Young Gets It Done: Sal Khan, 33

Never thought that tutoring/education from a Harvard MBA could be free? Think again. Sal Khan and his non-profit, Khan Academy, does just that. Through on-line lectures and tutorials on YouTube, Khan teaches 200,000 students math, science and an array of other subjects, all at no cost:

Khan Academy, with Khan as the only teacher, appears on YouTube and elsewhere and is by any measure the most popular educational site on the web. Khan’s playlist of 1,630 tutorials (at last count) are now seen an average of 70,000 times a day — nearly double the student body at Harvard and Stanford combined. Since he began his tutorials in late 2006, Khan Academy has received 18 million page views worldwide, including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S., followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. In any given month, Khan says, he’s reached about 200,000 students. “There’s no reason it shouldn’t be 20 million.”

And, his eager students aren’t Khan’s only supporters. A little guy named Bill Gates is also a big fan! Gates found out about Khan Academy through YouTube (naturally) and began watching the videos with his son. In Gates’ own words: “This guy is amazing. It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.”

At just 33 years old, Khan, a former hedge fund manager, is quite accomplished. Born in New Orleans to immigrant parents from India, Sal went on to become a star student. In addition to an MBA from Harvard, he holds three degrees from MIT. A BS in Math and both a BS and Masters in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Making education affordable and accessible should be one of our main priorities in America. No one should miss out on an education because they can’t afford it. Sal Khan is doing his part to make this dream a reality. We have no doubt he is going to make a huge difference in many people’s lives.

Also, don’t forget to save the date for our 2nd Annual Young Gets It Done Party & Fundraiser! Details here.

CNN Money – Bill Gates’ Favorite Teacher

Numbers Don’t Lie: Honeymoon Definitely Over Between Wall Street and Obama

We already knew this. It’s no secret. Obama and Wall Street have had a very public break-up. Of Tiger/Elin Woods proportions. In fact, anyone who has friends who work in finance–like me–have heard the rants firsthand. Wall Street to Obama is the equivalent to a scorned woman looking to take her ex-husband for all he’s worth. They feel burned by the President and it’s gotten pretty ugly. Losing your biggest (and wealthiest) supporters can only mean one thing: they go to the other party. The numbers are in and there has been heavy casualties:

Less than two years ago, Democrats received 70 percent of the donations from Wall Street; since June, when the financial regulation bill was nearing passage, Republicans were receiving 68 percent of the donations, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.

With this huge loss of support, Republicans have no doubt gained momentum. And that unsettling, all-too-familiar-feeling-of-uncertainty is looming again. Which means one thing — we have A LOT of work to do!

There’s more than one way to have an impact on elections this season — and donating tens of thousands of dollars is only one way to do it. Check out our list of 2010 Campaigns for more info and get plugged in.

NY Times – Why Wall Street Is Deserting Obama

The Most Powerful Men You’ve Never Heard Of

If you haven’t read Jane Mayer’s obnoxiously long, but insanely informative piece in the New Yorker this week, you should.  Mayer exposes the vast connections between Koch Industries and a plethora of rabid anti-government organizations, including Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for a Sound Economy, among many others.  What is particularly disturbing is the way the Koch family stealthily funnels money into groups that reinforce policies which, coincidentally, benefit the industries from which Koch derives its wealth: oil and chemicals.  Money from the Koch family also helped launch conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center.  As the article explains:

An environmental lawyer who has clashed with the Mercatus Center called it “a means of laundering economic aims.” The lawyer explained the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”

Koch has been the target of several EPA investigations, which could explain why the company has fought so hard to limit the power of the federal government to regulate polluters.  In 1997 the EPA tried to regulate emissions from oil refineries.  According to Mayer’s piece, Susan Dudley, an economist with the Mercatus Center, argued that the EPA had not taken into account that smog-free skies would result in more cases of skin cancer.  Yes, you read that correctly.

The article is far too long and complex to summarize in a few short paragraphs.  Suffice to say it’s worth the read.  Once you’re done reading, you may want to take a look at the list of products Koch Industries manufactures.  If you’re like me, once you’ve read the article you won’t want to give these guys one more dime of your money.

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins
Georgia Pacific paper products and envelopes

1930 to 2010: What’s Changed?

We should be very alarmed when hatred gets to such a point that a man walking through a crowd may be harassed for simply looking like he belongs to certain ethnic or religious group. We don’t need to wait for a government which condones actions like that to take power before we become alarmed at the dark undercurrents which are present in our own community.

It’s not 1930s Germany and we will never let it be. But American resilience to ethnic hatred relies on the immediate and unconditional repudiation of this sort of behavior. People rallying around hate and proposing the limitation of one group’s constitutional and civil rights for the appeasement of “the majority” must always swiftly be revealed as the minority.

The Youtube description describes the scene pretty well:

A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him. I told him that I hoped it did not ruin his day.

The 7th NYC Wedding March

Happy Birthday, 19th Amendment!

From Planned Parenthood NYC:

“Happy Birthday, 19th Amendment! Ninety years ago today, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was ratified. We’ve come a long way since – right?”

I’m still waiting for some industrious MYD member to start up our Women’s Issues Committee, cuz there’s plenty still left to do. (Though some might disagree…)

This Looks Scary

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Explanation of the generic ballot and relationship to predicting midterms:

Throughout the election season, the Pew Research Center and other major polling organizations report a measure that political insiders sometimes call “the generic ballot.” This measure is the percentage of voters in national surveys who say they intend to vote for either the Republican or the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in their district.*

*(If the elections for U.S. Congress were being held today, would you vote for the Republican Party’s candidate or the Democratic Party’s candidate for Congress in your district?)

There is no national election for Congress, of course; rather, 435 individual races determine the composition of the House. So while it might seem that the generic ballot is too broad a measure to forecast the outcome, it has proven to be an accurate predictor of the partisan distribution of the national vote.

The final forecast of the generic House vote and the actual vote totals have paralleled each other very closely for nearly a half-century in U.S. elections. The average prediction error in off-year elections since 1954 has been 1.1%. The lines plotting the actual vote against the final poll-based forecast vote by Gallup and the Pew Research Center track almost perfectly over time.

TPM Poll Tracker – US Congressional Generic Ballot

Pew Research Center

MYD Unveils White Roof Project

On Wednesday, August 11th, the Environmental Committee of the Manhattan Young Democrats held New York City’s environmental event of the year when it unveiled its brand new website www.whiteroofproject.com at 10 Degrees Wine Bar in the East Village. A cast of environmental proponents served as speakers, and more than 50 supporters were on hand to celebrate the event.

The new website encourages building owners in New York to paint their roofs with highly reflective white paint as a way to reduce energy costs and keep the city cooler in the summer. It does this by allowing building owners who would like to have their roofs painted for free identify themselves on the site, and then connects them to painting volunteers and financial donors. The site also uses a “google map-like” computer program to track the progress of MYD in its longterm effort to white coat the roof of every city building.

“I think we can all agree that New York City has been hot this summer,” declared MYD Environmental Committee Chairman Stephen Spear. “In fact its been hotter here than in the communities that surround the city because of the millions of square feet of sun-light attracting black tar surface, much of which is on roof tops.”

The event was cosponsored by the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club, which has its own cool roofs initiative, and supported by NYC Cool Roofs Program Outreach Coordinator Cammi Climaco, who spoke at the event.

White Roof Project founder and website creator Juan Carlos displayed modesty as he unveiled the new site explaining that the ambitious project was ” a little idea I came up with on Earth Day this year.” The project already has its first client. The Bowery Mission Center, a homeless shelter and medical clinic in Lower Manhattan is scheduled to have five of its roofs coated by MYD in September. The organization raked in an impressive $2200 in public contributions toward that project on the night of the event and Bowery Mission Operations Director Matt Krivich was on hand to express his thanks.

Anyone interested in joining the fun as a painting volunteer for the White Roof Project should contact MYD Community Service Director Kim Moscaritolo at service@gomyd.com.

Nice Job Green Team!

NYS to Save Thousands of Jobs With The Passing of $26 Billion in Aid

After months of negotiating among lawmakers, Education Departments nation-wide will be receiving relief in the form of $10 billion in school funds recently made possible with the passage of a $26 billion dollar aid package during a special session of the House called yesterday by Speaker Pelosi. The objective is a combined effort to prevent 300,000 teacher and public sector layoffs with $16 billion reserved to help state governments bridge massive Healthcare/Medicaid expenses weighing heavily on their budgets. In order to keep the bill from increasing the deficit, offsets were made by closing existing corporate tax loopholes and agreeing to cuts in food stamp programs slated to go into effect 4 years from now.

This aid package is a relief for school districts that have been hit hard by decreasing tax revenues due to a poor economy. Sacrifices have been the norm among administrators forced to cut bus routes, reduce educational programming and even shorten their school years. The saving of an estimated 160,000 teachers nation-wide is a small comfort to places like our home state New York, which is expected to receive $622 million or 8,200 jobs.

(To see how many teacher jobs will be saved state by state click here)

Rep. David R. Obey, the legislation’s champion in Congress, made headlines when he proposed covering the bill’s cost by diverting money from President Obama’s education reform initiatives, best described the intentions of this spending bill:

“We do the country no favors if we allow the weakness of the economy to strip qualified teachers from our schools, which in turn would result in exploding class sizes and a decline in educational opportunities for children,”

Despite the many positives, Ed Weekly cites that the caveats attached to making this happen came at the expense of other promising programs including improved access to educational opportunities, combating illiteracy among adults and funding more teacher training. This bill also became the catalyst for a showdown between the White House and legislators after President Obama threatened to veto any bill that would mean cuts to federal grant programs like Race To The Top or the Investment in Innovation Fund.

Regardless of those disagreements, public support from groups like the National Governors Association insure that states will overwhelmingly welcome this support during a period of fiscal crisis — and only weeks away from the beginning of a fall semester in which funding questions will almost certainly continue to creep up.

More Regulations Increase Personal Freedom; More Taxes Increase Personal Wealth

To most, the title of this post is, at best, confusing, at worst, completely counter-intuitive. How can regulations increase personal freedom? How can higher taxes increase personal wealth?

This predictable response speaks to how weak the progressive message has been on the central issues of our time: raising taxes on the rich and raising regulations on the powerful. There exists no narrative, no cogent talking points, no easily accessible argument that we can employ to defend what we believe in: that taxes should be higher on the wealthy, and that regulations should be more comprehensive to protect the majority of Americans.

But this doesn’t have to be the case. We can change the debate, and we do this by changing the yardsticks by which we measure the issues that we are debating.

Regulations are not inherently bad. In fact, if employed in a smart, fair way, they are overwhelmingly good for freedom. Good regulations increase freedom, not decrease it. But until we start talking about regulations in this way, they will continue to be seen by the majority of this country as the proverbial noose that Big Government uses to enslave America. Take, for example, one of the best regulations ever thought of: the regulations against murder. Such regulations increase all of our personal freedom, not decrease our freedom. Although these regulations decrease our narrow freedom to murder, by doing so, they increase our aggregate freedom to go out in the world and live our lives.

Let’s take another, less obvious example: regulations that would enforce net neutrality. As most of us have probably read, Google and Verizon are in the final stages of a deal that could shatter any hopes of net neutrality in our time. For those of us who don’t know, net neutrality is the contentious debate surrounding whether or not giant corporations should be allowed to slow down the internet speed of certain websites (those that don’t pay them) while speeding up others (those that do). Those of us in favor of net neutrality believe this would be the end of the internet as we know it, crushing small websites with no money while strengthening corporate-backed websites that are willing to pay.

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