Obama: "America's First Online Social Networking President"

From Wednesday's Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123003518_pf.html

"With some notable exceptions, federal Washington -- how agencies deal with citizens, the process in which policies and laws are created -- is stuck in the Encyclopaedia Britannica era. A relatively small group of editors and contributors is in charge. A growing portion of the country, however -- the Web-enabled set that swears by MySpace and YouTube (and note the emphasis on "My" and "You") -- lives by the wisdom-of-the-crowd, I-have-something-to-contribute ethos of Wikipedia.

In the same way that anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, not only will Web-acculturated citizens speak their minds, but they also won't ask anyone's permission to do so.

It has been only a decade since an American president first used the Internet. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration created WhiteHouse.gov and ordered all federal agencies to get online. For the first time, the government used the Web to describe what it was doing in its own terms, bypassing media middlemen. George W. Bush's two terms brought podcasting, online chats and videos to the presidency's online presence."

Go Vote...Absentee!

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Bail Me Out!

In April 2008, Mobilize.org, in conjunction with Common Cause, issued a report on college finance issues entitled, "We're Broke, Let's Fix It." The report detailed the growing problems with the student loan industry in the United States.

Feedback on the report was mixed. Some thought the report was of great value, since we attempted to address the problem from both points of view, a student borrower's and a lender's. Others felt that our paper was meant to be a scare tactic.

Six months later, it is clear our fears were rightly placed. Personally, I know people with law school debt who are getting job offers rescinded, students, who due to poor credit, may not get loans to complete their undergraduate education, and recent graduates who are losing jobs left and right in the financial sector. And, let's not forget the millions of Millennials who do not attend college and how the current state of our economy will effect them. Our generation is in debt, with some of us just struggling to survive.

Millennials, who is going to bail us out? This issue affects all of us, and although the conversation on the issue nationally has been strictly partisan, the solutions, those that are sustainable and innovative that is, will have to come from people who are willing to think holistically.

The cost of college already places an insurmountable barrier for many people. Without available financing, our generation will bear the cost, not only losing access to dollars but access to the knowledge we need to survive in our information economy.