Government of, by and for the people has become government of, by and for the corporations. We must wrest back our voice and our power through Free and Fair Elections. Signers of this petition are asking that the FBI and the FEC collaborate with California's Election Boards to ensure California voting machines do not harbor software to override voters' choices. This action must occur immediately so that it is in place for the upcoming California Republican and Democratic Primaries. We recommend that the FBI impound and examine a random sample of voting machines throughout California's election districts IMMEDIATELY following the close of the polls. In order to ensure that late removal of anything to alter the actual votes as cast does not happen, we need an official presence throughout the hours the polls are open. It should be broadly announced that such a random examination will occur and that prosecution of anyone involved in breaking election laws will also happen. California's voting results should NOT be certified until the examination of the machines and possible correction of the outcomes has occurred.

Since cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose heightened risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. During attacks, the weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, especially in populated areas. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. That's why more than a hundred nations have joined the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits all use, production, transfer and stockpiling of these weapons. [1] Saudi Arabia has used cluster bombs in its war in Yemen, according to Human Rights Watch. [2] HRW documented the remnants of a CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon, a cluster bomb manufactured by Textron Systems Corporation in the US and supplied to Saudi Arabia. [3] Although the US is not yet a member of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, US law bars the sale of these weapons to countries that use them in civilian areas. [4] But according to Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia did use these weapons in a civilian area. [5] Urge Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin and Milwaukee Representative Gwen Moore to advocate for a ban on sending these weapons to Saudi Arabia, including in the National Defense Authorization Act, by signing our petition. References: 1. http://www.clusterconvention.org/ 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/world/middleeast/saudi-led-group-said-to-use-cluster-bombs-in-yemen.html 3. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32572408 4. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32572408 5. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/03/yemen-saudi-led-airstrikes-used-cluster-munitions

The Democratic Party will officially adopt the 2016 Democratic party platform at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia this summer. It's crucial we make our voices heard now. This platform will have major implications for races at all levels of government across the country—and it’s one of our best tools for establishing our shared vision for the policies we push for and secure in the coming years. Millions of voters joined the movement to support Bernie Sanders and his plan for America. Now, we must stand with him and call on the Democratic Party to set a forward-looking, progressive platform that will shape the future our country needs: fair wages, Social Security expansion, access to health care and higher education for all Americans, protections for our climate, and an end to the rampant corruption on Wall Street and mass deportations.

Going green saves our Intuit Plano office thousands of dollars a year. And everyday choices you make can improve our impact even more. This is why we’re asking you to join us in reducing our collective impact by taking this pledge. Plus, when you sign this pledge, you'll be entered to win some fun Intuit swag. Will you join us? (Deadline: Friday, April 29th at 5 PM). THE PLEDGE: • I pledge to use my desk recycling bin properly. Recyclables go in the large blue bin. Waste goes in the smaller black bin. • I pledge to use a plate (not a compostable tray) when I eat in the cafeteria. • I pledge to compost all of my food waste using the compost bins in the cafeteria and in the breakrooms on my floor. • I pledge to turn off the lights when I leave a conference room. • I pledge to only put EMPTY containers (plastic and glass) and paper products in the recycling bin; plasticware, food wrappers, and soiled paper goes in the trash; and food and compostable containers go in the compost bin.

birthday revolutions

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 broke my leg on these inadequate roads. Neighborhood roads should provide for pedestrians, and bicycle riders, and skaters, as well as cars.

To get our citizens really informed about what is happening in their goverment!

We are told the Town Council may not grant us permission to volunteer and update the City of Chesapeake Playground at the corner of 116th St. & Kanawha Avenue. We want a high school regulation basketball court. Basketball uprights and rims are being donated. Volunteers are available to put in proper mulch and write playground companies for update and compliant play areas. Vote to update our playground. Permission to raise funds and make a safe and compliant playground.

On April 26, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback notified “the Obama administration" that the Kansas Refugee Resettlement Program State Plan, which resettles refugees with help from federal funds, will no longer accept those funds because he says Kansans are in danger of terrorists from Syria, Iraq, or Sudan sneaking in as refugees. Because governors have no authority to limit who enters their states, the federal government will now have to identify a private Kansas entity to run an “alternative” resettlement program under the Wilson-Fish Amendment. While this eliminates supervision by the state over the funds, it has no effect on which refugees come to Kansas or on the 13-step screening process. Apparently the governor is trading away the public’s goodwill towards our Arab and Muslim neighbors to avert attention from the serious problems the state faces.

My son, who turned 3 this April, is enrolled in preschool. I asked his teacher: how much time does he spend outside? 45 minutes was the answer. Shocking? No wonder American kids have vitamin D deficiency. So I asked if he could play outside more. The teacher said that he could, but then he would be missing out on other activities, including tracing letters and numbers, and by the time he turns 4, when he goes to the next class, he needs to know letters and numbers. I was shocked even more. I insisted that I want him to play more outside, and she agreed, saying if the parent asks, then it is ok. Why, despite all the scientific proof, that early academics hurt, the government keeps pushing first grade curriculum to kindergarten and to the preschools? Isn't it time to actually incorporate research into school policies, instead of making policies that hurt our children? Researcher and educator Mercedes Schneider, author of A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Education, has documented the lightning- quick writing of the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) and has found no evidence that they are based on research. She writes: If they [the writers of the CCSS] were interested in research they would have started with kindergarten and piloted the standards for a few years and then made adjustments based on their research — and built slowly from there. There is absolutely no evidence that developmental stages were considered. That is a major problem across the standards and especially for the youngest grades. Anyone who has a cursory knowledge of development knows that it is not linear and that children do not all develop at the same rate — there is a span. Now, as the Common Core standards take hold across the country, literacy has taken over even more space in kindergarten classrooms, crowding out many high- quality learning experiences young children need. In a survey by Defending the Early Years (DEY) of about 200 early childhood teachers (preschool to grade three) across 38 states, 85% of the public school teachers reported that they are required to teach activities that are not developmentally appropriate for their students.9 A New York public school kindergarten teacher with more than 15 years of experience reported: Kindergarten students are being forced to write words, sentences, and paragraphs before having a grasp of oral language...We are assessing them WEEKLY on how many sight words, letter sounds, and letter names they can identify. And we’re assessing the “neediest students’” reading every other day. While the timetable for children’s cognitive development has not changed significantly, society’s expectations of what children should achieve in kindergarten have. A recent two-year study by the Gesell Institute in New Haven found that “children are still reaching important developmental milestones in much the same timeframe as they did when Dr. Arnold Gesell first published his data in 1925. Gesell used 19 measures to ascertain a child’s development. Among them were asking children to look at and draw a circle, cross, square, triangle, divided rectangle, and more complex forms. A clear pattern emerged. He found an age span for each task, but also a clear pattern of when most children could accomplish the task. By age three most children could replicate the circle, but most could not copy the cross or square until age 4.5. They could draw the triangle by 5.5 but could not copy the diamond until after age 6. The Institute’s recent study, given between 2008 and 2010 to about 1300 children across the country, found almost identical results. The Harvard Education Letter described the findings under the heading: “Kids Haven’t Changed; Kindergarten Has.” A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component. A number of long-term studies point to greater gains for students in play-based programs as compared to their peers in academically-oriented preschools and kindergartens in which early reading instruction is generally a key component. Findings from HighScope’s Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study, for example, suggest long-term harm, especially in the social-emotional realm, from overly directive preschool instruction. In this study, begun in the late 1960s, 68 children from low-income homes were randomly assigned to one of three preschool classes. Two were play-based and experiential. The third was a scripted, direct-instruction approach. Interestingly, there were very similar short-term gains among the children in all three programs at the end of year one. But the children were followed until age 23. By that time, there were significant differences in social behavior. School records indicate that 47 percent of the children assigned to the direct instruction classroom needed special education for social difficulties versus only 6 percent from the play-oriented preschool classrooms. And by age 23, police records showed a higher rate of arrests for felony offenses among those who were previously in the instructional program (34 percent) compared to those in the play-based programs (9 percent). Rebecca Marcon found negative effects of overly- directed preschool instruction on later school performance in a study of three different curricula, described as either “academically oriented” or “child- initiated.”18 By third grade, her group of 343 students — 96% African American with 75% of the children qualifying for subsidized school lunch — displayed few differences in academic achievement programs. After six years of school, however, students who had been in the groups that were “more academically directed earned significantly lower grades compared to children who had attended child-initiated preschool classes. Children’s later school success appears to have been enhanced by more active...

My name is David Jon Timm and I have been a patient of Positive Health Care at India Street Public Health for 12 years. Portland's proposed municipal budget calls for closing the India Street health clinic, which serves 1,000 patients a year, regardless of whether you have health insurance. Nowhere else in greater Portland can a person receive low-cost STD testing, free treatment for STDs, harm reduction education, clean needles and injecting equipment, and comprehensive HIV medical care. I was diagnosed with HIV in February of 2004 by the doctors at India Street. By April of 2006 I was diagnosed with AIDS. I started medical treatment immediately and by October of 2006 the virus was undetectable and I have remained undetectable and extremely healthy for the past 10 years. My experience with India Street has been nothing but stellar. Not only are the staff knowledgeable and highly educated in HIV care, they are a family to me and my relationship with them has been extraordinary. I can actually call my doctor and speak with her directly concerning any issues. Where can you get care like that? My story is different than most patients who are treated at India Street. I consider myself a success story. I have private insurance, a job, and I'm a college graduate. My medical history and my ability to beat AIDS and manage HIV can only be associated with the knowledgeable, professional staff at India Street. I owe them my life! Please sign this petition to keep India Street open.