cnewmark

A new GI Bill: serious economic stimulus

Hey, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have a great idea here, better than most regarding economic stimulus:

As Washington wrangles over the best way to jumpstart the economy, there's one proven strategy for growth that no one is talking about -- a new GI Bill. This year, President Bush can strengthen our country's economy by investing in our newest veterans. The annual price tag for fully funding college for today's veterans is less than the amount of money we spend every two weeks in the "War on Terror".

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the original GI Bill in 1944, he ensured that eight million World War II veterans would be able to afford an education. It resulted in higher national productivity, consumer spending and tax revenue. Every dollar spent sending the Greatest Generation to college added seven dollars to our national economy. Sadly, today's GI Bill covers less than 70% of the average cost at a public college and less than two years at a typical private college.

To find our more, and to contact your representatives in Congress, visit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America at www.iava.org/education.

YouBama; meBama

Hey, I just got video blogged, saying briefly that leadership, hard as it is to articulate, is what Barack's about.

You can find it on YouBama, a really good viral effort by Christopher Pedregal and Eric Park.

(Hey, I want to be voted as popular as George Clooney; that would be the same as voting for George Costanza, preserving the number of Georges.)

Also available on YouTube here.

Full Frontal Scrutiny: exposing front groups

Hey, you're probably already aware of front groups, which pretend to represent grassroots efforts, and are actually run by suspect politicians or shady corporations. They're sometimes called "astroturf", since they're the opposite of honest grassroots efforts.

More bluntly, the purpose of a front group is to deceive consumers or voters.

Well, Consumers Union WebWatch and the Center for Media and Democracy have just launched Full Frontal Scrutiny, the purpose of which is to expose consumer-related front groups.

The Full Frontal Scrutiny site is debuting today with an investigation of front group activity on Wikipedia. The information includes a guide to help consumers get the most out of that site and other information sources on the Web, and with a history of front groups and their nefarious activities. Full Frontal Scrutiny will also publish selected content from WebWatch and from the CMD's SourceWatch site, as well as aggregating news about front groups from other reliable sources.

I've taken a good look at all involved, and they're for real, CU and CMD have outstanding records for integrity and accuracy.

Note that CMD does excellent work regarding political front groups, which is not part of the Full Frontal Scrutiny mission. Check out their report on Freedom's Watch.

Disclaimer: I'm on the board of Consumers Union and on a related group, Sunlight Foundation.

New study documents "935 false statements" by Bush et al. to justify war

Hey, two groups known for outstanding credibility and journalism have just made major news with a report on the deception that led to the Iraq war..

You've probably read this already. All I'm adding is that I know some of the people behind this, and they have my complete confidence, and have superb records for honesty.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

Great op-ed from Sarah Vowell in Times re MLK and another guy

Hey, check out Radical Love Gets a Holiday. There's a bit in there that reinforces the moral compass you get doing customer service:

... the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

babajob.com: bridging the digital divide for jobs in India

Hey, craigslist helps lots of people who have access to the Net. However, there are lots of people around the world whose only connectivity is a friend with a phone with texting. These guys have a new model, with some traction already:

Babajob.com seeks to help people escape poverty by connecting employers to informal sector employees - such as maids, cooks and janitors - through people they know. Uniquely, when an employer hires someone on babajob.com, babajob compensates whomever digitally registered the job seeker and up to 2 people that connect the employee to the employer. The Bangalore-based company has garnered approximately 8000 users since its August 2007 launch and was profiled in a lengthy New York Times piece as a significant innovation that “seeks to bring the social-networking revolution to the world’s
poor”

Jim gets the credit regarding the craigslist endowed chair at UC Berkeley

If you've heard of this, to clarify, it's craigslist doing it, not the Craigslist Foundation.

Jim gets the credit, this is really smart, and I'm looking forward to see what happens.

... and for those of you who've been complimenting me on (what you perceive) as my endowment, why... thank you!

"La Passion por la Decision"

It's coming soon:

Starring
Wilmer Valderrama
Rosario Dawson
Tony Plana
Nick Zano
Mayte Garcia
Jay Rondot
& Craig Newmark ( founder of Craigslist)

New iPhone install very buggy

Just to get the word out: downloaded 1.1.3, but when iTunes tries to install the new code, keep getting "unknown error 1602". Happened twice.

Had a big problem like this with 1.1.2, worked on second or third try.

Now iTunes is suggesting I download 1.1.3, even though already downloaded?

Anyone knows what's going on?

UPDATE: tried a coupla more times, finally worked.

MyOpenCongress from Sunlight Foundation

Hey, for folks who want to take a closer look at Congress, and who want to network with others who're interested:

Now you can build a personal profile on OpenCongress of the bills and people you're tracking, network with other users, comment and vote on bills, and much more.

To get started, create your own "My OpenCongress" profile, it's free and only takes a minute.

More info is here.