Yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) aggressively questioned Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about efforts to break up so-called “too big to fail” banks. She noted that under the previous Treasury Secretary, the administration failed to support a Senate amendment to break up these banks. She then probed Lew about if he would support such efforts. LEW: … [m […]
As Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said, the nation’s biggest banks have essentially gained “too big for trial” status, and the federal government has failed to prosecute any executive at a Big Bank for financial fraud. While Wall Street has escaped prosecutions, thousands of Americans have been arrested in the course of protests against the … [more]The […]
This afternoon, dozens of homeowners who have faced abuses by Big Banks rallied outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. They demanded that the agency finally prosecute Wall Street banks who have become, as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said, “too big for trial.” The march, consisting of well over a hundred demonstrators, … [more]The […]
In the rubber match of a three-game set Wednesday night, the Phillies may be a welcome sight for Marlins righty Kevin Slowey, who has limited the Phils to one run in 12 1/3 innings. Cliff Lee, riding a stretch of three consecutive quality starts, gets the nod for Philadelphia at Marlins Park.
The Phillies will have Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning represent them in the first round of the 2013 First-Year Player Draft next month. Scott Palmer, the club's director of public affairs, will also represent the Phils at the Draft.
The Phillies did not seem terribly bothered that Marlins pitcher Alex Sanabia spit on a baseball after allowing a home run Monday to Domonic Brown. "He did?" Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "That's good. I didn't see it."
After weeks of long workouts in the weight room and difficult conditioning drills on both the indoor and outdoor practice fields, the Rams got back to business on Tuesday afternoon. Having what am...
ST. LOUIS – Today, the St. Louis Rams and Competitor Group, Inc. (CGI) announced an event for football fans to combine their love of running with their passion for the blue and gold at the 2013 Ram...
Winning the PLAY 60 Challenge was a great accomplishment for the students and staff of Ladue Middle School. Being named one of three Character Fitness Model Schools was another noteworthy success. ...
“I spoke with Jake this morning. He was involved in a car accident in the Czech Republic. Although his car did suffer damage, there were no injuries. Jake is fine.”
On Monday evening, the party was still going on in Stockholm from the night before. Winning the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships means that much in Sweden – perhaps even more so since it was the host of the 2013 event. ...
A new era of Maryland baseball is upon us. The Terps joined forces with 522 Productions to produce a short film to showcase the new attitude. 522 spent three days on the field, in the weight room and behind the scenes with the goal of capturing key elements of the team's daily preparation for success. In conjunction with the release, the team will utili […]
As the regular season comes to a close this Saturday, this week's Maryland Men's Lacrosse Blog is taking care of some housekeeping with some odds and ends, including Senior Day, the upcoming NCAA Tournament, Terps in professional lacrosse, information on Maryland Men's Lacrosse Summer Camps, Tournaments and Clinics, and more. Let's take a […]
Last week, we played the in the ACC Championships in Cary, NC. We left a day before our first round. It was nice to go to North Carolina last week, because it was cold and rainy in College Park and much warmer in Cary. After we arrived at the Tennis Center in Cary, we practiced for a couple of hours and then went to the hotel. As usual, we had team dinner […]
A new era of Maryland baseball is upon us. The Terps joined forces with 522 Productions to produce a short film to showcase the new attitude. 522 spent three days on the field, in the weight room and behind the scenes with the goal of capturing key elements of the team's daily preparation for success. In conjunction with the release, the team will utili […]
As the regular season comes to a close this Saturday, this week's Maryland Men's Lacrosse Blog is taking care of some housekeeping with some odds and ends, including Senior Day, the upcoming NCAA Tournament, Terps in professional lacrosse, information on Maryland Men's Lacrosse Summer Camps, Tournaments and Clinics, and more. Let's take a […]
Last week, we played the in the ACC Championships in Cary, NC. We left a day before our first round. It was nice to go to North Carolina last week, because it was cold and rainy in College Park and much warmer in Cary. After we arrived at the Tennis Center in Cary, we practiced for a couple of hours and then went to the hotel. As usual, we had team dinner […]
This week, the national media has focused on the three different scandals surrounding the White House, devoting hours of coverage to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly targeting conservative groups applying for tax exempt status, the talking points Susan Rice used in the aftermath of the attacks in Benghazi, and the Justice Department’s subpoena of phone records from the Associated Press as part of an investigation into a national security leak. The around-the-clock coverage comes even as a new Gallup poll finds that interest in the ongoing controversies is “lower comparable to major news stores in the past.”
And while these stories raise serious concerns about money in politics, embassy security, and freedom of the press, they aren’t the only problems impacting the American people. Here are five big stories the media isn’t obsessing about:
1. Carbon pollution reaches historic highs, threatening human existence. The concentration of climate warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm),” scientists estimate. “At the beginning of industrialisation the concentration of CO2 was just 280ppm,” said Prof Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We must hope that the world crossing this milestone will bring about awareness of the scientific reality of climate change and how human society should deal with the challenge.” The last time the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels that high, humans did not exist. The West Antarctic ice sheet also did not exist, and sea levels were as much as 82 feet higher than they are today. During an earlier period when CO2 levels were this high, temperatures were 5° to 10°F warmer globally.
2. The devastating impact of sequestration on kids, cancer patients and first responders. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the budget deficit will shrink to its smallest level since before the Great Recession in 2013, and it will continue to decrease through 2015. But despite the smaller deficits, Republicans remain focused on spending reductions — even as the most recent round of cuts has kicked children out of preschool, left cancer patientswithout needed screenings, undermined public health and fire safety, and gutted programs that help low-income Americans in a variety of ways. Those cuts have also threatened to derail the economic recovery, which has sputtered along despite the headwinds created by a consistent focus on deficit reduction.
3. Massive cuts to food stamps for the most vulnerable Americans. The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps by $20.5 billion — more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Earlier this week, the Senate Agriculture Committee also agreed to a $4.1 billion reduction. The program keeps hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans out of the deepest pits of poverty, and even as the Great Recession swelled SNAP rolls, the program continued to push its erroneous payments rates to record lows.
4. 1100 workers die in garment factory collapse in Bangladesh and most American retailers plan business as usual. Since a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,100 clothing industry workers, American retailers have been hesitant to adopt safety plans that could prevent similar tragedies. Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would sign a safety upgrade plan that has been approved by six major European retailers and one other American company, but many other manufacturers — including Walmart and Gap — are holding out. Although some retailers fear the costs of upgrades, they could pass them on entirely to consumers and only raise prices by10 cents per garment.
5. 4,000 gun deaths due to gun violence since Newtown. A crowdsourced effort to count every person killed by a gun in the United States since the Newtown tragedy is currently being hosted by Slate. As of this writing, the count is 4,150. The Senate rejected gun safety legislation in April and has not yet set a date for reconsidering the measure.
Tonight’s policy briefing is a little bit different than previous weeks — and I think you’ll really like it.
You’ll get a chance to hear from each of OFA‘s issue campaign managers on where we stand, and look at the path forward.
Emmy Ruiz will update you on where our fight for comprehensive immigration reform is at as the Senate begins to consider the bill.
Tomorrow, we’ll be delivering our petition to Congress demanding action to reduce gun violence (with more than 1.4 million signatures on it!) — and Kelly Byrne will fill you in tonight on where we go from there.
And since we’ve just launched our campaign to change the conversation and make real progress to combat climate change, Jack Shapiro will explain what our goals are and how we’re going to get it done.
RSVP here and join us at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time tonight:
I feel worse about making these claims on Bush for some reason these days, and I wish we could shift what is said here by the Roots Action team….directly to (Dick) Cheney but anyway….a half-billion dollar George W. Bush Library is being dedicated in Dallas with help from four other current or former U.S. presidents.
Protesters of this Bush Lie Bury — this burying of a lying leader’s record with a lying version of history — believe Bush should be facing criminal prosecution instead.
We don’t need vengeance, but deterrence. Warrantless spying, imprisonment without trial, secret prisons, assassinations, and illegal wars didn’t end with Bush’s presidency — because he’s only been rewarded, never punished.
A new report last week on Bush-authorized torture has helped to reawaken awareness. But we knew Bush tortured. He confessed as much on television. We don’t so much need to know what was done as we need to know that those who do such things will be held accountable.*
We’ve tried “looking forward not back” for five years. It hasn’t worked. Crimes in the future cannot be prosecuted in anticipation. Only crimes in the past can be brought to account. And only when those in power are subject to the rule of law can we avoid the catastrophes inevitably brought on by the law of rulers.
Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.
– The RootsAction.org team
*Laws clearly violated by George W. Bush include, among many others: The U.S. Constitution Article I, Sections 8, 9, Article II, Sections 1, 3, Article VI, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the prohibition on covert propaganda, Title 2 U.S. Code Section 194, Title 18 U.S. Code Sections 4, 371, 1341, 1346, 1385, 2340A, 2441, The War Powers Act, the United Nations Charter Chapter 1 Article 2 Section 3, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Hague Convention of 1899, Joint Resolution 114 Section 3, Additional Protocol I to Geneva Conventions, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008 Section 1222, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Third Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Human Rights Articles 7, 10, the Convention Against Torture, the Optional Protocol to the Fourth Geneva Convention on Rights of the Child, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Stored Communications Act.
Tomorrow, we’re keeping up the pressure against cuts to Social Security benefits — and taking our message to Congress.
Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) will join us for a national media call, where we’ll give a progressive response to the president’s budget that officially gets submitted to Congress tomorrow.
On the call, you can ask questions along with national media. We’ll also give an update on how many members have joined Reps. Alan Grayson and Mark Takano (D-CA) in promising to vote against any bill that cuts Social Security benefits!
PCCC member Phyllis Zolotorow speaks to the crowd.
Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-2) addresses the crowd.
(2012 PCCC candidate!)
PCCC Co-founder Stephanie Taylor speaking to the crowd.
PCCC candidates Mark Takano (CA-41) and Mark Pocan (WI-2) gather with PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor and others before the event.
The crowd at the White House petition delivery.
PCCC ally, Terry O’Neill from NOW, addresses the crowd.
Reps. Rick Nolan (MN_08) and Mark Takano (CA-41); our allies Jim Dean of Democracy for America, Nancy Altman of Social Security Works, and Damon Silvers of AFL-CIO; and PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor at the White House.
The mighty Mississippi is one of the largest and most fabled rivers in the country and home to seven national parks—but only the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area was specifically created to share the history and science of the river itself. This urban oasis has a bit of everything, from canoeing and bird-watching opportunities to military relics and historic buildings.
As if we needed any more evidence of the kind of havoc that Keystone XL could deliver, a pipeline carrying tar-sands oil ruptured on Friday in a small Arkansas town, spilling 400,000 gallons of crude in a subdivision and forcing people to evacuate 22 homes.
It’s a nasty truth about oil pipelines: Systems fail — and people and wildlife pay the price. If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it will transport as many as 35 million gallons of oil a day through a 1,700-mile pipeline from Canada to Texas, cutting across waterways and wildlife habitat for more than 20 imperiled species, including white whooping cranes and the massive, prehistoric pallid sturgeon.
The U.S. State Department says Keystone XL could spill as many as 100 times during the course of its life. We just can’t take that risk. The Center for Biological Diversity is joining with people across the United States and beyond in opposing Keystone.
Renowned Climatologist Retires From NASA to Fight Global Warming
After almost 50 years as a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Dr. James Hansen — easily the U.S. government’s most visible scientific figure on climate change — retires this week. Besides being a leading voice urging action on climate change, Hansen, 72, has been arrested or cited at climate protests six times.
Hansen says he intends to be more active in lawsuits against the government over its failure to limit greenhouse gas emissions; he also plans to advocate against the development of dirty tar-sands oil in Canada.
“Dr. Hansen has been an extraordinary, singular force in the scientific and governmental community for swift, ambitious action against climate change,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute Director Kassie Siegel. “We’ll be excited to see him making an impact as a private citizen.”
Update: Charges Filed in Three-State Dog Fighting Raid
Last week we told you about our role in a multi-state dog fighting raid in Texas, Missouri and Kansas. Now we’re able to update you on the nearly 100 dogs we transported to a temporary shelter and the dog fighters who harmed these animal victims. Get the latest news about this unfolding case. Read more…Visit The Sustainable Action Network.
Bills Seek to Halt Calif. Fracking to Protect Water, Air and Climate
Three California assembly members — Richard Bloom, Holly Mitchell and Adrin Nazarian — are introducing a trio of bills to halt hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state while the threats it poses to the environment and public health are studied. Using huge volumes of water mixed with sand and dangerous chemicals to blast open rock formations and extract oil and gas, fracking — so far unregulated and unmonitored by the state — has already been deployed widely: More than 600 wells were fracked in California in 2011 alone.
The move to halt fracking, supported by the Center for Biological Diversity and numerous other groups, reflects growing public concern about fracking’s threats to people, wildlife and the climate. All three bills seek to limit destruction as oil companies gear up to frack the Monterey Shale, a geological formation that holds an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil and lies beneath some of the state’s most important farmland and wildlife habitat.
“We applaud these legislators for their leadership in protecting California from a dangerous fracking boom,” said the Center’s Brian Nowicki. “State regulators have shrugged off fracking’s dangers, so it’s up to lawmakers to stop oil companies from polluting our air, contaminating our water and undermining our fight against climate change.”
EXCLUSIVE: State Dept. Hid Contractor’s Ties to Keystone XL Pipeline Company
Late on a Friday afternoon in early March, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report downplaying the environmental risks of the northern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But when it released the report, State hid an important fact from the public: Experts who helped draft the report had previously worked for TransCanada, the company looking to build the Keystone pipeline, and other energy companies poised to benefit from Keystone’s construction. State released documents in conjunction with the Keystone reportin which these experts’ work histories were redacted so that anyone reading the documents wouldn’t know who’d previously hired them. Yet unredacted versions of these documents obtained by Mother Jones confirm that three experts working for an outside contractor had done consulting work for TransCanada and other oil companies with a stake in the Keystone’s approval. Visit The Sustainable Action Network.
Be a Voice for New York’s AnimalsPlease join the ASPCA, the New York State Animal Protection Federation, the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society and fellow animal lovers on Monday, May 6, in Albany for New York Voices for Animals Lobby Day! This is an exciting opportunity to let your state lawmakers know, in person, that you support animal protection and oppose laws that would allow animals to be hurt and exploited.
During Lobby Day, you and other animal advocates will be the voices for animals in your state.
New York Voices for Animals Lobby Day provides animal advocates with a structured, comfortable setting in which to meet their elected officials. We’ll organize and help prepare you for these meetings with insider tips and an overview of pending or upcoming legislation that directly impacts animals.
Legislative topics will likely include:
Cracking down on puppy mills
Dog control officer training
Strengthening cruelty penalties
Stopping dog breed-specific insurance policy discrimination
This event is critical to our lobbying efforts and to preventing animal cruelty. It’s also a great networking activity, and is invigorating, inspiring and very personally rewarding. Don’t miss out! RSVP today.
New York Voices for Animals
Lobby Day 2013
Date: Monday, May 6, 2013
Time: 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.
Place: Legislative Office Building
(in the Well)
198 State Street
Albany, NY 12210
Great news: The EPA recently proposed significant, long-awaited pollution reductions for a coal plant that has been dirtying the air at the Grand Canyon and at least ten other pristine public lands for decades. The bad news: It could take a decade or more to see pollution reduced. Please commend the EPA for working to clean the air at the Grand Canyon, but urge them to require cleanup measures in the next five years so we can soon breathe easier.
ASPCA Pet of the Week: Buffy
Buffy is a sweet, sensitive little puppy with lots of energy. If you’re ready to dedicate time to socializing and training this chocolate-colored sweetheart, adopt Buffy today in NYC!
The deadline to prevent the sequester has passed. If House Republicans don’t act soon, brutal, indiscriminate cuts will cost our
economy over two million jobs.
It’s wrong to ask the middle class the bear the full burden of these cuts while billionaires get to keep their tax breaks.
Send a message, and help the DCCC reach 100,000 strong telling House Republicans to stop the sequester. –> Click here to send a message –> Click here to share this on Facebook –> Click here to share this on Twitter
Dunes, lagoons, tidal flats, and coastal prairie… Padre Island’s 70 miles of protected shoreline offer a surprising diversity of terrain. For bird lovers, early spring is one of the best times to plan a trip: The park’s location on the Central Flyway makes it an ideal stop for watching the winged migration overhead.
Calif. Bill Would Ban Lead Hunting Ammo — Take Action
A new bill in California would remove toxic lead from hunting ammunition and provide important protections for people and wildlife. Assemblyman Anthony Rendon’s bill to require nonlead ammo for all hunting in California, A.B. 711, was made public this week; a hearing is expected next month. The Center for Biological Diversity, which has been working for a decade to get lead out of hunting ammunition, is supporting the bill. If you live in California, we need you to speak out for it.
Lead that’s left in the wild takes a deadly toll on wildlife, poisoning and killing bald eagles, endangered California condors, swans, loons and millions of other birds yearly. It also poses significant health risks to people eating wild game. A new national poll commissioned by the Center finds that 57 percent of Americans support requiring a switch to nontoxic hunting bullets.
Hunters in much of central and Southern California have been hunting with copper and other lead-free ammunition since 2008, when state regulations required use of nonlead hunting ammo in California condor range. Rendon’s bill extends the protection from lead poisoning toall wildlife in the state and safeguards human health.
The U.S. Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on whether the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline gets built. We can’t let that happen. The 1,700-mile pipeline would, every day, carry up to 35 million gallons of oil strip-mined from Canada’s tar sands — some of the dirtiest, most climate-hostile fuels on the planet. The pipeline would also cut through rivers, streams, and wildlife habitat for at least 20 imperiled species, including whooping cranes and pallid sturgeon.
If we’re going to stop this destructive behemoth in its tracks, we need to show massive opposition. This week that means joining the Center for Biological Diversity to contact your senators and tell them to reject Keystone XL, a project that leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen says will be game “over” for our ability to avoid a climate catastrophe — a project even the State Department admits could spill 100 times over the course of its lifetime.
Bills Seek to Halt Calif. Fracking to Protect Water, Air and Climate
Three California assembly members — Richard Bloom, Holly Mitchell and Adrin Nazarian — are introducing a trio of bills to halt hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state while the threats it poses to the environment and public health are studied. Using huge volumes of water mixed with sand and dangerous chemicals to blast open rock formations and extract oil and gas, fracking — so far unregulated and unmonitored by the state — has already been deployed widely: More than 600 wells were fracked in California in 2011 alone.
The move to halt fracking, supported by the Center for Biological Diversity and numerous other groups, reflects growing public concern about fracking’s threats to people, wildlife and the climate. All three bills seek to limit destruction as oil companies gear up to frack the Monterey Shale, a geological formation that holds an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil and lies beneath some of the state’s most important farmland and wildlife habitat.
“We applaud these legislators for their leadership in protecting California from a dangerous fracking boom,” said the Center’s Brian Nowicki. “State regulators have shrugged off fracking’s dangers, so it’s up to lawmakers to stop oil companies from polluting our air, contaminating our water and undermining our fight against climate change.”
EXCLUSIVE: State Dept. Hid Contractor’s Ties to Keystone XL Pipeline Company
Late on a Friday afternoon in early March, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report downplaying the environmental risks of the northern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But when it released the report, State hid an important fact from the public: Experts who helped draft the report had previously worked for TransCanada, the company looking to build the Keystone pipeline, and other energy companies poised to benefit from Keystone’s construction. State released documents in conjunction with the Keystone reportin which these experts’ work histories were redacted so that anyone reading the documents wouldn’t know who’d previously hired them. Yet unredacted versions of these documents obtained by Mother Jones confirm that three experts working for an outside contractor had done consulting work for TransCanada and other oil companies with a stake in the Keystone’s approval.
50 Cities to Obama: Use Clean Air Act Against Climate Chaos
It’s the biggest milestone yet in the Center for Biological Diversity’s ambitious Clean Air Cities campaign. Fifty cities across the nation have passed resolutions urging the federal government to use the Clean Air Act ambitiously — and quickly – to halt otherwise irreversible climate catastrophe, from city-swallowing sea-level rise to polar bear-killing sea-ice melt to coral reef-obliterating ocean acidification. Cities that have heeded the Center’s call to action include Los Angeles; Nashville; Washington, D.C. — and now our 49th and 50th municipalities, San Leandro, Calif., and Newton, Mass.
Joining our cause is especially urgent: The Obama administration is reportedly considering putting off or weakening a key Clean Air Act rule aimed at cutting greenhouse gas pollution from new power plants. Congress is also once again taking aim at the Clean Air Act’s authority to reduce carbon pollution through an amendment inserted into the latest budget debate.
So a big thanks to all our Clean Air Advocates and participating cities — but if your hometownisn’t on our Clean Air Cities list, please use our Clean Air Cities Take-action Toolbox to get it there now, before it’s too late.
The People’s Budget eliminates the deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work and restores our economic competitiveness. The People’s Budget recognizes that in order to compete, our nation needs every American to be productive, and in order to be productive we need to raise our skills to meet modern needs.
Our Budget Eliminates the Deficit and Raises a $31 Billion Surplus In Ten Years
Our budget protects Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and responsibly eliminates the deficit by targeting its main drivers: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession.
Our Budget Puts America Back to Work & Restores America’s Competitiveness • Trains teachers and restores schools; rebuilds roads and bridges and ensures that users help pay for them
• Invests in job creation, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing and R&D programs
Our Budget Creates a Fairer Tax System
• Ends the recently passed upper-income tax cuts and lets Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of 2012
• Extends tax credits for the middle class, families, and students
• Creates new tax brackets that range from 45% starting at $1 million to 49% for $1 billion or more
• Implements a progressive estate tax
• Eliminates corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies; closes loopholes for multinational corporations
• Enacts a financial crisis responsibility fee and a financial speculation tax on derivatives and foreign exchange
Our Budget Protects Health • Enacts a health care public option and negotiates prescription payments with pharmaceutical companies
• Prevents any cuts to Medicare physician payments for a decade
Our Budget Safeguards Social Security for the Next 75 Years
• Eliminates the individual Social Security payroll cap to make sure upper income earners pay their fair share
• Increases benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side
Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home • Responsibly ends our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to leave America more secure both home and abroad
• Cuts defense spending by reducing conventional forces, procurement, and costly R&D programs
Our Budget’s Bottom Line • Deficit reduction of $5.6 trillion
• Spending cuts of $1.7 trillion
• Revenue increase of $3.9 trillion
• Public investment $1.7 trillion
“The most comprehensive alternative to the budgets passed by the House Republicans and recommended by the Simpson-Bowles Commission“
“Does two things far better than the antigovernment budget passed by the House: it takes care of older Americans and others who need help; and much more than the House plan, or the Simpson-Bowles plan, it invests a lot our tax money to get America back in the future business”
“Mr Ryan’s plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus’s plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people.”
“…something that’s gotten far too little attention in this debate. The most fiscally responsible plan seems to be neither the Republicans’ nor the president’s. It’s the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan…”
“National budget policy should adequately fund up-front job creation, invest in long-term economic growth, reform the tax code, and put the debt on a sustainable path while protecting the economic security of low-income Americans and growing the middle class. The proposal by the Congressional Progressive caucus achieves all of these goals.”
“instead of gutting programs for the poor like Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, and the new healthcare law, the People’s Budget focuses on cuts in defense. It also doesn’t scrap new financial regulations designed to at least partly stave off another massive financial collapse like the one that put us in this mess in the first place.”
WildEarth Guardians commissioned an expert report that found the federal government, led by the U.S. Department of Interior, grossly underestimated the air quality impacts of massive new coal mining plans, putting public health at great risk.
The Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana is already the largest coal-producing region in the nation. The region fuels more than 200 coal-fired power plants in the U.S., and coal is increasingly being exported to Asia.
Interior’s latest plan calls for rubberstamping expansions of Arch Coal’s Black Thunder coal mine and Peabody’s North Antelope Rochelle mines.
Sign our petition and let the Interior hear that you want clean air made a priority.
In total, more than 4.7 billion tons of new coal strip mining is on the table, which if burned threatens to release 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions of more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.
This climate catastrophe is bad enough, but getting the coal out of the ground threatens to fill the skies of the West with more smog, toxic orange clouds, and dangerous particulate matter.
Dunes, lagoons, tidal flats, and coastal prairie… Padre Island’s 70 miles of protected shoreline offer a surprising diversity of terrain. For bird lovers, early spring is one of the best times to plan a trip: The park’s location on the Central Flyway makes it an ideal stop for watching the winged migration overhead.
Every year more than 2 million live, wild turtles are snatched from the United States and exported to Asia, destined for slaughter for the food and medicinal markets. Thanks in part to a 2011 Center for Biological Diversity petition, the international community has taken notice and acted.
Last week parties to the Convention on Trade in International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted to regulate and monitor international trade in Blanding’s turtles, spotted turtles and diamondback terrapins. In 2012 the Center petitioned to protect the Blanding’s and spotted turtles, along with 51 other imperiled reptiles and amphibians, under the Endangered Species Act.
“Turtle traders are depleting U.S. populations at a frightening rate. It’s got to stop soon or we’re going to lose these incredible animals from the wild,” says the Center’s Collette Adkins Giese. “Commercial trade only compounds the problems native turtles already face from habitat destruction, water pollution and being hit and killed by cars.”
The U.S. Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on whether the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline gets built. We can’t let that happen. The 1,700-mile pipeline would, every day, carry up to 35 million gallons of oil strip-mined from Canada’s tar sands — some of the dirtiest, most climate-hostile fuels on the planet. The pipeline would also cut through rivers, streams, and wildlife habitat for at least 20 imperiled species, including whooping cranes and pallid sturgeon.
If we’re going to stop this destructive behemoth in its tracks, we need to show massive opposition. This week that means joining the Center for Biological Diversity to contact your senators and tell them to reject Keystone XL, a project that leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen says will be game “over” for our ability to avoid a climate catastrophe — a project even the State Department admits could spill 100 times over the course of its lifetime.
Tulane University in New Orleans informed the Physicians Committee that it has replaced the use of live pigs with the TraumaMan simulator to teach physicians in Advanced Trauma Life Support courses. But the university says it might use pigs in the future. E-mail Tulane >
Tar Sands Pipeline Gets Whitewashed.Despite President Obama’s recent tough talk on confronting climate change, his State Department has just issued a review of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that ignores its disastrous impacts on our climate. Producing tar sands oil generates three times as much global warming pollution as the production of conventional crude. This climate-wrecking pipeline would also drive more destruction of the boreal forest and endanger communities along its route with toxic spills. Urge President Obama to deliver on his promise to address climate change and reject this flawed review.
Earlier this month, a U.S. proposal, supported by Russia, to ban the international trade in polar bear parts was voted down at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. More than 100,000 BioGems Defenders had sent messages urging an upgrade in the international protection of polar bears. Despite widespread citizen support, the proposal failed to win a two-thirds majority, with strong opposition coming from Canada, which allows the killing of hundreds of polar bears each year. While the loss is a setback for polar bears — scientists predict that more than half of them could be gone by 2050 — the fight is far from over. NRDC will continue pursuing other means for ending the global trade in polar bear parts and protecting America’s polar bears. (See In the News below). Learn more.
In this week’s Happy Tail, Manhattan resident Colette Lageoles shares the story of how adopting a five-year-old kitty from the ASPCA helped bring joy to both the human and animal members of her family:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) released the third iteration of the GOP budget on Tuesday morning. The document achieves balance in 10 years by maintaining the high revenue levels and health care savings that Republicans have vociferously opposed and slashing the health and safety net programs that middle and lower income Americans rely on. Top-income earners and corporations, meanwhile, would benefit from huge tax breaks.
Here are the five worst things about Ryan’s budget:
1. GIVES HUGE TAX CUTS TO THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS:Ryan’s plan would reduce both top income and corporate tax rates to 25 percent, resulting in trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. The government would lose roughly $7 trillion in revenues compared to Ryan’s projections, and while he plans to close loopholes to pay for the cuts, he has in the past failed to specify which loopholes he would close, and raising enough revenue from the elimination of tax expenditures would prove politically difficult, if not impossible. Ryan would also convert the corporate tax code to an “international” plan, resulting in an even bigger giveaway to American companies that are already paying historically low tax rates.
2. FORCES SENIORS TO PAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE: Beginning 2024, the guaranteed Medicare benefit would be transformed into a government-financed “premium support” system. Seniors currently under the age of 55 could use their government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare. But the budget does not take sufficient precautions to prevent insurers from cherry-picking the the healthiest beneficiaries from traditional Medicare and leaving sicker applicants to the government. As a result, traditional Medicare costs could skyrocket, forcing even more seniors out of the government program. The budget also adopts a per capita cost cap of GDP growth plus 0.5 percent, without specifying how it would enforce it. This makes it likely that the cap would limit the government contribution provided to beneficiaries.
3. JEOPARDIZES MEDICAID: The budget would eliminate the exiting matching-grant financing structure of Medicaid and would instead give each state a pre-determined block grant that does not keep up with actual health care spending. This would shift some of the burden of Medicaid’s growing costs to the states, forcing them to — in the words of the CBO — make cutbacks that “involve reduced eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP, coverage of fewer services, lower payments to providers, or increased cost sharing by beneficiaries—all of which would reduce access to care.”
4. REPEALS HEALTH COVERAGE FROM 30 MILLION AMERICANS: The budget repeals the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to purchase health insurance coverage, the establishment of health insurance exchanges, the provision of subsidies for lower-income Americans, the expansion of the Medicaid program, and tax credits for small businesses that provide insurance coverage. As a result, more than 30 million Americans would lose coverage and the budget would eliminate the new law’s consumer protections, which have already benefited tens of millions of Americans. States across the country are already implementing the law and agrowing number of Republican governors have finally agreed to expand their Medicaid programs.
5. CUTS FOOD STAMPS: The budget seeks to turn most social safety net programs into block grants to the states that are modeled after the 1996 welfare reform law. That would result in devastating cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), women, infant, and children programs, and other parts of the social safety net that keep millions of people out of poverty each year. Since welfare reform occurred 16 years ago, it has failed to reach many families with children in poverty, particularly during the latest economic recession. Ryan’s budget would make most safety programs equally as impotent.
Thanks to Congressional gridlock, automatic budget cuts took effect 14 days ago, threatening 700,000 jobs and gutting fundsfor vital programs in housing assistance, early childhood education, disaster relief, and national security. Secret Service staffing was also impacted, prompting the cancellation of White House tours last week. Republicans immediately attacked the decision as a political move designed to turn the public against the sequester and 14 Republican senators signed a letter demanding information.
The media has also latched on to preserve the White House tours, while largely ignoring other much more devastating sequester cuts. As Ari Melber of The Nation pointed out on Wednesday, there are 12,000 news stories concerning White House tours and less than 1,000 about the sequester’s impact on housing assistance programs, which disproportionately affect low-income Americans.
ThinkProgress examined this trend on three major cable news networks — Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC — since March 6. White House tours were mentioned 33 times as often (Fox News had 163 segments, CNN had 59, and MSNBC had 42) as mentions of other sequester impacts hitting the poor. Any discussion of sequestration’s steep cuts to housing assistance, food stamps, and Head Start early education was virtually nonexistent on all 3 networks in the same time frame. Fox News mentioned Head Start three times, ignoring housing and food stamps entirely; MSNBC mentioned Head Start 4 times, food stamps once, and did not cover housing assistance cuts at all. CNN stayed completely silent on all three issues:
While covering budget cuts, cable news channels have also largely avoided discussing military tuition assistance programs, which were suspended by the Marine Corps and the Army shortly after sequestration. CNN and MSNBC each mentioned the cuts to tuition assistance once since March 6, while Fox News took the lead with 11 segments.
The media’s silence on the most brutal sequester cuts is well in line with the fourth estate’s normal approach to poverty. During the 2012 presidential campaign, just .2 percent of campaign coverage by major TV, radio, and print outlets addressed poverty in any substantive way. More recently, the media mostly ignored the effects of spending cuts in the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012, preferring to discuss tax hikes instead.
In response to the highly publicized backlash over White House tours, Obama is now signallingsome tours may resume.
The 10-year spending plan to be released Tuesday by Rep. Paul Ryan is virtually identical to last year’s GOP budget: It would defund President Obama’s health-care initiative, end guaranteed Medicare coverage for future retirees and sharply restrain spending on the poor, college students and federal workers.
The one big new development: Ryan’s latest blueprint would balance, producing a small surplus in 2023 — a goal achieved not primarily through deeper spending cuts, but by the addition of more than $3.2 trillion in new tax revenue.
There’s a reason Newt Gingrich initially described Ryan’s budget as “right-wing social engineering.” That, and not deficit reduction, is what it’s really about.
The tax hike is already in force. Ryan (R-Wis.) merely adopts new revenue projections laid out by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in the wake of a year-end deal to raise rates on income over $450,000. But the impact on his budget is huge.
Last year, Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee and chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed big tax cuts that would leave the government taking in $37 trillion in revenues over the coming decade. This year, Ryan adopts CBO’s 10-year projection of $40.2 trillion in revenues, an increase that lets him wipe out the deficit even though he would let spending grow a bit compared with last year’s proposal.
Ryan has acknowledged the tax increase, which would push collections to 19.1 percent of the national economy, with oblique references to the CBO “baseline” and the year-end “fiscal cliff” fight.
“We don’t want to refight the fiscal cliff. That’s current law,” Ryan said when asked about the tax hike on “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s not going to change.”
But the tax increase, combined with the one-year shift forward in the 10-year budget window, produces far more new revenue than the estimated $600 billion the tax deal would raise over the coming decade. Ryan’s presentation of his budget plan, offered in an op-ed published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, makes no reference to the primary cause of his new fiscal achievement.
“On Tuesday, we’re introducing a budget that balances in 10 years — without raising taxes. How do we do it? We stop spending money the government doesn’t have,” Ryan writes, adding that he proposes to cut $4.6 trillion over the next decade compared with current law to match spending with available revenue.
Conservatives are grumbling — the influential Red State blog calls the new Ryan plan “imperfect” because it “uses Obama’s tax hikes to balance” — but, so far, seem resigned to his decision. Democrats are crying foul even as Senate leaders prepare a budget blueprint of their own that would add nearly $1 trillion more in new taxes on top of the fiscal cliff revenues.
House Republicans, meanwhile, see the claim to a balanced budget as a powerful new message that will overshadow their decision to accept the tax hikes and give them a fresh edge as they begin another months-long dance with Democrats to tackle the swollen national debt and raise the federal debt limit later this year.
“We owe the American people a balanced budget,” Ryan writes in the introduction to his 91-page spending blueprint. “The less we owe to foreign creditors, the more of our future we will control.”
Dunes, lagoons, tidal flats, and coastal prairie… Padre Island’s 70 miles of protected shoreline offer a surprising diversity of terrain. For bird lovers, early spring is one of the best times to plan a trip: The park’s location on the Central Flyway makes it an ideal stop for watching the winged migration overhead.
Polar bears will keep their hard-won federal protections. On Friday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed efforts by the state of Alaska, polar bear trophy hunters and others to strip polar bears of their Endangered Species Act protection. It upheld the government’s 2008 decision — responding to a Center for Biological Diversity petition and litigation — to protect the Arctic bears as threatened throughout their range.
The appeals court ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to protect the bear due to the melting of Arctic sea ice was well supported in every regard. The court also noted the listing decision was, if anything, underprotective of polar bears, rather than overprotective as the state of Alaska had claimed. Global warming is robbing polar bears of the sea ice they need to survive. Left unchecked, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears, including all in Alaska, could be gone by 2050.
”If we’re going to save polar bears, the Obama administration needs to move swiftly to cut greenhouse pollution,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center’s Climate Law Institute.
Also in breaking news today, the international community lost an opportunity to ban the trade in polar bear parts — especially rugs — when Canada successfully opposed a U.S.-backed ban under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to keep the animals from being commercially hunted. Check next week’s edition for more details.
The Obama administration has released an ”environmental impact statement” on the Keystone XL project — moving this dirty, disastrous oil pipeline one step closer to approval. Keystone XL would cross the heart of the Midwest and deliver oil from Canada’s tar sands all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where much of it would be exported to other countries. Along the way the pipeline would cut through rivers, streams and prime wildlife habitat — including habitat for at least 20 rare and vanishing species, including whooping cranes and pallid sturgeon.
The planned pipeline would ship, every day, up to 35 million gallons of the dirtiest oil on the planet to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Keystone XL will move us closer to climate catastrophe, threaten our land and water with spills and encourage further strip mining — bringing destruction of a boreal forest the size of Florida.
Read more in GlobalPost, then take action to tell the administration to reject Keystone XL.
Gray wolves are struggling to recover in the Pacific Northwest, California, southern Rocky Mountains and Northeast — but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is drafting a proposal to delist them in these states.
To “delist” means to remove the protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This would be a death sentence for wolves.
More than 1,200 wolves in the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes region have been massacred since they lost ESA protection in 2011, when the species was removed from the list by political fiat instead of science.
Wolves across these states are slaughtered by bowhunters, gunned down by “recreational” hunters, tortured by trappers in steel-jaw foothold traps and snares, and subjected to brutal “management” methods, including aerial gunning. The same fate awaits wolves in other regions who are barely hanging on. Delisting would subject them to the same massacre we’re seeing in the Rocky Mountain states and the Great Lakes states where they’ve already lost protection.
Click here to tell USFWS to keep gray wolves protected under the ESA. Tell them delisting is premature, because wolf populations have not yet recovered, and because the prejudices and misconceptions that led to their near elimination across the continent are still present.
Stop Cruelty at UCSF.The University of California-San Francisco has a long history of abusing animals imprisoned in laboratories. Urge the National Institutes of Health to STOP funding the university’s cruel experiments on animals. TAKE ACTION!
A PETA investigation found that ducks spend weeks in bleak metal cages not much bigger than their own bodies before Hot’s Kitchen sells their diseased livers. LEARN MORE.
How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election!
By now, I’m sure you know just how serious the situation is for our national parks due to the sequester cuts which will go into effect later today. I know you are as concerned as we are about this. Below is an NPCA press release with more information. Please help us do everything we can in the days ahead to protect our national parks from these damaging cuts.
ASPCA Pet of the Week: Spike Spike hasn’t met you yet, but he already loves you—we promise. Rescued by our Humane Law Enforcement in 2011, he’s got a uniquely hoarse bark that makes him all the more lovable. Please come give this wonderful guy a chance.
Sustainable Sundays: Keystone XL Moves Closer to Approval — Take Action, Cruelty to Ducks EXPOSED, Sequester Cuts Threaten National Parks, Polar Bear Victory: Court Upholds Protection, Confirms Global Warming Threat, Tell U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service To Protect Wolves, Stop Cruelty at UCSF., How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election and meet Spike, the ASPCA Pet of the Week!
With Congress unable to reach a deal to avert the indiscriminate spending cuts put in place in the Budget Control Act of 2011, President Obama on Friday signed an order authorizing the government to begin canceling $85 billion from federal accounts for this fiscal year.
As Obama said during a press conference yesterday, “This is not going to be a apocalypse, I think as some people have said. It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt individual people and it’s going to hurt the economy overall.” In a 83-page letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), the Office of Management and Budget details the specific reductions each government program will face. Here are the dumbest and most painful cuts:
$199 million cut from public housing
$96 million cut from Homeless Assistance Grants
$17 million cut from Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS
$19 million cut from Housing for the Elderly
$175 million cut from Low Income Home Energy Assistance
Disaster and Emergency
$928 million cut from FEMA’s disaster relief money
$6 million cut from Emergency Food and Shelter
$70 million cut from the Agricultural Disaster Relief Fund at USDA
$61 million cut from the Hazardous Substance Superfund at EPA
$125 million cut from the Wildland Fire Management
$53 million cut from Salaries and Expenses at the Food Safety and Inspection Service
Obamacare
$13 million cut from the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program (Co-ops)
$57 million cut from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control
$51 million cut from the Prevention and Public Health Fund
$27 million cut from the State Grants and Demonstrations
$44 million cut from the Affordable Insurance Exchange Grants program
Education
$633 million cut from the Department of Education’s Special Education programs
$184 million cut from Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research
$71 million cut from administration at the Office of Federal Student Aid
$116 million cut from Higher Education
$86 million cut from Student Financial Assistance
Immigration
$512 million cut from Customs and Border Protection
$17 million cut from Automation Modernization, Customs and Border Protection
$20 million cut from Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology
Security
$79 million cut from Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance
$604 million cut from National Nuclear Security Administration
$232 million cut from the Federal Aviation Administration
$394 million cut from Defense Environmental Cleanup
The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that the nation’s deficits haveshrunk by trillions of dollars, and the debt is close to being stabilized as a percentage of the economy. Meanwhile, budget cuts have already reduced spending by $1.5 trillion and even with the revenue included in the fiscal cliff deal, the ratio of cuts to revenue stands at an unbalanced3 to 1.
Thanks to Republicanobstructionism in Congress, the nation was forced into the sequester last Friday — a series of automatic and destructive budgets cuts that you and your neighbors are just beginning to feel.
In the face of these devastating cuts, House Speaker John Boehner went on TV and said, “I don’t know whether it’s going to hurt the economy or not … I don’t think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.”
Really? We’re not talking about some abstract numbers on a piece of paper — this is real.
The sequester will cut 10,000 teaching jobs, 70,000 spots for preschoolers in Head Start, $43 million for food programs for seniors, $35 million for local fire departments, and access to nutrition assistance for over half a million women and their families.
And the reason congressional Republicans let these cuts go into effect is because they simply wouldn’t support closing tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires — for things like yachts and corporate jets. I wish I were kidding.
I am of the more than 340,000 OFA supporters that have added their names to support President Obama’s balanced plan and call on congressional Republicans to take action to stop the sequester budget cuts right now:
The group of GOP senators that President Barack Obama invited to dinner Wednesday will include some of his harshest critics, including the top senators pressing him for more information on the September attack in Benghazi, Libya.
A GOP source provided the list of invitees to CNN. The senators are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John McCain of Arizona, Dan Coats of Indiana, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Pat Toomey Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and John Hoeven of North Dakota.
The President has now “Moved The Goal Posts…” as the brand new talking point…but forget about it anyway……that makes no sense to move goal posts. No one ever moves the goal posts and its only been done one time in the history of the NFL….i think it has but anyway, I also think u dumb asses mean the lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brownmetaphor….
After all at first in 2008, we had to deal with ONLY just a few of those bad Apples…before kicking the can down the road…over the fiscal cliff…to the sequester….after now, they MOVED THE GODDAM GOAL POSTS….
BTW, that was the dems analogy or metaphor they used last summer, but again, it was the real one with lucy moving the ball when Charlie Brown tried to kick it…besides, who moves the goal posts anyway? That makes zero sense in the real world….tools…
I am more than 70,000 or so words through my next book (A Ram Phan). I tend now to put anything that comes to mind that i want to write out in some way, into the book. Rather than here and besides, we are plenty busy with things that needed to be talked about but overall, lets culminate this sequestration thing by saying thanks in advance to the producers of the Lawrence O Donnell Show or maybe it did come from Ezra Klein whom was working for Lawrence Friday night. This is mostly paraphrased from that show which is why I want it sitting online forever, rather than it being buried in the last chapter of a book with more than 100,000 words.
Now, I called the GOP a bunch of Nigel’s from Spinal Tap because i have never seen so much use of the “these goes to Eleven” delusion, than I see with with regard to the sequester and whom is at fault, etc. What i mean is that the no matter what is going on the world of politics, Obama is criticized for “leading too much” when something is happening in politics and then at the same times, he is criticized for whatever is NOT happening like now, because now he is now considered to be NOT leading enough with regard to this sequester, etc. Or, it is like my mom when she would yell at me for placing my jacket on the kitchen chair one day. And then the next week, when I would hang it on the door knob, she would ask me why that jacket is NOT on the back of the kitchen chair.
Regardless, lets be real about Political Science 101, it is an absolute myth, delusion and a bold face lie that is how DC works for us people.
The American political system is and was set up by a group of people that as part of its design were horrified at the notion that any President could act as a monarch as they say, or like a King.
Those people that set up the constitution to make certain that any President of the USA, would be weak in his position to be able to do whatever they wanted to do law wise….
So again, lets go back to Poli Sci 101 which is done about our Freshman year as an undergraduate college student. Look at the first section or what is Section I of the Constitution which is NOT about the President and how he leads this nation.
Again…one more time is that was NOT done by accident and it was done on purpose but the fact…..is that the CONGRESS is where the governments primary power lies. Its always been that way and it was set up that way purposely by our forefathers way back in 1876.
Therefore, it is CONGRESS that writes up, and then in turn passes what is called a “bill.” In its’ case today, Congress could set up a bill to END THE SEQUESTER….at any time…The President caNOT do it.
And, then, it is just like that Saturday Morning Special Cartoon (I’m Just A Bill) that’s been spelling out this message since the 70s, as to how this system works….Kids know how it works.
Because then and ONLY then can the President step into action to lead the country if you will, to sign or veto that bill (to become a law). The President canNOT by law, and per our beloved Constitution of The United States, create the bill to sign himself. That’s is NOT allowed to be done in America.
Actually, the President can sign or veto any bill and even if the President vetoes the bill,the CONGRESS can even over turn that decision.
The next argument is that the POTUS has its”bully pulpit” but as Ezra (Klein) said on Lawrence’s show Friday night, “The Bully Pulpit does not even work anyway.” And then those producers or whomever on the show reminds us of G.W.’s (Bush) push for Social Security Privatization. That did not work. And, then there was (Bill) Clinton’s push for Healthcare reform back then when he was Pres. That did not work until Obamacare, and then even (Ronald) Reagan’s push for those Social Security cuts. That did not work let alone has not NOT to this day. There have been ZERO examples of any speeches given by any President of the United States to build public support for anything the public had been against or disagreed with and I mean ever as in forever. Therefore, the answer cannot be that Reagan, Clinton and Bush were all bad at accomplishing whatever even after using their bully pulpit. There was a study from my alma Mata, the University of Maryland by Professor Frances Lee whom did a study that proved or showed that if the President preaches something out loud to the people, it makes it much more likely that the other party, will vote against it.
Even though i feel that the Bully Pulpit is a non issue in this exact case with regard to the sequestration, however, there is that the USA Today / Pew Research Poll (not a left winged poll by any means) that shows that 76%…let me repeat this a few times like Ezra did on the show because SEVENTY SIX PERCENT…that is 76%…of the American people agree to a “combination of spending cuts” and that “tax increases should be part of tackling the budget deficit.”
76%.
Still, the GOP does not care about it because of their select few people that voted them in back in 2010′s elections, will threaten to “primary” them next year in those mid term elections. And, it is because they do not want any tax increases, let alone any compromise with Obama.
This Nigel syndrome as i refer to it, happened to us two years ago with the mandate that i personally wanted on the healthcare bill. That, mind you, is the same mandate that the GOP pushed and introduced in the 90s. And it is the very same mandate that Willard (Mitt Romney) brought to everyone in Mass. The GOP goes so far to say that Obamas mandate idea was NOT only bad to enact with Obamacare, these same people also call it an “unconstitutional policy.”
Ironically and with everything I said here in writing, plus everything I took from Lawrence’s Friday Night show, is that without this working this way, the President would then fold or buckle to those pressures of the GOP. Whereas in turn and again, ironically speaking today, he would not be a good so called leader of this country if he acted that way. He would not be showing leadership if he just did whatever the GOP wanted and wait a second here, the first four years of this admin, were all driven by the old Bush policies that were up kept by Obama until after this last Presidential election that went down in November last year.
And, wait a second here because on Monday of last week, I heard the POTUS say that he would already sign it. And/or he said something along the lines of that he would sign a variation or some compromised proposal between the two parties. he said that last week.
And, remember everyone, its Political Science 101 because the point of our constitution in the united States, is to make sure any POTUS canNOT do what Congress is now saying for him to do and moreover and overall, is that we no doubt need more leadership from CONGRESS. We do NOT need more leadership from the White House and the people that work in it. We need the House of Rep’s GOP or republicans in the House to compromise with the Democratic senate.
And, when that does not work. It is up to the media to call them out on any lie quite frankly and if that does not work for the People, the public needs to vote these officials out of those jobs.
Great news for the Arctic, polar bears and other creatures of the Far North: Shell Oil has announced it won’t drill in Alaska’s Beaufort or Chukchi seas this summer. Wednesday’s announcement follows a series of mishaps for Shell in the Arctic, including one of its drilling rigs running aground earlier this year.
The Center for Biological Diversity and allies have been pushing for years to stop drilling in the Arctic ocean, home to polar bears and other imperiled creatures that would be devastated by an oil spill. More than a million people sent messages to President Obama last year urging him not to allow Arctic drilling. Shell began exploratory drilling operations last summer but was beset by a series of mishaps.
“Although Shell calls this simply a ‘pause’ in its plans for Arctic drilling, we think it ought to be a permanent stop,” said Rebecca Noblin, the Center’s Alaska director. “Drilling in the Arctic can never be made safe for polar bears, whales and ice seals or the fragile ecosystems where they live. President Obama ought to use the opportunity to rethink his support for Arctic drilling and take if off the table forever.”
Coincidentally, Wednesday was also International Polar Bear Day. What a great way to celebrate.
As oil companies gear up for a hydraulic fracturing boom in California, state regulators have proposed industry-friendly fracking regulations that would do little to protect the state’s air, water and wildlife from pollution. The Center for Biological Diversity, in comments submitted this week, is pressing officials to recognize that the draft fracking rules fail to protect the public and fall far short of legal requirements.
In a boisterous public meeting in Los Angeles earlier this month, the Center’s Kassie Siegel told California officials that their proposal would not allow for a real assessment of the impacts of fracking, or for compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act. The state’s proposal to exempt fracking with diesel from the state’s Underground Injection Control Program would also violate the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The federal government has already criticized California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources for not doing enough to protect state water from oil industry pollution.
The Center also pointed out other fatal flaws in the draft regulations and urged state officials to replace the extraordinarily weak regulatory proposal with a simple prohibition on fracking.
A new national poll commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity found that a majority of Americans – 60 percent – believe the world’s growing human population is driving wildlife species toward extinction; 57 percent say human population is making climate change worse. A majority of Americans (54 percent) also say stabilizing the human population will protect the environment.
The poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling last weekend, also found that 60 percent believe our society has a “moral responsibility” to address wildlife extinctions in the face of a growing population. That’s important vindication for the work the Center’s been doing for years highlighting the connection between population growth and wildlife declines and other environmental problems.
“It’s now more clear than ever that Americans are concerned about the toll that human population growth is having on wildlife and the planet,” said Jerry Karnas, population campaign director at the Center. “Population is clearly a driving factor in so many of our environmental issues today, whether it’s sprawling development crowding out Florida panthers and sea turtles, loss of wild habitat for San Joaquin kit foxes in California or the climate crisis pushing polar bears and ice seals toward extinction. It’s heartening to see that most Americans understand these connections and don’t want to see them ignored.”
Yesterday Time Magazine declared that Keystone had become the Stonewall and the Selma of the climate movement — and today we got a reminder of just how tough those fights were, and how tough this one will be.
On a Friday afternoon, with Secretary of State John Kerry half a world away and D.C. focused on the budget fight, the State Department released a new environmental impact statement for the pipeline. Like the last such report, it found that approving a 800,000 barrel-a-day fuse to one of the planet’s biggest carbon bombs was “unlikely to have a substantial impact” on the tar sands or the climate.
That, in a word, is nonsense — some of our most important climate scientists in the U.S. have written the State Department to explain exactly how dangerous Keystone is. Just yesterday Europe’s top climate diplomat pointed out that it would send a truly terrible signal to the rest of the world.
President Obama will be making a decision in a few short months. I won’t lie: today’s report makes the odds look even tougher — and the power of the fossil fuel lobby hasn’t waned one bit.
But I’m reminded that the last time the State Department issued an environmental impact statement about the pipeline, we were just beginning this fight. That day in 2011, 50 people were arrested at the White House during the very first wave of protests against the pipeline.
This time around we’re tens of thousands of people stronger, and once again, I think we are just beginning to fight.
In these next months we need to send a signal to the White House that we’re not standing down. There are two things I think we should begin working on immediately.
First — since it’s clear that the polite but firm warnings of our top climate scientists aren’t being heard –anytime that the President or Secretary of State Kerry appears in public, it’s crucial that we let them know that we won’t accept this pipeline or the damage it will do to our climate. We need a team of rapid responders coast-to-coast who can turn around with 24 hours notice and raise a ruckus at these events when we find out about them.
I should also say that with our global network, both President Obama and Secretary Kerry can expect to hear from folks when they head abroad as well.
Second, we need to raise the heat this spring and summer. Significantly. To get a jump on the season, 350.org and our allies will be hosting a massive day of action and training at venues across the country in May. It will be the first muster for the grassroots army we hope will fan out across the nation this summer, and a unified statement of our intention to fight this pipeline.
Even as we stick it to the pipeline, we’re going on offense as well, with a student-led divestment campaign that grows by the day (and increasingly moves off campus to city governments and faith communities too), and a Global Power Shift gathering this June in Turkey to gather young leaders across the globe.
I don’t know how this will all go down — only that it won’t go down easily. After watching Arctic sea ice practically disappear last summer, and Superstorm Sandy hit New York, I can also tell you that this is a key moment for our planet, and your role in it will be remembered for a long, long time — as will the President’s.
Here’s how Time put it yesterday: “There are many climate problems a President can’t solve, but Keystone XL isn’t one of them. It’s a choice between Big Oil and a more sustainable planet.” As with those historic moments at Stonewall or Selma, “The right answer isn’t always somewhere in the middle.”
Thanks for all you’ve done, and thanks for all you’ll do.
One year ago today, Trayvon Martin — an unarmed 17-year-old boy on his way home from 7-11 — was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. The murder trial is scheduled to begin this June. A separate hearing may be held in April to determine whether Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law gives Zimmerman immunity.
While nothing can make up for the events of February 26, 2012, many people have responded to the tragedy with compassion, courage and strength. Here are some of the most inspiring things that have happened over the last year.
1. 192 colleagues of Trayvon Martin’s mother donated 1,362 hours of their vacation time so she could grieve.
“Sybrina Fulton, who has worked at the Miami-Dade County housing authority for 23 years, collected $40,825 worth of donated vacation time, county records show… the Miami-Dade County Commission passed a resolution sponsored by Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan and Jose “Pepe” Diaz to allow county employees to donate vacation time to Fulton…Records show 192 county employees gave Fulton some of their hours” [Miami Herald, 5/12/2012]
2. Sanford, Florida has a new police chief who has pledged to finally address “long-standing racial tensions between the police department and the African-American community.”
The police chief who decided not to charge George Zimmerman was fired. [ABC7, 2/18/2013]
3. Dozens of major companies ended their support for ALEC, the right-wing group who championed “Stand Your Ground” laws.
The companies that ended their support for the American Legislative Exchange Council include “Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Procter & Gamble, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, Dell Computers, Best Buy, General Motors and Walgreens.” ALEC was also forced to end it’s “Public Safety and Election Task Force,” which advocated for “Stand Your Ground” laws around the country. At least 39 lawmakers have also ended their association with ALEC.[ThinkProgress, 4/17/2012; ThinkProgress, 8/7/2012; ThinkProgress, 5/18/2012]
4. Thousands of people peacefully gathered in Sanford, Florida to demand justice for Trayvon Martin.
5. A United States Congressman went on the floor of the House of Representatives in a hoodie to show solidarity with Trayvon.
Illionis Rep. Bobby Rush said, “Racial profiling has to stop Mr. Speaker. Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.” After delivering a rousing speech, he was escorted from the floor for violating decorum. [NBC News, 3/28/2012]
6. Legislation to repeal “Stand Your Ground” laws was introduced in four states.
The law was cited by the police as the reason Zimmerman was not arrested for weeks after Martin was killed. [Yahoo, 1/26/2013]
7. Students at Howard University produced this video to highlight the racial profiling of young black men.
“All young black men are not suspicious. We don’t deserve to be harassed, murdered, prosecuted or denied the protections of the justice system all because America believes that we are suspicious… Some of us have already and will eventually change the world. All are not suspicious.”
8. President Obama spoke out about Trayvon Martin in the Rose Garden.
“My main message is to the parents: If I had a son he’d look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.” [3/23/2012]
By now, I’m sure you know just how serious the situation is for our national parks due to the sequester cuts which will go into effect later today. I know you are as concerned as we are about this. Below is an NPCA press release with more information. Please help us do everything we can in the days ahead to protect our national parks from these damaging cuts.
Battle of the Climate Process
We have been on the front lines of the fight against global warming — and on front pages, too — for years now with some of the country’s most innovative legal, policy and grassroots campaigns to save the globe from irreversible climate catastrophe. Last year we started our Clean Air Cities campaign, which urges cities to sign formal resolutions calling on the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas pollution; we’ve already signed on 40 cities, including Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Miami and Nashville. We’ll grow that number substantially in 2013.
Our Climate Law Institute will continue with our other pioneering climate work, including to save the Arctic from oil drilling, to stop dirty fuel-extraction methods like oil and tar sands development and fracking, to improve fuel economy, to protect warming-threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and more. So stay tuned to find out what new tricks we have up our sleeves; we’re not giving it all away yet.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is also attacking Ellison, and Sean Hannity put out a statement saying, “I mark this night as the beginning of the end for the Obama Democrats.”
Ellison is more than a typical Democrat. He’s a leading progressive voice in Congress, and that’s why they are attacking him.
Ellison stood with Alan Grayson on a letter promising to “vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits.” He fought for the public option. He offered the progressive alternative to Paul Ryan’s budget. And he’s been a partner to the PCCC as we fight to build progressive power in Congress.
When we were kids we had to finish our chores before going outside to play. The same can’t be said for Washington these days. Apparently, they don’t realize they still have “chores” to do regarding our fiscal crisis because they keep taking breaks.
Obama called a meeting withJohn Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell…but on fri…not today or tomorrow but on fri…i thinkthats the day after the deadline
A congressional source with direct knowledge of the plans tells me the top four congressional leaders – John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell – will meet with President Obama at the White House Friday to attempt to negotiate a way to avoid the spending cuts that both sides have said should be avoided.
This meeting – the first one the president has had with Republican leaders to talk about the across-the-board cuts known as the sequester – will come after the cuts actually go into effect (midnight Thursday).
White House Press SecretaryJay Carney would not confirm the meeting, but the source told ABC News that the White House reached out to the congressional leadership Tuesday afternoon to request the meeting.
These disastrous consequences are completely avoidable, and the President has a balanced plan to stop the sequester.
Share the graphic below to make sure your friends know we need to stop the sequester — the more people who spread this information, the better chance we have of convincing Republicans in Congress to avoid these harmful spending cuts:
Warren suggested that Bernanke support a policy of ending this subsidy. After a back and forth with him about the question of “too big to fail,” Warren suggested that Big Banks — backed by the government — are causing smaller banks to get “smashed.”
WARREN: $83 billion says that there really will be a bailout for the largest financial institutions if they fail.
BERNANKE:That’s the expectation of markets, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it. [...] Too big to fail is not absolute. [...]
WARREN: It is working like an insurance policy. Ordinary folks pay for home owners insurance, ordinary folks pay for car insurance, and these big financial institutions are getting cheaper borrowing to the tune of $83 billion in a single year simply because people believe that the government would step in and bail them out. And I’m just saying, if they’re getting it, why shouldn’t they pay for it?
BERNANKE: I think we should get rid of it. [...]
WARREN: I know we’re both trying to go in the same direction, I’m just pointing out that in all that space in between what’s happening is the Big Banks are getting a terrific break, and the little banks are just getting smashed on this, they’re not getting that kind of break, and that has long-term impact for all of the financial system.
This is what I wrote on her blog just now…with alex…wagner: Lets see now….I agree that healthcare needs to be slashed but why did we do that obama care if we were gonna chop it 6 months later….and, Is it farm or agriculture…i assume the latter has too many digits but i have no issues cutting the tobacco people, etc….i like this proposal..i am posting it….but i hope this is NOT a negotiation…i dont care about social security….i am way into the tax term…and wait a sec…how does 50 bill on infrastructure equal a cut but dont get me wrong now…i am totally for that one….i want more money spent that way….
The United States is rapidly approaching March 1, the date on which the automatic spending cuts put in place by the summer 2011 debt ceiling deal will begin taking effect. There is little indication that Congress will avert the cuts as it did in January, as Republican leaders have thus far been unwilling to negotiate with President Obama and Senate Democrats.
Congress is currently on recess until next Monday, leaving just five legislative days until the automatic cuts — known as sequestration — will take effect. Here’s a breakdown of why the sequester was created and what it will mean for programs facing cuts and the nation’s overall economic recovery:
Why the sequester was created. The sequester was a result of the GOP’s wrangling over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, when Republican leaders — who had previously passed clean debt increases 19 times under President Bush — demanded spending cuts as the price for averting a costly default. On the brink of default, Congress passed the Budget Control Act, which enacted immediate spending cuts and created a supercommittee tasked with striking a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit. Republicans walked away from the committee after refusing to consider tax increases on the wealthy, setting sequestration into motion. The sequester, which cuts from both domestic and defense spending, was designed to be painful enough that both sides would negotiate to avert it.
How to avoid it. The sequester was originally supposed to take effect on January 1, but it was avoided as part of the overall “fiscal cliff” deal that maintained most of the Bush-era tax cuts and enacted spending reductions to offset the first round of automatic cuts. In the past, Republicans offered plans to offset the sequester by cutting more spending, even though deficit reduction efforts have been heavily skewed toward spending cuts to domestic programs already. Democrats have offered multiple proposals that would bring more balance to efforts to reduce the deficit. A plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus would replace the sequester largely with new revenue, evening the balance of spending cuts and revenue increases in overall deficit reduction efforts. Senate Democrats proposed a plan that reduced the deficit by $110 billion, enough to offset the sequester until next January. Half of the reduction comes from cuts, the other half from tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans, however, have again refused to negotiate over new revenues, even from tax reform that would close corporate loopholes.
What it will mean. Because its cuts are across-the-board, the sequester will affect most domestic programs. Jobless workers will lose access to unemployment benefits, while safety net programs for women and children and early childhood education programs will face deep cuts. The sequester willcut funding for law enforcement and border security, food safety, airline travel security, Head Start, disaster relief, and health research. Defense programs will also see reductions. These cuts will have broad ramifications for the country’s recovering economy, pushing it down the austere path Europe has followed into second recessions. Independent reports predict that sequestration would reduce economic growth by 0.6 percent over the year while also leading to the loss of 700,000 jobs. The debt limit fight that created the sequester alreadypummeled the recovery, and allowing these spending cuts to take effect would cause even bigger problems. Travis Waldron
Each year, billions of dollars fund animal experiments, much of it U.S.-taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The public is led to believe that these experiments are necessary to promote human health and well-being. Indeed, the mission of NIH is to “to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.”
But under close scrutiny this claim does not hold up. Animal experiments continue year after year, examining the same questions, at huge cost, creating “animal models” for diseases and conditions that are uniquely human, like smoking and alcoholism.
IDA‘s Outragie Awards highlight the Top Ten most stupid, cruel and truly outrageous experiments. You can read IDA’s full list here. Among this year’s awardees are:
The Most Outrageously Superfluous award went to researchers at Yale and the University of California, Los Angeles who gave massive doses of PCP to monkeys, claiming this made them “schizophrenic,” and then gave them a drug already known to treat schizophrenia in humans. The Most Outrageously Depraved award was bestowed upon scientists at Columbia University who used costly genetic engineering to wipe out the sense of smell in mice, and then electro-shocked them and hung them upside-down by their tails with adhesive tape, claiming to study the effect of smell on anxiety.
Right now, House Republicans are refusing to even vote on the sequester. If they do nothing, a meat-cleaver will chop away, almost indiscriminately, at essential domestic programs and make life even harder for millions of Americans.
If we go over the sequester cliff on March 1st, two million jobs could be lost — including law enforcement, first responders and teachers. Essential programs for pregnant women, children and domestic abuse victims could shut their doors. And the economy could be thrown back into a recession.
President Obama made it clear: “This is not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs.”
Join the DCCC, Democratic Governors, and proud Democrats all across the country calling out Boehner and Cantor before the sequester deadline:
After her “nobody got rich on their own” speech inspired many, she now has a sequel — stumpingWall Street regulators with the posing of obvious questions at a hearing. This awesome moment got 500,000 YouTube views in 1 day.
Rachel Maddow gushed over this video on Friday night’s show.
By getting the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (which regulates Wall Street) to admit that they have no idea when they last took a bank to trial, Warren exposed that the cop on the beat isn’t much of a cop.
She also coined a new term: Too big for trial.
The best part? This was Warren’s very first banking hearing! There’s a lot more to come, and we can all be proud to have helped her get elected!
You’ll get a chance to hear from each of 
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Stephanie Taylor, PCCC co-founder, talks with media and delivers petitions to the White House. 
After almost 50 years as a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Dr. James Hansen — easily the U.S. government’s most visible scientific figure on climate change — retires this week. Besides being a leading voice urging action on climate change, Hansen, 72, has been arrested or cited at climate protests six times.
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The national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. 
“There are worse penalties for fucking up on 
We have been on the front lines of the fight against global warming — and on front pages, too — for years now with some of the country’s most innovative legal, policy and grassroots campaigns to save the globe from irreversible climate catastrophe. Last year we started our Clean Air Cities campaign, which urges cities to sign formal resolutions calling on the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas pollution; we’ve already signed on 40 cities, including Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Miami and Nashville. We’ll grow that number substantially in 2013.
Today, 
