Oct 28, 2008 -- Fight the Right-Wing Wackos Links of the Day.

** Public Citizen **
While the investment bank Lehman Brothers faced bankruptcy and asked the federal government for a bailout, it arranged to pay executives millions of dollars in bonuses.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported that in September, the bank arranged to approve payments for two fired executives worth $18.2 million, and another $5 million payment for an executive who was leaving voluntarily. Four days later, Lehman went bankrupt, the first of a series of financial shocks that led to a bailout costing taxpayers $700 billion.

In fact, former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. said in October that a compensation system that paid him about $350 million between 2000 and 2007 was appropriate despite the company's financial woes.

This is infuriating! Write a letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee using the easy form below, and tell lawmakers to continue monitoring the actions of Lehman Brothers, fully exposing the irresponsible spending that contributed to our current financial meltdown.

Tell Congress: Stop Wasteful Corporate Spending

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** Center for Biological Diversity **
In response to the Center's petition, the National Marine Fisheries Service is conducting a status review to determine whether three ice-dependent seals that inhabit Alaskan waters warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. This is the first important step toward protection for ringed, bearded, and spotted seals -- all of which are threatened with extinction by the rapid loss of their Arctic sea-ice habitat due to global warming.

Please let the Bush administration know that you support the protection of these seals, and that we must reduce greenhouse gas pollution immediately to slow global warming and save them from extinction.

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** Earth Justice **
In one of the most important environmental cases of its history, in early 2007 the Supreme Court affirmed what Earthjustice had been saying all along: The Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to fight global warming. The EPA must act immediately and issue regulations that limit global warming pollution.

Tell the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to reduce global warming pollution!

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** Food and Water Watch **
You want food labels you can trust. “USDA Organic” should be one of them. Industrial fish farmers seek to cash in on the organic label – only you can stop them.

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB ) -- at the request of the industrial fish farming industry -- is considering allowing farmed fish to get the organic label even though the practices are anything but organic. This astonishing greenwashing covers up unsustainable practices like feeding wild fish to fish in open net pens in the ocean.

Feeding wild fish to farmed fish not only disrupts ocean ecosystems by wiping out the fish on the bottom of the food chain, but may also increase the amount of dangerous pollutants like mercury and PCBs that end up in the farmed fish consumers eat. And raising farmed fish in open nets can pollute the ocean with massive amounts of waste and exposes wild fish populations to parasites and other diseases.

Neither of these practices is consistent with organic principles that you have come to trust and that require minimal impact on the environment, control of inputs and outputs, and animals to be raised on organically-raised feed.

Tell the NOSB to stop the greenwashing and vote against lowering the bar for organic standards.