Senators are coming back to Washington D.C. on September 8th, what do you think they’ll do? Will they pass bold healthcare reform to help Americans get the care that they need? Will they pass a bold climate bill to lift the threat of the climate crisis and create millions of green jobs? The answer to these questions is entirely dependent on whether we all get loud and organized in demanding that the progressive priorities young people voted for in November are fulfilled. Here are a couple of things you can do on climate and healthcare to remind your Senators that just because they are back in the beltway they are still accountable to the youth vote:
Get It Done Healthcare Actions
Young people’s voices have been thuroughly ignored in the healthcare debate. Now that the summer is almost over, it’s time to remind our representatives that we are the least insured segment of the population and that we need healthcare reform.
On Sept. 8th the Senate will return from Summer Recess and release its version of a clean energy jobs bill. This is our chance to welcome back our Senators and tell them to “Get to Work!” Let’s create some clean energy jobs on the Hill!
Join this creative demonstration on Capitol Hill to show the Senate what clean energy jobs look like. We need dozens of people to form a “clean energy assembly line”, wear costumes and green hard hats, deliver props to Senators, and have fun! Will you join us?
Yes, your Senator is leaving your state, but you still have access to their local offices. Take a field trip over there dressed up in nurse outfits or wearing arm slings and demand healthcare reform.
Hosta PowerShift Campaign Kick-off Event
In the coming weeks the Power Shift movement will begin to take new life. Innovative new actions, state-wide rallies and the introduction of new online and mobile tools are all in the works, but we need your leadership to make it happen. That’s why we are inviting you to start using a groundbreaking new organizing tool we are unveiling today to help you create a local Campaign Kick-off Event.
Just because the summer is almost over doesn’t mean that we will stop pushing for progressive change. Now is the time to take action in your community!
Sick and tired of the lies: As a young person engaged in the health care debate, I am fed up with the lies and distractions that have spiraled out of control over this past month. Congressional recess was supposed to be a chance for people to have real discussions with their legislators about reforming the health care system. Instead, the town hall discussions have turned into an insurance industry-funded, right-wing lobby-orchestrated debacle of crazy mobs. Many other unhinged health care reform opponents say that reform is inspired by Nazism, and call out “Heil Hitler” while constituents try to express their struggles with health insurance and medical bill debt. As Sen. Barney Frank put it, they must be spending their time on another planet. This behavior is absurd and clearly demonstrates that these crazies have nothing helpful to say. We would be happy if they would give us some alternate solutions! We would be happy to argue over what age young people should continue to be covered on their parents plan for, or whether preventive care should be covered.Instead, they bombard us with lies and fear-mongering to win the debate.
Sick and tired of seeing brain power go down the drain: America voted for an incredibly intelligent president last November.I work for a think-tank full of incredibly intelligent people. There are plenty of journalists out there who are very intelligent (like Ezra Klein, Rachel Maddow, etc), although some “journalists” on certain “news” networks are part of the problem. Yet, all of these intelligent people are forced to spend their days responding to vitriolic rants from reform opponents and combating dystopian fantasies that a 6 year old could debunk in ten minutes.
Exhibit number one: Obama’s health care reform logo looks like a Nazi symbol, according to many in this “movement.”
It seems the media is finally starting to take note of the fact that young people have been missing from the health care debate thus far. Is it because of a lack of interest or concern from young people? Maybe for some. Or is it because Obama and Congress have failed to recognize the importance of engaging young people on the issue of health care reform? Or because the media has chosen to focus on the drama of the conservative town hall mobs instead of the young supporters that are getting out there to fight for reform, just like they fought to get their President elected?
In this AP article by Beth Fouhy, the observation that young people are AWOL from the health care debate is a disturbing assessment:
Heather Smith, executive director of the youth-oriented group Rock the Vote, said that the heated arguments that have dominated the debate recently — from the future of Medicare to “death panels” to claims of rationing — have seemed far removed from the lives of young people, whose health-insurance worries primarily center on the cost and availability of coverage.
Lake, the Democratic pollster, said the lack of involvement by young people in the health care push may hint at a bigger concern for the White House: Some so-called Obama “surge” voters, who voted for the first time in 2008 and are largely younger and nonwhite, may not be as motivated to get involved in his signature causes, including health care.
“They say, ‘I’m taking a break from politics, I’m uninformed about the system, I’m sick of Washington, I’m not going to help these people.’ It’s interesting that he hasn’t countered that disengagement,” Lake said.
Don’t get stamped as AWOL. Take Action Now for health care reform and show Congress, President Obama, and the public that young voters are still here and ready to fight for change.
A new report by the Project on Student Debt shows that an alarming number of students are taking out private student loans, which often come with high and variable interest rates and few borrower protections, before exhausting federal sources of funding.
Among their findings:
The portion of private loan borrowers who did not exhaust federal sources of student loans increased from 48% in 2003-04 to 64% in 2007-08.
The portion of all undergrads who borrow private loans has increased dramatically from 5% in 2003-04 to 14% in 2007-08. Students at certain kinds of institutions are much more likely to take out private student loans, however. 14% of students at public four year universities have private loans, compared to 42% of students at for-profit schools.
African Americans are the most likely to borrow private loans. Between 2003-04 and 2007-08, the number of percentage of African American undergrads who took out private loans rose from 4% to an alarming 17%.
Though these loans often come with interest rates comparable to a credit card and few borrower protections, borrowers are unable to discharge them in bankruptcy.
The Project on Student Debt is also calling on folks to support a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that, among other things, could regulate private student loans. Despite some new disclosure regulations passed last year, not enough has been done to reign in the growth of these dangerous loans. Take action by clicking here.
The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s pet dog in Washington D.C., was throughly inspired by the success of Big Pharma and Insurance companies in popularizing lies about healthcare and decided to organize it’s own set of astroturfing events throughuot the nation. ‘Energy-Citizens’ is what they called them and they encouraged all of their lsits to run and attend. The first of these events happened in Houston a couple of days ago and Public Citizen organizers went to check it out. See for yourself how ’spontaneous’ and ‘grassrootsy’ these events were:
Not only was the event exclusive to oil company employees, but when our friends managed to sneak in with a camera, they revealed that most people in there had no idea or were highly misinformed about what they were brought there for:
In a summer rife with industry scandals and lies, we must make sure that our government doesn’t balk. Here is the list of other scheduled ‘Energy Citizen’ events. If you see one in your hometown, why don’t you pay them a visit?
21-Aug
Lima, OH
Veterans’ Memorial and Civic Center
11:30 am
21-Aug
Farmington, NM
Convention Center at McGee Park
11:30 am
22-Aug
Atlanta, GA
Marriott Century Center
11:30 am
25-Aug
Elkhart, IN
RV Hall of Fame
11:00 am
25-Aug
Greeley, CO
Island Grove Regional Park
TBD
25-Aug
Nashville, TN
Wild Horse Saloon
11:30 am
27-Aug
Bismarck, ND
National Center of Energy Excellence at Bismarck State College
This is a guest blog post, written by Kaitlyn Cunningham, a member of the Campus Progress Network.
Heated town hall meetings on health insurance reform have become a staple of this year’s Congressional recess. Last Tuesday, I had an opportunity to attend Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire. Based on my exposure to media sources prior to the event, I was pleasantly surprised at the meeting to see that the tea-baggers were out-numbered.
In Maine, Senators’ Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are refusing to hold town hall meetings on the health insurance bill, H.R. 3200. With that said, several young people from Maine and I made the trek to New Hampshire last week because we wanted an opportunity to shape the conversation. Our group consisted of community organizers, students and a mother. We represented a group of people who recognize that the health care system must change in this country. In Maine almost 25% of people are without insurance. An even deeper statistic which was given to me by a local state senator is that of those people, 40% are between the ages of 20 and 29.
Tickets to the meeting were given out at random from the White House. Since many people wanted tickets we did not expect our group to get them. Fortunately some did, and those who didn’t were happy to be among the crowds of supporters outside the event.
When I say “energy efficiency”, what comes to mind? I’m sure that you aren’t thinking about the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions! Despite the lack of attention it receives from major environmental organizations, energy efficiency is by far the most promising approach to climate mitigation as shown by a new report from a business consulting firm and by the upsurge in student activism aimed at reducing their communities’ energy bills.
Last month, the McKinsey consulting firm released a report highlighting the immense potential for energy efficiency to quickly and cost-effectively reduce our carbon footprint. In it they highlighted that energy efficiency alone could easily reduce our energy use 23% by 2020. These are targeted investments that pay for themselves (referred to as NPV-Positive in the report) and provide an immense gain to our economy once you add in (and these cost saving-factors are not included in the report) the side benefits associate with job creation, improved air quality and health of residents, increased productivity, and, of course, weakening the climate crisis. Check out this graph summarizing their findings. The width of the columns indicates how many Gigatons of CO2 could be saved a year by implementing the measure and their vertical height indicated the incremental cost per ton of CO2 saved (from a previousMcKinsey report). You will see that most energy efficiency investments will have a strong payback, whereas other forms of energy improvements are somewhat costly (check out how expensive Coal plants with Carbon Capture and Sequestration, the coal industry’s ’solution’ to the climate crisis, are).
These are not abstract and hard to reach improvements, they are happening every day, mostly in buildings and institution with the available capital and know-how to tap into this incredible resource. Fortunately, there are many young people out there working hard to bridge the gap between these money, energy, and air quality saving measures and everyday people who don’t traditionally have access to them.
The right wing mobs disrupting the town hall meetings on health care reform this August recess are becoming violent and ridiculous. These mobs just don’t get that they are opposing reform that will better our health care system.
Nuclear energy and “clean coal” have been proposed by some as solutions to our oil addiction and need to address climate change, yet they are not necessarily clean or safe for that matter.
Isn’t it clear? ‘Clean Coal’ is the process of taking the CO2 and making it disappear somewhere! As John Hodgman from the Daily Show would say: Climate change? Solved!
* Disclaimer, this post refers to ‘Clean Coal’ based on definition #345 – Carbon Capture and Sequestration. To read more about the thousands of different meanings that the term ‘Clean Coal’ can conveniently have depending on what’s convenient for the coal industry, check out this post.
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
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for August, 2009.
Senators are coming back to Washington D.C. on September 8th, what do you think they’ll do? Will they pass bold healthcare reform to help Americans get the care that they need? Will they pass a bold climate bill to lift the threat of the climate crisis and create millions of green jobs? The answer to these questions is entirely dependent on whether we all get loud and organized in demanding that the progressive priorities young people voted for in November are fulfilled. Here are a couple of things you can do on climate and healthcare to remind your Senators that just because they are back in the beltway they are still accountable to the youth vote:
Sick and tired of the lies: As a young person engaged in the health care debate, I am fed up with the 
It seems the media is finally starting to take note of the fact that young people have been missing from the health care debate thus far. Is it because of a lack of interest or concern from young people? Maybe for some. Or is it because Obama and Congress have failed to recognize the importance of engaging young people on the issue of health care reform? Or because the media has chosen to focus on the drama of the conservative town hall mobs instead of the 
A 
This is a guest blog post, written by Kaitlyn Cunningham, a member of the Campus Progress Network.
