Going to WAR, being at WAR, should be painful for OUR entire country! FREEDOM IS NOT FREE! Take the power back from the President to start wars & put it again with Congress & THE PEOPLE! USE the 'Abrams doctrine' which made it harder for this country to go to war. This has been ignored beginning with Ronald Reagan!!!

On September 11th, 2001, our nation was wounded by the horrific event of NYC, DC and PA deaths of many of citizens. At the WTC, a brave Security Leader of Morgan-Stanley/Dean-Witter heroically saved over 2700 lives by planning and insight. His name was Richard Cyril Rescorla. He was 65 years old. He had been a soldier (Once and Young) as retired Lt. General Hal Moore said in his two books on his experience of leading brave men into battle in November 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley. Ric Rescorla was one of those troopers. He was not even an American citizen at the time. He was a Brit. Eventually Ric became a naturalized US citizen. He never forgot what it took to lead men. In 1993 he was present when the explosion went off in the basement of the WTC. From that point on he practiced with the 20 floors of the largest investment firm in the world. Now its the President's turn to honor Ric's wife. Its long over due.

Health care Economy Military

Currently the public is secondary to the greedy interests of many elected officials. They give corporations tax credits to the extent that they pay no taxes and are actual paid, annually, by the IRS, often to the tune of millions of dollars per company. If politicians weren't controlled by the banks they wouldn't hand them billions of dollars of our money, without our consent, and then not audit the money nor care that the banks still do not loan money to people. (There are clients at Housing Departments in NC that are subsidized a 30% mortgage down-payment by the agency and the agency guarantees the bank that the debt will be paid if the client defaults--and they still cannot get help from the banks.) We would also have much less war if the politicians weren't owned by defense contractors and oil men. Washington is rampant with corruption and conflicts of interest dictate our laws and actions. It is sick and corrupt and disregards almost all of the non-elite. Washington has become a gross perversion of what it was meant to be and we are all paying for it. I would suggest subsidizing campaigns to equalize the candidate's resources so that their only motivation was to cater to the people they are supposed to work for.

Every year, millions of Catholics around the world die knowing they're not going to Heaven for a love they cannot control. It's heartbreaking, especially knowing that the Church accepts that some people really are born that way, yet simply aren't allowed to act upon it. Fortunately, there is hope: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.” Matthew 16:18-19, New International Version (NIV). This excerpt is from the book of Matthew, and it holds a secret truth that few Catholics are prepared to speak openly about: Our love simply doesn't have to be taboo anymore. If the Pope declares it permissible on earth, it's permissible in Heaven, too. I'm calling on all Catholics, LGBT Activists and Supporters to petition the Vatican to do the right thing, and "loose" an archaic rule which has barred us from Heaven for so long. And if we can do this, perhaps we can do more than just save a soul. We might even save lives.

Stop Wayne county, Michigan tax foreclosures and auction sales of homes and in Wayne county, Michigan after three years; repeal escalating interest rate on unpaid taxes for property in Wayne county, Michigan.

Why should you care? It could happen to you or your children or grandchildren if we do not educate our fellow Americans. We must be aware so that we can do all we can to eliminate and lesson gencocide worldwide. We can only hold it back from our shores for so long.

Changing Minimum Wage Into Living Wage When considering this complex process one will inevitability reach the problem of the poverty measure. Common sense dictates that minimum wage should at least let someone live above poverty, otherwise what’s the point. Okay, so there are some obvious points, it’s a way of sustaining a poor working class which is essential for a capitalistic society. But the argument here, is that government and society should be responsible for providing at least a living wage to the workers that fuel capitalism. This all important poverty measure was created in the 1960s by an economic statistician called Millie Orshansky. She based this poverty measure off of two things, a family’s income and their resources. Income can be adjusted with inflation, but resources can not. When resources were thought of back then, it was primarily food (1/3 of a family’s expenditures were food in 1955). So, Orshansky took the 1955 food consumption survey and took 75 to 80 percent of the low-cost plan and multiplied that by 3 to make the estimate whole. So even by those standards it was 3/4’s of the lowest cost food plan, not average… lowest cost plan. So even in the 1960s it represented below a barely sustainable food plan. Fast forward… according to the 2009 US Census the average consumer spent…10.6 to 13.9 percent on their expenditures on food. Basically, there are expenditures now, that either did not exist or were not considered essential for living back in 1950. Lets be real 2012 is nothing like 1950, cell phones, computers, TV’s did not exist, only the wealthy had cars, and health insurance, clothing and housing have all grown into a larger portion of our budget since 1950. One of the biggest things is that the poverty measure needs to be updated, some work has been done to develop the Supplemental Income Poverty Measure, but there are still deficits. Next, historically minimum wage has NEVER been enough to raise a family out of poverty. Check the nice folks at Oregon, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html. Amazingly, the last time that minimum wage even got close to the poverty line was back in 1968, and if you calculate for inflation it would be $10.04 in the year of 2010, so technically the government is paying less now then it was forty years ago. What I’m purposing is that the Rhode Island government implement a living wage based on more updated and flexible poverty measures. Okay so lets examine the two biggest criticisms; 1) Businesses will hurt. Actually it’s been proven that when people have more money they spend more, and this actually increases business profits. There can also be a slight mark up in product cost to adjust for overhead expenditures. When taken into account this small markup is marginal compared to what economic benefits are stimulated. It’s also been proven that lower income individuals spend a lot more of their money on local goods, instead of the upper income individuals who typically invest their money in global goods and diversify. So, logically, more money will be fed back into the local economy, more so benefiting small businesses. The big businesses like Walmart or Mcdonalds can spread out the cost of raising their wages over the nation, this amount of money would equate to fractions of a percent of the company’s profits. Other beneficial factors, that research has proven, include more employee loyalty, which leads to less expenditures in rehiring (training, paperwork, processing, screening) and more efficient workers. (if you like your job and feel you have a steak in the company, you’ll probably work harder and better). 2) If wages increase the cost of everything else will increase. Wages are only one contributing factor to increased prices. Others include manufacturing, transportation, equipment, rent, advertising, business location, income demographic of the community, employee recruitment and training. Several of these aspects can be improved by technology (manufacturing, transportation, advertising) and bring about cost reduction to equalize the wage increase. Let’s take a case study of the fast food industry for a real simple example. There have been multiple studies done around the time of an increase in minimum wage across the nation. When wages were increased the cost of the product should logically increase. However, it has been proven that there was “little evidence of relative price increases in those establishments with larger mandated wage increases” (Katz & Krueger, 1992). There are also several other updated studies that show the same. For everybody that has the time there is a good Q&A about the economic and societal benefits of a living wage located on this website, http://www.universallivingwage.org/ under the facts and myths tab on the left hand side. Sources: Card, D., & Krueger, A. (1994). Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The American Economic Review. 84:4. 772-793 Fremst, S. (2010). A Model Framework for Measuring Poverty and Basic Economic Security. Center for Economic and Policy Research. April 2010. 1-63 Katz, L., & Krueger, A. (1992). The Effect of the Minimum Wage on the Fast-Food Industry. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 46:1. 6-21 Oregonstate. (2012). Minimum Wage History. Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html Univerallivingwage. (2012). Universal Living Wage, Clearing the Air: Myths and Concerns. Retrieved from http://www.universallivingwage.org/ United States Census. (2012). Income, Expenditures, Poverty, & Wealth. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth.html

Our Country, Our Liberty, Our Freedom, even our Daily Lives are being bought and sold in the hallways and back rooms of our Capital. Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Energy, Big Insurance, Foreign Interests and Super PACs, etc. Dare I say the 1% have in place master manipulators that literally buy our elected officials and their vote. Our Congress is being used as pawns in a fight over power and pure greed with zero regard for everyday hard working Americans.Saudi Arabia said they can pump all the oil we need and theres no real reason gas is four dollars a gallon.Big oil , Big banks are Speculating on oil futures playing the same ole games on Wall Street.putting the screws to almost everyone's budget.The list of issues and the deception for profit are many helped along with our bought and paid for do nothing Congress. Courtesy of Big Oil and Big Bank, etc., lobbyists and their underhanded robbing of American Citizens. Please sign this petition and spread the word.. Our United States Congress and other elected officials are not for sale any longer. We have to start somewhere.

The Constitution of the United States, Article 1 section 2, defines the composition of the House of Representatives. It states that the number of Representatives shall not EXCEED one for every thirty thousand people in each state with at least 1 representative from each state. There is no Maximum number of people that each representative shall be able to represent. In fact, that number has increased over the years as our population grew.

US should impose a tax on speculative financial transactions. Speculative interest makes up the majority of transactions in any financial market artificially inflating the price of hard assets (oil, houses, grain, minerals, materials, etc.) and having a negative impact on real economy. Also, speculation periodically causes asset prices to collapse creating havoc in real economy. A tax on speculation would create incentives for money to be invested in real economy generating more jobs and helping everybody in our society.

No more out of state tuitions! In Europe students go to school for free in countries that used to be at war with one another and our kids have to pay exorbitant fees to go from Texas to Oklahoma. Make it 1 country not 50!Its become a global economy and our students cant compete when they cant go to the school they like. We are falling behind. Please sign this petition to erase out of state tuitions in the US!