Change.gov

http://change.gov/

by kirubakaran • 18 years ago

86 124 18 years ago

change.gov

makecheck2• 18 years ago

Two lines of text, guess how much source code Microsoft Word generated to render it.

tc72• 18 years ago

http://www.smartcard.gov/thurston_bio.cfm

This guy did it. :)

Saw his name as Author in the Word HTML that used to be there ("Keith Thurston GSA"). Glad Word does that, so we know who to blame.

makecheck2• 18 years ago

Looks like they changed it already, now it just says "No suitable nodes are available to serve your request.".

tc72• 18 years ago

"Create a National Network of Public-Private Business Incubators: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators. Business incubators facilitate the critical work of entrepreneurs in creating start-up companies. Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country."

Does this mean incubators like yc? Obviously it isn't limited to hightech, but is that the sort of thing they speak of?

kirubakaran6• 18 years ago

Obama & Biden create YC clone?

I wonder if there will be news.change.gov for entrepreneurs to post links and hang out.

davidw• 18 years ago

I hope it doesn't get overrun by politics articles.

fallentimes3• 18 years ago

Free market YC would absolutely destroy bureaucrat YC

...unless massive subsidies were involved :).

corentin8• 18 years ago

Can someone here who happens to be enthusiastic about this idea enlighten us and explain why the federal government would be a better investor than private entities?

dangoldin5• 18 years ago

Well for one the government can take a longer term view than a typical VC. As an example, imagine if the government focused on alternate energy years ago. Then when oil increased in price we'd be in better shape to make a transition.

Also, a lot of technology comes as a by product of working on something for the long term.

Just my 2 cents.

tortilla• 18 years ago

Government can take a longer term investment.

Example: Space exploration

jhancock• 18 years ago

Doesn't have to be better; just more and different.

Besides if its government run, it might have a strict form associated with getting funding. There will probably be a part of the application where you need to specify your revenue model. If you leave it blank, no funding. That might qualify as "better".

liuliu• 18 years ago

No. National angel fund can be found in Russia and China. They are not work very well. Basically because the managers are more care about the safety of the money, they are not tend to invest business that will spend and revenue tens of millions in future. They invest 50~100k$ roughly and expected to get back in 3~5 years with ~10% revenue.

wumi• 18 years ago

Seeing as JG is part of Obama's tech team, it probably does. He's part of the crew behind launchbox digital.

palish4• 18 years ago

YC is not an incubator, or at least not a traditional one.

On a tangent... "Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year". That's $250 million of our dollars, not theirs. Maybe it's just me, but that type of behavior makes me extremely nervous. I did vote for him, but we should all be wary of him going forward.

I'd pesonally like to see the whitehouse take a hands-off approach to governing. At least one time.

Retric3• 18 years ago

That's like 1/12000th the current federal budget and something a lot of state and local governments are already doing through the SBA. If you don't want government investments what level of spending are you comfortable with?

Edit: I think we could cut 80% of the federal budget (over time) and keep 95% of I what I want but I don't see that happening. Let's cut the DoD to 100 billion a year and see if anything bad happens. (That should pay for around 500,000 people and a lot of tech.)

rms2• 18 years ago

It means incubators more in the style of Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, most of the seed money is supplied by the state of Pennsylvania and invested via organizations like http://www.pittsburghlifesciences.com/ and http://www.innovationworks.org/. These organizations effectively provide due diligence for the entire (small) VC community.

What we will get is more available investment money in cities that need it. It is certainly arguable whether this is good for the overall entrepreneurship environment. I take the position that it is good.

kirubakaran6• 18 years ago

I hope they change that soon.

ph0rque2• 18 years ago

Did they just change the website? It looks nice and modern to me.

kirubakaran6• 18 years ago

It was big bright yellow "www.change.com / Coming Soon" text on bright blue background. The website seems to be down now.

bk• 18 years ago

Load balancer fail: "No suitable nodes are available to serve your request."

wensing• 18 years ago

Obama is already doing things I didn't know the President could do.

jobeirne2• 18 years ago

Like mandating community service hours.

ObieJazz• 18 years ago

($4,000 / 100 hours == $40 / hour) tax credit for college students for community service != bad news

bsaunder• 18 years ago

Hehe, yeah so did Bush, but I'm sure you didn't mean it the same way.

ardit33• 18 years ago

Great step, but still mostly fluff. Very light on specifics. Hopefully they will keep updating it as they go.

jcdreads2• 18 years ago

Very interesting to note some of the links you can see commented out when viewing source, including:

/newsroom/blog/

/newsroom/events/

/newsroom/press/

/learn/inauguration

And, within a comment block labelled "comment out america serves":

/americaserves/plan ("Service Plan")

/americaserves/serve ("Find a Way to Serve")

Probably gonna need to get that new CTO to clamp down on accidental leaks by the IT staff. (Edited for formatting.)

jcdreads2• 18 years ago

Alas, now the Service Plan and Find a Way to Serve links are visible...and link to pages that read, "Need Content". Launched early, I guess.

lackbeard• 18 years ago

"They will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods."

Does this scare anyone else? I can't articulate exactly why this scares me, but it seems rather... un-free. If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?

raheemm2• 18 years ago

As long as they find a happy medium - it's not going to be "scary"

unalone8• 18 years ago

Yeah.

Either side taken to the extreme is slightly scary. Absolute freedom could easily lead to very evil corporations. No freedom leads to Atlas Shrugged. Some place in the middle, where we learn from things that go wrong and try to make a good equilibrium, is potentially the best for both sides.

palish4• 18 years ago

Yes, that's a little nerve-wracking. We'll see what happens.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

Don't worry about that. Worry about the removal of secret votes following card check procedures at businesses. That will allow union organizers to "organize" unions by way of muscle. But don't worry about that either.

yummyfajitas4• 18 years ago

I suspect it's less by muscle, and more by social pressure. Don't underestimate the desire to conform.

anewaccountname2• 18 years ago

>If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?

If there were a one-sided restriction on employers like you sort of make it out to be, yes it would scare me. But it isn't. Unions are not allowed to conduct secondary-strikes for instance. This tremendously weakens their power, and to make up for it we wind up with a cycle of more unnecessary regulation for both sides.

I agree we need less regulation of it overall--but it is crazy to pretend there isn't significant regulation stifling the union side of things.

unalone8• 18 years ago

What is a secondary strike?

hugh11• 18 years ago

Sweet! Does that mean that instead of quitting my job I can just go on permanent strike from it? That way, I know I can always get the job back if I decide to return.

Kinda unfair to my boss, who won't ever be able to replace me, but hey! One of the small costs of creating a worker's paradise, right?

unalone8• 18 years ago

I'd like to think that the system will be designed to prevent abuse like that. I mean, this site is based on a grand overview rather than getting into nitty-bitty details. I think it's possible to create a system that prevents stuff like this happening. And I'd like to think that Obama's committed to people not gaming the system.

raheemm2• 18 years ago

What CMS do you think this is built on?

pstinnett• 18 years ago

obama's campaign site as expression engine. Guessing this is too?

r7000• 18 years ago

builtwith.com agrees: expression engine

palish4• 18 years ago

Love, Unity, The American Way, and Change, of course.

sachinag• 18 years ago

It's a mix of EE, MovableType, with a dash of Blue State Digital's interal code.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/hey-the-president-elect-...

arthurk• 18 years ago

Someone forgot to replace the "Lorem Ipsum" text on the signup page:

http://change.gov/page/signup

and the "Plan" page needs content: http://change.gov/americaserves/plan ;-)

kolya3• 18 years ago

Lorem Ipsum? Nah, that's just that fancy soundin latino elitist talk ;)

technoguyrob• 18 years ago

Wow.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=20...

jbyers• 18 years ago

Can't resist pointing out the joys of wildcard DNS:

http://spare.some.change.gov

(Best read in a cockney accent.)

corentin8• 18 years ago

Actually, that's more or less the purpose of government.

patrickg-zill3• 18 years ago

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

(from http://change.gov/americaserves)

Compulsory volunteerism?

PieSquared3• 18 years ago

Ack... That makes me cringe. In my school district (in MD) you are required to have 75 hours of community service hours to graduate high school. It's also nearly impossible to earn them doing something interesting - most people resort to sorting books or working at a library or something.

100 hours of community service in college every year? That'd really sucks. It may not seem like a lot, but it is if they're spent on drudgery...

auston• 18 years ago

I understand where you are coming from, we had a 40 hour requirement at my high school.

But I can't help but feel you aren't being creative enough or looking hard enough. I mean I'm sure homeless shelter's need volunteers, as do toy donations for under privileged children, political campaigns need volunteers (see Louie Mantia's contribution to the Obama campaign here: http://louiemantia.com/blog/?p=31), and so do Boys & Girls clubs.

Not to mention taking 1-2 weeks off and helping people in other countries.

bigthboy2• 18 years ago

I believe, but I'm not for certain, that developing a plan includes also coming up with new and helpful ways to do community service, not just a "here, 50 hour requirement, go have fun." That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.

I also don't think its necessarily the best thing to do... perhaps he should give incentives to school districts that implement such a system but make the school districts responsible for it.

lacker2• 18 years ago

Look at the flip side - if your small business provides a way for high school students to do something useful for you, and it is both somewhat fun and counts as "community service", then perhaps you have access to a nearly free source of labor.

bayleo• 18 years ago

We needed 75 hours in FL for the bright futures scholarship. I joined the local volunteer fire station and got my first responder cert. from the county. It's not always boring.

jobeirne2• 18 years ago

Does anyone find the phrase "americaserves" ominous?

nihilocrat3• 18 years ago

Does anyone find the phrase "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" ominous?

I'm not disagreeing with you, just reminding everyone of something very similar.

noodle• 18 years ago

while it would definitely be nice if more people volunteered, i highly doubt that this will ever happen.

the mandatory part, that is.

rms2• 18 years ago

I believe that 100 hours of community service also includes $4000 worth of tuition credit, but we'll see. Remember that this is his idealized plan, now he has to govern.

Obviously compulsory volunteerism won't actually be mandated. This is America.

patrickg-zill3• 18 years ago

I don't share your "obvious" optimism... there are plenty of ways that the Federal Gov't mandates behavior that would not otherwise occur.

yummyfajitas4• 18 years ago

Lets not use euphemisms, especially oxymoronic ones like "compulsory volunteerism." It's forced labor. We should not call it anything but what it is.

matthavener• 18 years ago

School is already mandatory, why wouldn't community service be? They're both considered "learning"

PieSquared3• 18 years ago

"Obviously compulsory volunteerism won't actually be mandated."

As I said earlier in the thread somewhere, it already is in some places at least. In my county you need 75 hours of community service (fluffed 'Social Service Learning Hours') to graduate high school. I'm not whining, because you have 7 years to do it, but I'm just saying: "This is America" won't get you that far.

unalone8• 18 years ago

Not compulsory volunteerism, but I think the government has the right to make you do community service in exchange for, say, free education. My college is a public school, and we need to do 8 hours of community service as it stands right now.

As much as I don't like volunteer work, I think it's a reasonable trade. If you don't want to do the work, you go to a private school.

yters• 18 years ago

Yeah, nothing like compulsion to make me want to help others.

nihilocrat3• 18 years ago

Germany already requires something like this, or military service, when you turn 18.

Sweden requires compulsory military service, and I don't actually know, but I bet they can choose community service instead.

frisco• 18 years ago

http://change.gov/americaserves/plan

The Obama National Service Plan NEED CONTENT

nice.

siculars• 18 years ago

compulsory national service, eh?

my ma grew up in communist russia. and when she hears obama speak all she can think of is the 1917 revolution and the Khrushchev speaking at the 20th congress of the communist party.

is she right, i dont know. did i grow up in a communist country, no. i was born and grew up in nyc. but i do know that every russian i've talked to thinks obamas 'change' sounds like the hammer and they all waitin for the sickle.

ojbyrne2• 18 years ago

Nowhere in there does it say "we will stop the use of torture." And that just sucks.

Change.gov

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