American Family Voices in the News
New York Times: Big Banks Have a Powerful New Opponent
April 7, 2011- As a lobbying group, the largest American banks have been dominant throughout the latest boom-bust-bailout cycle – capturing the hearts and minds of the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the support of most elected representatives on Capitol Hill.
Big banks are lobbying Congress to delay a limit on fees they charge for debit-card transactions, and retailers are countering with an advertising campaign.Elaine Thompson/Associated Press Big banks are lobbying Congress to delay a limit on fees they charge for debit-card transactions, and retailers are countering with an advertising campaign.
Their reign, however, is being seriously challenged – finally – by an alliance of retailers, big and small, on whose behalf a variety of ads are now running, including on television (such as this one, by Americans for Job Security), the Web (such as this, by American Family Voices) and a powerful radio spot directly attacking the too-big–to-fail banks.
The immediate issue is the so-called Durbin amendment –- a requirement in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul legislation that would lower what are known as the interchange fees that banks collect when anyone buys anything with a debit card. Retailers pay the fees, but these are then reflected in the prices faced by consumers.
The United States has very high debit-card fees, colloquially known as swipe fees –- 44 cents on average (that amounts to 1.14 percent of the average purchase price of $39) and up to 98 cents for some kinds of cards. These fees are per transaction and although the formula is complex, the payment is a significant percentage of many purchases and poses a particular problem for smaller merchants. These fees are estimated to amount to $16 billion to $17 billion annually.
Read the rest of the story here.
The Hill: Glenn Beck: ‘Dang dong darn it’
April 1, 2011- “Dang dang dong darn it. Dang dang darn it. Dang. Darn it. Dang dang.”
That’s what passes for intelligent political discourse on the Glenn Beck radio show when it comes to clean air and protecting our children from harmful air pollutants like arsenic, mercury, soot, smog and carbon.
Beck and his co-host, Pat Grey, were reacting Thursday to a new television ad from American Family Voices that hits Congress for considering legislation that would prevent the EPA from updating pollution standards on everything from arsenic to mercury to carbon pollution. The ad, rightfully so, indicates that if we don’t reduce these harmful emissions, we are essentially leaving them in our air, water and food for children to consume. Scientific research has found that existing pollution standards have prevented 160,000 early deaths annually, including nearly three hundred infants each year.
Beck and Gray mock the ad, calling it “fear mongering,” and express pretend surprise at the notion that arsenic is dangerous to children. “I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to feed our kids arsenic!” one of them exclaims, shortly before bizarrely reading off a list of their children’s’ names and declaring each one of them “dead.”
Beck’s childish reaction gives short shrift to the issue at hand. Some in Congress argue that new pollution standards are too burdensome to business — though business coalitions like BICEP and CERES have come out in support of the standards. Others in Congress argue that it should be Congress, not the EPA, who should set pollution standards. That argument actually might hold water if the folks making it weren’t also blocking congressional efforts to set pollution standards.
But Beck, dang it, just wants to mock the whole thing. The reality is that children and babies are most susceptible to air pollutants. Exposure levels once thought to be safe are now considered dangerous. The Clean Air Act is the best defense we have against harmful air pollutants and it’s been doing a great job of protecting all Americans for 40 years, dang it. What Fred Upton and James Inhofe and Mitch McConnell want to do is prevent updating the standards so that polluters can continue to dump harmful substances into our air. Dang it, we should all be dang dong darn it angry about it. Even Glenn dang Beck.
Read the rest of the story here.
Michigan Messenger: Ad campaign targets Upton for anti-EPA stance
April 1, 2011- American Family Voices, a non-profit group that advocates for the environment and health care, has launched a TV ad campaign targeting Rep. Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) for his recent anti-EPA crusade.
The ad campaign focuses on the positive effects of the Clean Air Act, which Upton is attempting to weaken by preventing the EPA from regulating any substances related to greenhouse gases or global climate change. A press release from the group notes:
Over 80,000 of Congressman Upton’s constituents are estimated to have asthma, including over 19,000 children. Yet, over the course of his career, Congressman Upton has taken $765,000 in campaign contributions from oil, gas, electric utilities, coal and mining companies.
“Congressman Upton continues to put big corporate polluters ahead of the health of his constituents. We need to hold big polluters accountable and not allow them to block strong safeguards that would protect our health and quality of life,” said Mike Lux, President of American Family Voices. “Reducing toxic air pollution through updated EPA standards, especially pollution caused by power plants, will prevent the deaths of more than 675 people that die each year in Michigan from lung infections, heart attacks, and other diseases.”
Read the rest of the story here.
The Hill: Blocking the Clean Air Act Helps Polluters, Hurts Kids
March 30, 2011- Members of the House and Senate love to play the game of one step forward, two steps back; Republicans’ favorite role being the latter. This game has been a part of American politics since our nation was formed, but when political decisions affect the life and death of Americans there is no excuse for putting politics before progress.
The current battle over the EPA’s Clean Air Act updates is the perfect example of putting politics before common sense progress. The issue boils down to this: big polluters don’t want updated clean air standards because they’d have to comply with them by cutting the amounts of dangerous toxics they emit into our air. Their pals in Congress agree and are busy at work blocking any updates to the Clean Air Act even though EPA research shows that the Clean Air Act prevents 160,000 early deaths each year, including hundreds of babies. The polluters prefer dumping unlimited carbon pollution and tons of deadly pollutants like arsenic, ammonia, formaldehyde, mercury, dioxin and other harmful chemicals into the air – pollutants that poison our air and our water and aggravate asthma, and cause other respiratory and heart diseases. The Republicans’ insistent disregard for science and logic threatens our lives by allowing these silent killers to continue to poison our air and water, unchecked.
The Clean Air Act has protected our air, water, children and families for 40 years. Yet, it finds itself under an all out assault from Congress – with bill after bill being offered to delay, defund, deny and detract from the Act’s success and authority. Remember when New York City smog filled the air and made breathing a chore? Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught fire because it was so polluted? The Clean Air Act cleaned that up and is responsible for making these types of health threats a part of our past.
So how can Republicans overlook the public health benefits and the 160,000 lives saved each year because of the Clean Air Act? Because those 160,000 American lives don’t compare to the other six-figure numbers of interest to them. Republicans, and some Democrats, don’t want to fund the Clean Air Act updates because of the millions in campaign cash they receive from the big polluters, simple as that. They don’t care about the success of the Clean Air Act and how it has worked exactly the way it was intended, saving lives while cleaning up our air. As Americans, we can’t stand by and watch the special interests influence policies that will make us sick.
An organization I head up, American Family Voices, recently launched an ad campaign and petition to drive the message home: we don’t want the deaths and other public health threats that will result from this policy decision the Republican-controlled Congress wants to pursue. Our ad certainly doesn’t pull any punches, but if that’s what it takes to inform Americans that lives are at stake then so be it. Certainly, the debate about air pollution should include the truth: lives are at stake, and Congress is taking action to put us all at risk.
It’s time to stand up and tell Congress to stop playing games with our lives. When it comes to clean air we want to take steps forward with no going back. Preventing clean air standards for the sake of the special interests puts profits before American lives. It’s wrong, and we need to stop them from succeeding.
Read the rest of the story here.
The Washington Post: New ad portrays GOP attack on EPA as assault on babies
March 25, 2011- With several key votes set for next week on the GOP’s ongoing assault on the Environmental Protection Agency, this new ad gives us a hint on how the left intends to respond — by portraying the GOP push as an assault on children.
The Senate is set to vote next week on a GOP proposal — strongly opposed by the White House — to revoke the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. The new spot from American Family Voices, an organization that advocates for lower-income and middle-income families on economic, health care and consumer issues, goes directly for the heartstrings with images of babies and baby food jars, claiming the GOP initiative would endanger their lives:
The ad will run for a week on D.C. cable, suggesting the target audience is Beltway elites and that its goal is to frame the Dem response in Congress.
“The Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 early deaths last year, including 230 infants, yet Congress is busy working to prevent the EPA from updating and enforcing standards that would limit toxic pollutants that endanger the public health,” Mike Lux, President of American Family Voices, says. “If we don’t curb those pollutants, they’ll end up in our air, water and food and eventually in our children. Congress needs to let the EPA do its job to protect public health.”
Senate Democrats are plotting a strategic response to the GOP’s push. For instance, they may introduce an amendment that would exempt small industrial facilities and agricultural facilities from climate regulations, which would give moderate Dems in farm and heavy manufacturing states a way to go on record favoring curbs on EPA regulations without supporting the GOP’s drive to gut the EPA’s regulatory role completely.
But by and large, this fight is going to break down mostly along partisan lines, and this ad gives you a sense of how fraught the war over EPA’s fate could get.
Read the rest of the story here.
Roll Call: Heard On The Hill: Not Child’s Play
March 29, 2011 – Senators got an unexpected surprise dropped into their mailboxes Tuesday: baby food jars.
But with labels such as arsenic, mercury, dioxin and formaldehyde, these little glass pots offered up something a bit different than mushy peas or pureed carrots.
Instead of nutritious baby food, each jar contained a thumb drive with a copy of a new ad campaign that recently hit national airwaves in support of the Clean Air Act. The TV spot features a smiling baby being fed a spoonful of arsenic and ends with an urge for viewers to “Protect the EPA. Protect our kids.”
Paid for by American Family Voices, the delivery also included fact sheets, polling information and a sneak peek of an ad aimed at Rep. Fred Upton. The Republican’s home state of Michigan will see a special ad in the future, thanks to his position as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The jars also came complete with a health-warning label timed to the Environmental Protection Agency votes in the Senate this week, cautioning that the amendments to the small-business bill proposed by Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are “hazardous to public health.”
No baby talk in these little jars, it seems.