Do you want to give the insurance industry *more* power over New Mexicans’ health coverage choices?! If you answered, “No!”, you must call New Mexico’s legislators RIGHT NOW to speak up to stop the insurance industry's attempt to gain more control over our state's new health coverage marketplace. Here’s everything you need to call now: Who to Call: Here are the legislators who need to hear from you – call as many as you can even if they are not your Representatives. They are making decisions for the whole state and they are accountable to us all. Rep. Lucky Varela, (505) 986-4320 Rep. Sheryl...

So you think you can dance, er, vote!? YOU CAN! But do you know WHERE you need to go to vote tomorrow? We do! And we can help you! *Get the latest information on where you need to go to vote tomorrow sent directly to your cell phone (where you need it most!) by clicking here: http://www.momsrising.org/page/moms/sign-up-for-momsrisingonthego (And if you want to sign up to receive this information directly from your phone, text the message “Vote” to the number 747464, which spells RISING). We can just see you now: You're gonna be the best voter this country has ever seen. You've got your voting...

Four-year-olds don't mess around – when they have questions, they want answers. During the last Presidential election, my son was a baby. This time around, he’s four and giving me the third degree about the election: What is an election? How do you vote? Where do the ballots go? Why do people want to be elected? His most thought-provoking query yet, "Why do you vote?" What a great question! Those of us who vote do so for many different, valuable reasons. And sharing why we vote might inspire someone else to join us too. Click here to tell us why you are voting this November! http://www...

Everyone wants their hard work and effort to be recognized and valued. When you earn a paycheck for your work, there's some built-in validation of the "worth" of your effort. But the external recognition of stay-at-home parenting is often more complicated. Sure, the contributions of stay-at-home parents are validated rhetorically but things seem to usually get a little more murky after that. For this reason (and many others), stay-at-parents were justifiably outraged when new credit card rules, instituted last October as part of the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility Act (CARD),...

1. Right now, the birth of a child is a top cause of a "poverty spell" in America, and nearly 1/4 of families with young children are living in poverty. 2. More than 50% of women have delayed seeking medical care due to cost, and one-third of women report forgoing basic necessities to pay for health care. 3. Child care costs more than college in a majority of U.S. states. 4. Over 170 countries have some form of paid family leave for new moms, but the U.S. doesn't. 5. A whopping 1 in 10 children in the United States have asthma and the attacks on clean air have been happening for years...

Last week, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that a woman, Candy Crowley of CNN, would moderate one of the three nationally televised Presidential debates. This makes Crowley the first woman in 20 years (!) to moderate a Presidential debate. Although women have done a great job moderating recent Vice Presidential debates, including PBS' Gwen Ifill in 2004 and 2008 , we've waited a long time for a woman to moderate the top ticket debate again. However, the fact that a woman is moderating a presidential debate is far from a guarantee that the top issues for moms and families...

I’ve been reading a lot of parenting books on discipline lately. (Don't ask!) Across all of the methods, one piece of advice is the same – praise your child when they do the right thing. This rule doesn’t apply just to four-year-olds – we all like to get noticed and praised when we do the right thing. And, not surprisingly, getting praise makes us more likely to repeat the positive behavior again. Recently, four California legislators did the right thing for children in our state and they deserve a big “Thank you!” from all of us. During the intense California budget negotiations recently,...

Ah, the call of the ice cream truck. The minute he hears the music from a distance, my four year-old begins begging, “Can I have an ice cream?!” He tries every possible approach – when I say no, he corners his father, and has even resorted to asking a neighbor to buy one for him. Lessons from the ice cream truck for Congress: We mean business! Don't roll back these fundamental protections for our families! These antics are funny – in a four year-old. But it’s not funny when it comes to our health care security. Even though the Affordable Care Act already passed Congress, the President already...

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. California’s Healthy Families program is most definitely working. Each year, the Healthy Families Program provides approximately 875,000 children from low to moderate-income families the health coverage they need to stay healthy and succeed in school. Unfortunately, Governor Brown’s budget proposal is trying to fix something that's just not broken. His proposal calls for eliminating the Healthy Families Program altogether and shifting all of the children now covered to the state’s Medi-Cal program by June 2013. Although these children would not lose coverage...