St. Patty's Day Quick Hits: Education, Recovery, Troops, Broadband

Kevin and I are working on the Guide to Winning with Youth Voters which we'll be posting on the website soon, but it means that both of us are crazy busy writing and re-writing. We'll have a post up today about the awesome events on The Hill, but for now check out some of these stories on young voters and the Millennial Generation.

• Just because young people don't have the deep pockets older people do to donate to political campaigns doesn't mean that we don't need our own recovery package.
• Education is a key issue for first time voters. "Research by the independent education foundation, Edge, has found two fifths of young people between 18 and 22 believe education is more important now than it was at the last election."
• Golden Gate Press reports that youth turnout is expected to rise in the state of California if trends continue their natural progression. Thanks for recognizing that 2006, the primaries and caucuses of 2008, and the general election of 2008 weren't a fluke thing. I keep hearing from state party people that some still aren't considering 18-29 year olds as "likely voters." #FAIL.
• Student journalists are blogging about homelessness by taking to the streets and investigating themselves.
• Earlier this week Change.org's blog talks about how young people are pro-choice.
• CNN covers older woman who lives in rural Oklahoma without broadband. And we wonder why rural communities are dying. Its pretty hard to bring young people to small towns if you can't even get basic utilities. This week the FCC announced its intentions to build out the broadband network saying that it is a necessity and a utility that we as people have a right to.
• We tweeted about this but it should be mentioned again - AP reports that young war veterans are returning home to unemployment... what happened to the good old fashioned American GOP "Support our Troops?" Guess that's only when they're overseas that we're doing that....

"As of last year, 1.9 million veterans had deployed for the wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some have struggled with mental health problems, addictions, and homelessness as they return home. Difficulty finding work can make the adjustment that much harder.

"The just-released rate for young veterans was significantly higher than the unemployment rate of young veterans in that age group of 14.1 percent in 2008.

"Many of the unemployed are members of the Guard and Reserves who have deployed multiple times, said Joseph Sharpe, director of the economic division at the American Legion. Sharpe said some come home to find their jobs have been eliminated because the company has downsized. Other companies may not want to hire someone who could deploy again or will have medical appointments because of war-related health problems, he said.

"It's a horrible environment because if you're a reservist and you're being deployed two or three times in a five-year period, you know you're less competitive," Sharpe said. "Many companies that are already hurting are reluctant to hire you and time kind of moves on once you're deployed."