October 7th, 2008 • 9:30 amCongress Freed To Blog, Flicker & Tweet
I just got an email from Gabriela at the Sunlight Foundation. She’s proud to announce that, thanks to the Sunlight Foundation’s supporters, congresscritters are now free to use blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Here’s the text of the email:
Dear Sunlighters,
Good news! Thanks to your help, the House and Senate recently updated the guidelines that govern how members of Congress can use the Internet to communicate with us about their work.
The new rules now allow members of Congress to interact with us on sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Sunlight advocated for these rules changes through our bipartisan collaborative effort; the Open House Project, http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/, and through our popular Let Our Congress Tweet campaign, the first Twitter-based petition to Congress. Thanks to the hundreds of you who joined our call for change!
To show our gratitude, we’ve created Capitol Tweets at http://sunlightfoundation.com/CAPITOLTWEETS/. This widget, which you can embed on your site, lets you follow the latest tweets from members of Congress who use Twitter.
Get the code to embed the Capitol Tweets widget here:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/capitoltweets/
While you’re at it, be sure to check out PC Magazine’s list of the “5 sites That Will Boost your Political Knowledge”
http://tinyurl.com/pcworld5sites
You might recognize a few Sunlight friends such OpenSecrets.org, OpenCongress.org and FedSpending.org, who do great work to bring more transparency to work of our federal government.
Thanks again for your support,
Gabriela Schneider & the Sunlight team
Anytime that We The People win another battle for disinfectant of transparency is a good day. Our work must continue, though, because politicians, by nature, are resistant to transparency. This victory is sweet but the fight continues.
Congratulations to the vigilant efforts of the Sunlight Foundation.
Technorati: Blogging, Twitter, YouTube, Sunlight Foundation, Flickr, Transparency
Cross-posted at California Conservative
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Fannie Mae Preferred and the American Senior
I am appealing to the readers of Let Freedom Ring. Maybe there is someone in it’s vast readership that can help millions of seniors around the country. It seems as if no one cares about the investors of Fannie Mae’s just the mortgage-holders.
Why is it that when you do the right thing, the right way, you are always the first one hurt!! When you don’t speculate and borrow foolishly, but instead invest your savings in American institutions you get royally screwed. It seems that seniors would have been better off, if we had speculated on mortgages rather than invest in Fannie Mae Preferred. The Government is saving the Mortgage holders and destroying the investor…the backbone of America.
A government appointed commission has claimed to have solved the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issue, by putting all their debt on hold and virtually destroying the Preferred stock.
They saved these mortgage giants by ceasing to pay dividends on the preferred and making them almost worthless.
The government bailout put a tremendous portion of the senior population in danger!!! They forgot, or did not want to remember, that we American seniors bought these preferred shares in our retirement accounts for income and safety.
We were under the impression that these investments were safe, since there was an implicit gov’t guarantee, due to its connection to the Federal Gov’t. Many of the Fannies and Freddies were sold with this
connection.
Please…..Please, don’t forget the thousands and possibly
millions of seniors who put their life savings into Fannie and Freddie
preferred. We put our money here to draw a decent income so we could live comfortably in our retirement years.
The press and the Government has cast us aside and forgotten about us.
WHAT CAN WE DO????????
PLEASE HELP!!!
Comment by sam steinfeld • 11Oct2008 @ 4:05 pm
Sam, I’m sympathetic with what’s happening to seniors.
One thing that we should push for going forward is tax cuts for seniors who invested in equity markets. I’m thinking that the tax cuts should come in the form of a tax holiday when you withdraw from your 401(k).
Another thing that I’d recommend is notice who said that there wasn’t a problem. Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Greg Meeks & others said that there wasn’t a problem with Fannie & Freddie.
Let’s be clear about something. Elections have consequences. Had Republicans not lost their majority, the rescue bill would’ve looked much different. There would’ve been more accountability provisions in it.
Here’s something else that shouldn’t be ignored: The Democrats’ original bill would’ve sent $20 billion to ACORN over the life of the bill. It didn’t have serious accountability/oversight provisions in it.
Remember these things this November. Elections have consequences.
Finally, electing conservatives isn’t enough. Don’t be bashful. Don’t hesitate to hold Republicans accountable. Think of it this way: it’s always right to do the right thing for the right reasons.
I hope you can ride this out. I wish you nothing but the best.
Stay in touch, too. I appreciate your comments.
Comment by Gary Gross • 11Oct2008 @ 4:37 pm
[...] this year, the House and Senate tried prohibiting members from blogging, using YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter. Only our activism prevented that. Still, [...]
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[...] this year, the House and Senate tried prohibiting members from blogging, using YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter. Only our activism prevented that. Still, [...]
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