Tell President Obama: Appoint an S.E.C. Chair Who Will Hold Wall Street Accountable

Yesterday S.E.C. Chair Mary Schapiro announced that she will be resigning. This decision presents President Obama with a very important opportunity. As one of the top regulators of Wall Street, the S.EC. should be a champion for accountability on Wall Street. But according to the New York Times, Sallie Krawcheck, the former head of global wealth  management at Merrill Lynch and a former top executive at Citigroup, is being considered for the position. Let’s tell President Obama that he must appoint someone who will hold Wall Street accountable and will diligently enforce the law. Demanding accountability from Wall Street would set a powerful precedent by Obama while bringing much needed justice to Main Street.

Outrageous: Keystone XL conflict of interest

President Obama has nominated Susan Rice to become the next Secretary of State, who conveniently has nearly a third of her personal wealth—estimated between $23-$43 million—tied up in Canadian oil producers and pipeline operators, as well as energy companies known to have poor environmental protection records. Rice holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. OnEarth Magazine reports.”If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project.” We must demand that Rice immediately sell every dollar of stock in every one of those companies.

Stop the Marketing of Junk Food to Kids

Food and Water Watch released a report on the persuasiveness of food advertising to children and the results are shocking. With one in three American children and adolescents overweight or obese, restricting unhealthy food marketing to youth is one important step in addressing this crisis. The industry that wants to sell children soda and junk food relies on self-regulation in their marketing campaigns. Letting this industry regulate itself has only contributed to the alarming rate of childhood obesity. To quote Michelle Obama, “the physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation is at stake.” Let’s ask President Obama to listen to his wife’s wise words and demand that he improve the health of children and adolescents by strengthening regulations on food marketing.

Urge Congress to Support Wind Energy

Time is running out for Congress to renew a critical tax credit for wind energy development, which expires December 31. Clean energy from wind and other renewable sources is critical to efforts seeking to curb the global warming trend threatening the stability of the environment on which we depend. As pointed out by Susan Stephenson, Executive Director of the renewable energy advocacy group, Interfaith Power & Light, “We need clean energy from wind and other sources to curb global warming, and the wind industry has been growing, in part thanks to the tax credit.” Devastatingly, the expiration of wind energy tax credits threatens to cut the number of current jobs in the wind industry in half, resulting in loss of income for thousands of American workers.  Sign the petition urging congress to renew tax credits for the wind industry to continue the fight to end global warming and create American jobs.