March, 31 2016, 11:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
David Turnbull, david@priceofoil.org, 202-316-3499
John Sellers, john@other98.com, 510-390-6416
Rodrigo Estrada, rodrigo.estrada@greenpeace.org, 202-478-6632
100,000+ Urge President to End Fossil Fuel Leasing from Public Lands and Waters
Keep it in the Ground” petition meets goal, response from White House required
WASHINGTON
A petition calling for an end to fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters has garnered more than 100,000 signatures on the White House's "We the People" online platform, surpassing the threshold necessary to trigger an official response from the White House.
The petition, supported by a number of progressive organizations, calls on the President to "secure [his] climate legacy by halting all new drilling, fracking, and mining on public lands and waters, including stopping all new offshore drilling in the Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic."
Initiated by the Other98, Oil Change International and Greenpeace USA, the campaign to collect signatures and force an official White House response includes a broad range of additional progressive organizations, including: Courage Campaign, Daily Kos, Environmental Action, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch, The Nation, Stand (formerly ForestEthics), Rainforest Action Network, WildEarth Guardians, and WatchDog.
"In the last nine months, President Obama has rejected the Keystone pipeline, cancelled Arctic Ocean drilling leases, and halted new coal mining leases on public lands. But our children and grandchildren need him to be even more audacious in stabilizing the climate," said John Sellers, Executive Director of Other98. "When this President looks back in 25 years, will his legacy be as the President who finally broke with Big Oil, or the President who left our oceans and public lands on the table?"
"The movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground has been growing at an amazing clip all around the country. We're excited to hear from the White House in response to this petition, because we know that if they are serious about tackling climate change, they will heed this call," said David Turnbull, Campaigns Director at Oil Change International. "Allowing for continued extraction of fossil fuels on our public lands endangers communities and fails the climate test. We need to stop digging and drilling away our future, and our public lands are a great place to start moving in a new direction."
"Thousands from all across the country are united behind the call to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. This growing movement is providing support for President Obama to secure his climate legacy. We are united behind a clear demand: protect our communities, our environment and our climate from those who have placed profit over people. The President should listen and act," said Vicky Wyatt, Climate Campaigner at Greenpeace USA.
The petition milestone comes amidst a series of escalating protests at federal fossil fuel lease sales in recent months, including a recent sale at the Superdome in New Orleans which saw hundreds of protesters disrupting the sale proceedings and expected activity at hearings across the country regarding the Obama administration's most recent draft offshore drilling plan.
The full petition can be found at https://ObamaClimateLegacy.us or on the White House's official "We the People" petition site at https://1.usa.gov/1RoeB3N.
"Extreme oil, coal and fracked gas are over," said Ross Hammond, US campaigns director, Stand. "We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground and anyone who is paying any attention to justice, safety, and the environment knows exactly why. President Obama understands the imperative and the urgency. The time to act is now."
"The current practice of selling off America's precious public lands and waters for pennies on the dollar to some of world's dirtiest and wealthiest corporations must stop now," said Ruth Breech, senior climate and energy campaigner with Rainforest Action Network. "This outdated corporate giveaway no longer serves our communities, our climate or our children's future and ending it is the single most important action on the climate Obama can take in his remaining months in office."
"Public lands belong to the American people," said Dr. Gabriela Lemus, President of Progressive Congress. "Current leasing practices damage the land while leaving Americans to suffer the consequences. As more oil companies go bankrupt, oil wells are abandoned and orphaned, requiring extensive clean-up and creating serious health hazards. President Obama has set climate objectives and pledged to reduce our nation's dependence on fossil fuels to hasten our departure from dirty energy. This is a great opportunity for him to live up to those promises: leave fossil fuels untouched underground and protect the land for future generations to enjoy."
"President Obama speaks eloquently about the threat of climate change, but while in office he has enabled a dramatic increase in domestic oil and gas production, especially on our treasured public lands," said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch. "We are quickly approaching climate crisis and must reject fossil fuels now. President Obama should use his remaining time in office to ban fracking, keep fossil fuels in the ground by halting leases on federal lands, and lead us on a path to a 100% renewable energy future."
"President Obama can use his executive authority to get us on the right track," said Mara Schechter, Campaign Director of Daily Kos. "He doesn't need to deal with an obstructionist Congress, or the oil and gas industry. He alone can put millions of tons of carbon off limits."
"For all the President's talk on climate change these last seven years, the harsh reality is it's business as usual when it comes to him selling more than 30 million acres of public lands and waters for fracking for oil and gas," said Tim Ream, WildEarth Guardians Climate and Energy Campaign Director. "Worse still, climate impacts from not one of these sales have ever even been studied. Our climate and our future demand nothing less than this President keep it in the ground."
"President Obama made a promise in Paris to cap global warming well below catastrophic levels of 2 degrees Celsius," said Drew Hudson, director of Environmental Action. "If he's serious about keeping that promise he's got to stop permitting new fossil fuel drilling and infrastructure. And that's the message he's been hearing all month from the New Orleans superdome to the pancakes not pipelines protest at FERC and in many other places. The call to keep it in the ground is only getting louder this spring and it's time for the president to listen up.
"The reign of Fossil Fuel Empires is coming to an end. The Keep It in the Ground movement gains strength and momentum every time the federal government mismanages our public lands and waters and tries to sell off publicly owned fossil fuels to the highest bidder. President Obama's climate legacy depends on keeping fossil fuels in the ground to protect communities and our planet and justly transition to a clean energy economy," said Marissa Knodel, Climate Campaigner, Friends of the Earth.
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
'This Maniac Must Be Stopped': Netanyahu Condemned Over Massive Beirut Bombing
While Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly survived the attack on the densely populated area of Lebanon's capitol, one observer warned that Israel may still "get the regional war it has sought."
Sep 27, 2024
Israel's dropping of massive bombs in Beirut on Friday sparked a fresh wave of global condemnation against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with critics accusing him of trying to drag the Middle East into an even bloodier conflict that could engulf the entire region.
The Israeli attack supposedly targeted Hassan Nasrallah, head of the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Multiple media outlets reported that the leader survived, though hundreds of others are feared dead in the "complete carnage" from the bombing that leveled several buildings. While the death toll from Friday is not yet clear, over 700 people have been killed in Israel's strikes in Lebanon since Monday.
As The New York Timesreported:
Lebanon's health minister, Firass Abiad, said that there had been a "complete decimation" of four to six residential buildings as a result of the Israeli strikes. He said that the number of casualties in hospitals was low so far because people were still trapped under the rubble. "They are residential buildings. They were filled with people," Mr. Abiad said. "Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble."
Social media and news sites quickly filled with photos and videos of massive plumes of smoke and smoldering rubble.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, said Friday that she was "deeply alarmed and profoundly worried about the potential civilian impact of tonight's massive strikes on Beirut's densely populated southern suburbs. The city is still shaking with fear and panic widespread. All must urgently cease fire."
However, the bombing is widely expected to worsen this week's escalation, which came after nearly a year of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) trading strikes with Hezbollah over the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 41,000 Palestinians.
"For Israel, it may not matter if Nasrallah was killed. Either way, it believes it'll get the regional war it has sought," Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said of the Friday attack.
Citing an unnamed Israeli official, NBC Newsreported that "Israel expects Hezbollah will attempt to mount a major retaliatory attack" in response to Friday's bombing of the group's command center.
As Reutersdetailed:
Israel has struck the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, four times over the last week, killing at least three senior Hezbollah military commanders.
But Friday's attack was far more powerful, with multiple blasts shaking windows across the city, recalling Israeli airstrikes during the war it fought with Hezbollah in 2006.
In a video posted on social media, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari described the Friday attack as "a precise strike" on what "served as the epicenter of Hezbollah's terror," adding that the group's headquarters "was intentionally built under residential buildings."
During Netanyahu's United Nations General Assembly speech on Friday—which was met with a walkout from several diplomats and other officials—the prime minister said that Hezbollah has stored rockets "in schools, in hospitals, in apartment buildings, and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon. They endanger their own people. They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage."
In response, Middle East expert Assal Rad said, "So he's claiming there's no civilian spaces in Lebanon and Israel has a right to destroy all of it."
Jason Hickel, who has positions at multiple European universities, also sounded the alarm over those lines from the Israeli leader's speech.
Netanyahu is "effectively arguing all homes are a military target," he said. "This is 100% genocidal and this maniac must be stopped."
Hours before the attack in suburban Beirut, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) strongly condemned "Israel's brutal bombardment of Lebanon, another reckless escalation in the Middle East on behalf of the Benjamin Netanyahu regime that risks further destabilization in an already fragile region."
"The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is the latest dark chapter in a series of disproportionate displays of force. Its ongoing genocide in Palestine over the last year has proven beyond any doubt that its willingness to commit horrific acts knows no bounds," DiEM25 said. "Rather than seeking a peaceful and just resolution, Israel's government has consistently chosen the path of militarism, often with international support from the European Union and the United States."
"The international community, including the E.U., has a critical role to play in promoting peace rather than enabling violence," the group added. "Peace and security in the Middle East will not come through bombs and military strength. It will come through diplomacy. We remain committed to working towards that aim and stand in solidarity with the Lebanese people, as well as all others suffering from this violent escalation."
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'This Is Political,' Journalist Who Published Vance Dossier Says of Permanent X Ban
"It's not about a violation of X's policies," wrote Ken Klippenstein. "What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
Sep 27, 2024
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein said Friday that he was privately informed by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X that his account has been permanently banned, a decision that Klippenstein argued was "politically motivated."
X, formerly Twitter, suspended Klippenstein on Thursday after he posted to the platform a link to his Substack article containing a download link for a 271-page dossier that Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign prepared to vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who was ultimately chosen as the former president's running mate.
The dossier, Klippenstein noted, "reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign," and major news outlets such as Politicodeclined opportunities to publish it. The U.S. Justice Department on Friday charged three men with allegedly carrying out a hack against the Trump campaign.
In a statement issued late Thursday afternoon as it faced backlash, X said that "Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance's physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number."
On Friday, Klippenstein—who has previously worked for The Intercept and The Nation—shared a private message from X informing him that his account is "permanently in read-only mode, which means you can't post, Repost, or Like content" or "create new accounts."
"The two-step dance X is doing here—avoiding further backlash by pretending like my suspension is just a temporary thing, no big deal, while privately suspending me permanently—only makes sense when you consider the political dimensions," Klippenstein wrote on his Substack. "Elon Musk is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and JD Vance's political campaign. The Wall Street Journalreported that he promised $45 million a month for a pro-Trump Super PAC (Musk subsequently disputed this). So X clearly doesn't want to give the appearance that my ban was politically motivated. But a careful look at the pretext X cites for my suspension makes it obvious that this is political."
"The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over."
Observers have noted the obvious parallels between the social media platform's handling of the Vance dossier and a 2020 New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. At the time, Twitter—not yet under Musk's ownership—placed restrictions on sharing of the Post story, limits that were reversed months later.
Klippenstein noted Friday that Musk—a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist"—was "so incensed by Twitter's previous owners' decision to block the story on its platform that he took the extraordinary step of releasing Twitter's internal correspondence to independent journalist Matt Taibbi so he could report on how the decision came about. (I support his transparency, by the way.)"
"Now, anyone posting a link to my article finds their account locked, which is exactly how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post," Klippenstein wrote.
Journalist Lee Fang pointed out shortly after Klippenstein's ban that "the Hunter Biden laptop—which had newsworthy info that was fair game—also had personal dox info, far more than this Vance doc."
"The Biden laptop had bank/credit cards, personal addresses, nudity, etc," Fang added. "You can still link to those Biden docs on X, but Vance doc link banned?"
Klippenstein argued that "the biggest tell that this is political" is that X did not offer him a chance to restore his account by removing the post that resulted in his ban, as the platform typically does with users accused of violating its policies.
"As an experiment, last night my editor and I decided to redact all 'private' information from the Vance dossier in my story here at Substack," Klippenstein wrote Friday. "Despite filing an appeal in which I mention this, I remain banned. So it's not about a violation of X's policies. What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
"Boo hoo, poor me, I lost my account. That's not the point here," he continued. "If you were frustrated with the media's refusal to publish the Vance dossier, prepare for a future that's worse. The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over. Why take the risk when you can just blather on about the horse race? As always, it's the public that loses out the most."
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Dems Name and Shame Companies Paying Executives More Than They Pay in Federal Taxes
"In the first five years following the 2017 giveaway, 35 companies raked in $277 billion in domestic profits and paid their executives $9.5 billion."
Sep 27, 2024
A group of congressional Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday highlighted dozens of profitable U.S. corporations that have paid their executives more than they've paid in federal income taxes in recent years, a problem that the lawmakers attributed in large part to former President Donald Trump's massive tax-cut package that Republicans are working to extend.
"In the first five years following the 2017 giveaway, 35 companies raked in $277 billion in domestic profits and paid their executives $9.5 billion—more than they paid in federal income taxes," the lawmakers noted in letters to each of the companies, pointing to recent research by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness.
"Next year, Congress will decide what to do with these corporate giveaways. Republicans have promised to go even further if elected and cut the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 15%," the lawmakers continued. "This additional tax giveaway would provide Fortune 100 corporations as a whole with another $50 billion each year, more than all current K-12 federal education spending."
"The windfall from TCJA to big businesses, executives, and wealthy shareholders is unmistakable."
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the Senate and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in the House led the letters to the 35 companies, a list that includes high-profile names such as Netflix, Ford, and Tesla, whose CEO is the richest man in the world.
"Tesla is among the most dramatic examples of this phenomenon—big, profitable corporations that have actually been paying their top executives more than they pay the government in federal income taxes," the lawmakers wrote. "According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness, in the period between 2018 and 2022, Tesla raked in $4.4 billion in profits and did not pay a single dollar in federal income tax."
During that same period, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk received "the largest pay package ever recorded for a company's CEO," the lawmakers observed.
The other companies that have paid their top executives more than they've paid in federal taxes in recent years are T-Mobile, AIG, NextEra, Darden, MetLife, Duke Energy, First Energy, DISH, Principal Financial, American Electrical Power, Kinder Morgan, Dominion, Oneok, Williams, Xcel Energy, NRG Energy, Salesforce, DTE Energy, Ameren, Sempra Energy, U.S. Steel, Entergy, AmerisourceBergen, PPL, CMS Energy, Evergy, Voya Financial, Atmos Energy, Alliant Energy, Match Group, UGI, and Agilent Tech.
The lawmakers demanded that the companies' CEOs answer several questions, including how much the corporations would have paid in federal taxes had the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) not been enacted and how much they've spent on lobbying to keep the Republican law intact.
"The windfall from TCJA to big businesses, executives, and wealthy shareholders is unmistakable," the letters read. "A recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that 342 companies paid an average effective income tax rate of just 14.1% during the five years after TCJA passed, almost a third less than the 21% statutory rate. The gains do not 'trickle down'—90% of workers saw no earnings increase, while executives making $989,000 per year or more got an average raise of $50,000."
The letters were released days after the Economic Policy Institutereleased an analysis showing that CEO pay has soared by 1,085% since 1978 while the pay of typical U.S. workers has grown by just 24%.
The 2017 Trump-GOP tax law led major companies to splurge on stock buybacks, a major gift to corporate executives whose annual compensation packages consist largely of stock.
"President [Joe] Biden and Democrats in Congress are committed to making corporations pay their fair share," the lawmakers wrote in their letters. "In the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, we passed the first corporate tax increase in 30 years with the 15% corporate minimum tax. Though significant, raising $222 billion from billion-dollar corporations, it is not enough on its own to undo the corporate tax giveaways signed into law by President Trump and ensure that corporations pay their fair share."
"Next year," they added, "Congress has an opportunity to take bigger strides in reforming our tax code—to raise the corporate rate, close loopholes, and hold big businesses to the same standards as everyday working Americans who pay their fair share."
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