Ever wonder how pipeline-building corporations get around those pesky risk assessments and environmental reviews -- not to mention public comment periods! -- they're supposed to get before building? Well, of course you haven't; you don't spend all your waking hours thinking up ways to get over. Anyway, they get the Army Corps of Engineers to approve their really long pipeline project as a series of much smaller pipeline projects, since smaller projects don't require all those reviews. The Corps has the authority to approve small pipeline projects via a process called Nationwide Permit 12 from the Clean Water Act, but if big corporations are using it to pretend their big pipelines are really a bunch of little pipelines, then we might call that a loophole big enough to build a pipeline through. We could also call it an abuse of power, a circumvention of the democratic process (since risk assessments, environmental reviews, and public comment periods benefit the public), and, not incidentally, yet another way of using small operators to shield the abuses of big operators. So the Sierra Club helps you tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop fast-tracking big pipelines as small ones just to avoid public review.
Meanwhile, we could all grow old waiting for President Obama to issue his purported Executive Order mandating that federal contractors disclose their political campaign spending -- seriously, didn't we hear the Order was imminent, like, weeks ago? -- so, in the meantime, People for the American Way helps you tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to require publicly-traded corporations to disclose their campaign spending. I know, getting the SEC to do anything on behalf of the people (versus the banksters!) is like pulling teeth, but the SEC has already received over a million public comments demanding such campaign finance disclosure. The SEC looked pretty bad when they ignored all those comments, and you may argue that this means they won't act now, but I'd argue that we only need remind them of how bad they looked, because people don't want to look bad once, let alone twice. I'd also remind the SEC that protecting investors from abuse by corporate executives and corporate boards is their job, and that campaign spending by those executives and boards is something those investors deserve to know about. And if you're invested in a pension fund, you're likely one of those investors, too. So let's remind the SEC that they're supposed to serve people, not "markets."
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5474, the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, and thus demand better human rights protections from the government of Honduras, then Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn still help you do that. H.R. 5474 would end American training and funding of Honduran security officers until the Honduran government launches a credible investigation into the murder of numerous human rights activists there, including Ms. Cáceres. After our government pulled a Hamlet and debated the precise definition of "coup" during the right-wing military coup of Honduras -- which, I feel compelled to add, deposed a democratically-elected President whom most corporations found too worker-friendly for their tastes -- this is, frankly, the least we can do. And I'll brook no silliness about the even-worse government we could have in Honduras if we don't support this one, because you know that's a hostage situation -- and you also know that exactly zero self-styled "foreign policy realists" were advancing that argument as the military was deposing President Zelaya in 2009. Call me quaint, but I think values actually matter, and they matter more when actions reflect them.
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