The license fee added to the property tax bills in Portsmouth, VA was adopted in place of city stickers which were placed on vehicles and trailers operated on the street. All-terrain vehicles, also known as ATVs, cannot be operated on the streets. They are utility equipment that should be treated like lawn mowers. Charging a license fee for something that cannot be licensed in a city already overburdened with taxes is wrong. I request the license fee be rescinded.

LATEST UPDATE (June 18): The Senate recently introduced its version of the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act (S. 2444). Thanks to your efforts, it does NOT take critical food-aid dollars away from hungry people to subsidize the world’s largest shipping companies. The bill now faces a vote by the Senate Commerce Committee. If it passes, the full Senate will vote on it and it will have to be reconciled with the House version of the bill, which provides for increased subsidies to shipping companies using food-aid funds. But the fight is far from over. Amendments could still be introduced when the full Senate deliberates on the Coast Guard bill. Changes could also happen in the conference committee of Congress when both versions of the bill are reconciled. Continue to tell your senators not to use food aid to increase subsidies to the world’s largest shipping companies, leaving 2 million more people hungry every year. * * * Dear advocates, I am outraged. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would keep 2 million people from receiving lifesaving food aid. This bill takes critical food-aid dollars away from hungry people to pay for the increased cost of transporting food. This subsidy to the world’s largest shipping companies was quietly inserted as a provision in the Coast Guard Reauthorization Bill for fiscal year 2015. This provision has nothing to do with the U.S. Coast Guard and is a blatant attempt by special interests to line their own pockets while more people overseas go hungry. The lives of millions of people should not be sacrificed to subsidize shipping companies. These companies already take up to six months to deliver emergency food aid to countries that need it. Increasing the shipping companies’ subsidies will not make them deliver U.S. food aid faster. Frankly, it’s a waste of our taxpayer dollars. A Senate committee is now debating the Coast Guard reauthorization bill. Tell your senators and the Senate’s leaders: Don’t use food aid to increase subsidies to the world’s largest shipping companies and leave 2 million more people hungry every year. For more information on ways we can make our country’s food-aid programs better – without increasing their cost – see www.bread.org/ol. Ryan Quinn, Senior Policy Analyst Bread for the World

I had a good friend, Billy, who died two years ago because he got sick, lost his job, and didn't qualify for Medicaid in Florida. Six people in Florida die every day because they cannot afford to purchase health insurance, yet the Florida legislature, callously, and for purely political reasons, refuses to bring Medicaid expansion up for a vote. The failure to expand Medicaid in Florida will lead to the forfeiture of $50 billion over ten years, and the closure of hospitals due to cuts in federal reimbursements for uncompensated care. People in Florida are dying from curable diseases because the Florida legislature insists on legislating based on hatred of President Obama. My friend Billy was one death too many. It's time to do the right thing: Expand Medicaid in Florida!

During my life, I have had many friends and family members who served in our military from Vietnam onward. None of these people deserve the disrespect that Senator Burr has shown them. His interest in the VSO's efforts to improve veterans' access to timely medical care seems to be limited to counting on them as allies to embarrass the administration by removing the VA Secretary. His concern certainly didn't extend to voting for increased funding to provide for an influx of 1.5 million wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.

For Chronic Lyme Disease Patients who are suffering with Lyme disease and are being refused proper treatment or can not afford treatment.

Our immigrant and faith communities across the country are appalled by the daily deportation of 1,100 aspiring Americans. This separation of families is a moral tragedy, and as people of faith we cannot stay silent. Many immigrant families - like all families - are seeking better lives for their children, investing in communities, and contributing significantly to our economy and workforce. Tragically all across the country these families are being needlessly separated by detention and deportation, most of whom would benefit from pending legislation that has already passed the Senate but has lingered in the House of Representatives for a year. No one of good conscience can let this continue to our neighbors, congregation members, colleagues, and friends. We need President Obama and his administration to act now.

Justice has not been served rightfully, causing the smart, bright and wonderful Cyntoia's life to be discarded, when instead we were supposed to support and care for youths who are broken and wounded, to give them another chance to strive, to achieve, and to make a change to others around them; to make them a living testimony. However, the justice system has let the tough overrule the weak and feeble and thrown Cyntoia's life away by giving her a life sentence at the age of 16 in 2004 for simply defending herself from a 43 year old man. But we shouldn't let this judgement prevail and stop us for making amends. Cyntoia Must Be Released, with our help.

To prevent seafood fraud and provide more consumer knowledge about the seafood we eat.

There are 100+ million chronic pain patients, who are now considered a part of the "War on Drugs." This war should only concentrate on the cartels, drug smugglers and abusers. Not real patients with real, intense pain, with no hope for any relief but the medications, our doctors prescribe. Sometimes medications which are opiates, the last hope in relieving our pain. We are forced to take these because everything else, we've tried, has worked. We don't sell our precious pain medications, because we need them for our intense pain. So we can cook, clean our homes, take care of families, etc. Our pain is such that it not only is extremely painful, like cancer patients feel, but it is exhausting, debilitating and causing most of us just to lie in bed in pain. Yet, people who don't suffer or have anyone, in their lives, who are suffering are making impossible for us to get any relief. They simply don't know what the pain, chronic pain patients are feeling. The DEA isn't just concentrating on the ones who abuse and make money from these opiates, no, they are also harming us! They are oppressing our doctors, pharmacies and honest manufacturers, as well, making them from helping us. So much so, most doctors won't treat us, anymore, or they just disappear, on us. We are NOT drug abusers, we don't sell our precious medications, which gives us relief from our intense pain, which we need to live our daily lives. Most of all, we don't get "highs" from these medications, for it is going directly to the pain sites. Unlike drug abusers, using drugs for recreation or sell them for profits. Please stop treating us as if we are. Our doctors carefully monitor our prescriptions, as well as the pharmacies. Our insurances, such as my disability insurance, cover these necessary medications, as well, so they are monitoring us, too. Stop the DEA from oppressing us, our doctors, pharmacies and honest drug manufacturers, but focus on the abusers! PLEASE HELP US, enjoy life too, even though our chronic, intense pain won't ever go away, but at least makes us more human. We are part of the "We the People," we want the "Liberty and Justice for All," too. But, we are treated less than animals, who get more humane treatments, than chronic pain patients. We didn't ask to be this way, we are sick because of hereditary, the jobs and the services we were part of, from exposure to asbestos and other harmful substances, we didn't know were affecting our health. Some suffer from accidents, the wars, from bad surgeries, too. I suffer from scoliosis of the spine, I was born with, which is now affecting my entire half of my body. I also have been diagnosed, for many years, with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease and Crest Syndrome, diseases that will eventually affect all my organs, such as my heart. I have a leaky valve, as well. Eventually, I will die, not a long life, but at least having a less painful life, if I can continue with my medications. I am, also, trying to care for my ex-husband, who is destitute and blind, with no one else to care for him. My income is too low for two people. I can't afford to go to a pain clinic, which is four hours from my home, also because it is too painful. I can't find a doctor, nearby who will help me, because of the DEA. This is also the problem for all chronic pain patients, all over the U.S.A! We write about our conditions and troubles, in finding help, for us. If all the non-sufferers would take the time to find "Chronic Pain Patients" on the Internet and read our stories, maybe then, with the knowledge they gain, they will understand our situations and our suffering. Please, help us keep our precious medications, so we can enjoy, at least, reading a book, seeing family and friends, without pain. Please, give our lives back. We are NOT Drug abusers.

We all suffer. I know first hand how blind spots in our awareness contribute to our individual and collective suffering. No matter what side of the political line you fall on, more insight, awareness, and inner peace is the only way we get out of the struggles we find ourselves in. Let's go in together.

My son Michael (who just turned 26) almost died on January 29, 2014 in Prison. Corizon is the Medical Provider for Inmates. Corizon was not giving Michael the care he was requesting and on January 29, 2014 collapsed in Prison from a rupture aneurysm that caused him to have a stroke. Michael needs intense therapy for he is paralyzed and Corizon feels 2 hours a week is good enough for Michael to gain his mobility back. Michael is in a State Prison for a 5 years sentence for Drugs. He has completed almost 4 years. Michael would get his intense therapy if he was at home finishing his time out. He is young and deserves to get the help he needs.

There has been a big controversy regarding same-sex marriage. California has often changed its mind regarding same-sex marriage as to should we allow this or should we not. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders in California should be able to legally get married without having to fly to another state to do so.