Obama's Jan 24 radio address

You can stream Obama's first weekly address from the whitehouse.gov blog. It's also available as an iTunes podcast, though that's through ABC TV rather than the gov site.

Excerpts below, with my emphases. I've asked the site to start providing full feeds rather than excerpts -- please add your voice to that cause ...

The White House - President Obama delivers Your Weekly Address

... Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four...

... I have proposed an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to immediately jumpstart job creation as well as long-term economic growth...

.. It’s a plan that will save or create three to four million jobs over the next few years, and one that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment - the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there’s so much work to be done. That’s why this is not just a short-term program to boost employment..

... To accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels over the next three years. We’ll begin to build a new electricity grid ... weatherizing 2.5 million homes.

To lower health care cost, cut medical errors, and improve care, we’ll computerize the nation’s health record in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives. And we’ll protect health insurance for more than 8 million Americans who are in danger of losing their coverage during this economic downturn.

To ensure our children can compete and succeed in this new economy, we’ll renovate and modernize 10,000 schools ... We’ll invest more in Pell Grants to make college affordable for seven million more students, provide a $2,500 college tax credit to four million students...

Finally, we will rebuild and retrofit America to meet the demands of the 21st century. That means repairing and modernizing thousands of miles of America’s roadways and providing new mass transit options for millions of Americans. It means protecting America by securing 90 major ports and creating a better communications network for local law enforcement and public safety officials in the event of an emergency. And it means expanding broadband access to millions of Americans, so business can compete on a level-playing field, wherever they’re located.

... Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made public, and informed by independent experts whenever possible. We’ll launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov...

I'll subscribe to the iTunes podcast. Recovery.gov isn't up yet, there's just a notice that it will be online after passage of the recovery act.

Since I make my living working on clinical computing software, I will abstain from comment on the economic and clinical merits of investing in the EHR. The rest of it sounds good to me.

The broadband investment is critical. Cheap broadband combined with the the $150 Netbook will be revolutionary.