6:54 Fewer abortions and teen pregnancies are falling. Personal responsibility = fufillment.
"Dems you shoul dbe proud of this record"
6:55 Activist courts wanna redefine marriage. Treatable diseases should be treated to. Pessimists are wrong.
6:56 I picked two, count 'em two, Supreme Court justices. YES!!!!
6:56 This was a big news day. Sandra Day O'Connor retired.
The cameraman said "where is she? Why isn't she sitting with her old colleagues. I cant find her."
6:57 Human-Animal hybrids better not be sold on ebay. That would be unacceptable.
6:59 My wife is working on the helping america's youth initiative. She's not going to screw this up like someone did with health care. Wink!
7:00 We're rebuiliding stonger levees in NOLA. We really need to fix things there. The schools are bad too, and residents haven't had good opportunities.
7:01 Blacks disproportionatley have AIDS. This needs to be fixed! They deserve better access to medicine.
7:02 Metaphor about arcs and shores. Now let me pause and compare myself to Lincoln and MLK.
Obama not pleased.
God Bless America.

6:33 Reauthorize the PATRIOT ACT to prevent crime in Africa.
Ben Nelson and Republicans applaud.
6:34 Let me tell you why I like eavesdropping. Other people did it first. It maybe, just maybe, could have prevented 9/11
[ABC discovered picture in Picture. Hillary doesn't like the Prez]
6:36 OK let me backtrack. Good Presidents you read about in history books didn't believed in isloationism. And neither do i.
6:37 The economy too. 4.6 Million new jobs, that's more than Japan and EU combined.
6:38 China gives us uncertainty.
Unexpected applause.
6:39 We dont retreat. In nation building or economic growth. Americans need more of ther money. Tax cuts were good and led to uninterrupted economic growth. Please don't let my tax bill to phase out. Responsibility=Permanant cuts.
Democrats sit for this one.
6:41 We've reduced the growth of not security discretionary spending. I will cut more programs to save $14B. Let's cut the def in half in 2009.
McCain takes a clap.
6:42 Line item veto please! I'd really appreciate.
Joke about Bill Clinton. Hillary not amused.
6:43 What will congress do if we dont cut taxes.
6:43 Dems take a bow. We kept you from saving Social Security.
6:44 I want a commission to help save SS from baby boomers. Greedy boomers!
6:45 We want people to buy American.
6:45 Let's talk about Immigration. I want orderly and secure borders. More enforcement and protection. And humane guest worker policy.
6:46 Affordable healthe care is smart too. Gov't is meeting responsibility of providing for the poor already. We will use technology to save money.
6:47 Lawsuits are driving docs out of business. Many women don't have OBGYNs
6:48 America is addicted to oil from unstable regions. Threshold of incredible advances. 22% increase in clean energy research. We want coal plants and solar energy
AND wait for it
Nuclear Energy.
6:49 I like the Prius and Enthanol from wood. lets do this in six years. Deal?
6:50 By 2025 we can get away from Mideast oil.
[Is that optimistic or pessimistic? I have no idea.]
6:50 Here's a new one fro those education wonks "american competitiveness initiative." Math + science + reaearch + development + nanotechnology = impoved quality of life. By the way, Kids: You have to take AP classes and Ace math tests. It's really important.

6:23 The military will make military decisions. Not the politicians, in Warshinton.
6:24 Don't crititicze me! Only Republicans clap.
6:24 Leaving Iraq will mean handing Iraq to Zarqawi and Bin Laden.
6:25 Soldiers know the costs of urban warfare. I'm going to read a letter written by a fallen Staff Sargent addressed to his family.
6:27 Military families sacrifice too.
[I wish he would talk about policy already.]
6:29 Egypt voted! Palestine did to. THEY MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAEL AND DISARM, WORK FOR LASTING PEACE.
6:30 The Mideast will democrtitize. I assert this as true.
Iranian government better not get nukes. We respect you an your conutry and we want tot be best friends. But you gotta be free first.
6:32 I know about Africa too. Disease is really bad there. Especially AIDS and Malaria.

Hello Readers,
I will be liveblogging the State of the Union. I'm sitting in the IGS Library at UC Berkeley surrounded by Political Science Professors and a number of students. I'm watching ABC where George Stephanopolus is giving instant political commentary. I'll try to leave partisanism at the door. Expect some sarcasm!

6:05: Handshakes, handshakes, handshakes.
6:09 Bill Livinggood announces the prez, he kisses a lot of cheeks and makes it to the podium.
6:11 Prez hands the speech to the the Speaker and the VP. Thats it He's met his constitutional obligation. That was easy.
Prex introduced to US. Congress applauds. I hope this voice over commentary goes away
6:12 W starts talking. Honors the passing of Corretta Scott King. Smart opening!
6:13 He is humbled. That's the second time tonight. Our differences should be respected. Prez will play game
6:14 IT'S OFFICIAL STATE OF UNION IS STRONG.
6:15 The US will continue to lead by our leadership.
Fighting terrorism is not "idealism"
6:16 Democracies respect the rights of their neighbors. Freedom = respect
McCain is not a smiler!
6:16 Democracy is spreading, look at Afganistan and Iraq
He didn't mention Palesstine but mentioned Iran. Hmmmm.
6:17 Radical islam is an ideology of terror and death. They are totalitarian, and completely unlike us. They use fear. And blow up things.
Applause for "loving freedom"
6:19 Isolationism is not going to happen. There is no honor in retreat. Believing in our own ideals means that we must be involved in combatting terror worldwide. (THESIS)
6:19 He just invoked the holocaust. Well...liberating camps as a parallel to fighting terror.

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College students increasingly use student loans to finance their education. The average college student will leave school with between $15,000 and $20,000 in student loan debt. Those students who drop out will not reap the benefits of attaining a college degree while being saddled with debt. Low-income students, who already are more likely to drop out due to other risk factors, such as academic preparation and working part-time, are especially at risk.

Two-thirds of students who enroll at a four-year institution with the intention of attaining at least a bachelor’s degree borrowed to finance their education. A similar proportion (68%) of students at private vocational school borrow. Perhaps most troubling is that almost one third (32%) of those borrowers at private institutions dropped out.

Ethanol, the characteristic solvent for social distance and shellac, is also a motor fuel with attractive characteristics: it's made of sunshine and exactly the CO2 we like to take out of the atmosphere, it increases gasoline octane as an additive, it's environmentally quite benign in spills and such, and it's not imported from places with fractious and prickly governments. However, it doesn't just dribble out of corn plants: to get ethanol requires growing plants (fertilizer, tractor fuel...), hauling corn to a distillery, smooshing it up with yeast and keeping it warm (more fuel), distilling the alcohol out of the mush...

If you think that it's getting outrageously expensive to get an education, you wouldn't be wrong. Some quick facts from Strapped, a new book from Demos, a group focused on income inequality.

Did you know?

Every year, 410,000 college-qualified students from households with income less than $50,000 enroll in community college instead of going to a four-year college. Another 168,000 college-qualified students do not enroll in college at all.

Attempts to operate intelligence gathering and sharing systems in obscurity put the entire homeland security mission at risk. Since 9/11, several scandals have suggested that public backlash can scotch programs. The solution is not to tighten the secrecy around these programs: almost nothing the government does is kept secret for long. Rather, federal and state officials must bring legislators, civil liberties groups, and the public into a wide-ranging political discourse on the appropriate level of domestic surveillance in a time of terrorism. Robust public debate, legislative oversight, and checks on agents will give our domestic intelligence efforts—which most observers consider necessary—a certain level of trust and resiliency to weather the snafus inevitable with new or newly-tasked bureaucracies.

Here's a (now-extinct) SAT analogy for you...

President Bush's open and public support of Fatah in the recent Palestinian elections is to Foreign Policy as _______________ is to Business.

The House is scheduled to vote Feb. 1 on a package that includes student aid cuts. If passed, the policy also would raise interest rates for parent loans from 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent and fix student loans at an interest rate of 6.8 percent.

There are many natural resources endowed to us at birth… air, water, fossil fuels, and spectrum.

Spectrum?

What’s that you say? It’s the airwaves. It’s the natural resource that brings light to our eyes and radio to our cars. It’s the medium used to take x-rays, run your cell phone, and bring the Internet to your wireless laptop.

It’s a unique natural resource in the sense that it cannot be depleted. But certain technical limitations (i.e. interference) means it must be used with some level of oversight, so as to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Advances in technology may overcome this limitation, but we’re not quite there yet. Hence its regulation by the FCC.

All spectrum isn’t created equal. Some spectrum is good for one purpose, but not for another. You can cook a frozen burrito using microwaves or gamma rays, but I wouldn’t recommend the latter.

Similarly, certain spectral regions are better suited for transporting digital information. The spectrum used by over-the-air (broadcast) television stations is perhaps the most valuable, as the physical characteristics of this region of spectrum make it much more practical to transmit signals through buildings, hills, trees, and other objects that might block a higher frequency signal.

Some estimates put the value of the TV-band spectrum at nearly one trillion dollars. But how much does the FCC charge TV station owners for use of this resource?

Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, zero. And it doesn’t end there. The law also mandates that privately owned cable systems carry the signals of all local broadcast stations, vastly increasing their audience.

All the Congress mandates in return, is that the broadcasters act in the “public interest”. Ah, but the students of free speech out there will recognize the difficulty in actually ensuring this happens.

So let me ask you, should home shopping count as public interest programming? …

The cover of Time Magazine this week shows that the editors still have a sense of humor. Smiling, arms akimbo in a Ford manufacturing plant stands William C. Ford Jr. next to the words “Would You Buy a New Car from This Man.” The funny thing is, just Monday Ford announced it would shut down 14 plants and layoff 30,000 workers as part of its massive revitalization plan begun in 2002. Sure new cars will still be manufactured, but Ford was once a company that raised wages so that employees could afford the cars they assembled. I can think of several thousand people who won’t be interested in buying a Ford this year.

The Iraqi election results were released yesterday, more than a month after the election itself, and with early objections from Sunni groups unaddressed (at least publicly). While the Shia bloc did not obtain an outright majority, and will therefore have to govern in a coalition government or poach Assemblymembers from other parties, the Prime Minister will almost surely be a religiously leaning Shiite. Sunni slates won 55 seats; Kurdish parties 58. Two semi-surprises: former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular coalition won only 25 seats. Allawi, you will remember, was the most clearly American-backed candidate.

The second semi-surprise is that Ahmed Chalabi, whom some administration figures proposed as the "strongman" Iraq needed after the US invasion, and his list received exactly ZERO seats in the new Iraqi assembly.

The New York Times has one of their neat interactive graphics here.

Why confusing?

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

But unless Congress and the FCC act to protect it, the Internet as we know it will cease to exist.

Regional monopoly incumbents such as Verizon and BellSouth are pushing to create a new kind of Internet – one where the content of big media companies get priority, while smaller content providers are segregated to their own Internet ghetto...

PolicyMatters, the student-run Journal of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, will shortly be launching the PolicyMatters blog. Just as the journal aims to marry insightful analysis of pressing policy problems with an accessible style, the blog will scrutinize the policy issues of the day. It will be a hub for policy conversations within the GSPP community and the wider policy community.

This Blog marks the introduction of PolicyMatters to the online policy communtiy, producing informative, readable, and energetic debate. Likewise the PolicyMatters blog will be a group effort with up to 10 regular contributors representing varied intellectual interests and fields. Our bloggers will primarily consist of students, professors, and policy practitioners with connections to GSPP or UC Berkeley.