatload of suck, and the Democrats will pay for it in 2010. The good news? Just as the remaining moderate Republicans in the House paid the price for the scarlet R in 2006 and 2008, the Democrats most likely to lose their House seats will be Blue Dogs.)

Meanwhile, behind every dark cloud there's another one: six law professors find too much ambiguity in the FCC's proposed net neutrality rule. The professors found the FCC's definition of "nondiscrimination" too narrow -- the FCC applies the term to an ISP trying to charge content providers for enhanced access, but not to ISPs trying to slow or block traffic. I guess you'd say the FCC applies "nondiscrimination" to positive discrimination but not negative discrimination, which can be just as bad. The professors also found the FCC's definition of "reasonable network management" to be, well, just about nonexistent -- the rule offers no guidance over whether, say, a Comcast can slow BitTorrent traffic at will, which FCC Chair Kevin Martin said they could not do in 2007. Is this another example of the Obama Administration wanting to hear from all sides? Fine; that's why we have public comments on executive branch rule-making. But if you don't define "reasonable network management," you might wind up letting corporations do it for you. And that would be bad.

don't stop 'til you get enough.

S. 1808, the Control Spending Now Act, would cut a lot of wasteful spending, chief among them the $244 billion in as-yet-unspent Bush bailout money. Senator Feingold's bill also targets earmark spending, corporate welfare, and big agribusiness subsidies. Chances are that, if you read the bill at thomas.loc.gov, you'll find something you don't agree with, but I think the aggregate effect of the bill is quite positive, even if it includes that annoying line-item veto section that the Supreme Court will almost certainly strike down (as they did a decade ago). I think S. 1808 merits a phone call to your Reps and Senators. None have stepped up to co-sponsor Mr. Feingold's bill, not even putative spending hawk John McCain. So give them a call. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama signed a bill last week including gays in hate-crimes legislation -- if we must have hate-crimes legislation (and reasonable people disagree about that), it ought to include gays -- and now the Gay and Lesbian Task Force reminds us that H.R. 2981, a.k.a. ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009, requires our support. Of course the right-wing "family" "values" crowd has their knickers in a twist over it -- the American Family Association, for instance, tells us that, if ENDA passes, a "Christian school...would not be allowed to reject a homosexual" who applied for a particular job. That's a lie -- under ENDA, an employer would be unable to reject a homosexual just because they're homosexual, and ENDA doesn't even establish an affirmative action program for gays. That's your "Christian" right-wing: always thinking you're stupid. I bet on you being smart.

Finally, Mr. Obama has just done something we thought he wouldn't do -- nominate an industry lobbyist to head a federal agency. If Mr. Obama gets his way, Anne Ferro would head the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates truck safety. Granted, we're in November before we're hearing about the kind of thing Mr. Bush did all the time, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. Ms. Ferro lobbied in favor of Bush rules that would have increased the number of hours truckers could drive without a break. Ever met a truck driver? I've met dozens (I used to unload trucks in college), and they're among the most overworked people on Earth. They don't need to be spending even more time on the road; they need to be paid better for the work they do. Letting them work more hours, putting them and other drivers on the road at an unacceptably high risk -- what a typical Bush solution to a problem. Public Citizen provides the contact tool.

UPDATE. Argh! I've fixed the link in the 3rd paragraph so that it works.

one nation under a groove.

Weren't we just hoping the House would put together a bill restraining PATRIOT Act excesses? Along comes H.R. 3845, the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009, which would reform the National Security Letters and library records search provisions and would also require the government to go through a court when it wants a national security gag order. However, the bill does not contain protections for charities that do humanitarian work in strife-torn lands. The ACLU helps you ask the House for that protection. The House Judiciary Committee will begin hearings on PATRIOT Act reauthorization tomorrow, so let's get crack-a-lackin'.

Public Citizen (the source of yesterday's health care action alert, as I should have mentioned) informs me that we're doing a good job putting pressure on our Reps to demand a vote on the Weiner amendment to the health care bill -- which would essentially replace the health care bill with H.R. 676, the single-payer bill. Now Public Citizen urges you to call Speaker Pelosi herself, at 202.225.0100 (though you can also use the number I found at her website yesterday), and demand a vote on the Weiner amendment. The amendment, if passed by both houses and signed by the President, would eliminate the private health insurance industry. Some people say that like it's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. Like Rep. Weiner, I wonder: what service does the private health insurance industry provide, other than converting care for others into profit for themselves?

Apparently the Senate did not vote last week on H.R. 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009. I don't know what's holding them up this time. I do know that this economy, now widely presumed by the chattering class to be "recovering," still hemorrhages over half a million jobs a month. NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby (I may not stop), helps you tell your Senators to support extending unemployment benefits. It's not like the unemployed can just go get another job or something. Hello, Senators? No one's hiring..

H.R. 1147, the Local Community Radio Act, sailed through a House subcommittee and a House committee; now it deserves a full vote in the House. The Local Community Radio Act -- which, all together now, enjoys actual bipartisan support -- would enable the creation of hundreds of new, small, independent low-power FM radio stations, a nice alternative to the 80-song playlists we put up with from every big radio station we encounter. The big radio stations also don't serve communities that well -- they only run news in the mornings, and they banish their public interest broadcasting to an early Sunday-morning ghetto. So Free Press helps you contact your Reps and Senators with the number one reason you support low-power FM stations. I've given you three reasons, but of course you've got others. One of those might even be "I'm dissatisfied with the amount/quality of religious programming I get from big radio stations."

Finally, today is Election Day, one of the holiest days on the "Thieves in the Temple" calendar, so even though it's an off-year, go out and vote. Virginia and New Jersey will elect governors today, and New York Congressional district 23 will elect either a Democratic or Conservative Party House Rep today (the Republican dropped out over the weekend and, despite what you may have heard from Fox News, she then endorsed the Democrat). And in my lovely vale, we'll elect a new District Attorney. So, if anyone has any problems voting today -- said problems may include, but are not limited to, finding the polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues -- or if anyone witnesses anyone having these or any other problems, the toll-free number for you to call is, as always, 1.866.OUR.VOTE -- or if, like me, mnemonic devices such as "OUR VOTE" actually slow you down considerably when you're dialing, 1.866.687.8683.

tempus fugit.

Rep. Weiner (D-NY) wants to offer an amendment to the current House health care reform bill that would essentially replace it with H.R. 676, the single-payer bill. Of course, House leaders decide which amendments get votes and which don't, and Nancy Pelosi seems to have an animus toward single-payer for some reason -- so we need to call our Reps right away and demand a vote. The Capitol switchboard number is 202.224.3121; you may also use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page. While you're at it, you may as well call Mrs. Pelosi herself at 202.225.4965 and ask her to submit H.R. 676 to the Congressional Budget Office for an evaluation of its cost. I bet it costs less than the House's ineffectual bill, which in turn cost less than the Senate's even more ineffectual bill. Don't take "because the bill won't pass" as an answer. If the people find out how much it'll save while providing better services than we get from the HMOs now, then Congressfolk will have to vote against the people's will.

Meanwhile, the current House bill does ensure full access to reproductive health care services for women, and Planned Parenthood helps you ensure that whatever comes out of Congress continues to do so. You can amend the contact tool to reflect your preference for single-payer health care, especially in paragraph one. And if the Vitters and DeMints of the world really want to deny women access to birth control and abortion, then they ought to work to make birth control and abortion illegal, rather than forcing the law to discriminate against more than half the population. That's all I've got to say about that.

Finally, the New York Times reported that the legitimate and illegitimate governments of Honduras have agreed to let the democratically-elected Mr. Zelaya finish out his term. At least that's impression you gather from its lede. Then there's this nugget, buried down in paragraph 13: "Some significant obstacles remain, not least of which is the approval of the nation’s Congress, which voted overwhelmingly to strip Mr. Zelaya of power four months ago and now has to decide whether to reinstate him." Well, that's hopeful! And then, in paragraph 18, Mr. Micheletti (the usurper) apparently thinks the accord with Mr. Zelaya will create a "unity government." One hopes that, with world opinion unified against the Micheletti "government," Honduras's Congress will do the right thing and reinstate Mr. Zelaya. But hope is exactly what it is. It's not exactly a contract.

unemployment benefits extension, plus credit card reform acceleration.

A while back, we talked about S.1699, which would have extended unemployment benefits to the states that didn't already have their unemployment benefits extended, but (according to an alert commenter) that bill got held up by Sens. Kyl (R-AZ) and Hatch (R-UT), under the pretext that they needed more time to study it blah blah blah. Seems like all Jon Kyl's good for is holding up good bills. But the Democratic Senate leadership brought H.R. 3548 -- which would extend unemployment benefits another 14 weeks for workers in all 50 states, and add another six weeks of benefits for workers in states with unemployment rates above 8.5% -- to a cloture vote instead, and that bill passed its cloture vote and will proceed to a full Senate vote soon. We've already delayed unemployment benefit extension too long. If we're going to let corporations make all our decisions for us, if we're going to let them fire workers willy-nilly for their own "survival," then extending unemployment benefits is the very least we can do. I said least, Senator Kyl, OK? Anyway, NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, provides the contact tool.

Meanwhile, Congress's massive-but-not-quite-massive-enough credit card reform legislation will take effect in February, and as you might guess, credit card corporations have been jacking up rates and fees and minimum payments like there's no tomorrow. But H.R. 3639 would move credit card reform's kick-in date for the biggest credit-card issuers up to December 1, so that you might get some relief during the holidays. H.R. 3639 should get a House vote soon; Consumers Union provides the contact tool. Said contact tool also argues for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which of course we ought to take every opportunity to support, since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opponents are spending millions of dollars to defeat it, when they could be spending millions of dollars hiring people to defend the rights of small businesses. Which would, you know, create jobs.

the return of Quotestamp! (Guest-starring the Italics Hammer and the Hyphenator.)

At last, a climate change action tool I can get behind, and of course it's from the People's Email Network. No cap-and-trade, no giving away of emissions "permits," just a simple mandate to cap CO2 levels at 350 ppm, where it was about 20 years ago (vs. the 387 ppm we now have). Only a few people on Earth don't "believe in" global warming, but you don't have to be a scientist to reject their "skepticism," you just have to follow the money. Who "benefits" from global warming "alarmism"? According to global warming "skeptics," "radical" environmentalist organizations benefit. While global warming might help, say, the Sierra Club's fundraising efforts, it hardly makes them rich. Now who benefits from global warming "skepticism"? Large corporations that pollute a lot and stand to lose a lot of money if they're forced to pollute less -- in other words, people with actual money and actual power. In the follow-the-money game, the biggest pile of money always loses. Hell, the biggest pile of money has to lose somewhere.

Speaking of the environment, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar surprises (in a good way) by halting new claim-staking on one million acres of land around Grand Canyon National Park, and the Department of the Interior will now take public comments on whether he should extend that moratorium 20 more years. Environment Colorado helps you submit said comments. This will wind up being a long fight, though -- the 1872 Mining Law, a President Grant production, mandates that hardrock metal mining concerns always take precedence over environmental/local community impact concerns. That law got passed some 30-odd years before Teddy Roosevelt made conservation popular. The contact tool Environment Colorado provides also addresses the 1872 Mining Law, but you may want to contact your own Reps and Senators about it, too. They'll never see it coming.

penny rants for Monday, October 26, 2009: special "everything that sucked last week still sucks!" edition.

In the midst of Goldman-Sachs's huge profits and huge bonuses after being bailed out by taxpayers, what does its international Vice Chair have to say? "Thank you, taxpayers, for bailing us out of the mess we made, and we will gladly accept restrictions on executive pay because we really don't deserve these absurdly high salaries"? Well, not exactly: he suggests we must "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all." By "all" I guess he means "all my friends." I'm actually a bit more disturbed by his statement that we ought to look at "the medium-term common good, not the short-term common good" -- Lord Griffiths apparently has nothing to say about the long-term common good, which cracking down on excessive executive pay surely serves. And finally, sensing his audience slipping away from him, he takes the world's economy hostage: if you crack down on our bonuses, the banks will all move to Switzerland! Then you'll be sorry. I don't think Switzerland, famously neutral during WWII and famously father of the "unnumbered Swiss bank account," could take the PR hit.

Just as a public service, FAIR reminds us that Rush Limbaugh, who showed interest in buying the St. Louis Rams earlier this month before numerous NFL players and owners suggested they'd look unkindly upon his long history of making racist remarks, does in fact have a long history of making racist remarks, contrary to what some right-wing commentators have said lately. Said commentators no doubt presume that "a lengthy list of racist remarks made by Rush Limbaugh" does not sit permanently at the front of your mind, and thus with enough yelling and shouting, they might get to the point where they can zing you with see? See? You couldn't name even one racist thing he said! Or, alternately, aside from the Donovan McNabb thing, you couldn't name even one racist thing he said! Or aside from the "take the bone out of your nose" thing and the Donovan McNabb thing -- OK, maybe it is easier to remember Mr. Limbaugh's record of shame than I'm inclined to think. Why, come to think of it, FAIR's list does not include that day in 1995 I heard Mr. Limbaugh discuss Rep. Major Owens (D-NY) with what I presume was supposed to be "jungle music" playing in the background. If you want to leave your own "Rush Limbaugh's Greatest Racist Moments" entry in the comments, go right ahead.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter says on CNN that all Presidential assassins were liberals, "assassin by assassin by assassin." Not unless you define "liberal" as "radical segregationist and separatist," which I think more accurately describes John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln), or as "charlatan lawyer and disgruntled office-seeker," which more accurately describes Charles Guiteau (Garfield). In other news, Leon Czoglosz (McKinley) was too crazy for the anarchists of his day, let alone the progressives, and if we could pin down Lee Harvey Oswald (Kennedy) as a Communist, that still wouldn't make him a liberal, unless liberalism equals totalitarianism and/or state ownership of private property. But I guess, for Ms. Coulter, "liberal" means whatever she wants it to mean. I wonder what she makes of Gen. Butler's refusal to lead a right-wing coup against FDR. Actually, I don't. Neither does she, I'm pretty sure.

Finally, in an item of local interest, Philadelphia-area business leaders extoll the leadership skills of Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. His desperate pitching changes in NLCS Game 2 aside, I think Mr. Manuel is actually a pretty good manager, but he hardly needs an endorsement like this: "The closest analogy in business management to what he's done might be what happens on Wall Street." "What happens on Wall Street" these days is clearly not nearly as well-managed as what happens on the Phillies, who won the World Series in 2008 and are going back this year. In other news, the comments are, for once, well-informed and hilarious -- believe me, you don't see that in the sports pages that often.

an alert about health care, and, in addition, an alert about health care.

Forget Obamacare -- forcing people to buy into the corporate health insurance system, even with the vague hope of a public option or a "trigger" thereto somewhere down the line, is a scam, the kind of scam that makes me doubt either Mr. Obama's courage or his good intentions. Single-payer will have to start at the state level, and perhaps not coincidentally, Pennsylvania state Rep. Manderino (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery) and state Sen. Ferlo (D-Pittsburgh) have introduced single-payer bills in their respective houses. These bills are H.B. 1600 and S.B. 400, respectively. The bills would fund health care mainly through a 3% tax on individuals, a 10% payroll tax on employers, existing Medicaid/Medicare funds, and tobacco settlement funds. Now I think the income and payroll tax additions could be progressive, and I'm planning to tell my Reps and Senators so; Pennsylvania residents can do the same using contact information that may be found here. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen still helps you defend against medical malpractice "reform," and advocate for real health care reform. For extra Anger Power, you might read this entry from Public Citizen's blog telling stories about folks whose medical malpractice claims were most emphatically not "frivolous." Only two anecdotes, you say, to prove that point? Well, that's one more anecdote than most tort "reform" proponents will give you at any given moment -- and their anecdotes, in my experience, don't actually prove their point (i.e. they don't describe actual miscarriages of justice, but suggest that people shouldn't have to go through the trouble of fighting unjust lawsuits, which, to me, is the price of living in a democracy). Plus most lawsuits get filed by corporations, not people, or even large groups of people. Yet the tort "reform" advocates generally leave corporations untouched. It's like that's the idea or something.

bring the noise!

Mr. Obama gives me hope sometimes -- like when he took on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "remember the neighborhood butcher" ads, which imply that a Consumer Financial Protection Agency would adversely affect small businesses. "I don't know how many of your butchers are offering financial services," Mr. Obama told the press -- and no, an informal line of credit isn't the same as a derivative. Now Mr. Obama does have this habit of making nice noises and then coming up with reasons not to deliver, but then this isn't really about him -- it's about us, making the noise we need to make. PennPIRG helps us bring that noise.

Meanwhile, in case you've missed any of the pro-net neutrality action alerts I've been passing along here, Common Cause provides another one. The big telecoms have geared up to fight any and all efforts like H.R. 3458, and guess who's their willing pimp? Why, that "populist," Glenn Beck -- he of course thinks Net Neutrality is "Marxist." I shouldn't let pass that Mr. Beck's guest hack implies that the Christian Coalition is stupid for agreeing with the Free Press -- he did call Free Press's argument a "scare story," after all. Are Republican corporatists really afraid they'll lose their Christian allies? We can only hope! A politically independent Christian right would be far more valuable to democracy than the Christian right currently tethered to the corporatists who do far more to ruin their children's morals than any liberal does.

it came from the Senate Finance Committee! And other atrocities.

CREDO also provides a pro-net neutrality contact tool. Their email missive puts it quite succinctly: "Who do you want to decide which websites you can visit or what Internet content you can access -- you or a big telecom company?...Net Neutrality is the principle that Internet users, not Internet service providers, should be in control." The FCC prepares to propose new net neutrality rules this week, but the big telecoms are pretty mad about all that. We talked about an AT&T astroturfing effort yesterday, but the big telecoms have been attacking on more traditional fronts as well: an incredible 72 House Democrats sent a letter to the FCC opposing net neutrality rules, and guess what: all but two received contributions from big telecoms this year. It doesn't matter. They may have the money, but we have the will. Rep. Polis (D-CO) could tell you that.

Meanwhile, the health care "reform" bill that came from the Senate Finance Committee includes a provision mandating document requirements and database checks before anyone can receive subsidies or participate in health care exchanges. Supposedly that requirement would keep undocumented immigrants from receiving health care -- but surely you realize that an undocumented immigrant would want to avoid advertising their presence in the United States by getting health care. You may also know that the sort of "authentication" documents the provision requires, like a photo ID, aren't standardized across the country, so a lot of people (perhaps not coincidentally, poor people) don't have them. Make no mistake, this isn't a "solution" to a "problem" -- like "rescission," this provision just keeps people from getting health care, since, you know, health care is a burden on health insurers' profits. The ACLU helps you oppose this provision.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County) is at it again, calling Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans "traitors" and "Benedict Arnolds" for advocating for climate change legislation. I'm not much into demanding apologies from people -- generally, I think we apologize too readily and not very sincerely -- but I get so, so tired of folks who think everyone who disagrees with them is a "traitor." Here's the relevant section from Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." See the part about "disagreeing with Daryl Metcalfe"? Me neither. So Keystone Progress helps you hand out the beatdowns. And, ah, good citizens of Butler County? Could you unseat this man in 2010, please? Send a Libertarian to the House if you have to.

him, Al Franken (again)! Plus airport nudity and AT&T astroturfing.

Sen. Franken's anti-discrimination/anti-forced arbitration Defense Appropriations amendment did pass the Senate resoundingly, but now the House and Senate go into conference, and the Senate is actually thinking of weakening the amendment. You know, because it's in conference, the other place where good bills go to die, and also because they think no one's watching. Public Citizen helps you let them know we're watching. They recommend you call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid first, and your own Senators second. The Franken Amendment's number is S.A. 2588, and the Appropriations bill's number is H.R. 3326. They don't get to use "the amendment wasn't in the House bill, so we had to compromise" as an excuse. If it passed the Senate by a 68-30 margin, chances are it would've passed the House with an even bigger margin.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now has machines that enable screeners to see under your clothes. That wart you were thinking of getting burned off your rearend? Better get it done before you get on that plane! The TSA originally claimed it would only use the machines for secondary screening (presumably for folks who set off a metal detector), but has apparently changed its mind, and now plans to use them in place of metal detectors. The House has already overwhelmingly passed legislation reining in this practice, and the legislation was the brainchild of Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, meaning it presumably has the blessing of the far right. So what's the Senate waiting for? The ACLU helps you demand that the Senate protect our privacy better during airport screening.

Free Press still provides a petition demanding that Congress codify network neutrality provisions, thereby preventing some corporation from telling you what you'll see on your internet. The occasion of this reminder? This item, describing a missive from a Senior Vice President at AT&T to all of his U.S.-based managers suggesting that they send anti-net neutrality comments to the FCC. The VP in question tells his managers to "use (their) personal accounts," presumably so they won't be identified as AT&T employees. The VP's missive is here; he provides "talking points" for his side. I already laughed out loud at number one -- China (China!) gives its wireless cell phone users more choices than the U.S. does. Did I mention it's China? A totalitarian state? Giving its consumers more choices than the U.S.? China? The talking points don't get any better from there -- number two decodes into "all regulation is anti-competition" when we know better, number three decodes into "all regulation is anti-network management" when we know better, number four decodes into "net neutrality will kill people" when we know better, and number five decodes into "wah! We hate Google! Wah!"

when governments go bad.

The Senate Judiciary Committee moved the weak Leahy PATRIOT reform bill forward last week, instead of the superior Feingold JUSTICE bill -- but the House has not acted on PATRIOT Act reform at all, so the ACLU helps you urge your Rep to introduce the JUSTICE Act or something like it. The House would still have to introduce such a bill, move it through committee to a full House vote, pass it, and then conference with the Senate to produce a final bill -- but that's four opportunities to make your will known to your Reps and Senators. They'll need to hear from us at every point, or else they'll do what they want, which is cave to the fearmongerers. Who may now count Barack Obama among their number -- now that he's President, he won't want to give up power that easily.

Meanwhile, the illegitimate Honduran coup government has hired a Washington, D.C.-based PR firm (Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates) to paint a smiley face on their regime -- which, for those of you counting at home, has kicked out a democratically-elected leader, cracked down on protestors sympathetic to said leader, and earned the enmity of just about the entire planet. SOA Watch (among others) will protest outside Chlopak et al's offices today at 12.30 pm, and also helps you urge Chlopak et al to reconsider its decision. You may also call them at 202.289.5900. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said "there are lies, damn lies, statistics, and public relations"? No? Well, he might have done, if he were alive today.

penny rants for Friday, October 16, 2009.

Here's a shocker: Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell won't marry an interracial couple. Out of concern for the children, you understand. And he has "piles and piles of black friends" -- that's right, piles, you know, like they're dirt or bricks or something. He even lets them use his bathroom, and in that he's been surpassed by Charles Pickering, who actually had them over for dinner. And anyway, "I've made some mistakes, but you have, too," so stop giving him guff. I wonder if Keith Bardwell believes, as the early 20th century anthropologist Franz Boas believed, that interracial marriage will ultimately end racism. If so, I guess he's less sanguine about the prospect than Mr. Boas was.

And now that the stock market has hit 10,000 again, Neil Cavuto celebrates "the Bush recovery." Yes, you read that right: such is the awesome power of George W. Bush that he can fix the economy nine months out of office. Mr. Cavuto poses it as a question, though of course it's not really a question, and sure enough he only talks to one analyst, who sure enough agrees that Mr. Bush should get some of the credit for the recovery. (I guess, since Mr. LaCamp doesn't think Mr. Bush deserves all the credit, Mr. Cavuto is being fair and balanced.) If he wanted, Mr. Cavuto could have found conservative analysts who would decry the unsustainable federal deficit, which is nearly all George W. Bush's fault. Or he could have found conservative analysts who would decry Mr. Bernanke's unsustainable next-to-zero interest rates, which is also nearly all George W. Bush's fault. But you can't praise your Lord and Savior that way, can you?

Finally, Glenn Beck hits another crying jag wishing for a simpler time in America, when we were all united. Then he shows us that Mean Joe Greene Coke ad and that Kodak ad, which do indeed come from a time when we were united -- united in our belief that government should serve its people and not mammon, united in our belief that the rich should help society provide opportunities for everyone, united in our belief that corporations should serve the cause of progress, all beliefs folks like Glenn Beck have spent their entire professional careers attacking. It gets better: he compares America to a teenager staying out too late at a party, and says it would be better if, like said teenager, we would just tell the truth to our parents about it, I'm guessing, since I can't tell who the "parents" represent in that analogy. And we're already "staying at home on a Saturday night because we're financially grounded," though Mr. Beck isn't, since Fox News pays him very well to spew nonsense. And, at the risk of piling on, I don't need Vicks Vaporub to move myself to tears -- the end of King Lear does that quite nicely, thank you. Yes, that's because I feel and he doesn't.

what in Sam Hill's goin' on?

Folks on the right like to accuse Mr. Obama of breaking a lot of promises he never made in the first place, but here's (another) actual promise he actually hasn't delivered on: he hasn't rescinded Bush Mobb-era rules allowing religious organizations receiving federal funds to discriminate in their hiring practices. What a conundrum, huh? If some Episcopalian charity can't just not hire Jews, what's the world coming to? One more time: if you receive federal funds, you follow federal rules, and if the federal rules say "don't discriminate," then you can't discriminate. You're not special if you're a religious organization. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State help you communicate your will to the President.

Planned Parenthood helps you call your Senators to demand that women don't get left out of health care reform. In your call, you'll specifically ask that your Senators "vote against any amendment that undermines women's access to comprehensive health care from the provider of their choice." You may want to add that if the amendment is offered by a Senator named Vitter or DeMint, that's a good sign they should vote against it. "Comprehensive" includes birth control and abortion, as far as I'm concerned, since they're both legal. My Libertarian friends like to tell me that health care providers should have the choice of whether or not to provide these services, but a) free markets should focus on consumer choice, not the provider's choice and b) try telling that to folks who live in rural areas and won't have a choice in any real sense.

penny rants for Wednesday, October 14, 2009.

At last, someone interrogates Howard Kurtz the right way! Seriously, I wish I could hug the Fairfax County, VA writer for his/her absolutely perfect query in re the Post editorial board's wish that Neda of Iran had won the Nobel Peace Prize instead of Mr. Obama. (Long story short: you can't win a Nobel Prize posthumously, and her martyrdom happened after the deadline for submissions.) The writer's question sticks to the facts and doesn't leave Mr. Kurtz an escape hatch, and the resulting reply is one of the single worst paragraphs I have ever read. No, Howard, you can't just invent an alternate universe where Martin Luther King Jr. dies in the early '60s just to cushion your concession of a point. And no, Howard, the Post editorial didn't say Neda of Iran was "a symbol" of someone who should have won the Prize, but wished she'd won the Prize. And no, Howard, editorials have no smaller obligation to get their facts straight than straight news articles just because they express an opinion. As someone who would prefer a world that would prize a Neda more than an Obama, I can say this: Howard Kurtz's stupidity is officially unbearable.

Meanwhile, I am once again compelled to feel bad for Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Mr. Graham was Newt Gingrich's emissary to the press during Mr. Clinton's impeachment hearings, but since becoming Senator, Mr. Graham has, on more than one occasion, acted as if being a Senator was a really important job -- he was the first Senator to condemn the abuses at Abu Ghraib, you may recall. Now the far-right hates his guts -- they call him "RINO," "douchebag," "traitor" (betraying a lack of familiarity with Article III, Section 3), and, in one particularly egregious explosion, a "wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy." As a famous philosopher once said: so much for civility! Keep in mind that Mr. Graham has reached out to John Kerry on climate legislation that Big Energy has already thoroughly eviscerated -- which makes me wonder if folks like Angry White Dude are in on the con.

Finally, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) voted in favor of the Finance Committee's inadequate health care reform bill yesterday, even though the Republican Senate leadership threatened to deny her a Committee chair for which she's in line. (She'd only be ranking member of that Committee for the foreseeable future, but never mind.) Stunningly, reasonable political observers seem to wish Democrats were more like the Republicans in this matter. But a Senator's loyalty doesn't belong to his or her party's leadership, it belongs to his or her constituents. The constituents speak, and the Senator acts on their will; that's how it's supposed to work. I don't mean to assert that Evan Bayh, for example, really votes his constituents' will when he doesn't vote Harry Reid's will -- in fact, I suspect he more likely votes his corporate donors' will whether he's bucking leadership or not. But we have to stop viewing politics as football or war if we're going to make things any better. And when I say "we," I mean you, and I, and all the people we know, and all the people we can reach. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Democracy is us.

cloudbusting.

The People's Email Network, in an effort to "confront the dangerous trend toward violent extremism in America," has joined with Velvet Revolution to nail a seven-point petition to the government's door. In signing it, you'd demand that both the Justice Department and Congress investigate violent extremism within the U.S. and media incitement to said violence. I don't believe Bill O'Reilly has blood on his hands for George Tiller's murder (or that Glenn Beck has blood on his hands for whatever), so I worry a little about this kind of effort becoming Our Very Own Witchhunt. But the PEN petition doesn't call for anything unlawful, and calls, in fact, for quite a few good things -- like investigating media violations of antitrust laws, rolling back the loosening of media consolidation restrictions, and scrutinizing FCC broadcast licenses -- which I'd support under any circumstance.

Meanwhile, as the big financial kingpins prepare for another round of bad publicity, NETWORK, the (wait for it!) National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, calls for the reallocation of a mere $1 billion of TARP funding toward the National Housing Trust Fund. The relevant legislation is H.R. 3766, the Main Street TARP Act, and S. 1731, the Preserving Homes and Communities Act. Neither title contorts the language for the sake of a clever acronym, and H.R. 3766 also reallocates $2 billion of TARP money to the Emergency Homeowners' Relief Fund, while S. 1731 allocates a little over $6 billion in grants to states to assist homeowners currently in default on their mortgages. None of this is as good as mortgage cramdown, but it's good enough to support. NETWORK provides a contact tool for H.R. 3766 here, and another one for S. 1731 here.

You may have been one of the 23,000 good folks who signed a petition protesting worker conditions at the Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, which produces about a tenth of America's table grapes, but American Rights at Work now helps you post a comment on the Nature's Partner website protesting said working conditions. (Nature's Partner uses Giumarra grapes, in addition to dozens of other foodstuffs by other producers.) You might tell Nature's Partner that Giumarra forces workers to fill dangerously high quotas while picking in 100-degree-plus heat without adequate water or shade or breaks, plus they give unpaid "time-outs" for workers who protest the quotas, the heat, the lack of water, the lack of shade, or the lack of breaks. I'd say bullying and interfering in union elections also qualifies as a "bad working condition" -- you know, since it's a condition, and the workers are working. The only good thing about corporate "partnerships"? The bad PR can spread more easily.

Finally, Brendan Skwire suggests that the locally-owned Philadelphia media ignored one pro-health care reform stunt because reporters were "pulled off the story to cover Phillies fans at local bars." You're free to doubt the veracity of that particular story in the absence of further evidence, but the rest of the article is pretty damning anyway. See the Inquirer bury its coverage of HCAN's City Hall rally in its business section, where all stories critical of business go to die! See the Inquirer business reporter call numerous local pro-reform events "staged," then explain why her paper devoted such extensive coverage to the multitudinous "staged" events coming from the right! One more time: newspapers aren't dying because of new technologies. They're dying because they suck at what they do. And they suck at what they do because their corporate owners redistribute all their papers' income upward.

UPDATE. Corrected one word in paragraph four, sentence two above, so that paragraph four, sentence two above would make some sense. I used to know how to edit.

long-distance runaround.

H.R. 3126, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009, would, as its title suggests, establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that could prevent the next economic Armageddon. And yet, in the midst of the current economic Armageddon, not everyone's on board with it: apparently Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) plans to introduce an amendment that would prevent states from passing stronger consumer protection laws than those of the federal government. Rep. Bean is a "Blue Dog," or "fiscally-conservative Democrat," but I continue to insist that conservatism means more than just giving big corporations whatever they want. And these are the same big corporations that just crashed-and-burned our economy, so maybe, for a little while, they should shut it. Public Citizen helps you hand out the beatdowns.

Meanwhile, I found last night's opening segment on The Daily Show especially rousing. Long story short, Jon Stewart rips CNN for fact-checking a Saturday Night Live skit and then fact-checking nothing else. That Mr. Stewart fact-checks more in that segment than CNN does is a credit to him -- and a shame to the rest of us. I sure do wish I had some of that old-timey a la carte cable packaging right now, so I wouldn't have to pay CNN for the privilege of watching The Daily Show. Of course, if we rallied in D.C., the media wouldn't cover it.

creeping up to the money god.

H.R. 1826/S. 752, the Fair Elections Now Act, would help get big corporate money out of federal elections. I've had my qualms about it in the past -- namely, that it'd be too easy for the big corporate guns to bundle hundred-dollar contributions -- but a $100 limit would be much better than a $2,300 limit. I'm far less worried about the voluntary nature of the public financing program described in the bill -- similar systems work quite well in Maine and Arizona, and a candidate who opts out of the public financing system would be fairly well-stigmatized by his/her publicly-financed opponents. H.R. 1826 now has 102 co-sponsors; Public Citizen helps you urge your Rep to join them.