Friday, 20 March 2009

Number 8) College Completion Incentive Fund

A great deal of time and money has been spent over the years trying to encourage more young people, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, to attend a four year university. On the whole, these efforts have been fairly successful - yet the proportion of you people with a college degree is much lower for my generation than for the generations before. How can this be true? Well, the simple answer is that an unacceptably high percentage of the people who start college drop out without finishing.

Children from poorer families are more likely to drop out, as are minority children. However, drop out rates do not appear to be predestined - some colleges do a good job of keeping these kids in through their degree, others don't.

In his State of the Union Address, Obama's big "let's go to the moon" moment was a pledge that, "By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal we can meet." Curently, we are 12th on this metric if you include adults from 25-34 with either a batchelors or associates degree (we do better if you include everyone up to the age of 64, but that's because other countries were further behind us then - they've recently caught up and surpassed us).

Obama's budget creates a $2.5 Billion Completion Incentive Fund to allow colleges to adopt the techniquest that have been successful at high-graduation schools.

Why does this matter? Well, leaving aside the social justice argument that poorer kids should have more chances to raise themselves up than they currently have, this program fulfills a very practical need: we aren't producing enough doctors, teachers, scientists or engineers to meet the countries needs today, let alone for the future. If this money can help even a fraction of the 46% of students who don't graduate to actually complete their degrees, it will buy us a downpayment on that future. Money well spent.

Thursday, 19 March 2009

Number 9) Improved treatment for mental illness among the military

It's no secret that in recent years, our service men and women have been called upon to serve in deeply traumatic conditions. Instances of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder amongst the military are drastically on the rise, and treatment for it has not increased to meet the need.

An extraordinary story in the New Yorker late last year (read the whole thing!) put the problem into perspective for me:


These men and women aren't just a danger to themselves as suicide risks - left untreated they are also a danger to the communities they return to. But with the programs that manage this problem overstretched, and a strong stigma associated with mental illness, thousands of people aren't getting the help they need. In this study, only 27% or people who showed symptoms of having a problem were getting any help

No matter what you think of the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, the people who fought in them deserve better than this callous indifference.

Obama's budget will increase funding for PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and psychological disorders. It will create a tracking system for TBI with a single designated point of responsibility. It will add extra mental health professionals stationed directly with the troops capable of identifying and treating at risk individuals. And it will fund the National Intrepid Center of Excellence for psychological health and traumatic brain injury, which is due to open this year and which will be a cutting edge research and educational facility leading on these issues.

This funding will create jobs, protect our military and save lives. Money well spent.

Number 10) Rural Broadband Investment

I'm concerned that as President Obama tries to pass his budget, there are going to be a lot of people attacking him for doing things that I think need to be done. So, stealing a page from John McCain's inaccurate and unserious "top ten" twittering, here are ten things in Obama's budget that make me hopeful about our future.

The first one comes from the budget for the Department of Agriculture, and it's about $1.3Billion in loans and grants for rural broadband infrastructure. At this point, I'm sure someone somewhere is making a stupid joke about online porn. Let's allow the snickering at the back of the class to die down before we continue. Ready now?

Fine. This particular investment is not only necessary - it's long overdue. Manufacturing jobs are dying out and farming jobs are on the decline. As a result of these and other factors (poor access to healthcare and education among them), rural communities tend to be more poor than suburban or urban communities. They also lag behind in access to broadband internet. To attract and create new jobs to these areas, we will need not create fundamental infrastructures that put these areas within reach. A fast internet connection has long since stopped being a "Nice to have" for small businesses and start ups - it is essential. But it is simply not commercially viable for the market to supply this - creating broadband capacity is expensive and there aren't enough people in these areas to make it worth the while of commercial enterprises.

What's more, it may surprise you to know that it isn't just rural areas that have fallen behind the times. The US in international comparison has a much lower broadband capacity than other first world nations.

Stop and think about that for a second. We all know that traditional industries, like manufacturing, are being increasingly outsourced to third world countries that cand do them better. Our consolation has been that the US can lead in the cutting edge, information age businesses that will lead the future.

But according to the chart above, we have less broadband access and we pay more for it. $1.3 Billion of this year's budget is aimed at helping to bring us up to speed in this area. Money well spent.

Make sure your friends and family know - this budget isn't perfect. But it's important.

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Obama: "Here's my guidance to you. Protect health care."

You should really read the excellent inside peak at the Obama White House just published in the New Republic. It's the story of how Health Care became a major priority of the President's budget, and what it demonstrates is that against some significant resistance from trusted advisors, Obama has been personally pushing for this since early on. In addition to the quote in the subject head above, I was very struck by this bit:

Obama's political strategists advised him to soft-pedal the topic. One of them was David Axelrod. Although personally acquainted with the flaws in our health care system because of his disabled daughter, he also understood public opinion: The middle-class voters whose support politicians covet were worried about the cost of insurance, but their enthusiasm for universal coverage seemed shallow. Obama, though, always insisted on keeping health care prominent in the election. "He said, 'I want to do health care as president,'" one senior adviser paraphrased, "'and I can't do health care if I don't talk about it during the campaign.'"
Wow. Strategy + tactics.

Happy St. Patrick's Day (OK, I'm late. So Sue Me)

Yesterday, Michelle Obama decided to celebrate St in Pat's in the tradtional way. The traditional Chicago way, that is. You may have heard Chicago they dye the river green on this most festive of occassions. Yesterday, the White House fountain took on the same hue.

But I'm really just posting this to remind you all of my favorite Irish Folk song to be written during the campaign:

Favorite lines:

Oh he's in the White House. He took his chance.
Now let's see Barack do Riverdance.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Twitter and Google and Meet Up and....

This is just a quick housekeeping post to remind all my new readers (hello new readers!) that this blog is part of an extended Obama London family of online activity.
  • First off, yes - I am on Twitter. My Twitter name is KarinJR. You can find me here, should you be so minded.
  • We also have an Obama London MeetUp Group - it's open to all, but some events that we list are Democrats Abroad events and therefore by necessity are for US citizens only. Find us here:
  • There is also the Obama London Google Group (if you prefer it - this group tends to get the same info that goes to the MeetUp, and I find MeetUp a bit easier to handle) here:
  • And finally, if you ARE a US Citizen and have not done so yet, make sure you join Democrats Abroad. DA is the official party organisation for the Democrats overseas, and is a great source for events, info and voting help. And I'm not just saying that because I'm UK Vice Chair (the opposite in fact):

Monday, 16 March 2009

RIP Ron Silver

Actor and political activist Ron Silver died yesterday. Silver was an interesting and smart man - a fervent liberal who became more conservative after the events of Sept 11 and wound up supporting both the Iraq war and President Bush's 2004 re-election. Obviously, I disagreed with him on both points!

But I did have the chance to see Silver at an event last year in the House of Commons, and I have to say he struck me as sincere, thoughtful and very intelligent. We chatted briefly after the event and he told me that he had mixed feelings about Obama, but thought he would almost certainly win (according to his obituaries, it looks like he wound up voting for him).

Silver was clearly a complicated guy. Socially very progressive but positively militiaristic on foreign policy, he didn't really fit in anywhere. Still, he was a great actor, and if he did nothing else in his life I'd still consider it a life well-lived just for Bruno Gianelli:

The Internet for Activists













You know about he underpants gnomes, right?


Their business plan is as follows:

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!


Phase 1: Gather lots of people for a protest.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Peace!
