McDonnell Promotes Youth On-Line Safety

MySpace, the on line social networking site owned by Robert Murdoch's News Corporation, has agreed to voluntary action to better protect children in its system. Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, working with the ten other AG's who on a National Association of Attorney's General executive committee convinced My space to make several changes including allowing parents to prevent children from establishing profiles for related to children's email addresses they submit, making the default setting private for 16 and 17 year old members, and providing more rapid response to inappropriate content complaints. Work will continue to develop workable age and identify verification tools for social networking websites.

In announcing the agreement McDonnell said:

“I commend MySpace for stepping up and leading the way in improving security features on social networking websites. This agreement serves as a significant step towards making the Internet safer for our children. This is the way we keep children safer online, by working for progress and improvements with technology leaders. We can’t do this without cooperation, and MySpace has led the way in working with Attorneys General nationwide.”

Read More. . . .

Childcare: Another Layer of Bureaucracy

That is exactly what the passage of the Children’s Health Bill. Of course that is not what the official Democratic line is. According to the Washington Post, Representative Chris Van Hollen (D - Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said “he will make sure Republicans who oppose the bill pay a political price, and that price could keep growing.”

I’m glad to see that one of the parties actually cares about our children. The Republicans are standing up for our progeny in order to prevent another abusive layer of bureaucracy. The article actually states, “The measure would make it very difficult for states to cover children at higher than three times the poverty level.” If there should be a Childaid program similar to Medicaid it should be operated at the state level, and that is a very big IF in the first place. In stead the Democrats have proposed a form of Childcare at the federal level making it difficult for states to implement their own programs.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are admittedly using our own children in order to gain more political power. This truly is a sad state of affairs. Why can’t we address the real problems, out of control Tort system in America or the heavily government regulated medical insurance industry, with market based solutions?

Update: Congresswoman Thelma Drake (R-VA) noted the following in a press release today:

H.R. 976 represents a first step in the effort to move the United States towards a more bureaucratic, government-run health care system by encouraging families to replace private insurance with a federal program subsidized by taxpayers’ dollars. . . .

Unfortunately, today, we are watching Democrats in Congress use these children as bargaining chips in their efforts to move this country one step closer to their vision of government-run health care. Under this vision, taxpayer dollars are used as an incentive to move 2 million children away from private insurance and into a government-run assistance program. When we lose sight of our original mission, ensuring that needy children receive health care, we are doing a disservice to the children and families that this program was intended to help.

Further, a letter from the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration states that this piece of legislation would open up this subsidy program to illegal aliens. Drake reacted to this revelation stating, “By no longer requiring proof of citizenship, we are extending an open invitation for waste, fraud and abuse by illegal aliens.” Read More. . . .