Open Letters to Our Leaders

Dear editor,

This Christmas season I find myself ashamed at the falling status of our country in the estimation of foreign governments and citizens. Our national obsession with diversion and entertainment has allowed the Bush administration to dilute our moral responsibility to our neighbors, implicating us in torture, secret kidnappings, invading sovereign nations, and contributing to world pollution and unchecked resource consumption. Our government uses tactics such as lying, secret surveillance, and fuel market manipulation to keep the electorate confused. Ronald Regan must be spinning in his grave at the knowledge that in five short years, we have fallen from world benefactor to become the next Evil Empire.

Thank you.

Dear Postmaster General Potter:

Please bar the shipment of day-old chicks as postal mail on commercial airlines.

Animals should not be treated as common postal mail. Day-old chicks are especially fragile and vulnerable, and shipping them in the mail without consideration of their most basic needs -- food, warmth, ventilation and protection from injury -- is cruel and unconscionable.

No reasonable person would consider shipping a live kitten or puppy as mail, and neither should anyone treat baby chicks in this cruel way.

As you may know, FedEx refuses to ship baby chicks or any animals as mail. It's time that the U.S. Postal Service adopt a similar, humane stance and bar the shipment of baby birds in the mail.

Sincerely,

I write today urging you to strip the mining provisions inserted by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) in to the budget reconciliation bill. Representative Pombo is circumventing the democratic process by using a reconciliation committee to ram through his corporate-friendly policies.

The mining subtitle would legalize one of the largest corporate land grabs in U.S. history. This initiative would open many millions of acres of publicly owned lands -- land that is supposed to be held in trust for all Americans now and in the future -- for purchase by foreign and domestic corporations and other private interests.

For example, under the proposal, developers could claim lands on the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park adjacent to the Park border, purchase them, and then build a massive housing development. This scenario could be repeated directly outside National Parks, Wilderness, and anywhere else on the public's land not specifically withdrawn from mining.

A public policy change of this magnitude deserves ample open public debate. But there has been none. The mining language was made public two days before committee markup. This language has never been introduced in a stand-alone bill. It's never been debated at a hearing. If the budget bill passes with the mining subtitle attached, Representative Pombo will have single-handedly weakened the General Mining Law of 1872 -- a 133 year old law affecting 30% of all lands in the western United States, and 15% of lands in the entire U.S.

Congress has a responsibility to manage the nation's public lands for the benefit of ALL American citizens, now, and for future generations. This is a shameless and ill-advised proposal that even the mining advocates of 1872 couldn't hope to pass. Please don't let it happen on your watch. Please work to strip the mining subtitle out of S1932, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

Thank you.

Deep sea corals and sponges provide essential habitat for a wide range of marine species. More than 1,300 species live among the Lophelia coral reefs in the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean. These species rely on the coral and sponge gardens for protection, shelter, food, and room to spawn safely. Please increase protections for these slow-growing, fragile deep sea corals and sponges by demanding that Senators Stevens and Inouye include S. 1635 in the Magnuson Stevens Reauthorization Act.

The fishing practice known as "bottom trawling", however, threatens to destroy these critical ocean resources. Bottom trawlers get their catch by dragging huge, weighted nets behind their vessels, scooping up everything in their way. Unfortunately, these nets also destroy many underwater habitats -- including deep sea coral gardens, which they simply flatten.

You can help protect these vital habitats by demanding that Senators Stevens and Inouye include S. 1635 in the Magnuson Stevens Reauthorization Act. This important legislation would restrict the use of mobile bottom-tending fishing gears like trawls to areas that are known to be free of deep-sea coral gardens -- bringing the principle of "first, do no harm" to fishery management.

This legislation will provide critical protections to a key component of the marine ecosystem. As a constituent, I urge you to contact Senator Stevens and Inouye today and ensure that any reauthorization of Magnuson Stevens include protection for deep sea corals.

Thank you for your time and attention.