Tag Archives: health care

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Good News For The Whole Family

02/07/2015 Nativegrl77

A Great Jobs Report In The Headlines, And Important Education News Under The Fold

Friday brought some very good news for Americans in the workforce, and for those who haven’t yet entered it (students!).

The January jobs report added more evidence that the U.S. economy continues to get stronger, not just for those at the very top but also for the middle-class and those looking to get into the middle-class. Headlines from major news outlets delivered the message loud and clear:

New York Times: This Is a Great Jobs Report Across the Board
Bloomberg: Job Report Crushes It
Los Angeles Times: Best Wage Growth In Six Years
Wall Street Journal: January Jobs Report…Cast[s] Rosier Glow on 2014
The New Republic: The Recovery Is Finally Happening for Ordinary Americans
CNBC: Jobs Report Leaves GOP Grasping For Ammo

A different event garnered far fewer headlines, but represents another important victory. This time, its not for those who are in the workforce now, but for those who rely on quality education to hopefully one join it.

Today, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the lead Republican on the Senate Committee with jurisdiction over the nation’s education policy, reneged on his attempt to push through a partisan bill to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind. In a joint statement with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Committee, Alexander agreed to scrap his bill and move forward to develop a bipartisan starting point for the Committee to consider.

Just one month ago, Alexander put forward an aggressive timeline to have a bill on the Senate floor by the end of this month. But as education experts, including our colleagues at CAP, dug into the that bill, they found that it included a number of troubling provisions. Among other things, it would divert funding away from students living in the poorest communities who need it the most; fail teachers, parents, and students with disabilities; and rollback the federal government’s role in ensuring an equitable education for all students no matter their background, zip code, or income level.

A CAP report released this week demonstrated how communities with concentrations of poverty could lose federal funding to wealthier school districts under Alexander’s original proposal. For example, Chicago could lose more than $64 million, while the much more affluent suburb of Naperville could see its allocations increase. In Los Angeles Unified School District, students could lose out on more than $75 million, while Beverly Hills could gain.

BOTTOM LINE: In 1965, the original goal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was to ensure low-income students have a chance of success. After initially introducing a plan that could have done the opposite, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander has pulled back and announced a more bipartisan process. That is a very important step in making sure that our nation’s education policy improves to ensure student success in an equitable way.

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A Roadmap For Inclusive Prosperity

02/03/2015 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

Global Commission Offers Bold Prescriptions To Address Inequality and Grow Middle Class

For the last 18 months, a group of 17 international experts from 5 countries has met to discuss the transnational trends of globalization, technology and declining worker power. These trends—all exacerbated by the financial crisis—have placed downward pressure on wages and incomes, and exacerbated economic inequality. This group, called the Inclusive Prosperity Commission, or IPC, and convened by the Center for American Progress, today released a robust report aimed at establishing sustainable and inclusive prosperity over the long term in developed economies, with a specific focus on raising wages, expanding job growth, and ensuring broadly shared economic growth.

The IPC identifies five key policy areas that can deliver more inclusive prosperity on a global scale: rewarding and encouraging work; promoting educational opportunity for all; improved measures to support innovation and regional clusters; a move toward greater long-termism in the private sector; and international cooperation on global demand, trade, financial stability, and corporate tax avoidance. Beyond that, the report details a number of policy proposals to achieve inclusive prosperity in the United States. Below are some of the highlights, and click here to read the whole report.

Increasing workers’ share of the economic pie, raise wages and incomes

Create tax incentives for companies to share profits with their workers.
Modernize employment laws around overtime pay, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, and other protections to recognize the changing nature of work and to provide basic economic security to workers.
Raise the minimum wage to a level that is at least high enough to prevent full-time workers from living in poverty, and index the minimum wage to the consumer price index in order to reduce the share of workers trapped in low-wage work.

Eliminating financial barriers to higher education

Guarantee financial support for a college education at a public four-year college or community college so that every high school graduate and their family know that they can afford college.

Structuring tax policy to promote fairness and support aggregate demand

Provide middle-class tax relief—until income stagnation is overcome—by crafting a tax credit that provides relief for Americans who do not benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC.
Make the tax code more progressive and fairer over the long term by eliminating the decades-long accumulation of tax exemptions, deductions, and exclusions that have helped reduce effective tax rates on high-income households and corporations.

Increasing labor-force participation and growth

Use family-friendly labor-market policies to increase female labor-force participation and income by enacting policies including paid parental leave, paid caregiving leave, paid sick days, paid vacation, protections for part-time workers, and workplace flexibility.

Targeting public investment to create jobs and raise long-run economic potential

Expand infrastructure investment by $100 billion annually over 10 years to bring our infrastructure to a competitive level and sustain demand.

This list has just some of many recommendations included in the bold, comprehensive report. But even though the list is long, there is also momentum in some areas. Today, President Obama announced that he will sign a memorandum ensuring federal employees get at least six weeks of paid sick leave for the arrival of a new child and proposed that Congress pass legislation to give them six weeks of paid administrative leave (the United States is the only developed country that doesn’t have a national requirement that workers get access to paid sick leave). Also today, a new poll was released showing that 75 percent of 2016 voters support raising the minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020.

BOTTOM LINE: Despite the economic recovery, global trends are creating a toxic combination to suppress incomes and wages for middle-class families. Change won’t come with more trickle-down economics. But fatalism is not an option–the future of industrial democracies depend the growth of middle class living standards. Today’s report from progressive leaders across the globe is an important roadmap containing new, innovative ideas to spur quality job growth and tackle increasing economic inequality head on.

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Slicks Seep on in the Amazon

02/02/2015 Nativegrl77

In Pictures: Slicks Seep on in the Amazon

“This isn’t just about this spill, or the last one, or the next one that will happen when the pipe breaks again because it will as it always does,” said Tania Ines looking out over a reflective Marañón River from the open thatched-roof house where she, her husband and their four children live in the center of San Pedro, a Kukama indigenous community deep in Peru’s northern Amazon. She crossed the room with a pace indicating endless time, collecting a crying baby at the other side and returning to sit at the edge of weathered steps. She looked as though she were waiting.

“The water is ruined – we’re all getting sick from it,” Ines turned the fussing baby from one hand to the other. She told me he had been suffering from diarrhea, likely due to the contamination of one thing or another, as everything seemed to have been touched. “I gave him a bath in the river water and he’s had stomach problems since. It’s the same with this one,” she pointed to the infant’s sister peeking out from behind Mama’s legs. “…with all the children really.”

READ THE REST ON EYE ON THE AMAZON

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Tell the FDA to Label Genetically Engineered Foods!

02/02/2015 Nativegrl77

You Have Right to Know if You’re Eating Genetically Engineered Foods
Tell the FDA to Require GMO Labeling on Nutrition Labels!

You Deserve the Right to Know What’s In Your Food

Tell the FDA to include GMO Labeling on the New Nutrition Labels!

Recently Vermont became the first state to require genetically engineered (GMO) foods to be labeled!

This is a huge victory: it makes Vermont the first state to require labels on GMOs and thus gives consumers the right to know what they’re eating. It also puts their neighbors in Connecticut and Maine that much closer to meeting their own requirements for labeling. Meanwhile, ballot initiatives to label GMOs are heating up for the fall in Oregon and Colorado, and the movement to label genetically engineered foods at the state level has never been stronger!

It’s great that people in these states will soon know what’s in their food, but what about the rest of us? Tell the FDA to include genetically engineered ingredient labeling on the new nutrition labels!

So why should we even care if we’re eating GMOs? Well, genetically engineered crops have been altered in a way that could never happen in nature. Companies like Monsanto and Dow (chemical companies) take genes from one plant, animal or virus, and shoot it into the DNA of another organism, like taking genes from a fish, and inserting them into a tomato. This is drastically different than how crops have been adapted since the beginning of human civilization, and these genetically engineered crops have been largely untested, and are unregulated by the U.S. government. They could have higher rates of allergenicity, and have unintended consequences for people and the environment.

Many other countries around the world ban or limit GMO foods entirely, and 64 countries including Russia, China, Japan, Australia, and the countries of the European Union all require labeling. So why doesn’t the U.S. have a federal labeling law?

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), with about 300 member companies like Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Smithfield, represents the largest food, beverage and biotech companies, and has spent $54.7 million (on behalf of its Big Ag members) to defeat ballot initiatives on labeling genetically engineered foods in California and Washington. Instead of taking this fight state by state, the GMA would like to pass a bill through Congress that will stop all genetically engineered food labels nationally, and they’ve got a lot of money from their corporate members to spend to try to pass their bill.

The good news is, the Food & Drug Administration has the authority to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered ingredients, and they could do it now. They’re already considering new content and designs on the nutrition labels that are required on every food package, and they could just include a requirement to label genetically engineered ingredients. We know that more than 90% of people want labeling on foods that contain GMO ingredients, and recently more than 20 states have considered their own labeling laws, so it’s time for the FDA to require GMO labels on all foods in the U.S.!

The FDA is accepting comments until June 3. Please take action now to let the FDA know that you want labels on all genetically engineered foods.

Thanks for taking action,

Sarah Alexander
Deputy Organizing Director
Food & Water Watch
act(at)fwwatch(dot)org

Monsanto, Nestlé, Dow and Pepsi don’t want genetically engineered foods to be labeled, but more than 90% of Americans do.

The Food and Drug Administration could require mandatory GMO labeling as part of their new nutrition label, and give people the right to know what’s in their food.

Please join Food & Water Watch in telling FDA to require labeling of all genetically engineered ingredients on the new nutrition label.

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

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BREAKING NEWS: Our fight to protect walruses in the Arctic

02/01/2015 Nativegrl77

Stop Shell Oil from harming walruses in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea!

In recent weeks, 35,000 walruses were observed crowded together on Alaska’s Arctic coast—forced ashore because their sea ice home is literally melting away. (Corey Accardo / NOAA)

Chip in to support our critical efforts in court.

Their homes are literally melting away due to extreme climate change. They’re being forced ashore, where they are far from food and vulnerable to injury. Their calves are dying in stampedes caused by disturbances at these coastal aggregations.

And now our government is giving Shell Oil and other oil companies the green light to drill and conduct deafening seismic surveying in their home, chasing them from feeding and resting areas and adding to their mounting misfortunes. Will you help us fight back?

Walruses are the Arctic’s canary in a coal mine. And now more than ever, they are struggling to survive.

Recently my team and I filed a lawsuit to challenge a U.S. Fish and Wildlife rule permitting companies like Shell Oil to harm Pacific walruses during reckless Arctic Ocean oil drilling. Help us see this fight through.

Make a tax-deductible gift today to support our efforts in court.

Pacific walruses—which the government has determined need protection under the Endangered Species Act—depend on Chukchi Sea ice in the spring and summer for resting, raising their young, feeding, and avoiding predators. But in recent years this sea ice has shrunk substantially—and with it, much of the walruses’ prime habitat.

Now Big Oil wants to drill offshore and disturb these majestic creatures with seismic testing; risky, dirty, and loud drilling; ice-breaking; and airplane and helicopter use during the time of year they’re most vulnerable, and in the region most critical to their survival.

Adding insult to injury, the drilling would accelerate climate change, which is already putting this species at risk.

We at Earthjustice are doing everything we can to fight back and save walruses from oil drilling and the worst effects of climate change, but we need you to stand with us.

Together we can fight back.

In 2012, Arctic sea ice shattered previous low records, covering only about half the area covered on average from 1981 to 2010. The extent of Arctic sea ice is declining faster than predicted, in a dramatic change that is a major stress on walruses.

Without sea ice, walruses are flocking to land in large numbers, where food becomes scarce. Loud noises or disturbances can cause herds to become alarmed and stampede into the water, trampling and killing small walruses and baby calves in the process. Reckless and irresponsible oil development could make things much worse.

Walruses are struggling—they need a good lawyer. We’re fighting multiple battles to stop reckless and irresponsible drilling in the Arctic. Help us win this and other critical fights!

Thank you for all that you do,