We are creating this petition to ban plastic bottles in Mount Shasta, California. Plastic bottles are just horrible for everyone and everything. By eliminating plastic bottles in schools, offices and public areas in Mount Shasta, we can do our part in eliminating unneeded waste in landfills, littering in our National Parks and reduce greenhouse gasses. This petition will also serve as a response from the residents of Mount Shasta to reflect our feelings about a environmentally risky project is taking place in Mount Shasta conducted by Crystal Geyser in 2015, and due to their lack of a "Through Environmental Review". The newly announced Crystal Geyser Plant could produce chemicals that could potentially runoff could overwhelm the wastewater treatment plant.

After a Bloody Liberation War the people of Bangladesh do not deserve such oppression from it's own Govt. Our close relatives are living in there and we are worried for them.

The PhD students and TAs of the Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities have recently learned that the incoming PhD students for the 2014-2015 academic year will receive a TA stipend of $20,000, while the stipends of the current students will remain unchanged at much lower rates - barely adjusted for inflation. This means that many current PhD students in the social sciences will lag behind their newer cohorts by as much as 25% in funding per year. For PhD students predominantly supporting themselves on a TA stipend, this monetary discrepancy is very significant to our standards of living. Yet such considerations are not even as distressing as the effects that this unequal structure of incentives will have on graduate departments, cohort dynamics, and overall university standing. As dedicated, hard-working Northeastern PhD students, we demand equal stipend rates for all. Therefore, we urge the College of Social Sciences and Humanities to equalize current students’ stipends to those of the new incoming class for the following dominant reasons: FAIRNESS & PROMOTION OF A COLLEGIAL ENVIRONMENT: Different stipend rates for PhD students within the same program will breed an environment of inequality. The university is implicitly stating that newer students deserve more financial support than older students, and this may lead to negative relations between students in the department. As a matter of principle, a PhD program should value its students equally, yet this funding policy assures that some students will appear more valuable than others and receive more material support in their academic pursuits. In this way, the department also fails to value the accumulated experience of its older cohorts, especially their roles as mentors to newer students. Moreover, due to the Graduate School’s new 10-hour TA policy for first year students, the older cohorts are increasingly taking over responsibility for TA/RA activities - yet they continue to receive lower compensation over the years. We understand that as Northeastern University and our departments increase in stature, the university must offer more attractive incentive packages to new students in order to compete with other universities. However, those of us who have already been accepted and are currently enrolled in the program are at least in part responsible for the enhanced reputation of our programs. Further, we also face the dilemma of leaving the program (or supplementing our TA pay with other work that ultimately can detract from our effectiveness as teachers and aspiring scholars) in order to generate more income. A competitive stipend is necessary, but should be applied to all of us. DISTORTED INCENTIVES: Unequal stipend rates create a structure of disincentives for current students. This structure rewards new recruits at the expense of students making progress in the department, and this pattern becomes more troubling with each passing year. As it stands now, the new students will receive significantly higher monetary support than other students, regardless of the other students’ years of experience, accomplishments, or other merits. Along with damaging department morale, funding is only one factor considered by potential PhD students and is usually dwarfed by other considerations, including research interests and job placement opportunities. RETENTION RATES & ACADEMIC SUCCESS: In time, the distorted incentives created by this funding system may show themselves in the performance of PhD students across programs. With less funding and support, older graduates will have less time to dedicate to their classes and research, and they will have less incentive to remain fully dedicated to their programs. In the long run, these trends may harm the success of graduate program rankings overall, as too many graduate students will not be supported at the same level as others, hindering their potential for publications and other projects. In light of these main factors, the Northeastern PhD students petition for the equalization of stipend rates across cohorts. As it stands, the current system promotes only unfairness, disunity, and disincentives that harm the future of our university as a whole.

Under the current DOT proposal to widen 6th Street, the historic district in our city would likely lose its entire canopy of 39 trees. Our city leaders have expressed their deep concerns about the project. Let's join them in urging DOT to address concerns about public safety on 6th Street in ways that don't so drastically affect home and business owners, the loveliness of the city's historic district, or the quality of life in the neighborhood. NOTE: DUE TO THE ACTIVITY ON THIS PETITION, WE HAVE DECIDED TO KEEP IT "LIVE" UNTIL SIGNATURES ARE NO LONGER BEING ADDED. THANKS, EVERYONE!

If the Columbus Board of Education does not act very soon, the "Annex" could be torn down as early as April 29th. I live up the street and want to live in a neighborhood and a city that maintain the character that comes with the limited number of historic structures that exist in our relatively young city. Many other important points have also been raised: - The "Annex" could be used for education. Lottery students are already turned away because of lack of space at the high performing Clinton Elementary - less lottery students means less diversity and shared prosperity. Plus, many feel the neighborhood is growing and we very well may need to accommodate more families with young children. Keeping the building gives us flexibility. - The "Annex" could be used for other purposes. There are clear needs for day care and preschool facilities in the neighborhood, the space could be used for other community needs, entertainment, and more. - Even if there is no immediate use or immediate funding, we should be looking at the bigger picture and longer term. - It is likely to cost less to renovate the current space than to build new, as many assume will be needed due to the popularity and success of the school and the neighborhood. Folks who sign this petition may not agree with every one of these points, but do agree that we should stop the demolition now, before it's too late.

What's worse: that the NSA knew about a massive bug that could be catastrophic for Americans and did nothing, or that our supposed top spy agency had no clue about a gaping hole in our security for two years?

We need voices for freedom and the future driving technology forward, not remnants of the Bush era's anti-rights past.

Companies will never stop trying to manipulate the government into giving them a bigger market share. But we can still call out our lawmakers for caving in — and we now have a full year to tell them enough is enough.

Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the gas and oil industry in the form of exorbitant, never-expiring tax breaks.

Voter lines in Florida were so bad in 2012, some people stayed in line for six hours just to cast their ballot. In heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County, it's about to get a lot worse — they won't even be able to use the bathroom.

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez has dubbed herself the most transparent governor in state history. Yet newly released secret recordings reveal her advisers joking about the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women, a constitutionally-mandated advisory council which saw its funding gutted by Martinez. In the recordings, current New Mexico Human Services Department spokesman Matt Kennicott jokes another male adviser of Martinez direct the commission so he may "study more women." An expose by Mother Jones points to Martinez and her inner circle's attitude toward women, shows her laughing while discussing ways to cut teacher salaries, and even calling an elder legislator a "retard." These are not values any elected official should have.

UPDATE: We are currently in Day 9 of our sit-in at Washington University. I’ve learned many things in my four years at Washington University in St. Louis--not all of them in the classroom. For example, before I became a student at Wash U, I had never heard of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal corporation. In St. Louis, Peabody ingratiates itself to the local community by posing as a benefactor of the arts, charitable corporate ‘citizen,’ and hero tackling “energy poverty.” It all sounds pretty good until you realize that Peabody Energy is the world’s largest private sector coal corporation whose business model propagates climate change and destroys communities. Peabody’s list of crimes is a veritable laundry list of social and environmental injustices: the destruction of mountains in West Virginia, the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi Indian tribes in Black Mesa, Arizona, being a major supporter of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which have been strong advocates of controversial legislation like “Stand Your Ground” laws, the destruction of Rocky Branch, Illinois through aggressive mining and logging, and the distortion of democracy here in St. Louis by striking down a city-wide ballot initiative. Peabody CEO Greg Boyce also holds one more distinction: member of the Washington University Board of Trustees. Since Boyce was placed on the board in 2009, students have been actively organizing against Peabody Energy’s presence on campus. We have demanded that Boyce be removed from the Board of Trustees and that the University change the name of the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization,” a research entity to which Peabody and Arch Coal donated $5,000,000. We have met with the Chancellor -- multiple times. We have dropped banners at coal events, peacefully disrupted speeches by Greg Boyce on campus, marched through campus and taken our demands to Peabody’s headquarters. We have protested with residents from Black Mesa, collected signatures for the Take Back St. Louis ballot initiative and rallied with the United Mine Workers in their fight against Peabody. But, five years later, Boyce is still on the board, the name of the Clean Coal Consortium remains unchanged, and Chancellor Wrighton continues to stand behind Peabody Energy. Indeed, just this week he emailed us saying, “your opinion that peabody energy behaves in an ‘irresponsible and unjust manner’ is not one that I share.” The Administration has successfully used a “deny by delay” process by holding town hall meetings and developing task forces around renewable energy and energy efficiency while ignoring the role that coal plays on the campus. Thus, like many campus divestment campaigns across the country, we are at a crossroads. We’ve decided that it’s time to escalate to let Chancellor Wrighton and Greg Boyce know that we’re running out of time and we’re not going to back down. We are engaging in a sit-in of our admissions office to tell Chancellor Wrighton that our university can no longer legitimize destructive fossil fuel corporations. By having Greg Boyce on the Board of Trustees and hosting the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization,” the University is propagating the lie that coal is clean. But people who live in the communities where Peabody mines, including Black Mesa and Rocky Branch, know that coal is never clean. Escalating on campus is scary. We know it is going to be divisive. We know our Chancellor fundamentally disagrees with us. But not escalating is even scarier. Not escalating means Peabody continues to destroy communities and our climate. And that’s a risk we cannot take. Let Wash U know that you stand with us by signing our petition.