I wanted to let you know that Senator Cantwell (D-WA) has an important role to play this week – as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, she will likely be considering a bill that proposes to extend the tax credits that expired at the end of last year, including the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) and investment tax credit (ITC).

I encourage you to write to your Senator today, and urge support for the PTC and ITC extensions in the tax extenders mark-up.

And, I have another update for you – 158 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate recently sent letters to their colleagues in support of taking quick action to extend the PTC and ITC.

Many thanks to YOU and your fellow wind power advocates for encouraging your federal elected officials to sign these letters!

Take a look at the Power of Wind site to see if your legislators signed the letters.  If they have, we will have drafted a template thank you note for you to send in along with your note to your Senator, to let your legislators know that you noticed and that you appreciate their support.  

Thanks so much for your help!

Sincerely,
Aaron

Aaron Severn
Interim Vice President, Federal Legislative Affairs
American Wind Energy Association

P.S.  Want to know more about the PTC and how it helps to drive the wind energy industry forward?  Visit powerofwind.org today.

By CAP Action War Room

The Five Biggest Failures Of The Latest Ryan Budget

Today, for the fourth consecutive year, House Republicans released a budget spearheaded by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). And for the fourth consecutive year, it is a budget that only works for the wealthiest individuals and special corporate interests at the cost of America’s middle- and working-class families, seniors, and the economy. Budgets, as we said when President Obama put out his in early March, are a reflection of a political party’s priorities and values. We can only say that we wish the latest effort from Ryan and the GOP caucus were an April Fool’s joke. Sadly, it is not.

Here are the five most regrettable pieces of the latest Ryan Budget:

1. Returns To The Same Failed Trickle-Down Tax Policies Of Past Republican Proposals. The Ryan Budget proposes giving generous tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest among us while in effect raising taxes on middle- and working-class families. It calls for reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, and lowering the highest income tax bracket from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. Meanwhile, as analyses of identical previous tax proposals showed, there is no way to implement these tax cuts in a deficit-neutral way without raising taxes on the middle-class.

2. Leaves Working-Class Families Out In The Cold. As in years past, The GOP Budget contains a number of proposals to radically cut programs that many working people rely on. For one, the budget repeals the Medicaid expansion provision in the Affordable Care Act and slashes $1.5 trillion over ten years from the program that covered 67 million people in 2012, including 32 million children. It also cuts $125 billion over ten years from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also called food stamps. These draconian cuts are just two of many choices made that attack programs which support working-class and struggling families.

3. Makes Wild And Misleading Claims About The ACA. Unsurprisingly, Ryan’s latest budget document calls for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But it includes additional language missing from previous budgets that makes some pretty crazy claims about the law. In a possible preview of the GOP’s election-year rhetoric, Ryan warns that the law “will undermine the private insurance” and would “eventually lead to a single-payer system.”

4. Radically Alters Medicare. It’s long been a hallmark of Ryan’s budget proposals to dismantle traditional Medicare and replace it with a voucher system. Premiums for traditional Medicare would increase by 50%, forcing seniors out of Medicare and into the private insurance market. And while last year’s plan allowed those age 55 and older to remain in traditional Medicare once they became eligible, this year’s plan forces 55-year-olds into a new voucher system.

5. Doubles Down On Misguided Austerity Through Investment Cuts. Austerity has failed. Crucial investments have already fallen to historically low levels due to sequestration. The latest GOP budget ignores those facts, and offers more enormous cuts to middle-class investments in infrastructure, science, and education.

BOTTOM LINE: The economy is simply not working for most Americans. But instead of trying to build an economy that works for everyone by addressing our many economic challenges head on, the Ryan Budget ignores them and continues to advocate for failed conservative policies that only benefit the wealthiest people and corporations.

Right now, billions of bees are dying. Already, there are nowhere near enough honeybees in Europe to pollinate the crops, and in California — the biggest food producer in the US — beekeepers are losing 40% of their bees each year.

We’re in the middle of an environmental holocaust that threatens all of us, because without pollination by bees, most plants and ⅓ of our food supply are gone.

Scientists are sounding the alarm about pesticides that are toxic to bees, and say we’re using way, way more pesticides on our crops than we need. But as with oil companies and climate change, big drug companies that sell pesticides are fighting back with corporate-funded junk science that questions the evidence, and gives politicians an excuse to delay.

Scientific studies are expensive. Avaaz may be the only crowdsourced funding model in the world able to raise enough to fund the world’s first large scale, grass-roots supported, totally independent study of what’s killing our bees, that decisively challenges the junk science of big pharma. The need is urgent, and if we can’t do this, it’s not clear who can. Let’s see if we can raise a massive fund to save our bees.

Click to pledge what you can, we’ll process your donation only if we raise enough to fund a study that can go head to head with big pharma:
We’re running out of time. A new study has revealed the scary truth: in more than half of European countries, there are not enough honeybees to pollinate crops. In the UK, the honeybee population is only a quarter of what is actually needed for pollination — and although other kinds of bees are stepping in to fill the honeybee void, we’ll likely start losing them too if we keep loading our crops down with pesticides.

And it might all be for nothing: in the 70 years since pesticides were introduced, we’ve learned that some of them do more harm than good when it comes to cultivating our food because they kill off the natural enemies of pests. Worse still, over time many pests become immune to pesticides, forcing farmers to use more and more deadly chemicals — often poisoning themselves in the process.

Everyone from official government agencies to scientists agree that one group of widely-used pesticides called neonicotinoids is killing bees. But chemical giants like Bayer and their supporters continue to argue against regulation of their products, presenting self-funded research they claim show pesticides aren’t necessarily responsible for the bees’ deadly decline. And it’s working — in the United States, the newest battleground for the ban on deadly pesticides, the government says there is not yet enough evidence to justify a ban. If we lose in the US, Europe could follow suit and lift their own temporary hold on these dangerous chemicals.

It’s time to end the debate once and for all. When enough of us pledge, Avaaz will fund research by highly-respected scientists to fill critical gaps in knowledge. Then, we can join beekeepers and local advocacy organisations in a massive global offensive to save the bees by fueling strategies like:

• Organising a media tour with our giant Bernie the bee to ensure the research shows up in the world’s biggest media outlets.
• Funding public opinion polls in key agricultural countries to smash the claim that farming communities can’t survive without bee-killing chemicals.
• Going after retailers to take the deadly pesticides off their shelves. It’s already happening in Europe, but we’ll get supermarkets and garden centres around the globe to follow suit.
• Campaigning hard to get a game-changing anti-pesticides bill that has been lounging in the US congress passed once and for all.
• Naming and shaming those pushing the bee-killing pesticides by running hard-hitting billboard and newspaper ads.
• Taking legal action to stop government agencies that have approved neonicotinoid pesticides, despite evidence proving they are toxic to bees and a host of other beneficial creatures.

The bees are up against a well-oiled, resource rich machine that will do whatever it takes to ensure the profits of chemical companies and big agriculture don’t take a hit. Pledge now to support a massive effort to save the bees — Avaaz will only process donations if we raise enough to make a difference:

If the bees die out, the world we hand off to our grandchildren will look very different — apples and almonds could become exotic foods in our supermarkets. But we’re making incredible progress in the fight to protect our precious pollinators: last year 2.4 million Avaaz members were part of a massive movement in Europe that convinced the EU Parliament to place a 2-year ban on the worst bee-killing chemicals. If our movement joins forces now to clear up the false debate that’s stalling our legislators, we could win urgently-needed pesticide bans all over the world and end the chemical war on bees once and for all!

With hope and determination,

Ricken, Mia, Emma, Allison, Christoph, Mais, Emily, Ian, Jeremy and the whole Avaaz team

MORE INFORMATION:

Pesticides halve bees’ pollen gathering ability, research shows (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/29/bees-pollen-pesticides-ban

Honeybee shortage threatens crop pollination in Europe (BBC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25656283

Pesticides ‘making bees smaller’ (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/20/pesticides-making-bees-smaller

U.S. funds research to reduce use of pesticides harmful to bees (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/epa-honeybees-idUSL2N0KI1QM20140108

Chemical giants go to court, bees go to Washington, and giant carpenter bees (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/04/bees-buzzfeeds-pesticides-ban-congress

One-Third of U.S. Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening Food Supply (Wired)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/winter-honeybee-losses/

Pesticide Lobby Spends Millions To Defend Chemicals Tied To Bee Deaths (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/pesticide-lobby-bees_n_2980870.html

Warning Signs: How Pesticides Harm the Young Brain (The Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/article/178804/warning-signs-how-pesticides-harm-young-brain