Thieves in the Temple.

Bills, bills, bills!

You know how Republicans always talk about how their pro-big business bills help small businesses, though of course they don't? Well, H.R. 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act of 2009, would actually do something for small businesses -- in essence, by narrowing the definition of "small business" so that federal contracts actually go to small businesses. Apparently a lot of very big businesses get boatloads of federal contacts intended for small businesses. You can see by the bill's date, of course, that it hasn't moved very far in the last year or so, even in a Democrat-controlled Congress. But the American Small Business League still provides an action page supporting H.R. 2568. ASBL's page is very good: it doesn't provide a handy emailing tool or anything, but it does provide phone numbers for relevant Congressional committee chairs/ranking members, and it also provides a template for the letter you'd write to your Congressfolk. Let's see if we can get this bill moving.

Meanwhile, the House voted 255-159 in favor of H.R. 847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 -- but it did not pass! How can this be? Well, the House voted to "suspend the rules and pass the bill," which action requires a two-thirds majority. The bill seems fairly non-controversial to me -- it would help 9.11 first responders get proper medical care, and help settle 9.11-related medical claims. But the House Republicans apparently won the day by, get this, claiming that the bill would create a massive new entitlement program. How do Republicans think this will work, politically? I guess they're hoping "liberal" media newsreaders won't ask the simple question, "are folks who got sick because they were heroes on 9.11 entitled to decent medical care or not?" You may want to call your House Rep and demand another vote, and then call your Senator and put them on notice that you won't tolerate any "massive entitlement" or "we just think the bill needs more scrutiny" shenanigans from them, either.

Finally, the House plans to vote today on H.R. 3534, the CLEAR Act, which would establish new regulations for protecting rivers and other waterways from, oh, hypothetically, a nightmare spillageddon. This CLEAR Act should not be confused with the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR Act that would establish a cap-and-trade regime, nor the Charlie Norwood CLEAR Act that provides for "criminal alien removal." H.R. 3534 would fully and permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation trust fund, and would also take some steps toward forcing oil/gas corporations to comply with environmental laws, though I presume we'd still need the DiGette/Casey bill (H.R. 2766/S. 1215) to close the gas loophole fully. The bill would also establish an Office of Federal Energy and Minerals Leasing within the Department of the Interior; right-wingers will no doubt complain about another new bureaucracy within the bureaucracy, but leasing is a big deal now and it's certainly overdue for its own office. American Rivers provides the contact tool.

Three more alerts about regulation and rights.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn Environment reminds us to tell our state regulators to regulate gas drilling more stringently than they do now. They don't regulate more stringently, I'm told, because the economy really needs the work and the state really needs the revenues. Well, riddle me this, state regulators: what happens when someone's drinking water well, or someone's place of employment, or someone's home, blows up because of the methane that's seeped into the groundwater due to gas drilling? I'll tell you what happens: lawsuits. And those lawsuits -- which won't be "frivolous" lawsuits filed by corporations, but real lawsuits alleging real damages suffered by real people -- will drain away whatever extra money you got from cutting regulatory corners. Hell, you might even wind up with less money. Regulate, dammit! It's not only the right thing to do, it's the cost-effective thing to do.

In the wake of a Phoenix federal judge's ruling blocking the most offensive provisions of Arizona's SB 1070 from taking effect tomorrow, the ACLU also provides a petition to the nation's Governors opposing SB 1070-type legislation in other states. You can go ahead and sign this even if you wrote a letter using Amnesty International's tool yesterday, because their targets are slightly different (the latter targeted your Governor in particular, the former targets all governors). The Supreme Court may yet uphold SB 1070, because John Roberts is a right-wing activist judge, but I don't see very much hope for right-wing bigots in the short run. Excuse me, I forgot that the real target of SB 1070 was the massive influx of Icelandic immigrants taking good American jobs.

Finally, we come to the use of "spent hens" in federal school lunches. What's a "spent hen," you ask? It's a hen that's effing "spent" from having been bred and shot up with drugs all its life so that it lays more eggs. Meat from these hens are considerably more likely to have salmonella than other hens, and dig this: the drugs it gets to lay more eggs makes its bones brittle, so that the bones splinter off into the meat. Sink your teeth into that! Even KFC won't use spent hens for chicken meat, but the government still thinks it's OK. So CALPIRG helps you urge Michelle Obama to call for a ban on spent hens in school lunches. Why the First Lady? Because she's taken on children's nutrition as a cause, and she might decide this would give her some needed cred. The right-wingers will wail and cry about it, but they wail and cry about the size of her biceps.

More on jobs and civil rights.

Yesterday I was just complaining about how H.R. 4213 didn't extend Medicaid payments to the states, and along comes this action alert from AFSCME calling for just that. The action alert is appropriately strident -- I don't think Congress should leave until they finish all of H.R. 4213's work, either -- but the alert doesn't point to any specific piece of legislation that would extend Medicaid payments. H.R. 4263, a Tammy Baldwin production that never even got a committee vote, would extend increases in Medicaid payments to the states for one year, but I'm not seeing a bill that would restore the lost payments in total. No matter. Communicate your will to your Reps and Senators, and when they blow you off, keep communicating your will to your Reps and Senators. I'd like to think this is still a nation where the public will matters, and giving up isn't a good way to test that belief.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Lancaster County commissioners mull over getting rid of the county's Human Relations Commission, which investigates civil rights violations. Elimination of the Human Relations Commission would save a whopping $470,000, and of course since we are in a recession we have to give up not-very-costly things that actually work for people, right? Ha ha ha. The county votes tomorrow night on whether to eliminate the Human Relations Commission, and Keystone Progress helps you demand that they vote to keep it. Also, if you're near Lancaster, you can go to the Unity Rally to Defend Civil Rights, at Binn's Park, 100 N. Queen St, tomorrow at 5.30 pm. That should send a message to the County commissioners, who meet an hour and a half later down the road, at 150 N. Queen St., Room 102.

Jobs, water, rights, sunlight.

You may know that H.R. 4213, the unemployment extension bill, finally passed last week; you may not know that H.R. 4213 failed to do a lot of the things we wanted it to do: it did not extend TANF emergency funds, it did not extend COBRA funding, it did not extend Medicaid funding for states, and it did not fund the National Housing Trust Fund. S. 3500, a production of Sherrod Brown, Mark Begich, Al Franken, and Kirsten Gillibrand, would not extend those programs (as I mistakenly suggested the other day) but it would at least help communities create and retain education, law enforcement, and firefighting jobs. Currently it seems stuck in the Health/Labor/Education/Pensions Committee, whose members can be found here, if you like. Also, NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, still helps you email your own Reps and Senators about the bill.

Meanwhile, the United Nations contemplates a resolution declaring that clean water is a human right! Thanks to government regulation and water sanitation technology, you and I have clean water we never have to think twice about drinking or washing with, and there may be no bigger factor in our relatively good health, but folks in developing countries must contend with pollution, scarcity, and private control of water access. Hence, the U.N. resolution. Now you may well be saying: it's only a resolution. Well, if that's true, how come the United States, Canada, and England are fighting it? Obviously they don't think it's "just a resolution," or else they'd be going along with it and hoping we all forget about it. Change.org helps you tell your government to stop stonewalling.

In other news, Amnesty International helps you tell your state government not to pass a draconian anti-immigration law like Arizona's SB 1070. You remember SB 1070, the law that virtually requires cops to stop folks they "suspect" are illegal immigrants and requires anyone passing through the state to carry papers proving they're not? Well, that law goes into effect in two days, and now nine other states are hankering for anti-immigration bills of their own. And yes, this is exactly what and-then-they-came-for-me is like -- now you'll have to carry papers around proving your citizenship, later you'll have to carry papers around proving you belong in a public library or public swimming pool or shopping center that's not actually in your hometown. And, by the way, your out-of-state drivers' license won't cut it in Arizona. And if you're poor, you may not even have a birth certificate. See how this works? Or, rather, doesn't work?

Finally, I'm going to hold my nose and tell you to go ahead and support S. 3295, the DISCLOSE Act; Public Citizen provides the contact tool. Yes, I hated it when they carved out an exemption for the NRA, and I hated it even more when they then carved out exemptions for a few other organizations, but the bill will shine more sunlight on corporate contributions to campaigns. By the way, Public Citizen also provides a petition calling for a Constitutional amendment that would affirm that First Amendment rights are for people, not corporations. That seems self-evident, but the Supreme Court has upheld the "precedent" "established" in the 1880s hundreds of times, so a Constitutional amendment, hard a slog as that would be, would be the best way to win this battle.

In the future!

Remember ENDA? The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prevent states from firing gay/bisexual/transgender folks just because they're gay/bisexual/transgender? I keep hearing that the House might vote on it soon, or that the Senate might vote on it in December or January, but I've put action alerts on it enough times that I wonder. Anyway, the bill numbers are H.R. 3017 and S. 1584, and you can read the bill for yourself at thomas.loc.gov and discover that the bill doesn't cover religious organizations or the Armed Forces, doesn't promote affirmative action for gay/bisexual/transgender folks, and doesn't protect gay/bisexual/transgender folks from being fired for legitimate transgressions. I really, really hope I've just refuted the lies the right wing will tell you about ENDA. You can call your Reps and Senators using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

Meanwhile, don't let the massive bipartisan support for network neutrality make you complacent: several far right-wing Senators have introduced a bill with a truly Orwellian name, the Freedom for Consumer Choice Act. Look up S. 3624 at thomas.loc.gov and note Congress's "findings" in Section 3 -- that a "deregulatory" environment is automatically "pro-competitive" (it's not), that we currently enjoy "competition" solely because of technological advances (like hell), and that "competition" is the most effective way to protect consumers (ha ha!). Good regulation is the most effective way to protect consumers, and good regulation increases competition by preventing corporations from buying their way into monopolies. And we enjoy "competition" (I'd say "diversity") on the internet mainly because of network neutrality regulations, not technology. And surprise: the bill's main sponsors take a boatload of money from big telecoms, the very corporations that fight net neutrality the hardest. So that's why they act like government's main purpose is to "promote competition," versus, you know, keeping corporations from ruling the land. Call your Reps and Senators about this, too. Some of them don't really read bills, you know, and they might get hoodwinked by the title.

Finally, the Obama Administration has announced a final rule for national fuel economy standards, but the National Automobile Dealers Association (or NADA, what an unfortunate acronym) is still suing to keep the rule from being implemented. If you have a strong stomach, you can read NADA's latest statement about how the fuel economy rules would cost car owners more. Just like a corporation, to take consumers hostage! Just like a corporation, to act like cost is the only factor in any reasonable decision! Just like a corporation, to say they support more fuel-efficient cars, but not actual rules that would actually force manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient cars! C'mon, guys, suck it in -- pay your CEOs a few dozen million dollars less, and you might be able to absorb the cost. Change.org provides a petition demanding that NADA stop fighting the future.

Stormy weather.

Incredibly, word on the street is that some Senate Democrats would like to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Heckuva job, Democrats! Keep going down this road and you will kick your Congressional majorities away! And these "reasonable," "moderate" "Democrats" tell us that in these difficult economic times we have to let the rich have more money so they can put it back into the economy. Trouble with that is, it's not true: in any economic times, the rich don't pump their windfalls back into the economy; they hoard them, just as you or I would do. Not to mention, of course, that tax cuts for the rich tend to increase deficits, because they decrease revenues -- to the tune of $115 billion alone next year, according to the CBO. So Wealth for the Common Good provides a petition urging Congress to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Congress can keep the itty bitty tax cuts for the rest of us if they like, but if the negotiations get too ridiculous, I'd rather just have Congress do nothing -- and doing nothing would let all the tax cuts expire. Doing nothing in this case is far better than doing us harm.

Which reminds me -- this "ticking tax bomb" rubbish, this largest tax increase in history rubbish, really sticks in my craw. I've said this before, but the liars keep lying, so I'll say it again: the impending expiration of Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts will not represent "the largest tax increase in history." Do these liars think we've never heard of inflation? The top tax rate jumped several times during the 1910s, ultimately moving from 6% in 1913 to 77% in 1918. I would nominate any one of those tax hikes, all of which I would have supported had I been alive back then, as the biggest tax increase in history, regardless of the fact that income and prices were much lower back then. Or how about the tax hikes passed during World War II, which resulted in a fivefold increase in government revenues? Maybe those tax hikes (several of which I would not have supported) were the biggest tax hikes in history. Meanwhile, as the CBO indicates above, if Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts expire, the federal government's revenues will increase by approximately five percent. Five percent is, as you know, much smaller than fivefold. Am I beating a dead horse? In these times, beating a dead horse is an act of courage.

Wordz of wisdom.

You've probably heard about the right-wing noise machine's latest scam -- a heavily-edited video clip alleging institutional racism on the part of a black USDA worker named Shirley Sherrod. In the full video, of course, she actually tells how she overcame her own vestigial racism. USDA Secretary Vilsack fired Ms. Sherrod before figuring out what all the noise was really about; he has since apologized and offered her another job within Agriculture (which she's not exactly jumping to take -- would you?). Mr. Breitbart may have done himself more harm than good with this stunt, but nonetheless CREDO helps you tell the Obama Administration to stop cowering before right-wing propaganda campaigns. It's bad enough that the "liberal" media take their cues from right-wing jerks. Maybe they'll do it less if Mr. Obama shows a bit more backbone.

Meanwhile, I have action alerts from Public Citizen and Americans for Fairness in Lending advocating the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair. Treasury Secretary Geithner seemed to think this was a bad idea not too long ago, and you know what that means -- that Ms. Warren's appointment is almost certainly a good idea. Why would we wade into this whole Presidential-appointment mess? Because the CFPB can be more effective with the right people running it, and everything I've learned about Ms. Warren suggests she's one of the right people. I eagerly await Andrew Breitbart's heavily-edited video of Ms. Warren allegedly kicking a kitten.

In other news, Vaseline has launched a facebook app that helps users lighten their skin on their profile pictures! And, dig this, Vaseline targeted this app at Indian users! (I was wondering why I hadn't seen it.) Apparently skin-lightening is big business over in India -- products have names like Fair and Lovely, Fair and Handsome, and White Beauty, whereas Vaseline calls its skin-lightening product for men (simply) Vaseline Men. Double entendre aside, that name's even worse than the others -- the others tell you you're beautiful if-and-only-if your skin is light like white people's, but Vaseline Men's name suggests that if your skin is dark you're not really a man. Heckuva job, Vaseline! In any case, change.org helps you tell facebook to stop running racist apps like this, whether it's big business somewhere else on the planet or not. Skin-lightening shouldn't be big business anywhere, frankly.

We're not done with you, Congress!

The Senate finally voted to close debate on H.R. 4213, the unemployment extensions bill; now the Senate must actually vote on the bill, and then send it to the House. This iteration of H.R. 4213 did not include many of the good things we've been fighting for over the last few months, including an extension on state funding, but no matter: S. 3500, a Sherrod Brown production, would restore the state funding missing from H.R. 4213, plus it would offer appropriations and additional training for educators, firefighters, and law enforcement. Presumably the Republicans will again complain that it's not paid for without the "liberal" media reminding us of any of the other things (Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D, two wars) that Republicans OK'd without paying for. But that's why I'm here, isn't it? NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you support S. 3500.

Meanwhile, H.R. 5663, the Mine Safety and Health Act of 2010, still requires Congressional action. H.R. 5663 would, among other things, provide additional protections for whistleblowers, enable the Mine and Safety Health Administration to shut down repeat offenders more easily, and raise fines against negligent corporations that haven't been raised (not even to adjust for inflation!) in 20 years. And with all the mining disasters we've had in just the last six months (not just the one in West Virginia that killed 29 workers, but the one in Connecticut in February that killed six and the one in Washington state in April that killed seven), I'd think we'd demand more from our government. Especially one nominally committed to protecting people, versus the last one, committed entirely to protecting corporations. Public Citizen helps you support H.R. 5663.

Finally, those of us who've been claiming for years that trying to wiretap everyone means you'll catch no one got some validation from the lengthy Washington Post article describing the mess that is our current intelligence apparatus. But one does wonder about the timing -- no, not even that one of the sources claiming the intelligence apparatus is just too big now to be properly overseen just happens to be Mr. Obama's new DNI nominee getting vetted by the Senate this very week. No, I'm wondering why such an exposé didn't come out two years ago -- surely it was no better then. I don't mean to claim the Post has completely ignored the issue, but I wonder why they'd want to pin the doing-too-much charge on Mr. Obama and not Mr. Bush. Possibly it's as simple as no reader would buy the charge that Mr. Bush was doing too much. Of course that'd be wrong -- Mr. Bush was always doing too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing, almost like that was the plan.

H.R. 4213: not dead.

The Senate may bring up cloture on its latest iteration of H.R. 4213 (the unemployment extensions bill) as early as Tuesday; the House might take up its own version this week as well. I have no idea how these bills differ from previous iterations of H.R. 4213, though the House version now has Sandor Levin, not Charles Rangel, as its lead sponsor, and is now called the Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act. But, frankly, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that any iteration of H.R. 4213 extends unemployment compensation, extends TANF funding, extends COBRA funding, extends state aid, funds summer jobs for disadvantaged youth, and funds the National Housing Trust Fund. All these would stimulate the economy, which may well be why Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats hate it. You may contact your Senators and Representatives using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer tries to convince us that Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey, a religious fundamentalist as well as a free-market fundamentalist, has been "reaching out to moderates" in his party lately. The sum of their evidence? Susan Collins, putative moderate Republican Senator from Maine, will swing into town and raise money for Mr. Toomey -- which could just as easily be explained as Susan Collins taking one for the team, as she seems wont to do. Also, other folks come forward with testimonials, including Mr. Toomey himself, who says the party shouldn't be so rigid on abortion. 22 paragraphs later, I'm still waiting for the part where Mr. Toomey actually did anything to "woo moderates" -- you know, like changed a position on anything important. (Saying you'd have voted for Sonia Sotomayor is easy now, especially when the vote was 68-31.) In any case, alert citizens will no doubt remember that Mr. Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" in 2000, and once in office was anything but. Absent a 9.11-size terrorist attack, I do not imagine that trick working again.

UPDATE. Sen. Casey's office informs me that the Senate will vote on a "stand-alone" version of H.R. 4213 tomorrow -- that is, the bill will only include an unemployment benefits extension. But don't let that stop you from demanding the other items listed in the first paragraph above. We must never pass up an opportunity to teach them to worry about the people's will first, and how to get Ben Nelson and Scott Brown to vote for a bill second.

ANOTHER UPDATE. Reader Tom indicates (in the comments) that, according to Sen. Specter's office, the Senate will be voting on the whole bill, which would presumably include some/all of the provisions I described above. Also, reader Jim says the "stand-alone" bill is actually H.R. 5618; according to thomas.loc.gov, said bill does contain only unemployment extensions, has been passed by the House, and has been put before the entire Senate (though it hasn't received a vote yet). I don't know which bill the Senate will vote on first -- common sense tells me they'll give H.R. 4213 another go, but we all know where expecting common sense from Congress gets us. More details as they arrive.

Penny rants for Friday, July 16, 2010.

America's last conservative, Paul Craig Roberts, is back -- has been back for a bit, actually -- and this fourteen-paragraph overview of the economic problems we face is, as always, edifying. The "free market," he notes, is merely a market where we permit supply and demand to find their equilibrium, not some Excalibur restoring order to all kingdoms. I'm certain he's correct to note that the current economy's real problem is the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries, such that "there is no work to which low interest rates and massive government spending can recall workers." But, actually, there is work -- plenty of roads and sewer lines need repair, plus we have an opportunity (which Mr. Obama runs the risk of squandering, if he waits too long) to build a real solar/wind energy infrastructure that won't power our cars but could power our homes. It just won't be the world we see right now, which may be why Mr. Roberts doesn't quite see it.

Meanwhile, RL Miller at Daily Kos provides exhibit 474 of "why I don't want a climate change bill from this Congress." Apparently utility companies want to extort "relief" on several air pollutants in exchange for going along with a carbon tax (and I don't even want a carbon tax!), and this follows on the heels of BP's prominence in negotiations on the Kerry/Lieberman/Graham bill, not to mention the 2009 House-passed bill that gave away nearly all of the revenue-raising carbon credits. Of course, at this point, the side of good has won anyway, at least until a Republican becomes President: the EPA declared late last year that it would regulate greenhouse gases (as the Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Scalia, said it could do) under the Clean Air Act, and the Murkowski "Resolution of Disapproval," which would have prevented such regulation, failed to pass a few weeks back. The EPA still has to write strong regulations, of course, but I think the people will have more say over that than they would over any climate change "legislation" that could come out of Congress this year.

Finally, the vote on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill went as expected yesterday: 60-39. (Due to Mr. Byrd's death, the Senate only has 99 members at present.) And as I noted not too long ago, the vote also means 38 Republicans (Mr. Feingold also voted nay, having repeatedly said the bill doesn't do enough) voted against ending the TARP bailout, which is how the bill pays for its various reforms. Quite a few Senators up in 2010 (Feingold, Vitter, Shelby) voted against TARP to begin with, so their 2010 re-election efforts likely won't be undone by their vote on Dodd-Frank -- but Richard Burr, Lisa Murkowski, and Chuck Grassley (to name three) could still find that it's the straw that breaks their campaigns' backs.

Financial reform and nuclear handouts.

The Senate votes on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill today, probably to "close" debate on the bill, and possibly even to vote on the bill itself, so Americans for Fairness in Lending helps you tell your Senators to vote for the bill. To be sure, we'll need to do more work after this bill passes, but this bill will at least create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and will shine a lot more light on derivatives trading, and these are both worthwhile endeavors. Supposedly, the bill has the 60 votes it needs -- it needs only three Republicans, and Sens. Snowe and Collins (R-MA) have indicated support, while Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) finally said he'd support it after extorting the change he wanted. (Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) suggested earlier this week that he had some indeterminate problem with the bill, but apparently he's better now.) In any case, don't get complacent. Talk to your Senators.

Meanwhile, the House has inserted some $25 billion in subsidies for the nuclear power industry into their most recent energy bill. Some environmentally-inclined folk like nuclear power because it doesn't emit carbon into the atmosphere. They forget, apparently, that nuclear leaks are dangerous and that storing nuclear waste is difficult. They also forget that the nuclear industry has largely failed in this country no matter how much it gets in government handouts. They also forget that a nuclear power plant is a giant bullseye for terrorists and spies. And they also forget that solar and wind power have advanced considerably over the years, and would be more available to all if they got a little government funding thrown their way. I'm not particularly opposed to private nuclear power plants, where the owners of the plants take most of the risk and most of the responsibility; I am particularly opposed, however, to throwing taxpayer money away on bad ideas to already-rich corporations who then get bailed out when they fail. So Public Citizens helps you oppose new nuclear subsidies.

Fiscal chicken-hawks be damned!

To my surprise, the FCC is still taking net neutrality comments. You remember net neutrality, the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally (or "neutrally"), the principle that puts you, the consumer, in control of what you read, see, and hear on the internet? Sounds pretty important, doesn't it? Well, the big telecoms would rather that they controlled what you read, see, and hear on the internet, so that they can make more unearned millions from their corporate "partnerships" and tiers of "service." But net neutrality enables this humble blogger to help fellow citizens agitate for progress -- you think Verizon and Comcast and AT&T would ever let someone see the page you're reading unless I gave them a pile of money that I don't have? Never in a million years, my friends. And they would treat our friends on the right the same way. So Free Press helps you leave comments. And the comment period ends tomorrow, so get crack-a-lackin'.

Meanwhile, the House Education and Labor Committee plans this week to mark up H.R. 5504, the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act, and NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you support it. I'm tempted to say, "let's see the Republicans get all fiscal chicken-hawk on this bill," but I also know that some of my Libertarian friends will say, the government shouldn't be involved in this! Poor people can just go to McDonald's! (No, really, they do say that.) When confronted with that canard, just ask them if they take their own kids to McDonald's for every dadgum meal. Betcha they don't -- because they know that 2,500 empty, soda-pop-drenched calories a day (with little, if any, roughage) is a recipe for fat, unhealthy, unhappy kids. Kids deserve better, and if government does better by them, that's not a sin.

Also, Common Cause still helps you support the Fair Elections Now Act. The news hook this time -- there's always a news hook, because there's always a corporation trying to buy off a Congressperson -- is the BP oil spill. Only the financial industry, apparently, gives more money to Congressional candidates than the energy industry, and the oil and gas industries are the biggest bribers, er, givers in the energy industry. You see what their giving has got them, too -- a Congress (not to mention a President) now completely "helpless" to stop Spillageddons from happening again. The Fair Elections Now Act would fund all campaigns that meet a small-donor threshold, and would permit only small donations ($100 or less) from individuals after that. Maine has a similar program (Arizona's got partially struck down by the Supreme Court recently), and it's nice to hear Republican legislators in Maine testifying to how great they feel that they get to work for the people without worrying about mollifying rich corporations. We could have that all over the country, if we demand it.

Finally, the Supreme Court recently vacated a lower court's decision to outlaw genetically-modified alfalfa, but pointedly did not reverse the lower court's main finding, that Tha Bush Mobb broke the law when they gave Monsanto's GMO alfalfa the go-ahead before determining that it was environmentally safe. Chances are pretty good that it's not safe -- alfalfa is one of the most common crops on the planet, and GMO alfalfa contaminates more organically-grown alfalfa. I wonder if the USDA could certify any alfalfa as "organic" after Monsanto's Frankenfalfa spreads enough of its seed. Hence, CREDO provides a petition opposing any government effort to partially deregulate Monsanto's GMO alfalfa. I would think that preventing genetically-modified alfalfa from hitting the market before we can control its side effects would be a profoundly conservative cause. I guess modern-day religious bigots and fiscal chickenhawks don't agree, but I don't call any of them conservative.

More deficit-busting, plus bonus PBS slam.

Weren't we just talking about deficit-busting yesterday? And weren't we discussing ending big oil tax breaks as a way to slash the deficit? Perhaps not coincidentally, TrueMajority provides a petition demanding an end to big oil tax breaks. Congress tried to end big oil tax breaks in 2007, but the effort (and I'm sure this will shock you) ran into a Senate filibuster, or should I say a Senate "filibuster." In the meantime, the Senate still can't bring themselves to end $35 billion in tax subsidies, all the while complaining that unemployment extensions aren't "paid for." I'm inclined to believe that the Senate's priorities are mixed up. And not another word about how ending tax subsidies will cost us jobs! I'm sick of big corporations taking their workers hostage when we try to make them members of the community again. And if oil company CEOs were so concerned about jobs, they'd break off some of their unearned hundreds of millions in salary and options and bonuses for their workers.

Meanwhile, FAIR informs us that PBS plans to broadcast a gushing three-hour documentary on former Secretary of State George Shultz. That in itself isn't a great big deal, but dig this: corporations on which Mr. Shultz currently serves as a board member helped fund the documentary without being real up-front about that. Think Bechtel and Charles Schwab might be a little less than objective? Especially Bechtel, where Mr. Shultz was President from 1975 until 1982? Worse, PBS has held at least three other documentaries over the years to a far stricter standard, and surprise! Their putative conflicts were with labor unions, lesbian organizations, and support groups for domestic violence. I presume that if the aforementioned three groups were rich corporations, PBS would have been more permissive about possible conflicts of interest. You may ask PBS ombud Michael Getler to investigate possible conflicts of interest concerning Turmoil and Triumph by writing ombudsman at pbs dot org or calling 702.739.5290.

It's super-deficit-busting Monday!

Since the deficit is on the minds of so many pundits today, I thought I'd do my part and highlight USPIRG's report, "The Next Trillion," which tells us how to slash the national debt by a trillion bucks. It follows their report "The First Trillion" (accessible from the link above), which advocated for such common-sense items as closing offshore tax havens, ending oil/gas subsidies, collecting unpaid payroll taxes, and, of course, closing the "carried interest" loophole for hedge fund managers. (Congress did take one bit of USPIRG advice -- ending student loan subsidies to private corporations as part of the health care reform bill -- and, as you might recall, getting that done was like pulling teeth.) "The Next Trillion," sadly, does repeat a few items from "The First Trillion," which doesn't appear particularly honest, but it does have more good ideas, like taxing financial transactions, ending orders for obsolete spare parts in defense spending, and reforming various Medicare administrative practices. You may want to compile a list of the things you like best and call your Reps and Senators about them -- and then see which "deficit hawks" fight as hard for them as they fight against extending unemployment for the unfortunate.

Meanwhile, CNN has picked up the whole New Black Panther alleged voter intimidation story, and boy they sure are cleverer at this news-distortion thing than Pravda TV! See Kyra Phillips tell J. Christian Adams he had "become the whistleblower," because unequivocally calling him a "whistleblower" would be harder to walk back! See CNN host a black Republican Civil Rights Commissioner, so he can fail to note that one of his fellow Republicans on the Commission also thinks this whole thing is trumped up! Now Ms. Phillips did talk to an actual Black Panther in a separate segment later on, but not about the facts of the case, and by then, really, the damage had been done -- CNN had legitimized another Pravda TV drama, showing less skepticism about Mr. Adams's testimony than even Mr. O'Reilly has shown, failing to notify its viewers that Mr. Adams was a political appointee in Mr. Bush's Justice Department or that Mr. Adams didn't seem palpably upset when Mr. Bush's Justice Department declined to file criminal charges against the New Black Panthers in the first place. Hence, Color of Change provides a petition so you can tell CNN to stop passing along Pravda TV's race-baiting. Which is what they did, whether they had Bobby Seale on later or not.

Surprise, pimps! It's super-action Friday!

The House passed a $33 billion war supplemental last week. Remember when Mr. Obama said there wouldn't be any more supplemental war spending bills? So do I. Anyway, the Senate will act on it when they get back, and they'll probably make changes and send it back to the House. After Downing Street sees an opportunity to cut off war spending entirely -- this is how wars ended in the past, after all -- and I'd suggest calling your Reps at their home districts, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner, and demanding a "no" vote on the war supplemental when it returns. No timetable for withdrawal, nothing like that -- just no money. And no, cutting off war spending won't "put the troops in harm's way." First off, the troops are already in harm's way! (There may not be a big enough Italics Hammer for that one.) Also, the Pentagon can simply reallocate a small portion of its own largesse toward withdrawing the troops.

Public Citizen reminds us that the financial reform bill needs Senate approval when they get back, and thus provides another action page. If your Senator might be vote number 60, tell him or her that the time for hostage-taking is well past. (And n.b. that at least one potential vote number 60, Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, is up for re-election in 2010, and if early polls are any indication, re-election won't be as easy for him as it's been in past years.) Also, Mr. Obama helpfully reminds us that S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, is still out there; the bill has broad bipartisan support, and I never think the Senate has "too much to do," so you may want to call your Senator in his/her home district and tell them to get to it. No more "need for scrutiny," "time to consider the issues," etc. -- that bill's been awaiting a vote for almost seven months, and frickin' Richard Burr and frickin' Saxby Chambliss and frickin' Orrin Hatch are co-sponsors, for Frick's sake.

Finally, the Center for Responsible Lending reminds us that, starting August 15, your bank can't charge overdraft fees unless you specifically "opt in" to that "service." The banks call it "overdraft protection" -- that's right, it's protection, like they're in the mob or something -- because it allows you to overdraw your account and then pay a $30-plus "fee," rather than the alternative, which would be denying the transaction. Before the massive credit card reform bill of last year, banks could enroll you in "overdraft protection" without your say-so, and they made nearly $24 billion off such "protection" in 2008, but now you have to give your permission for them to steal that chunk of your money. I suppose my Libertarian friends would say government didn't need to intervene, that some bank, somewhere, would have offered the "option." Main problem with that is they didn't -- they all got drunk on their overdraft fees instead.

Penny rants for Thursday, July 8, 2010.

Bill O'Reilly continues his canoe-act with Barack Obama: watch as he spars, more or less, with two right-wing legal analysts on Pravda TV's new cause célèbre, the "voter intimidation" case against the New Black Panthers (not the "Black Panthers," Ms. Wiehl), against whom Mr. Bush also failed to file criminal charges. Note the skepticism he has for J. Christian Adams! Count the number of times he says "with all due respect"! And then watch him conclude that Mr. Obama's Attorney General is "a far-left ideologue" and that Mr. Obama "backs him up time after time on these crazy things," without even providing anecdotal evidence. I guess Mr. O'Reilly wants you to remember his two minutes of "skepticism" about Mr. Adams, about whom no reasonable observer has anything but skepticism, so that you conclude see? He is fair and balanced! But symmetry does not equal fairness, and defending someone against an obvious fool doesn't make you a moderate. Better to criticize Mr. Obama for things he's actually screwed up, and praise him for things he's actually done right, rather than see which piece of rotten red meat draws the most dogs.

Another reason I don't see the Republicans growing their Senate caucus: their best shots at picking up seats might be thwarted by the further-right challengers their corporate paymasters have unleashed via the Tea Party "movement." In Washington state, putative Republican Senate nominee Dino Rossi, who lost the 2004 governor's race by a mere 133 votes, can't seem to get endorsements for the 2010 Senate race that he would ordinarily have no trouble getting. And that may be because he's not the only Republican running -- Clint Didier, the better former pro athlete running for statewide office in the northwest this cycle, is a Tea Party darling, and could very well cement defeat for Republicans against Ms. Murray. Tea Partiers don't even have a coherent philosophy, let alone a defensible interpretation of recent American history, so I can't imagine them convincing large swaths of the electorate that they can represent their interests -- but I can imagine them attracting more primary voters than their cookie-cutter corporatist opponents.

Finally, Nancy Pelosi calls for an end to the Senate filibuster. That's truly stunning -- it's like she doesn't remember, three and a half short years ago, Democrats having to filibuster against Republicans, or, for that matter, her Republican comrades in the House routinely shutting Democrats out of meetings. Besides which, she's just dead wrong. The filibuster isn't the problem in the Senate -- the gentleman's filibuster is the problem. Mitch McConnell only needs to signal his intention to filibuster these days; he doesn't need to get up and mouth off for a day like Strom Thurmond used to do, and if he did, he'd filibuster a lot less. And frankly, the Senate needs to get rid of the anonymous holds more than they need to get rid of the filibuster. Sen. Bennet (D-CO) already proposed many such reforms (plus a few I don't agree with). I just can't imagine why these reforms don't get more airtime in the press.

Penny rants for Wednesday, July 7, 2010.

I'm just as prone to ride the all-news-is-bad-news train as anybody, so I'm leading off with some good news for once: the Obama Administration has pledged to spend $2 billion on solar energy. I might have reminded Mr. Obama that there are American companies who could have qualified for the money, and hell I'd be much happier with an FDR- or JFK-style all-out solar power-plant building spree like the hypothetical one described here in 2007, but $2 billion is more than George W. Bush ever spent on solar power. And I get tired of folks who say that solar is unproven. Unproven? Is that why most of the rest of the developed world gets more out of it than we do?

This could qualify as good news, in that I think it's wrong: Charlie Cook thinks a Republican tsunami is coming in the House. Mr. Cook essentially deep-reads one poll, then compares it with another poll, and from that we get seven paragraphs (including that almost incomprehensible introductory paragraph invoking James Taylor and Carole King). Measuring enthusiasm among partisans has limited use, really -- no matter how enthusiastic you are, you still only get one vote. And I think a lot of polls ask the wrong questions. I'd like to see the poll measuring independent voters' enthusiasm for voting against Republicans, for example. Admittedly, I'm having a hard time getting my head around the idea that so many Americans would so quickly hand the reins of power back to the party that screwed everything up and is still doing its damndest to screw everything up.

Finally, et tu, Utah? KSL radio in Salt Lake City has dropped Sean Hannity from its lineup. I'm a bit torn between believing KSL dumped Mr. Hannity to carve out a niche for "unique local content," and believing that KSL dumped Mr. Hannity because he violates Deseret Media's call for "civility." Either one seems equally true, actually -- Mr. Hannity is just another radio meanie even if his smoothness actually makes you miss Rush Limbaugh's bluster, and KSL's other programming (Doug Wright in the morning, Nightside Project in the evening) seems appropriately locally-oriented, not to mention good. Here's hoping more radio stations take this opportunity. Cookie-cutter national radio shows might be OK if they were internet-only, where you, the internet consumer, could avoid them far more easily. In most markets now, though, they're the only choice you get.

Still the same.

Congress adjourned for the July 4th holiday last week, which would normally be cause to celebrate, except that they did nothing about extending unemployment benefits, again. But here's a dirty little secret: your Congressfolk are available in their districts this week. So here's what we ought to do: take NETWORK's email tool and fact sheet about H.R. 4213 from last week, and use them to build a script for a phone call with your Reps and Senators, but call them at their district offices. You can get to the House's web page and the Senate's web page using the tools in the upper left-hand corner, and your Reps' and Senators' sites will have local contact information. And absolutely do not compromise on a damn thing. Let the Congressfolk worry about how to get Ben Nelson to vote the right way. The people do not compromise.

I received a lot of email alerts about the latest supplemental Afghanistan war spending bill, but they all wanted support for a timetable for withdrawal, which smacks, to me, of not ending the war fast enough. I've long said that our goal should be get bin Laden, get out, but in retrospect that formulation (attractive though it is, rhetorically speaking) puts the steps in the wrong order. Rather than waiting until we get Mr. bin Laden before withdrawing, we'd do much better taking out the large, occupying ground force that won't find Mr. bin Laden, and replacing it with a force of select soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence agents that would navigate the area much more nimbly (both geographically and politically). You may want to communicate such thoughts to your Congressfolk at their district offices this week.

Finally, evidence of BP/governmental collusion against the media continues to mount. Now that the police are detaining journalists for questioning from BP security, and journalists face prison time and five-digit fines for the heinous crime of approaching an oil spill clean-up site without "permission," I wonder whether the lesson Mr. Obama learned from watching Mr. Bush botch the Katrina clean-up was that Mr. Bush didn't clamp down on the press hard enough. He'd be learning the wrong lesson, if so -- the corporations getting what they want from Mr. Obama now will still find some excuse to destroy him later. So you may want to tell your Congressfolk, when you talk to them, that the Obama Administration should put BP into receivership, because that would give your government more power over the clean-up effort, and would curtail BP's efforts to get your government to do its bidding for it.