FORCED ADOPTION AND ILLEGAL ACTS AGAINST CITIZENS IN FAMILY COURT,FAILED TO REPORT SEXUAL CRIMES BY COURT OFFICERS

After 21 years in the business of providing disability services I have taken over 4 failing minority disability businesses in Illinois. You would think this would mean big business right? Wrong! Those 4 businesses, plus my own means, I serve 50 clients, while white run businesses serve hundreds even thousands of people. The minority agencies are targeted to close down. The Illinois DHS does nothing to make sure that the minority businesses are treated fairly and the distribution of all requests for services is sent to minority agencies as a part of the choice process. Stop the racism in the Illinois Disability community.

Too many times in recent history has the Electoral College overridden the popular vote in elections, thus defying the will of the people! It may have served an important function in the election process in the past, but it is now an obsolete dinosaur being twisted and used by political parties (particularly the far Right!) to circumvent the will of the peoples majority. My 14 y/o son noticed this during the recent Congressional elections, and asked me "why bother voting?" I believe this is a large part of why many people do not vote. This must stop.

My employer in Oklahoma failed to accommodate for my mental disability, forcing me to quit serequel 300mg a day for 2 years cold turkey. This sent my mind in psychosis, basically making my brain non-functional for 13 months. And because of that I am penalized for not making a disability discrimination complaint within the time required. THIS IS UNJUST, AND UNDERMINES THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF DISABILTY LAWS.

Johanna is being held hostage in Missouri Foster Care over a malpractice cover up, a false hotline report, and fraudulent removal for county funding. She has been abused in foster care and never abused at home prior to foster care. She has had her mouth busted, a 90 -min seizure in the Christian County Mo. foster Care. She was left with Foster father alone at time of seizure. This child never had a seizure before foster care! She has never been around strangers. The foster mother signed for a spinal tap, they never called us. We have proof they never called. The foster Mother signed for spinal tap without parental permission.! The tap was not successful so a second spinal tap was done!! She was 16 months old at the time and having a stress tachycardia! The caseworkers never called us and she could have died. She is grieving for us we have videos of her grieving for us at CPS visits. The caseworkers signed that we could not visit her in hospital. The Foster Parent's attorney yelled, "I don't care," at the courthouse when I complained about his client and the abuse to my grandchild. Johanna has had her Mouth busted and pink eye more than once. I believe she is being molested in foster care. I now have been forced to file suit against the State. Someone must stand up to the state of Missouri and Gov. Nixon about this abuse of power and fraud, abuse to my grandchild by their lousy system. The complaint advocate is under their paycheck too. M. Bower, 2015. for Truth and Justice in Missouri , (see the facts on Saving Johanna on Facebook, view the foster abuse pictures. )

For years, we at the Sierra Club have fought to ensure that the new housing we desperately need goes into places where we have already built, so as to minimize traffic, preserve our best ag lands and protect the beauty of our island. This project belongs in Kapolei - not on the best farmland in all of Hawai‘i

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Education Management Corporation (EDMC), who operate the chain of Art Institutes, for $11 BILLION! So what about the parents and the 151,000+ students who attended during the years 2003 to 2011, who were innocent of the crimes committed? Would paying back the student loans make them accessories to the fraud? Making these parents and students pay monies that was intended for education, but was used for salaries and bonuses for executives in the company is NOT in line with our Constitution. Consider THIS: Then-President (and now CEO) Edward West received $1,551,802 in compensation for 2009, $5,486,905 in compensation for 2010, and $6,355,982 in compensation for 2011. Then-CEO (and now Chairman) Todd Nelson received $1,812,996 in compensation for 2009, $3,804,121 in compensation for 2010, and $13 million in compensation for 2011. The year 2006 saw the takeover of EDMC by Goldman Sachs and its private equity partners. Source: Huffington Post article below. I enrolled at Ai Pittsburgh in 2009 and graduated with an Associate's in graphic design in 2010. I, like many others, had been lured in by their claims of high employment ratings and being the first, therefore the best, school for graphic design. This is far from the truth as many of the courses had nothing to do with graphic design and failed to provide the tools needed for the professional field; such as web design. I endured the same situation as Matt Bors in the Huffington Post article saying, "that many of the students in his classes had no talents to speak of, and it was clear that they would not be able to get jobs as artists or designers." This created an atmosphere not of creativity, but of confusion, discouragement, discontentment, and low spirits. As they say, "If I only knew then, what I know now", I never would have signed my parents or myself up for a $50,000 debt for a lack of education only to find out that my enrollment directly contributed to the fraud. $11 BILLION seems quite unfathomable to students and parents now burdened by sums that are miniscule in comparison. I have not paid a cent to contribute to this company's fraudulent action, and I refuse to pay a cent, or let disciplinary action to be taken upon myself or my parents. The loan company is threatening wage garnishment. How is this possible when they are accomplices to a HUGE fraud scandal? This scandal has been recognized in the Supreme Court, who then took action against EDMC. Loan agency Sallie Mae, now Navient, were hand-in-hand with EDMC, handing out loans to anyone who asked. So what happened to the $11 BILLION? While a civil court case could prove punitive damages to the ones affected, the least I am asking is for the debt to be lifted for all those in attendance at the Art Institutes from 2003 to 2011. View these articles on the EDMC money scandal, read the comments people have made on these articles, sign the petition, and help out those who have been conned into this scheme. http://www.pdnonline.com/news/The-Art-Institutes--3531.shtml http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/edmc-professors-and-stude_b_1909449.html http://petapixel.com/2011/09/02/us-gov-sues-the-art-institutes-for-11-billion-fraud/ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/education/09forprofit.html?_r=0 http://www.studentsreview.com/specific_detail.php3?uid=3147 Quote from Huffington Post article: "Senator Tom Harkin's Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee calculates that 77.4 percent of EDMC's 2010 revenue came from U.S. Department of Education student financial aid." In 2012, an online petition was started by Vaughn Reynolds at Change.org. He sought to unite Art Institutes students at various campuses in opposition of the teacher layoffs, to educate students and the public about the impact of Wall Street ownership of colleges. The petition has more than 2800 supporters so far. A related Facebook group has over 1800 members. Find the Facebook link here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aistudents/?ref=ts

Hiding a discriminatory, hateful bill behind a name like religious freedom is an act of a cowardice. For more information, please see: http://time.com/3755297/indiana-religious-freedom/

Mike Pence is the worst.

Gun rights groups are intent on everyone in the United States having the right to own and carry guns. In the past, gun safety was emphasized even here in Montana. Now it appears that guns have become idolized as part of Montana's values. Montana is so much more and better than that. Gun safety should be a major component of Montana's hunting culture as well as help prevent the state's very high suicide rate from escalating even higher.

As foster parents in Winneshiek County, my husband and I have first-hand experience of Iowa DHS Director Charles Palmer's lack of effective oversight of his department and his unresponsiveness to complaints we made concerning unethical behavior of some DHS employees and some employees of agencies with whom DHS contracts. Mr. Palmer has not responded to a single letter or email and has, instead, allowed problems to persist at our expense and to the detriment of the human services profession as a whole. Every Iowan should be concerned when social workers lie (in court and elsewhere), fail to fulfill the terms of their contracts with foster parents, insinuate their personal lives into their professional relationships, gossip about clients and co-workers, and retaliate toward those that file complaints-- problems which Palmer has been made aware of but to which he has not offered a response of any kind. It is well known that Palmer has failed to communicate or work appropriately with the Iowa legislature. It is our experience that his performance with Iowa citizens is equally abysmal, despite his self-description as a "problem solver and a bridge builder." He may consider himself "very open to input," but his actions speak otherwise. Iowa deserves better. Please vote Mr. Palmer out and protect foster children, foster parents and all those dependent upon the professional integrity of the Department of Human Services. DHS needs a good house-cleaning and Charles Palmer should be the first to go. Iowa tax-dollars should not support work of such poor quality, and Iowa's most vulnerable need a state agency that is accountable at every level.

AB 700, the Gomez-Levine California DISCLOSE Act, will stop funders from deceiving voters about who pays for ballot measure ads by requiring ads to clearly reveal their top three funders. Funders must be shown in a big contrasting font on a black background for five seconds. The actual contributors must be listed — none of the usual shell games. Just the truth. That's why a remarkable 18 newspaper editorial boards called for passing the 2014 California DISCLOSE Act, more than 400 organizations and leaders endorsed it, and more than 80,000 Californians signed petitions for it. Please thank Assemblymembers Jimmy Gomez (D-Northeast Los Angeles) and Marc Levine (D- San Rafael) for their leadership in the fight against Dark Money in political ads and tell them you're with them and the California Clean Money Campaign!