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
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.
Supreme Court Candidates – Get to Know Them
From the fine folks at Alliance for Justice:
Yesterday, the White House confirmed that President Obama will not announce a Supreme Court nominee this week. That means you have at least a week to learn more about the potential nominees and what’s at stake with this vacancy.
We have developed brief background reports on the most likely nominees, which are available on our new Supreme Court Watch web page.
The Alliance for Justice has fact sheets on the following potential Supreme Court nominees:
- Merrick B. Garland
- Jennifer Granholm
- Elena Kagan
- Pamela S. Karlan
- Harold Hongju Koh
- Martha Minow
- Carlos Moreno
- Janet Napolitano
- Leah Ward Sears
- Sidney Runyan Thomas
- Elizabeth Warren
- Ann Claire Williams
- Diane Wood
The stakes are high in the appointment of a new justice to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. Our recently released report, “Unprecedented Injustice: The Political Agenda of the Roberts Court” shows a frighteningly clear pattern: the current court has repeatedly gone out of its way to place corporate interests first and
the rights of individuals second. Precedents and long-held principles have been disregarded, frequently in 5-4 votes, revealing a drastic rightward, pro-corporate tilt.
That’s why it’s so important for the next justice to be someone willing and able to persuasively articulate and unhesitatingly defend our individual rights and liberties. Whether the razor thin conservative majority can occasionally be broken is an open question, but given the record of this Court,a full-throated defense of core constitutional values is needed now, more than ever.
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
http://afj.convio.net/site/R?i=WM8Iai1mg_WkTUNx9S6DUw..
