Thieves in the Temple.

gold dust falling/here in action town!

The House of Representatives returns to work today. Normally we hurl boos and insults when the House comes back, but they still refuse to pass a FISA bill that would give Mr. Bush the big telecom immunity he so desperately wants, so we withhold the boos and insults for now. I don't believe they'd have done the right thing without our help, but that's how it's supposed to work. And they may continue to need our help. And we ought to continue to provide it.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed legislation last week to help poor folks with health insurance; now H.B. 2005 stands before the body. H.B. 2005 would prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. If you saw Sicko (as I finally did last week), you saw a woman denied coverage because the corporation decided a freakin' yeast infection was a "pre-existing condition." H.B. 2005 would also force insurers to spend at least 85% of premiums on actually delivering care, versus, say, advertising, or gilding the plumbing on the CEO's yacht. Needless to say I believe these are good ideas, and if you're a Pennsylvania resident, you can contact your Rep using this handy PIRG-provided contact tool.

Public Citizen asks that you support their call to "recycle" EPA head Stephen Johnson -- that is, to get him fired. I remember being vaguely satisfied when Tha Bush Mobb tapped Mr. Johnson to the post, because he'd been an EPA lifer, and thus, presumably, more sympathetic to his co-workers and immune to political pressure. Once again I underestimated Tha Bush Mobb's capacity to wreak havoc! In this very space we've been documenting the many ways Mr. Johnson has turned the EPA into the worst Bush Mobb alphabet agency. Lately he's denied Clean Air Act waivers for 17 states because they want to impose stricter environmental standards. Of course, he's argued that state standards create too much chaos and a good federal standard is best. And that, sadly, describes the state of conservatism these days -- its nominal adherents barely understand what the word means.

In other news, our friends at FreePress made the Washington Post front business page last Friday. I know Friday's a slow news day, but I also know the business pages rarely highlight folks who actually agitate for better media, as opposed to more lucrative media, so I'm still impressed. But objective as she tries to be, the author can't dampen her paper's pro-obscene wealth agenda entirely -- in paragraph 4, she says that FreePress "has generated buzz for its aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics online." Which "aggressive" and "controversial" tactics are these? She doesn't describe one until paragraph 29, and it doesn't prove her point. I would think Comcast's packing of sleepyheads at the Harvard hearing -- a tactic designed, after all, to keep the public out of a public hearing -- more adequately fits words like "aggressive" and "controversial." I could go on about paragraph 10, too, but I'll leave that to the social scientists for now.

the legend of John Henry's hammer.

Wasn't I just speculating on the number of civilian deaths in Iraq? Apparently, so was NPR, and the range they came up with in a March 15 report was, shall we say, a bit on the low side. "47,000 to 151,000," it said, "depending on the source" -- but not, apparently, depending on the full range of respectable sources. The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health came up with over 600,000 in 2006, and the British firm Opinion Research Business came up with an astounding 1.2 million in August 2007. Moreover, the NPR report doesn't even represent the full range of figures its apparent sources use -- the same New England Journal of Medicine report that gives a 151,000 figure also cited the 600,000 figure, and both the Iraq Body Count (47,000) and NEJM (151,000) figures come from June 2006. Perhaps not coincidentally, the first half of 2007 was pretty bloody in Iraq. This all smells of pro-Bush bias to me, and I don't excuse that just because fear of Mr. Bush most likely drives it. The above link contains NPR contact information.

H.R. 5577, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2008, would help good Americans protect themselves from chemical spills or, heaven forfend, a terrorist attack on chemical plants. The bill would end the Homeland Security Act's anti-terror exemptions for drinking water and wastewater plants, involve plant employees more in creating security plans, protect whistleblowers, and (here's the good part) protect state authority to establish stronger security standards. The bill also says it will require high-risk chemical facilities to use safer chemicals where technologically feasible and cost-effective, which is a bit willy-nilly for my taste, since lawmakers tend to let corporations define "cost-effective." But the rest is pretty good. Here's where to write your Congressfolk.

"Why not designate oil companies as public utilities?" So asks U.S. District Court Judge Ed Ludwig in the March 23 Albany Times Union. Judge Ludwig doesn't come out and say it, but a nationalized oil industry is probably our best shot at competing with Chinese, Brazilian, and Russian oil. The only roadblock, as far as I can see, is that the oil companies will contract with Blackwater USA (could Philip K. Dick have made that up?) and wage war on the U.S. government, which act would constitute treason under Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. But flinching before that possibility would be unworthy of a nation that waged a war to end slavery.

in the heart of the heart of the country.

The 4,000th U.S. soldier died in Iraq this week -- and that figure stands alongside the thousand-plus private contractors and the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of civilians who've died so Mr. Bush could funnel taxpayer money into the pockets of his crony corporations. Given the sharp drop in actual news coverage of Iraq in the "liberal" media -- which, remember, hates George W. Bush with a passion bordering on madness -- TrueMajority provides a letter-to-the-editor tool with which you may discuss, with your local newspaper, how you feel about this particular milestone. I bet you don't feel any better about it than I do.

Mr. Bush still plays games with the NAFTA trucking program that for some reason is so dear to him. Congress passed legislation specifically defunding Mr. Bush's attempt to let Mexican-based trucking companies use American roads without adhering to safety standards, but Mr. Bush has been playing semantics for some time now in letting the program continue. And as we well know, playing semantics is not something Mr. Bush does particularly well. Abusing the power of the executive branch is something Mr. Bush does particularly well, however, so we'll have to tell our Congressfolk, again, to limit Mr. Bush's efforts.

Amazingly, the Department of Justice sees nothing wrong with letting a proposed XM/Sirius Satellite Radio merger proceed. Problem is, of course, that they're the only two satellite radio providers on the market. If they merge, they'll be one. One! That makes a literal monopoly, which I thought was illegal. Anyway, it's not Justice's call to make -- it's the FCC's call to make. Will our FCC fail to at least look up "monopoly" in the freakin' dictionary? Not if we tell them.

Finally, what, er, extraordinary economic times lay ahead! What can we say about a land in which the federal government bails out the corporations that cause the financial mess but not the little guy who gets the shortest straw? Well, this AP report, though mainly about John McCain's stands on financial issues, runs down all the Presidential candidates' proposals for dealing with the crisis except, of course, for Ralph Nader's (which you may find here, at Mr. Nader's own site). As you might expect, Mr. McCain's verbal histrionics (doesn't like bailing out the "irresponsible," but of course Bear Stearns wasn't irresponsible!) are quite irritating -- and the last three paragraphs remind us why Mr. McCain maybe isn't the best fellow to talk about financial meltdowns -- but paragraph 7 reminds us that proposals coming out of the Clinton and Obama camps ain't all that, either. So much for all that awesome charisma power, or all that awesome experience power.

penny rants for the day of March 22, 2008.

The Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) backs down, granting Montana an extension on REAL ID implementation that it has not sought and will not use. Behold the awesome power of an actual Democrat who actually stands up for actual voters! And n.b. the chutzpah of DHS poobah Michael Chertoff in suggesting (in a letter to five Senators) that he just couldn't grant a REAL ID extension because he was just upholding the law! I mean, when has a Bush Mobber ever been picky about upholding the law? And surely he remembers (as I didn't) that REAL ID got attached to a must-pass Defense Appropriations bill in 2005 specifically so Congress wouldn't be able to debate it! In any case, Bruce Schneier discussed in early 2007 why REAL ID is a bad ID-ea. Long story short: any ID card can be forged, the documents upon which they're based are even easier to forge, and it's a lot easier for a bad-guy to hack into one streamlined, centralized database than any of a bajillion quirky, decentralized ones.

We have two more victories to celebrate today! Contrary to my expectations, the House has continued to stand up to Mr. Bush on warrantless wiretapping, sending the Senate a spying bill that not only denies Mr. Bush his coveted big telecom immunity, but denies him his basket warrants as well. Moreover, the House passed ethics legislation that would create an outside ethics board to investigate possible breaches by House members. The Senate still might kill the House spy bill, and the House ethics board isn't exactly independent since it permits the Speaker and the Minority Leader to appoint three members each. But I'm pleased enough with these developments that I'm willing to suspend my "don't get complacent" rule, at least for long enough to enjoy a good cup of hot tea.

spring is here.

H.R. 5626, the Protect Our Troops and Our Constitution Act, would bar funding for a) the building of permanent bases in Iraq and b) the implemention of the "Declaration of Principles" which Mr. Bush hopes would commit U.S. policy to his preferred course of action well after he leaves office. Last I looked, the President was Commander-in-Chief, not policy-maker-in-chief. And not for longer than he occupies the office, either. Council for a Livable World helps you communicate your will in this matter.

Dozens of Iraq/Afghanistan war vets gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier hearings, in which they testified to the atrocities they'd seen or participated in while fighting. How vast was the worldwide coverage! Er, except in America. Now we don't expect American media outlets to cover everything, but I'd question the judgment of a U.S. outlet putting coverage of the event itself in the metro section and a pro-war protest of the event itself in the A section -- which, coincidentally, is what the Washington Post did. TV news outlets, despite their "liberal" bias, largely ignored the event, but did make sure to cover the visits of Messrs. Cheney and McCain to Iraq. Because they're, like, rock stars or something. FAIR provides ways to contact your favorite "liberal" media.

H.R. 2452, the Raw Sewage Community Right-to-Know Act, would require sewage treatment plants to notify the public whenever a sewage overflow occurs. Overflow as in "overflows into the river or the lake or the sea." Sewage overflows are bad. They can make you sick. And you can't trust corporations to mean it when they tell you things are OK, because mainly they care about money. Express your support for this legislation here.

crackin' up.

CREDO provides a contact tool concerning China's recent crackdown in Tibet and what Congress could do about it. China has been oppressing Tibet for about half a century now, but China recently demanded that Tibetan activists turn themselves in to Chinese authorities by March 17, and began searching houses, making arbitrary arrests, and parading Tibetans in handcuffs through the streets before then. Tha Bush Mobb, that paragon of moral goodness, hasn't uttered a peep about it, though the putatively decadent nations of Europe have. Couldn't be because our economy is fairly dependent on China's, could it? Well, that's what courage is for.

Factcheck.org titles their latest missive "That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously." Not a lot of wiggle room there, eh? "We've noticed that chain e-mails," Lori Robertson writes, "particularly those about politics, have a lot of things in common: urgent and frightening messages; spelling errors; a tendency to blame mainstream media for not telling the real story; and false, misleading, utterly bogus, and completely off-base claims." Plus a bajillion exclamation points!!!!! after the really, really important claims. When I was young and brash, I used to laugh at folks' inability to pierce through their own emotional weaknesses when confronted with verifiable truth. But I've been shoveling a lot of dung these last few years, and I don't think it's funny any more.

Mr. You're on Fire Mr.

As you may have heard, the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is coming up, and tomorrow, March 19, MoveOn will be hosting vigils honoring the fallen and demanding a change in course. Here's how to find a vigil near you. The Iraq war has mostly disappeared from "liberal" media coverage, since the surge is "going so well," but that's a little like saying a dehydrated patient is doing fine after being given a cup of water. The war is still a bad idea, no matter what the "liberal" media thinks, no matter whether or not it's a bad idea for them.

Speaking of the "liberal" media, the New York Times's March 16 "Week in Review" section included pieces by "nine experts on military and foreign affairs" which purported "to reflect on their attitudes in the spring of 2003 and to comment on the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wished they had considered in the prewar debate." Sounds like someone's about to chow down on a crow sandwich, eh? Well, not quite -- not one of the nine "experts," all long-time war supporters, concluded that we should get out, which is awfully convenient. I mean, it's almost like the whole "what would you have done differently?" angle is some kind of scam designed to get pro-war folks to advertise their pro-warness a little more. The FAIR link above has contact information for those individuals who require a spanking.

Meanwhile, I'm damn tired of hearing about how Barack Obama should denounce or reject or do whatever to Jeremiah Wright. "Support" is not the same as "lock-step agreement." People being fairly complex, you will inevitably disagree with someone who supports you, or whom you support. Moreover, "support" requires, on occasion, the opposite of "lock-step agreement" -- on occasion, you need to disagree with someone in order to remain supportive. Of course, given the far right's compulsive equation of dissent with treason over the last six-plus years, and the "liberal" media's complicity in amplifying and repeating that equation, I guess it's easy to see how we all got confused.

penny rants for the day of March 11, 2008.

"Fewer Than One Percent of Estates are Taxed" says the headline of Citizens for Tax Justice's new study. It gets worse: with the threshold for inheritance taxation rising (now, only estates worth $2 million or more even have a shot at being taxed), fewer estates pay the tax every year. In New Jersey, for example, the number of estates subject to the inheritance tax dropped from 2,349 in 2000 to 739 in 2006, and nobody in Arizona paid the inheritance tax in 2006, which must make Jon Kyl very proud. I admit that wielding the Hammer of Truth at folks who whine about "the Death Tax" gets frustrating. At some point, I figure folks have to acknowledge that there are such things called facts and that the only debate thereafter is how significant said facts are. But with inheritance taxation, we're not even there, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

Factcheck expands its portfolio to court elections, and this "first installment of our Court Watch series" is a whopper: a fundraising letter from the challenger's campaign accuses the incumbent of being the "deciding vote" in the release of a sexual predator who was never released, and an outside group sympathetic to the challenger claims that the incumbent overturned a murder conviction despite overwhelming evidence, except that the evidence was far from overwhelming. Like I said, at some point, the existence of facts is important. Right-wingers seem to think like post-structuralist literary critics, just without the rigor.

Finally, my homey, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, responds at length after the Montana legislature unanimously refuses to join the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic)'s REAL (sic) ID (sic) plan (sic). Listen to all 4:21 of it, because it's hilarious as well as edifying. As an aside, I find it difficult to accuse NPR of "liberal bias" after hearing their reporter essentially craft questions straight from DHS propaganda, but at least they permitted Gov. Schweitzer to shoot it down without interrupting him too much. Maybe "letting your guests talk" is the new "liberal bias." Certainly none of that "letting your guests talk" madness happens on that fair-and-balanced Pravda TV.

I'm a believer believer believer/I'm a believer believer believer.

Make that the House was standing up to Mr. Bush on warrantless wiretapping. House Intelligence Committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) has suggested he'd be willing to grant big telecoms immunity in Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping scheme, now that he's had a chance to review more papers provided by Tha Bush Mobb. Because Tha Bush Mobb would never lie to a Democrat! Frankly, I think we ought to leave it up to the judges to determine whether the big telecoms broke the law; if they so happen to rule against the obvious truth, then at least our representatives went all in, which is their job. Tools for contacting your House Rep are in the upper left-hand corner; it's time to use them again.

The Department of Labor solicited comments on the Family Medical Leave Act back in 2006, and now they're proposing rule changes, most of which would hamper employees' ability to get the help the law gives them. Per the National Partnership for Women and Families, the Department of Labor's "reforms" would (among other things) make it more difficult to use personal/vacation time during FMLA (which the law allows), would allow employers to speak directly with an employee's health care provider (which permission could be coerced), and would allow employees to waive FMLA claims without legally-mandated review (which waiver, of course, could also be coerced). I know as well as anyone else that some folks treat FMLA as sixty extra days off per year, but I also know that managers can do more than they're doing to stop such abuse. There are P.I.s who specialize in FMLA fraud these days, after all. Anyway, the Department of Labor will accept comments until April 11; you may submit comments here, using Docket identifier ESA-2008-0001.

Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly must be in a tiz-izzy today with the speculation that Moses might have been completely high when God delivered the Ten Commandments to him. I can hear Bill O now: the nerve of these French, I mean, Israeli non-believers to, er, question others' beliefs! Of course, many world religions use hallucinogens as mediums and/or belief-enhancers, and visions may have other verifiable physiological explanations as well. But I care less that Paul might have had a seizure on the way to Damascus than about the good or harm he might have done as a result. And if Prof. Shanon's speculation is really the kind of thing that lays waste to your belief, I've gotta wonder if you were much of a believer to begin with. Certainly I've gotta wonder if you've ever enjoyed believing, which to me is kind of the point of believing.

drink the hatorade!

As noted last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reform bill (S. 2663) moves to the Senate this week. Public Citizen offers this tidbit: the bill reduces the maximum penalty for Act violations from $100 million to $10 million in most circumstances. When you write your Senator about the bill, you might want to mention that the bill ought to keep the stiffer penalty. You could call it going on the offensive, just like our Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush does. (But N.B.: the third paragraph of the contact tool misidentifies S. 2663 as S. 2045; you'll want to correct that.)

Public Citizen also provides a contact tool in support of $18 billion in renewable energy credits passed recently by the House as part of the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act. The Act takes handouts, er, subsidies to Big Oil and Big Gas and shifts them to renewable energy efforts. Maybe the Senate sees that and thinks that, since it doesn't also subsidize Big Coal, that it's not bipartisan enough. The fools! Renewable energy is about as bipartisan an issue as exists in America, as voters across the political spectrum agree that renewable energy is a good thing. See, those damn politicians think it's all about them, when really it's all about us.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists wants you! To call your Representative about environmental safeguards for ballast water. Come again? Well, if an oceanliner isn't carrying any cargo on a voyage, it needs to carry special tanks of water so the ship will stay balanced in the ocean. And what will you find in that water? The usual: plants, animals, microbes. And what happens when the ship doesn't need that water anymore? It dumps it wherever it stops, thereby introducing species of plants, animals, and microbes that the dumped-on ecosystem might not be able to handle. The contact tool above isn't an email tool, by the way; it's a phone script.

Finally, for California readers: the state's been talking for a long time about building a high-speed rail line that would connect the Bay Area to San Diego (and, of course, El Lay and points inbetween), but mainly it's just been talk. California residents are well-acquainted not only with local traffic problems (once described to me by a Bay Area resident, tongue-in-cheek, as a "paradise tax") but with commuting problems as well -- some folks do drive, like, three hours to and from work out there. CALPIRG suggests that a high-speed rail line would cut 92 million car trips annually and divert 18 million passengers from air travel annually; thus they provide a "Traffic Haters for High Speed Rail" petition. You don't have to be a California resident to sign the petition, but it sure helps.

UPDATE. I erred above in stating that the first Public Interest contact tool "misidentifies" S. 2663 as S. 2045 in its third paragraph; S. 2045 was also a CPSC reform bill, and S. 2663 replaces it. Still, you'll want to change "S. 2045" to "S. 2063" in the contact tool.

penny rants for the day of March 1, 2008.

Recent Oscar winner Marion Cotillard doubts the official 9.11 narrative, rather more than I do, I admit. She's an actress, and she's French, and therefore probably also liberal: why, it's a Bill O'Reilly trifecta. She wonders if the moon landing was a hoax, too (it wasn't), but since Fox's TV operation has, over the years, also pushed "documentaries" suggesting the moon landing was a hoax, I wonder if Mr. O'Reilly will remind the folks of that. Oh, wait, of course he will: it'll make them think he's "independent."

John McCain accepts endorsement of anti-Muslim/anti-woman/anti-Catholic preacher John Hagee, then criticizes some of his positions sort-of. Do you suppose Mr. Hagee tells the terrorist/PMS joke to his wife? The "liberal" media has been all over Mr. Obama for failing to use his amazing charisma powers to go back in time and strangle Mr. Farrakhan in his crib, but I can't help but think that the only reason the "liberal" media would ever make John McCain account for John Hagee's bat-guano beliefs is that another obnoxious right-winger (Catholic League President Bill Donohue) also hates Mr. Hagee.

Finally, why does Rick Santorum persist in the belief that he's so smart? What a wretched attempt he makes to prove that Mr. Obama -- who does not support single-payer health care, who has voted for a Mexican border fence, and who has introduced exactly zero bills to raise taxes on the rich -- is a far-left ideologue. Five paragraphs twisting Mr. Obama's position on one issue doesn't prove a guy's a far-left ideologue, and incorrectly glossing over four issues in one paragraph doesn't prove it, either. And the nerve of him to suggest that he picked four issues out of so many -- it didn't occur to him that a more thorough investigation might have lost those five paragraphs he's so fond of, did it? And then there's that infernal National Journal "most liberal" ranking, again -- which must be absolutely true merely because it's nonpartisan, never mind that a blind, deaf, and dumb infant would honor Russ Feingold as America's most liberal Senator every year. I'm all for conservative viewpoints in the papers, I really am. But I'm not for bad arguments.