Online discussion sponsored by ALA’s Washington Office: “Political Connections: The Long Road Ahead”
A colleague of mine just alerted me to a press release issued by the American Library Association. Here's the excerpt that I thought would be of special interest to FGI readers:
The next installment in the series of ALA President Jim Rettig's ALA Connections Salons will be an online discussion with Emily Sheketoff, associate executive director of ALA's Washington Office, and Vic Klatt, ALA's political consultant and former staff director of the House Education and Labor Committee. The discussion entitled "Political Connections: The Long Road Ahead" will take place from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 21, 2008. Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL) Coordinator Tom Peters will begin the hour with an interview with Sheketoff and Klatt. Both professionals will talk about President-Elect Obama's Administration, the new Congress and what these changes in Washington portend for libraries during a period-a year, a term and beyond-marked by extraordinary challenges.As the time of this posting, I cannot locate the press release on ALA's website, but I'll edit this entry as soon as I have a reliable link. It appears you can participate in this salon by going to OPAL's master schedule. [Edited to add: The press release can be found here.] Continue reading
In honor of Veterans’ Day
Because today is Veterans' Day, I thought it would be interesting to investigate some recent government publications from the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Here are a few things I learned by searching for "veterans" in the Catalog of Government Publications:
- Merchant Mariners who served during World War II were not granted full veterans' status until January 17, 1988. Legislation has been proposed to offer additional compensation to this group of veterans. (See here for the Congressional hearing where I first learned of this. For more information, you can also see the House bill, the related Senate bill, and an additional House bill that specifically addresses Merchant Mariners that were awarded the Purple Heart.)
- Roughly 30% of people who have served in the military and have signed up to receive educational benefits as accorded by the GI Bill never take advantage of these benefits. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs is working to expand these educational benefits to include a wider variety of programs - including "short-term, high-cost" educational programs. I gather that, in the recent past, these short-term, high-cost programs have focused on high tech. One of the points brought up in a hearing held last May is that there should be support for educational programs in other high-demand fields - for example, health care .
Who is running Change.gov?
As everyone probably knows by now, Change.gov the website of "The Office of the President-Elect" is having problems. It is evidently being overwhelmed by traffic. This morning it took me several tries before a page would load and the site delivered error messages instead. The site also had a page of Agendas, which it has since removed and replaced with a singe page http://change.gov/agenda/ without any details. Although the site is a dot-gov site, it says, "Content copyright © 2008 by Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization. All rights reserved." So, who is running the site? Why the lousy service? Why the scrubbing of agendas? Why the copyright? Netcraft reports that the I.P. for Change.gov (69.25.74.162) is owned by Blue State Digital which also hosts the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Continue reading
Plum Book to be available Wednesday
The Government Printing Office has announced that its eagerly awaited "Plum Book," which lists more than 8,000 federal positions that can be filled by appointment as a new administration takes office, will be available Wednesday from the GPO's bookstore for $38. The press run will be 2,717 copies. But only 1,000 hard copies are for sale- the rest are given away to members of congress and other officials. (The Plum Book: Washington's Hottest Read.) http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=052-070-07534-1 The text also will be posted on gpoaccess.gov and available there at no charge. Continue reading
What Don’t We Know About The Bailout?
OpenTheGovernment.org has set up a Bailout Transparency page: What Don't We Know About The Bailout?. OpenTheGovernment is using this page as a clearinghouse for information on the bailout as information becomes available. Currently, most of what we know is coming from news reports rather than from the government directly. Continue reading