Petition Representative Jim Matheson of Utah's 4th District to support marriage equality.

Our immigration system is broken. It's forcing our friends and neighbors to live in the shadows. Reducing economic growth. And making the American Dream a criminal offense. With 90% of Californians supporting a pathway to citizenship, our state must lead the way on immigration reform. Rather than relying on votes from House members in Mississippi or Iowa, California's 15 Republican members of Congress must provide those votes. Not only does immigration reform make sense from a moral perspective, but study after study shows that legalizing the aspiring citizens all around us will increase economic growth by as much as $1.4 trillion. Help California's GOP congressmen realize their political lives will be in danger if they're on the wrong side of this issue.

President Bush and the Republican Party have done our country a great deal of harm. Reason not to celebrate him.

OUTRAGE OF THE NEW PARKING FEES FROM 60.00 TO 272.00 -75.00 TO 340.00 ETC. THESE FEES OR OUTRAGES AND NOT FAIR AT ALL. THE FEES MUST BE PAID IN FULL NOT FAIR. THE PARKING IS SO CALLED RESERVED JUST BECAUSE THEY WHERE PAINTED AND ASSIGNED NUMBERS TO THE SPACES WHICH NYCHA HAS ALWAYS DONE. NYCHA HAS NO MONEY BUT THEY HIRE GREYSTONE TO MANAGE OUR PARKING LOTS AND OPPOSE THESE OUTRAGES FEES ON US NOT FAIR AT ALL.

California Legislature voted by 2/3 to implement Obamacare to the fullest but now, Gov.Brown is holding up negotiations on the bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more than one million Californians. He has 63 pages of amendments, some of which are worse than the proposals of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's amendments would preserve unnecessary bureaucracy, delay the implementation of electronic medical records, and hinder our ability to hit the ground running on January 1, 2014 -- only 9 months away. The Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, and the Sacramento Bee all say he's wrong on this.

Did you know more than 20,000 Californians illegally possess more than 40,000 guns? And convicted felons can buy massive quantities of ammunition, no questions asked. California's gun laws are better than federal laws, but gun manufacturers exploit loopholes and law enforcement is under-resourced, leading to the murder of three Californians every day due to firearms.The LIFE Act stands for "Lifesaving Intelligent Firearms Enforcement." It's a package of eight bills under consideration in Sacramento.

The country's current debt is atrocious at $16 Trillion dollars. We all hate taxes and taxes getting raised. It's about time everyone pays their fair share, including churches, non-profits, and other tax exempt organizations.

Medicare Advantage, the Bush-era privatized portion of Medicare, originally cost 14% more than original Medicare, yet it produced no better outcomes. The original intent of Obamacare was to get the sticky hands of private insurance off of Medicare once more, and the Medicare advantage program funding was originally supposed to be cut by 2.2% Following a media blitz and a lot of corporate money, Medicare Advantage is now scheduled for a 3.3% increase in funding this year instead of a cut. Adding insult to injury, the insurance industry is asking for increases in deductibles on original Medicare and a tax on Medigap plans, forcing more people into Medicare advantage. We may lose Medicare by bits and pieces if we don't stop the insurance industry now!

Runaway development and urban sprawl is creating a serious environmental problem here in California. The attacks by developers on our remaining open space and rural areas is constant. California, by all studies, is already, population wise, in environmental overshoot. This exacerbates all of our other ecological problems. California is now a scene of water wars. Every new development, whether an expensive new housing development or another winery, is making things worse. California has already had 91% of its wetlands drained. It is predicted that the Colorado River could be functionally dry in about a decade. Much of California’s groundwater is in an overdraft state. The drought has caused the snow pack in California to be only 52% of normal as of April 1, 2013. The expansion of fracking, which uses a tremendous amount of water, is the newest threat to our water supply. The water that remains for each individual in the state is becoming increasingly polluted. According to the EPA, the number of rivers in California that are polluted increased by 170% from 2006 to 2010. Of its 3 million acres of lakes, wetlands and estuaries, 1.6 million acres are not meeting water quality standards. Our air is also being affected. The fact that our state is the 12th largest emitter of carbon in the world is behind our state being in the 90th percentile in air pollution in the country. California has 5 of the top 10 most air polluted urban areas in the country. Not only air and water, but much of our state’s resources are being depleted at an unsustainable level. If left unchecked, California will commit slow but steady suicide. Steps need to be taken, and the first should be to create a check on urban sprawl. If there is a genuinely good reason for us to lose even more of our rural land to development and sprawl, it should now be put up to a vote of the people in the area most affected. It should no longer just be left to the politicians and their developer allies. That is the inspiration behind this petition signed by California voters.

Seniors need to have more respect. When we retire we loose much of our income, we cannot stay in the homes we loved because of the high property taxes. The economy has been awful for many years now. We have lost our savings because of the greed of others and the government that is unwilling, or unable to do anything about it. They are either in it for themselves or they are inept. Either way we have lost out and the least they can do is stop taxing us.

Social Security is not driving the deficit, therefore it should not be part of reforms aimed at cutting the deficit. The chained CPI, deceptively portrayed as a reasonable cost of living adjustment, is a cut to Social Security benefits that would hurt seniors. There are several sensible reforms to Social Security that should be considered to help make it sustainable, including lifting the ceiling on income subject to Social Security from $113,700 to $200,000 or more, as well as instituting a 1% raise in the payroll tax rate, a rate that hasn't changed in over 20 years. Both of these reforms would go a long way toward protecting the long-term health of Social Security, but neither should not be conflated with efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit. President Obama needs to stand by his Democratic principles and fight to protect Social Security benefits.

Now that the federal government has failed to pass basic, common sense gun laws, it is up to the states to act. Governor Shumlin has said that Vermont's laws are adequate, but Vermont actually has some of the weakest gun laws in the country. We are currently lacking some of the most basic gun regulations, and the safety of Vermonters is at stake. - Vermont has the highest rate of gun deaths in New England – mostly by suicide. - Vermont has the 12th highest suicide rate in the country and the highest the northeastern U.S., the majority of which are carried out with a gun. - Vermont, despite its small size, is 16th in the nation in exporting guns later found in crimes throughout the country, and has the highest rate of exported guns per capita in the northeast. - Vermont does not require gun owners to make guns inaccessible to children, despite the clear correlation between accidental shootings and unsecured guns. - Over past 10 years, 50% of Vermont’s homicides have been domestic violence-related. In states that require a background check for privates sales of handguns, 38% fewer women are shot to death by their intimate partners. Vermont has lots of responsible gun owners, but as our laws stand now, there is hardly anything keeping an irresponsible person from acquiring a firearm and harming themselves and/or others. If the governor truly believes in a 50-state solution, he should help put Vermont on the map as yet another state willing to prioritize its citizens' safety ahead of the gun lobby's agenda. More statistics and our sources can be found at: www.GunSenseVT.org. To join the GunSenseVT e-mail list and be part of growing coalition of Vermonters in support of sensible gun laws, e-mail [email protected] with your NAME and TOWN.