"Entergy" is the only electric service provider option for consumers in New Orleans. A fairer way to equalize the billing would be to offer other service providers. This is not a dictatorship.

Carol Parker and her mother were long-time congregants at St. Columban Catholic Church in Chillicothe, MO, so when her mother died, it was only natural that her funeral would be held there. Carol never guessed that she’d be denied communion at her mother’s funeral Mass simply because she's a lesbian. When the local priest read Carol’s mom’s obituary, he learned that Carol was in a committed relationship with her female partner. He then told Carol and her partner that he would refuse to serve them communion. Imagine receiving the news that, despite over ten years of active membership in the church, including singing in the choir, and volunteering as a cantor and a lector, you would be excluded from communion at your own mother’s funeral. When the exact same thing happened in another diocese two years ago, the priest was subsequently removed from ministry. So let’s stand with Carol and her partner in their time of grief, and make sure the local bishop and the media see how many people are appalled by this hateful discrimination.

The recent reports of excessive, unnecessary salaries and wasteful capital spending at the Queens Library are deeply disturbing and have hurt the Library’s public service. Since 2008, the Queens Library’s President/CEO Thomas Galante has not hired a full-time public service staff member, including librarians, clerks, custodians and computer technicians resulting in the loss of over 150 public service staff, 44 layoffs and the contracting out of custodial services. His actions have resulted in less hours, fewer programs, dirtier libraries, slower services and demoralized staff. With the money used for excessive salaries and unnecessary capital projects, the Library can hire more public service staff who provide free materials, programs, computers, wifi, clean and safe libraries to thousands of diverse Queens Library users every day. Mayor de Blasio and Borough President Katz keep Queens Library one of the best library systems in the World and tell your Queens Library trustees to have the Library rehire the 44 and hire more full-time public service staff.

We cannot force these Companies to bring back our jobs, but we should not subsidize, or support Companies that do export American Jobs. When jobs are shipped overseas there are fewer Tax Payers to take up the slack for the massive tax breaks these Companies already receive.

Show some solidarity to an unlucky backpacker

I am starting this petition because my community of Saint Helena Island South Carolina will be affected by CAROLINA JELLY BALLS, LLC's trawling of cannonball jellyfish and discharge of wastewater and toxins. The effects of the trawling will include: contaminated food source, river ways (water), environment, and a decrease in future seafood population. We are also extremely concern about our properties and neighborhoods.

We are starting this petition to continue to push the MTA to restore elevator services for our senior citizens, disabled persons and mothers with baby strollers at the E. 149th St. & Grand Concourse Train Station Hub (2, 4, and 5 lines). This South Bronx community has suffered over 30 years without having these vital elevator services repaired. There are also several institutions in this community that are directly affected including Michelangelo Houses, Hostos Community College, Lincoln Hospital, 149th St. General Post Office and Pregones Theatre.

U.S. trade negotiators, acting in the interests of corporations serving as "advisers" are trying to use free trade agreements to bring in through the "back door" policies SO AWFUL they couldn't get them passed in Congress. In 2013, the leaked “Intellectual Property” chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement confirmed our worst fears: film and media companies were pushing extreme copyright provisions in secret that would threaten individual privacy and impose severe restrictions on the Internet. While Hollywood has had a ringside seat at negotiations, with access to the negotiating text so they could give input, Congress—whose job it is to oversee trade—wasn't even invited to the party. Now, the president expects them to grant him "Fast Track" authority, so he can slide through the TPP, and TTIP, a companion agreement in Europe, quickly, before anybody notices. Both deals threaten everything Americans hold dear – from our jobs to our sovereignty. One of the biggest threats is language that brings back provisions from SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA was defeated two years ago amid a huge, bipartisan public outcry. It would impose severe limits and harsh penalties on internet users for what many of us consider harmless everyday sharing. We could face fines or lose internet access FOREVER for such things as non-commercial, small-scale copying (from the buffer copy made when you view a legit video to sending your buddy an image or song) to “breaking” a digital lock so you can use software you have purchased on a Linux platform. Even worse, the methods by which ISPs would need to monitor for "copyright infringement" threaten online privacy in a way that we can never reverse. Service providers would become online police-or be held responsible for any copyrighted content they allowed to be transmitted. Besides monitoring websites and social networks, they would have to scan individual email, clouds, and secure communications for potentially offending links. In some instances, government agencies could gain unauthorized access to user data that would normally require a warrant. That 4th amendment threat, once established as routine, would be virtually impossible to roll back. (So much for eliminating NSA spying.) And because these provisions would be part of an international trade agreement, users in member countries would have no legal recourse to fight this warrantless surveillance. (We couldn't even pass a law to fix the problem, because trade agreements trump domestic laws.) That's why we MUST stop Congress from granting the president "Fast Track" authority. (The official name is The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act and the bill was introduced January 9 in the House and Senate.) And we must stop these undemocratic "free trade" agreements that have nothing to do with trade and are destroying our economy and eroding our civil liberties - all to further fatten the wallets of a handful of Hollywood crony capitalists who managed to buy themselves seats at the president's table.

I am starting this petition because we need all hands on deck to help us win back the House and retain control of the Senate in 2014. Priorities USA made the decision not to help candidates in 2014 and to wait until 2016 elections. This is wrong and if we lose the Senate and don't try to retake the House in 2014 it will further erode the ability of President Obama to get anything done for the people.

Clean water is a basic human right which must be protected. Fracking is exempt from provisions in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act which leaves our water unprotected. New Mexico's San Juan and Lea Counties have been devastated by fracking - water is taken by the millions of gallons and toxins are dumped into their water systems daily. In New Mexico, we want clean water - not fracking.

To let kids focus on well rounded learning not just NJASK scores.

I have no problem at all with legitimate reviews of a business, but Yelp is not interested in the truth. They are predatory with a clear conflict of interest. My business, income, and my reputation have been damaged by the strong-arm tactics of Yelp, as I have refused to pay them to 'fix' my problem of a one star rating, which they caused in order to profit from me paying them to 'fix' it, while 'filtering' my legitimate five star reviews. I have a defamatory false negative one-star review posted on my business Yelp listing, while all of the legitimate five-star reviews from my clients are 'filtered' by Yelp. I am not the only business and person affected by Yelp. Small business owners, employees, and the public are harmed everywhere by Yelp. See the articles, websites and the class action lawsuits by business owners against Yelp. === Update 11 September 2019 Could it get any worse? Where is the justice for Yelp victims? Help the honest hard working people and the victims of extortion. Pay it Forward: Ban Yelp from Google and all Search Engines until they stop filtering legitimate positive reviews and stop allowing false reviews to appear on business listings. Thank you! Groupon may pursue deal with online-review company Yelp https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/groupon-may-pursue-deal-with-online-review-company-yelp === Update 12 December 2018 I have managed to re-open my petition on change.org. I do not know why it was closed. Anyway, it is re-opened. Please sign that one too! Thanks! https://www.change.org/p/larry-page-ceo-pay-it-forward-ban-yelp-from-search-engines-until-they-stop-their-harmful-practices-yelp-is-destroying-small-businesses-help-small-businesses-succeed-and-you-will-help-all-economies-prosper http://www.prostfilms.com/blog/where-the-film-stands-dec-2018/ 'Where The Film Stands – Dec 2018 Posted on December 10, 2018 Share: Facebook twitter google_plus pinterest linkedin tumblr mail Hello everyone! Let us start off by saying we can’t thank you enough for your continued support of Billion Dollar Bully and it’s message. We apologize we haven’t been on top of releasing updates. Going forward, we’re going to be better about updating everyone! Today’s update is regarding some things we’ve been dealing with for a bit of time. Things we weren’t sure we should share with the public. Since this isn’t just our fight, we decided it would be a good idea to share with you all what’s been going on behind the scenes lately. As we’ve mentioned previously, Billion Dollar Bully is fully finished! Its been seen during several private screenings, and has been very well received. We’re currently sitting on several distribution offers that will help Billion Dollar Bully be seen by a very wide audience. And for that, we’re so excited! The thing is, we can’t sign any distribution deal. Why? Well, because in order to sign a distribution deal a film must have insurance. We posted a blog here about the process we went through just to be approved for insurance. While we have been approved, insurance has not yet been purchased and we will explain why. As we came to learn, there’s an industry standard for the price of insurance for documentaries. Billion Dollar Bully was quoted an insurance number that was 8x that of a normal insurance cost! A big blow to a film that’s been made on a limited budget. Some distributors will take a film and put money upfront to pay any additional costs. Given that this is our first film and we don’t have any “industry connections,” this has not been our case. All distribution companies are requiring that we figure out a way to finance the insurance first. We’ve had many uphill battles completing the film, so we did what we’ve done before. We got to work! We starting looking for ways to secure the insurance. And as we fought to complete the last battle to ensure Billion Dollar Bully was released, strange things started happening… A few sales agents reached out to us, several times, wanting to see the film. They claimed Elon Musk was very interested in seeing the film, and possibly interested in buying it. At first, an exciting prospect. But on closer inspection we realized that Jeremy Stoppleman, CEO and founder of Yelp, and Elon Musk go way back. Together, they were part of the “PayPal Mafia”. And since Elon Musk isn’t in the movie buying business, as far as we’re aware, and he and Mr. Stoppleman are what we can only assume are friends, it seemed strange. And then? Our emails got hacked. Several times. People started reaching out to us claiming they could help secure the insurance. And after countless wasted hours, we’d find out they were somehow connected to Yelp. Current and former employees of Yelp reached out to us; some of them admitted they were with Yelp, and some would try to hide the information. It took a bit of digging on our end to figure out who these people were. There was rabbit hole after rabbit hole. The truth has always been, and remains the truth today, that Yelp is a billion dollar company that knows it has something to hide. It knows that what they’re hiding could cost them a billion dollars. And so, our fight to complete and release the film has been an uphill battle. We want you to know that we aren’t giving up and that we’re out here getting very close to securing insurance for the film and signing that hard won distribution to deal. Billion Dollar Bully WILL be seen. It NEEDS to be seen. Yelp continues to abuse their very own consumers! Ben Kohn recently reached out with a lovely graph that shows reviewers for his business being filtered, but those same reviewers leaving other companies reviews and their review being considered legitimate. Here’s a video you can watch of him showing his ad campaign and what he did (and didn’t) get out of it. Your continued support is more appreciated than you know! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season with those you love. Mellissa and Kaylie' Update 2 December 2018 ...