MARTA has outsourced its paratransit service before. The result was so horrible that the federal government issued an injunction against MARTA under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which MARTA is still not in compliance with today! MARTA Mobility, the only means of transportation for many of our city's most challenged citizens, is too important to be experimented with again. Cutting the pension and benefits of low-wage workers, and hiring new workers at even lower wages, will not improve the quality of MARTA Mobility service. Changing the eligibility process and adding new hurdles to disabled people applying for MARTA Mobility will not improve the quality of the service. County Commissions appoint MARTA Board members and approve public funds for MARTA. I am watching this issue, and related MARTA ballot initiatives, closely.

The Communication Workers of America are on strike as they stand up to the greed and immoral behavior of Vernizon and it's leaders. It's no secret that the CEO of Verizon, Lowell McAdam, makes an obscene amount of money. He wants to continue his greedy ways by firing and intimidating his workers, slashing their benefits, and shipping jobs overseas. We can't strike with the CWA, but we can surely vote with our dollars. This petition requires Verizon to create a fair contract with CWA and start treating their workers (our fellow Americans) with the dignity and respect they deserve. If they fail to do this in a timely manner, we will cancel our cell phone, home phone and Internet services with Verizon. It's a small price to pay in order to stand up to corporate greed. What CWA is asking for is not unreasonable. In fact, it's the right thing to do. Here's why they are on strike: CWA is on strike because they'll do whatever it takes to create a better workplace for their workers and those that follow. They're standing together to make sure the needs of working families are met, instead of standing by as a handful of individuals get richer and richer. They're standing together because Verizon has fired, threatened, and intimidated working people at Verizon Wireless who are trying to create a better future for themselves and their families. They're standing together because they want to earn a living in their own communities instead of moving away from their homes and families for months at a time. They want good jobs to stay in the United States, not be sent overseas. They're standing together to make sure that working people at Verizon can not just make a good living, but also have a good life. CWA are our friends, family and neighbors. They are standing up for themselves - it's time we stood with them.

The Donald won the Republican nomination, at least partly, through "earned media" (that is, free media exposure). The media claim that they give him this exposure because Trump is fun to watch and he draws viewers and clicks. So the idea is to deny him that exposure by paying the media enough money to not continue covering him for free.

Ivanka, daughter of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, is a vocal and public supporter of her father. Nordstrom is better than the hateful, misogynistic, bigoted rhetoric Mr. Trump spews.

Figures from ForProfitU.org report that only 13% of those who enrolled in the for-profit University of Phoenix had received their bachelor’s degree as of 2012. Phoenix’s parent company Apollo Group received over $800 million in federal Pell Grants in 2013 -- the most of any college in the country. Meanwhile, The University of Phoenix has been the subject of numerous federal investigations, as well as by Attorneys General in a number of states around the country, for its practices and the quality of educations enrollees receive. Lastly, the National Center for Education Statistics reported Phoenix gets $12,000 per student in tuition but spends $1,600 on actual instruction. Ellen, the student loan debt crisis is threatening the American Dream for tens of millions of student loan borrowers. The University of Phoenix deserves not your seal of approval, but condemnation and derision. If you don’t believe us, talk to people we know who have paid for Phoenix about their experience and the quality of instruction they received. This is why we ask you to please, drop your partnership with The University of Phoenix immediately.

Most businesses have nothing to hide, but if you do have something to hide, it's easy: You just set up an anonymous shell company -- which in America, requires less personal information than it takes to get a library card. Since you don't even have to report who owns the company, anonymous shell companies are a favorite tool to hide all sorts of unsavory behaviors, from terrorism and drug cartels to tax dodging. “Shells are the No. 1 vehicle for laundering illicit money and criminal proceeds,” explained Lanny A. Breuer, former Asst. U.S. Attorney General to the New York Times. [1] Much of the opioids that are trafficked in Massachusetts come from drug kingpins based in Mexico or Colombia. [2] The biggest of Mexico’s drug gangs is the Los Zetas cartel. From 2008, the Zetas used anonymous companies, including from Oklahoma, in a scheme to launder millions of dollars of drug money into the United States, with the true ownership hidden behind front-men. The money was hidden behind the purchase of race horses, some of whom were given names such as ‘Number One Cartel’ and ‘Morning Cartel’. [3] The Government Accountability Office estimates of the $39 billion in drug money leaves the country each year. Of every $100 that goes south, U.S. law enforcement officers intercept only 25 cents. [4] The ease of money laundering makes it all that much easier to flood our streets with cheap drugs. As Massachusetts communities deal with public health problem created by the rising opioid crisis, we can also help make it harder to launder money through shell companies. But given how money is hidden in shell companies, there is a lot of pressure to maintain the status quo. That's why we need people like you to speak out. 1. "How Delaware Thrives as A Corporate Tax Haven,” New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html 2. “DEA details path of deadly heroin blend to N.E.” Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/28/fentanyl-laced-heroin-makes-journey-new-england-that-starts-colombia-and-mexico-dea-says/hVHvjvBE9cvV9lkKLVR3cN/story.html 3. “The Great Rip Off,” Global Witness. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/great-rip-off/ 4. "Analysis: Losing the War on Drugs," Government Executive. http://www.govexec.com/management/2013/02/analysis-losing-war-drugs/61403/?oref=dropdown

I do not want to go through the process of arbitration. No one at Ford, or the dealership, seems to believe that this is a safety issue. I feel that when a consumer spends $42,539.00 for a new vehicle, there should be an easier avenue for recourse, and more dialogue between all parties involved. Lemon Laws protect the manufacturer more than the consumer, and arbitration is a lengthy process.

The families of the striking Verizon workers are suffering incredible financial hardship due to Verizon's unreasonable and greedy demands at the bargaining table. Verizon is demanding the right to transfer us anywhere, lay us off with no regard to seniority and replace our displaced Brothers and Sisters with outside contractors. Verizon is demanding the right to outsource our call center jobs overseas. Verizon is demanding that our retirees greatly increase their contributions to health care costs. The Men and Women who built their network and service their customers deserve to live their lives with dignity.

Can you believe this is legal? Recent Boston Globe headlines revealed that Governor Baker and the Massachusetts GOP are using a loophole in a law meant to limit big money in politics by funneling big donor dollars from the federal GOP account into Baker's campaign coffers. A recent decision by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) just said that this is okay. Unless we act now, huge campaign contributions and more secret money will pour into Massachusetts elections at an alarming rate. Join us in demanding quick action to keep huge contributions and secret money out of our state elections! Read: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/17/mass-gop-finds-new-way-raise-big-money/cQmU0jzotCLvhn6Zs95JOI/story.html Read: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/07/regulators-gop-can-use-federal-funds-aid-baker/lZ0krS4RIYzGHKMVyTYizM/story.html

Big Cable is running a scam that makes millions of Americans pay them money for nothing. And even worse, this racket is locking us out of a more open, diverse, and accessible media. Here's how it works: if you have a cable subscription, then there's probably a rental fee for your set top box snuck into your bill. At $10 or $20 a month, that's an average of $231 per year! This means you end up paying the full cost of the device -- but the rental fee doesn't ever go away. But even more costly is the way Big Cable is stifling innovation and competition by restricting what we are able to access through their devices. The FCC can change this and turn a stagnant element of the electronics landscape into an innovative one that could bring more diversity in programming to our TVs. It's time for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to break up this racket. Right now, the FCC is considering new rules that would let consumers choose freely where they get set top boxes -- instead of shackling them to the cable companies. They're soliciting public comments, so let's make sure they hear loud and clear that it's time to break up this monopoly. Send a message to Chairman Wheeler right now and urge him to #UnlockTheBox!

Coming out of the Dodd-Frank 2010 overhaul, the goal was to make large banks less of a threat to the economy. One of the requirements was that the largest financial institutions need to submit plans, or living wills, for how the banks would enter bankruptcy in an orderly fashion in case of a crisis. Plans submitted by five of the largest banks have failed testing, which suggests that if there were another crisis today, the government would need to prop up the largest banks if it wanted to avoid financial chaos. In order to prevent that from happening, we need to restore The Glass-Steagall Act, which successfully protected taxpayers and the economy from the risky bets investment banks take. From 1932 to 1999, the original Glass-Steagall Act led to the largest sustained period of economic growth and safe banking in U.S. history; it ensured that investment banks could take risks but consumer deposits in commercial banks were protected. Just seven years after it was largely repealed in 1999, the economy suffered a major collapse and taxpayers were forced to bail out the banks. Now that five big banks have flunked two separate regulator tests of their ability to avoid being bailed out again, it’s time to pass the “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act” to rein in the still too-big-to-fail and still too-big-to-manage big banks.

Yes I personally have been affected by this. Geico went from charging me $241 for 6 months of liability to wanting $820 for 6 months because my credit is bad. My driving record is good and I have not been involved in any claims at any time through Geico or any other insurance company. Decent paying jobs are scarce and a lot of us cannot afford to pay these ridiculous premiums based off of nothing more than a credit score