Central Perk: 23 apr. 2011

sâmbătă, 23 aprilie 2011

Weekly Address: Stopping Oil Market Fraud, Beginning a Clean Energy Future

Your Daily Snapshot for
Saturday, April 23, 2011

Weekly Address: Stopping Oil Market Fraud, Beginning a Clean Energy Future

The President lays out his plans to address rising gas prices over the short and the long term, from a new task force to root out fraud and manipulation in the oil markets to investments in a clean energy economy.

Watch the video.

Weekly Wrap Up

Town Hall x Three: This week, President Obama traveled the country to hold a series of town hall meetings. In Virginia, he stopped by Northern Virginia Community College to talk about the importance of education in a 21st century economy. Then it was on to California, and Facebook headquarters, where he answered questions about fiscal responsibility. On the way back to Washington, the President stopped in Reno, Nevada, to meet with workers who are manufacturing tomorrow's clean energy technologies today.

Celebrating Earth Day: To celebrate Earth Day, Nancy Sutley and Heather Zichal, two of the President's top energy and environment advisers, hosted a live chat on the South Lawn of the White House. Energy.gov launched a special Earth Day page, and the EPA shared stories and video of activities around the country.

Your West Wing Week: "My Old Number, Twenty Three"

A New App for Vets: Teams at VA’s National Center for PTSD and DoD’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology have collaborated to create a mobile app to educate about PTSD, information about professional care, a self-assessment for PTSD, opportunities to find support, and tools that can help with managing the stresses of daily life with PTSD.

Advise the Advisor with Secretary Chu: Secretary Chu addresses your questions from Advise the Adivsor specifically on reducing the amount of oil we import by a third in a little over a decade, along with the need to both increase our domestic energy production and reduce energy waste.

Your Turn: As part of the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge, public high schools around the country submitted an application earlier this year that describe how their school is preparing students for college and a career. We’ve narrowed down the schools to six finalists and now it’s your turn to weigh in.

Will.i.am is Joining Forces: Watch the video and join Mrs. Obama, Dr. Biden and Will.i.am to recognize, honor, and support our military families. Visit JoiningForces.gov and learn how you can involved.

Get Up and Go!: On Monday, April 25th, the South Lawn of the White House will play host to the 133rd White House Easter Egg Roll. With this year's theme being "Get Up and Go!," in collaboration with the First Lady's Let's Move! initiative, guests will have the chance to enjoy entertainment and activities that go far beyond the traditional Easter egg hunt and egg roll. Be sure to tune in live on WhiteHouse.gov.

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Seth's Blog : The realization is now

The realization is now

New polling out this week shows that Americans are frustrated with the world and pessimistic about the future. They're losing patience with the economy, with their prospects, with their leaders (of both parties).

What's actually happening is this: we're realizing that the industrial revolution is fading. The 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is ending.

It's one thing to read about the changes the internet brought, it's another to experience them. People who thought they had a valuable skill or degree have discovered that being an anonymous middleman doesn't guarantee job security. Individuals who were trained to comply and follow instructions have discovered that the deal is over... and it isn't their fault, because they've always done what they were told.

This isn't fair of course. It's not fair to train for years, to pay your dues, to invest in a house or a career and then suddenly see it fade.

For a while, politicians and organizations promised that things would get back to normal. Those promises aren't enough, though, and it's clear to many that this might be the new normal. In fact, it is the new normal.

I regularly hear from people who say, "enough with this conceptual stuff, tell me how to get my factory moving, my day job replaced, my consistent paycheck restored..." There's an idea that somehow, if we just do things with more effort or skill, we can go back to the Brady Bunch and mass markets and mediocre products that pay off for years. It's not an idea, though, it's a myth.

Some people insist that if we focus on "business fundamentals" and get "back to basics," all will return. Not so. The promise that you can get paid really well to do precisely what your boss instructs you to do is now a dream, no longer a reality.

It takes a long time for a generation to come around to significant revolutionary change. The newspaper business, the steel business, law firms, the car business, the record business, even computers... one by one, our industries are being turned upside down, and so quickly that it requires us to change faster than we'd like.

It's unpleasant, it's not fair, but it's all we've got. The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we've got. Whining isn't a scalable solution.

Tomorrow: part II—the opportunity