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Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As any American who is still looking for work or a way to pay their bills will tell you, we are by no means out of the woods. A full and vibrant recovery is many months away. And I will not let up until those Americans who seek jobs can find them; until those businesses that seek capital and credit can thrive; until all responsible homeowners can stay in their homes. That is our ultimate goal. But thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink.

I want to thank the members of this body for your efforts and your support in these last several months, and especially those who have taken the difficult votes that have put us on a path to recovery. I also want to thank the American people for their patience and resolve during this trying time for our nation.

But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future - and that is the issue of health care.

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.
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Our collective failure to meet this challenge - year after year, decade after decade - has led us to a breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can’t afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.

We are the only advanced democracy on Earth - the only wealthy nation - that allows such hardships for millions of its people. There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem of the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won’t pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America.

Then there’s the problem of rising costs. We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It’s why so many employers - especially small businesses - are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It’s why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally - like our automakers - are at a huge disadvantage. And it’s why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it - about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else’s emergency room and charitable care.

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.

These are the facts. Nobody disputes them. We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months.

During that time, we have seen Washington at its best and its worst.

We have seen many in this chamber work tirelessly for the better part of this year to offer thoughtful ideas about how to achieve reform. Of the five committees asked to develop bills, four have completed their work, and the Senate Finance Committee announced today that it will move forward next week. That has never happened before. Our overall efforts have been supported by an unprecedented coalition of doctors and nurses; hospitals, seniors’ groups and even drug companies - many of whom opposed reform in the past. And there is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been.

But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care.

The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals:

It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge - not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals. And it’s a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans - and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

That’s what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan - more security and stability.

Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange - a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves.

For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned. This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right. In the meantime, for those Americans who can’t get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill. This was a good idea when Senator John McCain proposed it in the campaign, it’s a good idea now, and we should embrace it.

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage. There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don’t sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people’s expensive emergency room visits. If some businesses don’t provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can’t be achieved.

That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95% of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.

While there remain some significant details to be ironed out, I believe a broad consensus exists for the aspects of the plan I just outlined: consumer protections for those with insurance, an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses to purchase affordable coverage, and a requirement that people who can afford insurance get insurance.

And I have no doubt that these reforms would greatly benefit Americans from all walks of life, as well as the economy as a whole. Still, given all the misinformation that’s been spread over the past few months, I realize that many Americans have grown nervous about reform. So tonight I’d like to address some of the key controversies that are still out there.

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a “government takeover” of the entire health care system. As proof, critics point to a provision in our plan that allows the uninsured and small businesses to choose a publicly-sponsored insurance option, administered by the government just like Medicaid or Medicare.

So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly - by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.

Insurance executives don’t do this because they are bad people. They do it because it’s profitable. As one former insurance executive testified before Congress, insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill; they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what this former executive called “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations.”

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. The insurance reforms that I’ve already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear - it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.

Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don’t like this idea. They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers. It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

It’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated - by the left, the right, or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and should not be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to that end - and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.

For example, some have suggested that that the public option go into effect only in those markets where insurance companies are not providing affordable policies. Others propose a co-op or another non-profit entity to administer the plan. These are all constructive ideas worth exploring. But I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can’t find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice. And I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.

Finally, let me discuss an issue that is a great concern to me, to members of this chamber, and to the public - and that is how we pay for this plan.

Here’s what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize. Part of the reason I faced a trillion dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for - from the Iraq War to tax breaks for the wealthy. I will not make that same mistake with health care.

Second, we’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system - a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. Right now, too much of the hard-earned savings and tax dollars we spend on health care doesn’t make us healthier. That’s not my judgment - it’s the judgment of medical professionals across this country. And this is also true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid.

In fact, I want to speak directly to America’s seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that’s been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.

These steps will ensure that you - America’s seniors - get the benefits you’ve been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. That’s what this plan will do for you. So don’t pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut - especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past, and just this year supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.

Now, because Medicare is such a big part of the health care system, making the program more efficient can help usher in changes in the way we deliver health care that can reduce costs for everybody. We have long known that some places, like the Intermountain Healthcare in Utah or the Geisinger Health System in rural Pennsylvania, offer high-quality care at costs below average. The commission can help encourage the adoption of these common-sense best practices by doctors and medical professionals throughout the system - everything from reducing hospital infection rates to encouraging better coordination between teams of doctors.

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. Much of the rest would be paid for with revenues from the very same drug and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of new customers. This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money - an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long-run.

Finally, many in this chamber - particularly on the Republican side of the aisle - have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don’t believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It’s a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.

Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years - less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent - but spent badly - in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle-class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of one percent each year, it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.

This is the plan I’m proposing. It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight - Democrats and Republicans. And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed - the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.

I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be delivered upon his death.

In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to the love and support of family and friends, his wife, Vicki, and his children, who are here tonight . And he expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform - “that great unfinished business of our society,” he called it - would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that “it concerns more than material things.” “What we face,” he wrote, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

I’ve thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days - the character of our country. One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and sometimes angry debate.

For some of Ted Kennedy’s critics, his brand of liberalism represented an affront to American liberty. In their mind, his passion for universal health care was nothing more than a passion for big government.

But those of us who knew Teddy and worked with him here - people of both parties - know that what drove him was something more. His friend, Orrin Hatch, knows that. They worked together to provide children with health insurance. His friend John McCain knows that. They worked together on a Patient’s Bill of Rights. His friend Chuck Grassley knows that. They worked together to provide health care to children with disabilities.

On issues like these, Ted Kennedy’s passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience. It was the experience of having two children stricken with cancer. He never forgot the sheer terror and helplessness that any parent feels when a child is badly sick; and he was able to imagine what it must be like for those without insurance; what it would be like to have to say to a wife or a child or an aging parent - there is something that could make you better, but I just can’t afford it.

That large-heartedness - that concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It is not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character. Our ability to stand in other people’s shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand. A belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

This has always been the history of our progress. In 1933, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism. But the men and women of Congress stood fast, and we are all the better for it. In 1965, when some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care, members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

What was true then remains true today. I understand how difficult this health care debate has been. I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them. I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road - to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.

But that’s not what the moment calls for. That’s not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it’s hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history’s test.

Because that is who we are. That is our calling. That is our character. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

The Source of Our Predicament

The United States has long been the darling child of worldwide capitalism. Since the end of World War II we watched as our country became the financial underpinning for rebuilding a war-torn Europe, and as the worldwide economic system turned to the dollar for stability it has since flourished as the worlds economic center, creating wealth so vast it is almost frightening to comprehend. As globalism has taken hold in recent decades it has only expanded this incredible wealth production system to a beast that dominates not just this country, but the very world we live in.

Capitalism, in theory, is not in any way an evil or malicious thing but an extraordinarily effective way to utilize certain aspects of human nature to generate wealth; the unmitigated need to further ones own interests. The danger lies not in our economic dependence upon capitalism but in our blind faith in it. Confusing our system of wealth generation for anything more than that very specific task has led us down a road more perilous than we can imagine, creating forces within a democratic society that overpower the social interests of its citizens with the cold, calculated financial self interests of a board of directors. It is a struggle between those warring factions that we are watching play itself out in breathtaking vitriol on the twenty four hour news cycle today.

Democracy is, on a basic level, the institutionalization of serving the organized interests of a countries populace. Our founding fathers, in their wisdom, created and protected the democratic governance of our country from many malicious forces which they saw with the power to rot the integrity of such a republic. Tyranny was their primary focus. John Adams fought tirelessly so that in throwing the British off the back of the colonies we did not end up in the yoke of another power such as the French. Thomas Jefferson, distrusting of large institutional forces, fought to ensure the rights of the individual to protect themselves and have a direct voice and role in their government, and created the visionary wall between church and state.

However our founders failed to foresee one major threat to the integrity of our democracy: large financial self interests in the form of corporations. This was likely intentional. Many of the founding fathers were wealthy landowners and from the very beginning the interests of the wealthy were well served, and attempts to challenge some of those interests would later lead to the American Civil War. These, financially driven, interests have grown today to a scale of monstrous proportions. For instance, the derivatives market, one of the key players in the economic crisis we now face, soars over $500 trillion dollars in outstanding derivatives.

The Problem of American and World Wide Economic Success

Our democracy is at risk of becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the worlds economic drivers, subverting the needs of its people to that of the needs of large financially self interested businesses. Very simply, the power of such economic forces in the world can overpower nearly any system set up to regulate them and reign them in. Our own political system is already over run with economically driven actors playing incredibly wide ranging roles, including funding campaigns of all our nations leaders and writing legislation regulating their own industries, and the supreme court is poised to open the floodgates of corporate money into our democracy.

If we are not careful these interests will be the only interests represented in our American democracy.

“Facebook functions as a general organizing tool, much as Outlook does for me. Facebook is her calendar, contact book, and primary messaging platform. Any communication gaps are filled by GoogleTalk, text messaging, and if all else fails, dialing. Twitter adds nothing meaningful to this mix — especially since [their] friends don’t use it.”

As evidence of this the article posits that “data has consistently shown 18-24 year olds lagging in Twitter adoption” (apparently citing a study by the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN)) and then follows up with a number of theories on why this might be the case, including “the Theory of Millennial Narcissism” and “Twitter offers little opportunity for ’self-branding,’” as well as a theory that “Millennials aren’t accustomed to making online friends.”

My first disagreement with this argument starts with the evidence. While it does appear that the study does include findings about the 18-24 year old age group, and supports the 22% adoption rate for Twitter claimed within the article, the PMN study makes no attempt to gauge or compare that finding with adoption rates for other age groups. Twitter, a three year old company whose major growth began just a year ago, is a baby in the social media world and is clearly still within the early adopter phase despite attempts to move beyond it, and therefore an adoption rate of 22% is actually quite high. In fact, as recently as February of this year Pew Internet Research published findings directly opposing the findings of the PMN study stating

“Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34.”

While this does not support any claim that Twitter has become common place among younger audiences, it does adequately counter the argument that somehow the Millenial generation has refused to utilize it.

The second major problem with this argument is the idea that the existence of Facebook really negates any need for Twitter, that “Twitter adds nothing meaningful to this mix” given the extensive feature offerings of Facebook. Quoting an intern with CNN, Phillips adds

“Twitter’s microblogging platform is what many Gen Y’s may describe as “like Facebook, but just the status update.” What is the point of that?”

This is a failed understanding, in my opinion, of the very different roles of Facebook and Twitter play in the information age. Facebook was designed to maintain already existing relationships by connecting the user with friends the user knows from specific social areas such as the workplace, school or geographical local. While Facebook has embraced “the stream” in its latest redesign of it’s homepage, seemingly bringing it into competition with Twitter, it provides more barriers to shared information than Twitter does by focusing on pre-existing social circles. Twitter, on the other hand, is designed to provide a stream of information which is distributed, quite importantly, free of the necessity of previously existing social interaction of any kind. Twitter, due to the ease with which you can develop new connections through “following”, is not, primarily, a social platform but a broadcast platform that allows direct social interaction. So I would agree with Phillips’ argument that Twitter does not serve the role of reinforcing specified and pre-existing social networks well, however, it would seem that is an intention of its design far more than a flaw.

The real question at the center of this, and the many articles written on the subject, is: does Twitter play a necessary, and therefore lasting, role in the future of web-based communication? While Phillips has stated that “[Millenials] have no need for broadcast/outreach” media such as Twitter, it does not seem to be backed up by facts. In another study of basic internet usage by Pew Internet Research it is found that the Millenials are more likely to “get news” online than they are to “participate in a social network” by 74% to 67%, a sign that consumption of news broadcast online is actually higher than that of social network usage. “Watching videos” is also higher in the activities list than “participation in a social network” by 72% to 67%.

Broadcast media, I would argue, plays to a core function of civil society: the role of gathering, aggregating and sharing information. Paul Lazarsfeld, in among the first empirical studies ever conducted on the subject, hypothesized what he called the “Two Step Flow Theory” which outlined information distribution in relation to electoral and political behavior. This theory posits that there are, indeed, two steps to information distribution in a community.

Twitter, I would argue, plays the role of formalizing the “opinion leader” in a community. This role, which is increasingly common in a world of ever mounting information overload, is that of the aggregator that bridges the gap between mass media outlets and individuals. Indeed, given the tools available today, in many ways the opinion leader has far higher abilities to broadcast messages and information than ever before in the history of human communications with publishing tools such as blogs and community outreach tools such as social networks.

Finally, whether or not Twitter is the exact tool that provides it, I would simply argue that Twitter plays a role that is not at all new, and not at all useless, in human civilization. To the contrary it plays among the oldest and most necessary roles in our civilization, aggregating and sharing information and human knowledge, and does it extraordinarily well. Whether Twitter is the main player of this role going forward is impossible to know but as a tool it has added an incredibly important ripple to the history of human communication.

But the stabilization of key financial institutions and government actors offers little comfort to tens of millions of Americans who are watching their assest shrink, their jobs disappear, and their dreams and expectations fall by the wayside
For the poorest Americans, the crisis means an increase in hunger and homelessness; food lines are growing longer in every poor and working class neighborhood, and shantytowns resembling Hoovervilles have started to appear in some particularly hard hit cities.

But for most Americans, the crisis has brought an enormous increase in stress as they try to figure out whether they can still live the way there are accostomed to living, or pursue dreams they had spent much of their lives working for

With jobs disappearing, salaries being frozen, home values plunging, retirement accounts shriking and taxes and tolls soon to go up, millions of people, every month, worry whether they can afford to remain in the house they own or the apartment they live in while still putting food on the table and paying their gas, phone and electric bills. Many, to meet their daily expenses, will have to take in boarders or share their space with another family; others will have to move in with relatives. The privacy they once prized , and viewed as their birthright as member of the middle class, will have to be sacrificed

Those who own stores, or small enterprises, will stay up nights worrying whether declining revenues, and rising debts, will allow them to remain in business for much longer. Unable to get bank loans to tide them through the hard times, they wonder whether they should put all their personal assets up for sale to keep the business going and then face the risk of having nothing at all should the business still go under. Every time you see a store or a gas station with a “for rent” sign, think of the sweat and tears that it took to build and maintain that business and the personal pain and humiliation involved in watching that business fail. As unemployment continues to rise, and consumer demand remains stagnant, there will be a lot more of that humiliation going around

And then think of all the young people who went off to college or graduate school dreaming of the exciting careers awaiting them, only to face job markets offering no opportunities in their field. A poignant example of this is the thousands of people graduating from teachers colleges or participating in Teach for America or the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program, who will not be hired as teachers in New York City because the Department of Education just instituted a hiring freeze. In numerous other fields, the job market is equally dire. Millions of young people with advanced education will have to move into low wage
service industry positions to find employment, in the process pushing working class and immigrant youth into the ranks of the unemployed. If this economic crisis lasts for another five years, we are in danger in producing a “Lost Generation” of young people unable to find jobs in the fields they have been trained for
Some of these displaced youth will respond creatively to their misfortune and become artists, entrepreneurs and political activists, but many more are likely to become bitter and defeated, falling into a lethargy that may make economic recovery even more difficult

We are living in dangerous times. The stress people are under will make many of them snap. Alcoholism, domestic abuse, road rage and gun violence are all increasing as the economic crisis intensifies increasing.

Easing stress on individuals and families has to become a national priority, as well as a personal moral obligation. We have demand that government direct income and resources to those that need it the most, but we also have to help people in need whenever they cross our path, including co workers, family members and neighbors, who have never been in trouble before.

There are some forms of stress than no one can handle alone. It is our job to make sure they don’t have to

Today, public housing is widely viewed as a failed experiment in social policy, a place where poor and troubled families are warehoused in prison like conditions that breed crime, violence and apathy. But Sonia Sotomayor’s experience of growing up in the Bronxdale houses, a low rise public housing development in the Soundview section of the Bronx that opened in the mid 1950’s, recall a different reality. The Bronxdale houses, like many other public housing projects that were built in Bronx in the early and mid 1950’s, were filled with families of World War II veterans looking to escape crowded tenements and rooming houses and their airy apartments, spacious, well kept grounds, seemed like wonderful places to bring up children, Not only were the projects designed with green space, playgrounds and outdoor sitting areas where parents could watch their children, they had community centers on premises and schools conveniently located within walking distance of the buildings.

In those years, there was no stigma attached to living in “the projects.” To the contrary, many residents took tremendous pride in the beauty of their surroundings. Allen Jones who wrote a book about his Bronx experiences called “The Rat That Got Away” recalls friends and relatives of people who moved into the Patterson Houses in Mott Haven walking through the grounds in sheer wonder at the meticulously maintained lawns and litter free walkways, while Connie Questell, in an oral history interview she did with the Bronx African American History Project boasted that the Japanese Gardens in the nearby Melrose Houses was a favorite Sunday strolling site for Bronx families

But for many residents the social atmosphere of the projects was as much an attraction as spacious apartments and well maintained grounds For Black and Latino families especially, who experienced extreme segregation in the private housing market during those years, public housing in the Bronx represented their first experience with living in an integrated neighborhood.. Taur Orange, a college administrator who grew up in the Bronxdale Houses at the same time Sonia Sotomayor did, remembers Bronxdale as a “little United Nations” and recalls Black, Jewish, Italian, Latino and Asian mothers sitting on the project benches watching their children and sharing stories and recipes. Vicki Archibald Good a social work supervisor,who grew up in the Patterson Houses with her brother, basketball legend Nate “Tiny” Archibald recalls families of every nationality playing together, raising children together, and sharing each other’s food and music and while Allen Jones, and Nathan Dukes, another Patterson resident fondly remember days when everyone regardless of race, sang doo wop, danced Latin and would defend their project against all rivals, on or off project grounds.

From 1950, when the Patterson Houses opened, through the early 1960’s, public housing in the Bronx, low income and moderate income, located as far north as the Edenwald Houses( near the Mount Vernon border), as far West as the Sedgwick Houses ( right near the George Washington Bridge) as far east as Castle Hill Houses( near the Whitestone Bridge) and as far South as the Millbrook Houses ( near the Triboro Bridge) represented a great urban success story, a place where tens of thousands of working class families found a safe, health envirnoment to raise children, and where thousands of young people grew up to become successful, productive citiznes, some of whom would make a tremendous mark on their nation as scholars, scientiests, writers, musicians, journalists, athletes and leaders in government and public service. Over time, the atmosphere in the projects would deteriorate. As the first generation of families moved out to buy homes or middle income Co-Ops, they would be replaced with poorer, more troubled families, many of them on public assistance, and a combinatinon of job losses, drug epidemics and white flight would erode the spirt of community and feelings of optimism that these developments had once been known for.. These problems would be intensified by budget cuts that would reduce the quality of project maintenance, leaving lawns poorly cared for, hallways and grounds filled with debris, and elevators in need of repair, and local community centers deprived of needed staff Nevertheless, Bronx housing projects never became the broken, hopeless urban concentration camps that many people imagine them to be. The Bronx Rivers and Bronxdale Houses, along with many other projects in the South and West Bronx, were important sites in the development of Bronx Hip Hop, hosting the early parties and jams of pioneering Bronx DJ’s like Afrika Bambatta, Jazzy Jay, Disco King Mario, and Grandmaster Flash. And even through the present, Bronx projects house thousands of senior citizens who have lived in them for fifty plus years, and who refuse to move because their neighbors look out for and take care of them But the most important thing to remember, at a time when develoment of affordable large scale multiple dwellings has been neglected for more than a generation (,while huge high rises for the rich dot the urban landscape all over Manhattan and North Brooklyn) is that public housing was a tremendous success when it was rich in social services, provided excellent daily maintenance and was careful in its tenant selection.

Sonia Sotomayor’s inspiring life story is one of many nurtured in the heyday of public housing in New York. There is no reason we can’t provide this kind of opportunity for a new generation of children growing up in families of modest means.

I’m not talking about any one medium be it newspapers, magazines, television or websites, I am talking about a fundamental change in demand for every major institution set up to distribute information. We have crossed a threshold in the progression of human communication unlike anything seen in our history outside of the invention of the printing press, and even that remarkable event is one millionth of the significance.

Let me explain it like this. In 1994 perhaps you saw the movie The Puppet Masters, an alien invasion movie about small creatures that latch on to humans and use their brains and body to wreak havok. The most interesting part about this, two stars on a good day, film was the idea that the creatures were designed to periodically share all information through a central hub creating a form of super intelligence based on shared knowledge. Like a giant redwood forest the creatures connected themselves together creating enormous power out of unity and shared information. It is this concept that makes social applications of internet technology so incredibly important, and basically all other forms of media dsitribution obsolete, the concept of a world of knowledge made accessible in a single click.

This is true for one single reason: simplicity. Nearly every aspect of attaining and distributing knowledge has become enormously simple in the age of social networking. The enormous production power demanded for message distribution by way of television, print and radio have been dramatically cut down by new techology, democratizing the very act of publishing and distributing information to the masses. For $200.00 today you can by an HD video camera complete with ready to install editing software (see Flip Camera Mino HD) and post that video to a community of hundreds of millions for free, you can write and distribute articles with the very same blogging software (for free) that many major media outlets use for their own online journals (see Wordpress), bottom line is an individual with limited resources can create an incredible wealth of content without the enormous resources it took to do this in the past.

What is the downside? The easiest to point out is quality, and indeed this change does change the average quality of mediated information dramatically. The average quality of information, given such a wide spread distribution of content creation, is easily the largest drawback of this new media paradigm. Where you used to have stories fact checked tirelessly and requirements for confirming facts before they are printed today those restrictions and quality controls have all but disappeared, creating a wealth of intentional and unintentional misinformation, and leading many to dismiss blogs and new media as forms of journalism. This criticism, however legitimate in a technical sense, is not a fair representation of how facts are actually consumed. Theories stating the “magic” impact of mediated messages have been debunked since the beginning of empirical study largely because we, as intelligent beings, do not automatically assume the truth of incoming information. Indeed the very need to erect a solid “bullshit” filter over the long term could very well improve the state of human affairs, an evolution of information processing on a human level creating an intellectual immune system.

A second argument against the degradation of quality point is one we can trace back to competitive theory: with such enormous amounts of information being created and distributed quality will increasingly drive successful distribution. Like an enormous peer-review journal social networking and the sharing networks that are being developed are naturally developing defenses against false, misleading and incorrect information. There is simply very little market for unsubstantiated facts and those that dabble in it are forced to do so in a transparent way as competing facts are often presented with breathtaking speed. People’s very reputations, and follower counts, are tied to distributing accurate and helpful information and a violation of that trust is tantamount to betrayal.

Therefore we have begun to see a world that is changed in incredible ways, and it is not done yet. Only three years ago social networking was barely a thought on the modern media landscape, only ten years ago America Online was a powerhouse, and only forty years ago the computer was run on punch cards. The new landscape will require an ongoing flexibility of us all and the pace of change will be faster than we, as humans, can realistically comprehend however adaptation is the basis of evolution and this is an adaptation we can be excited to watch.

The ad is as tasteless as it is offensive. I was at Fordham University in New York on the morning of 9/11 and had two family members nearly die on that day, with countless friends and fellow students losing parents, siblings and friends. The traumatizing fear that gripped this country following that horrific day stay with me to this day as it does with thousands of other New Yorkers and patriotic Americans.

The ad is an animated ad showing a plane crashing into the world trade center silhouette and the building crumbling to the ground.

To see this ad blatantly politicizing the events of that tragic day for what can only be called sick and disturbing political opportunism is disgusting and should make the editors of the National Review ashamed of themselves and bring their judgement into serious question.

I realize that in today’s world there are questions of grave importance and indeed sometimes those points need to be made with clear messages, but this is remarkably inappropriate for the National Review and the organization running the ads, entitled Keep Gitmo Open. Please write to the National Review and demand that these ads be taken down and an apology be issued:

letters@nationalreview.com

(212) 679-7330

I joined the now ever-present Twitter a few months ago as an experiment. I had no idea what it was, why it was, or how it was and as a matter of fact the only thing I did know is that it was becoming somewhat obnoxiously wide spread. So, in search of my own ability to stay relevant I signed up (ok you can follow thinkingpress here) and ever so slowly I started to get it.

For those of you who might have been pulling an ostrich the last few months Twitter is a single action website for sharing things with other people. No, it doesn’t do anything else, and even on that task it limits you to 140 characters. So you may be asking yourself what on earth is the point of a sharing service that doesn’t let you share anything outside of a short sentence, WTF is the point is what I asked and I love my point of view enough to have a blog.

I had already missed the point, of course. Twitter is the inevitable current end point of the simplification of online communication to a remarkably simple and surprisingly effective task: sharing information. Be it an article, a thought, a picture, a video or an exclaimation people tend to want to share these days. This is important because the heart of any community is in what they share and while it used to be that, for the most part, that meant sharing a socio-economic standing and a geographical location today it means sharing information, sharing a point of view, sharing knowledge.

Sure, there are still so called “brick and mortar” communities and there always will be, but a larger more complex human community is being built every day at a rate that I don’t think we realize. I share ideas, information, pictures and conversation with people I will likely never meet or never need to meet however I have become inexplicably more connected to the world around me. Yesterday for instance, on a monitoring service for twitter called Twitscoop, I found out within 3 minutes of it occuring that there had been an earthquake in Los Angeles. Not a single news outlet covered the (low magnitude) quake, however I was clearly informed of it in enough time to call my brother in said city within 6 minutes of it happening.

Human networks are only just beginning to fruitfully use the internet as a medium, and even further behind on understanding it, but we are moving toward a world that creates clear and relevant connections between people of all races, faiths and geographical locales. We are more connected than we have ever been and the impact on our world has only barely begun to rise over our collective horizon. At my age my father remembers the first computer, an enormous punch card machine with maybe a few kilobytes of memory, where do you think we’ll be in 50 years at this rate?

It has been about five months since I lost a bit of interest in maintaining this publication, and there were a few reasons for that. The largest reason was one of finding purpose. Inspired by my distinct need to do anything at all to help the election of Barack Obama to the office of President of the United States I started writing to share my thoughts on the extreme import of the 2008 election. Once that, relatively sizable, to do was marked off I felt more than a little vindicated and took some time off not sure if this would remain a focus of my life at all.

Having watched the ongoing debate on mainstream media outlets in the last few months I am again convinced that the blogosphere will become the voice of reason of our very democracy, as it has proven to be on multiple occasions in the last few years, and that I had a drive to insert my admittedly imperfect voice to that most esteemed of peanut galleries.

So here I am, back and better than ever, with hopes and dreams that the Thinking Press will continue finding a readership that happens to care in you. Keep in touch and let me know how it grows.

– This is an April Fools Article…Got you! –

Senator John McCain had no comment when asked Wednesday morning about rumors that Sarah Palin, the former Vice Presidential candidate and 2012 GOP Presidential hopeful, is pregnant and the child may be his. Rumors began after a highly secretive doctors visit by the Alaska state Governor, broken by liberal bloggers Monday.

An unnamed source close to the Governor has said that after a number of early morning sicknesses Palin’s staff became concerned, however it is only recently that allegations about an affair between Palin and her former running mate have come to light. Despite strict secrecy rules set for the staff of both candidates on the nature of their relationship a few sporadic reports of the two candidates occasionally sharing a room and often requiring “private meetings” to which not a single staff member of either McCain’s staff or Palin’s staff were allowed to attend at their campaign stop hotels.

“It became a regular occurrence on the trail and no one ever thought twice about it. John McCain is so incredibly old we always thought that it was harmless, but clearly that has been called into question here.” Former campaign manager Rick Davis responded when asked by Alaska newspaper, The Juneau Empire.

More on this coming today including an exclusive interview with a former Clinton aide, now a campaign affair expert.