LCV's 2013 National Environmental Scorecard, check your Senators and Reps record 3MAR14

CLICK the maps and links to see how your Representatives and Senators are voting on environmental issues.....
 

Take a look at our 2013 National Environmental Scorecard here >>

The 2013 National Environmental Scorecard numbers have been crunched, tallied, and posted and things are looking great in Virginia!

In 2013, both of your Senators took important votes to support the EPA’s work and fund efforts to fight climate change.

But, while your senators took action on climate change, the same can’t be said for many senators in other states, or the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives.

This year, House Republican leadership gave in to extremists in their party and supported even more attacks on our environment and public health safeguards. So now it’s more important than ever that we give champions like your senators the support they need to keep holding strong.

See which votes earned your senators a high score for the environment in 2013 and find out if your representative joined them >>

Congress started 2013 with votes to provide disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, but this year’s results make it painfully clear that far too many members failed to heed the lessons offered by that tragic storm and other extreme weather events.

The Republican-controlled House led attacks against the environment including efforts to: roll back cornerstone environmental laws; deny the costly impacts of carbon pollution; and subsidize dirty fossil fuels while cutting funding for renewable energy resources.

Luckily, both of your senators and the Obama administration helped block the vast majority of House-passed attacks on the environment and public health. It’s not easy to buck Big Oil and powerful special interest groups, so we have to let the pro-environment members of Congress like your senators know we appreciate them and want them to keep fighting.

Check out your senators’ scores and thank them for standing with the environment here >>

With one of our coolest new features you can see how your senators and your representative voted on particular issues that are most important to you. So whether it’s drilling, clean energy, or climate change in general, you can get a snapshot of their record here >>

The first step to getting more environmental policies passed is letting your members of Congress know that you’re paying attention. So I hope you’ll check out the 2013 National Environmental Scorecard and share it today: scorecard.lcv.org.

Best,

Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters

LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS 2012 SCORECARD 20FEB13

THE LCV has released it's Environmental Scorecard on the 112th Congress, and I have to agree with their comment, at least it is over. Click on the interactive map and links to see how your congressional delegation rates.....

JUST UNVEILED: Be the first to find out how your members of Congress measured up in LCV's 2012 National Environmental Scorecard and use our new, interactive website! Take a look at our new online National Environmental Scorecard here >> Today is a big day for us. Not only are we releasing the 2012 National Environmental Scorecard, but we're also unveiling a completely new, interactive Scorecard website, where you can see all the votes we've scored going back more than 40 years. Right now, I'm about to jump on a call to share this news with the national press, but I wanted to make sure that LCV members like you got an exclusive look at our new site before anyone else lays eyes on it. Find out where your members of Congress stood on the most important environmental votes of the year. Explore LCV's 2012 National Environmental Scorecard on our new website here >> Unfortunately the best thing that can be said about this session of the 112th Congress is that it's over. This was hands down, the most anti-environmental House of Representatives ever. Continuing their bad record from 2011, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) forced through radical bills attacking cornerstone environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. They pushed to drill off our shores and in the Arctic Refuge, tried to approve the harmful Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and attacked protections for our national parks, forests, and wildlife. If it wasn't for our champions in the U.S. Senate and the Obama Administration, many of the environmental and public health safeguards we rely on would have been lost. Want to know if your members of Congress stood with people or polluters last year? Take a look at the 2012 National Environmental Scorecard here. The good news is: if we can educate the public about anti-environmental legislators' records, we can build the public pressure to hold them accountable and improve our environmental policies in the years to come. So that's why we've completely overhauled our Scorecard website to make it easier for you to access and share the information not just from this year, but every year since the National Environmental Scorecard was first released in 1971. On our new website you can not only read about the votes and check out the scores for your members of Congress, but you can also see how your state's congressional delegation has voted compared to the rest of the country using interactive charts and maps. You can look at votes taken over the years on just one issue like clean energy or climate change. And we've built in share features that make it easy to spread the word on social media or send a message to your members of Congress to thank or reprimand them depending on their vote history. I hope you'll take a moment to explore and share our new National Environmental Scorecard website today at: scorecard.lcv.org Thanks for helping us make a major splash with this release by getting the word out today. Best, Gene Karpinski President League of Conservation Voters

1920 L Street, NW Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
202-785-8683

 

Practical Progress: What 'Bird by Bird' Can Teach US About Changing The World 20FEB13

PRACTICAL PROGRESS NEWSLETTER from the Agenda Project, reports from the world of Bold Progressive activism....

Back by popular demand, today we bring you the inaugural issue of our re-imagined Practical Progress newsletter which offers influential progressives a now-weekly, smart, insightful, actually ‘brief’ briefing on the most important News From The Movement.

As we continue our collective Road Trip to Progress (Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?!), we remind ourselves that a journey of 1,000 miles is . . .really, really, long; irritatingly slow; and only has so-so scenery. 

So to pass the time we re-read (for the 912^th time) Anne Lamott’s Instructions on Writing and Life, taking comfort in her words:

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'"

These are our favorite Birds. 

                    

PRACTICAL PROGRESS: The Agenda Project Action Fund’s actually ‘brief’ briefing on the most important News from the Progressive Movement.  

All You Need is a Gun License to Vote

Yesterday, Center for American Progress published a five-point primer on why protecting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act during the Supreme Court’s hearing of Shelby County v. Holder on Feb 27^th is critical for preventing voter-suppression laws from rising up in 16 states. Section 5 requires states with historically discriminatory voting practices to seek 'pre-clearance' with the DOJ or a three-judge court in DC before making any legal changes to their voting laws. Highlight from CAP’s primer:without Section 5, Texas would have considered concealed handgun licenses a valid form of voter ID, but not college or state employee IDs. (For more progressive substance on Section 5 this month, check out these pieces from:Brennan Center for Justice, American Constitution Society, Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights, Color of Change, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, America Votes, and NAACP).

Mark your Calendar: In defense of Section 5, Alliance for Justice will host a Twitter Town Hall on Feb 26^th, a rally in front of the Supreme Court in D.C. on Feb 27^th, and provide analysis on their blog Justice Watch after the hearing.

Facebook Profits: $1.1 Billion, Facebook Tax Bill: $0

A new Citizens for Tax Justice report shows that while Facebook will not be paying any federal or state taxes this year in spite of turning over $ 1.1 billion in profits, it is expecting to get $429 million back in net tax refunds. In a footnote on Facebook’s January financial statements, CTJ found that the company’s half a billion dollar refunds result from taking advantage of a single (and legal) corporate tax break: the tax deductibility of executive stock options. CTJ’s Rebecca Wilkins, Senior Counsel on Federal Tax Policy, says: “Why does the company get to take a deduction for stock option compensation, when it didn't cost them a dime? If Mark Zuckerberg won the lottery tomorrow, would we expect Facebook to get a tax deduction for his winnings? Stock options have pretty much the same impact on a company's income as do lottery winnings." In a similar report last year, CTJ identified the stock option tax break as one of the reasons why Fortune 500 companies pay so little taxes. (See CTJ’s Facebook report in BusinessWeek, Gawker, and The Atlantic).

And on a much lighter economic (read: pathetic) note today: Sorry Boehner, You Can’t Rewrite Sequester History!

99 PROBLEMS

Fox News prime-time hosts and their guests have used the terms ‘Illegals,” “Illegal Aliens,” and “Anchor Babies” 99 times since the election, even though these terms are banned on Fox News’ website for Latinos, according to a new Media Matters research analysis released on Tuesday. In an interview with The New Republic a few days ago, Fox President Roger Ailes admitted that Fox News really needs to find a new message on immigration.

Presente’s Movement Building Director Ana Perez says: “Fox can't have it both ways, loving Latinos on Fox Latino and hating Latinos on Fox in English. If Fox really wants to enter the Latino media market in a serious way, Roger Ailes needs to steer the network away from racial profiling and immigrant scapegoating. The Latino community knows this about Fox and we don't appreciate it. As the Univision-ABC Latino venture and other new Latino media initiatives indicate, you either lose the bigotry or lose the Latino market.”

In other immigration news, kudos to Progress Michigan for working hand-in-hand with Alliance for Immigrant Rights on getting Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson (R) to finally begin granting driver’s licenses to DREAMers this month.

Ken Cuccinelli is a Breath of Fresh Air

On Monday, American Bridge launched a website outlining passages that are “extreme by any standards” from VA Attorney General and aspiring Governor Ken Cuccinelli’s new book, The Last Line of Defense. According to the most overtly partisan Attorney General in Virginia history: “Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane were pollutants dangerous to public health because they allegedly caused global warming. Yet carbon dioxide is what we exhale every second of the day. It keeps the trees alive and allows them to make the oxygen that keeps us alive. It’s a wonderful symbiotic system that sustains life on earth. But to environmentalists, carbon dioxide is a slow killer” (p10). *See also: American Bridge’s Part-Time Cuccinelli video and Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s Keep Ken Out, which MIGHT explain this from WaPo: “Democrats urge sales of Cuccinelli Book” (h/t The Atlas Project). Update: HuffPo reports Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli are running dead even in the polls today – yikes!

JUST RELEASED:

• The League of Conservation Voters launched a new Environmental Scorecard revealing whether members of Congress stood with the people or polluters last year. According to LCV President Gene Karpinski: “This was hands down, the most anti-environmental House of Representatives ever.”
• Advancement Project launched a new website to end the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track. Must-read: The Top 12 Reasons to end the School-to-Prison Pipeline. (If you haven’t already, check out these awesome pictures of Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne-Dianis with Michelle Obama’s special SOTU guest, 102-year old Desiline Victor and Practical Progress’ 2012 MDV (‘Most Determined Voter’).

AWAKE THE STATE

On March 5^th, Floridians will rally across the state in a growing grassroots chorus of discontent with Governor Rick Scott. They will demand lawmakers to undo the damage of the 2011 voting law that notoriously caused Floridians to wait in line for up to 8 hours to vote last year (Find out more here). Central Organizers of ‘Awake The State’are: Progress Florida, Florida Watch Action, and America Votes.

Jump on the CFBU bandwagon with Senator Elizabeth Warren

Americans for Financial Reform issued a letter last week criticizing 43 Senate Republicans for attempting to filibuster Richard Cordray’s appointment to Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Lending full support to Cordray’s nomination, the letter accosts Republicans for exercising “extreme political brinkmanship of refusing to consider a well qualified nominee in order to extract changes in the law,” adding that their effort to block Cordray in order to “relitigate policies would hold hostage not just the CFPB director, but the future well-being of consumers, financial markets, and the economy.”

Email tips, news, and reactions to Practical Progress Editor, Shruti Sehgal at ssehgal@agendaproject.org (and add her email to your safe-list).

Make sure you SUBSCRIBE to our Practical Progress Newsletter. (We only send one newsletter per week. Trust us, it’s worth it).

Find out more about Practical Progress at www.practicalprogress.org.