Thieves in the Temple.

Penny rants for Friday, May 4, 2012.

More evidence that Google has the FCC in its hip pocket arrives courtesy Chris Soghoian at Wired. Last weekend, Google released a minimally-redacted FCC report concluding that Google intentionally intercepted private WiFi communications in its Street View project. You may well be asking: didn't the FCC release that report? Well, yes, the FCC did release a heavily-redacted report two weeks earlier, blacking out the parts that described Google intentionally intercepting communications -- you know, the parts the public deserve to know about. Mr. Soghoian correctly demands Congressional investigations of both Google and the FCC, but I bet Darrell Issa, as conscious of all the googles in Google's bank account as anyone, passes up a chance to include the FCC's shenanigans in his "most corrupt Administration in history" narrative. That'd be a shame, because some good might actually come of it.

Meanwhile, Alyssa Rosenberg writes a complex critique of the Fox TV show Glee: "Glee is an immoral show, but not for the reason cultural conservatives (sic) believe. It’s become a show that’s not just sloppy but exploitative and manipulative of serious societal issues and human experiences." You mean it's immoral to discard complex situations as soon as they require more than an episode's worth of commitment (or as soon as they don't fit a particular week's song selection)? As someone who has long accepted that bad art is also bad civics, I totally agree: pop culture purveyors generally don't commit to their creations enough, settling for titillation and arousal more often than not, and thus don't commit to their customers enough. And I don't think it's coincidence that pop culture uses "trauma as a sparkly toy" while our elites in politics and business only seem to care about short-term profits.

Show me.

As you may have heard, Mr. Obama took a secret trip to Afghanistan, and announced that, yes, we're going to keep a lot of troops there until the end of 2014, and leave some troops there afterward. You'd think he'd have remembered, in that context at least, that we've already killed Mr. bin Laden. But Rep. Lee (D-CA) remembers, and still has H.R. 780 out there. H.R. 780 would only permit funding for the orderly withdrawal of our long-suffering troops and contractors from Afghanistan, instead of keeping the war going. Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 780, and thus support an end to this quagmire. Roots Action also helps you tell your Senators that any "agreement" with Afghanistan should be a treaty and therefore subject to a two-thirds vote in the Senate. All in all, no bin Laden plus no al-Qaeda presence worth mentioning in Afghanistan equals no more reason to spend blood and treasure there, and most Americans agree.

Meanwhile, the problems just keep piling on for News Corporation's embattled head, the nefarious Rupert Murdoch. A British government investigation found Mr. Murdoch "not fit to run an international company" due to his lack of regard for the law in News Corp.'s hacking into cell phones and bribing police officers, and now the News Corp. board has declared its "full confidence" in Mr. Murdoch, suggesting that a parting of the ways may be in the offing. I must confess I'm a little disappointed that Mr. Murdoch suffers now for only a small part of the harm he's done the world, but either we're a culture of laws or we're not, and Mr. Murdoch may have done some phone-hacking on 9.11 victims' families here in the U.S., too, where it's also against the law. So Free Press helps you ask Congress to investigate the allegations. Mr. Obama's Justice Department is investigating the matter, but Congress has power, too.

Finally, if you've missed previous alerts concerning the Department of Agriculture plan to let food processing corporations do more inspecting of chicken carcasses, Food and Water Watch provides another one, and Daily Kos points us to a petition on the White House's "We the People" website, which will get a response from the Obama Administration when it gets 25,000 signers. I suppose plan supporters think the chicken processors know the business better than some bureaucrat -- which not only insults the men and women who work for our government on our behalf, but also insults the intelligence of anyone who understands human nature: left to their own devices, corporate decision-makers will always do whatever makes them the most money, and what makes food processing plants the most money is doing more inspections more quickly, regardless of how much bile or bruising or feces gets by their inspectors. Should we let burglars "regulate themselves" next?

Four sticks.

S. 1517, the 21st Century Works Progress Administration Act, would spend $250 billion to employ the unemployed on infrastructure and public works projects, and would fund that effort via a 5.4% excise tax on millionaires and billionaires. Puts people to work, gets important projects done -- that's exactly what we've needed for many years now. The bill's even paid-for, as Republicans love to screech about, though generally when we see good bills that are paid-for Republicans object to how they're paid-for. But I think they're losing the debate -- over 70% of Americans now think millionaires and billionaires aren't paying enough in taxes, and corporate tax avoidance has been a major story in the "liberal" media for over a year now, this despite the "liberal" media being owned by a lot of the corporations doing the avoiding. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers helps you tell Congress to move on S. 1517, and get this economy moving again, for real.

Meanwhile, H.R. 1505, the so-called National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, would not actually do very much in the way of protecting federal lands or promoting national security. The bill would put Homeland (sic) Security in charge of land use decisions better made by the Secretary of Interior or the Department of Agriculture, and would permit Homeland (sic) Security to waive any environmental regulation within 100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders. That's right, the Canadian border, too, which would essentially permit DHS to "allow," say, Keystone XL pipeline construction as a "national security issue." And they thought we wouldn't pick up on that! The punchline, of course, is that Mr. Obama's DHS actually opposes H.R. 1505. When was the last time a government agency refused sweeping new powers? The Wilderness Society helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose H.R. 1505.

In other news, Congress appears poised to really frack up the Farm Bill, and the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to support healthy and sustainable foods. A Farm Bill that supported healthy and sustainable foods would be a marked improvement over our current situation, where the corn industry gets buku bucks to produce high-fructose corn syrup that helps keep soda pop cheap and children fat. UCS finds obstacles smaller farmers face that the big ag corporations don't, and proposes a number of solutions. These include expanding small-scale loans to organic/sustainable farms, expanding crop insurance to small farms, and including fruit and vegetables in farm subsidies. You may also want to advocate an end to corn subsidies. It may not fly with Monsanto, but it will fly with the vast majority of the American people who'd like healthier food choices.

Finally, if you've missed any previous alerts on the Safe Chemicals Act, I've got three-count-'em-three more: from Breast Cancer Action, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Moms Rising. In case you're just tuning in, we want stricter safeguards on the chemicals that go into our household products, and the big chemical corporations don't, because SOCIALISM!!!!!!, I guess. The last time Congress passed toxic chemical legislation was 1976, and we've learned a lot since then -- that chemicals can leach out of furniture and food cans and plastics into our bodies and cause cancer and infertility and early puberty, for example. Also, the EPA only tests a few hundred chemicals out of the 85,000 or so currently on the market; the Safe Chemicals Act would mandate that they all get tested. We can't keep finding out what's in our toys and food containers after the fact. That's true even if expanded chemical testing costs some CEO his bonus this year.

Dollar sign.

"Partners" in the Trans-Pacific Partnership "free" trade agreement come to Dallas on May 8 for ten days of negotiations. Now, when I say "partners" I most assuredly do not mean you and I, who do not even have access to the TPP proposals that over 600 corporate "advisors" have. But we know from leaks that the TPP would undercut our efforts at financial regulation, environmental regulation, and food safety, plus it would let corporations shove even more American jobs overseas, plus it would let corporations challenge and even defeat our laws before "tribunals." If we don't have laws, what do we have, exactly? So Public Citizen helps you demand that U.S. Trade Rep. Ron Kirk release the TPP proposals. That may sound like a small thing to ask for, but the TPP proposals will be unpopular, and the refusal to release them will only be slightly less unpopular.

Meanwhile, the Congress of Screw You moves very slowly on matters directly concerning the American public, but is anxious to push anti-regulatory schemes like H.R. 4078, the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act, which would block implementation and enforcement of all regulations for at least two years. Like what they did there, "for Jobs" -- as if "freezing" government regulations actually creates jobs? It doesn't -- regulations actually create jobs, for the people who have to interpret the regulations and the people who have to implement them. Don't believe me? You could believe the Economic Policy Institute, or Public Citizen, or the Institute for Policy Integrity. And who said we could only have clean air and clean water when the economy's good? OMB Watch helps you tell your House Rep to oppose H.R. 4078.

Penny rants for Monday, April 30, 2012.

So the Washington Post, long a purveyor of "centrist" pablum, permits a pair of writers to assert that the Republicans really are the problem with American politics. But the sentiment still seems a little soft. Messrs. Mann and Orrnstein say "self-styled bipartisan groups" (paragraph 6) try to move politics to the center, when one could more easily argue they move politics to the right and call it the center. The writers mislabel four conservative Republicans "moderates" in paragraph 7 -- folks like Charles Matthias, John Sherman Cooper, or Margaret Chase Smith too unmemorable somehow? And saying that modern-day Republicans insist on "principle" (paragraph 19) frankly gives Republicans too much credit -- modern-day Republican "principle" only involves their corporate paymasters' money. The article says a lot of true things, sure, but you and I have known them for years, and I doubt the writers will penetrate the mindset of the "elites" by flattering their prejudices.

Meanwhile, another day ending in "y," another Republican calling anything he doesn't like "socialism." Or, more precisely, "the stage three cancer of socialism," which I presume is differentiable from stage four somehow. Of course, when Mr. Akin refers to "what the Democrats did to the private student loans and take it all over by the government," he actually describes an effort to get private bankers out of the federal student loan business, thus lowering the cost of said loans. Why would a nominally conservative Congressman support a federal government effort to outsource its loans to private bankers -- rather than, say, ending federal student loans while regulating private lenders? Possibly because his banker paymasters told him to, possibly because he wants to make the federal student loan process so onerous and expensive that it falls apart -- or possibly because he doesn't want anyone telling him what to do, like some diaper-loaded brat in the middle of a tantrum, or John Raese.

Finally, possibly because I enjoy causing myself physical pain, I did watch this entire five-minute-plus clip of Sean Hannity "interviewing" Michelle Malkin about matters including "little lynch mobs" attacking "Republican donors." Note well that, for Ms. Malkin, these "lynch mobs" include you, if you called Coke or your state legislator and told them to disassociate themselves from ALEC. But setting aside, for a moment, the fact that pressure from citizens does not equal an "ad hominem attack" -- it takes a full American crapload more than "ad hominem attacks" to make a "lynch mob," even a "little" one. Really! Over a dozen corporations dropped ALEC, with no ropes, no trees, no rifles. When nominal "conservatives" get this hysterical over the democratic process actually working -- and, indeed, Michelle Malkin seems hardly able to catch her breath here -- they not only act they way they say liberals act, but they dishonor the good name of conservatism.

Hello America.

We recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of a terrible Supreme Court ruling, no, not Citizens United v. FEC or Gonzales v. Carharrt, but AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, in which the Court ruled that corporations can force us into binding arbitration agreements -- to be settled by arbitrators paid for by the corporations themselves, like that's going to produce very many impartial decisions -- rather than permitting us to join class action lawsuits in real courts. Thankfully, Congress can redress this situation via H.R. 1873/S. 987, the Arbitration Fairness Act, and Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support it. If you're looking to add to your letter, you can read Public Citizen's report on the harm the Concepcion decision has done, as well as Public Citizen's "Rogues Gallery" of corporations that use forced arbitration agreements.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration still drags its feet on whether it'll require genetically-engineered food to be labeled as such, despite Mr. Obama having promised to require such labeling. So Food and Water Watch helps you tell Congress to require our government to label genetically-modified food. You may well be saying, really? Tell the the Congress of Screw You? What good could that possibly do? Well, first and foremost, it's our job to tell them and it's their job to listen, and someone's got to hold up their end. And second, even if Congress doesn't pass an actual bill to force actual GMO food-labeling, Congress will have to take notice of our position, and they won't be able to ignore us any further. Over 90% of Americans want their GMO food labeled properly. Congress ought to know that, if they don't already.

Finally, the Department of Defense maims more than 6,000 goats and pigs every year, shooting them and slicing them open and sawing off their limbs, ostensibly so that they may show military medical personnel how to deal with war injuries. My God, is that really the only possible way to do that? I've been shown how to plate serious bone breaks at my job, and no animals were harmed during that seminar. Plus, goats and pigs aren't that similar to human beings anyway -- and the technology has advanced enough that we can instead use effective human-patient simulators, ones that actually breathe and bleed. So a retired Lieutenant Commander in the Navy has begun a petition on change.org demanding that the Department of Defense stop such inhumane practices, and you can sign on to it here.

Something's gone wrong again.

Boy, those Republicans sure are clever: announce a CISPA vote for Friday, and then ram through a vote on Thursday, with amendments that make the bill even worse. Now that's something to take to the Pearly Gates! But the bill still has to pass the Senate, and then it has to withstand an Obama veto threat, and not that I trust Mr. Obama's veto threats, but the margin of victory in the House wasn't big enough to overcome one, and a second vote won't be big enough unless Mr. Boehner can get over two dozen Republicans to switch their votes. If John Boehner tries to browbeat that many House Reps into supporting yet another anti-internet freedom bill, I'd have to say he's awfully desperate. But let's be proactive. Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to vote against CISPA.

Meanwhile, the CIA has lately asked for authority to carry out drone strikes in Yemen even if it does not know the identities of folks who get killed. One could read that as an admission that drone warfare (i.e., warfare using unmanned aircraft) is a terribly imprecise way to wage war and that our government needs all the CYA it can get, but I prefer to read it as yet more evidence that we live in a sick, immoral, and decadent culture. And not incidentally, we're not even at war with Yemen, though with all the AUMFs flying around over the last few years you could have become confused. So Just Foreign Policy helps you tell Congress and the President to end "signature" drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. (Last I looked, we were also not at war with Pakistan.)

Finally, the Farm Bill reauthorization has become such a labyrinthine process that I hesitate to put up action alerts about it, but this CREDO alert cuts to the chase pretty nicely: "Instead of sending billions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy agribusinesses, the Farm Bill should support struggling farm families, promote organic farming, increase access to local food, protect land and water and help feed low-income children." Ever wonder why soda pop costs even less than it did thirty years ago? That's because our government subsidizes corn (as in "corn syrup") out the wazoo. If we subsidized fruits and vegetables the way we subsidize corn, we'd all be a damn lot healthier than we are. Such a statement might prompt right-wingers to respond that ALL GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IS NAZI!!!!!!, but they never seem to say that about corn subsidies.

The world we know.

Bank of America holds its annual shareholder meeting in Charlotte, NC a few weeks from now -- and some shareholders plan a resolution forbidding BOA from giving any corporate cash to political candidates, political campaigns, or superPACs. Right-wingers always tell us that a corporation should only be accountable to its shareholders; strike the "only" and I'd agree: it's not pure democracy when you have to buy into it, but shareholders do give the corporation the money it uses to make more money, and so ought to have control over how the corporation uses their money. The shareholders would like to be able to tell BOA that the public is fed up with corporate meddling in our democracy, and that's where we come in: Sum of Us helps you tell Bank of America to stop buying elections. The BOA braintrust may well respond that giving to political campaigns helps shareholders make money, but I suspect the shareholders in question are past being swayed by appeals to selfishness.

Meanwhile, Latoya Horton got an accounting job a few years back, but was fired after her employer discovered that she carried a lot of college debt. About three out of five businesses now routinely run credit checks on at least some of their prospective employees, but does "running up a lot of debt" always equal "a complete lack of character"? Or could it also mean you got laid off and had to buy groceries on the Visa card for a while? Or that you went to college to better yourself in the eyes of employers? Or that you had a medical emergency that depleted your savings, or got stung by an identity thief, or, maybe, just maybe, you're in a crap economy where oil speculators drive up gas prices and corporations just sit on trillions of dollars and don't hire anybody? Anyway, Ms. Horton started a petition on change.org, which helps you demand that credit reporting agency TransUnion stop selling credit reports to employers. TransUnion is privately-owned, so it can respond to bad PR a lot more quickly. I say hit 'em where they hurt. After all, they say that, too.

I may be used (but baby I ain't used up).

Are you less than faithful that the House could write a good Medical Device User Fee Act reauthorization? Never fear! Consumers Union helps you tell your House Rep how to amend it. Most Americans would like to have their hip implants and heart defibrillators tested before they go into their bodies, and most Americans would also like to be able to track implants as easily as we can track coffee machines, but the House plans to vote upon a bill this week that does neither, probably because of COMMUNISM!!!!!!!!!! or something. Consumers Union provides no less than four other improvements we could make on this bill. I do wish I could edit out the statement "I know this is a lengthy list" -- if Congress doesn't want "lengthy lists" of bill improvements from their constituents, they should try writing decent bills in the first place.

In other news, certain federal student loan interest rates could double on July 1, unless Congress acts, and both Consumers Union and the Campaign for America's Future help you tell Congress to extend the 3.4% rate on Stafford loans. Republicans continue their helping-people-better-themselves-costs-too-much dance, though they just passed another tax-cut-for-the-rich that would cost many times more than the loan extension, but (and I'm aware I may be asking too much of Republicans at this point) this ought to be a no-brainer: the federal government will still make money on these loans at the lower rate (arguably more money, since they'd have fewer defaults), and both Mr. Obama and his likely Presidential opponent, Mr. Romney, support extending the lower rate. Well, Mr. Romney supports it today -- for Tha Mittsta, tomorrow is always another country.

Penny rants for Tuesday, April 24, 2012.

Here's the New York Times, burying the lede on a front-page above-the-fold story. The first six paragraphs suggest that Mr. Obama has shifted his view on executive power toward a view more like Mr. Bush's, which of course he has, but certainly not on the basis of the evidence the Times article presents in those paragraphs. Mr. Obama has, in fact, embraced Mr. Bush's unconstitutional and unconscionable doctrines of warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention, but only after they became law, and when Mr. Obama raised fuel economy standards, he exercised a power Congress had already granted him via legislation, versus Mr. Bush's habit of saying a law simply doesn't apply to him. That doesn't justify anything Mr. Obama does, but the distinction is important, and we don't get a hint of it until paragraph nine, when it should have been in paragraph one. I wonder why the Times would want to "clumsily" conflate overruling statutes on torture and job creation programs for veterans in anyone's mind.

Meanwhile, Mike and Ike candies put out the sort of mildly-amusing PR campaign that no one would remember in six months anyway -- except that it's got Tony Perkins's shorts in a bunch. The Family Research Council President spoke thusly: "It’s just another subtle example of society chipping away at the value of marriage...And I don’t know what’s more disturbing -- that advertisers think divorce appeals to kids or that sexualizing candy will make people buy more....look for Mike & Ike to have a distinctly liberal flavor.” Ooh, snap! I don't know what's most distubring -- the use of "liberal" as a curse word, the use of "just another...example" as if anecdotes equal arguments, the reflexive equation of a breakup with a "divorce," the reflexive equation of homosexuality with "sexualization" in the complete absence of any actual gay sexual behavior, or the tenor of a man with no damn sense of humor about anything at all. Just kidding; I think the fourth item's the most disturbing. But not by much.

Beat the clock.

A Presidential candidate has declared his opposition to CISPA, the alleged cybersecurity bill! No, not Mr. Obama, who's only voiced "disapproval" of the "process," and certainly not the professionally timid Mr. Romney or the outside-the-brain thinker Mr. Gingrich, but Ron Paul, who worries that our government will use CISPA to make corporations into their spies. Corporations are all too willing to do that already, but note that the definitions in the bill's proposed Sec. 1104(g) clearly regard theft of "intellectual property" as a national security threat, versus something more properly handled by the state and federal agencies already handling it. So CISPA still wants to shut down dissenters under the guise of policing "intellectual property," just more subtly than the Internet Blacklist Twins, SOPA and PIPA. Hence another anti-CISPA action alert from Daily Kos.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that the Senate has had trouble reauthorizing a relatively uncontroversial bill, the Violence Against Women Act. You may not have been surprised to hear this, since this is the Congress of Screw You, but it's no less sad that Republicans are picking on gay, transgender, and Native American women who also suffer from domestic abuse, and if Republicans really feel "picked on" that they have to vote on such matters, maybe it's time for them to sell shoes. Thankfully, Amnesty International helps you tell your Senators you want a strong Violence Against Women Act reauthorization that covers all women. Why didn't the original VAWA cover all women, you ask? I suppose it was the price of getting the bill passed in the first place. But there's no need to keep paying that price now.

Penny rants for Monday, April 23, 2012.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) thinks folks should boycott Coca-Cola because it "sucombed (sic) to pressure fr Leftist (sic) not to support ALEC," but I ain't mad at him, and not just because there are plenty of good reasons to boycott Coca-Cola. What Mr. Grassley proposes is democracy at work -- we can put pressure on Coca-Cola to wash its hands of ALEC's anti-voter and pro-corporate initiatives, but other folks have just much right to put pressure on Coca-Cola to do the opposite. Naturally, I suspect the only way to get other folks to go along with a pro-ALEC campaign is to lie to them, to tell them that we're somehow abridging ALEC's "rights," and therefore all of humanity's rights! But nobody put a gun to Coke's head and made them quit ALEC. It didn't even take a shareholder's revolt.

In other news, I had nearly forgotten about Konstantin Chernenko, the Soviet leader for a little over a year until his 1985 death, until I saw Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Two Tribes" video. And though in this pit Mr. Chernenko looks a bit vigorous, his appearance still seems an accident of history -- after all, Mr. Andropov preferred Mr. Gorbachev as a successor. A friend of mine, noting that the song felt "unfinished" to him, prompted a look at the lyrics, in which "cowboy number one/A born-again poor man's son" gets two lines to himself while Mr. Chernenko ("farmer number two"?) gets bupkus. Also, at video's end, as Mr. Reagan seems aware of the havoc he's helped cause, the world blows up with Mr. Chernenko's back to the camera. Could it have been that FGTH, fairly successful envelope-pushers in other ways, hesitated when confronting the Evil Empire?

Any major dude will tell you.

S. 847, the Safe Chemicals Act, would require the EPA to test chemicals and chemical processes more completely and rigorously, so that less crazy stuff winds up in, say, your food cans or your kids' sippy cups or your household cooking items. Some other things S. 847 would do: set minimum data sets for evaluating chemical substances, establish a public database comprising EPA findings, and create a Children's Environmental Health Program within the EPA. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the big corporations oppose S. 847 on the grounds that it "strangles innovation." "Innovation" like earlier puberty and more infertility and more cancer and more learning disabilities, fellas? Ain't nothing innovative about a product unless it's also safe. Both Moms Rising and the League of Conservation Voters help you support the Safe Chemicals Act.

Meanwhile, you may have heard about six-year-old Salecia Johnson, whose tantrum in school a week and a half ago apparently prompted her teacher to call the police, who then handcuffed the girl and charged her with battery. And my first thought is: just wait until you're older, kid, when you can get rich having tantrums in public! Seriously, though, calling the police? Even if Ms. Johnson were bigger than Louie Kelcher and had a head-slap like Deacon Jones, no adult could possibly be so powerless as to need police help to deal with a tantrum. And if the lesson was "actions have consequences that might seem unfair," the school gets to learn it now, with whole world knowing they abused a six-year-old. So change.org helps you demand that the police expunge the arrest from Ms. Johnson's record, and that her school stop making the police do their job.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to oppose the USDA's rule loosening inspection standards for chicken, OMB Watch provides another one. To sum, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which operates within the USDA, would drastically reduce the number of federal inspectors present in food processing plants, and even better, the FSIS would allow chickens to proceed down the production line 90 percent faster. Have human inspectors evolved to the point where they can pick out bones and bile and poop several times faster than they could, say, fifteen years ago? Didn't think so. And anyone who wonders aloud WHY CAN'T WE POLICE OURSELVES!!!!!!!!! should note that the last "pilot program" to inspect chickens more loosely went so well that not even Mr. Bush could justify keeping it going.

Penny rants for Friday, April 20, 2012.

Now this is evil: agricultural corporation Monsanto has filed 150 lawsuits against small farmers for the "intellectual property theft" that supposedly occurs when Monsanto's genetically-modified seed contaminates their crop. If a man raped a woman and then claimed their child is a "rip-off" of his DNA in a lawsuit, he'd be no worse than Monsanto. I'd like to think that even if they put some thought into this scam -- by, say, sending out "warnings" to small farmers that they'll be sued if they don't protect their crop from contamination (which is, not incidentally, impossible) -- a judge would throw such a suit out in half a minute, and not just because Monsanto asserts a patent on a form of life! But I'd also suspect that the farmers they've sued would be broken by legal fees by then. Or maybe not: the Public Patent Foundation sued Monsanto a little over a year ago on behalf of over 200,000 farmers belonging to 60 organizations. Their novel thesis? That no Monsanto Frankenseed can be patented, because all it does is cause harm, and you don't give patents to harmful items. I wish them luck.

Meanwhile, from the EVERYTHING IS HITLER!!!!!!!!! file: West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese (R) -- last seen too incompetent to ride a big Republican wave in a big Republican state against a Governor of slipping popularity -- got caught on tape yesterday comparing no-smoking signs to Hitler's Jewish stars: "I have to put a huge sticker on my buildings to say this is a smoke-free environment....Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody's lapel, remember that? Same thing." Now, as you digest that mound of dung, I don't want it to get lost that he also said "I don't want government telling me what I can do and what I can't do because I'm an American," as if laws proscribing, say, murder should maybe be optional. But, yeah, a government mandate that you keep people from smoking in your building is not comparable to being forced to wear a Star of David, simply because you don't get cancer from breathing in Jews. Next: Mr. Raese does a media tour to tell everyone how he's oppressed by accurate reporting of his own stupidity.

Set guitars to kill.

First things first: Uzbekistan, under the notorious President-for-however-long-he-wants-it Islam Karimov, has become a human rights nightmare, with "forced sterilization" quotas (i.e., when a woman goes to give birth and instead has her uterus removed) being only Mr. Karimov's most recent offense against civilization. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned Mr. Karimov's human rights record, yet U.S. military assistance has been flowing to his state since early this year (after an eight-year ban). So Avaaz.org helps you demand that Ms. Clinton back her words with actual deeds. Of course we have an ambivalent relationship with Uzbekistan -- according to former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, the U.S. sent detainees there to be tortured under questioning as late as 2004. But no force should prevent us from doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, Rebuild the Dream helps you petition the Obama Administration to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide relief for underwater homeowners. Specifically, you'll ask Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide principal reduction for homeowners whose houses are now worth less than their mortgages. Right-wingers love to talk about the "moral hazard" of doing such a thing, but our government is perfectly capable of giving assistance without fomenting fraud, and anyway, what about the moral hazard of bailing out the banksters who consciously caused this whole mess and still benefit from it? Reducing principal is not only the courageous and kind thing to do, it's the practical thing to do -- as Paul Craig Roberts pointed out long ago, it'll make all those toxic assets a lot less toxic. (Remember that you'll have to create an account at whitehouse.gov in order to petition the Obama Administration.)

Penny rants for Thursday, April 19, 2012.

Oh, look, it's the "liberal" media hard at work trying to convince us that Mitt Romney's flip-flopping habit might actually be a strength. One might also say "oh, look, here's Howard Kurtz fortifying his bad arguments with quotations from his consultant friends," but the theme's the main problem. Does Mr. Kurtz really think that "if voters believe (Mr. Romney) was just throwing red meat to voracious primary voters" they might actually be more likely to vote for him? Giving two diametrically opposite positions on a controversial issue the same day because you're afraid a segment of your constituency will throw a temper tantrum about it is not the Webster's definition of "respect." None of this is to say Mr. Romney can't win despite his flip-floppiness, but it might take a lot more yammering from the "liberal" media about Mr. Romney's "secret positions" to seal the victory.

Meanwhile, we learn from the Greenlining Institute that the top 30 tech corporations in America pay, on average, 16 percent of their income in federal taxes. Boy, it's a good thing Republicans have such a hard-on for lowering the 35% corporate tax rate! Note well that the most profitable corporation in the world (Apple) pays less than 10% of its income in federal taxes, and Amazon has a lower tax burden than the average tax burden of families making less than $18,400 per year. Note, also, that you only have to make around $90,000 annually to have a larger tax burden than the Top 30 tech corporations' average -- and that profits for the Top 30 tech corporations have nearly doubled since 2009 as their average tax burden has fallen. But that means they're paying more in revenues, replies the Arthur Laffer Clown Car -- though that would not be a way of saying they're paying enough, and why aren't they hiring if they're doing so well?

Brave & strong.

The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose CISPA, while Avaaz helps you tell Facebook, Microsoft, and IBM to oppose CISPA. The ACLU concentrates on information sharing with the military, and having the military operate against American citizens is scary enough, but my main problem with this bill is that it allows our government and corporations to ignore our other laws merely by declaring that they're looking for cyberterrorists. Boy, does that ever sound like a recipe for tyranny! Why on Earth can't our leaders establish probable cause and get warrants? Are they afraid they'll miss a cyberterrorist and then they'll look bad? They shouldn't worry about that. After all, Mr. Bush fouled up bigger than any other Executive branch ever fouled up on 9.11, and he got re-elected, more or less.

Meanwhile, SignOn helps you support H.R. 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012. No doubt right-wingers will seize on the bill's title and cast the bill as ZOMG THOSE LAZY COLLEGE KIDS ARE GOING TO GET FREE COLLEGE!!!!! But that would be a lie -- the bill merely eases the burden of debt from federal college loans, and only for folks at 150% of the federal poverty line or folks who've made ten years' worth of payments. The bill also caps the direct loan interest rate at 3.4% and extends loan forgiveness to primary care physicians in areas with fewer doctors. And lest any right-wingers decry the inevitability of fraud, the bill caps the amount of loan forgiveness anyone who gets a loan after the Act's enactment can receive, and it also doesn't let people get away with making payments of zero dollars based on their relationship to the poverty line. All in all, it's a good start.

We have a technical.

If you've missed opportunities to tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to force publicly-traded corporations to disclose their political spending to their shareholders, Public Citizen still helps you do that. Citizens United v. FEC may have allowed corporations to spend boatloads of money on political campaigns, but corporate shareholders theoretically have a lot of say over how their corporate boards spend their money -- that is, if they know about it, and the corporations won't tell them unless they have to. Certainly the same right-wingers who've been telling us that corporations don't owe anything to anybody but their shareholders must be eager to see more accountability for shareholders, right? I kid, of course. But if you believe the individual ought to have the power to make a difference in the world, you ought to support an SEC effort to make corporations accountable to the individuals who fund them.

Meanwhile, the NLRB issued new rules four months ago that would streamline, somewhat, the process workers must follow when forming a union -- some NLRB meetings would happen more quickly, some voluntary procedures for employers would become mandatory, some roadblocks employers put up to delay the process would be eliminated, like that. But the Republican minority in the Senate would roll back all of these, via another "resolution of disapproval," S.J.Res. 36 -- no doubt because letting workers form unions at a slightly faster clip is "job-killing," or "job terrorism," or something. And if you were thinking "moderate Republicans" still exist, note that all but two Republican Senators are co-sponsors -- all but Scott Brown (facing a tough re-election battle in Massachusetts this year) and Mark Kirk (still recovering from a stroke, best wishes to him). So American Rights at Work helps you stop S.J.Res. 36 in its tracks.

Finally, United for a Fair Economy still helps you (via a rather simpler tax-cut calculator) figure out how much Tha Bush Mobb's tax cuts saved you this past year. I'm sure you know the short answer by now: if you're like me, Tha Bush Mobb's tax cuts saved you a few hundred dollars, whereas a millionaire saved a number of dollars not terribly unlike my total earnings for the year. For me, the next question has always been: what to do with this money? If everybody got the same amount of money, for example, I'd dutifully put the money back into the economy -- I mean, come on, that Pet Shop Boys B-sides collection should be out in America any day now! -- but since I don't agree with the tax cut, I can essentially opt out of it, by contributing my share of Tha Bush Mobb's Tax Cuts to the Bureau of the Public Debt. If you don't do that, of course, I don't blame you -- it's hard for working people to make it today. It's almost like that's the idea.

Big log.

We beat back SOPA and PIPA, and even ACTA isn't enjoying a whole lot of support anymore, yet our government still forges ahead with CISPA, which supposedly helps law enforcement protect against "cyber-threats," but which actually just allows corporations and our government to ignore the law in snooping in your private internet affairs and sharing that information with just about anybody. So Access Now helps you tell 30 corporations to refuse to support CISPA, while the Electronic Freedom Foundation helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose CISPA. Read EFF's FAQs about CISPA and you'll come away with the impression that Congress cares a lot more about the rights of corporations than they do about the rights of people. They seem to go to some length to give that impression. I wonder why that is.

Meanwhile, you may be surprised to learn that our government still hands out mining leases based largely on the General Mining Act of 1872, which was, after all, 140 years ago. All our government was trying to do then was codify the existing informal system of establishing claims -- and not, you know, protect the environment or even get a decent return for the taxpayer. But even today mining corporations can pay as little as $2.50 an acre for a mining lease, a price that literally hasn't been updated since the law passed, and mining corporations don't have to pay any royalties to our government. Worse, our government can't force mining corporations to adhere to environmental regulations, meaning that when mining corporations contaminate the water, as is pretty much inevitable, we-the-taxpayers will pay for its cleanup. So CREDO helps you tell Congress to update the General Mining Act of 1872.

Finally, Moms Rising helps you tell Congress to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. In a nation where women still make, on average, 77 cents for every dollar a man makes (and single mothers and women of color make rather less than that), we could use a bill that would strengthen the 1963 Equal Pay Act by giving our government more power to go after employers who practice discrimination. And the Paycheck Fairness Act nearly became law last session, but lost in the Senate, 41-59. (Yes, you read that right -- the minority won, as often happens in the Senate.) I must confess I don't quite understand why Republicans seem to think actively pissing off half the population is a winning strategy -- just last week Gov. Walker of Wisconsin quietly signed a bill repealing a 2009 fair pay law, and that's an odd thing to do in advance of a recall election.

Vital signs.

Hot on the heels of the news that Mr. Obama's secretary also pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than her boss, today the Senate takes up S. 2230, the Paying a Fair Share Act, which would help ensure that millionaires pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than those on whose work they depend. The Coalition on Human Needs, True Majority, Daily Kos, and Moms Rising all help you tell your Senators to vote for S. 2230. But if you're feeling that, well, enacting the Buffett Rule into law just isn't enough, Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to tax the rich much more heavily than they're taxed now. You may want to make more specific demands than the Roots Action alert suggests; the second paragraph of this post can help you do that.

That's not all we can do for the economy, either: S. 2252, a Tom Harkin production, would raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $9.80/hr over two years, and would index the minimum wage to inflation thereafter. Actually, S. 2252 does a few dozen other things, too -- institutes the Buffett Rule, raises capital gains taxes on millionaires, and indexes Social Security benefits properly-without-tricks, among other things -- but the minimum wage hike has substantial support across the political spectrum. No, I'm not kidding -- American Conservative publisher Ron Unz has called for a substantial minimum wage hike. And the punditoids who tell you that minimum wages will kill the economy? Tell them that Australia has an almost-$16/hr minimum wage and much lower unemployment (5.2% officially, vs. 8.2% officially here). CREDO helps you support S. 2252.

Meanwhile, the Honduras Assembly mulls an an anti-birth control bill that no doubt has some American right-wingers salivating in envy -- it would put almost anyone involved with the morning-after pill in jail, including the woman actually using the pill, the doctor prescribing it, and the pharmacist selling it. (Though not the man who got her pregnant, I note.) Now, while we don't have actual representation in Honduras's Assembly, that only means is they should have kept their damn mouths shut if they wanted it so badly -- after all, no force on Earth can stop us from speaking out. And it just so happens that Honduras already passed this law in 2009, but Honduras's then-President, Mr. Zelaya, vetoed it after massive public pressure. Avaaz helps you speak out against the anti-birth control bill.

UPDATE. The Bloomberg Editors also favor a minimum wage hike, and they offer more evidence refuting the "worries" of the right wing.

Twenty-four hours.

Free Press helps you oppose H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence (sic) Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. What would CISPA do? CISPA would let our government and private corporations ignore privacy protections and spy on us and share information about us. How frickin' hard can it be to establish probable cause and get a warrant, when FISA judges have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night for decades to issue them? If our government can spy on us when it likes, we'll all feel a lot less free to say what we like. It's almost like that's the idea. And private corporations wouldn't just want to spy on you, of course, or even just compile information just to target ads at you -- they'd want to keep you from going places you might want to go, because it might give them less money. Welcome to post-Bush Mobb America, where government intrudes where it shouldn't and can't help you when it must, all because corporations matter to our politicians more than people do.

Meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit yesterday struck down an FCC ban on political ads on public broadcasting stations. The Ninth Circuit cited First Amendment protections on free speech, and also held that since political ads don't actually sell products or services, they don't violate the FCC's mandate to prevent "commercialization" on public broadcasting. And if the result of all that -- partisan political ads from the heaviest hitters in political advertising -- still seems to counter our mission as members of a civil society, well, you're not alone in thinking so. But the law doesn't command your local PBS or NPR station to run the latest Crossroads GPS ad, either -- your local PBS or NPR station can simply refuse to run such ads, even if it would make them a lot of money to do good things. So Free Press helps you tell PBS and NPR stations to refuse to run political attack ads. I bet a lot of them do it, even without massive public pressure. But let's not be complacent.

In other news, the FDA still hasn't decided whether to force corporations to label their genetically-modified foods as such, despite receiving over one million comments about the matter. (I'm going to go out on a limb and say the FDA received very few comments along the lines of "yes I enjoy eating Frankencorn without knowing it, if it'll help some CEO gild his plumbing!") Thus we take our efforts to Mr. Obama's own website, and tell him directly that we want genetically-modified foods labeled. Warning: you'll have to create an account to sign any petitions to the President. But if we can get 25,000 signatures within the next 30 days, Mr. Obama will respond, because that's the deal he made. I can't say it'll be the response we want -- Mr. Obama has been Frankenfood's greatest friend, greater than Mr. Bush and not just because he's more competent. But he'll also look bad if he defies the popular will, and no one is on the other side but the big agricultural corporations.

Finally, from the "WTF They Didn't Fix This Already Seriously WTF" file: despite popular pressure, the Milton Hershey School, funded by Hersey's Chocolate, still refuses admission to a now-13-year-old honor student/athlete explicitly (and only) because he's HIV-positive, in direct contravention of both federal law and common sense. Remember? "(W)e cannot accomodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others." How communicable is HIV? Not very. Not as communicable as stupidity, apparently. We first posted about this matter four months ago, and the Milton Hershey School hasn't budged -- in fact, they've whined about the family suing them. I've got your "adversarial action" right here! Sum of Us helps you demand that the Hershey School do the right thing.

Stop the world.

First things first. The U.S. Senate may cripple the U.S. Postal Service this week, by passing S. 1789, the so-called 21st Century Postal Service Act of 2012. You may recall that the Postal Service faces a fiscal crisis of the Republicans' making -- they passed a bill in 2006 mandating that the U.S.P.S. contribute billions more to its pension fund than any other entity on the planet, and this has, not surprisingly, left the Postal Service billions of dollars in debt. S. 1789 would permit the Post Office to use these overpayments to pay down its debt -- but only after it's offered said overpayments to all the workers S. 1789 is going to force them to fire. Don't worry, the bill also has plenty of benefit and service cuts, too. The National Association of Letter Carriers will hold demonstrations outside of Post Offices nationwide today; here's where to find one near you.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama made some sassy remarks yesterday about calling "the Buffett Rule" "the Reagan Rule," since President Reagan used to say that a millionaire shouldn't pay less of his income in taxes than a bus driver. Outstanding rhetorical flourishes aside, Mr. Obama supports a bill (S. 2230, the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012) which represents only a portion of what we need to do. S. 2230 would, as you probably know, force millionaires to pay at least 30% of their income in federal taxes, in a world where (to choose an example completely at random!) Mitt Romney paid a paltry 13.9% of his income in taxes in 2010. We still need estate tax reform and capital gains tax reform, but for the moment, both the Campaign for America's Future and the National Women's Law Center provide action alerts supporting S. 2230.

Saboteur.

PennPIRG has entitled their latest action alert "Support Small Business Owners." How, you ask? By demanding an end to tax loophole abuse by large corporations. How do these relate? Well, the money to fix roads and pay firemen and keep the water running has to come from somewhere, and when some 30 super-profitable Fortune 500 corporations are still paying precisely zero dollars in taxes, that money's most likely going to come from the small businesses that are already paying their fair share. Remember that the next time Republicans tell you they're proposing some super-rich-folk's tax cut or big corporation's tax break "for small businesses." And go ahead and use the link above to call for an end to big corporate tax breaks.

Meanwhile, I suppose I should mark Rick Santorum's exit from the Presidential race. Steve Benen says that, "in a strange sort of way, I consider the Santorum campaign one of the most impressive things I've seen in presidential politics in quite a while." I, too, am tempted to marvel at how long Mr. Santorum lasted, given that he lost his last Senate race by 18 points and that his campaign was so lousy it couldn't pick up delegates in states he won. But I can't help feeling that Mr. Santorum's "staying power" is really an indictment of us, in our inability to function as a civil society anymore -- in a land where the "liberal" media and the political class ever did its job, and where kids wanted to become doctors and lawyers and scientists instead of rock stars and rap stars, how could Rick Santorum be elected dogcatcher?

Upside down.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: it ain't just corporations that belong to ALEC; it's also legislators, including some of yours. So Keystone Progress helps you tell your legislators to quit ALEC if they're members, and condemn ALEC if they're not. I'm going to edit the contact tool so that it doesn't mention Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, because I don't oppose such laws, and no I don't think that law "made" George Zimmerman shoot Trayvon Martin, nor will he be able to hide behind it. But ALEC's done enough bad stuff, starting with "voter ID" laws that won't prevent voter fraud (since that hardly happens anyway), but which will prevent good Americans from voting. Of course, your legislators will respond that they have a right to associate with ALEC. And they do! But they don't have a "right" to be shielded from criticism about it -- nor do they have a "right" to be re-elected come 2012.

Meanwhile, here's putative Christian pastor Rick Warren, downplaying Jesus's commitment to the poor. The man's so desperate to cling to the values that got him his megachurch that he can only argue with straw men -- there is no "fundamental question on the meaning of fairness," sir, because no one on my side ever says equates "fairness" with "everybody mak(ing) the same amount of money." Note well, also, that Mr. Warren thinks that "HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero." Not only does he think resorting to shouty-caps improves your argument, he also dismisses things like payroll taxes, sales taxes, and state income taxes, which his 47% who don't have enough "dignity" in their lives all pay. "I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation" -- it disgusts me that folks sacrifice Jesus to their worship of mammon. It disgusts me even more that they do it in His name.

Bloody money.

According to a Consumers Union survey, 91% of Americans want medical implants tested before they go on the market. I shudder to think what the other 9% thought ("no thanks, I just want medical device corporations to get even richer!"), but one might assume, given the 91% result, that the American people have spoken and that Congress is ready to do their will. Alas, this is not so -- early drafts of the Medical Device User Fee Act reauthorization indicate that Congress doesn't plan to make medical device manufacturers test their devices, despite the fact that over 5% of all cardioverter-defibrillators, for example, cause injury or death in the person they're implanted in. And don't go thinking 5% is small, when that number could very well be 100% of you. So Consumers Union helps you tell your Senators to support consumers more as they reauthorize the MDUFA.

Meanwhile, if you missed last week's alert in re the USDA's attempt to "streamline" the chicken inspection process such that less inspection gets done and more diseases get into your chicken, then America Rights at Work gives you another opportunity to keep more salmonella, E-coli, and feces off your dinner table. I neglected to mention last week that the USDA actually started a "pilot program" letting a few big poultry corporations police themselves in the mid-1990s, and that not even George W. Bush would expand the program after some rather severe criticism from the Government Accountability Office. As happens too often, it seems that just as only Nixon could go to China, only Mr. Obama can let corporate food producers have too much say in what we eat.

Finally, Citizens for Tax Justice has released a report enticingly titled "Who Pays Taxes in America?" No doubt you heard of Erick Erickson's absurd "We Are the 53%" campaign, claiming that just because the poorest 47% of Americans eke out a net negative tax bill from the IRS, then they don't pay any taxes, as if payroll taxes, state taxes, and sales taxes simply don't exist. Well, CTJ's report takes all that into account, and finds that the bottom 20% of income earners pay about 18% of their income in taxes on average, while the top 1% of income earners pay a shade under 30%. That's a far cry from "the poor don't pay any taxes," and if you're me, you know that a bacon double-cheeseburger at Wendy's doesn't cost $159 for someone who makes a hundred times what I make, so taxing the rich at a higher rate than the poor doesn't deprive them of their survival, or their comfort -- or even their ability to make the world a better place.