Tell Costco to Adopt Ocean Conservation Policies
(As received from a GreenPeace email…)
Millions of Americans are preparing to celebrate Independence Day with backyard BBQs and picnics. As people flock to supermarkets and shopping centers to stock up, those ending up at Costco Wholesale might be surprised at what they find.
In the Costco warehouse you’ll find freezers and coolers full of unsustainable fish. Greenpeace surveys found that Costco continues to sell fifteen of the twenty-two red list seafood items.
Costco is the largest wholesale club operator in North America. While Costco continues to grow bigger and bigger, so does its footprint on the environment. Did you know that Costco is destroying our oceans through its harmful seafood purchasing practices?
It’s time to shine a spotlight on Costco and expose the truth behind their destructive seafood policies. Costco can be a leader in ocean conservation, not a contributor to ocean destruction.
Costco can and must do better!
Greenpeace is urging Costco to implement a sustainable seafood policy, to offer transparency in its seafood labeling, and to stop selling red list seafood starting immediately with orange roughy and Chilean sea bass.
Sign the Green Peace pledge telling Costco that our oceans deserve better.
The power is in your hands. Remember by working together, we were able to improve Trader Joe’s seafood operation through public pressure and campaigning. We can do the same with Costco. Please take action today.
Stop The Radical Religious Right from Changing Textbooks in Texas
Religious Right Leaders in Texas Wage War Against Science and History Textbooks
As reported on the People For the American Way website
People For the American Way Foundation is pleased to share with you a new report titled, Texas Textbooks: What happened, what it means, and what we can do about it.
Religious Right leaders in Texas have been waging war against science and history for the past few decades. A primary target and battleground has been the state’s public schools, in particular the statewide approval process for textbooks. People For the American Way Foundation first started working with Texans to resist Religious Right takeovers of textbooks back in the 1980s.
The Religious Right has invested so heavily in Texas textbooks because of the national implications. School districts in Texas have to buy books from a state-approved list, and Texas is such an enormous market that textbook publishers will generally do whatever they can to get on that list. Textbooks written and edited to meet Texas standards have in the past ended up being used all over the country. So Religious Right leaders in Texas see the opportunity to doom millions of American students, not just in Texas, to stunted, scientifically dubious science books and ideologically slanted history and social studies books.
The most recent battle, over the standards for new social studies textbooks, culminated in May with the adoption of social studies standards by the State Board of Education that give the board’s far-right faction and its Religious Right advisers far too many victories in their efforts to replace history with ideology and turn public school classrooms into Heritage Foundation seminars.
Read the full report here. Be sure to download the pdf version for the fully formatted report including pictures, charts and quotes.
– Ben Betz, Online Communications Manager
Facebook Executives Meet Regarding Your Privacy
Sign the ACLU Petition Regarding Facebook Privacy Policy
According to news reports, Facebook has called an “all hands” meeting today to discuss its privacy policies. That’s because they are facing a brewing revolt among Facebook users alarmed by the company’s cavalier attitude toward protecting your privacy.
In recent months, Facebook has rolled out some very privacy-unfriendly practices, from the “privacy transition” that took away privacy controls to “instant personalization” that instantly shares your personal information with third party pages without your consent.
At every step, the ACLU has been there to push back. Why? Because the less control you have over your own personal information, the more likely that information could end up in the wrong hands—including the government’s.
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that “the default is social.” That means Facebook starts from the assumption that your personal information will be distributed far and wide without your consent. But, tens of thousands of you have signed the ACLU petition to make it clear that you want to share with your friends, not a spying government.
Facebook is feeling the heat. It’s time to hold the company’s feet to the fire and take back control of our personal information.
You—not Facebook—should decide who to trust with private information about your political interests, sexual orientation, and more.
Sign the ACLU Facebook privacy petition. Make it clear you want to share with the people you choose, not the ones Facebook chooses for you.
Today’s reported all-hands meeting at Facebook means we’ve got their attention. Let’s keep the pressure on until Facebook adopts policies that respect the privacy of its users.
Kagan is Bad Choice for Supreme Court, Says Libertarian Party
Wes Benedict, Executive Director of the Libertarian Party, issued the following statement today:
“Elena Kagan is another bad pick for the Supreme Court. If confirmed, it is likely that she will vote on cases with the intent of advancing political policy goals. Kagan will probably vote to advance liberal policy goals, just as some other justices vote to advance conservative policy goals. That is not the place of justices, who should be applying the Constitution, not trying to rewrite it to make society work better according to their views.
“However, the bitter battles over Supreme Court justices expose a more serious problem in our federal government: the legislative and executive branches simply refuse to take the Constitution seriously.
“Once upon a time, Congress felt it had a duty to legislate in accordance with the Constitution. Likewise, past presidents believed that they should veto laws that were not clearly constitutional. But in more recent years, both branches have thrown this crucial duty away. Now their attitude seems to be, ‘We can pass anything we want to, and let the Supreme Court deal with it if they don’t like it.’ That was absolutely not what the American Founders had in mind.
“We shouldn’t have to worry so much about who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. It shouldn’t be the case that a single justice can make all of American society lurch from one direction to another. They shouldn’t have that much power.
“Republicans who want to throw stones at Kagan, ought to ask themselves why they supported the Bush Administration’s blatantly unconstitutional Patriot Act, or why they supported huge expansions of the blatantly unconstitutional Medicare program. When they were in power, they showed absolutely no respect for the Constitution.
“I wish that President Obama had picked a nominee with more regard for the original intent of the Constitution. But even more than that, I wish that he and the members of Congress would stop shirking their responsibility to apply the Constitution themselves.”
For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.
The LP is America’s third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.
If you have not yet become a member of the Libertarian Party and wish to do so, please join the only political party dedicated to free markets and civil liberties.
