Dear Sen. Mitt Romney, Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Burgess Owens, Rep. John Curtis, Rep. Blake Moore, and Rep. Chris Stewart, An email was send out to Utah residents by the Division of Services for People with Disabilities earlier this month, that said NO NEW STATE FUNDING was allocated this year to help people get off of the wait-list for the Medicaid Waiver. Last year, the same thing happened because of the pandemic. This is devastating because almost 5,000 disabled Utahns are on this list and in desperate need of services. It is a huge blow to the Autism Community because many of us have been on the wait-list for 5+ years. Early intervention for the Autism Community will save our state money in the long run. Our kids are missing milestones while neglected parents try to "figure it out" all alone. This is counterproductive and we need a change now. This will also create thousands of jobs in Utah! The HCBS Access Act will address the Autism Community's biggest issue head on. But, we are in desperate need of adequate services for all disabled people in Utah. To those of us on the waiting list, we know that this neglecting people with disabilities is Utah's biggest shame. Not meeting the needs of people with disabilities seems to go against the core values of the majority of Utah citizens. According to an article titled "Waiting Lists May Be Eliminated For Disability Services Provided By Medicaid" in Disability Scoop, "A draft bill unveiled this month known as the HCBS Access Act would require Medicaid to provide home- and community-based services to EVERYONE who is eligible and establish a minimum set of services that states must offer. The bill is also designed to help states create a network of providers and workers to deliver such supports." WE NEED THIS! The decision earlier this year to put zero funds toward getting disabled people off of the waiting list has broken the hearts of your constituents and we need you to step up to the plate and bring this bill home. We deserve to live our best lives and we need your help to do that. Disabilities are non-partisan and this bill should be, too. Please join U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., along with Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio in drafting and voting for this bill. We are counting on you! Sincerely, Utah Citizens Advocating for Autism *Rep. Chris Stewart is not going to be sent this petition since his email address is not available to the public. To send him your thoughts and feelings, contact him through his website at https://stewart.house.gov/contact/

"Thank God these weren't around when I was 13 but also... how are teens supposed to learn to accept themselves with this sh*t?". - Demi Lovato, apologizing to her TikTok fans for using unrealistic beauty filters. Demi is right. TikTok -- immensely popular with teen girls -- has multiple types of beauty filters that let young people change their skin tone, jaw structure, facial features, body shape and more. The result is images that are more computer-generated than real -- doe-eyes, poreless skin, chiseled jawlines, and emaciated stomachs. These filters create an impossible standard for young girls forming opinions of themselves and send girls an unmistakable message that they are “not enough.” TikTok should immediately disable all beauty filters for teen accounts to support healthy and realistic standards for teen girls. It’s clear these filters fuel depression, disordered eating….TikTok knows exactly what it is doing.

Amazon controls the majority of America’s book distribution but fails to do what every other major publisher does: sell e-books and audiobooks to public libraries where kids can access them for free on apps. Amazon doesn’t just sell books, it publishes them -- including thousands of books for kids and teens and many award-winning titles. However, Amazon has refused to sell any of their e-books or audiobooks to public libraries. Shame on Amazon for undermining libraries in order to sell more books. Amazon has raked in hundreds of billions during the pandemic, with CEO Jeff Bezos 80% richer than he was a year ago! To put it mildly, the pandemic has been a windfall for this company and its CEO. Children, on the other hand, have had school and their entire lives shut down. They need access to books more than ever. Tell Amazon to stop stonewalling America’s libraries and give kids access to books

The rule change is a huge benefit for self-employed people. They can now use their gross income from their Schedule C to determine the final loan amount in the 2nd round of PPP funding. However, not allowing for the rule change to be retroactive to those who already received their 2nd round money is absolutely unfair. This decision is affecting tens of thousands of self-employed people whose only mistake was to apply and receive their 2nd round of PPP money before the rule change. A CNBC article: "How just a few days cost some small businesses thousands on their PPP forgivable loans explains the issue thoroughly.

Nuestros hijos disfrutan jugando y compartiendo todos los días en los parques de la Urbanización, y los consideramos una de las cosas que más nos gusta de nuestra comunidad. Los parques se han convertido en un punto de encuentro para nosotros, un lugar donde nuestros hijos crean nuevas amistades y muchísimas memorias. Ahora durante la pandemia, las breves salidas al parque son quizás el único entretenimiento que podemos ofrecerle a nuestros hijos. Queremos un lugar donde nuestros hijos estén seguros y disfruten.

We call to replace or alter the seal due to problems over the imagery, and most notably by modern day connections of lynchings to the African American community. The noose disrespects thousands of African Americans that where lynched and is becoming more and more of a symbol of violence against black people.

If we allow this traffic will increase through our quiet neighborhood. Non Glenaire residents will begin using the street access and our once quiet neighborhood will become a busy thoroughfare.

The Atlanta mass shooting that resulted in the death of eight people -- six of whom were Asian American women -- again proves that Americans can no longer wait for action against gun violence and hate. In 2020 alone, as though the pandemic weren't already too much to bear, gun violence rose dramatically with over 19,000 people killed in shootings and firearm-related incidents. Tragically, who is harmed by gun violence has long been determined by race, ethnicity, or gender. Asian American women -- and everyone -- deserve to feel safe. While we mourn the Atlanta shootings, we must also fight the explosive combination of guns, racism, and misogyny to reduce the likelihood of such tragedies ever happening again. The U.S. House recently passed gun legislation to tighten up background checks on gun sales, and now it’s up to the U.S. Senate to turn it into law. Tell the U.S. Senate to act against gun violence now and pass universal background checks.

Because everyday that we leave work we do not know if that is the day we are bringing this deadly disease. We do not know if it is going to kill us or one of our family members. We are tired we get cussed at daily because we are out of a product. Some of my fellow workers are going to loose their homes because they do not have enough money to cover rent because they are having to pay for child care because our children are not in school. We need help so please pass this around so we can take this back to the city council Thanks for your time please share

This is an unorthodox petition we're asking Pennsylvanians to sign. It comes in the wake of the decision of the Delaware River Basin Commission to vote to ban fracking in the basin. Governor Wolf is among the Commissioners who say in their resolution that they looked at the science and the on-the-ground impacts and concluded fracking is too dangerous to allow in the basin. When they looked at the science, they were looking data points that very often represent Pennsylvanians. When they looked at on-the-ground impacts, they were looking at the the impacts many Pennsylvanians are experiencing. We believe there should be no sacrifice zones. If fracking is too dangerous for those of us in the Delaware River Basin, it's too dangerous for Pennsylvanians everywhere. Signers' names of this petition will be delivered along with a letter containing the petition text we're delivering to Governor Wolf on April 13. It's not just the format of the letter that is out of the ordinary. We're asking people to sign with a brief description of the shale gas activities in their area and/or the impacts they have experienced. For those in areas of the state unaffected by fracking, we're asking them to add In Solidarity to their signatures. Please add your descriptions or statements of solidarity in the comments section so your signatures follow the same basic format of those of the signers of the letter.

I present this petition as President and Co-Founder of ButterflyPAC, a super PAC that advocates to end poverty and hunger. We agree with Charles Blow who writes, "We are witnessing attempts to use poverty and disadvantage as tools to silence voices. It is a further dehumanizing and delegitimizing of the poor." That is why we are advocating for passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The For the People Act will: • Expand voting rights; • Change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics; • Limit partisan gerrymandering; and • Create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act: • Establishes a targeted process for reviewing voting changes in jurisdictions nationwide, focused on measures that have historically been used to discriminate against voters; • Allows a federal court to order states or jurisdictions to be covered for results-based violations, where the effect of a particular voting measure (including voter ID laws) is to lead to racial discrimination in voting and to deny citizens their right to vote; • Increases transparency by requiring reasonable public notice for voting changes; • Allows the Attorney General authority to request federal observers be present anywhere in the country where there is a serious threat of racial discrimination in voting; • Revises and tailors the preliminary injunction standard for voting rights actions to recognize that there will be cases where there is a need for immediate preliminary relief; • Increases accessibility and protections for Native American and Alaska Native voters. Senator Warnock stated at the end of his speech, just before he received a rare standing ovation from those in the Senate Chamber, “As a man of faith, I believe that democracy is a political enactment of a spiritual idea – the sacred worth of all human beings, the notion that we all have within us a spark of the divine and the right to participate in the shaping of our destiny. Reinhold Niebuhr was right. Humanity's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but humanity's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” We could not agree more.

“Makaha Surfing Beach and must be preserved and protected. Any new bridge or roadwork on Farrington Highway at or near the beach should incorporate the community's preferred mauka route to the north and northwest of Makaha Beach Park as depicted on the master plan for the Makaha Beach Park dated May 24, 1999. If the current bridges are rebuilt as planned at their current location, such an investment would jeopardize the preferred mauka reroute and the Makaha Beach Park project until these new bridges need replacement 70-100 years from now. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would be willing to tear them down for many years from now to build the mauka route and park the community has voiced its concerns for since the mid-1980s. If the current Makaha Bridges replacement project proceeds as planned, the placing of the PROJECT's temporary bypass road on the makai side of Farrington highway will place the Makaha Beach ecosystem in immediate peril, especially if the "five-year flood level standard" temporary bridges are washed into the bay by inland flooding or ocean surge. If the mauka route is constructed, there will be no need to construct a temporary bypass route because the current route would be fully available. The existing bridges have been recently repaired and reinforced by the State DOT; there are no posted limititations on either of the bridges, they have withstood multiple 100 year floods (including the most recent in 2008). These bridges should last many years, giving plenty of time for the State DOT to reevaluate alternative #4 (the mauka route) and modify the current design to accommodate the community's needs and desires