Qatar will host the World Cup in 2022, which should mean all kinds of job-creating construction -- except that corporations are taking advantage of Qatar's "guest worker" program, in which folks come from nearby countries with the hope of making a better life, and then get their passports taken away and are made to slave away in 120 degree heat with little or no food or water. And this has been going on for a while -- 2014 saw the deaths of over 180 workers in some World Cup-related project or other. Luckily, we can apply pressure, not just to Qatar's government, but to the American corporation overseeing much of the World Cup-related construction: CH2M Hill, whose CEO lives in Colorado. CH2M Hill blames the worker abuse the government of Qatar and local contractors there, but if CH2M Hill's leaders didn't know Qatar was a wage slave zone, then I'm Benedict Cumberbatch. (Full disclosure: I am not Benedict Cumberbatch.) So Avaaz helps you tell CH2M Hill and Qatar's government to treat Qatar's guest workers a lot better. Personal to those who say, well, those workers took their chances: is abusing workers ever OK?
Meanwhile, the Cape Wind offshore wind farm, long delayed by wealthy folks on the Cape who claim that the gotta-squint-to-see-it wind farm constitutes an eyesore, has met another obstacle: the nearly two dozen lawsuits against it over the years have helped cause Cape Wind to miss crucial financing and construction deadlines, which prompted National Grid to cancel its power-purchase agreement (or PPA) with the wind farm. National Grid would have bought half of Cape Wind's power, but no longer; without utility corporations to buy Cape Wind's power, Cape Wind has rather less chance of succeeding. And if the numerous lawsuits against Cape Wind seem a little odd to you, consider that one of the driving forces behind the Alliance for Nantucket Sound, which has filed many of the suits, is none other than Bill Koch -- that's right, of those Kochs -- which tells me it's not an "eyesore" issue at all, but an issue of a coal guy not wanting any competition from a power source he can't control. You know what that makes these lawsuits? Frivolous lawsuits, that's what. Hence CREDO helps you tell National Grid to get back on board with the Cape Wind project.
Finally, some good news: the Department of Labor has decided it will require all financial advisors to put customers' interests ahead of their own when giving retirement account advice. You'd think that'd be common sense, but common sense is the bitter enemy of the financial sector today, which cares about money and nothing else. And already the banksters are advocating against it: too many financial planners will lose their jobs, they say, as if no one else -- hell, maybe even some honest people! -- could possibly rise up to fill the resulting void. Banksters argue for the "genius of the free market" and the "creative destruction" it supposedly works upon economies when anyone else is on the receiving end, but let banksters themselves be the target of actual free market justice, and they whine like diaper-loaded brats until they get their handouts and bailouts. Well, perhaps that's unfair: diaper-loaded brats can eventually get their diapers changed, but banksters will still be banksters, demanding taxpayer handouts and giving nothing back to civilization. So Public Citizen helps you support a vigorous fiduciary responsibility rule for retirement planners.
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