Thieves in the Temple.

Two more heaping plates of Congress sucks.

Consumers Union reminds us that S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, still awaits a Senate vote -- has been sitting on the Senate calendar since December 2009, in fact, so sayeth thomas.loc.gov. Surely haven't forgotten all the food poisoning scares occurring over the last few years? S. 510 would force foreign food corporations that export food to the U.S. to adhere to the same safety standards as domestic food corporations, would mandate more frequent inspections of food-producing facilities, and would improve reporting of findings of contamination, among other good things. Plus, eight of the bill's 17 sponsors are Republicans, so the Senate has no excuse for holding things up, unless Messrs. Alexander, Burr, Chambliss, Enzi, Gregg, Hatch, Isakson, and Vitter secretly plan to filibuster their own bill. Here's the contact tool.

Meanwhile, Chris Bowers at Open Left informs us that H.R. 4213 won't get passed before the Memorial Day recess, even though many millions of Americans are depending on its passage to keep their unemployment benefits and COBRA benefits going, and though many of its other programs (as we've discussed here ad infinitum) would stimulate the economy. Can't blame the evil Republicans for this one, though -- we have to blame the Evil Democrats, particularly the Blue Dog Democrats, who (like Republicans) get their Fiscal Responsibility on only on bills that might actually help the less fortunate. Never do I hear from the likes of Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin about defense department waste, corporate welfare, or supplemental war spending, but suddenly this five month-old bill upon which both Houses have already voted multiple times needs more "scrutiny." The silver lining to this dark cloud? If the Republicans pick up any House seats this year (which is, frankly, not a certainty), they'll pick up Blue Dog seats. And that's OK, because sometimes you'd rather just deal with the devil directly.

More more more.

The Senate finally passed S. 3217, the financial reform bill, and here's what I have to say about that: a lot of necessary reforms didn't pass, but I'm glad I fought to get it as good as it got, and maybe you are, too. And yet the fight goes on, since the House passed a different bill, and so the House and Senate must go to conference to create a final bill. Wall Street megacorporations still plan to gut the bill as best they can, so CREDO helps you demand transparency in the conference negotiations. Namely, CREDO advocates that the negotiations be televised on C-SPAN and that the bill's text should be made public well in advance of the final vote. These seem like minimal inconveniences to me -- insofar as any attempt by the people to oversee the actions of their nominal representatives can be considered an "inconvenience."

Meanwhile, H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act, has passed out of committee and could be voted upon by the full House as early as tomorrow, so Common Cause helps you urge your Representative to support it. The DISCLOSE Act, as we've discussed before, would force the corporations and unions to, ah, disclose their spending on federal elections; the DISCLOSE Act won't stop all the spending we've witnessed so far this cycle, but it'll force some sunlight on it. Luckily, the link above also helps you advocate for H.R. 1826, the Fair Elections Now Act, which would stanch the flow of corporate funding into Elections. And no, for the millionth time, money is not speech. Money is property, and the Supreme Court has established that property can be regulated by the federal government -- though I bet John Roberts is just waiting for an opportunity to knock that pillar over, too.

In other news, some 70-odd House Democrats have signed a letter to the FCC asking them not to enforce net neutrality regulations. What a bunch of pimps. I'm going to explain this one more time: the government does not aim to "take over the internet" by enforcing net neutrality regulations; the government only aims to stop corporations from taking over the internet, and, believe me, corporations want to tell you what you can see and do on the internet. The Christian Coalition and the NRA and the Parents' Television Council are just as concerned about corporate control of the internet as I am. And almost every last damn one of the aforementioned Democrats has (surprise!) taken money from the telecommunications industry. Apply the pimpsmack here.

Pimp-slapping BP, plus the best anti-war legislation we've seen this year.

What can a poor, poor federal government do when British Petroleum pollutes the Gulf of Mexico (besides, you know, cozy up to them)? It can ban BP from receiving any more federal contracts, that's what. CREDO helps you urge the EPA to do just that. Like many Congressfolk I've been tempted to try and wrest more money from BP than the $75 million federal liability limit allows, but the Constitution plainly forbids such a thing, as well it should -- frankly, we as a nation ought to have the foresight to regulate out-of-control corporations, and when we don't, we ought to learn our lesson. It couldn't be a coincidence that the last five administrations have been reducing regulations on corporations (and the current administration is timid about imposing them), could it? Nah, I'm sure all they had in mind was growing the economy. How did that all work out for us again?

Meanwhile, I now have an actual petition for H.R. 5353, the War is Making You Poor Act, courtesy of AlterNet. This Alan Grayson (D-FL) production wouldn't just force the Obama Administration to count the cost of the wars as part of the defense budget, it would rebate nine-tenths of the resulting savings to the American taxpayer. Fiscally responsible, lowers taxes, condemns the war -- no wonder Ron Paul is on board! I would add (though Ron Paul might not) that, like the Making Work Pay tax cut, the War is Making You Poor tax cut would be a progressive cut, because the lower income-earners would get back a larger slice of their income (and their bills) than the upper income-earners. And since the lower income-earners are more likely to have to spend their money (whereas the rich ones can hoard it), they'll pump that money into the economy, and so the War is Making You Poor tax cut will also do all of us more good. We've done tax cuts the other way around for too long now. The people should benefit, for once.

Unemployment extension and California blues, plus Sarah Palin parody.

NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, informs me that H.R. 4213 (the unemployment insurance/COBRA extension bill) now requires another House vote and another Senate vote, which means the House must have made changes to the version that just passed the Senate. I expect the new H.R. 4213 will sail through the House, and I hope Senate Republicans have decided they've objected as much as they think it'll benefit them politically. Of course, many of the benefits extended in H.R. 4213 expire on June 2, and where will Congress be on June 2? Off for the Memorial Day holiday, of course. Normally that's cause for celebration, but they have some work to do before they go on vacation. NETWORK helps you urge your Congressfolk to support the bill. NETWORK reminds us that the bill also extends emergency TANF funding, funds the National Housing Trust Fund to the tune of $1 billion, and expands assistance to states so they can preserve health care jobs. Only a Scrooge McSmallgovernment could oppose these things, which stimulate the economy better than any tax-cut-for-the-rich ever could.

Meanwhile, in the great-but-not-as-great-as-New-Jersey state of California, Anthem Blue Cross withdrew its proposed 39% rate increase for folks not covered by group rates after an unfavorable state review and a firestorm of bad publicity. (A sternly-worded letter from the Obama Administration, specifically HHS Secretary Sebelius, might also have helped thwart their plans.) Thus CALPIRG sees an opportunity to push AB 2578, which would require all health insurers to justify their rate hikes publicly, and would permit the state to reject requests it finds unreasonable. If we had single-payer, of course, we wouldn't have to do these things; we'd just have to keep an eye on the government, which we do anyway. But AB 2578 would be the minimum we'd need to do to rein in bad health insurers. So CALPIRG helps you tell California House Speaker John Perez to help get this bill passed.

Finally, on a lighter note, Daily Kos diarist NickM (who may well be the same NickM who has commented a few times here) serves up a hilarious parody of the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," only his version is "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sarah Palin." If you'd like to compare the parody to the original, well, here's the original. Read the comments, too; one reviewer calls "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sarah Palin" "the marriage of the ineffable with the execrable."

Babel.

Finally, some anti-war legislation I can get behind: H.R. 5353, the "War is Making You Poor Act" -- a project of Reps. Grayson (D-FL), Paul (R-TX), Jones (R-NC), Lee (D-CA), Woolsey (D-CA), Conyers (D-MI), and Kucinich (D-OH) -- would not end the war nor offer a "timetable" for withdrawal, but would a) require over $159 billion in war spending to come directly from the Pentagon's $549 billion budget and b) rebate some 90 percent of the $159 billion in savings to the American people. The remaining 10 percent would go to cut the deficit a bit. Bill opponents will no doubt cry that some $160 billion out of the defense budget would expose us to rape and murder by terrorists, but a cut that size might also force the Defense Department to stop funding so many defense boondoggles. Like missile defense, for example. H.R. 5353 has found itself in the House Ways and Means Committee; you can call your House Reps using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page and ask them to support H.R. 5353, and/or you can call members of the Ways and Means Committee and encourage them to get the bill moving.

Not so long after Kentucky Republican Senatorial candidate Rand "the Lesser" Paul tepidly criticized the public accommodations part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and then walked it back), Fox News (sic) analyst (sic) John Stossel backed Mr. Paul's statement with considerably more vigor: "private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist." Essentially, then, property-owners have more rights than consumers. Mr. Stossel also seems to think (as many of his ilk do) that racist businesses will lose at the free market ballot box, ignoring the reality the Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed: so many businesses in the South were racist that black folks didn't have the "consumer choices" they deserved as human beings. Thus, Color of Change offers a petition to Fox demanding his removal. I'd just as soon go after John Stossel for torturing data in the service of his pro-corporate prejudice, but this'll certainly do. And no, he does not enjoy a First Amendment right to paid for his speech, nor does the First Amendment protect him from his employer. Nor, I should add, does it protect him from other citizens, like ourselves, exercising our First Amendment rights in criticizing him, or even demanding his firing. Even if Pravda TV tries to characterize us as a dirty, unruly mob.

Prickly thorn, but sweetly worn.

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) may soon offer an amendment to H.R. 5136 (the Defense authorization bill) that would repeal don't-ask-don't-tell; the Senate may follow suit (its bill is S. 3280) when the Armed Forces Committee meets on May 27. Open Left has the inside scoop. Of course, Speaker Pelosi needs to schedule a vote on Rep. Murphy's amendment; her phone number is 1.202.225.0100. She has said this week that she's fairly certain don't-ask-don't-tell will be repealed this year. Of course, she's in a position to do something about that.

Meanwhile, Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) goes from hero to goat in one day, no, not for voting against the Wall Street reform bill, but for (along with Sens. Kerry and Murray) fighting the "carried interest" loophole that lets hedge fund managers get taxed at a lower rate than all of us out here scraping by. Hedge fund income doesn't get taxed as if it's income, you see -- it gets taxed as if it's capital gains, meaning a manager's millions get taxed at 15 percent when it should be taxed at 35 percent (at least!). Your income, meanwhile, gets taxed at 27 percent once you hit $40,000. See the problem? Then why can't Sens. Cantwell, Kerry, and Murray? You can find their phone numbers in a few clicks using the links in the upper left-hand corner of this page. They'll never see it coming, at least not from out of state.

The FCC is taking comments on the Comcast-NBC merger, and Free Press helps you leave comments opposing it. I'm going to say this to all the pimps out there one more time: if our government prevents this merger, it's not "taking over the media" or whatever; it's preventing the corporations from taking over the media. In a related note, Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) of the Congressional Black Caucus has circulated a letter demonstrating that he's bought into corporate propaganda that any government regulation equals "interference," especially in the lives of black folks; Save the Internet has the letter here (with helpful refutations sprinkled throughout), and Color of Change helps you call some of its signers and urge them to remove their names from the letter.

Finally, Ian T. Shearn describes how one Richard Berman (whose own son describes him as "a sort of human molester") sets up charities with innocuous-sounding names which act on a pro-corporate agenda, and funds them using his vast connections to the rich and powerful. Mr. Berman's charities include the Center for Consumer Freedom (which is really all about freedom for corporations), the Employment Policies Institute (which fought minimum wage laws) and the Center for Union Facts (which fights unions). And this scheme, you may be surprised to learn, makes him very rich: of the $20 million in donations the Center for Consumer Freedom took in between 2002 and 2008, nearly half ($9 million) went to Mr. Berman or his company, of which he's the sole owner. If that isn't unearned money, I don't know what is. All praise the new economy!

More financial reform action, sensible sex-ed for Pennsylvania kids, and a Paul descendant.

S. 3217, which aims to reform financial services so the economy doesn't crash again, has hit more than a few bumps lately. Sens. Cantwell (D-WA) and Feingold (D-WI) joined a Republican filibuster out of a conviction the bill isn't good enough -- Mrs. Cantwell wants to close a loophole in derivative regulation, and Mr. Feingold wants a Glass-Steagall-type reform (like the Cantwell/McCain amendment) that would keep banks from having their hands in too many other companies (which creates blatant conflicts of interest). Sens. Cantwell and Feingold aren't forcing further debate on the bill because they want to kill the bill, like most Republicans are -- their demands would be substantively good changes, and we can support them by calling our Congressfolk, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner. Also, Americans for Fairness in Lending still provides an email tool supporting other good changes in the bill; if you haven't sent an email already, you can amend it to include the concerns described above. I think we, the owners of government, want our economy to make some damn sense again.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania legislature contemplates HB 1163, the Healthy Youth Act, which would lay down a comprehensive sex education program for Pennsylvania public school students. If that sounds scary to you, you might want to read the bill -- the bill mandates that students learn about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and the effects of alcohol and drugs on decision making, but neither ignores nor oversells the importance of abstinence. Also, the bill mandates that the schools present all the teaching materials on their websites, and permits parents to excuse their children from participating without the students being subjected to penalties. That all sounds pretty damn common-sensical to me, though I bet Daryl Metcalfe finds something objectionable in it, or maybe he even makes something up. The ACLU helps Pennsylvania residents support the bill.

Finally, remember what I said about how good it was that Rand Paul was in the Kentucky Senate race? Well, scratch that -- dude thinks the government shouldn't tell private businesses not to discriminate against black folks. Didn't do any better on NPR and Rachel Maddow than he did with the Louisville Courier-Journal, either, and I do recall worrying that he'd be more political than his dad. I feel compelled to point out, however, that Mr. Paul has another bias -- he seems to think the fact of property confers more rights on businesses than consumers, that businesses have more of a right to keep people they don't like off their lunch counters than consumers do to eat at the lunch counter of their choice. Moreover, we're not talking historically about a single lunch counter in Pikeville, but just about every lunch counter in an entire region discriminating against an entire class of people for as long as they existed -- if a black consumer wanted to eat at a "white" lunch counter in 1958, he simply didn't have the freedom to do so. And if freedom is our business, and thus the government's business, then telling private businesses they couldn't discriminate was the right thing to do.

UPDATE. Mr. Paul now says he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act if he hadn't been only two years old at the time, plus he wouldn't support its repeal if anybody proposed it, plus Jack Conway lied about him. He's more a politician than his father, and that's not a compliment. He's also not a very good politician -- all he ever had to say, if he wanted to be a politician about it, was that the relevant Constitutional issues "have been settled by federal courts in the intervening years," which he finally said today. Rasmussen had Mr. Paul leading Mr. Conway by 24 points this morning. I expect the race will be considerably closer than that, and I do not assume that Mr. Paul will win it.

I got yr wave against incumbents right here!

The Obama Administration seeks public comments on an Office of Federal Procurement Policy rule that would set a definition of "inherently governmental" functions -- thus determining which government functions can be outsourced to private contractors and which can't. You probably already know how I feel about this: the government is our government, and thus should avoid farming out its functions to private hands, who might be someone's cronies. You've seen what happened when Kellogg-Brown-Root rewired Iraqi buildings: they killed American soldiers, including one Green Beret in the shower. You've seen what happened when ArmorGroup provided security for State Department employees in Afghanistan: they ran amok in a "Lord of the Flies environment." You've seen what happened when the IRS "privatized" some of its collection services: your government paid more, of your money, to collect less money than they'd have done if they'd done the job themselves. Privatizing essential government functions essentially removes you, the taxpayer and owner of government, from overseeing those functions via your Representatives. So CREDO, in conjunction with OMB Watch, helps you leave your comment.

NETWORK, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, provides an email tool with which you may support H.R. 4213, which we briefly discussed here yesterday. NETWORK lists some of the good points of the bill: unemployment and COBRA benefits get extended for one year and until the end of 2010, respectively; TANF Emergency funding, which pumps money back into local economies by giving money to people who'll, er, spend it, gets extended; the National Housing Trust Fund gets $1 billion in funding; and states will continue to receive necessary federal assistance on their health care spending. NETWORK also says the bill would extend a summer-jobs-for-underprivileged-youth program; the Coalition for Human Needs was less sure about that prospect yesterday, but that's a good program and should continue, too. The bill has passed both House and Senate, but the Senate amended it, so the House has to vote on it, again. The vote should happen very soon.

Finally, I congratulate Joe Sestak on his primary victory over Arlen Specter in the Senate Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. I also congratulate Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter for forcing incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln into a June runoff. (Full disclosure: I contributed $30 to the Halter campaign.) And I also congratulate Jack Conway and Rand Paul for their victories in the Kentucky Democratic and Republican Senate primaries, respectively; I expect that'll be a good race, giving Kentucky voters the best their parties have to offer. Jack Murtha's old district had a special election yesterday, too, and despite said district giving Mr. Murtha's opponent over 40 percent and preferring Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama in 2008, the Democrat won that one, too. If you're keeping score at home, that's seven consecutive special House elections the Democrats have won, in six fairly contestable districts, no less. I note with interest that the "liberal" media has changed its tune somewhat -- it's moved from the "Republican tsunami" to a "wave against incumbents." Of course we know that most Congressional incumbents are, ahem, Democrats, so when the "liberal" media talks about a "wave against incumbents," I can't help but think they're just cheering on Republicans without having the courage to name them.

I got yr resolution of disapproval right here!

Word on the street is that Sen. Casey (D-PA), the Artist Formerly Known as My Homey, plans to introduce an amendment hauntingly similar to S.J.Res. 26, the Murkowski "resolution of disapproval" that would have stopped the EPA from ever regulating greenhouse gases. Thomas.loc.gov doesn't have the text of the amendment up, so I can't tell if the bill would prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases for all time, or for a period of months or years. Either way, I don't approve, and Penn Environment helps you communicate your disapproval, as well. I guess it's possible the gas lobby in Pennsylvania wanted something pretty concrete from Mr. Casey, especially after he proposed a bill (S. 1215, you may recall) that would have ended the gas industry's exemption from clear water legislation. But I don't think the U.S. Constitution gives the gas companies more rights than people.

Meanwhile, H.R. 4213, which would extend certain unemployment benefits, Medicaid funding, COBRA funding, etc., through the end of the year, has passed both House and Senate, but the Senate passed a different version that, while not as good as the House version, still does a lot of good. The House may take up the Senate version as soon as Thursday, and apparently have been hearing from constituents that the government has already done too much and the deficit shouldn't go up any further. Ha! Funny that such folks would be worried about the deficit when considering a bill that would help poor people, but not, apparently, when debating whether to fund the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, or when throwing money at defense boondoggles, or when cutting taxes for corporations and rich people. And this government spending would actually help the economy. The Coalition for Human Needs suggests you call your Rep at 1.877.442.6801 and urge them to vote for the bill. You can use the tools in the upper left-hand corner, too, if you like.

Finally, we may be moving into the home stretch with S. 3217, the financial reform bill. Open Left updates us on some of the issues currently confronting passage; on the whole, I've been encouraged by the process, as some strengthening amendments (like the Franken amendment to reduce the pay-for-ratings conflicts plaguing credit rating agencies) have passed, while others (Sen. Chambliss actually sponsored an amendment making derivatives trading less transparent!) failed. But more amendments are coming -- like the Merkley/Levin amendment that would stop government-supported banks from engaging in shell game-type trading, the Cantwell/McCain amendment that would reinstate Glass-Steagall-type protections preventing banks from owning other financial companies, and, sadly, the dread Carper amendment that would pre-empt state regulatory authority. Public Citizen still provides a phone tool supporting Merkley/Levin, and Americans for Fairness in Lending provide an email tool also supporting Merkley/Levin, as well as opposing amendments from Carper and Brownback (who wants to exempt car dealers from financial regulations).

Penny rants for Monday, May 17, 2010.

Pennsylvania primary voters hit the polls tomorrow, and Sen. Arlen Specter, who bolted the Republican party in 2009 after realizing he couldn't beat Pat Toomey in a primary, may very well lose to U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary. And they say irony is dead! Mr. Sestak has been pulling ever closer to Mr. Specter in polls for two weeks, during which time he's deployed this nuclear option of an ad, showing Mr. Specter with Bush-Santorum-Palin (though he looks pretty unhappy with Mrs. Palin). The Philadelphia Daily News's Will Bunch was not surprised by Mr. Specter's apparent turn of fortune. In retrospect, I guess I'm not, either -- Mr. Specter has always been the "at least he's not" choice; the electorate would settle for him (as they clearly did in 1992 and 2004, for example), but no one would run through a wall for him, and upstart challengers always have folks who'd run through a wall for them.

In more important news, Mr. Obama apparently reserves the right to kill American citizens he deems a terrorist threat, and, moreover, has authorized the CIA to kill Islamic cleric Anwar al-Alwaki wherever he is. Mr. Bush also reserved the right to kill American citizens deemed a terrorist threat, but as far as we know he never targeted anyone. So Mr. Obama has surpassed Mr. Bush yet again! Seriously, though a Gawker headline read "Obama Does Something Bloodthirsty Enough to Please the Psychos," Mr. Obama probably knows by now that the far right will never be pleased with him, no matter how much he compromises with (or embraces) evil. No, Mr. Obama aims salvos like these squarely at that overrated specimen, the inhabitant of the American "middle," who of course would never support the assassination of an American citizen under any reasonable circumstances but does of course understand the difficulty of the decisions Mr. Obama has to make and appreciates that Mr. Obama keeps trying.

UPDATE. I thought you might not get that I was trying to be, you know, sarcastic in the last sentence above -- and if you didn't, that's my fault -- so I applied that most ubiquitous of tools, the italics hammer. Thanks for reading!

Lo, the wrath of the italics hammer!

Tha Bush Mobb arrested Canadian citizen Maher Arar in Boston in 2002 on suspicion of ties to al-Qaida, and then sent him off to Syria to be tortured. Because, you know, we don't do that in America, or should I say in America. Now the Obama Administration has argued before the Supreme Court that the Court should not hear Mr. Arar's appeal -- that even if Tha Bush Mobb conspired to send him off to be tortured, the courts cannot hold Tha Bush Mobb accountable. There's a lot of legalese involved here -- the Obama Administration has argued that the case was properly dismissed by lower courts, and lower courts have held that the case dealt with too many sensitive national security issues and/or that Congress hasn't "authorized" lawsuits such as Mr. Arar's. But none of that actually means torture is legal -- which seems to me to be the overriding issue -- and if you told me Tha Bush Mobb had no way of knowing Mr. Arar would be tortured if they sent him back to Syria, I'd say you were a fool. The Center for Constitutional Rights helps you tell Mr. Obama, like, WTF already.

Messrs. Kerry and Lieberman released their brand-spanking new climate change, er, power security bill yesterday, and, as expected, it stinks. (Too easy?) Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum comments at length here. Long story short: it's a bill that helps corporations, not people. Long story somewhat less short: the bill guts the Clean Air Act's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, promotes offshore oil drilling like the Gulf of Mexico isn't bleeding oil as we speak, promotes nuclear power plants at taxpayer expense, institutes a carbon tax that, incredibly, doesn't pay for solar or renewable energy expansion, and not only sets weak goals for carbon reduction but forbids states from setting stronger goals. Any pluses? The bill is better, in very small respects, than the bill the House passed almost a year ago, but "better than a pile of dung" really is not the bar we should set for legislation. Here's hope, though: the EPA already has the right, per Antonin Scalia and four other Justices, to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. So the only people who "need" this monstrosity of a bill are the politicians, and their "needs," frankly, don't count. So CREDO provides the smackdown tool.

Pennsylvania voters, take note: HB 2235, which would institute a three-year moratorium on drilling in many state forests, has passed the state House, but now goes to the state Senate. Penn Environment helps you petition your Senator for passage. Your Senator may not be willing, given that Pennsylvania faces yet another budget shortfall. But the legislature hasn't considered at least one sure-fire revenue-raising tool -- taxing millionaires' incomes more than they're taxed now. The rich pay the same state income tax rate as I do, but three percent of my income is a bigger chunk of my cost-of-living than it is of theirs -- unless someone making twenty times what I make really needs twenty times the food, twenty times the water, and twenty times the shelter. I'm always hearing these days that sales taxes and the dread Value-Added Tax are "necessary" sacrifices, but the folks who still make tons of money make zero sacrifices. A lot of folks agree with everything I've just said. But the rich and powerful don't, and you know they just might act solely out of self-interest.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd), Facebook has been taking a lot of heat for its privacy practices lately, and they should -- anytime you "reset" your users' privacy practices to let-it-all-hang-out without telling them, you deserve the criticism you get. I mean, duh. Facebook has apparently called an "all hands" meeting on its privacy policies -- whether to change their policies so they're more user-friendly or to discuss CYA strategies, I can't say. But the ACLU takes this opportunity to provide an online petition asking for better privacy protections from facebook. The petition asks for a) default settings to favor your privacy, rather than favoring publicly spreading around all your information and b) the ability to opt in to information sharing, rather than opting out. These would be significant and helpful changes.

Even more financial reform bill news!

Open Left alerts us to S.A. 3949 -- an amendment to S. 3217, the financial reform bill -- which would strip states of the right to make tougher regulations on financial institutions than the federal government does. Worse than its mere presence is its sponsorship list -- two Republicans (Messrs. Corker and Ensign) and five Democrats (Messrs. Bayh, Carper, Johnson, Ben Nelson, and Warner), of whom one, MBNA's Delaware's Carper, is the lead sponsor. Some have asked whether states really have the right to regulate interstate commerce. Well, as one commenter in the above link put it, states may not be able to target interstate commerce, but they can certainly regulate commerce that occurs within their state, and the size of the corporation engaging in the commerce doesn't matter. I think the abject and humiliating defeat of this amendment should be our goal when we call our Senators.

Meanwhile, buried in this New York Post trifle (in which Mr. Obama seems to get off a zinger on Rush Limbaugh) is this piece of alleged reportage: "The caustic comeback is another example of the verbal venom between the White House and the conservative radio star. In an interview with CBS News last month, Obama called the views spelled out by Limbaugh and Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck 'troublesome.'" Why, that's like Sarah Palin saying "so much for civility" when Mr. Obama called her death-panel lies "bogus." Seriously, when did "troublesome" become venomous? The media still loves to call any liberal criticism an act of incivility, or censorship, or even treason, while keeping silent when right-wingers call Mr. Obama a Nazi or Sen. Graham a sissy. I can't imagine why that could be.

All financial reform, all day!

Americans for Fairness in Lending provides a contact tool demanding that our Senators listen to the people, and not Wall Street, when debating S. 3217, the massive financial reform bill. That seems little to ask, since Senators are supposed to do their constituents' will in the first place. But Wall Street has more disposable income than we do, as I'm sure you know, and they're more than happy to throw it around in order to get their way. I'm guessing -- just guessing now -- that the vast majority of Americans want corporations to stop playing shell games with, and subsequently crashing, our economy. And we ought to make ourselves heard.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen alerts us to an amendment to S. 3217 from Sens. Merkley (D-OR) and Levin (D-MI) which would prevent government-backed banks (including bailout recipients, I'd presume) from engaging in risky trading, and would prevent large banks from making bets against their own clients, as Goldman-Sachs reportedly did. Hopefully it won't go down the way the Brown-Kaufman amendment did the other day. Public Citizen helps you call your Senators about the amendment and see where they stand on it. At this writing, nine Democrats "lean no" on the amendment (including Virginia's Mark Warner, who's not a Republican as stated), and 15 others are "undecided" (including Nebraska's Ben Nelson, whom I suspect is not really undecided).

Penny rants for Tuesday, May 11, 2010: special "once de mayo" edition!

Glenn Beck's war on truth rages on! Now he's enlisted the help of a man who got caught repeatedly fabricating Founding-Father quotations in the late 1990s, and, more importantly, hasn't changed his ways. I mean, I'm fine with having David Barton on TV if he's repented, but if he doesn't repent, he doesn't deserve to keep making money being an "authority," at least not in a healthy society. But this sick, immoral, and decadent society not only lets him ply his trade without shame, it also continues to shovel millions of dollars Glenn Beck's way when he spews gibberish like "(w)e are going to try to repair some of the damage that is being done by truth." I think you mean with truth, you idiot. I'm heartened to see his ratings falling, not because I like bad things to happen to people, but because he's more than earned a calamity that still leaves him redeemable. But if he can't keep from shooting himself in the foot, he shouldn't have a TV show in the first place.

Meanwhile, a Republican might win a May 22 special election and thus represent Hawaii's 1st Congressional district for the first time since 1991. Though any casual observer might conclude that Mr. Djou would win because the Democrats are split between two candidates, I fear that the "liberal" media will declare a Djou victory a harbinger of a "Republican tsunami." Worse, I fear the "liberal" media's more "reasoned" commentators will use a Djou victory to warn all of us DFHs who want more progressive Democrats representing us -- see? The price of you expressing your will is more Republicans in office! Now sit with your hands folded, children, and give Blanche Lincoln your money! Also, I'll take bids on which famous right-wing cheerleader will declare that the conservative movement is so awesome that it beat two Democrats in Hawaii! (My money's on Sean Hannity.)

Finally, as I'm sure you've heard, Mr. Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elana Kagan for the Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. I oppose Kagan's nomination, frankly -- partly because she's never been a judge (I know, I know, over a third of Supreme Court Justices have never been judges, but I think that lack of experience hurt Earl Warren and I think a decade on the Court made Bill Rehnquist a better Chief), but largely because when she has uttered something about the Bush/Cheney power grab, she's supported it. Ms. Kagan being "a fan of Presidential power," as one professor put it, should send up all sorts of red flags -- Samuel Alito was similarly "a fan of Presidential power," while 4th Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a favorite of the far right, apparently scuttled his chances by opposing Mr. Bush's actions in re Yaser Hamdi and José Padilla. Meanwhile, Judge Diane Wood (presumably on Mr. Obama's short list) criticized "sweeping executive powers" as far back as 2003, and Judge Leah Ward Sears (ditto) has written several opinions seeking to restrict law enforcement power, let alone Presidential power. I do not imagine all of these are coincidental.

Me! I disconnect from you.

The ACLU helps you tell your state legislature that you would not support anti-illegal immigration measures similar to Arizona's infamous SB 1070. Even if state legislatures aren't seriously considering laws that promote racial profiling, a lot of Republicans will pretend to consider them, so they can anger up the crazies and get them to the polls on Election Day. (A few Democrats will, too, in the vain hope that they can get the crazies to vote for them.) But we might as well stand up and speak before such efforts get underway, lest it be you being asked for your birth certificate if you're, say, driving in Pennsylvania with New Jersey plates, or vice versa.

The ACLU also helps you support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. (Bill numbers are H.R. 3017 and S. 1584.) ENDA would prohibit employers, employment agencies, and labor unions (among others) from discriminating against gays or transgendered folks; the bill exempts certain religious organizations, but so does the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The bill does not create affirmative action programs for gays and transgendered folks, nor compel the Armed Forces to end don't-ask-don't-tell, nor invalidate corporate rules that apply equally to all employees, such as dress codes. I think I've just named three lies the right wing will tell if H.R. 3017 passes the House. Journalists, all you have to do to refute such lies is read the bill, as I've just done, even though that's really more your job.

Public Citizen calls for us to boycott British Petroleum, in the wake of the still-unfolding Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. I think their role in helping to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1954 is reason enough for a boycott, but so's this. By "boycott" Public Citizen means not buying BP's "gas and retail store products." Of course, everyday items from ballpoint pens to glue to sneakers have some oil in them, probably even some BP oil in them, but that's not your fault. If we were to hold everyone to impossible boycotting standards, nothing would ever get done. It's like that's the idea or something.

Finally, USPIRG gives us a handy guide to financial reform bill amendments, plus a handy guide to how your Senators voted on those amendments. You'll be saddened to know that the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which would have broken up the largest banks and prevented future banks from getting that big in the first place, failed by a wide margin last week. Republicans Richard Shelby, Tom Coburn, and John Ensign actually voted for the amendment, meaning they outclassed almost half the Democratic caucus. I wish that was harder than it is.

Real bipartisanship, part 286.

Sens. Wyden (D-OR) and Grassley (R-IA) plan to offer an amendment to the Senate financial reform bill that would end anonymous holds by Senators. I applaud the effort -- I'm trying to come up with a good reason a Senator would place an anonymous hold on a bill or a nomination, and the only one I can come up with is "the Senator has no courage." I mean, who does a Senator have to fear, really, other than his constituents -- whom he should fear? If attaching relatively irrelevant amendments to bills isn't your cup of tea, I direct you to S. Res. 502, also a Wyden/Grassley production, which went to the Rules and Administration Committee last month. I suspect the effort has broad bipartisan support -- S. Res. 502's other sponsors are Mark Udall (D-CO) and James Inhofe (R-OK). James Inhofe! I just knew if I waited long enough he'd do something right! Seriously, you can call your Senators and ask them to support either the Wyden/Grassley amendment to the financial reform bill or S. Res. 502, or both, even.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration plans to forge a trade agreement this June with seven Asian and Pacific Island nations, an effort originally begun by Mr. Bush. This Trans-Pacific Partnership might be a good deal for its signatories, or it might be the NAFTA of the East, a good deal only for corporations. But I see signs of hope. For one, the other partners currently include Australia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, New Zealand, Brunei, and Vietnam -- no China present to dictate lousy worker conditions and unsafe products (Vietnam, despite its lousy human/labor rights record, won't have the muscle of a China). Also, opposition to bad trade agreements is now a bipartisan cause in America, just like opposition to media consolidation and opposition to corporate crime. I hope Mr. Obama can tell the difference between such actual bipartisanship and the "bipartisanship" of folks like Messrs. Bayh and Lieberman, in which Democrats and Republicans come together to give Republicans everything they want. In case he can't, though, Public Citizen helps you demand a trade agreement that honors workers, honors the environment, and honors consumers.

Wish you were here.

S.A. 3733, a Sherrod Brown/Ted Kaufman production, would break up the big banks and end this whole notion that some banks are just "too big to fail." The Senate may consider S.A. 3733 today, so Public Citizen helps you call your Senators and instruct them to support it. S.A. 3733 would force too-big banks to break themselves up within four years and would prevent today's banks from getting too big in the first place. Also, Sens. Franken, Schumer and Bill Nelson (Bill Nelson!) have come up with an amendment that would fix the conflicts of interest in credit rating agencies, many of whom are, ah, paid by the companies getting rated. You may include support for that in your phone message to your Senators. They'll never see it coming.

Meanwhile, numerous internet reports suggest that FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, supposedly a staunch supporter of net neutrality, may not reclassify broadband services as "telecommunications services," and thus may not protect network neutrality on broadband services. I don't know what it takes to convince these Obamanoids that net neutrality is an actual bipartisan issue, supported by both liberals and conservatives. The only people who don't support net neutrality are the corporatists, and I've had enough of them having all the say about everything. If you've had enough, too, you may call Mr. Genachowski at 202.418.1000. If you can't get through, call 1.888.225.5322, then press "130" to speak with a human. Free Press wants you to let them know how your call went by e-mailing usatsavetheinternet at freepress dot net.

Finally, America's last reporter, Greg Palast, writes about "The BP I've Known Too Well." Long story short: the British Petroleum Greg Palast got to know didn't have rubber booms at the ready in 1989 during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, just as they didn't have rubber booms at the ready during this spill. Long story even shorter: having rubber booms at the ready means employing workers 24-7, and labor is what the corporatists call an expense. Every long-story-shorter seems to be about the worship of mammon, doesn't it?

Black math.

Public Citizen helps you call for an immediate ban on offshore oil drilling, and the People's Email Network helps you demand a "crash program" in alternative energy production. I don't need to go into why, right? Spilled oil makes any bird or mammal swimming in it more susceptible to hypothermia -- and if they ingest any oil, which they'll do by accident, it'll wreck their digestive systems. Also, oil keeps light from penetrating the water, which interferes with plankton growth and photosynthesis, and thus impacts the entire food chain, which includes us. Also, we disperse oil spills with detergents that cause oil to sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it causes yet more damage to whatever lives down there. Finally, if we wind up containing the spill through controlled burning -- and before we can do that, the winds currently keeping the spill from hitting land would have to die down -- we'll create air pollution. And this spill is getting a whole lot bigger, every day -- one scientist has projected that the oil spill could reach the Gulf Coast current and then float as far north as North Carolina. Lucky for us, House Minority Leader John Boehner seems to think the spill actually emphasizes the need for more drilling. John Boehner did resemble a sane person back in the day. No more.

Meanwhile, H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act, compels corporations to (perhaps not surprisingly) disclose their campaign spending, since the Supreme Court says they have the rights of people and all. H.R. 5175 looks pretty loophole-free: it requires ads to list their corporate funders, forces CEOs to appear on camera saying they "approve this message," governs money transferred to front groups for the purpose of making campaign ads, and prohibits TARP recipients, foreign corporations and government contractors from spending money on campaigns. But even though the bill currently has two co-sponsors from each party (Chris Van Hollen and Robert Brady for the Democrats, Mike Castle and Walter Jones for the Republicans), the right-wingers have already begun their whining about how the bill would silence free speech. What are they afraid of? They're not witnesses to a crime who have reason to fear for their lives. And whenever I exercise my right to free speech, I don't get to be a ventriloquist. If corporations really feel oppressed by requirements to identify themselves when they speak, then they ought to consider whether what they're saying is worth hearing. I don't have a handy email contact tool yet, so you'll have to call your Reps and Senators if you want to support this bill today. They'll never see it coming.

Penny rants for Tuesday, May 4, 2010: special "cuatro de mayo" edition!

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later: right-wingers allege that environmentalists blew up the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. But even worse than the Limbaugh/Perino I'm-not-saying-I'm-just-saying act is Eric Bolling's utterly illogical basis for assuming the worst. His sole bit of circumstantial evidence is that Obama waited nine days to address the incident with the media -- and that's, you know, nine days to "let it leak." It's almost like Mr. Bolling thinks Barack Obama doesn't exist when he's not talking to the media. Could Mr. Bolling be suggesting that Mr. Obama wasn't doing anything important during those days? Nah, couldn't be. Should I let it pass that when bad things happened under Mr. Bush, right-wingers responded to similar accusations with cries of treason and why do you hate America? No, I should not let it pass. Ever.

Meanwhile, from the "newspapers are dying because they suck" file: the inimitable Washington Times is "looking for a buyer," or, possibly, a partner to take on some of the financial risk of making a paper people generally don't want to read. Now maybe the Washington Post writes about the troubles of the Times because it loves to gloat, but I'd be tempted to gloat if I were in their shoes, for the Times has never stayed afloat on anything resembling merit -- that annual $35 million lifeline from Rev. Moon has always kept the Times going, in an arrangement rather similar to that of perennial money-loser, the New York Post, historically kept afloat by Rupert Murdoch's other holdings. I wonder if, maybe, newspapers might do better if they, you know, produced good reporting and analysis and paid more attention to local issues and remembered that they're not supposed to be liked by the powerful so much as hated and feared by the powerful. I mean, it has worked before.

Finally, Barack Obama tells college students (and some 80,000 others!) that being reflexively anti-government is kinda silly because "the government is us." Well, like, duh -- right-wingers only get their way by divorcing the government from the will of the people. Yes, I know how it works in practice -- the government does, quite frequently, act like you and I don't matter, and that's true of this government just as it was true of Mr. Bush's government. But in leveling their government-is-always-bad critique, right-wingers don't want to change the government so it's more responsive to the people -- they want to convince you to abdicate your duty to communicate your will to your government, so they can destroy your government. With your government out of the way, right-wingers can redistribute your hard-earned wealth upward to their corporate paymasters. "Starve the beast" indeed -- corporations are the beast, not government.

Effect and cause.

It may be hard to get your head around the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, especially if the Christian Science Monitor is right in suggesting that the U.S. government has lowballed the damage. Sadly, it's easy to get your head around the question why-didn't-British-Petroleum-have-a-Plan-B -- they didn't have a Plan B because the government didn't force them to have one, like the remote cut-off switch required by Brazil and Norway. Of course, Mr. Obama announced the opening of hundreds of millions of acres of coastal lands for offshore oil drilling a few weeks back, and Environment Colorado provides a petition opposing his plan. On a related topic, I've been wondering why the right hasn't been attacking Mr. Obama more vigorously for failing to prevent this catastrophe. Could it be they're too ashamed to do such a thing? Nah! They're probably just waiting until the week before midterms to spring that argument.

Meanwhile, the Democrats show they're determined to bollocks up immigration reform by proposing a national ID card. But you may be asking: didn't Congress already do national ID cards? And the answer is, well, yes and no -- the REAL ID Act of 2005 didn't create a national ID card, but created uniform federal standards for state ID cards. The effective date of the legislation kept getting moved back, from 2007 to 2009 to 2011, while all 50 states asked for extensions and half of those passed resolutions or binding regulations opposing national ID cards. But Bruce Schneier told us in 2004 why a national ID card was a bad idea. And we'd be better off making existing forms of ID more tamper-proof than coming up with new forms of ID with new problems. At the risk of piling on, Gabriel Arana exploded Congress's "immigration reform" paradigm back in March. That's all food for thought, for when you call your Senators to oppose a national ID card. (I don't have a handy email tool yet.)