Build that "information superhighway" to every American school. Each school needs real, high-speed, broadband connections and wireless support which can enable students to use laptops. handhelds, and mobile phones to bring information and communications access to every student. We need to train our students in the use of 21st Century Technology, and how to leverage that technology for education, in jobs, to overcome disabilities and disadvantages, and to improve democracy.

We can join this to a Universal Design Technology initiative which insists that our schools use the ubiquitous technologies of the age to support student learning. From free text-to-speech systems for those with learning disabilities to mobile learning supports for those without economic advantages, from accessible websites for those with visual impairments to alternate keyboards for those struggling with dexterity. And including a nationwide commitment to text-to-speech systems to support literacy development.

Currently, US schools privilege 15th Century "Gutenberg" technology, which limits access to success to a small group of elites. Embracing Universal Design technology opens a world of possibilities, and installing this is an "every town" stimulus package.

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/

I have noticed that there a group of sites that are using a rating system similar to Digg to find out what people want President Obama to do once he takes office. However, I have a few concerns and some suggestions to make your mission more successful.

I came to this realization while reading Alan Boyle’s article “Wired Whitehouse” that there are too many groups doing this with the plan of passing it on to the administration. Wouldn’t it be better to contact the administration and have these as one sister site to the transition site?

Using semantic web technologies and further collaboration and voting systems within issues, you could easily aggregate all these issues to make it more efficient. This will achieve a higher quality debate and achieve your goals in many ways.

First, it will allow issues to be combined quickly and easily. Semantic web technologies can summarize issues and pull them together into a summary, finding trends that could be broken down into multiple sub issues. For example, within an issue titled “End the Drug War” could be the sub issue “Legalize Marijuana.” This way visitors to the site will not be overwhelmed by the number of issues and can have a more nuanced debate about each one, picking and choosing what sub issues they agree with rather than having to hunt through so many.

Secondly, with all of you working together everyone online would take the formation of a citizen’s agenda more seriously because with more people you would have more influence. In addition, the constituency drawn to the site through other aggregated news pages would be enough for the transition team to consider making it a sister site, guaranteeing a more serious consideration by the transition team than if multiple smaller proposals (with redundant requests) were submitted. It saves the Obama Administration from having to do the aggregation.

I sincerely hope you will take this under advisement. All of you guys are providing a great service, but I want to make sure it is taken seriously by the administration. This would make it easier for that to happen.

The new USAService.org website is a fine idea, but it's missing solving the real problem. There are already a ton of websites with volunteer opportunities (look at http://www.usaservice.org/page/content/opportunities/ to get a sample
of the number of them) - the real problem is that if you wanted to volunteer, you might have to spend a bunch of time searching all those websites, and you'd give up after awhile. That's the problem that needs to be solved.

If all those websites would share their information with each other, then a search on any one of them would let you find the relevant results from all of them.

This is not far-fetched, this can easily be done using existing standards (similar to RSS). What needs to happen is for a large number of these websites to adopt this model, and cooperate. This idea is *my* answer to the call to service: I'm promoting this idea that we don't need more websites; we need the websites to share information about service opportunities.

There are numerous issues that have appalled me about the Bush administration, but none more than the following:
- the support for torture and rendition
- the suppression of habeas corpus
- the gradual shrinking of the 4th amendment (i.e., FISA rewrite)

Like it or not, these things happened largely because Democrats in Congress didn't stand up against them when they were briefed to select members of the House and Senate, and now that these tools/techniques/practices are in the hands of the law enforcement, intelligence, and defense agencies, there will be a real resistance to addressing these problems.

Ensuring that we respect the rights of US Citizens, POW's, and enemy combatants in manner that is in keeping with the intents of the founders is a good idea, and I want to make sure that Obama resists the pressure of those Democrats and Republicans in Congress who failed to do their job in the past, and now have a vested interest in supporting the status quo.

If we win the war on terror by torturing, imprisoning without trial, and becoming a surveillance state, we will lose ourselves in the process.

ECONOMIC STIMULATION PLAN
(Paid for by Illegal Immigrants)
It is estimated in the U.S. immigration report that between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants are living within the confines of the United States borders. It is not argued by many Americans that these illegal immigrants are working jobs here in the United States. This means that there is an enormous amount of tax revenue that has not been taken in from these people. My plan does four things simultaneously: it collects this past revenue, it works to offer citizenship, it creates many jobs for current U.S. citizens, and most importantly it is set up in a fashion that does offend people who are already U.S. citizens.
I know that there are many Americans that want to deport these illegal immigrants, but my plan allows for them to become full citizens by following a strict set of guidelines. The plan will allow them to buy their way to citizenship by paying extra taxes. This will help our struggling economy by creating thousands of jobs (which I will explain shortly). Using these Illegal Immigrants to create jobs for Americans, and to pay for those jobs, will help hateful people have a little more respect for them. It will also put an end to the idea that the illegal immigrants take away good Americans jobs. Under my plan these people will be creating good American jobs.
My plan also helps to narrow the amount of illegal immigrants inside of our borders so that when INS or the Department of Homeland Security are trying to find the people that are threats to our way of life, they have fewer people to sift through.
My plan is an offering of temporary citizenship to the illegal immigrants that can somehow prove that they have been here more than one year. These people will be required to do one of the following: 1. Pay double taxes for seven out of ten years, or 2. Pay triple taxes for three out of 5 years. They will also be required to give their fingerprints to the FBI database, enroll in English language courses, and citizenship courses. They have to do all of this in order to prove that they are serious about attempting to learn our language (if they are not already fluent) and prove that they honestly respect American citizenship. Once they have completed all of these requirements they will have a review hearing to establish full citizenship. If the illegal immigrant complains however, the offer will be withdrawn and they will be deported. This is a success oriented program though, so there will be nets to catch the people who struggle to pay triple taxes if that is the choice they select, but they will finish our program if they want to stay.
Even though starting this program will require an initial investment on the part of the United States government, the taxes generated will be put into a separate tax system which pays the government back and pays for the many jobs this new program creates. These jobs will be created under a new heading or department in the national government for now I am calling it the “New System”. There will be three groups of jobs created by this system: one will be jobs created in order to follow up with all of the illegal immigrants on a regular basis until they complete the program, the second group of jobs will be for teaching these people English, and the third group will be for teaching each of them about U.S. citizenship. Again I will state that there are between 12,000,000 and 20,000,000 people in this country illegally. If you average that at 16,000,000, then take away a third who are probably children (who don’t work) you get 10,666,666, and then take that times the amount of additional money put into the “New System” by the illegal immigrants newly collected tax dollars (which I will blindly estimate at 3,000 per person without regard to whether they choose the 3 year or seven year plan): 10,666,666 X $3,000 = $31,999,998,000 this is an estimate of the additional money that will be collected annually and used to pay for these transitional jobs. At an average of $40,000 per year this system will create nearly 800,000 jobs. Each one of those positions will pay an estimated average of $5,500 taxes per year. This means that nearly $4,400,000,000 in federal taxes will be paid annually from the “New System” and the jobs it creates. - Jeffrey Knick