I am a organizer and I have seen the immigration issue not being address by President Obama. In this past election 75% of Latinos voted for him and 73% of Asians also supported him. It is time to pay attention to this issue and fix it.

Our government needs to put the seal of approval and authority on the ERA so that equal pay for equal work is the law, and to stand behind women in their quest for equal treatment under the law.

1. The government has no right to enforce marijuana laws. There are always reasons why laws exist. While some advocates for the status quo claim that marijuana laws prevent people from harming themselves, the most common rationale is that they prevent people from harming themselves and from causing harm to the larger culture. But laws against self-harm always stand on shaky ground—predicated, as they are, on the idea that the government knows what's good for you better than you do—and no good ever comes from making governments the guardians of culture. 2. Enforcement of marijuana laws is racially discriminatory. The burden of proof for marijuana-prohibition advocates would be high enough if marijuana laws were enforced in a racially neutral manner, but—this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with our country's long history of racial profiling—they are most definitely not. 3. Enforcement of marijuana laws is prohibitively expensive. Six years ago, Milton Friedman and a group of over 500 economists advocated for marijuana legalization on the basis that prohibition directly costs more than $7.7 billion per year. 4. Enforcement of marijuana laws is unnecessarily cruel. You don't have to look very hard to find examples of lives needlessly destroyed by marijuana prohibition laws. The government arrests over 700,000 Americans, more than the population of Wyoming, for marijuana possession every year. These new "convicts" are driven from their jobs and families, and pushed into a prison system that turns first-time offenders into hardened criminals. 5. Marijuana laws impede legitimate criminal justice goals. Just as alcohol prohibition essentially created the American Mafia, marijuana prohibition has created an underground economy where crimes unrelated to marijuana, but connected to people who sell and use it, go unreported. End result: real crimes become harder to solve. 6. Marijuana laws cannot be consistently enforced. Every year, an estimated 2.4 million people use marijuana for the first time. Most will never be arrested for it; a small percentage, usually low-income people of color, arbitrarily will. If the objective of marijuana prohibition laws is to actually prevent marijuana use rather than driving it underground, then the policy is, despite its astronomical cost, an utter failure from a pure law enforcement point of view. 7. Taxing marijuana can be profitable. A recent Fraser Institute study found that legalizing and taxing marijuana could produce considerable revenue. 8. Alcohol and tobacco, though legal, are far more harmful than marijuana. I have written in the past that the case for tobacco prohibition is actually much stronger than the case for marijuana prohibition. Alcohol prohibition has, of course, already been tried - and, judging by the history of the War on Drugs, legislators have apparently learned nothing from this failed experiment.

I THINK CONGRESS WOULD BE MORE SUPPORTIVE OF A GOOD HEALTH SYSTEM FOR EVERYBODY IF THEY HAD TO PAY FOR THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE.

The practice of large, wealthy corporations spending lavishly to influence Congressional legislation needs to be outlawed. It is clear that this practice promotes legislation that caters to special interests at the expense of the common good for American citizens. This is tantamount to "insider trading" on Wall Street.

Make every citizen's vote count, and count equally, for electing the president of the U.S., by replacing the electoral college system with a simple nation-wide popular vote system.

I believe that our country would be better off if politicians were elected to serve the people, and not themselves with career politics. I haven't met a single person that disagrees with term limits for congress.

I believe that if State Education officials had to work directly in a classroom (teach), they would finally leave their "ivory tower" and truly experience what educators are facing on a daily basis. Rude students, un-cooperative administrators, over crowded classrooms and testing instead of teaching. Members of The N.Y.S .Board of Regents are constantly coming up with paperwork and tests in order to "look busy". Yes we teachers recognize the lazy way out, creating "busy work". Get Up! Get Out! Reach into classrooms across the state before you dump more silly paperwork and tests on teachers and their students.

I, as an American citizen, am concerned about the national deficit and ever-widening income gap. I am most concerned with unfunded tax cuts that help those that don't necessarily need it while also feeding income inequality between the rich and the middle class . By the deadline of midnight, December 31, 2012, please negotiate with Congress a fair and amicable solution that addresses both of these concerns, while properly leveraging the "fiscal cliff" in such negotiations.

Long lines that stretch for blocks, standing and waiting for 4, 5, 7 hours is not helpful or healthy to our democracy. Voters who are white collar professionals, doctors, lawyers, they can afford to take long amounts of time away from work, not so for those who are nurses, teachers, bus drivers. Healthy people could stand in line for hours at a time, but those with disabilities, those with health problems, they are not physically able to stand for hours on end just to cast a ballot. This petition is created to force political leaders from all sides to resolve this issue, to improve the process for voting, to encourage and foster participation in American democracy by the entire voting eligible population.

LFUCG has applied for a $6,000,000.00 CDBG loan in order to build a luxury hotel and art museum. Our city has not met its 10% Minority Business Goal. This $6,000,000.00 renovation project should hire at least 20% minorities with the understanding that the unemployment rate in our cities Urban Core which is predominantly black, poverty stricken and overflowing with crime is above 20%.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that the GOP will hold its course during Obama's second term. Ending the filibuster is within the realm of possibility by repealing the anachronistic "cloture" rule in the Senate at the beginning of the new session of congress. Give hope and change a real shot at happening by urging your senator to end the cloture rule.