Thieves in the Temple.

post-modern sleaze.

S. 1699, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, would (as you might imagine) extend unemployment compensation in 23 states. Why only 23? Because those states have unemployment rates below 8.5%, and the House already approved a 13-week extension for the other 27 states. Only a Scrooge McSmallgovernment could possibly disapprove -- I mean, I can hardly consider unemployment payments a handout, even, given that corporations consider their workers a drain on their profits and can't wait to lay them off. NETWORK, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby (I never said I wouldn't start again!) provides the contact tool.

Meanwhile, the normally-estimable Nate Silver calls Glenn Beck a "post-modern conservative." If by "post-modern" he means "utterly incoherent," I might halfway agree. But the halfway I won't budge on is "conservative" -- Glenn Beck is a reactionary simple and plain; if he thinks something smells of Obama-ness, he's against it without thinking about it, except to dream up new ways of throwing everything-and-the-kitchen-sink at it. But I've got other bones to pick with this piece, too. Mr. Silver's dismissiveness of "consistency" in paragraph 4 insults those of us who strive honestly toward consistency, let alone those of us who achieve an honorable measure of consistency. And I'd like some proof, please, that Glenn Beck is "distrustful" of corporations. And that next-to-last sentence posits a false opposite -- really, are all conservatives either "spontaneous" a la Beck or "cooked up by a K Street thinktank"? Just because honest conservatives can hardly get on TV doesn't mean they don't still exist.

testify!

Now the Electronic Freedom Foundation provides a contact tool with which you may support S. 1686, the JUSTICE Act. S. 1686, as you may recall, would reform the widely-abused National Security Letter process and would repeal big telecom immunity from lawsuits for their participation in Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. As the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the renewal of several about-to-sunset provisions of the PATRIOT Act, we must make our will known. And, by the by, don't expect much help from Mr. Obama on this matter. As light can be observed as both wave and particle, Mr. Obama's intransigence on Executive branch power matters can be seen as both a) the first flush of a man getting his hands on power and b) an Executive doing what he perceives to be "his job" of defending the law as it exists. Either way, that equals "no help."

Word on the street is that the Senate Finance Committee (why oh why is the Senate Finance Committee working on a health care reform bill again?) plans to vote on the public option today, and Keystone Progress provides a unique contact tool which blasts all the members of the Senate Finance Committee at once. Which I suggest you summarily hijack to express your own will -- which, in my case, is that the Finance Committee scrap its bill and adopt a single-payer health care system like the one described in H.R. 676. I think the bill is a big pile of suck, and I'm gonna tell them so. I'll reprint the entirety of my letter in the comments section.

Finally, for your enjoyment and edification, Bill Maher makes a New Rule, the main purpose of which is to excoriate our laziness in attacking the problems that face us. I've often said that we should have had Coxey's Armies marching on the Capitol day after day during the Bush era, and with Mr. Obama being such an incrementalist or whatever, it's no different now. Of course, I blame myself for not being one of these marchers. What stuck for me in Mr. Maher's rant, believe it or not, was this: "Did you know that we eat the same high-fat, high-carb, sugar-laden (expletive) that's served in prisons and in religious cults to keep the subjects in a zombie-like state of lethargic compliance? Why haven't Americans arisen en masse to demand a strong public option?...We're tired and our brain stems hurt from washing down French fries with McDonald's orange drink." Actually, I know all of this from experience: approximately 24 hours after I dramatically cut back on my carb intake during my late 20s, I felt much better about myself and became a considerably more effective person. I only regret that I didn't become effective enough to keep George W. Bush from stealing his way into office.

penny rants for Monday, September 28, 2009.

Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review wonders why our TV nightly news anchors need to make so much money. High point: Jack Slater's suggestion that incoming ABC anchor Diane Sawyer turn the job down so ABC can hire "50 or 80 additional reporters to break stories." No, really, do the math: if Ms. Sawyer were to make what Charlie Gibson currently makes ($8 million a year), then ABC could hire 80 reporters at $100,000 per year including benefits. Seems to me newspapers could do something similar, except the CEOs would have to take the hit. As a bonus, Mr. Massing excerpts some truly exceptional pedantry from Howard Kurtz, who seizes upon a small part of a reader question put to him ("connection with the public") so he can wiggle out of the reader's real question entirely. "Katie Couric may make $15 million a year, but she grew up in a middle-class family in Arlington," he writes -- which, naturally, avoids the question of how "disconnected" she might have become after she got rich. Attention Jack Slater: CBS could hire as many as 150 additional reporters with Katie Couric money.

Meanwhile, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona reveals himself as yet another Republican jerk pretending not to understand the concept of "insurance." "I don’t need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive," he says. That Senator Stabenow gets him with a zinger doesn't make Mr. Kyl's "ignorance" less depressing. He doesn't need maternity care, so a policy aiming to cover everyone shouldn't have it either? Please. Like it's all about you. I bet he defends his "right" to have Viagra coverage, though, even though over half the population will never need it. And, not incidentally, he's not even right that such a policy would be more expensive -- the more people in the pool, the less expensive the plan would be for everyone in the pool. That's how insurance works. Good citizens of Arizona, could you please unseat this man in 2012? I know you tried in 2006, but Jim Pedersen wasn't really that impressive, and this time, America really needs your help. Send a Libertarian to the Senate if you have to.

Finally, in case you were wondering: yes, Messrs. Hannity and Beck obsess far more about ACORN than they do about actual corruption -- particularly if the corruption comes from the right. One could dismiss Media Matters's finding comparing mentions of ACORN and Abramoff/Ney on their programs, since Abramoff/Ney weren't really news anymore once they were both in jail. But the Beck and Hannity programs still mention ACORN 35 times as often as they mention Halliburton or Blackwater/Xe -- corporations that still feed at the government trough, corporations that still bear responsibility for the death of American troops at war. In case you didn't know what to say to someone who says Glenn Beck's show has mentioned Halliburton 19 times leave him aloooooone!, well, now you do. I should add that the numbers don't even assure us that any of those 19 mentions were criticisms of Halliburton.

five little words.

If you've missed previous opportunities to support S. 1686, the JUSTICE Act, which would roll back many of the abuses of the PATRIOT Act, well, here are two more, one from the People's Email Network and one from CREDO. And I promise this sentence will have fewer commas. Prepare yourself for the nightmare scenarios from the "liberal" media (and Pravda TV) of terrorists climbing through your bedroom windows and strangling your babies in their cribs. You'll likely see many Democratic "centrists" and "independents" on these "liberal" media broadcasts. Don't listen to them. They generally don't know what they're talking about.

I've been getting plenty of action alerts demanding a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, as Sen. Feingold has advocated, but I'm not so much into timetables as I am into narrowing the mission -- get bin Laden, get out. So I'll continue not passing those action alerts along, and I'll instead suggest that you call your Reps and Senators and tell them those five little words after the dash in the previous sentence. This is a curious moment in the war's progression, as you know -- Gen. McChrystal wants more troops, while President Obama seems reluctant to send them. I see an opportunity for the people to take charge of this operation.

Finally, the National Equality March takes place in Washington, D.C. on October 11, 2009, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network urges you to attend. There'll be events the day before, too, but the main event is that Sunday at noon. Here's another incentive for you to attend: the Ravens, Giants, Cowboys, Panthers, Vikings, Eagles, Steelers, Bills, Falcons, Cardinals, Patriots, Jaguars, Colts, and Dolphins will all win their games that week. There -- now you don't have to watch the games. And here's yet another incentive: do you want to be outdrawn by the corporate-funded and Fox News-promoted teabagger rallies? Let's show the "liberal" media sixty or seventy thousand people who know why they're at a rally and aren't there because they got whipped up by corporate interests.

here's where the story ends.

The New York Times, as part of a series on the health care debate, published a lengthy piece essentially sliming the single-payer solution, even though polls still show solid majority support among the American people. Long story short: the article told us why single-payer was crazy and unworkable, and loaded up on sources (from across the ideological spectrum, supposedly) who tell you why single-payer is crazy and unworkable, with only George McGovern arguing why it's not. You may contact New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, either at 1.212.556.7652 or at public at nytimes dot com, with your protests. I eagerly await the rhetorical contortions they'll employ in justifying their latest sack of crud.

Meanwhile, Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) has apparently proposed an amendment to the EPA's fiscal 2010 appropriations bill that would strip it of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from "non-mobile" sources for the next year. I guess she thinks (since she's what passes for a moderate these days) she'll split-the-baby -- she'll go after the easy target (cars) so she can protect the corporations (like coal plants) who do more than two-thirds of the polluting. But the right thing to do is still the right thing to do. So CREDO helps you oppose the Murkowski amendment. And don't get complacent counting on the Magic 59 Democrats in the Senate -- Sen. Begich will likely vote with Ms. Murkowksi, Hawaii's Democrats will also likely vote with Ms. Murkowski as they often do on these matters (Messrs. Akaka and Inouye were big ANWR drilling supporters, for example), and Mary Landrieu also generally votes with the oil interests, who would also very much like Mrs. Murkowski's amendment. And that's before we get to the rest of the Democrats' "centrists," who might claim Our Fragile Economy just can't bear any more regulation boo-hoo.

Finally, S. 1584/H.R. 3017, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, is up in Congress again, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force helps you support it. I can live with Sec. 4 (f), since it doesn't specifically outlaw affirmative action for gays, but merely says ENDA doesn't "require or permit" it. And I have to live with the exemptions for religious organizations because the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives religious organizations similar exemptions. And of course I understand why the Armed Forces are also exempted -- don't-ask-don't-tell doesn't permit otherwise (separate legislation already introduced in Congress addresses that). But though ENDA's not perfect, it's good enough. 29 states currently permit firing employees who identify as gay and/or employees their boss perceives to be gay, and 38 states currently permit firing employees who identify as transgender. That's wrong and it needs to stop. End of story.

fake cost-containment, actual courage, and a promise kept.

Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to keep medical malpractice suits in the courts, where they belong. The Baucus-led health care effort, in a putative effort to hold down costs, plans to experiment with "substitutes" for the civil justice system for medical malpractice cases. I would have the same problem with that as I do with forced arbritration -- corporations doing the arbitrating would want return business from other corporations (in this case, hospitals and health insurers), and so would usually rule in favor of said corporations. But think about what efforts like these say about our culture: they say we can't trust judges to judge, and that people with legitimate grievances against doctors and hospitals have to let themselves be screwed for the greater good. The Baucus/Obama "plan" demands no sacrifice from corporations, only people. I think we're better than that. Not only that, we already know ways of heading off problems before they become malpractice suits, and the Senate should work on that, not legislating yet another giveaway to their rich friends.

President Zelaya returned to the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras on Monday, and the illegitimate Micheletti regime responded to the news with a violent crackdown against thousands of pro-Zelaya protestors yesterday. The illegitimate regime has reserved the right to raid the Embassy to retrieve Mr. Zelaya. That means it's time to get on the phone to our Executive branch and demand that it condemn the violent crackdown already underway and call for the illegitimate regime to comply with international law by protecting the Brazilian Embassy and accepting the restoration of President Zelaya to office. The State Department's number is 1.202.647.4000, and the White House's is 1.202.456.1111. You may also find Mr. Obama's web contact page here. Might I add that the good citizens of Honduras show great courage? Both of the reports you view/read above will describe many instances of Hondurans refusing to back down in the face of Mr. Micheletti's strong-arm tactics. Good for them. I wish I were a tenth as brave as they are.

I said I'd pass along any email action alerts I received about S. 1686, the JUSTICE Act, and the ACLU has already come through with one. I believe the Senate Judiciary Committee is debating expiring PATRIOT Act provisions as we speak, so if your Senator serves on that committee, you'll want to contact them with a quickness; the Senate provides a list of those Senators here. But if your Senator is not on Judiciary, there's no harm in making him or her aware that you support the legislation.

busload of faith.

Our homey, Sen. Feingold (D-WI), has introduced S. 1686, the JUSTICE Act, in the Senate; broadly, S. 1686 would renew two PATRIOT Act provisions due to expire on December 31 and would scrap a third, and the bill would also repeal the big telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping provided by the FISA Amendments Act. S. 1686 won't repeal the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act, which would be my preference. But it would fix a lot of problems. And with a Democratic President, 59 Democratic Senators, and a 70-plus seat majority in the House, the Democrats really have no excuses. I wonder where the massive opposition to the JUSTICE Act will come from. From the "liberal" media, perhaps? They'll squeal like pigs, as though terrorists will strangle you in your bedroom if S. 1686 passes. And, of course, don't forget the Executive Branch -- Presidents of any party don't like to give up any power, if they can help it. I'm sure I'll get email action tools about S. 1686, and I'll pass them along when I get them, but you can still call your Senator and support it today. They'll never see it coming.

Citizens for Tax Justice urges us to support progressive tax measures in order to make health care reform more affordable. I support progressive income tax measures on principle; I don't need health care reform to do that, and I won't support health care reform if it isn't single payer. But CTJ supports some good ideas -- ending the exemption from the Medicare tax for wealthy investors, and limiting itemized deductions for wealthy taxpayers, to name two. I'd rather do either of these than support the so-called "Cadillac" tax on health care benefits, which I think will open the door to taxing everyone's health care benefits eventually. You can find Finance Committee Senators listed here; clicking on their names will direct you to their Senate home pages, which will link, ultimately, to contact information (or you can use the Senate's general contact page provided in the upper left-hand corner of this page). The instant answer to "health care reform will cost too much"? "The Bush tax cuts cost more." Just so you know.

On the occasion of the apparent return of President Zelaya to Honduras, some 80 days after the Honduran military kicked him out, School of the Americas Watch provides a contact tool supporting H.Res. 630 condemning the coup and H.R. 2567, which would investigate human rights abuses connected to the School for the Americas. Many members of the Honduran military learned their "trade" at the SOA, and many others still train there. After that, you can still call the State Department at 1.202.647.4000 and tell State to legally define the de facto regime in Honduras as a military coup, to help reinstall President Zelaya into office without preconditions, and to ensure that the coup plotters will be held responsible for what they've done. These all seem like big jobs, and they don't always seem like they do a whole lot of good. But refusing to do them because they don't seem like they do a lot of good? That's not the attitude that got rid of slavery.

victims.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) stopped a resolution recognizing October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month because, he said, it had a "homosexual agenda." Go ahead, read for yourself. You see it? Me neither. I'd started to think Republicans were just going to accuse anything they didn't like of having a "homosexual agenda," until an actual domestic violence worker suggested that what Mr. Metcalf could have really meant was that all domestic violence workers are man-hating lesbians. That just never gets old! And I guess, in his view, the approximately one in nine men who report suffering from domestic violence are all closeted homosexuals. Hear the sound of knuckles dragging on the ground? That's Daryl Metcalfe coming. Keystone Progress helps you protest his actions.

Meanwhile, Diebold plans to sell their voting machine business, Premier Election Solutions (sic), to its top competitor, Election Systems and Software. Normally, you'd jump for joy at the prospect of Die Bold getting out of the election-fixing business -- but the proposed sale would give ES&S, itself not exactly an innocent actor, almost three-quarters of the voting-machine market. Monopolies, or near-monopolies, just make everything worse: a monopoly or near-monopoly can virtually dictate terms to federal and state governments, and I don't want corporations dictating any terms to federal and state governments -- only the people get to do that. So Common Cause helps you oppose said deal.

and now for another exciting new edition of "meet the new boss."

The Obama Administration argued in a federal appeals court this week that the 600 detainees at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan don't have habeus corpus rights. Some of them have been held for up to six years, etc., with no charges filed against them, etc. You may recall that in the wake of Boumediene v. Bush, which held that detainees at Guantånamo have habeus corpus rights, Mr. Bush started moving detainees to Bagram. And Mr. Obama claims the right to keep doing that, though, as a Senator, he argued fairly passionately against it. Sigh. The ACLU helps you oppose this insanity.

Speaking of insanity, Unionvoice provides a contact tool telling the Senate Finance Committee to fix the Baucus health care bill so that it is not a boatload of suck. You can edit the tool to reflect your own values, of course -- it wants you to argue for a "public option," whereas I want to argue for single-payer. And don't think Mr. Obama has your back on this: the Baucus bill is basically a summary of everything Mr. Obama said he wanted in his speech last week (without the "public option," which wasn't going to be all that public anyway). If your appetite for insanity is insatiable, you can watch Senator Conrad (D-ND) talk about why Republicans should love this bill.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's Justice Department has not moved on his stated desire to reverse a Bush Mobb rule permitting religious groups receiving aid from the federal government to discriminate on religious grounds when hiring. Number one, discrimination is wrong. Number two, you take federal money, you follow federal rules. Number three, Tha Bush Mobb's interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Preservation Act is probably full of it. Did I mention discrimination is wrong? Anyway, this page helps you contact Attorney General Holder and communicate your thoughts. You can write a letter, call him, send an email, whatever you think is best.

Finally, I read a great letter-to-the-editor in my (very) local paper yesterday, written by one Richard DeMarco of South Philadelphia (scroll down to the bottom; it's the letter entitled "Pick the Right side"). This Richard DeMarco did more work writing that letter than most members of the cable news idiopunditry do in a calendar year. And don't anyone get snooty about the spelling of "delegitimize" (which could just as easily have been a typesetting error), when the punditoids commit larger errors of fact and rhetoric nearly every time they draw breath. I suspect Richard DeMarco makes less money than the punditoids. And yet that doesn't stop him from doing a citizen's work. Go figure.

beyond here lies nothin'.

California residents, take note: AB 260 would reform the mortgage industry in California, and yet there it sits on Mr. Schwarzenegger's desk. What's he waiting for? The main mortgage industry complaint, as you might have guessed, is that the bill would encourage frivolous lawsuits, as if they don't trust the justice system or something. But CALPIRG informs me that state regulators actually have the biggest beef with the bill, as if they didn't just help screw up the entire economy or something. Hard to believe someone has actually offended me more than the tort-reform crowd, but we are cursed to live in interesting times. CALPIRG has the contact tool.

I'm a bit confused by the latest Employee Free Choice Act email alert I've received from American Rights at Work. Senator Specter told an AFL-CIO convention that an EFCA "that will be totally satisfactory to labor" would pass. But given Mr. Trumka's recent remarks that card check might not be an absolutely necessary component of a passed EFCA, I feel compelled to wonder if Big Labor has moved the goalposts a bit. And sure enough, American Rights at Work tells you to call Sen. Specter (using the toll-free number 1.888.528.6450) and ask for this: "Workers who want a union must have a free choice and a fair path to form a union, free from intimidation." Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm not actually seeing the words "card check" in there. I called Mr. Specter's office not long ago and asked for a clear answer about card check, and I think you ought to do the same. You may want to remind him that he supported a bill with card check during Mr. Bush's second term. (No, he hasn't responded to my inquiry yet, but I don't suspect he's lollygagging, either. Yet.) You can report your call here when you're done.

Finally, if you're a Facebook user (and if you're not now, you probably will be soon), the ACLU provides a quiz that tells you how much of your personal information and your friends' personal information you may be accidentally providing to third-parties. Short answer: you have no idea! Sure, they're probably using that info to sell you stuff -- but they may also be sharing that information with other people who may want to sell you stuff, or who may have more insidious aims in mind (hello, federal government!). It may seem odd to take a quiz in order to find out how much info quizzes can give out, but afterward I can just about guarantee you you'll be sharing less information willy-nilly, plus you'll have an opportunity to petition Facebook itself for more careful treatment of your personal information. (Full disclosure: the L-Word character who most resembles me, according to Facebook, is Alice. I was hoping for Tina. But praise the Lord it wasn't Jenny.)

couldn't get ahead.

I oppose Mr. Obama's health care plan, as he laid it out last week. Long story short: it's not single-payer. Long story slightly longer: at its best, it'll deliver universal, expensive, corporate health care coverage at prices the corporations will dictate absolutely, meaning you're no less likely to go bankrupt if God-forbid-something-happens-to-you. And you'd even be paying premiums for the "public" option, which begs the question: how on Earth is that "public"? When even the Father of Reaganomics supports single-payer, you know for sure that the government opposes its owners, the people. So the People's Email Network helps you send a very simple message to your elected Reps and Senators: "Any health care reform bill without single-payer is no reform at all." You can write a letter-to-the-editor from that page if you like. Don't worry; most of its readers will probably agree with you.

Rep. Nadler (D-NY) has introduced the Respect for Marriage Act; I can't get a text for the bill at thomas.loc.gov yet, but apparently the bill would repeal the Defense (sic) of Marriage Act, which denies gay couples over a thousand protections married couples get -- protections like the ability to file joint taxes, take unpaid leave to care for a partner, and receive surviving spouse benefits under Social Security. And no, the Respect for Marriage Act doesn't force churches to marry gays. You're going to hear that from the Emptiest Wagon of Our Public Discourse, so I thought I'd say it first. CREDO has one contact tool and Keystone Progress has another, just for Pennsylvania residents, of course.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering: the "liberal" media did treat the D.C. teabag fest this past weekend a whole lot better than they treated the considerably larger anti-war protest in D.C. in 2002. No doubt they wanted to protect themselves from charges of "bias," though they ought to explain how actually practicing bias protects one from charges of bias. Heckuva job, "liberal" media -- I mean, letting the know-nothings have more say than everyone else has worked so well for us so far.

of unearned money, unearned "rights," and unearned honors.

Congress has returned to "work," and so Free Press reminds us to ask your House Reps to support H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. The Astroturf groups (NetCompetition.org, the American Consumer Institute, the Internet Innovation Alliance) are trying to convince our House Reps that free markets are for corporations, not consumers. But H.R. 3458 would keep the Internet free for consumers by preserving our ability to view any web page we like, without some corporate gatekeeper delivering whatever they like (i.e., the content of their corporate "partners") more quickly to your computer.

Meanwhile, the Arbitration Fairness Act (H.R. 1020/S. 931) would essentially outlaw forced arbitration contracts in civil rights, consumer, employment, and franchisee disputes, though it would still permit voluntary arbitration to resolve disputes. Corporations sneak forced arbitration language into contracts, as you probably recall, so that you can't redress grievances through the courts -- and, perhaps not coincidentally, the courts will almost certainly be more impartial than some arbitration mill trying to get repeat business from the corporations you're fighting against. So Public Citizen helps you support this bill. We've got the momentum on our side -- two large banksters (Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase) have dropped forced arbitration clauses from their credit card contracts, and the National Arbitration Forum agreed to close its massive consumer arbitration practice after a lawsuit from the Minneosta Attorney General. But let's not get complacent!

Finally, even the Father of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts, thinks America should adopt a single-payer health care system, mainly because the corporations have botched things so badly. Mr. Roberts's endorsement would be quite a coup for our side -- in an America that actually honored conservatives. Unfortunately, this America coddles reactionaries and gives them the unearned honor of the mantle "conservative." Nonetheless, I'll mention Mr. Roberts's endorsement anyway, since I still dream of an America without an insane pundit class. Mr. Roberts has the same big problem I have with the Obama plan -- the individual mandate essentially preserves big corporation profits, which doesn't reduce costs. I don't think mandating everyone's participation in the high-cost, corporate health care system is a better way than Canada's way. Hell, I don't think it's better than England's way.

science!

S. 619, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, does pretty much what it says it'll do -- limit use of antibiotics in agriculture. I understand the American Veterinary Medical Association opposes S. 619, essentially claiming that the science isn't conclusive -- but, as this veterinarian suggests, they may be speaking less for their membership and more for their corporate partners. Besides which, the common sense is conclusive: too many animals these days ingest too many antibiotics pre-emptively, which makes for multiple generations of sick animals and stronger bacteria. The Union of Concerned Scientists provides the action tool.

Meanwhile, Monsanto and Dow win FDA approval for a kind of Frankencorn supposedly so herbicide- and bug-resistant that corn yields could increase by 5 to 10 percent. That doesn't mean world hunger will reduce by 5 to 10 percent, but Big Corn doesn't even bother with that argument anymore. And the risk of genetically-modified plants hurting the people who consume it, or spreading out and contaminating other plants? Apparently that risk sounds no alarms, either to the FDA or Big Corn. Tha Bush Mobb FDA used to be stacked (dare I say SmartStacked?) with the sort of "conservative" who thought everything business did was A-OK, and not the sort of conservative who would warn against introducing genetically-modified plants without fully understanding their effects. I'm sad to see, eight months on, that the false "conservatives" haven't all left. And Big Corn still has its iron grip over American politics.

penny rants for Sunday, September 13, 2009: special "right-wing pity party" edition!

"Tens of thousands" of people showed up in D.C. to protest big gov'mint, and I gotta say some of their messages are a little late. Y'all bust out signs saying "you can't fix stupid but you can vote it out" now? Y'all are worried about deficit spending now, and not when Mr. Bush was fighting two wars off-budget and ramming a $700 billion finance industry bailout down America's throat? Y'all are quoting Ben Franklin on liberty and security now, and not when Mr. Bush rammed the PATRIOT Act through and wiretapped innocent Americans' phones? Where were you when America really needed you? Actually, I know the answer to that one: when America really needed you, Mr. Bush was President, and FreedomWorks and the Heartland Institute and Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights weren't interested in organizing you.

I also understand Sarah Palin's mad about Mr. Obama's speech. I suppose she ought to be -- she coined the phrase "death panel," and Mr. Obama (finally!) told the world the other night that no bills before Congress contain the sort of "death panels" HMOs already have without being stupid enough to call them that. Mrs. Palin responded thusly: "He called these concerns 'bogus,' 'irresponsible,' and 'a lie' -- so much for civility." If Mr. Obama has one infuriating fault, it's his refusal to be intemperate, but no matter -- Mrs. Palin will just re-label words like "bogus" and "irresponsible" as intemperate. Plus she'll argue that pointing out the other side's lies is not "civil." Remind me, again, how liberals are frail and weak? Right-wingers can't even take it when people tell them they're wrong. And I eagerly await Mrs. Palin's comments on folks drawing little Hitler mustaches on Obama photos, or folks going to townhall meetings with only disruption in mind.

Finally, Maggie Gallagher feels bullied by liberals again. Why? Because while she was campaigning against gay marriage in Maine, a preacher asked her "(s)houldn't we live with our neighbors in peace?", which Ms. Gallagher took to mean she was pro-war or something, and also because a bisexual Washington Post reporter wrote a sympathetic profile about Ms. Gallagher's employee, and Washington Post readers didn't like it. "Either you are for gay marriage or you are a bad person who should be repressed, humiliated, hurt, marginalized and excluded," she writes. I never said gay marriage opponents should be "excluded" from the debate, but what if you've earned "marginalization"? And I absolutely think gay marriage opponents should be "humiliated" for their bigotry, said bigotry being no more persuasive if it's polite. And "humiliation" isn't the same as actually having rights taken from you, or having fewer rights than someone else to begin with.

health care, health care, and (peripherally) health care.

As I said before, forcing individuals to buy health insurance is a bad way to get universal health care, mainly because it lets health insurance companies gouge you. Mr. Obama's "new insurance exchange" might reduce your costs, and so might his "public option," though he doesn't sound very committed to it. I suppose there's a chance that, once everyone has to buy insurance, insurance companies might actually compete against each other -- or they might collude, and you can't guarantee the Executive branch will enforce laws against collusion. Two hyphenated words render all these problems moot: single-payer. The People's Email Network still provides the contact tool. (I'm not as worried about Max Baucus's fine scheme as the good folks at the PEN are, though. In a lot of cases, the fines will be cheaper than the insurance, especially as long as charity care takes care of E.R. visits. And again, we wouldn't have this problem under single-payer.)

During his Wednesday night address, Mr. Obama mentioned some vague "demonstration projects" and spoke about "put(ting) patient safety first and let(ting) doctors focus on practicing medicine." He could well be talking about tort reform, possibly the least persuasive arrow in the right wing's quiver. "Reforming" medical malpractice suits so that, you know, you have less of a chance of having a serious medical error redressed would, surprise, have little effect on health care costs. With that in mind, Public Citizen reminds us that they've already made a few dozen suggestions as to how to "put patient safety first" and bring down costs at the same time. If you didn't participate in that action alert the first time, well, now you've got another chance. You can remind your Congressfolk, if you like, that corporations, not individuals or classes thereof, file the vast majority of all lawsuits in the U.S.

At the risk of making even more of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who thinks Mr. Obama lied when he said his reforms would not be available to illegal immigrants: the Institute for Southern Studies informs us that Mr. Wilson's top campaign contributors over the course of his career come from (surprise!) the health care industry. Since 2001, Mr. Wilson has received nearly a quarter of a million bucks from big pharma, big health insurance, and hospitals and nursing homes. Mr. Wilson could be in trouble in 2010, though: he only won by eight points in 2008, in a district he once won with 84% of the vote, and his 2008 opponent, Rob Miller, has raised $400,000 just since Mr. Wilson's outburst.

the sea refuses no river.

I'm not a big, big fan of Mr. Obama's speech last night -- I'm still a single-payer man, I don't think either the individual mandate or the "Cadillac plan" tax are good ideas, and I think the public option he offers (and doesn't demand, you may notice) isn't nearly robust enough. Your mileage may vary on these matters. My favorite part of the speech, of course, is the part where he tells the liars to stop their damn lying, and in that spirit, Consumers Union provides a toll-free number which you may use to communicate a Congressfolk-get-to-work message. Consumers Union supports a number of other reforms (listed at the above link and also here), many of which are fine by themselves, but again, I'm a single-payer man.

Senator Specter said on August 14 that he would not only vote for the Employee Free Choice Act, but would also vote for cloture on the bill, which would likely lead to its passage. So American Rights at Work helps you thank Mr. Specter, and subtly urge him not to change his mind. But in light of incoming AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka's suggestion that card-check doesn't have to be in the bill, you may want to ask Mr. Specter how he feels about that. He supported the EFCA with the card-check provision while serving as a Republican in a Senate which wasn't going to pass the bill; how does he feel, now, that he's a Democrat in a Senate which probably will? It's worth asking, even if you're not one of Senator Specter's constituents. He's asked for it, really.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Congress plans to hold hearings soon to consider reinstating protections for many of our waterways. In their 2005 decision in Rapanos v. the United States, the Supreme Court exempted small streams and many wetlands from the Clean Water Act -- which now leaves more than three-quarters of Pennsylvania's waterways largely unprotected from pollution and development. If you don't protect the little streams, soon their filth will find the bigger ones. And as the incorrigible Alexander Cockburn reminded us a few weeks ago, the biggest help we've had in health care over the last century has been clean water. So Pennenvironment helps you argue for stronger water protections in the Clean Water act. Sometimes I think Justice Scalia (Rapanos's author) has a profound place in the cosmic plan -- mainly, making legislators do more precise legislating, instead of leaving all the details up to executive branch "rulemaking."

the one thing.

The People's Email Network still helps you call your Congressfolk and argue for H.R. 676, which would establish single-payer health care in the U.S. The bill has 78 co-sponsors, by the way, so you may want to first establish whether your House Rep is already a co-sponsor (which you can do by clicking the "text of bill" link, then the "bill summary and status file" link on the following page, then the "co-sponsors" link on the page following that). If your House Rep is a co-sponsor (as mine is), I do not believe you would be impolite if you mentioned his/her current on-the-record support for H.R. 676.

Meanwhile, the Center for Economic and Policy Research cautions us about getting too excited over recent steps taken by the U.S. State Department against the illegitimate government of Honduras. State did declare that what happened in Honduras was a "coup d'etat," but suspended less than a third of the U.S.'s total aid to Honduras -- some $70 million in aid will still reach Honduras under State's declaration. Further, the U.S. did not exercise veto power over the International Money Fund's decision to give Honduras $160 million in aid a few days back. Perhaps State is "responding to pressure," but one wonders about the timing of said response, to say the least.

I ain't gonna stand for it, baby.

As we've noted here before, the Senate's version (S. 372) of the whistleblower protection bill is demonstrably worse than the House version (H.R. 1507), so the National Whistleblowers Center helps you tell your Senators, your House Reps, and Mr. Obama that you prefer H.R. 1507. H.R. 1507 gives whistleblowers the right to a jury trial; S. 372 doesn't. I can't imagine why it wouldn't. Because the Senate wants to stop "frivolous" lawsuits? Let the damn judge decide whether a lawsuit is "frivolous" or not -- sometimes (cf. Fox News's suit against Al Franken) it takes five minutes. And the vast majority of lawsuits get filed by corporations, but attempts to "reform" the process only ever target the little guy.

Oh, but I'm just full of bad news! Incoming AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the Employee Free Choice Act doesn't absolutely have to include card check to get passed. So, let's get this straight: corporations lie non-stop for four years telling everyone that the EFCA "outlaws" the secret ballot, when anyone who reads the bill knows that it doesn't, and the liars get what they want? I refuse to live in an America where the side that spends the most money lying wins. You may communicate your displeasure with Mr. Trumka's remarks by sending a fax to 202.508.6920, or by writing a letter to Richard Trumka, c/o AFL-CIO, 815 16th St. NW, Washington, D.C., 20006.

penny rants for Thursday, September 3, 2009.

Tired of all the "populists" and "grassroots" folk who come to your townhall meetings and shout and whine and stamp their feet? Well, Chris Walters at The Consumerist helps you learn how to identify Astroturfers and front groups. The article is quite short, but provides two additional links; one is a longer article (but not that long) from the Center for Media and Democracy, and the other is a fun who's-pulling-the-strings widget from Free Press. Long story short: if you can't establish a real address and a real set of chief personnel, be suspicious. Also, if their address is in D.C., be suspicious, because corporations often run many front groups out of one building.

Speaking of astroturfing, I notice that philly.com (which is way, way worse than its broadsheet Inquirer or its tabloid Daily News) now prominently displays a button on their home page which leads us to this pitch for keeping journalism local. From there you can sign a petition to "keep it local" -- really, the petition doesn't say much else. Sounds sort of agreeable, doesn't it? Not until you remember that Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns both the Inquirer and the Daily News, is currently in bankruptcy proceedings, not long after paying its Topp Doggs six-figure bonuses, not long after cajoling its unions to delay pay increases, and not even a year after slashing jobs for the second time since taking over the papers. They couldn't be going to their creditors with this petition, could they? But saying the people want local ownership is not the same as saying the people want this ownership. The people might just want ownership that actually keeps the papers afloat using something other than smoke and mirrors. It can be done, trust me. People like newspapers, and newspapers can still do a lot of good, if ownership would consider that providing a service to the community does more for one's bottom line than, you know, obsessing about the bottom line.

Finally, I realize that I didn't fully justify my strange-on-the-face-of-it contention that a la carte cable packaging was the most important issue facing Americans right now. I did argue that a la carte was more important than other media-related issues, but I did not argue that it was more important than, say, the income tax code or single-payer health care. Actually, that Maria Bartiromo link kind of makes my point for me -- as long as the media isn't accountable to the folks who watch it, they'll continue to stand in the way of progress (in her case, by ranting on and on over her guests with her corporate talking points like her mother never taught her manners). And it isn't true that we can all just go find things out for ourselves -- people like me with disposable income can afford broadband, and people like me who aren't working two jobs can afford the time, but people who aren't like me don't have those options, and they deserve a world where consumers as a whole can hold media outlets accountable just as much as anyone else.

the most important email contact tool I'll pass along this year (and it's from the right).

The Parents Television Council still provides a contact tool supporting a la carte cable packaging. Under a la carte, you pick the channels you want to watch, and they're the only ones you pay for. You can change the wording of the PTC's contact tool, of course, if you have no special hatred for FX, MTV, or Comedy Central. I changed the contact tool to reflect my hatred for all of cable news, a hatred which reached the boiling point last night when I witnessed ignorant-and-smug-about-it CNBC "reporter" Maria Bartiromo ask Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) why, if he thought Medicare was so great, he wasn't on it. (Rep. Weiner turns 45 this week.) The cable news channels, in particular, have been pimps* for corporate largesse throughout this health care debate, and short of cutting off their money supply, there's no way to change their behavior so that they'll have to account to their consumers.

I'll never think the PTC's moralizing is as good as mine, but their a la carte tool is a solid one -- it explains the issue succinctly and, more importantly, explains why just having the cable company come out to block the offending channels isn't good enough (namely, that you still have to pay for the channels you block). I hear two other objections to a la carte -- namely, that a la carte would jack up prices and would extinguish minority-owned cable channels. But I find both these objections unconvincing; you can address both with different legislation, and I've helped you support legislation to do both at this blog. The latter objection (regarding minority-owned channels) I find particularly offensive, for two reasons: one, it blithely assumes that minority-owned channels could never make it on their own, and two, I grow extremely tired of big corporations taking the little guy hostage whenever they're told to change their ways. "Don't make me accountable to you, or I'll shoot this black guy!" is essentially the sum of that argument, and it disgusts me.

I mean exactly what I say in the subject header. Supporting network neutrality and fighting media consolidation are both noble and vital causes, but they're not enough: you have to put power back in the consumer's hands. A la carte cable packaging would do that. And no more of your hard-earned cash would ever have to support the idiopunditry ever again. Some of them might actually have to get real jobs. If they can.

*No, I will not call them "whores," because that would be a compliment. Whores work. Pimps steal money.

penny rants for Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

Paul Krugman ponders the current state of affairs and fondly remembers Nixon. And who doesn't? OSHA, Mike Mansfield and Barry Goldwater, a run at universal health care, the 70% tax bracket -- good times! Though Mr. Krugman rightly asserts that "the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now," he's forgotten one other important reason the Nixon era surpasses the present: hundreds of thousands of protestors in the streets and in the jails. He sort of gets there at the end, though the right-wingers will have a field day with his call for "siege warfare," because they own all the war-words, you know, and thus have exclusive right to use them figuratively.

I'm completely unfamiliar with the New York Times blog The Opinionator -- because, hey, it's the New York Times! -- but this is a good post. The post's jump-off is NBC's hiring of Jenna Bush Hager for a Today show correspondent gig -- which prompts a righteous fury from Glenn Greenwald in which he names 17 public political/media figures who are all sons and daughters of other famous political/media figures, while reminding us that the media suspected the qualifications of Sonia Sotomayor, who almost certainly needed affirmative action to get into Princeton law only because some legacy admission would have bumped her. And it goes on from there. Remember that the next time someone complains about affirmative action, you can always trump them with complaints about legacy admissions.

Meanwhile, we've got more secessionist fun in Texas. Amazing how the election of a black man as President and a potential three percentage-point increase in the top income tax bracket have, together, driven so many Americans absolutely bat-guano. One putative activist even said he "hate(s)" America (which, sadly, provides the Glenn Becks of the world with an opportunity to prove their "independence") while another rails against the cap-and-trade bill as if it hadn't already been completely eviscerated by corporations. But, hey, if Texas really wants to take off, I say Godspeed. Let them defend their borders, not just from those evil Mexicans but from those evil Oklahomans. Let them raise taxes to pay for vital government services, which without federal help they'll have to do. Let them issue passports for good Texans with relatives in Mississippi. Then they'll find out being a country ain't as easy as it looks. And the Cowboys won't be America's team anymore. They might have to play in the CFL, in fact.