You may have seen their ads on TV or been accosted by a Fix the Debt canvasser on the street – they claim to be a grassroots effort promoting steps to reduce the national debt. But the truth is, Fix the Debt is just another corporate-financed DC lobbying group looking for taxpayer handouts.

That revelation prompted a flashmob-style demonstration today outside the New England headquarters of a major Fix the Debt funder and beneficiary, Bank of America.

Anthony Arnove got to know Howard Zinn’s distinctive voice when he collaborated with Zinn on “The People Speak.” As a result, Arnove was selected by the Howard Zinn Trust to edit four decades of his speeches. Although Zinn’s remarks are in text form, his passion, his energy, his humor, and his desire for long-term systemic change jump off the page and inspire the reader.

Zinn’s legacy is inspirational to progressives who believe in healing the world on behalf of the public good. War and the reckless accumulation of wealth – two of the most central features to the American zeitgeist – were anathema to Zinn, who celebrated a just, multi-cultural, egalitarian society.

Since the White House dropped an expected executive order preventing workplace discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors, activists have been planning a “We Can’t Wait”, campaign, co-opting a slogan the White House has used in recent executive branch announcements.

While writing a book about ACORN, I got to know Wade Rathke, spending dozens of hours hanging out with him, interviewing him, e-mailing back and forth, interviewing friends and enemies, and literally following Rathke as he worked. In an age of stylish cynicism, whatever else you might say about Wade, he believes in the basic goodness of people, our capacity for empathy, kindness, and caring. These traits are expressed not only through individual acts with his family and friends; but also with strangers, especially those who inhabit the squalid urban communities across the globe–the people ignored by the public officials and exploited by the rich and powerful.

The markup in the House Judiciary Committee of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has begun. Observers expect at least two days of markups, and the bill wouldn’t see the House floor until sometime thereafter, probably next year. There are over 60 amendments on the bill, and opponents on the committee are dragging out the proceedings. Rep. Zoe Lofgren refused to waive the reading of the bill, so Judiciary staffers needed to spend an hour doing that.

Understand that this bill is getting a hearing, and a markup, because very wealthy interests want it to pass. It so happens that very wealthy interests want it to fail, but that puts it on the agenda as well, because both sides can go to their funders and raise money off the threat of the bill passing or failing. This becomes a bonanza for K Street lobbyists. There are over 1,000 of them working on SOPA.

Labor commentator, and former union staffer, Steve Early draws on years of trade union activism to shed light on labor’s troubled path over the last decade. His recent book, The Civil War’s in US Labor, examines the internal conflicts which have wracked the labor movement over the last decade: the 2005 split of several international unions from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition, the subsequent fracturing of Change to Win, and the internal conflict within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Wisconsin Democrats came up just short last night, flipping two seats in recall elections but not the three needed to take back the state Senate. Currently the Senate will have a 17-16 majority for Republicans; there are two recall elections against incumbent Democrats Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin next Tuesday, August 16. It’s possible that the disappointment of not reaching the goal number in the Republican recalls will depress Democratic turnout, but the expectation is that Wirch and Holperin will hold the seats.

Jim Messina tried to claim in his video announcing the Q2 numbers that 98% of all donations were $250 or less, and the average contribution was $69 from around 550,000 contributors. That gives the impression of a grassroots-fueled army. Messina didn’t say that these numbers excluded the DNC contributions, mostly maxed-out $30,000 donations. And now, the fact of these bundlers complicates Messina’s narrative even more. It’s possible – in fact, given the numbers, it’s likely – that a portion of the under-$250 contributions were collected by bundlers. I think we can say with confidence that bundlers aren’t going to “ordinary Americans” for those collections. They are rich elites who go to their rich elite friends.

After the health care law passed, we were promised a massive, $125 million PR campaign staffed with top quality talent that would really sell the new law to the American people. In a fascinating article, Politico found that this promised campaign essentially crashed and burned.

Don’t Hope– Get Mad and Do Something!

The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell might struck you first, as it did me, as a sort of ‘path not taken’ over the past political cycle, but its also a path forward. Jamie Court understands the political landscape, exactly what happened, and how it could have been avoided. This is not a book that wallows in being right, but instead focuses on where to go next. Ballot measures play a large role. Many of the activists here, having just come out of activist participation in the Marijuana initiatives, will gain from the insights of this book.