Setting the record straight: Social Security is a vital system, one you’ve paid into your whole life Three things you need to know: • Social Security is fiscally sound. • Social Security is not a handout, you paid for it. • Spreading the truth is the key to urging lawmakers to ignite change. There are rumors and false information abounding regarding the financial status of the Social Security System and what really happens to that 6.2 percent taken from your paychecks. Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano wants you to know the facts! We want you to understand that Social Security isn't going anywhere for the hardworking men and women who have paid into the trust fund. Social Security As long as Americans are working, Social Security will have funds. Currently, $2.8 trillion is stored in the Social Security Trust Fund, which is collected from wage earners' paychecks [1]. That 6.2 percent taken from your paycheck is an insurance policy that you paid for; Social Security is not an entitlement or welfare program as some media have portrayed it. While nearly everyone understands that Social Security assists retirees, there is a lesser known benefit built into the system in case you cannot work because of a disability. No one wants to be out of work, but if you become disabled and are unable to return to work, you have invested in an insurance policy that can assist you - Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The false representation of SSDI in the media has caused some Americans to feel ashamed and embarrassed to apply for benefits even though they are compiled from the money the government deducted from their paychecks. Internal issues affecting applicants Delays in processing applications are affecting America's most vulnerable - those on long-term disability. Less than 30 percent of initial applicants are awarded benefits, which are modest at an average $1,130. Processing delays have caused some to file for bankruptcy or lose their homes; some even die before seeing a penny of the money they are entitled to [2]. An applicant must wait a minimum six months without any source of income, but the wait times nationally have been as high as 382 days in 2013 with no signs of decrease in 2014 [3]. Justice delayed is justice denied to those unable to work because of disabilities. What can you do? By knowing this information and sharing it, you can help ensure that lawmakers fulfill their obligations by advocating the importance of Social Security Disability Insurance and helping end delays within the system. In 2014, Pond Lehocky will redouble its efforts to remind lawmakers of their responsibilities to advocate for disabled American workers. Pond Lehocky asks you to support our efforts and have your voice heard by signing our online petition to urge lawmakers to do something about the delays affecting injured workers and help dispel the false persona the media has created about Social Security Disability Insurance. 1[] YES! Magazine, “Infographic: Why Social Security’s Not Going Broke,” http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-power-of-story/social-security [2] The Baltimore Sun,” Social Security disability backlog in Md. Among the highest in the nation,” http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-06-02/news/bs-md-ssa-delay-20140602_1_disability-backlog-ruppersberger-inspector-general. [3] “Getting Worse by the Month,” http://socsecnews.blogspot.com/2013

Libraries, creating opportunity, underpinning democracy, and available to all New Yorkers, are an essential and basic city service. They should always be fully and adequately funded. The cost of funding libraries is a small fraction of the city's budget, an exceptional bargain, given the economic, social and myriad other benefits libraries deliver. But in 2013, breaking headlines disclosed that Mayor Bloomberg, in his last term, was again reducing library funding at a time of increasing public use. Proposals were presented to close the resulting fiscal shortfall with a self-cannibalizing sell-off and shrinkage of system assets. The proposed transactions were costly, and would include the sale of the most valuable library properties, the focus being the generation of real estate deals. Citizens Defending Libraries (CDL), a group of concerned citizens, was formed in response to protect the public interest by opposing these wrong-headed and counterproductive plans.. CDL has since worked together with other groups such as the Committee to Save the New York Public Library and Library Lovers League, and has collected more than 17,000 signatures on a petition to stop the sale of libraries. In July of 2013, Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio joined CDL and other opponents of the library real estate deals on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library calling for Mayor Bloomberg to halt the proposed sales turning over “public land permanently to private parties”: Such sales include the New York Public Library's Central Library Plan, involving the sale of Mid-Manhattan and the 34th Street Science, Industry and Business Library, and the Brooklyn Public Library's plans for selling the Brooklyn Heights and Pacific branches. De Blasio joined with critics and other elected officials such as the City Comptroller and City Council Member Tish James, now the Public Advocate, in decrying a lack of transparency. He expressed skepticism about plans that had been pursued, largely in secret and without public scrutiny, by the NYPL and Brooklyn Public Library going back to at least 2007. Events have proved that skepticism about planned library sales is justified: • After belatedly responding to repeated calls for an independent audit, the NYPL disclosed that their original Central Library Plan would have cost $500 million, hundreds of millions more than the publicized estimate. Amazingly, they were about to spend half a billion dollars to sell and shrink libraries, demolish the research stacks of the Central Reference Library, exile books to New Jersey, and replace New York's most heavily used branch library, the Mid Manhattan, and SIBL with a much smaller space. When this scheme was abandoned, the NYPL had already spent at least $18 million on architect's and consultant fees. • The sudden, secretive sale of the Donnell Library in Manhattan, a transaction on which later library sales are largely modeled, netted the NYPL a pittance and space for a much smaller branch library, largely underground. The penthouse, just one apartment in the fifty-story luxury tower replacing Donnell, is on the market for 50% more than the sale netted. • With a similar lack of public discussion, NYPL sold off much of the Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) space for a fraction of the $100 million it had cost to build the facility in 1996. The sale was part of the now renounced Central Library Plan. • After candidate de Blasio called for a halt to library sales, it was revealed in connection with the proposed sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library, that about half the development rights for the site had been transferred years before, to the developer, Forest City Ratner, which is now in a position to be a gatekeeper profiting from the transaction. • The number of books in the NYPL and BPL libraries are being drastically reduced, emptying shelves of millions of books as library officials prepare to launch the real estate deals that require them to accommodate reduced collections in smaller spaces. These events cannot be ignored. While the Central Library Plan has been modified, aspects of it still ominously survive and, in Brooklyn, library trustees and officials continue to express enthusiasm for the proposed sale and shrinkages of libraries, saying that they are assessing “all” the libraries in Brooklyn for such “opportunities.” The Brooklyn Heights and Pacific Branch libraries are still prominently in their sights. Plans to sell the rest of SIBL have yet to be abandoned. The three million research books removed from the stacks of the Central Research Library have yet to be returned. Transactions such as the sale of Donnell Library, the NYPL's Central Library Plan and proposed sales of libraries in Brooklyn should be subject to a much higher level of public scrutiny than they have yet received, including review from the City Council and the State Attorney General. It is clear, among other things, that library officials and trustees do not always think in the same terms as the public when considering priorities and what is in the public's best interest. Selling libraries, these shared resources, should not become another chapter in the tale-of-two-cities story of escalating income disparities, with a few of the connected and privileged profiting at the expense of the rest of us. We should be one city standing together to protect the public commons. Libraries cannot be held hostage and traded in for development. We cannot let our libraries be the victims of privatization, or so-called “public-private” developer-driven partnerships-insider deals that put developers in the driver's seat and render competitive bids impracticable. Normal funding for operations must not be withheld to pressure communities into accepting sales of public assets, resulting in libraries housed in smaller, meaner spaces with fewer services. Isaac Asimov has commented: “Wh...

The Northern Manhattan community was promised $300,000 in 2011 in association with Columbia University’s Baker Field expansion. The community is still waiting because SOME of our elected officials have been sitting on the issue and continually moving the goal post. This only hurts the community. As shown in DNAinfo's "3 Years Later, Uptown Groups Still Waiting for Funds Promised by Columbia" (http://goo.gl/l1lWR9), the money is currently at risk of disappearing into the Parks Department. Our community is fortunate enough to have numerous neighborhood park groups and organizations whose projects and innovative programs improve the quality of life and make the parks more accessible to everyone. The money that was promised to the community should go to the community to support these groups and their efforts. Conservancy North is committed to administering grant funds equitably and supporting the growing community of stakeholders who recognize the critical importance our blue-green public spaces have on health, education, and making Northern Manhattan a great place to live, visit, and work. Please sign our petition urging our Northern Manhattan elected officials to stand by their commitment and sign the letter of unity that was requested by Columbia University in 2012 as the final condition for releasing the money.

The government should create a new vehicle class to allow the new vehicles being manufactured so they can be classified as green, travel in the carpool and hov lanes and not have to pay outrageous insurance premiums.

The KMPH FOX 26 News was outraged after an investigation reveals the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Fresno was caught blocking the "Fox News Channel" from a hospital waiting room. Let me remind Fox news and everyone that the Fresno VA Hospital is a military establishment not a civilian establishment and is regulated by military standards. All military personnel have taken the oath, and to abide by the oath which they were sworn in! The oath stated… I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. Any establishment like the likes of Fox news that constantly belittles, disrespect the president of the United States, and constantly promoting, siding with domestic terrorists like the likes of the Arizona rancher, it’s willing to raise arms against the flag should be banned not only in the Fresno establishment but and every military establishments and federal building.

The public needs to be better informed on how well the administration of each political party handled these two disasters and the extent to which there was full disclosure to the public or a politicized one.

We don’t have to hear anti-LGBT nonsense in California too often. Certainly not during Pride month. But when Texas Governor Rick Perry visited San Francisco this week, he had this to say: "I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way." It’s just wrong to compare homosexuality to a destructive addiction like alcoholism. Governor Perry needs to apologize. Add your voice and we’ll let him know his comments are unacceptable. Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom

I'm start this petition to shed some much needed light on the misrepresentation of Black America on reality TV. The only way this is going to stop is if we start by doing something about it.

Serial killers of wildlife ( trappers, hunters, hounders ) have controlled state agencies as killing business for a century. Wildlife is our commons and we all have a responsibility to pay for and steward our wildlife humanely. Fair Pay/Fair Say/ Fair Play. If 90% of the public are wildlife watchers and do not kill, they get 90% of the public land safe from harm. If 6 % kill, then they get 6% of the public land for killing, and since .0015 % of the public traps - that is the percentage for trapping. But we all pay equally and are represented proportionately in wildlife, land, air and water decisions.

I have been disabled now for 18 years, my husband a Veteran of the United States Of America passed away 9 years ago with Kidney Cancer. My only source of income is from Social Security Disability. I had insurance with my husband's former employer, Arkansas Best Freight. My insurance ended a few years ago and now I am told by the employees at Social Security Administration in Downtown Fort Worth, Texas that I will be penalized for 18 years of not taking Medicare when I first became disabled, ( something that I was not aware of. I can not afford the fee for Medicare Part B, nor the penalty percentage of 140%) that's being accessed today. I have asked to file a appeal on numerous occasion regarding this. Please help me and other disabled Americans that are disabled in body and mind. I am not the only person that's being forced by our Government to pay for services that we did not receive. I'm not the only person that's being insulted and demeaned at the Social Security offices. Where in America do we pay for services not rendered and then are penalized? Social Security is at a all time low, and our yearly increases are not enough to survive. I want to continue to live, but I must have food, shelter,and medicine for my blood clots, diabetes and other illnesses. Please stand with me, and others and sign this petition. Thank you

Thoroughbred racing needs a thorough stable cleaning. The essentially unregulated drugging of race horses is both incredibly dangerous and cruel. Unlike their human counterparts, these equine athletes have no choice and no voice. Please ask your members of congress to speak up for these magnificent creatures and their riders today.

For those who have no insight guardians can control whom a person speaks to or sees. Every human being has the right to happiness and not being controlled in this manner. My brother and I recently lost our father, his advocate in 2013. Since then his Guardian has forbidden all contact between Jim and his family. We've received threats of harassment/trespassing and we fear for his emotional and physical well being. I've come to the conclusion this is not just an issue for those in Iowa but all over our country. Guardians should have limitations and Jim should be able to speak and see his family. For more information: http://freejimmy.org https://www.facebook.com/guardianshiplaws Giving the voiceless a voice. One signature at a time.