Big Banks Are Too Big and Get $83 Billion in Lower Interest

	Attorney General Eric Holder indicated in testimony before the U.S. Senate that some Wall Street banks have gotten so big that they are now above the law. He actually said earlier this week: I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. This is wrong -- just plain wrong. We are a country that believes in equal justice under the law -- not special deals for the big guys. And that's not all the special deals that the big banks get. According to recent calculations by Bloomberg, the top ten biggest banks receive an $83 billion subsidy every year in the form of lower borrowing costs -- something not available to your community bank or credit union. The markets think that, if things get tough, the government will be there to bail out the big banks again but not the little guys. To put things in perspective -- that $83 billion subsidy is about the same amount of money being fought over in the sequestration. So why are we still debating this issue at all? Isn't it obvious that the "too big to fail" problem still exists and is bad for small banks? Bad for taxpayers? Bad for our economy? Bad for justice? Here's one theory that worries me: maybe people believe that the banks have in fact become too big to shrink. They have started to say that we can't cut these banks down to size. I'm not one of them, and neither are colleagues of mine like Sen. Sherrod Brown who have been fighting hard on this issue. We know we can take on the big banks and their army of lobbyists and win because we've done it before. When banks are too big to fail, too big to jail, too big for trial, too big to manage, too big to regulate, too big to shrink, and too big to reform... they are just too big. We're just getting started here. Thank you for being a part of this, Elizabeth

House Lawmakers Vote to Cancel 0.5% Raise for Federal Employees and 21,000 Petitions from AFGE Members Sent to House Speaker Boehner:

House Lawmakers Vote to Cancel 0.5% Raise for Federal Employees: Destroying jobs and attacking federal employees, nearly half of whom are veterans, must be the House of Representatives’ specialty as it just passed a bill that would deny these employees the measly 0.5% pay raise that was proposed by the Obama administration and was supposed to take effect next month. The $982 billion spending bill funds the government at last year’s levels for the rest of fiscal 2013. But instead of cancelling the job-killing sequestration cuts that will hurt everyone in America, the bill makes the funding subject to sequestration. This means hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be forced to take a pay cut of 20% because of the unpaid furloughs.
21,000 Petitions from AFGE Members Sent to House Speaker Boehner: More than 21,000 AFGE members from across the country signed a petition demanding that Congress stop holding working families hostage. Online petition signatures were sent to House Speaker John Boehner last Friday, the day the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration took effect. We shipped physical signatures to his office this week. The petition specifically asked Boehner and Congress to cancel the devastating cuts, oppose cuts to federal employee pay, health insurance and retirement, oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, close tax loopholes for Wall Street and the richest 2%, and cap outrageous compensation for government contractors.
Role of AFGE during Sequestration: Don’t miss this excellent interview of AFGE Public Policy Director Jacque Simon on C-SPAN's national call-in program, "Washington Journal". Simon discussed sequestration and the role of AFGE during this sequestration period. She also debunked several misconceptions about federal employees, unions, and social safety net programs.  
The show aired live on Monday, Mar. 4, but you can watch it here.

Senators Urge Senate Appropriations Panel to Cap Taxpayer Subsidies for Contractor Compensation: Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Charles Grassley of Iowa, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia this week urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to use the fiscal 2013 funding measure to lower the obscenely high cap on taxpayer subsidies to compensation for contractors.

“Most Americans would be shocked to know that under current law, government contractor employees can charge taxpayers $763,029 per year for salary reimbursements,” the bipartisan trio wrote to Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski and Ranking Member Richard Shelby. “The current compensation limit has more than doubled since 2000 and has grown more than 55 percent faster than the rate of inflation. The maximum amount of taxpayer dollars being paid to reimburse contractor employees for salaries not only increased more than $70,000 from the previous year’s limit, it is now nearly double the salary earned by the President of the United States.”

NP Cox Calls on Agencies to Adopt Pentagon’s Insourcing Process: In a testimony before a public meeting conducted by the Office of Management and Budget on the need to finally develop a methodology that would allow agencies to insource in order to save money, AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. called on federal agencies to adopt the Defense Department’s process for cost-based insourcing which Pentagon officials acknowledge has led to significant savings. NP Cox said agencies also need to put an end to an arbitrary cap on the size of the civilian workforce as reducing the number of federal employees without reducing the workload will only lead to the use of expensive contractors, which should be used for short-term work only. Work that must be done by federal employees because it’s so important or sensitive should not be subject to a cost comparison.
Read NP Cox’s excellent testimony here. Other groups that testified included POGO and Business Coalition for Fair Competition, Professional Services Council, and Aerospace Industries of America.
AFGE Calls for Increased Staffing, Pepper Spray Use Throughout Bureau of Prisons: AFGE and its Council of Prison Locals this week called on the Obama administration, Congress and the Bureau of Prisons to immediately increase the bureau’s staffing and expand the use of pepper spray for correctional officers in order to protect staff from a dangerous spike in violence throughout the federal prison system. The call for action comes as the union mourns the loss of a correctional officer killed in the line of duty. Eric Williams, 34, died on Feb. 25 after being assaulted by an inmate with a homemade weapon at the United States Penitentiary– Canaan in northeastern Pennsylvania. In the wake of Williams’ death, BOP has agreed to expand its pepper spray pilot program to all high security institutions – an increase from the seven facilities currently testing the program.
“The expansion of the pilot program is a good first step and something we’ve supported for years, ”AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said. “But it’s outrageous that an officer had to lose his life in order for the change to take place.”
AFGE Calls for Removal of VA Regional Director Moreland: Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN) 4 Director Michael Moreland and his culture of employee retaliation need to go. AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. last month asked VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to fire Moreland for repeatedly retaliating against employees, most recently a post-traumatic stress disorder specialist at the Wilmington, Del. VA facility who continues to face intense retaliation for testifying before Congress about understaffing and lack of mental health care access for vets. On the eve of her testimony to Congress, Dr. Michelle Washington, who for years had been rated as an outstanding performer, was rated as “needs improvement”. As part of this retaliation scheme, VA transferred her neuropsychological testing duties to the Coatesville VA, forcing veterans to travel substantially further for diagnosis which can and has been done by Dr. Washington. Her duties as the Evidence Based Treatment Coordinator have also been removed.
“It’s time for you to send a clear message and restore Dr. Washington’s evaluation and her duties,” NP Cox wrote in a Feb. 26 letter to Secretary Shinseki. “Your continued failure to address this issue sends just the opposite message. Lack of action from the highest levels of the VA is perhaps contributing to a management culture in which a management official at the Pittsburgh VA felt emboldened to tell our Local President Kathi Dahl that she could simply (and falsely) tell Congress she was sick and not testify [about the Legionnaire’s outbreak].”
FAA to Close 173 Air Traffic Control Towers April 7: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has plans to close 173 of its 251 air traffic control towers operated by contractors at smaller airports on April 7 in response to the sequestration cuts. The FAA would consider removing towers from the list on a case by case basis if the operators can give them a good reason to keep the towers open, according to Spenser Dickerson, executive director of the U.S. Contract Tower Association.
AFGE Joins Legal Brief Against Defense of Marriage Act: In a friend of the court legal brief filed this week, AFGE joined with the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The case under review, Windsor v. United States, involves New York resident Edie Windsor. Ms. Windsor sued the federal government after DOMA caused her to receive unequal tax treatment because of her same-sex marriage. DOMA forbids the federal government from treating married same-sex couples the same as other married couples with regards to taxes and many other benefits.
Unions, Hotels Join Forces to Train Workers for Jobs on Las Vegas Strip: It’s hard to break into the hospitality industry in Las Vegas. That’s why 26 properties have partnered with the Culinary Workers Union/United Here Local 226 and Bartenders Union/United Here Local 165 to offer vocational classes to prepare students for jobs on the Strip with good wages, opportunities for career advancement, and health and retirement benefits. The partnership, known as The Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, has offered classes ranging from Vocational English for speakers of other languages to food preparing, serving, and catering. The academy has trained more than 35,000 people since its beginnings in 1993. For the list of classes and tuition info, click here.  
This Week in Labor History: March 4, 1801 - In his inaugural address, President Thomas Jefferson declares: “Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”
This Week’s Tweet: “The final report is in: The U.S. wasted *billions* rebuilding Iraq http://thkpr.gs/ZfSr4B”  @thinkprogress
Inside Government: Tune in now to AFGE’s “Inside Government” as the union’s members speak out on the dangers of sequestration. The show, which originally aired on Friday, March 1, is now available on demand.

• AFGE Housing and Urban Development Council 222 President Eddie Eitches detailed the devastating impact sequestration would have on formerly homeless, low income and disabled individuals and also discussed the council’s work with management to negotiate benefits for employees.
  
• Joe Gonzales, president of Department of Defense Local 2142, then addressed sequestration’s effects on DOD, the civilian workforce and military.
  
  
• AFGE Bureau of Prisons Local 1112 President Mike Schnobrich and Steward April Bennett discussed health services staffing concerns throughout BOP.
  
  
• Transportation Security Administration Local 778 Executive Vice President Bobby Newsome provided a closer look at AFGE’s collective bargaining agreement with TSA and some of the contract’s top benefits for employees.
  
  

Quote of the Week: A new definition of ‘less government’? Seven lawmakers in the Iowa House have introduced a bill to prohibit parents with children under 18 years old from getting a ‘no fault’ divorce – a divorce that doesn’t require any evidence of wrongdoing from either party. The bill’s biggest cheerleader, Rep. Tedd Gassman, believes wholeheartedly in the idea behind the bill as his daughter and son-in-law have just divorced and that could turn his granddaughter into a promiscuous young girl.
"There's a 16-year-old girl in this whole mix now. Guess what? What are the possibilities of her being more promiscuous? What are the possibilities of all these other things surrounding her life that a 16-year-old girl, with hormones raging, can get herself into?"  

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American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO 80 F Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001 | Tel. (202) 737-8700 | Fax (202) 639-6492 | www.afge.org

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Who Are These Monopoly Men Controlling Everything?

By Michael Snyder (The Economic Collapse Blog | Original Link)

The Dow is at a record high and so are corporate profits – so why does it feel like most of the country is deeply suffering right now?  Real household income is the lowest that it has been in a decade, poverty is absolutely soaring,47 million Americans are on food stamps and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.  How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time?  Isn’t their wealth supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of us?  Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works.  Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of “expensive” American workers on their payrolls as much as they can.  If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it.  Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite.  Over the decades, the politicians that have their campaigns funded by these monopoly men have rigged the game so that the big corporations are able to easily dominate everything.  But this was never what those that founded this country intended.  America was supposed to be a place where the power of collectivist institutions would be greatly limited, and individuals and small businesses would be free to compete in a capitalist system that would reward anyone that had a good idea and that was willing to work hard.  But today, our economy is completely and totally dominated by a massively bloated federal government and by absolutely gigantic predator corporations that are greatly favored by our massively bloated federal government.  Our founders tried to warn us about the dangers of allowing government, banks and corporations to accumulate too much power, but we didn’t listen.  Now they dominate everything, and the rest of us are fighting for table scraps.
In early America, most states had strict laws governing the size and scope of corporations.  Individuals and small businesses thrived in such an environment, and the United States experienced a period of explosive economic growth.  We showed the rest of the world that capitalism really works, and we eventually built the largest middle class that the world had ever seen.
But now we have replaced capitalism with something that I like to call “corporatism”.  In many ways, it shares a lot of characteristics with communism, and that is why nations such as communist China have embraced it so readily.  Under “corporatism”, monolithic predator corporations run around sucking up as much wealth and economic power as they possibly can.  Most individuals and small businesses cannot compete and end up getting absorbed by the corporations.  These mammoth collectivist institutions are in private hands rather than in government hands (as would be the case under a pure form of communism), but the results are pretty much the same either way.  A tiny elite at the top gets almost all of the economic rewards.
There are some out there that would suggest that the answer to our problems is to move more in the direction of “socialism”, but to be honest that wouldn’t be the solution to anything.  It would just change how the table scraps that the rest of us are getting are distributed.
If we truly wanted a return to prosperity, we need to dramatically shift the rules of the game so that they are tilted back in favor of individuals and small businesses.  A much more pure form of capitalism would mean more wealth, less poverty and a more equitable distribution of the economic rewards in this country.
But it will never happen.  Most of our politicians are married to the big corporations and the wealthy elitists that fund their campaigns.  And most Americans are so uneducated that they believe that what we actually have today is “capitalism” and that the only alternative is to go “to the left” toward socialism.
Very few people out there are suggesting that we need to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations, but that is exactly what we need to do.  We need to give individuals and small businesses room to breathe once again.
With each passing year, things get even worse.  In fact, the founder of Subway Restaurants recently said that the environment for small businesses is so toxic in America today that he never would have been able to start Subway if he had to do it today.
For much more on how small business is being strangled to death in the United States, please see my previous article entitled “We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America“.
What I want to do now is to discuss some of the results that “corporatism” is producing in America.
First of all, we continue to see incomes go down even though we live in an inflationary economy.
As Time Magazine recently reported, personal incomes took a huge nosedive during the month of January…

Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed that personal income fell 3.6% in January, the biggest decline in 20 years. The drop was even bigger when taxes and inflation are taken into account. Real personal disposable income fell by 4%, the biggest monthly drop in half a century.

But this is part of a longer term trend.  Median household income in the U.S. has declined for four consecutive years, and it is now significantly lower than it was all the way back in 2001…

Real median US household income — that’s “real,” as in “adjusted for inflation” — was $50,054 in 2011, the most recent data available from the US Census Bureau. That’s 8% lower than the 2007 peak of $54,489.

Meanwhile, big corporations are absolutely raking in the cash.  The following is from a recent New York Times article…

“So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.”

The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.

Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.
Just check out the following chart.  Corporate profits have absolutely exploded over the past decade…

Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP continue to fall rapidly…

Most of the jobs being created in America today are “low wage” jobs.  Tens of millions of Americans are working as hard as they can only to find that they can barely put food on the table and provide a roof over the heads of their children.  The ranks of the “working poor” are exploding and the middle class continues to shrink.
Many of you that are reading this article are members of the working poor.  You know what it is like to stare up at your ceiling at night wondering how you are going to pay the bills next month.
Today, most Americans are living very close to the edge financially.  A recent article by NBC News staff writer Allison Linn shared some of their stories.  The following is one example…

Crystal Dupont knows what it’s like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.
Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn’t seen a doctor in two years. She’s behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.
When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.
“I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.
It’s a wage she’s lived on for a while now, but just barely.

Sadly, the number of Americans that are “just barely” surviving continues to grow.
But if corporate profits are soaring to unprecedented heights, then who is getting all of those rewards?
The monopoly men of the global elite are.
Just check out the following video which does a great job of illustrating how corporatism has systematically funneled all of the economic rewards in our system to the very top…
Once again, I want to make it very clear that I am not advocating socialism as the answer in any way, shape or form.  Socialism takes away the incentive to create wealth and it almost always results in almost all of the economic rewards going to a very tiny elite anyway.
As I said earlier, what we need is a return to a much more pure form of capitalism, but this is so foreign to the way that most people think that most people will not be able to grasp this.
It certainly would be possible to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations at the same time, but this is so “outside the box” for most people that they cannot even conceive of doing such a thing.
We need to create an environment where individuals and small businesses can thrive once again.  But instead, most of us are content to continue “playing the game” and getting enslaved in even more debt.
For example, according to CNBC, auto loans just continue to get larger and continue to get stretched out for longer periods of time…

American car buyers, attracted by new models and cheap financing, are taking out bigger auto loans and stretching out the terms of those loans to a new record length.
New analysis from Experian Automotive shows the average new car loan in the fourth quarter of last year was $26,691 and stretched out over an average of 65 months. The length of the average loan is one month longer than the previous record set in the third quarter of last year.

What will they think of next?
Will we eventually have auto loans that get paid off over 10 years?
By the way, that is another way that the monopoly men of the global elite get all of our money.  They enslave us to debt, and we spend year after year of our lives slaving away to make them even wealthier.
They are very smart.  There is a reason why they have 32 TRILLION dollars stashed away in offshore tax havens.  They know how to play the game, and they are very happy that most of the rest of us are asleep.
Fortunately, it appears that an increasing number of Americans are waking up.
For example, I wanted to share with you all an excerpt from a comment that one of my readers left on one of my recent articles…

In the past year, I’ve been slowly but surely waking up to the nonsense happening around me. There’s so many things I need to simply get off my chest, so excuse the length of this post. Recently in the past two years, I’ve gotten married and have been medically discharged from the Marines after being injured in Afghanistan. Being 23 years old and married, my goal is secure a secure a future for my family, but with the way things are going, I’m not exactly sure how much of a future we’re going to have in 50 years. I can’t explain it, but I’ve felt this need to change my attitude and motivations lately.
I started by turning off the garbage music, television and other mindless entertainment that seems to plague my generation. It was easier than it looked – I don’t miss most of it really. The next order of business was to educate myself on world news, so that’s what I did. Every day, like clockwork, I check all major mainstream news feeds (NBC, Fox, Abc, CNN, Reuters, BBC, etc.) as well as not-so-mainstream news sites – yours being one of them. It’s incredible how fast our world changes and the manner in which it changes. The local 10 o’clock doesn’t show anything but local news, sports, weather, lottery #’s and whatever else they decide to throw in. It’s a night and day difference once you start to actually research and see what’s happening all over the world. Look at the number of comments about a news story on the economy and then look at a celebrity story on the “news”….People are so blind, it truly amazes me. My friends, family and classmates at college seem to be under a spell of some sort. They’re distracted – and it’s contagious. Nobody I know gives a damn about global affairs/economics. They’re more interested in the newest iPhone, cars, shows, movies, and just about anything else you can think of. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these things, but my friends/family/peers are CONSUMED by these distractions. When the election was taking place in 2012, every Tom, Dick and Harry on Facebook had an opinion and rant. After the circus ended however, everyone simply went back to posting about parties, kittens, Farmville etc. It’s a huge joke. For me, it’s little terrifying and exciting to see history unfolding in front of our eyes. This country of ours is going through big changes now that will most certainly affect our future, so I strive to adapt and prepare myself and my family. I’m looking at buying my first home this summer. Right now I live in an apartment right outside Philly and spend more money on rent than most pay for a mortgage. I need a house with a little land to raise chickens, grow fruits/vegetables, store canned food – and to be as independent from the system as I can. For my job, I wanted a skill/trade that people would always need, so I picked the funeral business. On the side, I work in construction and have been learning everything there is to know about building with my own two hands. I feel as though these old forgotten skills are going to be handy in a short while.

Hopefully we can get a lot more people to wake up and start breaking out of “the matrix” of control that is all around us.
Right now, the system is designed to continually funnel more money and more power to the very top of the pyramid.  The global elite are becoming more dominant with each passing day.  Unless something dramatic happens, at some point the American people will become so powerless that they won’t be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to.
The idea of a very tiny elite completely dominating all the rest of us goes against everything that America is supposed to stand for.  In the end, it will result in absolute tyranny if it is not stopped.

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Who Are These Monopoly Men Controlling Everything?

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Pledge to resist Keystone XL:There environmental record in Canada is like the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster !

This is not the usual CREDO email. With the release last Friday of the State Department's favorable environmental assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline, we thought long and hard about the right way to respond; to get President Obama's attention, and to convince him to change course and reject this catastrophic project. Search for "XL Pipeline Canada oil disaster" on YouTube and you will see what they have done to Canada !

Here's what we think is necessary to meet the moment: a pledge to resist Keystone XL and commit civil disobedience if necessary. It's a big ask. We hope you will read below and carefully consider what we are asking. We hope you will join us in signing the pledge to resist, and most of all we hope President Obama will reject Keystone XL, so that it will not be necessary to fulfill our pledge at all.

Thanks for your great passion and commitment in the face of this important fight. It is what has gotten us this far, and it is our greatest source of hope that we can win.

— Michael Kieschnick, Becky Bond, and the CREDO team

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Will you join us in signing the Pledge to Resist the Keystone XL Pipeline? The pledge reads: "I pledge, if necessary, to join others in my community, and engage in acts of dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could result in my arrest in order to send the message to President Obama and his administration that they must reject the Keystone XL pipeline. " Dear William, Last Friday was one of those days that remind us of just how steep a hill to climb this fight against climate change is. Even with a president who recently professed a lofty goal of getting all cars off of oil, even with one of our stronger climate-hawk senators as the new secretary of state, the State Department still released a joke of an environmental assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline, taking us one big step closer to approval of this project that should be a no-brainer of a rejection.1 Obliviously ignoring the consensus among oil executives, bankers, and environmentalists, who all agree that Keystone XL is central to speeding the extraction of tar sands,2 the State Department found the project is "unlikely to have a significant impact" on tar sands development. This is coward's logic. This assessment was a vehicle for the White House to test the waters and see if the public will stand by, and buy this false and cynical argument that the tar sands will just get burned anyway. That while NASA's chief climate scientist's assertion that Keystone XL will spell 'game over' for the climate may be true,3 it is essentially irrelevant. That we should let the bankers and the oil companies profit while the planet inevitably burns. Well, we won't. And so, last Friday reminded us of something else, too: those two weeks in August of 2011, when the peaceful and dignified arrest of 1,253 people over two weeks at President Obama's front door effectively stopped what was considered a virtually guaranteed presidential approval of Keystone XL. There is still time to convince President Obama to change his mind and reject Keystone XL. But with the president ignoring every possible sign Mother Nature can send, it is once again incumbent upon us to send a message he can't ignore. That's why CREDO is joining with Bold Nebraska, The Other 98%, Hip Hop Caucus, Rainforest Action Network, 350, and Oil Change International to launch the Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance. It is time for us to pledge to resist. That is, we are asking you to commit — should it be necessary to stop Keystone XL — to engage in serious, dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could get you arrested. Will you join us in pledging resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline, including — if necessary — pledging to participate in peaceful, dignified civil disobedience? If tens of thousands of people stand up as President Obama mulls his final decision, and commit to participate in civil disobedience if necessary, we can convince the White House that it will be politically unfeasible to go forward. That is, our goal is not to get arrested. Our goal is to stop the Keystone XL pipeline — by showing enough opposition to Keystone XL that President Obama will reject it. But if he shows clear signs he that he is preparing to approve it, we will be ready. It goes without saying, this isn't a usual ask. It is not for everyone. So we want you to carefully consider if this is something you can commit to be a part of. Here's exactly what we have in mind: With the release of Friday's Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, we will have 45 days to submit formal comments. And comment we will. We will petition, rally, make phone calls, and comment through official channels. But that may not be enough. The moment of truth will come later, at some point likely in the summer, with the release of the Draft National Interest Determination. If the Obama administration issues a draft finding that Keystone XL is in our national interest, that will trigger action on our pledge to resist. So we are asking you to pledge, if necessary after the release of the Draft National Interest Determination, to join with others in your community and risk arrest in acts of dignified, peaceful civil disobedience all over the country. Will you join us in pledging resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline, including — if necessary — pledging to participate in peaceful, dignified civil disobedience? Most events will be outside of Washington D.C., because this decision will affect all of us where we live. So we want to see the beautiful sight of actions across the nation — including a wide variety of symbolic targets like State Department offices, TransCanada corporate lobbies, Obama Organizing for Action meetings, banks that are financing tar sands oil development, areas ravaged by Superstorm Sandy, and along the pipeline route. Some brave souls have started this work already. We need to support their efforts and make them much, much bigger. You can pledge to participate or you can pledge to help organize an action in your community. We'll need tons of volunteers. And soon, we'll announce organizer trainings so local leaders and activists who want to can get the tools they need to organize an action near them. You shouldn't make this pledge lightly. We certainly don't ask lightly. We ask in the belief that there are tens of thousands of people out there who feel as strongly about this as we do, who believe that these circumstances call for extraordinary action, and want to be part of that action in their community. And we ask with the faith that those who commit to participate and organize actions will participate only in the most dignified manner. After all, we are the conservatives, standing up for a safe and secure future for our families. It is those we protest, those who profit from radically altering the chemical composition of our atmosphere — and the prospects for survival of humanity — who are the radicals. But what is more frightening than asking you to join us in committing to acts of civil disobedience across the nation, is the prospect of coming up short in the fight against Keystone XL. Our time is short to convince President Obama to change his mind. We do not know how many people's pledges, and how many pledged actions, it will take to convince President Obama to resist the big money, dirty energy, inside-the-beltway pressure and take a stand to protect our nation from the greatest threat of all. So we need you. Literally, you might tip the balance. We hope you can join us. If you are so moved, make the pledge. And share this pledge with friends and family so that those who are ready and willing to be arrested can be counted in the pledge to resist. We'll send you more information soon. Becky Bond, Michael Kieschnick & Elijah Zarlin, CREDO Action Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska John Sellers, The Other 98% Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., Hip Hop Caucus Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network May Boeve & Bill McKibben, 350.org Steve Kretzmann, Oil Change International 1. "Keystone XL pipeline would have little impact on climate change, State Department analysis says" Washington Post, 03/01/13 2. "Keystone XL: In their own words" 350.org 3. "Game over for the climate," James Hansen, the New York Times, 5/9/12 Share on Facebook Post to your wall Tweet this Post to Twitter

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Tell the SEC: Don't let corporations hide their political spending. Please submit a public comment.

We helped put disclosure of corporate political spending on the agenda. Now we need to keep it there. After unprecedented public pressure, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced they're working on a rule to require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending. But in the face of a right-wing backlash, we need to make sure the SEC follows through. Click below to submit a public comment: The U.S. Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United v. FEC ruling has allowed corporate CEOs to unleash a torrent of secret corporate spending into our political system. Indefensibly, CEOs are able to keep both the public and their own shareholders in the dark about the use of company funds for political ends. And the results have been absolutely corrosive to our democracy. Fortunately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is empowered to enact disclosure requirements for publicly traded corporations. And recently, after unprecedented amounts of public pressure, including over 150,000 public comments submitted by CREDO activists, the SEC announced it is working on a rule requiring corporations to disclose their political spending. We helped put this disclosure rule on the agenda, but we need to speak out to make sure it stays there. Tell the SEC: Don't let corporations hide their political spending. Click here to submit a public comment. Corporate giants routinely launder their political spending by funneling it through politically active intermediaries like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. So it's no surprise that these political heavyweights and other right-wing groups are fighting back and pushing hard for the SEC to abandon its plan to issue a disclosure rule on corporate political spending. It was already a huge lift to get the SEC to put this issue on the agenda. In the face of this right-wing backlash, we need to continue to demonstrate strong public support for ending secret political spending. Tell the SEC: Don't let corporations hide their political spending. Click here to submit a public comment. To be clear, what we really need is to get all corporate money out of politics, to roll back Citizens United, end corporate personhood and institute public financing of elections. And we are working hard toward those long-term goals. But in the short term, given how corrupt the system is, disclosure of corporate political spending would be a meaningful, though small, step forward. And it's one we can achieve. While the likes of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board are opposed to this idea, it's actually a commonsense idea that is not especially ideological. In fact, nearly 60% of the S&P 100 companies already voluntarily disclose their political spending to investors. And in 2011, of the remaining S&P 100 corporations, 25 had shareholder votes about political spending issues. Already one SEC Commissioner has come out in favor of the idea. We just need two more to agree. Tell the SEC: Don't let corporations hide their political spending. Click the link below to submit a public comment. http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6996243&p=sec_agenda&id=54603-4993481-6eb9uZx&t=5 Thank you for speaking out. Your activism matters. Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets Click below to submit a public comment: Share on Facebook Post to your wall Tweet this Post to Twitter

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