I am appalled at the attacks on teachers and public schools and the concomitant rise in charters which are allowed to cherry pick their students and are backed by business.

I started this petition with Change.org. Sign there or here. http://www.change.org/petitions/federal-state-and-local-governments-grid-the-roads-install-solar-cells-above-all-public-roads This project would have massive benefits for the US economy, its citizens, and the Earth as a whole. The idea is simple - install solar (photovoltaic) arrays above all public roads. This provides a huge range of benefits! To list some: *For brevity, let's call these installations PVAs - for photovoltaic arrays. The PVAs could (first) reduce or perhaps eliminate the electricity needed to light the roads at night, or in cloudy weather. Electricity generated during the daytime could be stored in large capacitor holding stations for use after dark or when needed. *So called 'excess' electricity could be fed back into the existing electrical grid. This would have many powerful benefits. *Doing so would reduce the cost of electricity nationwide, both for individuals and corporations. That alone would give the US economy an enormous boost. *Generating local PVA electrical power would reduce our burning of fossil fuels, thus reducing global warming. *Since PVAs are a sustainable/renewable energy source, we greatly reduce the risk of social collapse from Peak Oil, Peak Coal, etc. *The manufacture, installation, and maintenance of the PVAs would create a fantastic number of local jobs. Jobs that could never be outsourced, or eliminated, as they have to (always) be done on a local basis. Jobs that will always be needed to maintain and expand the PVA infrastructure. After the first round of PVA installation on Federal highways, the project can be continued on state and local roads. The more PVAs we install, the lower the cost of the electricity generated. *Since the land below the PVAs is already dedicated to roads, very little additional land is needed to implement the project. Nor would land have to be seized under 'eminent domain' - the small tracts needed for capacitor holding stations could be bought or leased. *Such a national campaign would provide funding for research and development of ever more efficient PVAs. The more we do it, the better we'll get at it, and the lower the price of electricity drops. Plus, the more we do it, the less (and less) fossil fuel we need to burn for electrical power. It's a win-win that keeps on winning for everyone. *Properly designed PVAs could partially shield roads from rain and snow. This not only makes driving safer, but reduces plowing and salting costs in winter time. *PVAs could be used to provide charging stations for electric vehicles, thus helping still more to move the US toward renewable resources. *By reducing our need for oil and coal to create power, we not only reduce the pollution from burning them, we also reduce the pollution created by mining/extracting them. Further, we increase US national security by becoming less dependent on foreign oil. It could also help disaster-proof the US power grid, making it more resilient in case of natural or man-made outages. *We could eliminate the need for dangerous, non-sustainable, polluting nuclear power. *We can move beyond the conflict of government projects vs. private industry projects. The US government could work in tandem with existing power companies to create the needed infrastructure. The government could help finance construction, and then receive revenue from the power generated in the form of new taxes. Even with some tax load, the new electrical power will be cheaper than current power sources. Industry would get subsidies, just as the US government subsidized the construction of the highways themselves, along with many other historical examples. *This concept is not theoretical, it is very similar to two new projects in India. The first one is the Canal Solar Power Project that is currently working. The only real differences are the use of roads, rather than canals for the underlying right-of-way, and the scale of the project. More info is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Solar_Power_Project The second project is from the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute (GERMI) where scientists have proposed a pilot solar power project at a Gujarat state highway. Through computer simulation the scientists believe that a solar roof cover on the 205 kilometre (km) Ahmedabad-Rajkot highway can generate 104 megawatts (MW). The GERMI scientists note that the elevated structures that would support the solar PV modules would also help in rainwater harvesting. If applied to the railway network such projects could supply power to the trains and may help reduce the dependence of Indian Railways on diesel. Read more on the second one (PVAs over roads) at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/02/indian-scientists-propose-solar-roofs-for-roads/?utm_source=Cleantechnica+News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=af255b9dd6-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN#gsc.tab=0 The second report came out a few days after I first posted this petition, so I'm close to the Zeigeist... *Historically, we have developed our infrastructure to only meet one need at a time. But more enlightened design, along with better technology, can help us create roadways that serve multiple needs, all at the same time. Just as some ecologically designed buildings sequester rain water, and harvest solar power, so too, our roads can become multi-function, multi-benefit infrastructure. Truly, this is an idea whose time has come. On an ever more crowded planet, infrastructures must be designed to provide not one, but multiple benefits. GRID THE ROADS!

I'm sick of the Congress continually thwarting the will of the people and serving the rich and the corporations at the peoples' expense.

Congress has not done nearly enough to target student debt. NYU, the nation's most expensive college, and a leader in student debt, is a poster child for financial mismanagement. Republican Senator Grassley has been trying to investigate, but Democrats on the committee are dragging their feet.

Because as a Mexican American I am offended that 72% of the 2 Million Human Deportations by 2014 have Roots like I do from Mexico. This is 100% Racial Profiling by the Obama Administration. Where is the Our American Human Compassion, Our Human American Civil & Human Rights! The Following Human Rights Activists Agree That It Is Time for President Obama to Suspend Deportations: David R Gonzalez (Arizona), Julieta Andrade-Garcia (Illinois), Jennifer Marie Chenoweth-Ruiz (Georgia), Teodoro Palacios (N. Carolina), Tim Paynter (Colorado) & Richard Hartwell (State of Washington)! Please Read, Sign & Share This Petition! Gracias/Thanks

Sword Art Online (SAO) is a widely known Manga that has been adapted into an Anime, which lately has grown a large fan-base within the last year. Recently as of "March 14th 2013" Namco Bandai Games Inc. released a video game adaptation of the popular series to its Japanese public only. The games title; "Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment" for the PlayStation Portable. This Petition is to help convince the developers of this game to create an English rendition of the game and release it to the North American public.

Dear friends, My name is Moose Weatherman, and I am a service connected disabled veteran. I served almost 6 years in the US Navy, as a nuclear reactor operator onboard a US Navy nuclear submarine, the USS San Juan, (SSN-751). I graduated from the US Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando, Florida. I was honorably discharged and medically retired after an accident irradiated me and left me with thyroid cancer in 1989. Today, I have recovered from my illness, and I am a senior pilot for a major international airline. I have flown from the Pacific Northwest to Tokyo many times, and will resume flying those routes in the near future. Because of my education and experience as a nuclear reactor operator, I follow with great interest and concern the situation unfolding at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, located less than 150 miles northeast of Tokyo. My fellow citizens, I believe that while the seriousness of the ongoing and worsening situation at Fukushima is just starting to be noticed by the major media outlets, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the Japanese Government continue to downplay, procrastinate and actually mislead the world about the continued leakage from the plant, and more importantly, about the status of the three destroyed and melted-down reactors, and the leaking and rubble-filled spent fuel storage pool at reactor 4. The reactor "coriums," or melted reactor cores, for reactors 1, 2 and 3, have breached containment and are in the subterranean water table below the plant, as evidenced by the radioactive effluent from the plant into the ocean, and the steam rising from the shattered reactors, 2 years after the initial accident. The spent fuel pool at reactor 4 is precarious at best, and threatens to release 14,000 times the radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bomb... and that pool is leaking water continuously. The imminent destruction of the reactor 4 spent fuel pool will be the worst nuclear disaster in human history, and will make much of Northern Japan uninhabitable. These are the assessments of many leaders of the world's scientific community, not mine. Though today, years after my service ended, I can not claim to currently be an expert in the field of nuclear engineering, I do have enough education and experience to know that if the situation continues to follow it's current path of deterioration, millions of people.. including many of us in the Pacific Northwest, will die or be sickened. Our economy will be devastated as seafood becomes inedible, rain becomes toxic and crops will be radioactive. Friends, I urge you to educate yourself on the situation, and to petition the United States Government to move to intervene immediately to stabilize the situation at Fukushima. The Japanese Government has washed it's hands of the situation. At first, the GoJ allowed TEPCO (now bankrupt) to make all decisions and efforts at the plant, which they did in a meager and ineffective, financially constrained way. Today, they pledge to step in; however, Japanese Prime Minister Abe seems interested only in the continuation of the lie that won Tokyo the 2020 Olympics... namely, that all radiation is contained, the situation is under control, and there is no danger. While there is widely ranging opinion on exactly how bad the danger is, there is consensus among the brightest minds in science today that TEPCO and the Japanese Government have badly mismanaged the crisis, are lying on a daily basis, and that the situation is incredibly serious and becoming more grave on a daily basis. I urge you, my fellow citizens, to pursue intervention. The fate of millions of lives depend on whether or not the situation is stabilized. Syria, al Qaeda, the war on drugs, the economic crisis... none of it is as important as stabilizing Fukushima. Because if Fukushima goes, none of the rest of it will matter. Yours very respectfully, Captain James "Moose" Weatherman

Two children of a close friend of mine have been suffering from the devastatingly painful and crippling affects of Chronic Lyme disease for more than 13 years primarily due a succession of medical doctor misdiagnosis's for over 5 years. More needs to be done to educate not only doctors but the public to consider Lyme as a cause of symptoms such as unexplained muscle and/or joint pain, headache, stiff neck, fever, chills and swollen lymph nodes. If left untreated or under treated Lyme disease can and often does become a chronic disease that leaves its victims mere shells of their former selves and all the while experiencing random and intense bouts of pain, nausea, dizziness and fatigue.

Arguing for a drastic cut to the food stamp program (SNAP) Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) had said, "If you're a healthy adult and don't have someone relying on you to care for them, you ought to earn the benefits you receive. Look for work. Start job training to improve your skills or do community service. But you can no longer sit on your couch or ride a surfboard like Jason in California and expect the federal taxpayer to feed you." Here's a message to Rep. Tim Huelskamp from millions of long-term unemployed Americans (including the 99ers and older workers) who are no longer counted in the unemployment rate, as well as the other 11.3 million jobless Americans who are still being counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dear Mister Congress Man Huelskamp: As you very well know, because of very strict "means testing", SNAP benefits are not just given away to anyone who applies for them. Americans who receive food stamps don't have incomes to meet a basic standard-of-living. They either have low-paid jobs, are unemployed, or are elderly (and/or disabled) and rely on a small Social Security income (People such as your friend Jason are a tiny minority). You know all this, or at the very least, you should. Obviously you like to use anecdotal stories from Fox News to back up your arguments and use tainted studies from right-wing think tanks to enforce your ideological beliefs. But please try to expand your intellectual horizons a little more. As a representative of THE PEOPLE, try to see both sides of the food stamp debate. As for most of us, we did earn our food stamp benefits --- many of us have worked and paid taxes for 30 years or longer before being laid off during the Great Recession. And we have looked for work (for the past 5 years) since the mass layoffs. In case you're incapable of doing simple arithmetic, there still are not enough jobs (and even if there were, would you hire Jason?) And speaking of jobs, how many job bills have you voted for or introduced to Congress, and how many have you voted against? And please, tell us where 11.3 million (counted) unemployed Americans can sign up for job training? Most of the corporations that you represent no longer offer on-the-job training; and any form of government-sponsored job training would only defeat your purpose of "smaller government". You said "improve your skills", but please tell us --- what specific skills do 11.3 million unemployed Americans need to fill 3.7 million job openings? The "lacking job skills" argument has been proven to be a corporate myth to expand the guestworker program to hire more foreigners (for less money) in an already over-saturated job market --- a labor market that already pays stagnant wages. And besides, we already have plenty of skills. College graduates (saddled with debt) and those with advanced tech and engineering skills, are still working at places like Walmart and McDonalds (if they're lucky). Either that or they're unemployed. And if people like you and others hadn't allowed for the outsourcing of all our good-paying jobs with "free trade agreements" --- and also stopped insourcing foreign workers with H-1B visas --- maybe then we'd have enough jobs for everyone (jobs that paid a "living wage"). And maybe then, all us "takers" wouldn't need any "government hand-outs" from all the other hard-working Americans who were lucky and managed to keep their jobs. Also, most of us do not ride surfboards. And we also don't "expect" that you personally would have to feed us (just like we don't expect the churches to bail out the big banks) --- but it sure would be nice to eat food after we've exhausted all our resources while looking for all those non-existent jobs that you keep ignorantly babbling about --- jobs that you never helped to create. Instead, you and your ilk repealed Obamacare 40 times! Talk about a waste of time, how moronic is that? Maybe it's people like you who should first be drug tested before collecting your government check. So who's the real pimple on the posterior of our society? Blow-hards like you Mister Congress Man Huelskamp, who receives $174,000-a-year (as a government worker) from hard-working American taxpayers for doing little-to-nothing; or the poor and unemployed people like us, who might only receive a measly $150 a month to eat? And most people who do work pay Social Security taxes on 100% of their earnings (50% of all workers only earn $27,000 a year or less). You however, do not --- your Social Security taxes are "capped", as well as for your wealthiest political donors --- those who earn millions of dollars every single year with capital gains and don't pay any Social Security taxes at all. And they also pay a lower tax rate than does a factory worker who's only earning $40,000 a year in hourly wages. So who is it that's really "gaming the system" --- people like you and your corporate sponsors, or people like us (who are poor) and were forced out of work --- and now need food stamps just to eat? We think it's very repugnant and tasteless that you and your God-fearing Tea Party brethren find it so easy to hurl insults at the abject poor (calling us drug addicts, cheats, alcoholics, liars and lazy), while collecting your "unearned" campaign donations at swanky fundraisers from your "upper-class" supporters --- because if it were not for them, you'd have no class at all. Especially while everybody else is paying for your generous salary, your healthcare insurance and for your congressional expense accounts. And that also includes those who receive an unemployment check, because they too have to pay federal income taxes (depending on their annual adjusted gross income at the end of the fiscal tax year). Mister Congress Man Huelskamp...why don't you do millions of struggling unemployed Americans a really big favor: Either introduce a REAL job bill (without any earmarks, pork, or any other unrelated amendment --- such as more tax cuts for the ultra-rich)...

I, and many others, have pre-existing conditions that will cause insurance companies to find us not eligible for insurance or charge a really high premium for healthcare. It's time for the people to speak instead of insurance lobbyists.

Like me, over 40 million Americans live within 30 miles of a nucear waste storage site, and 116 million Americans live within 50 miles of a waste storage site. Sign this petition that tells the NRC to require that radioactive waste be stored in much safer, more secure concrete and steel dry casks. Also you can attend an NRC meeting by finding locations here: http://1.usa.gov/16kxqx1 Like the nuclear reactors themselves, spent nuclear fuel storage pools contain large amounts of radioactive material. An accident or terrorist attack resulting in a rapid loss of cooling water from a pool could lead to a fire and the release of a massive quantity of radiation—with potentially grave human, environmental, and economic consequences. These pools have become de facto nuclear waste storage sites. Rather than invest in dry casks, plant owners continue to fill them to well beyond what they were designed for, creating unnecessary risks for Americans. Simply put, spent fuel pools are overcrowded and incredibly dangerous if electricity "goes out." Concrete and steel dry cask storage, on the other hand, are so much safer and do not require electricity because they are passively cooled by natural air flow. The dry casks at the Fukushima plant in Japan, for example, went relatively unscathed after the March 2011 disaster there. Independent experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists and elsewhere agree that radioactive waste that has cooled sufficiently should be transferred to dry casks. Even the Sierra Club said that "Overcrowding in irradiated/spent fuel pools is an unacceptable risk to the public. Hardened on-site casks should become the choice for storage." As the waste must eventually be transferred to dry casks in order to be shipped offsite, why not demand that this happen sooner rather than later and improve safety right now?

We need a comprehensive approach to Syria that can serve as a peacemaking, prosperity-building model for the region. We need to break the endless cycle and horror of sectarian violence and dictators holding power through terror and genocide. The German Marshall plan offers a model that can be followed in Syria. Join me in proposing that our national and global leaders adopt and enact a visionary solution.