Tag Archives: senate spot

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Lisa Donner, Americans for Financial Reform

09/21/2014 Nativegrl77

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is doing invaluable work to make the markets for credit cards, mortgages and other financial products and services fairer and more transparent. And once again, the financial industry is going all-out to block those efforts.

The industry’s latest threat involves a proposal to make the CFPB’s complaint system more useful and user-friendly by giving consumers the right to include the specifics of their complaints in a searchable public database.

Please join us in telling the CFPB: Don’t back down from your proposal to let consumers share their stories publicly.

Hundreds of thousands of people have used the CFPB’s complaint system, and more than 30,000 cases have already resulted in monetary relief. Complaint data also helps the CFPB detect and respond to broader patterns of industry error or misconduct. The complaint system could be far more valuable, though, if consumers had the option of publicly describing their bad experiences. That way, consumers would be able to learn about the experiences of others and make more informed choices, and financial companies would have an added incentive to compete by actually trying to satisfy their customers, not by trying to put something over on them.

But financial companies, just as they fought the creation of the CFPB in the first place, are fighting its complaint proposal tooth and nail – through the press, through lobbying, and through a highly deceptive advertising campaign in which the industry falsely claims that businesses would not have an equal right to post their responses.

That’s why we need to fight back. Urge the CFPB to stand firm and help consumers share their experiences and hold big banks accountable.

Speak up today, because the big banks are working feverishly hard to take away our chance to speak up in the future.

Thank you for your continued support for real financial reform.

Sincerely,

Lisa Donner
Executive Director
Americans for Financial Reform

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Ten years in prison

09/20/2014 Nativegrl77

Eight Greenpeace activists are each facing almost ten years in prison for participating in a peaceful protest to protect Indonesian rainforest.

Sign our statement of support today for the action they took and the right to peaceful protest.

In just a few weeks, eight Greenpeace activists, who last March participated in a peaceful protest at Procter & Gamble’s Cincinnati headquarters to protect Indonesian rainforest¹, will be going on trial.

They’re each facing two separate felony charges — burglary and vandalism — and if convicted, they could spend almost ten years in prison.

These are crimes they did not commit. The charges in this case are an attempt to intimidate us and prevent more people from taking action — especially when it relates to large corporations like Procter & Gamble. The eight individuals on trial in Cincinnati are prepared to accept the consequences of their actions for a cause they believe in. But they aren’t burglars. And they aren’t vandals. That’s why they’re going to trial.

I’ll be there in person in Cincinnati during the trial doing everything I can to support the eight individuals and their case. You have a role to play too.

Add your name to our statement of support today and show these individuals that they’re not alone and that you believe in the right to peaceful protest.

When I took the job of Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, I didn’t think that this would be how I’d introduce myself to you. But this is a very serious moment, and we need your help.

I’m Annie Leonard. You might know me from my most recent project, the Story of Stuff, but I actually got my start in the environmental movement at Greenpeace over 20 years ago. And I’ve seen firsthand the power that peaceful protest can have.

I’ll be delivering your messages of support personally to the activists. It’s important that they know they’re not alone and that the there is broad support for the action they took. And it’s important that we work together to protect the right to freedom of speech which allowed this action to take place, and which will continue to allow other activists to take direct action in the future.

Add your name to our statement of support today and show these eight individuals that they’re not alone and that you believe in the right to peaceful protest.

The right to peaceful protest is one of the single most important tools at our disposal, not only to protect the environment, but to bring about positive social change in a democracy. It should be allowed to be exercised without the fear of unjust legal consequences.

Carmen, I can’t tell you how excited I am to have come home to Greenpeace as its Executive Director. Or how excited I am to work with you in the days, months and years to come to make our world a greener and more peaceful place.

Thanks for all you do. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as we get closer to the trial and the proceedings begin.

Sincerely,

Annie Leonard
Greenpeace USA Executive Director

1. For more information on the protest and why these activists did what they did, check out this blog post.

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Liberia and Ebola

09/19/2014 Nativegrl77

Introducing Liberia

After almost two decades of war, Liberia – a lush, rainforested country draped across West Africa’s southern flank – seems at last to have found some breathing room. With Africa’s first woman president at the helm, the peace, while still fragile, is holding and Liberians have thrown themselves with gusto into the work of rebuilding their shattered land.

If Liberia does stabilise and open up for travel, it will offer intrepid adventurers a fascinating glimpse into what was previously a wonderfully hospitable and fascinatingly enigmatic society. Liberia’s artistic traditions – especially carved masks, dance and storytelling – rivalled those of anywhere on the continent, and traditional culture was strong. This was especially true in the country’s interior, where secret initiation societies played a central role in growing up, and today still serve as important repositories of traditional knowledge and life skills. For now though, most of this cultural wealth remains inaccessible to visitors, and independent travel outside of the country’s capital Monrovia is not considered safe.

Liberia’s dense, humid rainforests – some of the most extensive in West Africa – are alive with the screeching and twittering of hundreds of birds, who are kept company by forest elephants, pygmy hippos and other wildlife padding around the forest floor. Along the coast, deserted white-sand beaches alternate with humid river deltas and tranquil tidal lagoons, while inland plateaus rise to verdant hill country on the borders of Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea.

Though the situation is definitely looking up, it’s advisable to get an update on local security conditions before setting your plans.

Resource: Lonely Planet

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Inequality In Focus

09/18/2014 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

America’s Disturbing And Pervasive Inequality, In Three Charts

The Census Bureau’s latest estimates of income and poverty released Tuesday reveal that, despite the economic recovery, inequality remains a massive problem in the United States. We’ve assembled three charts that demonstrate the how deeply the problem runs in our society:

1. Income inequality. Five years of economic recovery hasn’t resulted in any income growth for the vast majority of Americans. In 2013, the median income nationwide was $51,900, essentially unchanged from a year before and 8 percent lower than the median income in 2007, the year before the recession hit. The top five percent of earners made more than $196,000, while the bottom 10 percent made less than $12,400.

2. Racial inequality. Black and Hispanic Americans continue to lag far behind non-Hispanic white and Asian households in the amount that they ear. The median household headed by a black person earned $34,600 in 2013 and the median household headed by a Hispanic person earned $41,000. That’s compared to $58,300 for the median white, non-Hispanic household and $67,100 for the median Asian household.

3. Gender inequality. We wrote yesterday about how the gender wage gap hasn’t budged from last year: women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. But the poverty rate is higher for women than it is for men as well. The Census found that 15.8 percent of women live in poverty, compared to 13.1 percent of men. And as the chart below demonstrates, the poverty gap between men and women grows as the population ages.

CREDIT: U.S. Census Bureau

BOTTOM LINE: Five years into the economic recovery, middle class Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. But there is no reason to expect the economy to really hum again and inequality to decrease unless we take action to address the problems. That means supporting policies like these that help working families, not the rich, and that grow the economy from the middle-out, not the top-down.