Secret money is gushing into the presidential campaigns

Robert Reich via Facebook

12 hrs · 

Secret money is gushing into the presidential campaigns as never before through fake “social welfare” nonprofits under 501-c-4 of the Internal Revenue Code -- and the IRS has decided not to stop it, reports the NY Times. Under an exemption set up more than a century ago, nonprofits don’t have to report their sources of income as long as they “further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community” -- but obviously this doesn’t include being shills for politicians. Yet the IRS remains so scarred by the scandal two years ago over its scrutiny of nonprofits tied to the Tea Party that it won’t investigate.

That’s irresponsible. The IRS shouldn’t be caving to Republican political pressure. (IRS commissioner John Koskinen went so far as to say nonprofits could spend up to 49 percent of their money on political activities -- which is dead wrong. They’re not supposed to engage in any political activity at all.)

The President has the power to stop much of this. He should immediately:

1. Fire Koshinen and instruct the IRS (which is part of the Treasury Department) to crack down on fraudulent nonprofits.

2 Instruct the SEC to require corporations to disclose their political contributions to their shareholders.

3. By executive order also require federal contractors to make such disclosures, and to cease any political donations if more than half their revenues come from the federal government.

If Obama is concerned about his legacy as it affects our democracy, he must act. What do you think?

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

PETA LOCAL ACTION

LOCAL ACTION Dear Friend, The Ringling Bros. circus is coming to Los Angeles and Ontario and animals need your help! In order to force elephants to perform tricks, trainers beat them with sharp metal bullhooks, and lions and tigers are also whipped. Ringling has announced that it will phase out the use of elephants in acts by 2018, but their retirement day needs to come now. Please help put an end to this cruelty and join PETA, Animal Defenders International, In Defense of Animals, and CompassionWorks International to rally against the use of all animals in circuses. Los Angeles Protests:  WHEN Thursday, July 9, 11:45 a.m.–1 p.m. and 5:30–8 p.m. Friday, July 10, 10:45 a.m.–12 noon and 6–7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 11, 10:15–11:30 a.m., 2–3:30 p.m.and 6–7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 12, 10:15–11:30 a.m., 2–3:30 p.m.and 6–7:30 p.m. Monday, July 13, 6–7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, 10:45 a.m.–12 noon and 6–7:30 p.m.  WHERE STAPLES Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90015 (Please meet at the intersection of S. Figueroa Street and Chick Hearn Court; see this map.) CONTACT Eric Deardorff at 323-351-0188 or EricD@peta.org RSVP on Facebook Ontario Protests: WHEN Friday, July 17, 6–7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 18, 10:30–11:30 a.m., 2:30–3:30 p.m., and 6:30–7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 19, 10:30–11:30 a.m. and 2:30–3:30 p.m. Monday, July 20, 6:30–7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21, 11 a.m.–noon and 6:30–7:30 p.m. WHERE Citizens Business Bank Arena, 4000 E. Ontario Center Pkwy., Ontario, CA 91764 (Please meet on the south side of the building; see this map.) CONTACT Marisa Nozot Ohanian at 714-904-1649 Dana Kaiser Henry at 909-489-1060 or dana.kaiser@cgu.edu RSVP on Facebook All materials (such as posters and leaflets) will be provided. Note that reserved parking will not be available, and please be prepared for the weather. If you can't make it, you can still speak up by urging Ringling Bros. to end its cruel elephant acts now, not in three years.  OUTREACH TIPS BUY ACTIVIST GEAR* GET MOBILE ALERTS TAKE ACTION For all animals, Eric Deardorff Senior Outreach Coordinator People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals EricD@peta.org Add PETA on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. *Enter promo code ACT10 during checkout to enjoy your discount. Discount excludes donations, memberships, literature, taxes, and shipping and handling. Expires July 31, 2015. click here to contact PETA.  PETA, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510 USA.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

We’re not going to tolerate corporate CEOs and billionaires undermining our democracy.

FRIEND, All I can say is: wow. I’ve been working on stopping Fast Track for years now and I can tell you that—even though Congress pulled some last-minute political maneuvering to get Fast Track passed last month—we beat all the odds and changed the game. And we did it together. One year ago, if you had told me that Congress would vote against this awful legislation, I wouldn’t have believed you. But despite the arm-twisting from corporations and the 1%, we nearly got Congress to defeat Fast Track because of the pressure you and millions of others put on your legislators. And now the real debate has begun. In the coming months, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—the biggest trade deal in the history of U.S. trade deals—is going to be finalized, and Congress will have to vote on it. We need to make sure the TPP doesn’t sell out working people here and abroad, give foreign corporations special privileges to sue U.S. taxpayers to recover lost profits or undermine efforts to stop climate change. Sign our petition now to tell U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and President Barack Obama to make the Trans-Pacific Partnership work for working people, not corporate CEOs. When this Fast Track fight began, corporate CEOs and high-powered Washington lobbyists thought it was going to be a walk in the park. But because we put enough pressure on legislators by sending emails, making calls, taking action on social media and turning out for events, we slowed down and almost thwarted their plan to rubber stamp more bad trade deals that ship jobs overseas, lower wages and give more power to big corporations. This should send a strong signal to our elected leaders and the 1% that we’re not going to tolerate corporate CEOs and billionaires undermining our democracy. We need to carry this momentum forward and tell our lawmakers to focus on policies to raise wages, so millions of working families don’t have to worry about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their heads. And one way to do that is to ensure that the final TPP is as good for working people as President Obama has said it is. Leaked documents from the TPP negotiations (remember, the actual text is secret) show that some of the same problematic things included in past disastrous trade deals are being considered for the final version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Things like the investor-state dispute settlement system, which allows corporations to sue governments if they feel a law or regulation cost them profits. So this is only the beginning of our fight to demand better trade rules that benefit our families and communities. Tell U.S. Trade Representative Froman and President Obama to ensure the TPP and future trade deals don’t sell out working people. And thank you again for all the actions you took to stop Fast Track. We’re strongest when we stand together. In Solidarity, Celeste ----------------- Celeste Drake Trade and Globalization Policy Specialist, AFL-CIO

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

HRC Volunteers Needed for San Diego Pride!

HRC Volunteers Needed for San Diego Pride! Interested in getting involved with HRC? Volunteer with HRC San Diego at our booth in the Pride Music Festival! San Diego Pride is one of the largest prides in the country, so we'll need an army of people to help greet guests, sign up new members, and pass out flyers. No experience is necessary - new and experienced volunteers are both welcome! It's really easy and shifts are only 2-3 hours. Most importantly, it's fun and you'll meet a ton of great people! Volunteers will also be invited to our HRC Volunteer BBQ on July 16 - only for PRIDE booth volunteers!  San Diego Pride Saturday, July 1811:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. & Sunday, July 1911:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Balboa Park1540 El PradoSan Diego, CA 92101 Please email comments or question to volunteer@hrcsandiego.org. Volunteer at Pride Volunteer with HRC at a pride event near you. Pledge Your Support for Marriage Equality! Sign the HRC  #LoveWins Petition! Get the Goods Special HRC merchandise Please help us share the news of these events! All HRC members, supporters, friends and family are welcome.

© 2015 Human Rights Campaign Click here to read our privacy policy. Human Rights Campaign 1640 Rhode Island Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036-3278 Phone: 202/628-4160 TTY: 202/216-1572 Fax: 202/347-5323 Email: pride@hrc.org

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

COMING NEXT: THE REVENGE OF THE SUPREME COURT'S CONSERVATIVES

COMING NEXT: THE REVENGE OF THE SUPREME COURT'S CONSERVATIVES

shared from

U.S. WOMEN WIN WORLD CUP, GET STIFFED BY FIFA

COMING NEXT: THE REVENGE OF THE SUPREME COURT'S CONSERVATIVES		GREEKS JUST VOTED AGAINST AUSTERITY. HERE'S WHY THEY'RE RIGHT.

WHAT REPUBLICAN LEADERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT DONALD TRUMP		HASTILY WRITTEN BALLOT INITIATIVE, SEEKING TO BAN SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, WOULD MAKE ALL MARRIAGE ILLEGAL

THINKPROGRESS | Center for American Progress Action Fund 1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor | Washington, DC 20005

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

News Briefs: How Much Marijuana is in Wastewater?

News Briefs: How Much 

Marijuana is in Wastewater?

SHARED FROM

• 
  By Jennifer West
• Online Exclusives 
• July 1, 2015 
•  

In this week's water and wastewater news, a Washington wastewater study looks at drug use, states go to battle against the EPA and a water reuse project gets the thumbs-up.

---

In Washington state, researchers hope to glean a little information about pot use by studying wastewater in two separate cities. The pilot study, which is receiving some federal funding, could illustrate how use has changed since voters passed a bill legalizing the drug in 2012.

“We’re trying to get a sense of the type of user,” says Dan Burgard, an associate chemistry professor who will be conducting the study. “If there’s more use on the weekends, maybe that’s more recreational. But if Sunday to Thursday use goes up as much, that might be a public health concern, with habitual users using a lot more.”

Scientists often study public health via wastewater samples in a process called “sewage epidemiology,” which provides an accurate assessment of usage rates. Burgard previously looked at Ritalin and Adderal use on a college campus by analyzing wastewater samples.

Related: News Briefs: Texas Town Creates Emergency Water Reuse Plan

The two testing sites in Washington will not be released until the study is complete. Burgard is working with Caleb Banta-Green from the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

Source: AP

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Most Americans are worse off than they were a long time ago.

Mad As Hell, Not Going to Take it Anymore Dear FRIEND: This is a short essay on voter anger: its origin, its attributes, its meaning and its cure. Hint: most Americans are worse off than they were a long time ago. I started noticing voter anger around 2009. Initially, its locus was the Tea Party. They're the ones who would form a circle around a political event, holding hands, and start chanting expletives. I attributed this to the Tea Party's deep dissatisfaction with living in the 21st century. To them, basically, everything went south when Jane Wyatt stopped playing Robert Young's Stepford wife on Father Knows Best, and started playing Spock's mother, Amanda . . . Grayson, on Star Trek. (Does that mean that Spock and I are future relatives? I don't know.) For them, things have never been the same since. Generally speaking, the problem for Team Blue is not anger; it's apathy. However, by roughly the year 2012, Team Blue had caught up in the Anger Games, and the score was tied. Politically, we then entered very interesting territory. For many years up to that time, polling had showed that even when Congress had a negative approval rating, most voters wanted to reelect their individual Members of Congress. (It's as though Congress had become Garrison Keilor's Lake Wobegone, where all the children are above average.) No more. Now polls showed a majority in favor of voting out one's own Member of Congress, a matter quite unnerving to one's own Member of Congress. Moreover, polls showed that most voters wished that voting booths offered a magic Shakespearean "let's kill all the incumbents" button, that would let them throw out all the bums by extending a single digit. (The middle one, I surmise.) And speaking of digits, Congress's approval rating sank into single digits. Why? Well, the superficial explanation is that voters feel that elected officials simply aren't listening. We had a good example of that a few weeks ago, on the Fast Track bill. A GOP Member of Congress confided in me that his calls and e-mails were running 100-to-1 against Fast Track. In some Democratic offices, the numbers probably were even more one-sided. (Many of the people reading these very words had something to do with that.) Nevertheless, in the Party of the People, 13 Democratic Senators initially voted against proceeding with Fast Track, and then voted for proceeding with Fast Track. So that gutless anti-egalitarian bill slipped past a Senate filibuster with no votes to spare. Then, in the House, 28 Democratic Congressmen broke ranks, passing Fast Track by only extra four votes. (Meaning that if four votes had switched, Fast Track would have been halted in its . . . tracks.) From the voters' perspective, that's a very good example of "you're not listening to me!" But here is the deeper explanation for all of that anger: for most Americans, life simply is getting harder. This was painfully obvious from a Sage Foundation study last year, following up on an article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The study looked at changes in the wealth of American households over a decade, from 2003 to 2013. The study found that median net worth had dropped by 36 percent, from $87,992 to $56,335. Let me repeat that: the net worth of the average American household dropped by more than one-third in ten years. The decline from the 2007 peak was almost 50%, in just six years. (Most of that loss was in the value of one's home - home is where the heartache is.) That's why everyone is so angry. The net worth decline of someone at the 25th percentile (meaning that three-quarters of all household are richer than you) was even more extreme - from $10,129 to $3200. And among the bottom 5%, whose net worth is negative, their debt tripled. Only the top 10% of all Americans improved their standards of living during that decade. As the study summarized, "wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly doubled." By the way, this is not an isolated study. Other studies have shown declining hourly wages going all the way back to 1974. That's more than four decades of worse-and-worse. Look at what's been in the headlines lately: Fast Track. Obamacare. Power plant emissions. Marriage equality. Greece. Entirely absent from the airwaves is any discussion of what's really on people's minds, i.e., this. So, to sum it up, people's lives are circling the drain, and nobody's even talking about it, much less doing something about it. That's why everyone is so angry. And I'm hoping against hope that my party, the Democratic Party, wakes up and does something about it. Speaking for myself, I'll try my best to do something about it. But you knew that already. Courage, Rep. Alan Grayson

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

The Nation was founded 150 years ago today

Dear FRIEND, The Nation was founded 150 years ago today by a small group of abolitionists centered in and around Boston and New York City, who distributed the first issue to curious friends by hand. Today, The Nation publishes about 70 articles a week online, which go out to more than 420,000 Twitter followers, almost 290,000Facebook fans, and 200,000 e-mail subscribers. All this data can be overwhelming and, for some publications, even dispiriting. It’s become an industry cliché to lament how the Internet rewards content mills that churn out the equivalent of digital fast food. But here at The Nation, the exact opposite has proved true: The more we learn about our readers, the more inspired we are to create great journalism for them. The digital revolution has empowered our single greatest asset—The Nation’s readers—and you’ve responded by sharing our best work with millions of new readers every month. That’s why, today—exactly 150 years after the publication of our first issue—we’re relaunching TheNation.com. The new site, created in partnership with Blue State Digital andDiaspark, represents our commitment to being at the forefront of independent journalism for the next generation. The article template is designed with the Nation ambassador in mind: Beautiful, clear fonts (Mercury and Knockout) and a variety of image fields make the articles a joy to read—on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Prominent share tools, Twitter quotes, and a “highlight to e-mail/tweet” function make it easy to share them with others. Meanwhile, the home page doubles down on The Nation’s identity as a magazine of ideas and values. A variety of new tools allows us to showcase not just today’s top stories, but the depth of our coverage and archive. Related pieces will be grouped together to help readers understand the political and historical context of today’s crises. You might find, for example, an editorial calling on candidates to refuse to accept money from fossil-fuel companies paired with groundbreaking essays by Naomi Klein and Chris Hayes, along with a petition cosponsored by our friends at 350 Action. You’ll notice a few more changes as well. For the next few months, there’s no paywall: All of our articles will be free to everyone—our gift to you in The Nation’s 150th-anniversary year. Later, we’ll introduce a metered system that continues to put The Nation in front of new readers, but also asks our regular visitors to contribute to the cost of independent journalism. Finally, only subscribers will be able to leave comments—and they’ll be asked to identify themselves with a first and last name. We think it’s only fair that commenters stand by what they write, and give something to the community in return. Enjoy, and please let us know what you think. Yours, Richard Kim Executive Editor

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

CVS : Stop selling Antarctic krill oil

Dear Friend, Whales. Penguins. Seals. These are just some of the creatures that could be in serious danger if pharmacy giant CVS doesn’t stop selling Antarctic krill oil as a health supplement. We made our own cute little video to tell CVS to put our environment over its profits and ditch krill oil for good.  Click here to watch the video and then share it with your friends. Thanks for all that you do, Paul, Kat, Hannah, Nick, and the team at SumOfUs.org P.S. Websites like Facebook and YouTube let people promote videos to users who are likely to be interested -- but it costs money. Can you chip in a few dollars to help us pay for ads to make sure more people hear about endangered krill? SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. Please help keep SumOfUs strong by chipping in $3

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Calling for an immediate moratorium on crude-by-rail now.

Join the Week of Action!

Friends,

Today marks the second anniversary of the tragic oil train catastrophe that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. 

Since then, over a dozen oil trains have derailed, but little has been done to stop the danger they pose.

This needs to stop. Now.

And people across North America agree. They are gathering in their communities all week long to help put a stop to oil trains and you should join them — click here to find an event near you.

Crude-by-rail has been expanding at a blistering pace over the past couple years, but government regulations have failed to keep up. According to our analysis, there are as much as a million barrels of oil per day crisscrossing the continent by rail and, if expansion were to continue, there could be even more in the coming years.

Oil train explosions are what a ‘All of the Above’ energy policy based on increased oil drilling looks like. And the safety of our climate and communities are at risk. That’s why we’re calling for an immediate moratorium on crude-by-rail now.

Last year thousands gathered at over 60 events for the first Stop Oil Trains Week of Action. Help make this year even bigger by joining an event near you, and bringing your family and friends.

It’s up to us to put a stop to this.

-David Turnbull 
Campaigns Director 
Oil Change International

Oil Change International campaigns to expose the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy. We are dedicated to identifying and overcoming barriers to that transition.

Want to support our work further? Click here to donate.
We are a 501c3 organization and all donations are fully tax deductible.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

In the Race to Control the Arctic, the U.S. Lags Behind

In the Race to Control the Arctic, the U.S. Lags Behind

Jul 6th, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

No comments yet

BY BOB REISS 7/6/15

It was just after Christmas 2012, and the Kulluk, a 250-foot-high, floating oil-drill rig, swung like a metronome in gale-force winds blowing through the Gulf of Alaska. The tug that had been towing the rig bobbed helplessly in 50-foot waves, her four diesel engines flooded with seawater as the rig’s skeleton crew of 18 drifted toward a barrier island. If the Kulluk hit, it might split open, spilling 143,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 12,000 gallons of hazardous fluids into the waters.

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Posted in: Alaska, Arctic, Chukchi Sea, Climate Change, Environment, Gas, Gulf of Alaska, Oil Spill, Pollution, President Putin, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Russia, Shell, United States.
Tagged: Alaska · Arctic Ocean · Chukchi Sea · Environment · Newsweek · President Putin · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Russia · Shell

The TRUTH will set you FREE.