A large percentage of your salary is taken by FICA, but the rich, who receive non-salaried compensation, don't pay it. And Social Security doesn't need it, because the government creates dollars at will. FICA widens the gap between the rich and the rest.

Because my sister as an educator and administrator has a Masters in Early Childhood Development, I had assumed all educators were required to have education in child development. Wrong. There is so much more insight to child development than even 20-30 years ago. We also know that addressing your audience is a fundamental key to communication of anything. I would like to see education in child development be a requirement for all teachers.

Fracking is dangerous and destructive to neighborhoods and our land. The consequences of Fracking are not totally determined but it can contribute to gas leaks and sink holes. Please do not let big corporations benefit at the expense of California's citizens.

A local politician once said to me that the Golden Rule is: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The general manager, John Grubich of the Okanogan PUD #1 is negotiating, against the will of rate-payers, a $102.4 million dollar deal with a private venture capitol company to fund a series of optional “want to” projects. What the general manager (an employee, not owner of the PUD) refuses to acknowledge is that the rate payers are the owners of the gold. This deal would give our gold to for-profit “investors” and give them the power to make the rules. Mr. Grubich and his financial adviser insist that they must raise private customer rates 26% to service this loan. The Commissioners are blocking public input and enabling the management decision. Over-leveraged debt is what caused the 2008 financial crisis. I predict that this venture capital deal will lead to financial crisis for the rate-payers of our PUD. This is of concern for all tax payers because one of the projects is a hydro-dam project that has a negative cost/benefit assessment. It will never produce enough electricity to pay for itself. This project, known as Enloe Dam, is in conflict with billions of state and federal tax dollars and decades of time spent on habitat restoration on our local streams and rivers. The 1st step in our grassroots determination for fiscal sanity is to raise public awareness. Please sign our notice to the PUD that many people from across the state are paying attention. Our next step is to demand the management partner with us (honor our native and natural creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship) to create local sustainable power generation and affordable access to electric power.

Lee County Commissioners will be deciding on budget cuts sometime in September, 2013, and the entire budget for Lee County Extension Services ($885,600) is on the chopping block. Extension develops & administrates: 1. Public outreach, with free or inexpensive classes on a variety of topics that improve quality of life, nutrition, environmental sciences, bee keeping, Master Naturalist and Master Gardening. 2. Florida Yards & Neighborhood program that educates homeowners about landscapes that will protect the environment & conserve our precious water. 3. 4-H programs that provide youth programs with volunteer services valued at $330,000 in 2011. 4. Master Gardener volunteers (hours from last year alone totaled 26,874, which translates into a dollar amount of $585,584). 5. Training & certification for various occupational licenses. 6. Teaching professional landscapers the Green Industries Best Management Practices (GI-BMPs) on proper use of pesticides & fertilizers, resulting in fewer nutrients & toxins entering our water. 7. Marine Education 8. Agriculture & Natural Resources 9. Family & Consumers. Lee County Extension, providing residents with access to science-based information and education in natural and social resources through the work of UF/IFAS Extension (University of Florida/Institute of Food & Agriculture Sciences) does all this & more for a minimal investment. It’s a bargain that if lost, will certainly result in the compromise of our clean waterways, which is a big reason tourists visit our beautiful county. Save Lee County Extension. We can't afford not to.

No parents should have to go through what the parents that lost their children to the Tornado's in Oklahoma are going through. A parent should be confident that when they send their children off to school that they will be protected and that there is safe place within every school for them to go to in an emergency. A room that is engineered to protect our children and our teachers.

The Grateful Dead are truly an All-American Band. They created an entirely new genre of music. They deserve to be honored for their contributions to music and American life.

In 2014, change to a morning start time for the annual Memorial Day parade. Many residents support an earlier start time to help increase attendance. Just because it's always started at 2:15 pm does not mean it should not change.

Gov. Christie, my name is Alyssa Durnien and I’m a New Jersey Sandy survivor. In my town of Keansburg, we lost 1100 houses out of 1900. I worked on the evacuation, search and rescue, living out of the firehouse for 14 days. We’ve been working together to fix houses, cook meals, fight the mold. Even now, there are still people without electricity in my town. We’re doing what we can to keep the Jersey shore strong, but we need you to be a responsible leader, responding to immediate needs and planning for future threats. When you stood with President Barack Obama in the days after the storm, I thought you recognized that Superstorm Sandy was more important than partisan politics. It’s unquestioned — by scientists if not by politicians — that the sea level rise caused by global warming pollution made Sandy worse. So that’s why I was shocked to hear you attack a reporter for her “liberal public radio agenda” when she asked what you’re doing to prepare New Jersey for climate change. I thought you knew your job is to prepare New Jersey for the more intense storms and sea level rise that scientists have predicted for decades and that are now upon us. I thought you knew your job is to help New Jersey reduce the threat of climate change by fighting the pollution that is changing our weather. I thought you knew your job is to keep the people of New Jersey safe, but now it sounds like you want to be the next Sarah Palin instead. Please, don’t play politics with our lives.

Eric Holder ET AL, have spent years research the Wall Street meltdown, looked at the perpetrators on Wall Street, and locally at the mess on main-street when it comes to effects on the economy, lost jobs, decimation of education, needed government services, fair taxes, opportunities, SS, Medicare, infrastructure, healthcare, environment. It is unacceptable that DOJ could only, after 5+years, only sue Standard and Poor's in a $5 B "civil" lawsuit. There's Moody's, Dun&Bradstreet, and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings. We demand criminal action and ASAP on Goldman Sachs, AIG, Chase, CITI, Bank of America, etc. AG Eric Holder alleges the conduct egregious, and at the heart of the crisis. That's not good enough; we want to see the American people put into the positions they were lawfully in before the fraud, just like any court restitution agreement would enforce. The mortgage backed securities were bundled and sold to investors as AAA rated when they actually were junk status. They inflated ratings and understated risks, driven by a desire to gain more business from the investment banks, claiming ratings were objective. They practiced immoral, bad judgment, illegal acts knowing this based on their established business models, at several levels of management following strategic objectives to compete and maintain big market share. Individuals in all key roles must be held accountable for participating and knowing, imprisoned, fined and the entities must be held criminally liable. You see these investment banks can't sell financial instruments rated less than the top AAA, so risky mortgage packages had to be split up, rebundled to look good to US and global investors. S&P issued $2.8 trillion, the others issued trillions more. They would get $750,000 revenue per deal, and the investment banks are their customers. Top executives and managers could see both sides of the transactions, and knew the threat of losing deals. If S&P didn't make a deal, Moody's would, because they forced the numbers to support the credit level, this is called "being effective". They claim they were trying to adjust decision models to be broader/more accurate, it never happened. The historical data is never perfectly aligned with the uncertainty of the future, but they loosened assumptions, created loopholes to get approvals, and therefore profits and bonuses. Then came internal pressure to downgrade big time, as defaults started blowing up. The lawsuit was brought under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, a civil fraud statute from the S&L scandals, but 2007-2008 was the motherload of US and global cheating, lying, and stealing. History: A derivative, for hedging has an underlying #interest rate, exchange rate, or FAIR VALUE price changes# for notional amounts #the commodity, asset, foreign currency, Financial Investment Instrument on a public trading exchange#. The price of the derivative varies inversely to that, to avoid risk, a relationship by which losses are counterbalanced by gains in the other market. NO INITIAL INVESTMENTS WERE REQUIRED #IT WAS A PONZI TYPE SCHEME#, where futures contracts, options, relied on agreement to make or receive delivery/net settlement. 1. A fair value hedge pertained to fixed cash flows from changes in Fair Values of assets, liabilities, or firm commitments; 2. A cash flow hedge is like an interest rate swap to mitigate risk of variable cash flows from "forecasted" transactions #contract for the swap, but no contract on the Financial mortgage Instrument #no execution##. These are complex and the FASB would put out preliminary standards for input, but ultimately enacted what big business pressured them to produce for their benefits. As for SEC and DOJ, we could have supported Section 18 of the 1934 Act imposing liabilities for making or causing false or misleading statements #or omissions# of material facts that would have influenced decision makers, or supply proof that price of securities, debts were negatively affected #Fraud-on-the-Market Theory#, subbing for proof of reliance #1#. Take hard look at Section 10B-5: 1.Proof of reliance, 2. purchase/sale of securities #securitized,bundled, and diluted#, 3.intent to deceive, manipulate, defraud #willful-reckless disregard for truth#, 4. Government need not prove reliance, individuals would, 5. actual loss. If you listened to and read honest, well researched housing and financial instrument data from approximately 1995 to 2007, from market trackers like the Commerce Department, and responsible, well seasoned and ethical Professors of Economics, etc, the inflation curve veered upward strongly compared to normal CPI and other indicators of price levels. So even The FED Chair Alan Greenspan supported his robber baron friends, then after the fact apologized for no action. We had liar loans where lenders actually altered loan documents to get the applicants approved; business and home appraisers stood to gain on moving overpriced property from seller to buyer, and this was pervasive. The DOJ and SEC must bring large criminal action against all players who actively perpetrated, or appeased this abhorrent injustice on law abiding, hard working Americans, still deeply hurting for these offenses!

My daughter and I have been disabled by chlordane/pesticide exposures. There is no toxicological medical care to monitor our injuries, no educational provisions, and no justice in our courts for citizens disabled by toxic corporate products. We are at the mercy of federal, state, and local agencies who do not recognize our suffering or accommodate our need to avoid toxic exposures in order to prevent further injury.

Too little is known about the long term effects of Fracking; especially in a sensitively seismic area like California. Is it really worth putting our future in jeopardy just to squeeze out another drop of oil to further pollute our planet and put another billion dollars in the oil industries banks. Let's put a stop to the insanity and say, "Not in our State. Let's invest in clean and renewable energy."