Tens of thousands of nail salon workers throughout New York are exposed to dangerous health hazards on the job everyday. Many nail salon owners only pay workers between $35 and $80 a day, and cases of wage theft are all too common. The majority of the work is done by immigrant women from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, with limited English proficiency and mixed immigration status. The New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition (HSNC) is bringing New Yorkers together to create a fair, safe and healthy nail salon industry for workers and consumers. New York State has declared a potentially historic commitment to improving the nail salon industry. Governor Cuomo’s Multi-Agency Task Force is already educating workers, employers, and customers about their rights and obligations, and working to ensure effective enforcement of new regulations. Recently introduced legislation - A. 07630 / S. 05748 will bring thousands of nail salon workers out of the shadows, allowing the state to take a critical step forward on the path to eliminating exploitation and abuse in New York's nail salons. Nail salon workers cannot afford to wait until next year for legislative action. Please tell your legislator to act now!

Even if you don’t eat Big Macs, you STILL pay for them. That’s because fast food giants like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King depend on taxpayers like you to subsidize the low wages they pay their workers -- to the tune of $7 billion a year - when their workers are forced to rely on programs like food stamps and Medicaid. It’s SO not right - and it’s time for the fast food giants to get their hands out of our pockets. In New York state alone, taxpayers spend $700 million annually to subsidize low pay at food companies -- the most of any state in the nation. We can fix it. This summer. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo just launched a wage board with the power to raise wages for the 180,000 fast-food workers in the state. And this action would trigger a wave of raises for low-wage workers across the country. We need to make sure they don’t opt for a half measure and instead raise wages to where they need to be: $15 an hour. Time is running out - we need every signature collected by the big hearing in New York City on June 15. Sign now.

New York may raise the minimum wage this summer for fast-food workers to $15. Raising the minimum to $15 an hour would boost paychecks for 180,000 New Yorkers -- most of whom are adults, many supporting families -- and would trigger a wave of raises for low-wage workers across the country. If minimum wage had simply kept pace with worker productivity since 1968, it would be over $20 today. Tell the wage board you support this fix.

Orcas and dolphins suffer in captivity. They are sentient, highly intelligent marine mammals that live in family groups, and do not belong living in a chlorine-laden, confined tank their entire lives. SeaWorld claims they love their orcas and dolphins, but 44 orcas have died at SeaWorld. They currently confine 23 orcas in their facilities, and these orcas have been separated from their mothers. In the wild, orcas seldom leave their mother's side, even when fully grown. SeaWorld blatantly lies in it's newest TV ads, claiming that their orcas live the same lifespan as they do in the wild, but over 90% of their orcas have not survived beyond 25 years! In the wild, a female orca can live up to 80 to 90 years. All SeaWorld cares about are their profits - if they truly cared about the orcas and dolphins, they would NOT keep them in captivity in the first place! SeaWorld should NOT be granted a permit to build a larger tank - they need to stop imprisoning orcas, and dolphins!

To insure American voters receive fair, equal, and unbiased information about the Democratic Presidential candidates. The press is already writing off Bernie Sanders as a viable candidate. As a supporter of Mr. Sanders this is infuriating as it demeans true Democracy.

The economy has recovered from the recession and continues to grow. But as so many of us know, that growth isn’t reaching the middle class. It’s being gobbled up by Wall Street and company executives. Luckily, Massachusetts can do something about it. Despite record profits, corporations are giving less and less to help the middle class. A recent report showed that regular employees see the smallest percentage of corporate profit at any point since 1950 -- even while productivity has kept rising. [1] In Massachusetts, the average employee gets $51,082 per year, while the average CEO receives $4.5 million. Looking at just the S&P 500 companies, that jumps to $13M for an average CEO, 255 times the average worker. [2] If a company is doing well, there is no reason their executives shouldn't earn more, but when that doesn't reach the rest of the employees, it bogs down the whole economy with unsustainable inequality. There is a pending bill in the Massachusetts Senate that would push corporations to curb this trend. It's a simple idea: If a company pays their executives more than 100 times what the median salary is for that company, they would pay another 2% in taxes on their profits. This gives companies an incentive to raise the salaries of average employees. Massachusetts does best when everyone gets a fair shot and gets a fair share. Everyone should get a chance to work their way to a living wage. 1. Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute, "In 2013, Workers’ Share of Income in the Corporate Sector Fell to its Lowest Point since 1950." http://www.epi.org/publication/2013-workers-share-income-corporate-sector/ 2. CEO Pay by State, AFL-CIO. http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014/CEO-Pay-by-State

As an educated woman, I can no longer stand the mockery Fox "News" is making of the rest of our news outlets. Fox "News" is lowering the standards for the rest of our media and I'm not having it!

We, the citizens of Greensboro, do not support Friendly Center monetizing on the suffering of our world's creatures. Fur is torn from the backs of live animals because it makes for a cleaner separation. The animal is then thrown into a pile where they remain alive for upwards of 10 minutes. The fur at Friendly Center comes from China, where there is little to no regulation. Sadly, cats and dogs are sold as fox or mink. We love Friendly Center, however feel as though CBL's priorities no longer coincide with our ever progressing city.

It's just a money grab by big cable for people who use large amounts of data. Those who use lots of data (legitimately) are being persecuted and taxed for using the Internet as it was meant to be used

Five years ago, Congress passed a law that included a rule requiring all publicly traded companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratio. But Wall Street and big corporations have lobbied hard to stop the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from enforcing this rule. It’s time to change that. Enter your name here to sign the petition telling the SEC it’s time to enforce the rule requiring companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios.

In February, teachers and staff at Chicago's Urban Prep Academies announced that they were forming a union. They stood up to improve teaching and learning conditions in their schools, and asked CEO Tim King to respect their decision and their dedication to the schools. At the time, Mayor Emanuel publicly expressed his support for these educators. Now, unfortunately, Urban Prep administrators are responding by requiring teachers and staff to listen to anti-union speeches, cutting into valuable work time. One speech made misleading claims about the union that the teachers and staff seek to join, Chicago ACTS. These speeches aim to sow fear and misunderstanding about how unions work. Until educators vote on June 3rd in the union election, they may continue to be bombarded by administrators’ claims that having a union could result in worse teaching conditions and that a union would not be true to the mission of Urban Prep—a mission that these educators take very seriously and would use their union to uphold. The teachers and staff have discovered how much their administration spends on consultants, lobbyists, and outside events, while seeing the challenge of meeting their students needs despite continued turnover of staff each year.They have discovered how much their administration spends on consultants, lobbyists, and outside events, while teachers keep striving to meet their students’ needs, despite high staff turnover. The teachers and staff at Urban Prep are dedicated to their schools’ long-term success and are organizing to bring greater accountability and stability to their schools and their students. Public schools like Urban Prep should remain neutral when educators seek to form a union. Mayor Rahm Emanuel should live up to his pledge of support for teachers at charter schools, by telling Tim King to respect the educators at Urban Prep and to stop using anti-union messages to discourage them in their upcoming election.

Too many people believe that the lies of Bill O'Reilly represent factual news. He is damaging to democracy, a spiteful liar who must be taken off the air.