On April 10th, the Civil Service Commission held a public hearing on a rule proposal to eliminate civil service as we know it. The rule proposal bypasses the legislature and contract negotiations to "broad band" civil service titles, rewrite promotional rules, and eliminate or limit important protections like veteran preference, testing and ranking on lists, and layoff rights. Take action to ensure this rule isn't rubber-stamped after a single hearing! Make sure thousands of public employees and hundreds of thousands of residents can weigh in to shape or stop this rule. The “broad bands” of job titles would allow management at all levels of government (State, County, and Municipal) in the Civil Service System to group numerous job titles in large “bands.” Employers could hire, demote, or advance employees to jobs within the “band” based solely on management's assessment of your competency - without objective testing or lists. Even worse is the manner in which the Commission is trying to do this. They are only allowing one hearing on these changes—at 3pm on a work day when most workers and residents can not attend the hearing. Despite the fact that thousands of public employees would be harmed by the rule, the hearing room only holds 20 people. The Christie Administration wants to silence public input and push this change through with a rubber stamp after one meeting. We need to mobilize to stop it. We are organizing public comment opposing the rule but the first step is to get the Commission to hold a real public hearing process.

I HAVE WORKED FOR 50 YEARS TO HAVE AN INCOME WHEN I RETIRE!!!! DO NOT TAKE MY MONEY ( AND IT IS MY MONEY) AWAY FROM ME. iT IS BAD ENOUGH i AM PAYING TAXES ON IT TWICEALREADY! WHEN I EARNED IT AND AGAIN WHEN IT IS DIBURSED TO ME! ENOUGH!!!!! Francine Hunter 13 Branford Court Avon,CT 06001

We need to move treatment plant from school areas.

I run my own holistic wellness center, many people NEED the services we provide, but can not get them because we can not charge insurance. For instance, I have a client who is low-income, and has sciatic nerve pain. This can be debilitating. She has tried everything the doctors have told her to do short of surgery. NOTHING worked!! She came to me, knowing she could not afford our services, and asked what could be done. I am forced to work with her and many people like her for free because it helps her when nothing else does!!! Insurance companies won't pay for services like massage therapy unless they are done with a physical therapist or chiropractor, and even then only a couple of companies will pay. The other issue is that the therapist is still doing the massage whether they work in a chiropractors office or not, but they can not get paid on their own! That's ridiculous! Other treatments we offer, including Reiki, Yoga, Meditation, Counseling, Acupuncture, etc... are not paid for even though research has proved them to be more effective than medication in the treatments of many illnesses. These services need to be paid for, people should have the right to choose how they treat their symptoms, and money should NOT be a barrier!! Many of these treatments work better and cost less than medications and surgery. If more people were able to get these treatments, we would have less of a healthcare crisis!

The people are the goverment not NRA that pay off our elected members.

The state of alabama should provide some type of legalized gambling in the state. We as alabamians are forced to take our hard earned money to the neighboring states to gamble, taking multi-millions from the state. This is money we could use in the state, to help lower taxes, provide educational funds, and improve things in the state of alabama.

Our K-12 public school system continues to be negatively impacted by funding shortfalls. This has led to unacceptable loss of programs/staff that are critical to the educational needs of our children.Those programs and staff that remain are unable to be as succesful in their efforts due to increased class size, resource unavailability, variety etc..This must end. We must place our K-12 public school systems, at the very least, on the same funding priority, as we do our other critical national infrastructure needs.

Republican budget obstruction hurts economy badly! Rs are stalling to force debt ceiling debackle again which forced the Boehnerquester. What's next- another Republican depression? Please sign petition to get congress attention

In March 2012, caregivers at Care One’s Woodcrest Health Care Center voted to join with 1199SEIU, the healthcare workers union. We voted to form our union so that we could achieve dignity, respect, affordable healthcare and a voice in resident care. Now it is one year later, and we still have not sat down with management to negotiate a fair contract that will make Woodcrest a better place. This is because management has unlawfully refused to recognize our union. This January, the NLRB officially certified 1199SEIU as our bargaining representative. Yet, Woodcrest is still refusing to negotiate with us. Brothers Daniel and Moshael Straus run the Care One and HealthBridge nursing home chains. NLRB administrative law judges have found that Care One and HealthBridge have violated federal labor law more than 17 times. Some nursing homes run by these companies have threatened to slash healthcare benefits, staffing and wages for caregivers, have refused to recognize workers’ legally protected right to form a union, or have unlawfully fired workers for trying to form a union. Visit CareOneWatch.org to find out more.

We need a new party to represent the American people for the first time. A party that will stand up to the special interest groups and fight for Medicare for everybody in the country. We need a party that will stand up to the NRA and corporations who are against Social Security and Medicare.

The "gang of 8" wants no more than about 25% more future legal immigration than we have now. Calling that "reform" is like saying "we are doing immigrants a great big huge favor, to allow any to come at all." Meanwhile economists are telling us the more legal immigration we allow, the more dramatically our economy will grow; the better jobs there will be for citizens; and the more taxes we will collect towards our crushing deficit. America needs immigrants more desperately than immigrants need America.

Our legislators need to understand how much this nation will benefit from providing a path to citizenship for the millions of hard-working community members and their families.