~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Help save the last remaining wild orangutans


Rainforest Action Network
 
Make a $5 gift today and it will automatically be doubled!
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To get cheap palm oil, top snack food brands are doing business with companies that are driving the last 60,600 wild orangutans to extinction, committing human rights violations and destroying rainforests.
Put simply, if these companies don’t change the way they’re doing business, orangutans are predicted to be extinct within our lifetime.
That’s why RAN has launched what may be our most ambitious campaign to date—and why two RAN supporters have offered to match every gift dollar-for-dollar up to $50,000 to make sure we have the resources to take the fight to the doorsteps of the top 20 snack food companies using “Conflict Palm Oil” in their products.
Give $5 today and your gift will automatically be doubled, meaning it will have twice the impact to save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the 60,600 wild orangutans who call them home.
In Indonesia alone, the area covered by palm oil plantations has grown by 600 percent since 1990 to cover twenty million acres (that’s the size of Maine). This really is a critical moment for the world’s last remaining wild orangutans and the forests they call home, and we urgently need everyone who can to chip in to help us meet this match.
We’re only one month into our new campaign, The Last Stand of the Orangutan, and your emails and calls demanding the Snack Food 20 stop using Conflict Palm Oil are already having a huge impact. Some of these companies have started taking steps to address their palm oil problem, but they won’t commit to real, substantial change unless we can amplify our message.
Your support today will help build a powerful grassroots movement to send the loudest and clearest message we can that we expect these companies to eliminate rainforest destruction from their supply chains now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.
Every dollar you give today will double your impact to help save the endangered rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo and the orangutans that depend on them.
We are up against powerful and well-funded opponents, and we know our work is cut out for us. But, by standing together and taking the fight directly to the Snack Food 20, we can make a real difference in our fight to save these endangered rainforests.
So please don’t let this opportunity slip by—make your gift of $5 today to double your impact.
Thanks for all you do. You are making an incredible difference.

For the great red ape,
Lindsey Allen             Executive Director             Rainforest Action Network
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

900,000


By

GOP Crises Alone Have Killed 900,000 Jobs

After shutting down the government for over two weeks in a failed attempt to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans, the prospect of a catastrophic economic shutdown caused by an unprecedented default on our obligations has finally brought enough Republicans to their senses. A bipartisan deal negotiated by senators to re-open the government and avoid a default appears set to pass both the House and the Senate this evening.

President Obama and Democrats stood strong and refused to grant Republicans any of their ransom demands in exchange for Congress agreeing to simply do its job, but unfortunately the series of crises manufactured by the GOP over the past few years has already taken a terrible toll on the economy.

A new report out yesterday pins the number of jobs killed by the GOP’s government-by-crisis strategy over the past few years at 900,000.

As ThinkProgress notes, the report also finds that the painful and unnecessary austerity spending cuts (themselves largely imposed by the GOP using crises and threats) in place have cost us more than a million jobs:

The report also finds that cuts to discretionary spending from 2011 to the present have cost the country 1.2 million jobs and 0.7 percentage points of GDP growth. About three-quarters of the $2.4 trillion in total deficit reduction enacted since the fall of 2010 was in the form of spending cuts. The Peterson-commissioned estimate of what that steep reduction in government expenditures has cost is a bit more conservative than previous estimates by other economists, but only slightly less negative.

This graphic from our Center for American Progress colleagues illustrates how many more Americans would have jobs in a world without austerity:

WorldWithoutAusterity

Finally, a different report out this evening finds the current shutdown crisis pulled $24 BILLION out of the economy and will slash more than a half-percentage off GDP growth.

BOTTOM LINE: It’s time for Republicans to stop trying to govern by crisis, hostage-taking, and extortion. The fight over the debt limit is over. Period. It’s now time for us to come to a long-term agreement on the budget that gets rid of the damaging sequester cuts and is instead focused on our real problems: jobs and economic growth.

It’s also time for Speaker Boehner to abandon his failed attempts to appease the extreme Tea Party wing of the GOP and instead seek a bipartisan governing majority focused on doing what’s best for our country, including the passage of immigration reform with a pathway to earned citizenship.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Houston Chronicle regrets endorsing Ted Cruz.

POLLS: Shutdown hurting GOP Senate chances, even in red states.

Right-wing group that orchestrated shutdown overt Obamacare now admits that “everybody knows” Obamacare can’t be repealed.

Ted Cruz admits the shutdown was all about building email fundraising lists.

Anti-tax crusader says defunders owe conservatives an apology.

Senate Republicans: GOP didn’t get anything out of shutdown.

Tea Party already seeking purge of non-extremists in 2014.

Tea Party congresswoman who voted to shut down the government now wants billions in disaster aid.

More than five million poor Americans won’t get health coverage because of the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

You can give life, plant trees


Plant trees where they’re needed most. Donate today!

Thanks to you, The Canopy Project has improved thousands of lives by planting trees in impoverished communities around the world.

But our work is not done yet.

Fall is planting season, and with your help, we can advance closer to our goal of planting 10 million trees over 5 years. Together, we can make this happen.

Let’s keep the momentum going. Make a contribution today! You can better the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.

You can help the farmer in Uganda, who thanked us for planting trees to fence his land, saving his small farm from erosion, and asked if we could provide more trees to help feed his goats.

You can help the women and girls of Ethiopia, where deforestation forces them farther and farther from their homes to collect wood for fuel, often keeping the girls from attending school.

And you can help the villager in Haiti still struggling to recover from the devastating earthquake in 2010.

Just a small contribution can strengthen these lives and improve communities. Every dollar you give helps us to plant another tree.

Donate today to help the people who need it the most.

Thank you for your support.

-The Earth Day Network Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

CNBC Isn’t Reporting the Facts, But You Can


Media Matters for America
In June, Media Matters released a report showing that business news channel CNBC had cast doubt on science in more than half of its 2013 climate change coverage. [1] As the first analysis of its kind, the report was a wake-up call: by regularly denying climate science, CNBC was falling short of its core mission of providing “fast, accurate, actionable, [and] unbiased” business news to its viewers.

Environmental groups mobilized in response to the findings, collecting 42,000 signatures urging CNBC to improve its climate reporting. [2]

Four months after first sounding the alarm, Media Matters conducted a follow-up study to see if CNBC had adjusted its coverage. [3] Remarkably, we found that climate denial at the network actually increased, rising from 51 percent to 55 percent of climate reporting. Worse, one-third of the segments that did accurately report the science occurred during a limited “special week of climate coverage” on Worldwide Exchange, which airs at 4 AM ET. [4]

Help us let CNBC viewers know that they aren’t getting all the facts.

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change exists, and more and more businesses are deciding that they can’t afford to wait and see. According to a recent study, more than 70 percent of companies think climate change can significantly affect their revenues—and many are already hedging against the risk. [5] In fact, businesses are becoming leading climate advocates: more than 650 major U.S. companies have already signed a letter calling for stronger federal clean energy laws [6], and just last month, nearly two dozen leading U.S. businesses announced support for carbon pollution standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency for new power plants. [7]

In business, there’s a clear trend toward taking climate science seriously—but on CNBC, there’s a clear trend toward dismissing and distorting it. As a network that prides itself on serving the information needs of the business community, CNBC is failing its viewers and damaging its reputation by rejecting science.

Last month, we sent a letter to CNBC, offering to help develop a plan to gradually improve its climate reporting. The network dismissed this outreach.

CNBC is ignoring scientists and media watchdogs, so it’s time to bring the truth to an audience it can’t ignore: its viewers.

CNBC has had multiple opportunities to address its climate denial problem, but has only let it get worse. At this point, the network can no longer claim ignorance: CNBC is intentionally misleading its viewers about climate change, and it needs to stop.

To push back, Media Matters will charter a fleet of fuel-efficient mobile billboards to blanket major U.S. financial districts with ads calling out CNBC for denying climate science.

Can you chip in $5 to help fund a billboard?

With your participation, we can scale up our efforts to expose the bad business of CNBC’s climate denial to the viewers that determine its bottom line.

Cynthia Padera
Campaigns Manager
Media Matters for America

—–

[1] REPORT: CNBC’s Climate Denial Is Bad For Business http://mm4a.org/12GKKLW

[2] Environmentalists Deliver 42,000-Signature Petition For Better Climate Coverage To CNBC Headquarters http://mm4a.org/1dE9gSI

[3] REPORT: CNBC Still Deeply In (Climate) Denial http://mm4a.org/1doZkKa

[4] After Petition, CNBC Unveils A “Special Week Of Climate Coverage” http://mm4a.org/156wbkn

[5] Carbon Disclosure Project and Accenture: “Reducing risk and driving business value” https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/News/CDP%20News%20Article%20Pages/major-climate-threat-to-global-supply-chains.aspx

[6] CERES: Major U.S. Companies Call For Climate Change Action http://www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/major-u.s.-companies-call-for-climate-change-action

[7] CERES: Major U.S. Companies and Investors Support Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants http://www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/major-u.s.-companies-and-investors-support-carbon-pollution-standards-for-new-power-plants
Black History

the Senate ~~ CONGRESS 10/17 ~~ the House


EmptyhouseChamber

The Senate will convene at 2:00pm on Monday, October 28, 2013.

  Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until ­­­4:30pm with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

The Senate will meet for pro forma sessions only with no business conducted on the following dates and times unless the Senate receives a message from the House that the House has adopted S.Con.Res.24, the adjournment resolution.

–          Thursday, October 17th at 12:15pm;

–          Monday, October 21st at 1:30pm; and

–          Thursday, October 24th at 12:00 noon

Following morning business, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider Executive Calendar #344, the nomination of Richard F. Griffin, Jr., of the District of Columbia, to be General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board for a term of four years.  There will be up to one hour of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form.

Upon the use or yielding back of time (at approximately 5:30pm), there will be a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Griffin nomination.

*********************************************************

Last Floor Action:
10:55:07 P.M. – The House adjourned pursuant to S. Con. Res. 24.

The next meeting is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on October 22, 2013.

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