As you know, the U.S. brokered a climate-change deal with China last week, and to hear Bill McKibben tell it, it has more value as a PR document than an actual agreement with hard targets would have (though good PR isn't necessarily valueless). Hence Friends of the Earth helps you tell President Obama to do more to avert climate change catastrophe. Last week's accord, after all, sets very meetable (and therefore not necessarily useful) emissions reduction targets -- and no law in the universe can prevent us from agitating for more renewable energy sources and more stringent anti-pollution regulations just because President Obama signed an accord with China. What do we always say, after all? It's not our job to support the President; it's the President's job to support us. And given the number of climate change denialists who've just been elected to Congress, we'll have to fight for a lot more than the status quo just to improve the status quo. Personal to those politicians who refuse to act because "I'm not a scientist": you don't need to be a scientist to know not to eat dung, do you?
Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell the government of Luxembourg to stop being a tax haven for big corporations. Not just because telling our government to close corporate tax loopholes is like shouting at a wall built by every large corporation on the planet -- but also because making folks think of tax evasion whenever they think of Luxembourg is a worthwhile PR project for as long as Luxembourg lets corporations like Pepsi, JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, FedEx, and so many others shift their profits there. And making folks think of higher taxes for people and small businesses, or lousy government services due to lost revenues from corporations shifting their income to whichever country gives them the best tax deal, is worthwhile as well. And Luxembourg occupies less space than Rhode Island and is home to fewer inhabitants than any one U.S. House district. In other words, regardless of its corporate support, we should be able to exert some influence on the good folks of Luxembourg, who, if they knew about it, probably wouldn't like being used the way they are.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell WalMart to commit to $15/hour wages and full-time work for its workers, Color of Change helps you do that. We know WalMart can do that because WalMart has spent over $50 billion over the last five years buying back stock. Think their workers could have used some of that? Of course they could have -- not just to pay bills and stay off taxpayer assistance, but to get more education. And if WalMart's executives paid their workers $15/hour, they'd still be able to pay themselves pretty damn well. And I sure as hell don't want to hear any guff from the right that WalMart retail workers aren't "skilled" enough to make that kind of money, because that work does take skill, and because that's what right-wingers have been saying about every damn worker that's ever lived since they became the kind of people who only care about money. Gosh, I think I may have just found the thing to finish off Scott Walker's Presidential ambitions -- nah, just kidding, Democrats would be too chicken to defend the innate value of every American worker.
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