ProgressOhio

“The launch of this network is the next step of transparency in Congress and an additional bridge between me and my constituents,” said Congressman Tim Ryan. “New media has been an important part of my communications program, and I’m excited to take the next step for these online efforts.”

With Net Neutrality issues on the public agenda, timing is just right for the chairman to act on Net Neutrality, the principle that protects Internet users from discrimination online.

FCC To Introduce Net Neutrality Rule

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to propose a new so-called net neutrality rule Monday that could prevent telecommunications, cable and wireless companies from blocking Internet applications, according to sources at the agency.

Genachowski will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and services.

The guidelines in place today have been criticized by applications developers like Google and public interest groups for not going far enough to clarify what is defined as discriminatory behavior. Comcast is fighting in federal court an FCC ruling that it violated the guidelines by blocking a video application last year. AT&T and Verizon have said existing rules are sufficient, and more regulation is unnecessary. However, they have also said they wouldn't fight against an additional guideline that focuses on discriminatory behavior.

The panel falls on the same day the FCC will be filing a brief in the Comcast case and comes just days after Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) pledged to support the Internet Freedom Preservation Act during the FCC’s oversight hearing in Congress.

The panel at the Brookings Institution also includes Skype CEO Josh Silverman; Brookings Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Darrell West; and David Young, Verizon Communications Vice President of Federal Regulatory Affairs. Cecilia Kang, a reporter for the Washington Post, will moderate the discussion.

Genachowski and President Obama were classmates at Harvard Law School. He served as chief counsel for former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, the chairman under former President Bill Clinton, and held various positions at IAC/InterActiveCorp, as well as other technology posts.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/12/fcc-commissioner-julius-g_n_157350.html

Genachowski was Chairman of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications policy working group or the Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign that created the Obama Technology and Innovation Plan. He also advised and guided the Obama campaign’s innovative use of technology and the Internet for grassroots engagement and participation.

He co-led the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Group for president-elect Barack Obama's presidential transition team. He became Federal Communications Commission Chairman on June 29, 2009.

Jen Nedeau wrote the post to top all posts at Change.org, It's Time to Change Our Language, about this effort to eliminate the use of the R-word. You can read about the official event, Spread the Word to the End the Word, at the Special Olympics website.

What you need to know: It’s pretty powerful to see just how misused the r-word, aka “retarded," is – see here on Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+retard+OR+retarded

This event is a national day of awareness for America to stop and think about their use of the R-word.

Ways to participate:

Blog: A post about your experience with the “R-Word” and how you feel about it or just share the info about the 3.31 event.

Facebook: Attend the End the R-Word Day event and donate your status to end the R-Word such as:

Jill pledges to end the r-word today

• Tweet to spread the word to end the R-word, and use the #rword hashtag to show your support.
• Join the Tweetchat tomorrow at 4 – 5 PM EST. Use #rword to join!
• Follow our efforts at @EndTheWord (http://twitter.com/endtheword), where you can stay posted on the progress of our efforts to end the R-word.
• A sample tweet could be:

How often do you use the word retarded? It’s time to stop. Spread the word to end the word on 3.31 - http://www.r-word.org/. #rword”

Remember how Ohio 24th district state senator Bob Spada got some equally unacceptable terms dumped from the Ohio Constitution in 2007? This is no different. There are millions of people with intellectual disabilities who find those words as well as the r-word as offensive and cruel as any other slur. That's why I'm asking you to consider participating by taking part in one of the above actions.

Many thanks to Jen for putting so much of this effort together. Please help however you can.

The Women's Media Center is a nonprofit media advocacy organization founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan to make women visible and powerful in the media. The WMC is "changing the conversation" with our Progressive Women's Voices program by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers. Sadly, despite the numbers of women working in education, we rarely turn on the TV and see a woman - as I'm sure you are well aware. I would love to have a conversation with you about the PWV program, to give you a bit more info and to see if you are interested in applying.

Our first four classes are a truly stellar group, with experts in economics, foreign policy, reproductive rights, environmental issues, racial justice, voting rights, the history of feminism, immigrant communities, outsider cultures, national security, and many more areas of expertise. With our training and help, our PWV women have written Op Eds in the Washington Post and The New York Times, features for Elle and New York magazine, were quoted in USA Today, Forbes, Variety, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, on the Associated Press and Reuters wires, appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Nightly News, Fox News, ABC News, CNBC, The Tyra Banks Show, PBS's "To The Contrary," Bill Moyers, on numerous NPR shows, and in hundreds of other significant media outlets. Full info is available on our program page:

http://womensmediacenter.com/progressive_womens_voices_program.html

If you're like me, you've heard and read enough from the pundits and politicians about the stimulus.  Look, when a country is where we are economically, no solution is going to be one that everyone can support because we know we don't all agree on solutions and we know we don't know what will happen - no matter who tells you otherwise.

Today, starting at 12noon, you can participate in a discussion with people like yourself and others about the stimulus.  Here's what you need to know:

What it is:

You're invited to participate in 24 Hours of Stimulus - an online bipartisan citizen discussion on the Economic Stimulus and Recovery bill, hosted by Political Voices of Women on Twitter, starting at 12n EST, Monday, February 9th. hashtags: #24stimulus and #pvow,

This schedules the tweetchat between the start of the Monday Senate session and the currently anticipated time of the stimulus vote.

It also gives everyone a chance to pop in and have their say at a time that's most convenient for them.

How to do it:

Follow the conversation: Go to summize.com or search.twitter.com and search on the #24stimulus or #pvow hashtags.  That will bring up the tweets that have been written as part of the discussion.

Participate: If you have a Twitter handle, just jump in with a comment or thought or reaction or question and be sure to add the #24stimulus hashtag to your tweet.

If you don't have a Twitter handle, get one - it's free and easy to set up at twitter.com.

I'm told that if you go to Tweetchat.com, you can enter the room with either hashtag and follow the tweets and contribute to the discussion there.

Looking forward to it.

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday offered an outline of his economic recovery plan and jobs were the top priority.

American workers will rebuild the nation's roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy, creating 2.5 million jobs by 2011,

"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," he said. "These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long."

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The Guardian UK has collected hundreds of striking photo messages to Barack Obama on their Deadline USA blog.

All it took was setting up a Flickr group and invite people share their thoughts in photo form.

More than 800 messages have since poured in.

Here's three of them:

See more and submit yours here.

HT: techPresident

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It covers a wide range of subjects including the economy, the ailing automobile industry, the government's $700 billion bailout program, their visit to the White House, the emotions of election night and the quest for a family dog.

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Gay rights supporters marched, chanted and danced in cities coast to coast Saturday to protest the vote that banned gay marriage in California.

One of the largest rallies was held in Los Angeles.

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When did it sink in that her husband would become the nation's 44th president? Michelle Obama and the president-elect speak with Steve Kroft, this Sunday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

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Obama will take to Internet as Roosevelt took to radio

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Barack Obama's Internet-savvy campaign team will revolutionize White House communications like late president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did with the radio, according to NDN think tank president Simon Rosenberg.

"Senator Obama just ran the first true campaign of the 21st Century using these internet tools to help organize his supporters and fight on a new battlefied of modern politics, said the veteran of former president Bill Clinton's 1992 election campaing.

"He reivented the model of advocay," he added of the Indiana Senator who on Tuesday won became the first US black president elect.

Obama's campaign team used the Web to organize volunteers and in fundraising, dealing a decisive victory over his Republican rival John McCain, who resorted to more traditional methods of communications.

Rosenberg said the incoming US administration had significantly revamped political communications in the country and lowered the barrier to entry into politics for everyday people.

"It allows a much more meaningful participation by our citizens in their politics and democracy. We saw an enormous surge of civic participation in America this year, in terms of people giving money and voting.

"All future campaigns in America will be run on this people-based internet model Obama ran," he said.

He said the use of modern 21st-century tools will bring "an enormous reinvention" of the US presidency, as the radio did in the first half of the last century.

"FDR was using the radio in a very powerful way to establish his power in his country. In the US, now, every Saturday morning the president does a radio address.

"My assumption is that it will now be a Youtube address that will be translated in the principal languages of the world: Spanish, French, Arabic, Farsi and others.

"This way (the president) will be adressing not only his own citizens but the citizens of the world.

Rosenberg said the new technology will not only change the relationship betwen the US president and his own people, "it is going to change the American relationship to all the world ...

The overall composition of Obama's transition team indicates he is serious about implementing new uses of technology in the executive branch and directing more cohesive policy making.

Obama's search for a CTO

By naming some technology executives to his transition team--especially former IAC executive Julius Genachowski--President-elect Barack Obama is signaling that he's likely to follow through with his proposal to appoint a chief technology officer to the White House.

The person in this new position--and possibly a new White House technology office staff--could be given the directive to create new levels of transparency and access to government agencies, or to guide policies that spur innovation and growth. Technology experts within the Beltway warn, however, that a CTO would have to avoid potential pitfalls such as creating new spending for ineffectual projects, running into conflict with other agencies, or simply becoming nothing more than a symbolic office.

Still, creating the position would generally be seen as a positive step.

"The fact that this is difficult is, in some ways, an example of why we might need a CTO," said Alan Davidson, head of Google's Washington office. "There is no one place for unified technology leadership in our executive branch right now."

Barack Obama's 12 point blueprint for technology:

• Broadband access for all of America.
• Raise broadband speeds and standards
• Connect schools, hospitals and libraries.
• Encourage technology literacy.
• Educate the next generation of scientists and engineers.
• Electronic medical records that will reduce error, improve healthcare and lower costs.
• Participation in government reforms:
  Ask questions in real time;
  Offer suggestions that are reviewed before decisions are made; and
  Comment on legislation before it is signed.
• Double basic research funding.
• Make research and development tax credit permanent.
• Enforce anti-trust laws.
• Online accesss to government data.
• Enable tracking of federal contracts, earmarks and lobbying contracts.

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Colin Powell endorses Obama and exposes the mis- direction of the Republican Party.

Redemption is a good thing.

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