Drop the enrollment age for medicare to zero.

My 34 year old wife, Rachel, an American who once danced with the Royal Ballet, is accepted for a surgery to re-grow her collapsing airways using her own stem cells. But the FDA and NIH have used regulatory issues to impede our progress to get this done. Ask our Senators to tell FDA & NIH to Keep Politics Out Of Necessary Health Care! (http://HelpRachelBreathe.com)

Our health care system is failing the elderly and those with severe chronic illness. Way too often, human beings in a vegetative state without any hope of recovery are kept alive and repeatedly tortured with multiple unnecessary hospital visits, feeding tubes, rectal tubes, bladder catheters, tracheostomy and chronic ventilator dependency. As an emergency physician for the past 15 years, I observe this immoral treatment of the elderly and disabled every day. And the financial burden to our health care system is staggering. We need a better way to honor our elderly and allow them to die with dignity.

Charter schools show less progress than many public schools, some even lower than public schools. Stop the No Child Left Behind with its impossible goals and bogus tests. Teach kids how to think critically, not what to think. Stop making teachers the scapegoat for bogus test results. Fully fund public education with taxpayer dollars instead of handing it over to private companies whose record is poor.

As a result of heavy industry lobbying, the Obama administration decided not to allow the EPA to strengthen air quality standards. Lobbyists claimed that higher air quality standards would hurt the economy. The administration agreed to retain the weaker Bush administration standards.

It's about the abuse of power within our government and the fact that laws enacted to protect our state forests and agricultural lands are being leased and auctioned off to the highest bidder!

Ending special interest/corporate purchase of elected officials.

Congress enjoys privileges that are not afforded the American people. They vote themselves pay raises, have private health care plans, tenure and high pensions regardless of terms of service. It is time to equalize Congress with the American people they serve and help them perform citizen service as envisioned by our founding fathers.

All lobbying needs to be out in the open - no more hidden conversations, quid pro quo deals. The withdrawing of the E.P.A. recommendations on Clean Air is just another in a horrendously long line of examples where our elected officials have been bought off by big corporations. It is the last straw.

On behalf of girls everywhere, enough is enough. This week, a young woman in New York named Lauren Todd started a petition on Change.org urging JC Penney to stop selling a girl’s shirt with the statement: "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me." This is just one shirt in a series that display slogans that characterize a girl's worth by her looks and makes being smart somehow not "pretty". Seemingly harmless? Just a joke? Not funny. Girls get messages from all aspects of media that show a woman's value in relation to her looks – well, we say enough – time to tell retailers, "we're not buying it!" The shirt, which was marketed to girls ages 7-16, imparts the message that boys are smart while girls are only meant to be pretty. Valuing looks over knowledge and hard work, and stereotyping female images is a dangerous message to send to young girls, one that females are already bombarded with in today’s media. We at Girls For A Change believe that girl empowerment is essential in helping girls to realize their full potential and helps them speak up and out about issues they care about – that they are more than looks, lyrics, and objects. Girls need to know that they are valued for who they are, and not the style of their hair or the way they look. Clothing that blatantly diminishes the value of girls is harmful to a girl's perception of her worth. We know everyone wants girls to reach beyond their potential and let them know they're valued for who they are. Let's start by removing messages that put any girl (or boy!) down. JC Penney rightfully discontinued the sale of the shirt in response to the massive support of Lauren’s petition, but the presence of sexist messages on children’s clothing is an ongoing problem that must be addressed. Tell major clothing retailers to stop designing clothes with sexist and damaging slogans that perpetuate gender stereotypes and devalue the role of young girls in society. Let them know your money will not support their company unless they take a stand against sexist, destructive slogans and imagery. Tell them, "you're not buying it!"

creating jobs for the middle class and bring back the American Dream

Many problems in campaign financing stem from corporations financing political campaigns. Their right to do so stems from them being considered "people" under the law. Laws can be changed.