Tag Archives: news and events A. G. Crowe

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

I can’t afford to feed my daughter …

07/01/2014 Nativegrl77

United Healthcare: Cover baby formula for special needs children

Emi Clayberg
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Sign Emi’s Petition

My beautiful daughter Vivian was born 3 months premature and spent 4 months in the NICU. She survived, but never learned to eat and requires a special formula that costs $290 a case. Our insurance company, United Healthcare, refuses to pay for this.

Vivian was diagnosed with dysphagia and reflux and had to undergo multiple surgeries – including having a g-tube inserted. She gets 100% of her nutrition through the g-tube and due to absorption and food tolerance issues, the formula that works best for her is “Pediasure Peptide 1.5.”

We thought our insurance would cover it – but after months of purchasing the formula, we received news that United Healthcare was not paying for it – in the form of an $8,000 bill. My family is now in a panic worrying about how we are going to feed our daughter. She needs 6-7 cases a month – about $2,000. That is my entire paycheck.

Just a few years ago, United Healthcare posted a net earnings of $5.142 billion – they can afford to cover this for families that need it. Health insurance companies are susceptible to public pressure — and we believe that with enough signatures, United Healthcare will change its policy — not just for our family but for others, too. Thats why I need you to sign my petition.

Vivian is the most grateful little girl you could ever meet. She is so sweet to everyone and it breaks my heart to see her so physically delayed because she is not getting the medical care she needs and deserves.

Please sign our petition to United Healthcare demanding they cover special formulas like the one that Vivian and other children like her need to survive.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Weekly Address: Focusing on the Economic Priorities for the Middle Class Nationwide

06/30/2014 Nativegrl77

In this week’s address, the President discussed his recent trip to Minneapolis where he met a working mother named Rebekah, who wrote the President to share the challenges her family and many middle-class Americans are facing where they work hard and sacrifice yet still can’t seem to get ahead. But instead of focusing on growing the middle class and expanding opportunity for all, Republicans in Congress continue to block commonsense economic proposals such as raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance and making college more affordable.

The President will keep fighting his economic priorities in the weeks and months ahead, because he knows the best way to expand opportunity for all hardworking Americans and continue to strengthen the economy is to grow it from the middle out.

Click here to watch this week’s Weekly Address.

A Day in the Life: Rebekah from Minneapolis

This past March, a mom from Minneapolis named Rebekah wrote the President a letter about the increasing costs of taking care of her family. She told him about her day-to-day struggles, and let him know what she thinks needs to change. This week, the President traveled to Minnesota to spend some time with her. Check out the live-blog from President Obama’s trip.

This week takes us south of the border with the Vice President, to our nation’s capital for the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families, and along for the ride as Rebekah gets a reply… in person.

President Obama addressed the League of Conservation Voters at their annual Capital Dinner. In his remarks, he commended them on their work to protect the planet, and emphasized that the work is “even more urgent and more important” now than when he last spoke to the League in 2006, due to the rapidly growing threat of climate change.

JPMorgan Chase dropping mountain destruction

06/07/2014 Nativegrl77

Tell the Banks to Stop Financing Mountain Destruction

This could be the tipping point for the horrific practice of Mountaintop Removal coal mining.

Just this week, JPMorgan Chase updated its environmental policy, revealing that it will be ending financial relationships with Mountaintop Removal coal mining companies.

Wells Fargo and BNP Paribas/Bank of the West have recently taken similar steps. If the other major banks commit to stop financing mountaintop removal, fossil fuel companies will have no choice but to end the obliteration of mountains and poisoning of communities for coal.

tell Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to stop financing Mountaintop Removal coal mining!

Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is a mining practice that uses explosives to literally blow the tops off mountains for the coal inside. The rubble is then pushed into streams and poisons the water supply for thousands of people. This is morally unacceptable and why many, many local communities in Appalachia, along with activists around the world, are taking a stand against MTR.

For more than five years, Rainforest Action Network members like you have demanded JPMorgan Chase and other banks drop MTR financing. And while we’ll have to remain vigilant to ensure JPMorgan Chase stays on the path away from MTR, the bank’s new policy demonstrates that your activism is working.

JPMorgan Chase will no longer be doing business with companies like Alpha Natural Resources—the worst of the worst when it comes to MTR. Last month, the EPA issued Alpha the largest water pollution discharge penalty in the history of the Clean Water Act. The company also faces ten lawsuits over water pollution at its MTR mines.;

JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, shows that the smart money is leaving companies like Alpha Natural Resources. Other major banks do not want to be singled out for continuing to support environmental destruction and poisoning communities.

Tell the banks to drop Alpha Natural Resources and adopt a policy to phase out MTR financing.

Our movement is truly turning the tide against MTR. Companies like Alpha Natural Resources need financing from big banks to continue the destruction. If we make sure the banks can’t hide their responsibility for keeping MTR alive, we can force them to act to protect their image.

JPMorgan Chase is acting to protect its image right now by moving out of MTR financing. Let’s use that momentum. Send the banks a message today and help end Mountaintop Removal coal mining once and for all.

		For healthy communities and a healthy ecosystem,
		Amanda Starbuck Energy and Finance Program Director Twitter:@starbuck

Photo Credit: Kent Kessinger/Appalachian Voices

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Urgent plea

04/29/2014 Nativegrl77

The message below comes to you from Rudi Putra, a longtime ally and hero of RAN’s and winner of the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize – the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism.Dear friends,

My name is Rudi and I feel like the luckiest person alive.

I grew up in a place teeming with wild orangutans, elephants, tigers, sunbears and Sumatran rhinos. My family and I lived in balance with the mountains, forests and rivers surrounding us. From an early age, I knew I had to take care of the beauty that surrounded me. But as huge multi-national companies expand their reach and palm plantations spread, I know that I can’t protect these pristine places alone. That’s why I’m asking you to join me in telling PepsiCo to eliminate the Conflict Palm Oil from its products.

I have worked much of my life to protect the 6.4 million acres of prime tropical rainforests in the Leuser Ecosystem. I fell in love with the Sumatran rhino, the smallest and the most critically endangered rhino of all – and have spent years tracking, researching and protecting these special creatures from poachers.

I have left my home in Indonesia to come to yours to deliver a very important message. I need your help to protect the last rhino’s and rainforests of Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem from Conflict Palm Oil.

I have witnessed vast areas of forests destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations, forests I knew were the homes of endangered species. I’ve removed traps from the forest corridors used by the last Sumatran elephants and tigers. I have even found animals poisoned, speared, and burned alive by poachers and plantation workers.

And still, the plantations keep growing across Aceh, always feeding the demand for Conflict Palm Oil. It must stop. We must protect the world’s rainforests. We must stop powerful and wealthy international corporations from exploiting and destroying irreplaceable Indonesian ecosystems for profit.

My community and I work tirelessly to shut down and destroy illegal palm oil plantations inside the federally protected Leuser Ecosystem, using chainsaws and uprooting illegal oil palms. We do this to protect our families from the floods that result from the destruction of the forests on the hillsides that surround our homes. But we can not do this alone. We need your help.

It is with great honor that I am here in the US and receiving the Goldman Prize. But it is an even greater honor to know that YOU will stand with me and hold PepsiCo to account for the impact of its products.

For the rhino’s and our life,
Rudi Putra

_______________________________________________

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Keep In Mind

04/29/2014 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

Like CAP Action on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

11 Things The Senate Should Remember While Voting On The Minimum Wage

After returning from a two-week recess, the Senate is planning to vote on raising the minimum wage to $10.10 this Wednesday. The bill, called the “Minimum Wage Fairness Act,” needs 60 votes to advance thanks to the de facto GOP filibuster threat. And while in the past we have used this space to outline many of the different benefits of raising the minimum wage to $10.10, in anticipation of this important vote we wanted to go over some of the most important reasons one more time. Here they are:

1. Increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 and indexing it to inflation would raise the wages of 28 million workers by $35 billion. Raising the minimum wage would provide Americans who work hard a better opportunity to get ahead while giving the economy a needed shot in the arm.

2. In 2013, CEOs made 774 times the pay of minimum wage workers. While the top CEOs made an average of $11.7 million in 2013, full-time workers making the minimum wage took home only $15,080 a year.

3. Nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers are women. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would benefit 15 million women.

4. One million veterans would benefit from a minimum wage increase. After risking their lives to protect our country, 1 in 10 veterans working in America today are paid wages low enough that they would receive a raise if the minimum wage is raised to $10.10.

5. Raising the minimum wage will cut government spending on food stamps. Millions of workers earning the minimum wage make so little that they qualify for food stamps (SNAP benefits). This, in effect, amounts to taxpayers subsidizing corporations paying low-wages. Raising wages for low-income workers would actually cut government spending on SNAP by $4.6 billion a year, or $46 billion over the next 10 years, as workers earn enough on their own to no longer rely on the program.

6. Minimum wage workers are older than you think. Nearly 90 percent of minimum wage workers are 20 years or older. The average minimum wage worker is 35 years old. A higher minimum wage doesn’t just mean more spending money for a teenager, it means greater economic security for the millions of Americans who rely on it as their primary income.

7. Businesses see the value in increasing the minimum wage. Nearly 60 percent of small business owners recognize that raising the minimum wage would benefit businesses and support raising it. In fact, 82 percent of those surveyed don’t pay any of their workers the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

8. It won’t hurt job creation. States have raised the minimum wage 91 times since 1987 during periods of high unemployment, and in more than half of those instances the unemployment rate actually fell. Over 600 economists signed a letter agreeing that a minimum wage increase doesn’t hurt job creation.

9. In polls, nearly three-quarters of Americans support a minimum wage increase to $10.10. Pew Research found that 73 percent of Americans back a minimum wage increase.

10. Millions of children will be more secure. If we raise the minimum wage to $10.10, 21 million children will have at least one parent whose pay will go up.

11. A $10.10 minimum wage means a $16.1 billion boost for people of color. Raising the minimum wage is a matter of racial justice: people of color are far more likely to work minimum wage jobs and those who do are far more likely to be in poverty. A $10.10 minimum wage would lift three and a half million people of color out of poverty and add $16.1 billion to their incomes.

BOTTOM LINE: Over the next few days, as Senators take to the chamber floor to debate and then vote on this legislation that would help the economy and millions of American workers, they should make sure they keep in mind these vital facts on why the minimum wage should be raised to $10.10. A vote against increasing the minimum wage is quite simply a vote against working Americans.