A Pew Poll from the week of the President's inauguration in January (PDF) has some interesting results on Social Security and people age 18-29.

Rather than recite them, I'll narrate. Read along on Page 7 (Table C) of the document. I missed this poll at the time, but it is worth reviewing. It confirms the results from our own poll, which supporters of privatization have attacked vociferously and fecklessly.

So, according to the Pew Poll: Young people are are actually somewhat more optimistic about the future of Social Security than people age 30-44, but quite pessimistic when compared with people age 45-64.

They are somewhat more opposed to raising the payroll tax rate than the rest of the population, but still strongly in favor of raising the salary cap on Social Security taxes (it stops at $90,000 today). They are overwhelming opposed to giving people lower benefits than promised.

They are initially split on replacing Social Security with private accounts when the question is worded in a manner, as this one is, that makes it clear that there are upsides and downsides to it.

But a large portion of the group that would initially favor private accounts drops off when they learn that it would require large government borrowing, leaving the private accounts proposal with support from less than a third of the youth demographic.

They don't think the President has anything close to a mandate for his ideas.

A new study blows away the claim that Hispanics would benefit from privatization. From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The President’s Social Security plan, which reduces the program’s funding shortfall entirely through benefit cuts that slice deep into the benefits of middle-class retirees, would harm Hispanics.  Hispanics would be better off under plans that employ a balanced mix of benefit reductions and progressive revenue changes.  Simply stated, Hispanics would be harmed disproportionately if large cuts are made in a system from which they disproportionately benefit.

Also, the President’s plan places the burden of reducing the shortfall almost entirely on younger workers and future generations.  This would disproportionately harm Hispanics because the Hispanic population is overwhelmingly young.

Students shut out of Social Security event with Pres. Bush at their own high school

So they took to the streets to protest.

On Thursday, June 23, President Bush did one of his so-called "town hall meetings" at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland.

There were a lot of students from Blair at the event. But none of them were inside. They were all outside, protesting. They were shut out.

Check out our photos from the rally here.

Its hard to see how the President will win over public support by shutting out people who disagree. According to community activists and news reports, there weren't any Blair students or alumni invited, other than the Republican activist and actor Ben Stein, who is most famous for saying, "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller." He went to Blair. But the students are laughing any more.

Rock the Vote joined the rally to lend support to the student activists, and joined a press conference organized by Progressive Maryland afterwards where Washington Director Hans Riemer said, "the real story is not inside that high school, where the President is only hearing from people who agree with him. The real story is outside, here, where hundreds of students are making their voices heard."

We took a bunch of photos and have made a little photo essay of it here.

Read the coverage in the Washington Post, the Gazette, and the MBHS school paper.

Rehnquist Resigning?

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued its last decisions before its summer recess. The decisions were about displaying the Ten Commandments, file sharing, the reporters who published the identity of a CIA agent, and the cable industries control of broadband lines.

Now that the Supreme Court is done hearing cases, everyone is watching and waiting to see if chief justice William Rehnquist will resign. Experts think Rehnquist will not resign, but there are many signs that this summer is the right time. Rehnquist, who will turn 81 in October, has been showing signs of ailing health after being diagnosed with Thyroid cancer last October. With Republicans holding majorities in the House and Senate and the Presidency, Rehnquist would be guaranteed a conservative replacement. But, even with a conservative replacement, the Supreme Court's positions will change. The confirmation hearing would bring back the possibility of the ‘nuclear option’ and test the coalition of 14 Senators that worked out the compromise for Bush’s previous judicial nominees. With the 2006 elections a year and a half away, would the White House be under pressure to put forward a more moderate candidate? Some experts say the Senate will be in play...

Posted By Sam Buffone, RTV Intern

We're Making a Difference

The Washington Post acknowledged today what all of us here in the blogosphere have know for a while: we are influencing the main stream media.

For decades, the establishment media were like a walled village, largely insulated from the outside world. But technology has produced so many cracks in the wall that previously ignored stories can seep in – sometimes in a trickle, sometimes a flood – when partisans and pressure groups make enough waves.

In the old days, writes New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, “if the press ruled against you, you just weren’t news.” Now, he says, aggrieved parties “go into Supreme News Court and say ‘The press denied us, but we have a case.’”

We put the Downing Street Memo in the news. We made Senator Durbin apologize. We are being heard and we now have the power. So whether you have your own website, post comments, or just log on to read a different perspective realize that we are making a difference and your voice is being heard.

Note: Article is not linked because it is not posted at Washingtonpost.com but it can be found on page C1 of the June 27th issue.

Posted By Sam Buffone, RTV Intern

The Christian Science Monitor writes about Reverand Billy Graham's appeal to a new generation:

For many evangelical Protestants, it's a familiar fusion of old-time tent revivals and the modern MTV age, an embrace of a Christianized version of pop culture that is meant to draw and keep young converts like Jun.


"Steven Curtis Chapman, he's so amazing!" she says about one of the performers this evening. "I love listening to him - he's always on my iPod!"


In many ways, it was Billy Graham who pioneered this fusion of pop culture with evangelical ministry. His unprecedented influence and popularity over the decades, many point out, stem from his willingness to embrace some of the trappings of popular culture at a time when many conservative Christians preferred to withdraw - especially in the '60s, when rock music and television were seen as inherently corrupting influences on youth.

Spooky Dealings at the Pentagon

The Defense Department and a private contractor have been building an extensive database of 30 million 16-to-25-year-olds, combining names with Social Security numbers, grade-point averages, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

- New York Times, 6/24/2005

They have been doing this since 2002, about the time that the Downing Street Memo was written, i.e., about the time it was very clear to everyone but the Congress and the Media that we were on a path to war. Certainly the Pentagon was preparing for the situation they are in now, which is that they don't want to do a draft, but they need to do something dramatic to try and get young people in to the military.

Major General Don Edwards (Ret.) has pointed out just how desperate the situation is and everyone should read his article in the Washington Post.

So now they are doing what big banks, political campaigns and corporate marketers do. They are building a data profile on all young people so that they can crunch all the data and target the specific young people they want to recruit without the young people knowing at all that they have just been profiled.

According to the articles it was an innocent mistake that they failed to report this publicly for three years. That’s what I call a black ops ooops.

Bush speaking to high school students on Social Security today

Today, the President speaks at Montgomery Blair High School outside of Washington, DC, about his agenda for Social Security. We're wondering whether, should any of the students say that they have heard Social Security will not be there for them, the President will state the facts that Social Security is not going anywhere and it already can pay larger benefits, without any changes, to the students at Montgomery Blair than seniors receive today. That it might need changes down the road but everyone should feel confident that their government would never let them down. That you can be for or against his plan, but you shouldn't believe Social Security is going to disappear.

Somehow I doubt he'll say that. Instead, he'll say, "you're right to think that Social Security won't be there for you, and that's why you should support my plan." Unfortunately, the White House seems to think that it helps them if young people are misinformed about the future of Social Security. In fact, they're going out of their way to misinform young people, saying Social Security is going "flat bust," and all that, which is not true, not even close.

The funny thing is, it doesn't help promote privatization to mislead people into thinking that Social Security won't be there for them. All that accomplishes is making people feel like they don't have a stake in the issue and they shouldn't care.

If you're a student at Montgomery Blair, get in touch with us in the Washington Office---we've got a follow-up job for you! Email dc(at)rockthevote.com.

Ah, this brings back memories.

Associated Press headline: "Bush Backs Soc. Sec. Bill Without Accounts"

Leading you to believe: President Bush will set aside his support for private accounts in favor of just fixing Social Security.

Relevant fact: "This in no way should be interpreted to mean that the president is backing off of personal accounts," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. "He is not." (Quote in the article)


Associated Press headline: "2004 not the breakout year for youth vote after all"

Leading you to believe: Young people failed to vote in 2004.

Relevant fact: Turnout was up 9 percentage points from 2000, with more than 21 million 18-29 year old voters---nearly 5 million more than 2000, and a surge that far outpaced any other age group.

The latest phase of the battle to save Social Security (or, "Some people have hopes and dreams...some people have Ways & Means")

Congress might get to changing Social Security sooner than you might have originally thought. Legislation currently under consideration in the House Ways & Means Committee, if passed would divert all the surplus money that is supposed to be set aside for future Social Security benefits into private investment accounts. This would, naturally, leave a lot less money to future benefits as well as increase the deficit.According to the Post, "[W]alling the Social Security surplus off would balloon the federal deficit and forct hundreds of billions of dollars in new brrowing."

The umbrella group, Americans United to Protect Social Security, is mobilizing against privatization and bringing the battle right to the Ways & Means Committee. The organization is currently working to secure enough Republican support in order to stall the bill. Read more in the Washington Post about the rager over at Ways & Means.

--Nicole Brown, RTV Intern

What did Rock the Vote do in 2004? Check out the new video highlights reel, featured in our media gallery.

"Privatize...Clawback...PRIVATIZE!...CLAWBACK!..." Check out the amusing flash video about the future of Social Security from a group called "Faithful America"...

Law Schools Against Lattes

This weekend the Washington Post reported on a novel effort to reduce the debt of law students. With 78% of professional students (doctors, lawyers, etc.) borrowing for college and debts often topping $100,000 you could see why some would be concerned.

In this case a law school administrator has set up a web site to help you calculate the debt burden that is created by your daily Latte. You could use the calculator to figure out almost anything. I used it to figure out that a student in Boston switching form the New York Times to the Boston Globe would save almost $2,500 once you consider the impact of interest on the debt that is used to pay for the extra spending on the Times.

If you are interested in more calculators to help you plan or manage your college finances, the best site is finaid.org.

Sex Ed still an issue

Its a battle that is fought in pracitcally every school district in America. The latest: Mongtomery County, Maryland. Two groups, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, have successfully petitioned the Montgomery County School District (just outside of Washington, DC) to abandon a new and improved sex education curriculum. According to an article in today's Washington Post, the revised curriculum would have included a video demonstrating with a cucumber how to correctly use condoms as well as information about homosexuality in a publication prduced by Planned Parenthood entitled "Sexual Orientation Myths." The two groups opposed the new curriculum on the grounds that teaching high school students how to use condoms increases the risk of teenage sexual activity, and learning about homosexuality can be detrimental to students still unsure about their own sexuality. (Because as we all know, people choose to be gay! NOT!?!)

Aside from the scientific inaccuracy of the above charge, it seems that groups like these are in fact doing more harm to teenagers than good. Kids today are overexposed to sex in their everyday lives. It's in the media, its in their culture, and furthermore, it's what they frequently talk about in their own social groups. Whether or not the school board agrees to teach safe sex, teens are going to be sexually active. According to the article, by the time they reach their senior year in high school, three out of five teens in this country have been sexually active. That number is astounding!

Removing safe sex practices from the sex ed curriculum is certainly not the best solution to this problem. One high school junior quoted in the article put it best when she said:

"Adults fear that if we're learning about it, we'll be more influenced to carry it out. But not teaching it isn't the way, because one day kids are going to have sex, and they're going to need to know how to protect themselves."

-- Nicole Brown, RTV Intern

More on the youth vote and tomorrow's election in Iran from Foreign Policy:

So if the clerics hold all the power, why do we care about this election?
Many Iranian reformists are asking themselves this very question. Voters eager for change came out in large numbers to elect the reformist Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and again in 2001. But Khatami failed to push back the heavy hand of the clerics in daily life and enact much-needed economic reforms. Khatami’s powerlessness was on full display in 1999, during a brutal crackdown on student demonstrators, and last year, when he could do nothing as the government shut down hundreds of publications and barred reformist candidates from running for parliament. Surveys show that only about half of Iran’s electorate plans to vote on Friday.

The election is still a good barometer of Iranian politics and the government’s political intentions. Political change is so popular in Iran that even conservative candidates are couching their platform in reformist language.

What exactly is an Iranian “reformist,” anyway?
Reform encompasses several grievances with clerical rule. Foremost among them are a stagnant economy and the trampling of civil liberties. The young, in particular, are angry and disillusioned with the lack of jobs, governments censorship, and restrictions on intermingling between the sexes. Many are also eager to see an end to Iran’s isolation from the West.

The reform movement, after Khatami’s failure as president, is now facing a dilemma over whether to seek change from within the system or boycott the election altogether. Because the young are unlikely to rock the vote as they did in the last two presidential elections, the reformists will probably not win. And if they vote and lose, they’ve lent legitimacy to the process. As one student leader told the New York Times: “People are tired of lending a democratic face to this regime.”

If I can't have you...

Today's Washington Post breaks some big news: key leaders in Congress, and possibly the White House, after all this misleading talk about bankruptcy, would rather make no changes to Social Security than give up on their unpopular privatization plan. Here's a key quote:

White House aides have been locked in a debate over whether it would be a victory if Bush settled for a Social Security deal without private accounts. Some White House domestic policy officials have suggested that the savings that would flow from reducing future Social Security costs would go a long way toward fixing the government's long-term financial problems.

But Rove, among others, has told Republicans that it would be unwise, both from a political and policy standpoint, to reduce benefits without offering people the potential of better returns through personal accounts, aides said. "It gets no easier without private accounts," a senior White House official said.

Its too bad. Let's hope they can set aside their own particular agenda---private accounts---for the greater good, boosting Social Security.

Even if they did nothing but raise the "salary cap" on Social Security taxes, so that wealthy workers pay more into the system, that would be a step forward, and the public would get behind it.

Teen Unemployment

Each year when high schools and colleges across the country close their doors for the summer months, many teens look forward to making a little extra cash at a some type of part-time job. However, according to a recent USA Today article, it is becoming increasingly difficult for teens to find work. The unemployment statistics suggest that teens today are having a much tougher time than teens five years ago. And even as the economy recovers, it may be a while before teens see any benefits as they usually are the last demographic to feel the results of job growth and economic expansion.

Happily Ever After: 'The Man' and Student

The Committee for Economic Development (a group of business execs and some academics) has issued a report that says we need to do more to support affordability and access in higher education.

“Without improvements to our educational system, we [the U.S.] are in danger of losing our preeminent position to nations with better academically prepared youth, whose rapidly increasing rates of college participation and graduation already outpace our own,” states a new report by the Committee for Economic Development (CED).

A good summary of the report can be found at online at Higher Education Weekly.

So, if we just had some faith based intitutions behind us we could have a good old fashion marriage of convenience between the Man and young people. Remains to be seen if the wierd inlaws in Congress will show up for the big event.

Student Lenders Make Bank

I posted last week that Congress had just stiffed students on funding of student aid programs. According to a Brian Faler article in the Washington Post, banks and other lenders who receive a hefty subsidies to make student loans have been doing somewhat better.

The Post cites an Inspector General report and a report from the General Accounting office showing how banks have been abusing a loop hole in the law to pocket a lot of money in excess subsidies.

From the Article:

Congress tried to end that program in 1993. But it grandfathered loans that were funded by tax-exempt bonds issued before Oct. 1, 1993. In recent years, lenders have discovered and used various financial techniques and arrangements not only to maintain but also, in many cases, dramatically increase the volume of loans eligible for the subsidy.

A Government Accountability Office report last year found that subsidy payments skyrocketed from about $209 million in 2001 to more than $600 million as of June 2004. The government said it ultimately spent about $1 billion on the payments last year.

No doubt the student loan industry is getting very well paid through its government entitlements. This subsidy is just one of the most egregious examples.

The question is, what should the government do with all the excess money it is paying to student lenders? You decide.

Rockin' Iran's youth?

Is the youth vote in Iran rockin'? With the election on Friday we will get to see. There is a lot at stake for young voters---young people make up over half of Iran's population (!!!!)---but some skeptics claim they are going to take a pass on showing their power at the polls. We shall see.

Right now, under popular outgoing reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Iranian youth gained many of the practical freedoms that we Americans take for granted. Only recently young men can wear their hair long without fear of having it chopped off, house parties can rock on without the religious parliament arriving at the door, and women can go on dates wearing hijabs that let their hair show. These are the liberties that this coming election can put to the test.

Friday's election is a fight between the more traditional religious sector of society as represented by front-runner Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the nation’s modernizing impulses in reformist Mostafa Moin. Rock the Vote like tactics, such as chic young women handing out fliers and guys in brightly colored clothes on bikes with signs, are being used by the candidates to court the youth electorate.

The youth vote is very important to these campaigns as half the country's 67 million people are under 25 and anyone over 15 can vote. Despite the enthusiasm of some, many young voters are protesting the upcoming election because of the establishment appointment of candidates and disillusion with the system. Critics of these abstentions predict that the young population will stay home because they are just plain apathetic and have been distracted by the freedoms they have been given.

Iranian youth have the power. Let's see what they do with it.

-- Posted by Regina Schwartz

The ONE Campaign

Everyone should sign the ONE Campaign Declaration. The ONE Campaign is a new umbrella organization founded with the support of Rock the Vote and other social justice organizations. The goal of ONE is to lobby the US government and other members of the G8 to increase their aid to suffering countries by just 1% in order to combat global AIDS and poverty. In addition to the petition, ONE sponsors a number of local events around the country and offers white wristbands and other merchandise with the ONE logo. Check out these celebrities who also signed the Declaration. ONE by ONE we can counter the tide of disease and poverty abroad!

Building for the Next Generation. The New York Times has a great piece about how the conservative movement, in this case the Heritage Foundation, cultivates, educates, networks young leaders.

Its a wrap: the Rock the Vote Awards

On Wednesday, June 8, Rock the Vote brought together huge names in national politics and hot names in music and entertainment for the 15th anniversary Rock the Vote Awards.

It was Rock the Vote's first Rock the Vote Awards held in DC, and it was a huge success by all accounts. Among the distinguished guests were our awardees Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, our hosts former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe and former Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp, awardees The Black Eyed Peas, actress Amber Tamblyn of the new flick Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Grammy award winning singer Mya, American Idol host Randy Jackson, and singers Nikka Costa and Regina Spector. A number of Members of Congress were there, including Rep. Kendrick Meek, who spoke from the stage to introduce Senator Obama; Senator Norm Coleman introduced Senator McCain.

We even had a little protest, which was cool.

The highlight of the dinner was the presentation of the awards, which were very classy white Gibson Les Paul guitars emblazened with the Rock the Vote logo, to the night's honorees.

As CBS News reported,

Senator McCain joked about becoming the fifth member of the Black Eyed Peas, calling himself "Funk Master McCain." The senator also teased that he would not disclose what kind of "shorts" he was wearing, a reference to Mr. Clinton's response to a boxers-or-briefs query at a 1994 Rock the Vote event.

We invited McCain to sell young people on his agenda, which he did--stressing Social Security reform, among other points.

During his acceptance speech, Senator Obama passionately evoked the spirit of activisim during the Civil Rights Movement. "I don't know anybody who achieves significance unless they hitch their wagon onto something larger than themselves."

The Black Eyed Peas and Rock the Vote street team leader, Sarah Saheb were also honored. Sarah is one of Rock the Vote's best volunteer leaders, coordinating our mid-west region during 2004.

Nikka Costa and Regina Spector captivated the audience of Washington dignitaries with songs from their chart-topping debut albums. Nikka also performed at the afterparty.

The Washington Post said,

The awards, though, took a back seat to the message Rock the Vote was sending: We want to be the AARP for the iPod-obsessed, ring-tone-changing, PSP and Nintendo DS-carrying generation.

The after party at Dream Nightclub made the dinner seem...tame? Quaint? The club was completely packed, the music blaring, and it didn't stop 'til 4 in the morning. 2500 young people rocking out.

-- By Rock the Vote's DC intern staff

The health care crisis for young people continues (and continues to go un-noticed). A new policy report from the Commonwealth Fund, a think tank specializing in health care, draws some attention to this problem.

They describe "youth" as a risk factor for having no health insurance, which it is, noting that only 54% of 19-29 year olds have health care through their employer. For the other 46%, our job-based health insurance system is failing. And those who do have health insurance through their jobs will most likely go without it when they change jobs.

Commonwealth points to a solution that Rock the Vote strongly endorses:

There are many incremental changes, as well, that employers could make to improve coverage, like covering young adults under their parents' policies up to age 23 or 25, whether or not they are full-time college students...

We should just start describing "young people who get kicked off their parents' plans" as one of the key groups of uninsured Americans. But what is the best age to settle on for a change in policy? 23? 26? 29?

More on Rock the Vote's work on health care here, including an action you can take calling on Congress to support raising the age of eligibility for family health care plans.

We hope this is a solution that could bring all sides together; there's nothing political or ideological about it, its just letting kids stay on their family health insurance for a few more years, until they get a good job that has benefits.

The military keeps coming up short in recruiting.

Senator Joe Biden, the top Democrat in the Senate on the foreign affairs committee and a likely 2008 presidential candidate, raised the issue of the military draft over the weekend while appearing on a major political talk show.

"We're going to have to face that question," Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press" television show when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft.

"The truth of the matter is, it is going to become a subject, if, in fact, there's a 40 percent shortfall in recruitment. It's just a reality," he said.

The comment came after the Department of Defense announced Friday the army had missed its recruiting goal for May by 1,661 recruits, or 25 percent. Similar losses have been reported by army officials every month since February.

But experts said even that figure was misleading because the army has quietly lowered its May recruitment target from 8,050 to 6,700 people.

That has prompted charges that the real shortfall was closer to 40 percent, which in turn has led to questions about the future viability of the army as a force, if it continues to be plagued by lack of new recruits.

Since October, the army has recruited more than 8,000 fewer people that it had hoped to, which amounts to a loss of about a modern brigade.

The army, navy and marine corps reserves also fell short of their monthly goals by 18 percent, six percent and 12 percent respectively, according to the figures.

Recruitment at the Army National Guard was down 29 percent while the Air National Guard fell short 22 percent.

Not Enough Damn Money

The New York Times had it right in its editorial this week that we are totally failing to keep the doors open for upward mobility in this country when we keep making it harder to go to college.

So when I read about the 1.2% increase in the maximum Pell Grant that was approved by an appropriations committee in Congress I thought "That is not enough damn money". Tuition went up over 10%, but the main grant program (which has been frozen for the last three) years got an increase of 1.2%.

That means that a bunch of people who are already working 20-30 hours per week and taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans, are still going to be shy the money they need to pay all the bills.

Not enough damn money.

Don't believe the lobbyists and their too too polite reaction in the media. They are just trying to put a brave face on it and stay on the good side of the people they have to lobby. That's fair, that is their job. BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH DAMN MONEY!!!

A 1.2% increase in 4 years is a pathetic-inadequate-disastrous-no-big-solution-let-it-get-worse-economic-disaster of a policy. And I am outraged that the beltway response is filled with words like better, grateful, optimistic, favorable.

More on this later....

Okay, I'm rhyming kinda slow this morning. It was an incredible night. Check out the Post's story on it.

We're getting ready for tonight. Its going to be an awesome event.

We're eager to see what the politicos have to say. We've invited our awardees John McCain and Barack Obama as well as our special guests Minority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Chuck Hagel to sell their agenda for the youth of America.

Looking forward to what they have to say.

Welcome all friends of Talking Points Memo. Looking forward to what you can turn up.

"A surprise boner"

This whole protest thing... Well, when it first started, I did a little looking around. Before long I stumbled across a blog written by a young conservative where he described hatching the plan for this protest with a bunch of his fellow young conservatives.

I thought it was kind of funny. Here is what it said:

My second day of “work” at my D.C. summer conservative grassroots organization “job” further demonstrated my life’s progressive, and exponentially rapid descent into terminal absurdity.

After picking my nose for 3 hours (for those of you who are familiar with my nose you know that my nose picking is not a simple hobby, but instead a substantial work-out) I was summoned into a meeting with my fellow brilliant “activists” (a flexible euphemism for Republicans who can’t get real jobs) to decide how best to cleverly protest the upcoming Rock the Vote awards ceremony in D.C. via the Web.

The best that us college chaps could do after an hour of masturbating to the idea of being rich, was to arrive at the following conservative version of a poor excuse for being “edgy”: www.rockthevotesux.com.

I suggested the novel spelling of “sux.” But not before suggesting that we go with the slogan, “Everybody gets laid.”

This slogan did not jibe well in a room full of 30-year old virgins whose raciest memory was seeing Kevin Bacon’s surprise boner in “Friday the Thirteenth Part II” up on the big-screen.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever saw that boner.

So, in my spare moments tonight as I planned our glorious upcoming Rock the Vote Awards event, I went looking for that special blog again, but surprise! it had disappeared!

Instead of that lively, entertaining, and brutally honest section, it now says,

[THIS SECTION EDITED FOR FEAR OF MY LIFE]

You can see the cached version here of the original. I saved a PDF version. If that link doesn't work you can still find the cached version by searching "www.rockthevotesux" on google.

Wonder what Grover Norquist said to this guy?

To sum it up: Some guy wrote a hilarious account on his blog of the origins of this little protest. But when the "30 year old virgins" found out about his characterization of their sitting around "masturbating to the idea of being rich" and planning this protest, they must have put the fear of God in him. So he pulled it down, and wrote "THIS SECTION EDITED FOR FEAR OF MY LIFE."

Stop it! You guys are killing me! I mean, really!

Eagerly awaiting to see who is willing to admit that they are a 30 year old virgin on Wednesday.

UPDATE: As a consolation prize to the author, whose writing skills I genuinely admire and greatly appreciate, get in touch with me and I'll hook you up with a couple of free passes to the afterparty...

The New York Times
Financial Aid Rules for College Change, and Families Pay More

No matter how she parses it, Roberta Proctor cannot make sense of her son's college bill. Her income and her assets have not changed. If anything, she says, her family's finances have deteriorated somewhat.

So, she wonders, how could she possibly owe an extra $6,000 for the coming school year, when tuition has not increased anywhere near that amount?

But she does. Like Ms. Proctor, a Californian whose son just finished his freshman year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, thousands of American families might find it harder to qualify for financial aid this year and might be asked to contribute more money toward the cost of college because of changes to a complicated federal formula they barely know about, much less understand.

Taken together, these changes, some based on overly optimistic predictions of inflation, have required families to count a greater share of their incomes and assets toward college expenses before becoming eligible for financial aid. As a consequence, tens of thousands of low-income students will no longer be eligible for federal grants; middle-class families are digging deeper into their savings; and some colleges are putting up their own money to make up the difference.

[Read the rest at the New York Times website...}

Rolling Stone has a great article about "The heroic life and final days of Marla Ruzicka, an American martyr."

They call themselves Americans for Prosperity. They just sent us a box of t-shirts that mimic our I LOVE SOCIAL SECURITY shirts. A flattering imitation.

But here's the thing: our t-shirts are UNION MADE IN THE U.S.A. Supporting the American way of life.

Their shirts are MADE IN EL SALVADOR. Probably in a sweatshop.

Now which group is really americans for prosperity, and which group is really a bunch of hypocrites?

Get your I LOVE SOCIAL SECURITY shirts today!

Alright, this whole Social Security thing is starting to get interesting.

Check out the latest from the Youth Media Reporter.

The military draft issue isn't going away. There's a story in the Washington Post today about how concerns about the military draft are still on the rise. The article mostly focuses on how some people are preparing to claim concientious objector status. But there's an informative conclusion to the piece that spells out a concern we brought to light during the 2004 election campaign---a special skills draft.

That's a draft for the people who are in the shortest supply in the military---particular kinds of doctors, engineers, etc. Its already happening within the ranks of the national guard as well as retired military personnel, many of whom have been brought back into active duty because of their particular area of expertise.

Here's the excerpt:

There's not going to be a draft. Political leaders can't seem to say that enough. But if there were to be one, it could be of specific skilled professionals rather than general conscription, Flahavan said. That could mean women would be included -- and the cutoff age could be extended past 25 years.

Since 1987, at Congress's request, the Selective Service has had a plan to register male and female health care workers ages 20 to 45 in more than 60 medical specialties in case the country suddenly needed more doctors or nurses. The proposal would require the authorization of Congress and the president.

More recently, the agency has talked about reinventing itself by registering all sorts of professionals whose expertise could be helpful in an emergency. That way, the Selective Service could become a national "repository or inventory of special skills," according to the agency's annual report.

The "special skills" draft could give the government the option of calling up people in a variety of specialties, such as linguists, computer experts, police officers or firefighters, Flahavan said.

Other government agencies besides the Department of Defense could draft those workers, the report states. They could include U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The agency knows what angst such a program could cause, and Flahavan repeatedly stresses that it is "just a concept" that would require authorization from Congress.

"We're not advocating that it should be done," he said. "All we're saying is . . . we've been in this business for [more than 60] years. We know how to run a draft."

USA Today asks, can Tiger Woods Save Social Security?

Here's a relevant quote:

"Taxing all income and capping benefits would fix Social Security - mathematically, at least. The program would run a permanent surplus if all income - including the millions earned by athletes, movie stars and corporate tycoons - were subject to the 12.4% Social Security tax and if benefits for the affluent were capped at current levels, according to the Social Security Administration."

UPDATE: Here's another informative article on raising the cap.