The Obama Administration continues to work on the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," a "free" trade treaty that threatens to subjugate national laws to the will of multinational corporations. No liberal should support a "free" trade pact that would sully our air and water and injure our workers, just as no conservative should support a "free" trade pact that would overrule our laws. The good news? Most liberals and conservatives oppose "free" trade pacts like this one. The bad news? Just about everyone who does support them are in our government. And to think men like Sen. Baucus (D-MT), a walnut in the batter of eternity if ever there was one, have the cojones to want fast-track authority on these deals, so the President can bypass Congressional approval? The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Food and Water Watch help you tell your Congressfolk to reject "fast-track" authority for the President, while Roots Action helps you demand more transparency from the TPP "negotiations."
Meanwhile, the European Commission has banned the neonicotinoid pesticides that have killed off honeybees en masse all over the planet -- but the ban won't begin until December, and will only be in force for two years, unless renewed. Apparently, for Bayer and Syngenta, manufacturers of neonicotinoid pesticides, that's two years too long, because both corporations are actually suing the European Commission to get the ban overturned. You'd think the conservative thing to do would be to keep the ban and see if bees stop dying so rapidly. You'd think the liberal thing to do would be to find something that works nearly as well as a pesticide but doesn't have the awful side effects. But our corporate chieftains will have none of that! Still, public pressure got the EC to act in the first place, and we can exert public pressure whenever we like. So Sum of Us helps you tell Bayer and Syngenta to drop their lawsuits over their bee-killing pesticides.
Finally, you've no doubt heard that Ben Bernanke will leave the Chairmanship of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board later this year -- and you've no doubt also heard that longtime Clinton/Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summers is the Obama pick to replace him, though Mr. Obama hasn't said it out loud yet. But Mr. Summers shouldn't be the Chair of a damn thing -- repealing Glass-Steagall was his idea, not regulating derivatives was his idea, a bankster bailout that preserved bankster bonuses was his idea; why, even scrapping efforts toward a modest financial transaction tax was, allegedly, his idea. Does that sound like someone who should be running the Fed? The Campaign for America's Future helps you tell the White House to reject Mr. Summers as a candidate for Fed Chair. Because with ever more of these pro-finance "liberals" running things, we're not going to have very much of a future for very long.
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