Top 10 Dirty Corporate Tax Dodgers of 2011

Two weeks ago it was announced that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world sparking furious debate from Fox News types concerned about corporate well being. At RAN, we decided to dig a little deeper to see whether the corporate tax rate really is unfairly penalizing multi billion dollar corporations. Our [...]

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DC Judge Restricts The EPA’s Ability To Protect Our Water and Ecosystems

I’m outraged by today’s news from DC. Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority in revoking permits for what could now become West Virginia’s largest mountaintop removal (MTR) mine. Back in January 2011, the EPA vetoed Arch Coal’s permit to mine at the Spruce site,  as it would cause [...]

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Corporate Drag Gets The Goods

Sometimes change doesn’t come from the direct action camps or the hard actions putting a wrench in the gears of the machine. Sometimes it comes from putting on a suit and having a conversation. Case in point, while traveling in New York this week, I attended the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit. The schedule featured [...]

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Boston Activists Make Bank of America ATMs More Truthful

What’s that old saying? “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” People are waking up to the fact that there’s a big difference between what banks like Bank of America are telling us and the truth. In another action targeting Bank of America for its financing of the coal industry, [...]

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Wanted: Brian Moynihan

When we got word that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan was visiting our fine city of San Francisco this week, we knew that we needed to track him down and have a frank conversation about his bank quitting coal. RAN is calling on the biggest U.S. banks to stop financing the polluting coal industry [...]

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Huge Victory in Chicago

I just got word today that the City of Chicago has struck a deal with Midwest Generation and plans to close its two dirty coal-fired power plants: the Fisk plant by December and the Crawford plant by the end of 2014. This is a tremendous victory for the communities that have been fighting for clean [...]

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Coal River Tree-sitter Sentenced To 7 Days In Jail

Direct action is not as glamorous as many would have you believe. Days, weeks, or years in jail or prison is not easy. But fighting to save precious land and communities is damned motivating. Coal River Mountain tree-sitter Catherine-Ann has just been sentenced to seven days in a West Virginia regional jail. Her crime? She [...]

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Strip Mining Appalachia’s History

We’re starting hear rumblings that Arch Coal might be preparing to begin mountaintop removal coal mining operations on historic Blair Mountain. Blair Mountain is the site of the second largest armed insurrection in U.S. history (after the civil war.) In 1921, 10,000 miners fought an army of coal company thugs on Blair Mountain who were [...]

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King Coal Ups The Ante In Oregon

The reports of King Coal’s demise appear to be exaggerated. At least for now. After a year of fighting for coal export terminals proposals in Washington, coal companies are moving south into Oregon. Last week, it was announced that port officials at the Port of St. Helen’s, OR approved proposals to allow coal export terminals [...]

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L.A.’s Dark Secret

In the 1974 classic Roman Polanski neo-noir film Chinatown, private detective Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) discovers one of LA’s dirty secrets: Wealthy developers are legally stealing precious water from poor struggling farmers in California’s central valley to hydrate the posh homes of Beverly Hills and a rapidly growing Los Angeles. It’s a sordid [...]

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