~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Chicken of the Sea: Stop Ripping up the Sea

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77

Tell Chicken of the Sea that it’s time to end their destructive ways and start getting serious about saving the oceans.

There’s more that goes into a can of tuna than just what you find inside. A lot more.

According to an Australian government study, the canned tuna industry is responsible for killing thousands of sharks, rays, sea turtles, sea birds and other marine life as a result of the methods they use to catch tuna every year.

One company called Chicken of the Sea has a particularly bad track record when it comes to ocean destruction. That’s why we’ve been trying to start a dialogue with Chicken of the Sea for months now about how they can make their fishing practices more sustainable.

In fact, just last week I personally traveled to their headquarters and delivered a letter. They promptly showed me the door and have refused to acknowledge the damage they are doing to the oceans.

But they can’t ignore you and the tens of thousands of other Greenpeace supporters who care about the oceans. So join me and sign on to my letter to Chicken of the Sea. Once we reach 30,000 signatures I will head back to their headquarters and deliver the message again.

Tell Chicken of the Sea that it’s time to end their destructive ways and start getting serious about saving the oceans.

As one of the largest tuna companies in the U.S., Chicken of the Sea has a major role to play in saving our oceans. They have a chance to be a real leader in the industry, but it is pretty clear that they aren’t going to do it on their own.

Right now, the company is using something called fish-aggregating devices (FAD) to catch their tuna. The problem is that FADs, which are basically floating objects, don’t just attract tuna. They attract all sorts of things — including sharks, marlin, and baby bigeye tuna, which is a species in serious trouble. When the ship returns, it takes everything that has gathered around the FAD with a net. Very few animals caught in these nets survive the process.

The simple truth is that if Chicken of the Sea doesn’t change how it catches tuna, our oceans don’t stand a chance.

We aren’t going to allow that to happen. Join me and add your name to my letter today.

Once we’ve collected over 30,000 signatures I will head back to Chicken of the Sea Headquarters and deliver the letter with your signature on it. This next time we’ll make sure we get their attention.

For the oceans,

Casson Trenor,
Greenpeace Senior Markets Campaigner

P.S. Forward this to everyone in your address book who eats canned tuna and cares about the oceans.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

We’re only hours out from tonight’s critical Federal Election Commission reporting deadline… Nancy Pelosi

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77

We’re only hours out from tonight’s critical Federal Election Commission reporting deadline.

After House Republicans turned a blind eye to the nationwide constituent backlash over their votes to end Medicare while protecting tax cuts for billionaires and Big Oil, Congress is set to return to Washington next week.

We must show that grassroots Democrats are strong and unified to hold Republicans accountable for their reckless Tea Party agenda. As we enter the final hours before tonight’s midnight deadline, we remain $27,102 shy of our grassroots goal.

Contribute $3 or more before tonight’s FEC deadline and your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of House Democrats. www.dccc.org

It’s long past time for the House Republicans to put aside their right-wing ideological agenda and work on America’s top priority: creating jobs and growing our economy.

With your generous support we’ll show that Republicans will not get away with selling out our seniors and the middle class. Stand with me in our aggressive effort to hold Republicans accountable for their extreme agenda and help us win back our House Majority.

Can you help put us over the top before tonight’s deadline? Please contribute right now. www.dccc.org

Thank you,

Nancy Pelosi

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Aug 2011: GOP Presidential Field – Yet Another Summer Disaster

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77

What we Accomplished in Wisconsin

Progressives gained two seats in the Wisconsin Senate when Wisconsin voters voted to hold right-wing state senators accountable for their attacks on working families.We changed the game and seized momentum heading into the next battles, and many legislators across the country — especially those in competitive districts — got a message that there are consequences to their overreaching.The successful recalls of Republican Sens. Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper were in districts where PFAW was very active and PFAW enthusiastically endorsed both Senators-Elect Jessica King and Jennifer Schilling — two strong progressive women who will be strong advocates for working families in the Wisconsin Senate.

Rick Perry: Uniting the Really Far Right and the Really, Really Far Right

Texas Gov. Rick Perry formally launched his presidential campaign this month and quickly shot to the top of national polls, where he continues to dominate. Maintaining his healthy lead by appealing to Tea Party, he recently came very close to accusing Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of treason and has raised new concerns over his previous assertions that Social Security and Medicare were unconstitutional by calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and a “monstrous lie.” People For the American Way continued its coverage of the 2012 presidential primaries with a piece by PFAW president Michael Keegan exposing Perry’s cozy ties with the various factions which comprise the Far Right.

‘What You Talkin’ Bout, Willard?’

If you watched TV in the 1980s, you surely remember the show Diff’rent Strokes— which featured the iconic tagline “What you talkin’ bout, Willis?” It was produced by PFAW cofounder Norman Lear’s production company. When Norman heard some of the recent things coming from presidential candidate Mitt Romney — whose first name is actually Willard — it rang a bell.In a piece in Variety, Norman asks Willard Mitt Romney, “What you talkin’ bout, Willard?”

Koch Brothers Sink to a New Low to Undermine Public Education

A new video from our friends at Brave New Foundation — a part of their “Koch Brothers Exposed” series — details the disturbing rise of racial resegregation in one award-winning North Carolina school district. The story goes like this: the Koch-created and funded Americans for Prosperity supported a slate of right-wing school board candidates who ran on a platform that echoed those of 1960’s southern segregationists like George Wallace almost verbatim … they won, and now they are using their power to hurt the public school system by not only erasing the district’s commendable achievements of diversity, but hurting the quality of public education received by all the district’s students.People For the American Way and PFAW’s African American Ministers in Action (AAMIA) program are both incredibly proud to cosponsor the release of this video, and we’re hopeful that we can help shine a light on this latest right-wing attack on public education, racial equality and civil rights.

Watch the video and help spread the word >

Perry, Prayer, Politics and the Presidency

Casual viewers of “The Response,” including some political reporters who don’t pay a lot of attention to the Religious Right, may have watched Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer rally earlier this month and wondered what all the fuss was about. Most of the time was taken up with prayer and praise music. Few of the speakers seemed overtly political. Nobody used the occasion to endorse Perry’s pending presidential bid.But context is everything, and the context for this event was remarkable: a governor launching a presidential bid by teaming up with some of the nation’s most divisive extremists to hold a Christians-only prayer rally that suggested Americans are helpless to solve the country’s problems without divine intervention. Some media coverage is missing the boat: the issue wasn’t whether it was ok for a politician to pray, or the size of the audience, but the purposes of the event’s planners and their disturbing vision for America.

Pay-Per-View Congress?

Showing a profound disregard for representative democracy and the First Amendment, several Republican members of Congress decided not to hold open-to-the-public town hall meetings for their constituents this August recess and instead, held meetings that required an admission fee — or as Politico put it, “strictly pay-per-view.”

FEATURED VIDEO

Mitt Romney: People Person?

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney turned a few heads this month when he told an audience at the Iowa State Fair that “corporations are people.”PFAW responded immediately by producing and running a TV ad in New Hampshire, where the Romney campaign’s focus has been.

Watch >

And if you have not done so already, please add your name to our petition to Gov. Romney telling him that he’s wrong, corporations are NOT people >

News & Blogs

Anonymous Attacks Against LA Progressives

This summer, an organization called Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) finds itself the target of dozens of baseless public records requests instigated by an anonymous right wing entity apparently seeking to intimidate and harass the organization.LAANE has long fought for policies to raise wages, protect the environment, and enhance community input on new box stores. In other words, they have gotten in the way when giant corporations have put profit maximization over the rights of workers, consumers, and communities. Perhaps that is why they now find themselves the subject of an extensive fishing expedition for public records that can be taken out of context and demagogued ad nauseam.

Darrell Issa’s Two Hats

Rep. Darrell Issa’s ties to big business run deep, and as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, Issa has functioned quite efficiently as an arm of a Wall Street lobbying shop. He has demanded that government regulators back off from applying new rules to Goldman Sachs, and he has fought tooth-and-nail to deny the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and its yet-unconfirmed director Rich Cordray, any significant means to protect the public from fraud and abuse by the financial industry.

Michael Keegan in Politico’s The Arena: Should disaster aid be conditional?

Republicans in Congress never even suggested “pay as you go” for two wars and massive tax cuts for the rich under George W. Bush, but they are now willing to withhold urgent aid from American communities in crisis in order to prove some point about their new found budget orthodoxy. Republican budget brinkmanship over the debt ceiling cost the country its top credit rating; let’s hope brinkmanship over emergency spending funds don’t cost Americans in storm-damaged states their homes and livelihoods.

Taking it Back to 1987, Mitt Romney Teams Up with Judge Bork

Mitt Romney yesterday announced the members of his campaign’s legal advisory team, which will be led by none other than Robert Bork.This is interesting because Judge Bork’s views of the law and Constitution were so extreme that his 1987 Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Senate.

People For the American Way aired a TV spot about Bork at the time…

Anti-Gay Groups Rally To Defend Anti-Gay ‘Charity’ Group

A campaign spearheaded by LGBT rights and women’s rights groups Change.org and AllOut.org, encouraging companies to drop their ties to the Charity Give Back Group (formerly the Christian Values Network), unsurprisingly has the Religious Right up in arms. The CGBG “operates a sort of online mall, donating a portion of each purchase to religious nonprofits,” Michelle Goldberg explains. “Among them are conservative organizations like Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, Promise Keepers, and a number of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.”

ACLU DNA, Lead Paint, and the Judges who Made it Through GOP Obstruction

As we like to remind people often, the current GOP senate has been shameless in its enthusiasm for obstructing judicial nominees just for the sake of obstruction. For instance, a PFAW memo on August 2 reported that of 24 nominees then waiting for confirmation votes, 21 had been voted through the Senate Judiciary Committee with no recorded opposition. Instead of sending through at least the unopposed nominees in a voice vote and moving on with its business, the Senate decided to keep these potential jurists off the bench for as long as possible despite the pressing problem of unfilled judicial seats leading to slowed down justice. Ultimately, 4 of those nominees were confirmed by the Senate before it left for its August recess, and 20 remain waiting. (The Washington Postthis morning lamented that such “gamesmanship is not only frustrating but also destructive”)

DFA working to protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77

On Friday, we asked DFA members to vote on which Republican to target next with our new TV ad exposing the Republican attacks on Medicare, Social Security and education.

It was close, but the winner was clear: Republican Eric Cantor.

Now, we’ll hit him hard across his Virginia district before he heads back to Washington after Labor Day. You told us what to do. Please help make it possible by contributing $5 to get the ad on the air.

As of this morning, we’ve raised $30,000 for in-districts ads, but — to have a lasting impact and send a strong message — we need your help to raise at least $50,000 by Monday morning.

We’re holding Republicans accountable and hitting them where it hurts most — back home in their congressional district.

Please contribute now to make it happen.

Thank you for everything you do.

-Charles

Charles Chamberlain, Political Director
Democracy for America
Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

~ my 2cents ...

Jobs … The President has been talking Jobs contrary to “the media” comments

08/31/2011 Nativegrl77 2 Comments

by BarackObamadotcomon Aug 9, 2011

Description: President Obama announces a major jobs initiative for veterans, with the goal of getting 100,000 more veterans working by the end of 2013. August 5, 2011

Nominates Alan Krueger to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. August 26, 2011.

President Barack Obama FTW to CEOs Ask what you can do for America Chamber of Commerce Feb. 7, 2011

With a huge nuclear crisis in Japan and fighting in Libya, why is President Obama visiting Latin America this weekend? The short answer is American jobs. In his weekly address he discusses his trip to Latin America and the importance of strengthening our economic partnership with the region to create good jobs at home. He expresses a need to open more global markets and increase exports as a way of expanding the U.S. economy.

President Barack Obama outlines his fiscal policy during an address at George Washington University in Washington DC. Wednesday, April 13, 2011

President Barack Obama is reassuring the public that jobs and the economy are his top priority. (May 7)

President Obama Wishes America Happy Fourth of July Creating Jobs and Cutting Deficit

I renewed my call to Congress to stop subsidizing the oil and gas industries. Understand, I’m not opposed to producing oil. I believe that if we’re serious about meeting our energy challenge, we need to operate on all cylinders, and that means pursuing a broad range of energy policies, including safe and responsible oil production here at home. In fact, last year, America’s oil production reached its highest level since 2003.

Speaking from Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama discusses the vital role advanced manufacturing will have in strengthening our economy and creating good, middle-class jobs.

President Barack Obama visited Cree Monday to tour one of our LED lighting manufacturing lines, meet with his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and to address Cree employees. Cree was honored to play host to the president and his Jobs and Competitiveness Council.

President Obama Winning The Future Advanced Manufacturing Jobs America Economy President Obama visits the Alcoa Davenport Works in Bettendorf, Iowa and speaks about the critical role manufacturing plays in the American economy.