Got a mention at the Progressive Faith Bloggers Carnival this week – thanks! Be sure to go visit for a wealth of posts about progressive values, different faith perspectives, and just plain interesting reading. There are some very talented writers and thinkers in this group, and I always learn a lot.
The next carnival will be held May 7th at a Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens.
The actions I post are those I support, at least for the present. Sometimes I change my mind when new information, evidence, or compelling argument convinces me to do so (but – note to trolls – rarely do I change my mind because of comments intended to provoke me, harass me, and drain my energy and time).
There are so many things going on right now that I feel I need some sort of realignment with my larger priorities. I will try to do my part to support actions to bring compassion and ethics and accountability to our government and public sphere, to reawaken the American people to a realization of their own interests and to the need for a functioning democracy here. But I have to refocus on some other priorities as well, and this is not my top calling.
Among other things, I have decided to change the format of the activism suggestions I post – they need to be more minimalist. There is always a lot of information on the topic at the site, and adults can use their favorite search engines and so on to find out more about any of these topics.
Click on the links to read more and to decide whether you support the views presented. Go right ahead and read up on the issue elsewhere too!
Develop discernment – among other things, it’s a survival skill.
Today’s Actions:
Demand that our government stop dragging its feet and take decisive action to stop Darfur genocide (Color of Change)
Support Real Effort to Address US Oil Dependence – Fuel Choices for American Security Act (S.2025/H.R. 4409) bipartisian legislation would save as much as 10 million barrels of oil per day by 2030 by creating incentives and standards that would increase vehicle efficiency and alternative fuel use. (Union of Concerned Scientists)
Sign petition to repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies (they admitted they don’t need the money). (Biden, Unite Our States)
Tell your Senators to protect our coasts and stop more offshore drilling. We can’t drill our way to energy independence. (League of Conservation Voters)
Support the troops, but not the unending war. Listen to the new Neil Young album “Living with War”, then take action to bring our troops home in 2006. (True Majority)
Take a wide range of actions at: Consumer’s Union (publisher of Consumer Reports)
In April 100 years ago:
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
–Teddy Roosevelt.
(April 19th, actually – I’m a few days late with this.)
Looks like the “invisible government” he was referring to has surged forward and become a lot more visible.
Consider this, from Lawrence Wilkerson: “Is U.S. being transformed into a radical republic?” in today’s Baltimore Sun:
As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: “America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great – as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.
From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.
Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.
Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.
Sounds like place to start for the statemanship of today.
Happy Earth Day!
Join the Stop Global Warming Virtual March
Read the Progress Report
See the HBO Special “Too Hot Not to Handle“. They have also done a great job of creating a list of resources (including organizations who are committed to fighting global warming).
Reward companies that have a triple bottom line: People, Planet AND Profit. Buy Blue.
Visit The Wilderness Society’s collection of past Earth Day memories and practical tips for protecting our planet and its wild places.
Don’t Let Them Scrap Cape Wind
Cape Wind: the proposed offshore wind farm that would provide 75 percent of Cape Cod’s energy needs with wind power and kickstart the nation into a clean energy revolution.
On April 6, a conference committee signed off on an amendment to a spending bill that would grant veto power over Cape Wind to the governor of Massachusetts. Governor Mitt Romney is an outspoken opponent of the project and if Congress accepts the bill it will be the end of Cape Wind.
This veto provision is a blatant example of the kind of backdoor politics that Congress has been claiming it is against. The amendment had to be secretly added in a closed-door committee because it would never have passed in open committee debate. This provision is a sneaky attempt to shutdown America’s move toward a clean energy future.
Cape Wind is currently the largest renewable wind energy project in the country and is very important for a strong and vibrant future for wind power in the United States. Congress needs to get serious about addressing our addiction to oil. We need tangible renewable energy projects to reduce our emissions of dangerous global warming pollution.
Don’t let this backroom deal unravel years of hard work to make Cape Wind a reality.
Stop Weyerhaeuser’s Lumber Slash Zones
2,500 square miles of forests, lakes and rivers north of Kenora, Ontario have sustained the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation for thousands of years. Now Weyerhaeuser, the largest lumber company in the world, is turning the American dream of building a home into a native nightmare in Canada. A majority of the wood taken from Weyerhaeuser’s clear-cutting is used in constructing American homes, which are marketed as being “Built Green.”
By the way, VP George Weyerhaeuser Jr. was just appointed to a National Academy of Sciences committee that will evaluate the impact of forest-management practices on the nation’s water quality. Conflict of interest, anyone?
In the 1990s the Weyerhaeuser company dramatically increased logging rates in Grassy Narrows without the consent or proper consultation of the community, regularly clear-cutting huge tracts of land, spraying the land with herbicides and pesticides, and replanting with monoculture tree plantations. Despite decades of negotiations, environmental appeals, protests, and what has become the longest running road blockade in Canadian history, industrial loggers like Weyerhaeuser continue to use wood systematically extracted from ecologically sensitive old growth areas and destroy the traditional way of life of the Grassy Narrows indigenous community who have lived on the land since pre-Columbian times.
Demand the immediate termination of Weyerhaeuser’s destructive logging without consent from the community – and keep your eye out for local actions as well.
Rebuke Office Max and Demand Changes
Southern forests are being rapidly wiped out to meet surging demands for office copy paper and paper packaging. Unless consumers insist that such throwaway products be produced from recycled fibers instead of trees, the great forest that once cloaked the southeastern U.S. is in danger of being into turned into vast, biologically sterile pine plantations.
OfficeMax, the third largest retail office supply store in the US, threatens forests of the south by doing business with the most irresponsible logging company in the region.
Tell them to stop sourcing paper from endangered forests!
The Southern forest region of the U.S. contains some of the most biologically rich ecosystems in North America. It is home to hundreds of forest and aquatic species — especially amphibians, reptiles, snails and trees — that are found nowhere else on earth. What’s more, paper on the shelves of OfficeMax is contributing to the destruction of endangered forests in the Southern US’s Cumberland Plateau and the Canadian Boreal – two of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth
OfficeMax’s two largest competitors, Staples and Office Depot, have already committed publicly to increase recycled content in the paper they sell and avoid sourcing paper from endangered forests.
Urge Office Max to follow suit. Demand that they:
1. Stop sourcing paper from endangered forests, including endangered forests of the Southern US and the Canadian Boreal.
2. Match the standard 30% industry average post-consumer recycled content for all paper grades that OfficeMax sells.
3. Phase out all sales of 100% virgin paper.
4. Stop purchasing paper from suppliers that convert natural forests to industrial pine plantations.
5. Develop and implement environmental paper policies, and reduce overall paper use in internal company operations.
Tell Office Max CEO Sam Duncan to make a commitment to the environment and Southern Forests.
Protect Yellowstone and the Greater Rockies
The Bureau of Land Management has just released a draft management plan that threatens the spectacular wildlife and geological, historical and cultural treasures that make this national monument a unique place.
Urge the Bureau of Land Management to protect the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, rather than subject it to an onslaught of jet skis, motor boats, airstrips and hundreds of miles of roads.
The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a place of untamed beauty and flourishing wildlife, rich in cultural history and geological wonders, with the wild and majestic Missouri River at its heart. These wildlands have changed little from what Lewis and Clark saw on their westward journey 200 years ago, or from what Native American tribes experienced for thousands of years before that.
The lands and waters of the monument are home to renowned elk and bighorn sheep herds, bald and golden eagles, and numerous kinds of fish, including rare and endangered species. The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to allow an extensive network of roads — totaling almost 400 miles in length — that would imperil this wildlife and destroy the monument’s unspoiled character. In addition, the six unauthorized airstrips and excessive motorboat use that are part of the proposal would further damage the region’s wild qualities.
The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments until April 26th.
Please tell the agency to revise its proposed management plan to protect and preserve the special values of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument for present and future generations to enjoy.
Truth Liberty Justice Freedom
Take back the USA
Here are some of the progressive actions that you can take today. Please consider each of these carefully, and take action if you agree.
Oppose Attack on Iran
Join Gold Star Families for Peace, CODE PINK, Progressive Democrats of America, Democrats.com, Traprock Peace Center, Global Exchange, Velvet Revolution, Democracy
Rising, Truthout, OpEdNews, Backbone Campaign, Consumers For Peace, Campus Antiwar
Network, and The Young Turks in signing a petition to Bush and Cheney opposing the
launching of a war of aggression against Iran. The petition, with all the signatures and
comments you add, will be delivered to the White House by Cindy Sheehan and many other
activists.
Sign Petition at Don’t Attack Iran
Reports that the Bush administration may be planning a nuclear attack against Iran are alarming. A strong statement of opposition from the American public before that idea becomes credible is important. Please sign the MoveOn message to Congress today: we don’t want a nuclear attack on Iran.
A “preventive military strike” upon Iran is illegal under international law. It threatens to destroy 30 years of efforts toward non-proliferation and disarmament, and could even trigger a global war. It’s time to declare a hot pink alert! We weren’t able to stop the last war, but we must stop the next one…NOW! The United Nations, which is the mandated to uphold international law, must speak out against the Bush Administration’s plans.
Send a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan imploring him to denounce this threat and call for a diplomatic solution.
Corrections: Washington Post
The Washington Post’s editorial page has been printing blatantly false statements about the White House’s Iran-is-buying-uranium hoax and Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s exposure of the fraud.
Read more and ask the Post to correct its statements
Impeachment Investigation Resolution 635
Thirty-four members of Congress have signed onto House Resolution 635 which would create a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics. This committee would make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
Ask your Congresspeople to sign on
Reverse the Raid on Student Aid
Tuition rates at four year public schools have skyrocketed by 40% since 2001.1 Today’s typical student borrower is $17,500 in debt after graduating from college. Yet, earlier this year, Congress – in a virtual party line vote forced by the Republican majority – cut $12 billion out of student aid programs – even as interest rates on student and parent loans are being hiked UP this year. Instead of helping to deal with rising costs, the Republican-led Congress is making college more expensive. In response, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) have introduced the Reverse the Raid on Student Aid Act of 2006, which would cut interest rates in half for students and parents — a move that would save a typical student $5,600 in interest payments. The Reverse the Raid Act will not move forward if the Republican majority continues to put special interests ahead of students, so please petition House Majority Leader, John Boehner (R-OH) to endorse the Miller-Durbin bill and lead the House to make college affordable.
Call on House Majority Leader John Boehner to immediately lead the House of Representatives to slash the interest rates on college loans in half, and increase student grant aid.
Protest Expansion of Offshore Drilling
For more than two decades, most of America’s splendid coastline has been off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Unfortunately, anti-environment Senators and Representatives have recently introduced a flood of proposals to open our nation’s priceless coastline to oil and gas drilling, benefitting wealthy oil giants like ExxonMobil in the process. Drilling off our coasts is not the answer to America’s energy problems. Destructive offshore drilling would only produce a few months’ worth of fuel that won’t even be available for another seven years. Meanwhile, government data shows that clean energy solutions like fuel efficiency and wind and solar power would cut down on energy usage and lower costs right away. Offshore drilling produces huge amounts of mercury and other toxic pollution that could poison and even kill dolphins, manatees, sea turtles and other marine wildlife. And that’s if everything goes well! The consequences of an accident would be far worse — an oil spill could contaminate Florida’s beaches in as little as 24 hours. The Senate will vote on offshore drilling early this spring.
Please urge your Senators to oppose efforts to open Florida’s gulf coast and others to destructive drilling.
Demand Clean Air
The EPA is accepting public comments on the issue of air quality standards until April 17th. Air quality is not a political issue; it is a most basic human issue. It is critical that Administrator Johnson hear from all of us who care about the quality of the air that we breathe each and every day. The Bush administration needs to hear loud and clear that it’s time to stop catering to corporate polluters and start protecting public health and the environment. Unfortunately, the standards the EPA recently proposed would jeopardize the health and safety of Americans across the country. The science is clear. Particle pollution in the air causes serious health problems, including tens of thousands of premature deaths, increased use of medications, missed school days, emergency room visits, strokes, and heart problems. Millions of Americans are at risk from particle pollution, especially those with asthma and other chronic lung diseases, children, seniors, and those with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The EPA is refusing to propose adequate standards. Despite their mandate, they are caving to some of the nation’s biggest polluters. EPA Administrator Steve Johnson has even ignored recommendations from the EPA’s own staff scientists who agree that the proposed soot limits are too weak to protect public health. Why? See if you can put it together. Johnson recently headlined a fundraiser for a Republican congressional candidate in Denver. Representatives of coal, oil and gas industries paid to have some private time with the head of the agency that affects their businesses.
Please take a moment to insist that the EPA stand up for clean air and a healthy environment instead of bowing to pressure from polluting industries.
Send your comments through the American Lung Assocation campaign, Union of Concerned Scientists, or the
League of Conservation Voters
. Deadline April 17th! Sign today.
Junk Mail Opt-Out
Urge your members of Congress to support the petitions and support citizens’ rights to easily opt-out of wasteful ad mail targeted into our private homes. The production and disposal of unsolicited mail wastes trees, pollutes our water, and consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars at a time when energy security is more important than ever. Worst of all, it forces citizens and local governments spend more than $370 million per year to collect and dispose of unsolicited waste and it violates the privacy of our homes. Three years ago, the Do Not Call registry rightfully returned control over one aspect of citizen’s privacy. A Do Not Junk registry is needed to restore another. As the Supreme Court ruled in Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., there should be no distinction between unwanted ad mail, marketing call, door-to-door sales, or any other form of commercialism targeted into our private homes.
Take action
Yesterday I wrote a very long and detailed post on the Plame leak situation. It had quotations and it had links. It had the whole history, the timeline, and it had several compelling points. Just as I was about to publish it, a site in another window crashed my browser. Bummer. I have really got to start writing these things offline. I’m just too disheartened to reconstruct the whole blasted thing. Since you can easily look up everything to do with it, I’ll just contribute my own thoughts to the public conversation.
I believe that Plame was outed intentionally, which is a felony crime if not outright treason. Either Cheney or Bush authorized it. I actually suspect that it was Cheney (with Rove?), and that the official story is a backdated version for coverup purposes. The outing of Plame was meant to punish Plame’s husband (Wilson) for stating the truth – and it was also a message to the intelligence community that they had better give them the “intelligence” that is wanted, rather than assessing reality.
Although people within the administration knew that Bush’s claims weren’t true – and there were efforts to remove them (including by Tenet), these claims kept getting re-added to Bush’s State of the Union speech, which was delivered. It was just one of the ways in which Americans were manipulated – playing on their fears to drum up support for our illegal and unethical invasion of Iraq. This has proven to be a disaster, and all of the people who were demonized for speaking their minds at the time have been proven correct. We took over in Iraq for reasons that will become abundantly clear in future, if they aren’t clear enough to you already (hint – permanent bases on the oil pipeline, Cheney’s secret energy meetings, Enron, Halliburton, record oil profits, corruption, fraud…).
Neither American lives nor Iraqi lives (remember, we’re “rescuing” them?) matter enough to this administration for them even to answer the basic question of what cause our soldiers are fighting for. Modus operandi: when in doubt, change the subject – when in doubt, use doublespeak – when in doubt, use your media assets or run commericals as news – when in doubt, change the “reason” we’re there – when in doubt, hide everything. If they had nothing to hide, we’d be getting a lot more information instead of being under surveillance ourselves.
To claim that “declassifying” Plame and leaking her CIA status to their kiss-butt reporter friends (remember, it wasn’t a White House press release) was in the interests of national security is an outright lie.
Tell me – how does disrupting a valuable source of intelligence, undoubtedly along with others who could be tied to her, help our national security? Isn’t it obvious that it is actually a serious breach of our national security? I wonder how many people died as a direct result, and how much real intelligence has been squandered. It is a felony for good reason.
When he was asked about this leak, he stood up and said he’d get to the bottom of it, that whoever was responsible would be fired. Fire Cheney and yourself, Mr. President. Resign. If there wasn’t anything wrong with what your administration did, you would have explained yourself at the time, not years later when Libby was in court.
Oh wait, we still haven’t really gotten an explanation from the mouth of the king. His sycophant messengers have just given us some spin, that’s all.
Whatever voting machines haven’t been hijacked yet will tell you our judgment – if that matters anymore. We’ve seen what the interests of the American people mean to you – that is, nothing at all.
Take a good look around. Our land and water are being polluted. Corporate interests are all but writing our laws. Our system isn’t functioning – ask people from New Orleans, ask people who have to face new interest rates, ask people who are working part-time in more than one job, ask people trying to navigate Medicare and Medicaid, ask the children who are left behind or who graduate from our schools with a substandard education. Many people who believe they are religious have been hookwinked into following false prophets who would like to see this country turned from the land of the free into a pseudo-christian theocracy – money-grubbers of hate and corruption are even attempting to start ’em young with home schooling and bible classes in the public schools. People openly assert claims of empire and world domination. Now you’re deliberating whether we might use nukes on Iran? So what, we’re worse than Hussein now? Wasn’t that the ultimate no-no? Oh, and didn’t you just make a deal on that very topic? What was that all about?
I’m watching to see what happens in November. We know about the election fraud, the hidden programming in the voting machines. We know that even now Diebold technicians are making the rounds. With popularity in the 30-40 percent range, it would be very strange if the Republicans retained control of both houses, wouldn’t it?
So what’s on the menu? Planning to blow up a few more towers? Maybe a Bin Laden sighting in Chicago? A nuclear meltdown in Florida? A small dirty bomb in some suburban neighborhood?
Contact your congresspeople – it’s time for them to show some spine. We still – so far – have only the soft version of fascism. There is still a chance to use our democratic system the way it was intended.
Wherever you are, do whatever you can – while you still can.
How can anyone still support this President, this Vice-President, these cronies of theirs? What more proof do you need?
Vote. Vote. Vote.