News alert: Bill O'Reilly thinks Daily Show viewers are uninformed!

In a recent show, conservative bomb-thrower Bill O'Reilly attacked young voters as uniformed on the issues (presumably because they don't agree with him, right?), accusing young people of getting their information from Jon Stewart and bomb-throwing rock stars instead of crediible sources, by which we presume he meant himself.

According to Media Matters, a media watchdog organization:

Bill O'Reilly asserted that "[m]any Americans ages 18 to 24 have no idea what's going on," stating that they "get their news from [Comedy Central host] Jon Stewart and their point of view from bomb-throwing entertainers." In fact, studies have shown that viewers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart are consistently better informed about current events than consumers of other media, and Daily Show viewers are significantly better educated than viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. Further, consumers of Fox News in general have been found to be significantly more misinformed about current events than consumers of other mainstream media.

Ouch!

Young Adults without health care: The Commonwealth Fund has updated their study on the growing crisis of young people going without health insurance. From the overview:

Young adults (ages 19 to 29) are one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population without health insurance: 13.7 million lacked coverage in 2004, an increase of 2.5 million since 2000. Young adults often lose coverage under their parents' policies, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Insurance Program at age 19, or when they graduate from high school or college. Nearly two of five college graduates and one-half of high school graduates who do not go on to college will be uninsured for a period during the first year after graduation. Three policy changes could extend coverage to uninsured young adults and prevent others from losing it: extending eligibility for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program beyond age 18; extending eligibility for dependents under private coverage beyond age 18 or 19 regardless of student status; and ensuring that colleges and universities require full- and part-time students to have insurance, and that they offer coverage to both.

Read the study and take action! There is a growing movement to address this issue at the state level and you can get involved.

Student loans are a chain around your neck dragging you down... deeper...

Act now to make student loans more affordable!

We know that students are borrowing more than ever for college. Paying those loans back will get even harder when interest rates jump on July 1st. The Department of Education has some mechanisms that are supposed to help borrowers when they have trouble keeping up with high monthly payments, but most routes to relief are dead ends or impossible to navigate because of confusing and contradictory rules.

It’s time to fix the broken rules so that they actually help student loan borrowers. An unusual alliance of students, the lending industry, parents, and higher education groups has come together in support of an “administrative petition” to the Department of Education. The petition calls for changes to make required loan payments more affordable by linking them to what people actually earn. Learn more about it here. Secretary Spellings has the power to help students and their families right now, without waiting for a deadlocked partisan Congress to act. The secretary needs to hear from you! Please take a moment to send a letter, and tell her you support the goals of the petition. Student loans are supposed to help young people, not hold us back from the opportunities higher education provides.

[Guest blog by Edie Irons, Project on Student Debt]

Save the Whales Remix: Contest Launches Today

Save the Whales from Japanese Fishing - Mix Real Humpback Whale Sounds - Win a Video iPod!

Check out http://www.stopwhaling.org/

Remixes will be judged by an amazing celebrity panel of artists and musicians (including members of No Doubt, Le Tigre, Marlyn Manson, MC5, AKAs, Bellrays, etc..)

More going global:

Korea: Parties begin online campaigns to attract young voters.

MySpace under attack from Congress? The Youth Policy Action Center has the goods, including what you can do about it.

The World Tour:

Singapore: young voters make up 40 percent of the electorate and politicians reach out to them regularly.

Slovakia: politicians are "chasing first time voters."

Ireland: advocates are outraged at the poor state of voter registration lists and are calling for "immediate funds so that local authorities, census enumerators and postmen could call door-to-door to register all those eligible to vote."

Japan: the prime minister bolstered his power thanks to a strong and supportive voter turnout from young people.

Mexico: a Rock the Vote style campaign is underway for their election on July 2, as reported by Harp Magazine.

Jamaica: "A NEW generation has come of age in Jamaica and politicians ignore us at their own peril."

Chasing Ghosts: Paul Rieckhoff, founder of IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, has a new book out providing a perspective on the war from troops on the ground. The book is called Chasing Ghosts.

Paul was on the Colbert Report last week---you can see the clip here, for a while at least---get it before its gone!

A victory for the janitors and their student supporters in Miami. The Herald reports that the workers will now be able to vote on whether SEIU, the service workers union, should represent them when they negotiate their contracts. This will presumably lead to an election in favor of union membership, and for low-income workers, union membership leads to a better life.

The student organizers who joined the cause deserve a lot of the credit for putting pressure on the University to do the right thing. Student activists are discovering how much power they have to change the world when they tackle campus policies for workers.