Need Emergency Unemployment Benefits!

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are painful, often debilitating diseases that can seriously impact patients' quality of life, and IBD affects 1.4 million Americans. IBD can also be very difficult to treat. There are few medication options, and those medications can cause side effects from headaches and hair loss to dangerously low white and red blood cell counts, liver toxicity, lymphoma, and even death. Even on these potent drugs, many patients can't achieve remission. Fecal microbial transplant (FMT) is a treatment option with very few side effects, and numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in treating IBD. Unfortunately, the FDA recently classified fecal matter as a drug and a biologic agent. Now IBD patients can only get FMT through clinical trials, which most patients don't have access to. IBD patients need access to FMT, a safe and effective treatment that could drastically improve many lives. Please urge the FDA to allow IBD patients access to FMT.

So far I have been talking in third person. To put a face to the problem I am providing the readers of two true-to-life stories. My name is Gonzalo Duran. I expect to graduate on May 2014 from Fordham University. I am the CEO of Devil Dog USA Incorporated; and an advocate for the Bronx and Veteran community. Two years ago, my current status was not as appealing as my beginning introduction was. After a great successful 8 years of service in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and 1 tour of deployment within Iraq, I was discharged honorably and left the Military. As soon as I got back to the great state of New York, I was immediately faced with unemployment, homelessness, legal issues, and the inability to seek higher education without medical benefits from the VA. I attempted to enroll and comply with the programs set by the VA and by New York State but I could not qualify. I sought as much help as I could from the civilian sector but they did very little to nothing to help me in my situation. I had to find a balance of VA and VSO’s assistance and suffer with decisions between losses and gains – unfortunately, it was more on the side of losses rather than gains. The odd part to this is that I had a full knowledge of all the programs and the transitional process but could not prosper. It took me a full solid year to situate myself and another year to bring me back to the caliber I am at now. With God’s grace, a lot of trial and error, I decided to dedicate my time to serving my fellow Veterans and I have chosen to use what I have learned to help other Veterans to avoid the hard transitional period I went through. To illustrate for you, from a personal perspective one aspect of what I mean by ‘hard transitional period’ I will give you a specific issue I had. When I first came back home to the Bronx, I could not find an apartment and it would still be a few months before my educational benefits would go into effect. I tried to apply for unemployment but again, I was going to have to wait a few months, and I then applied for VA disability and was told I would have to wait 2 years. I then went back home to live with my mother for two months. I then got a suit from the Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs (MOVA), went into a broker’s office with a lump sum of money in-hand which came from my last paycheck from the USMC and from my old church with a ‘I don’t take no for an answer’ attitude. I was very lucky to finally have found good solid citizens who just wanted a good tenant. This is how I was able to build a foundation to start my new life even with so many obstacles in front of me. What I failed to learn was that my case was a one-in-a- million. Since that time of my life, I have found countless Veterans who have faced the same hurdles that I was faced with but for much longer periods of time. I have devoted much of my time to helping those individuals I have come across but I was faced with a dilemma that everyone and everything was against me. Recently, I met Yegor Zubarev, in one of my classes. He always seems positive and very energetic. He approached me after class once he saw one of my Facebook post. We discussed my projects and what my organization was all about. After speaking, we left with a sense of mutual respect and foresight of future collaboration. A few weeks went by and we began talking on how Zubarev could help within the organization since we are expanding. During a brief conversation, certain signs I read made me ask him a few questions I would to a friend/client. Zubarev told me his story of how he came to this country from Russia and joined the USMC to better himself. How he excelled in the service and became a citizen for it. Then he discussed the horrible effects of his honorable discharge. He took all the steps that he was informed of for transitioning but the cracks in the issues above caused him to end up at his present status. Zubarev is currently a Fordham University student with ambitions of Law School; he is currently living in a shelter and facing many obstacles. This is similar to a situation I faced two years ago myself. Seeking education and getting treatment but facing homelessness, unemployment and the problems that follow. Since that night I have devoted my time to pull him through this tragic event in his life. He has selflessly given his time to helping others before him, by helping me and now, I will show him what his efforts will bear. I saw a quality in him that I see in myself and other great figures. We have a willingness to persevere through hardship. Not for self-preservation but rather in a unified effort of brotherhood for ones’ peers. Why are there problems like these? Because I need the people to help me deal with the elected officials who are required to help in this venture. They promise assistance but once I make it back to my study to situate myself and begin the process. I either get buried in bureaucratic paperwork (or “red tape”) that will not go anywhere or I am told that there’s nothing they can do. This is the worst part because the banquet, forum (or lecture) where I met with them was dedicated to the exact thing I was asking for assistance with. I am demanding an audience so I could take the opportunity to discuss the problems with them and maybe find a way to close the cracks on the system. Monetary means and support is all we need to venture out and our main goal is to help the countless Veterans who are out there. If we were to fail, we would at least have done better than our counterparts or what the above parties have done so far. If however we succeed, we will set a higher standard and a model to emulate for other organizations- for profit or non-profit, and we will be there to continue to help and support the Veterans. To make this clear, this article is dedicated to those that are suffering because of the system and its flaws. These flaws ca...

Myself along with thousands of residents in my community have been seriously affected by the lack of public notification of Maryland State and County DOT sponsored public hearings (presentation, Q&A session etc ...) regarding a major highway which will ruin our community and destroy hundreds of acres of critical wildlife habitat.

Whole Foods' CEO, John Mackey, has been using his position as head of one of the most respected companies in America to promote anti-Obamacare lies and deter people from signing up for life-saving health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Fight back against this kind of confusing misinformation and tell John Mackey stop misleading Americans. Statements like these confuse people about the law and scare them away from signing up for the coverage they desperately need.

1.) http://christiannews.net/2014/01/07/satanists-unveil-design-for-proposed-homage-to-satan-near-ten-commandments-monument/ 2.) http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/sympathy-the-devil-ok-city

The richest country on earth should provide health care for all people,we can always find money for wars but the health of this nation should be a top priority but it is not,this is not a republican or democrat thing,this is an American thing,every American deserves health care.

Our Leaders in WV have turned our state over to the destruction caused by oil and gas extraction. Just as our long history with coal mining has proven; little more than lip service has or is being paid to the health and welfare of our citizens or the environment upon which we depend. Every day we face more contamination and potential death due to spills, pipeline ruptures, well explosions, dangerous roads and heavy equipment traffic. Lives have already been lost. We do not need jobs that kill. We need leaders who will focus on developing renewable energy which will guarantee jobs and a cleaner environment for our children well into the future. West Virginia must also be concerned about our neighbors living up wind and down stream from our ever increasing poisonous emissions. West Virginia is our home. We insist that our home be protected.

The Great Mandate demands a re-founding of our nation to become truly democratic and to place People before profit. We can do it. We have no choice as the alternative is unsustainable.

As detailed by a report of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riot of 1921, Greenwood after the riot was “a blackened landscape of vacant lots and empty streets, charred timbers and melted metal, ashes and broken dreams. Where the African American commercial district once stood was now a ghost town of crumbling brick store fronts and the burned-out bulks of automobiles. Gone was the Dreamland and the Dixie, gone was the Tulsa Star and the black public library, gone was the Liberty Cafe and Elliott & Hooker’s clothing store, H.L. Byars’ cleaners and Mabel Little’s beauty salon. Gone were literal lifetimes of sweat and hard work, and hard-won rungs on the ladder of the American Dream. Gone, too, were hundreds of homes, and more than a half-dozen African American churches, all torched by the white invaders. Nearly ten-thousand Tulsans, practically the entire black community, was now homeless." As justice was never delivered, H.R. 98 is a bill to reopen the case for redress. Redress to families affected by the Tulsa Race Riot is widely supported by civil rights scholars and academics who study the topic of reparations. To learn more, check out one of the many books that has been written on the riot and its aftermath, including Albert Brophy's Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Scott Ellsworth's Death in a Promised Land, and James S. Hirsch's Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy. There have been at least two documentary films made about the race riot: Before They Die!, and The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story. Check out the Oklahoma Commission report: http://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf. Last but not least, see the text of H.R. 98 here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr98ih/pdf/BILLS-113hr98ih.pdf.

After a two-year-long knock-down drag-out fight, Congress is on the verge of holding their final votes on the Farm Bill. Unfortunately, it looks like the final bill will still include billions of dollars in farm subsidies, most of which will go to Big Ag. Since 1995, 75% of agricultural subsidies have gone to just 4% of farmers, with over 60% not getting a dime. Even worse, $19 billion of those taxpayer subsidies have gone to pay for junk food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup. Given the nation’s obesity epidemic, it’s hard to imagine a worse way to spend our tax dollars. Some are claiming this new Farm Bill is real reform, but the truth is that most of the improvements are cosmetic. For example, in one creative sleight of hand, the bill eliminates one wasteful subsidy program only to replace it with another subsidy program with a new name that does the same thing. As our nation faces significant cuts to critical programs, it seems impossible to justify handing out billions of dollars to support profitable agribusinesses that don’t need our money and produce crops that get processed into junk food additives.

Scores of sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan and other US ships who responded with humanitarian aid for victims of the 3/11/2011 earthquake and tsunami were irradiated by Fukushima. They are now suffering radiation-related health effects. We ask that Tokyo Electric Power compensate them, and that the governments of Japan and the United States help in this process.