Tag Archives: Daily Kos

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

UPDATE: Wisconsin!


featured pic is from paul baker

Over 75,000 people have signed our letter of solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin. We’re trying to reach 100,000 by Monday — can you click here to sign?

Thanks! — Stephanie

——————————————————————————–

Our previous email:

Thousands are protesting in Wisconsin for days straight! Stand in solidarity with Wisconsin workers — sign the open letter against Gov. Walker’s cuts and intimidation.

(photo via paulbaker)

  For the last four days, tens of thousands of nurses, teachers, workers, students, and citizens have protested in front of the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison.

Governor Scott Walker is trying to cut benefits for state workers and take away their collective bargaining rights – and he threatened to call out the National Guard if they protest, a threat that’s still on the table.

And Democratic State Senators boldly refused to show up for a vote — delaying the vote!

We must stand in solidarity with these Wisconsin citizens who are fighting back against the Governor. Can you sign our open letter? (Already, dozens of local and national leaders have joined us.)

Click tell the Wisconsin State Legislature to oppose Walker’s budget and say no to his threat to use the National Guard against state workers!

Click on link to tell Wisconsin to oppose Walker’s budget >>  http://act.boldprogressives.org/go/3073?akid=3350.264653.6O9-No&t=4

Thousands have camped out in the capitol building overnight, a scene Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan had to admit was “like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

So far, dozens of local Wisconsin leaders like Patrick Landgraf, President AFL-CIO Local 18 have signed on, and they’re joined by the PCCC, VoteVets, CREDO Action, and Daily Kos, as well as thousands of people from Wisconsin and across the country.

We’ll alert the media to the progress of this letter, as more and more people stand in solidarity against Gov. Walker’s cuts and threats. So please pass this email to others.

Open letter to Gov.Walker      http://act.boldprogressives.org/go/3073?akid=3350.264653.6O9-No&t=5

Thanks for being a bold progressive,

Stephanie Taylor, Jason Rosenbaum, Adam Green, and the PCCC team

P.S. I’ve got a guest column in Salon about the history of using military force against workers. Click here to read it when you have a moment. http://act.boldprogressives.org/go/3052?akid=3350.264653.6O9-No&t=6

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Wisconsin


For the last three days, tens of thousands of nurses, teachers, workers, students, and citizens have protested in front of the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison.

Governor Scott Walker is trying to cut benefits for state workers and take away their collective bargaining rights – and he threatened to call out the National Guard if they protest, a threat that’s still on the table.

Just hours ago, Democratic State Senators boldly refused to show up for a vote — delaying the vote!

We must stand in solidarity with these Wisconsin citizens who are fighting back against the Governor. Can you sign our open letter? (Already, dozens of local and national leaders have joined us.)

Click tell the Wisconsin State Legislature to oppose Walker’s budget and say no to his threat to use the National Guard against state workers!

Thousands have camped out in the capitol building overnight, a scene Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan had to admit was “like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

So far, dozens of local Wisconsin leaders like Patrick Landgraf, President AFL-CIO Local 18 have signed on, and they’re joined by the PCCC, VoteVets, CREDO Action, and Daily Kos, as well as thousands of people from Wisconsin and across the country.

We’ll alert the media to the progress of this letter, as more and more people stand in solidarity against Gov. Walker’s cuts and threats. So please pass this email to others.

Click here to sign the open letter in solidarity.

Thanks for being a bold progressive,

Stephanie Taylor, Jason Rosenbaum, Adam Green, and the PCCC team

~ Culture & History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Do you want to know about progressive culture and the arts?


 

 

The creative juices of artists, and the energy of the larger universe of culture offers us some positive messages at a time when many of us feel very frustrated about the state of the world.

As we at AlterNet tell stories of America and the changes we want to make, we invite you to sign up for AlterNet’s new Culture and the Arts newsletter, launching this week.

We all know the power of art. As our Washington editor and jazz singer Adele Stan writes: “In most successful movements for social change, artists are in the vanguard. In many cases it is their soundtrack, their visual sensibilities, their literature that comes to define a particular movement in the popular imagination. Think of the civil rights movement and the role played by music. Recall the anti-war movement of the 1960s, propelled by rock ‘n’ roll and psychedelic art.”

What should you expect in our expanded coverage? As our cultural editor, and savvy music writer and critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd tells us: “We’ll critique and celebrate the important ways our political views manifest in the larger scheme of film, music, visual art, books, performance, television and beyond.” We know that a well made documentary can capture a powerful reality and be profoundly moving. And even a You Tube clip at the right moment can mobilize tens of thousands to a cause they care about.

Now more than ever we need to direct a laser-sharp focus on the culture and the arts that reflect, define and forge our progressive views into the future. AlterNet has always covered culture, but not with the emphasis it deserves. Now, we are going the extra mile.

We’re sure you will appreciate the diversity, breadth and depth of or future coverage, so please sign up for our newsletter, which will feature the best of our coverage from week-to week.

Cheers,

Don Hazen

Executive Editor and Publisher, AlterNet

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

ENVIRONMENT: Climate Zombie Caucus


One year ago, the right-wing media machine smeared climate scientists with the “Climategate” conspiracy theory, even as the climate itself continued to get hotter and more destructive and other countries seized the clean-energy initiative. Although the National Academies of Science says “the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change,” the Republican Party is now dominated by fossil-funded ideologues who repeat zombie myths about global warming. An exclusive survey by the Progress Report, with research support by Daily Kos blogger RL Miller, has identified the members of Congress from nearly every state in the union that are on record challenging the scientific consensus on climate change. This denier bloc is fueled by remarkable amounts of spending from fossil fuel polluters. The greenhouse pollution industry spent $543 million in lobbying expenditures since 2009 to shape or kill climate legislation — ExxonMobil alone spent more than the entire pro-environment lobby. Fossil interests spent more than $68.5 million this year on “misleading and fictitious televisions ads designed to shape midterm elections and advance their anti-clean energy reform agenda,” and they have contributed over $48 million to candidates.

CLIMATE ZOMBIE CAUCUS : In January 2011, the 112th Congress will open session, with a huge contingent of Republicans who have explicitly rejected the threat of manmade global warming pollution. These climate zombies express the classic variants of global warming denial: that the planet is not warming , that cold weather refutes concerns about global warming, that man’s influence is unclear, that climate scientists are engaged in a hoax, scam, or corrupt conspiracy, and that limiting greenhouse pollution would have no impact on global temperatures. There are no freshmen Republicans, in the House or Senate, who publicly accept the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is an immediate threat — but most of them signed onto the Koch Industries “No Climate Tax” pledge. Seventy-six percent of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate next year and 52 percent of Republicans in the House of Representatives publicly question the science of global warming. All four candidates set to take over the House Committee on Energy and Commerce — Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) — have disparaged climate scientists and climate policy. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), who is taking over the House Committee on Science and Technology, believes that the “scientific data, from which global warming theories emerged, has been manipulated, enhanced or deleted” and that “reasonable people have serious questions about our knowledge of the state of the science.”

REALITY-BASED CONSERVATIVES : This iron wall of denial about the moral issue of our time does not sit well with all conservatives. As former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough (FL) said last week on his MSNBC show, “it’s embarrassing.” “I’m a conservative Republican,” Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) said in a recent hearing on climate science, “but on these kinds of issues I’m not an idiot.” At the same hearing, outgoing Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) derided his Republican colleagues for refusing to acknowledge the truth and danger of global warming. In a Washington Post op-ed, former Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) articulated his confusion as to why “so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world’s top scientific academies and scientists are wrong.” Allowing for debate over policy, Boehlert said he finds the GOP’s “dogged determination” to deny the actual science “incomprehensible.” The GOP is rebuking the approach of “leaders of some of our nation’s most prominent businesses,” says Boehlert. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, for example, is “no collection of mom-and-pop shops operated by ‘tree huggers'” but rather a group of “hard-nosed, profit-driven capitalists” like General Electric, Duke Energy, and DuPont pushing Congress to see climate change as an opportunity to “create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy.” “My fellow Republicans should understand that wholesale, ideologically based or special-interest-driven rejection of science is bad policy,” he said. “And that in the long run, it’s also bad politics.”

SCIENTISTS RESPOND :  Led by climatologist John Abraham of St. Thomas University, a “climate rapid response team” of a few dozen top climate scientists have “decided to put their spare time to use fielding media questions about climate science, and even going up against hostile anti-science audiences,” launching ClimateRapidResponse.org today. Earlier this year, Abraham had comprehensively debunked global warming denier Christopher Monckton’s testimony in 126 slides, called A Scientist Replies to Lord Monckton . As “a Utah Republican who thinks his party is headed for a giant belly flop by constantly promoting anti-science,” geoscientist Barry Bickmore of Brigham Young University has challenged Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) for his “intellectual laziness” in rejecting climate science. Following work by independent science bloggers, USA Today reports that Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) “influential 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say.” Meanwhile, the work of the climate community continues. Climate scientists are reporting catastrophic changes in coral reefs, phytoplankton, sea ice, permafrost, and global ecosystems, while clean-energy technologists, supported by $90 billion from the Obama administration’s Recovery Act, are building solutions. “The government is also thinking about the environment, energy independence and national security,” said AltaRock CEO Don O’Shei, “and they want to catalyze technologies that will create whole new industries.”