Did you know that just about the entire town of Libby, Montana is on Medicare right now? Kay Tillen at firedoglake.com explains why: airborne asbestos from a vermiculite mine had sickened and/or killed thousands in Libby and the surrounding area of Lincoln County, and all attempts to gain restitution via the courts (against the W.R. Grace Company, which owned the mine) failed. So Sen. Baucus -- who famously said single-payer was "off the table" during the health care reform effort that ground up most of 2009 -- essentially instituted single-payer health care for Libby, Montana, by inserting a provision in the health care reform bill. It's exactly the sort of thing that'll get Mr. Baucus re-elected in 2014, whether he deserves it or not. Anyway, I can't begrudge help for folks who found asbestos in their home insulation or (even!) on their school running tracks. But it does give us an opportunity to note that Rep. Conyers has re-introduced his single-payer health care bill, H.R. 676, a.k.a. the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. I think a phone call to your Reps in support of H.R. 676 is in order.

Meanwhile, NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you oppose the Colombia "free" trade agreement. We've got plenty of reasons to oppose all "free" trade agreements -- they send American jobs overseas, and encourage corporations to enslave folks in other countries. But Colombia is, as you may know, a special case, because they're the World Capital of Killing Labor Leaders. And just this past April, representatives of the Latin America Working Group and Lutheran World Relief reported from Colombia's northern coast that conditions hadn't changed that much. We do want to get away from doing business with bastards, even "our bastards," right? And surely we'd want to get away from doing bad business, with anybody, right? "Free" trade pacts ain't good business for anybody but corporate CEOs. (They'll say it's good for shareholders, of course, but if shareholders knew how much blood was on their fattened dividends, they'd revolt.)

Finally, Color of Change helps you tell the FCC to oppose the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, if you haven't already. You likely already know why you should oppose the merger: the merger will destroy jobs (as the two corporations consolidate for "efficiency"), it won't lower prices (fewer competitors generally doesn't mean lower prices), and won't protect network neutrality so that you, the consumer, can decide where you want to go, rather than some corporation telling you where you can go. You may not know that several prominent and decent activist organizations have lined up behind the merger -- and hard to believe, Harry! They're all groups to which AT&T has donated large sums of money. You may also not know that AT&T has been flogging a chart supposedly demonstrating that mergers do-so lower prices, but that they've actually rigged the chart by ignoring the evidence they can't refute. In a sane society, AT&T would be losing this battle, because the facts aren't on their side. I guess you know what that means.