The American Legislative Exchange Council is an organization consisting of global corporate interests and state legislators that collaborate secretly to draft thousands of model bills that are then introduced simultaneously in state capitols throughout the country. Meeting in backrooms, being wined and dined by corporate lobbyists like the Koch Brothers, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Exxon Mobil, Hughes Oil, Geo and Corrections Corporation of America (the private prison industry), the NRA, and the lobby to privatize our once great public school system, is not democracy of, by, and for the people. When you have government by the private prison industry, the NRA, or by the Koch Brothers, you have a culture where prison is encouraged by the school-to-prison pipeline, young black men are shot down with impunity, and a world where environmental degradation and climate change are the price we all must pay for business as usual. Some ALEC bills you may recognize: "Stand Your Ground Laws," promoted by the NRA; "Right to Work Legislation" supported by the Koch Brothers and other corporate interests, designed to kill living wages and public pensions; voter ID laws to kill democracy; bills to kill meaningful healthcare reform; the Parental Choice Scholarship Act that promotes vouchers and sends our tax dollars to for-profit schools and phony online degree programs. According to Progress Texas, out of 181 state legislators, at least 35 have known ALEC ties. It’s well past time to stop the flow of dirty money into our state legislatures. We must demand our elected officials stop subverting democracy and drop their memberships in ALEC. Let’s have government of, by, and for the people once again.

Over the past 20 years, childhood vaccines have saved 732,000 American children from dying. Vaccines are the greatest public health achievement in human history, and free coverage is required in the Affordable Care Act. In the US, kids are required to get four doses of Prevnar, which prevents 13 infectious diseases, before entering school. But moms like Breanna Farris of San Antonio, Texas, can't find a doctor who'll vaccinate their children. Breanna's insurance wouldn't reimburse her doctor the full, astronomical cost Pfizer and other Big Pharma are charging, so her family physician stopped vaccinating children entirely. Breanna had to go to a public clinic and lie, saying she had no insurance, to get her daughter vaccinated so she could attend school. Pfizer is charging doctors around $136 a shot for Prevnar, saying the price is justified because the vaccine cost $600 million to produce. But Pfizer didn't develop the drug or build its manufacturing facility, both of which it purchased in 2009. Since then, the price has gone up 6% each year, and the company has earned $4 billion in revenue on Prevnar, making it the world's best-selling vaccine. Pfizer's CEO Ian Read takes home a hefty $25 million a year. The most ludicrous part is that Pfizer sells the same exact drug to poor countries at $3.30 a dose, and still turns a profit. Meanwhile we have a whooping cough epidemic in the United States which has already infected over 3,000 people and killed two infants. Fewer than 10% of pregnant American women are vaccinated for whooping cough because the medicine is too expensive for their doctors to purchase. Tell Pfizer's CEO that in America, our people come before profits. Moms like Breanna Farris are trying to do the responsible thing for their kids, communities and country by vaccinating. But Pfizer's corporate greed is putting millions of lives at risk. We have the power to step up and say no! Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/health/Vaccine-Costs-Soaring-Paying-Till-It-Hurts.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw

Right now huge corporations, like Wal-Mart, are getting tax breaks for handing out obscene CEO bonuses. The tax code sets a $1 million limit per executive for the amount of pay that corporations can write off their income taxes. But the problem is that there’s a loophole that exempts “performance-based” pay. So, corporations are shelling out huge CEO bonuses to pay less in taxes. For example, during the past six years, Wal-Mart pocketed $298.6 million in fully deductible “performance pay,” lowering the company’s federal tax bills by $104 million. At a time when so many Americans are struggling to find well-paying jobs and pay for basic things like healthcare, education, and housing, it’s wrong and unacceptable to give corporations tax breaks for shelling out multi-million dollar CEO bonuses. It’s time to close this performance pay loophole and end tax incentives for outrageous CEO pay.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined a West Virginia company, Freedom Industries, only $11,000 for poisoning the drinking water of 300,000 people in January. The spill sickened up to 1 in 5 people, and costed businesses an estimated $61 million.

[Note: The petition to Hillary was started before she officially declared her candidacy, before she became a grandmother, and before she had a serious challenger - Sen. Bernie Sanders - for the Democratic nomination. The petition language cannot be altered or edited once it has been made public, but the ask remains the same]. Hillary Clinton could be the next Democratic presidential nominee. Do we really want someone in the White House who protects Monsanto's profits at the expense of public health? Scientists, medical professionals and climate experts warn us that a food and agriculture system built around poisons like Monsanto's Roundup and Dow's 2,4-D, a system that promotes soy and corn monocultures instead of crop diversity, is unhealthy for humans and the environment. In fact, the World Health Organization in March (2015) declared Roundup a probable human carcinogen. Genetically engineered agriculture has failed. It has created superweeds that require increasingly toxic poisons, and those poisons are showing up in the blood, urine and breast milk of humans. The United Nations last year issued a report entitled "Before It's Too Late," stating that not only will genetically engineered crops not feed the world, as the biotech industry claims, but they are a huge contributor to global warming. Polls show that 93% of Americans want GMO labeling laws. It's time for Hillary, whose ties to the biotech industry run deep, to support public health, not Monsanto. The next leader of the U.S. needs to take a stand against huge corporations that are devastating the environment and human health. If Hillary Clinton is not that leader, consumers will look to candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has a proven track record of supporting states' rights to label GMOs, and the transition to organic, sustainable, regenerative agriculture.

I want my 1-year-old to grow up believing that Americans have a voice in their country and that citizens can have a greater impact than corporations. In 2012, the Koch brothers spent over $6.1 million to push their far right agenda in NM and failed miserably. Let's send them packing again and join the growing national movement to say "Koch no mas! Get out of our politics!"

The Obama administration is proposing a pretty awful idea. They want to let notorious outsourcers, like Apple and Nike, be classified as “American manufacturers” regardless of where they make their iPhones or Air Jordans. If this change goes into effect, it could have huge consequences for all of us. These changes would make it easier for corporate outsourcers to hide how they’ve exploited bad trade deals to outsource millions of jobs, undermine environmental laws, weaken workers’ rights around the world and make corporate CEOs even richer. Sign the petition to tell the Obama administration and the Office of Management and Budget, which is taking comments on the rules right now, that cooking the books for corporate outsourcers is bad for working families here and abroad.

A friend of mine has an 8 year old cousin who, while riding a NYC bus (with her mother) was video- taped by a complete stranger. The stranger (a teenager) posted the video of the child on Facebook with sexual content. All this was done without the knowledge or permission of the parent. Facebook was informed and refused to remove the video as it did not violate their policy. The video was viewed over 100 times within 12 hours. The comments were both demeaning and degrading toward the minor and their family. As adults, a standard of what acceptable behavior MUST be risen especially if we expect our youth & young adults to rise to such a standard. We MUST share openly to both youth & young adults what we believe is socially acceptable. We MUST also accept responsibility for our part in looking the other way. Each time we look away, someone else's child is being exploited, abused, bullied, threatened, and miseducated.

Because I want to make really sure Hobby Lobby is not promoting abortions among its customers.

Before we push through a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and McCutcheon, we're going to need a transparency bill to reveal just how much money is corrupting our politics.

I am starting this petition and pledge not to do any business with Hobby Lobby, because women should have the right to decent reproductive health care. One powerful socially progressive force is the daily purchase decisions of individuals.

Corporations' control and the elimination of everyone's civil rights.