Safe Energy For the Gulf: Hold the Line on Fish-Killing Machines

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals pose a threat to commercial and recreational fishing in the Gulf. Despite the fact that Gulf Governors have vetoed the development of any further open-rack vaporizer, or open-loop systems, which would run Gulf seawater through radiator-like racks, energy companies continue to try to gamble with our marine wildlife to increase their profits.

The TORP Bienville LNG terminal is currently seeking a permit to use 127 million gallons of Gulf water a day to vaporize imported natural gas. The drastic temperature change, and physical damage caused by the process would destroy billions of fish eggs and larvae by the day. While the terminal is proposed for 63 miles off the Alabama shore, it is close to critically important, marine wildlife reef habitat.


Alternatives to open-loop terminals exist and are supported by fisheries experts at the federal and state level throughout the Gulf. Take action today to tell the Coast Guard, the Department of Transportation, and Alabama Governor Bob Riley to allow only fish-friendly technology.



http://action.healthygulf.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25392

Don't Buy Big Oil's Land Grab

Did you know that oil companies are already sitting on 68 million acres of leases that they aren't even drilling? Which kind of makes you wonder: Why are Big Oil and its allies suddenly desperate to get their hands on the last few places that are still protected -- our natural treasures, wildlife refuges, and pristine coastlines? They wouldn't use the concerns caused by high gas prices as an excuse to grab it ALL, would they?

Big Oil and its allies would like you to think that more drilling will ease your pain at the pump, but that's not the truth.

The bottom line is this: More oil drilling will not lower gas prices or create energy independence - it will only make the world's richest oil companies richer.

Check out our map showing how much of our country Big Oil already has.

Average Americans are being squeezed by high energy prices, and the oil companies are taking advantage to push their long-term drilling agenda. They have been spreading a map full of lies though the Internet.

Help us counter their propaganda -- pass this map and the truth along to your friends and ask them to pass it along too.

http://www.sierraclub.org/bigoil/map.asp

Tell McDonalds to be a Leader and Not a Laggard!

Mc Donald's is the biggest of the 11 Fast Food Junkies buying their paper packaging from Southern forests. We know that McDonald?s is in the process of completing their latest Corporate Social Responsibility report and we know that it will include new language about an environmental paper packaging policy.

What we don?t know is whether McDonald?s will step out as a corporate leader with a policy that supersizes their commitment to protecting forests and increasing the post-consumer recycled content of their packaging and packaging efficiencies like right-sizing and light-weighting.

We need to make sure that their commitment is truly sustainable and not just greenwashing. Tell McDonalds CEO Jim Skinner that Southern forests are too important to be wasted for fast food packaging!


http://dia.dogwoodalliance.org/da/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25345&t=nwTemplate.dwt

Support the TRADE Act

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, cosponsored by fair trade champions Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), was introduced on June 4, 2008 with over 50 House and Senate original cosponsors! This landmark legislation sets forth in concrete, detailed terms a progressive vision for good trade agreements in the future and criteria to renegotiate existing failed pacts like NAFTA and the WTO.

Fifteen years of the NAFTA/WTO model has led to massive job loss, downward pressure on wages and the loss of nearly 300,000 family farms. It's given broad, expansive new rights to foreign corporations to challenge our environmental and public health standards and flooded the U.S. with unsafe imported food and products. And it has devastated developing nations, where millions of family farmers have been forced off their land, and where poverty, despair and desperation-driven mass migrations have grown.

The TRADE Act lays out in detail a new path forward for U.S. trade policy to achieve societal goals such as good jobs, safe food and promotion of basic human rights, healthy communities and environmental protection.

What you can do:
We now need as many representatives and senators as possible to publicly support this bill by signing on as cosponsors. Write your members of Congress now and urge them to cosponsor the TRADE Act!

To use the Global Trade Watch contact form, click here: http://action.citizen.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24836

For more information:
Available here: http://www.citizen.org/trade/tradeact/


http://www.citizen.org/trade/tradeact/

Allow Testimony or Face Impeachment!

Tell President Bush that he must allow executive branch officials to testify or he will face impeachment
On September 26, congressional oversight may be dead. The Constitution that has served our nation so well since 1789 may be hopelessly and forever diminished. Our federal government and, in turn, our nation may never be the same.

Those are the stakes.

In order for our government to function, we must have checks and balances. In order to prevent a president from assuming king-like powers and to ensure that all presidents are held accountable for their actions, Congress must have effective congressional oversight ability. And, of course, our presidents must respect that power.

George W. Bush does not.

It is time to put an end to this defiling of our Constitution. The U.S. House of Representatives has set September 26 as a target date for adjournment. By that time, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Josh Bolten must comply with the congressional subpoenas they have been issued – and which a federal judge has ordered them to follow.

If they do not, then George W. Bush must be impeached and removed from office.

If he is not removed from office, Congress will have established a standard under which a president may deny Congress’s investigative power without penalty. That simply cannot happen.


Please take a moment to speak for your nation at this link:

salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2165/t/1027/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25316

Do Not Pass Go. Go Directly to Pass223.com

Do you have five minutes to help bring the U.S. Senate into the 21st century? Do you have a phone? Are you at your computer? (If you're reading this, you probably are.) Then we've got a favor to ask. The Senate is considering a bill -- S. 223 -- that would require senators to disclose their campaign contributions electronically, just like the House and presidential candidates have been doing for years. The Sunlight Foundation, CRP and other transparency advocates have been pushing hard to get this bill passed this session, and we now have more than 40 co-sponsors of the bill. We need your help to get it passed into law.

http://pass223.com/

Want Some Basic Human Dignity with that Burrito?

The Nation Peter Rothberg on 07/29/2008 @ 12:48pm

In recent years, Taco Bell and Burger King have foolishly resisted efforts by activists to marginally raise the piece rate they pay tomato pickers only to eventually buckle under the pressure of well-deserved bad press. Chipotle Mexican Grill seems to have learned nothing from their lessons.

Although Chipotle, the expanding Colorado-based restaurant chain formerly owned by McDonald's, touts its fair treatment of animals and its locally-sourced organic avocados, its colorful, interactive website neglects any mention of the fair treatment of farm workers. While CEO Steve Ells boasts about his "Food With Integrity" brand, he has ignored countless letters and petitions from all over the country, asking for an extra penny per pound for his tomato pickers.

Migrant pickers typically work ten to twelve hour days, earning a piece-rate of about forty-five cents for each thirty-two pound bucket of tomatoes. Work is never guaranteed, there is no health care, and no overtime pay. The average annual income for a farm worker is $10,000.

Or take this snapshot of the average workday of a Florida tomato picker (with credit to the fine blog, The Pump Handle):

*4:30am: Wake-up. Prepare lunch in your trailer.
*5:00am: Walk to the parking lot or pick-up site to begin looking for work.
*6:30am: With luck, a contractor will choose you to work for him for the day. The job may be 10 to 100 miles away.
*7:30am: Arrive at the fields and begin weeding or waiting while the dew evaporates from the tomatoes. You are usually not paid for this time.
*9:00am: Begin picking tomatoes--filling buckets, hoisting them on your shoulder, running them 100 feet or more to the truck and throwing the bucket up into the truck. Work fast because you must pick 2 TONS of tomatoes in order to earn $50 today.
*Noon: Eat lunch as fast as you can, often with your hands soaked in pesticides. Return to work under the smoldering Florida sun.
*5:00pm: (sometimes later, depending on the season): Board bus to return to Immokalee.
Between 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm: Arrive in Immokalee and walk home.


(And the next day, get up and do it all again. Photos here)

Surely a company that took over $1 billion in annual sales last year can afford a modest raise request. Instead, Ells has tried to side-step the issue by looking to purchase tomatoes from places other than Florida.

Galvanizing the grassroots organizing by and for the Florida tomato pickers is the same group that led the successful fights against Taco Bell and Burger King -- the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), founded in 1993 as a "community-based worker organization" with members from diverse backgrounds, in low-wage agricultural jobs throughout Florida.

On Friday afternoon, August 8th, the CIW along with hundreds of members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) will be in Denver at Chipotle's corporate headquarters to demand that the restaurant chain work to ensure fairer wages and more humane working conditions for farmworkers. If you're in the Denver area, please join what should be a large and powerful action. if you're not, see what you can do to help the campaign, which has garnered the attention of Congress, with lawmakers earlier this year calling for the Government Accountabilty Office to launch an investigation into working conditions.

CIW's website is filled with details on the demonstration, sample letters to Steve Ells, and other ways that you can do something for some of the poorest and hardest working people in America, including urging Chipotle customers to print out this letter and hand it to the manager at your local Chipotle restaurant. The CIW has gone up against Goliath before and won. With dedication and solidarity, this fight can also be won.

Co-written and researched by Mica Schlosser.



http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/340332/

14 Wolf Pups Executed in Alaska

Soon after Alaska's Board of Game approved the killing of all wolves in an area near Cold Bay, state officials illegally killed 14 wolf pups after gunning down their mothers -- yet another grisly chapter in the Alaska’s out-of-control wolf slaughter.

Please make an emergency donation to help save the lives of Alaska’s wolves and fight the barbaric policies of the Board of Game.

Here’s what happened: State wildlife agency personnel staked out a known wolf denning site -- a practice that is illegal under Alaska law -- and, using helicopters, they gunned down 14 adult wolves from the air, part of an effort to boost caribou populations in Southwest Alaska.

When they landed, they found the 14 helpless pups in the nearby dens -- just weeks old -- and methodically shot each one in the head. 28 wolves gunned down in all.

Please donate now to help save Alaskan wolves from Alaska’s out-of-control Board of Game.

Alaskans are now moving to end the Board of Game’s barbaric aerial hunting of wolves through a ballot measure.

On August 26th voters can pass this ballot measure and ban this awful practice before another deadly season begins.

We are helping Alaskans for Wildlife, a coalition of local grassroots activists, hunters and citizens who secured the 55,000 signatures to put this measure on the ballot. Already, they have reached thousands of voters across the state with their hard-hitting mailings.

Please help us raise $80,000 by August 7th so that we can help Alaskans for Wildlife reach 125,000 voters with mailers like the one on the right -- and end barbaric aerial hunting.

We’re up against wealthy groups like Safari Club International who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat the ballot measure.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has even signed off on a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to justify the state’s barbaric wolf slaughter from the skies.

Your support is crucial to combat this million dollar campaign.

On August 26th, Alaskans can end the wolf slaughter from the skies. With your help, we can win for the wolves.


https://secure.defenders.org/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=6465&autologin=true&s_einterest=C4&s_Affiliate=C4akwolf_&s_src=4JY08WDCSAW&s_subsrc=4JY08WDCSAW_EJG08D1&JServSessionIdr010=wyrsxdup42.app25a