My Dog Ate My Homework

Sorry for the light posting today. The site swallowed a half written post early this morning and my schedule hasn't allowed me the time to rewrite it yet. I'll probably get to it after dinner. In the meantime, here's a few interesting articles I came across today covering some things we've touched on before, and all of which could be full blogs in their own right:

• I was checking out the New Era Colorado website to prepare for an interview and came across this stat (emphasis mine):

  The 2004 elections marked a year of unprecedented attention focused on young voters. However, immediately after the loss of Presidential candidate John Kerry, newspapers and political pundits overwhelmingly accused young people of not being worth the investment. Today, only 8% of political party chairs identify young people as the most important demographic for the “long-term success of their party,” compared to 21% who name senior citizens.

  That, to put it mildly, is what we call a problem.

• In what is either a devious strategy to exclude young people from the debate, a sign of financial jeopardy, or DC insider-dom gone mad (or some combination thereof), The Politico has decided to lay off all of its young staffers. Combined with their incredible knack for getting shit wrong, this move puts The Politico slightly above NewsMax on my reading list. But it still does have that shiny Web two-point-oh look.
• Anya Kamenetz continues her reporting on the student loan scandals, this time uncovering some connections between corporate lenders and congressional PACS, and wondering about the practices of bigger corporate lenders like Nelnet and Sallie Mae.

  Is this something y'all would like to hear more about? It's a little outside our normal realm of conversation, which tends toward the strategic rather than nitty gritty policy. If so, what angle would you be most interested in talking about? The blow-by-blow details? Why its' important in the grand scheme? How the candidates should be playing this in their messaging to young voters? Candidates responses? What's most interesting to you and what's the best way to leverage this to increase young voter visibility in this election cycle?

  More after the jump.

• On a related note, the Project on Student Debt has some tips for college or grad-school bound folks on how they can make the best of having to deal with corporate lenders.
• Finally, here's a novel way to stop a war. Apparently West Point grads are leaving the service in record numbers. How long before the army faces a middle management crisis?