Obama Announces e-Book Scheme For Low-Income Communities

An anonymous reader writes: The White House has today launched an initiative encouraging top book publishers to supply $250 million worth of free e-books to low-income students. Partnering with local governments and schools nationwide, President Obama hopes that the e-book scheme will support low-income households who significantly trail the national average for computer ownership and digital connectivity. At Anacostia Library in Southeast Washington, D.C., Obama announced that libraries and schools in poorer communities would be supported by the scheme and efforts would be made to increase internet access at these establishments. Publishers involved in the program include Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. NGOs, such as book donation charity Firstbook, and public libraries will also be working together to develop apps to support the digital reading program.

Comments

Re:Where did they get the $250M figure?

[Tailhook]

Now how exactly did they calculate how much the "free" ebooks were worth?

The amount is calculated as a function of the number of authors and publishers the Democrat bundlers designate for the funds, multiplied by the amount each of those individuals and organizations are permitted to contribute, times the factor needed to make the contributions a small enough fraction of the total so that it can't plausibly be called a straight laundering operation.

In the end the Clinton's hard money coffers will net somewhere between 2-3% of the total; a typical ratio for laundering public money back to politicians that know how to play the game and stay out of prison. $5-7 million, in other words. The other 97-98% go to politically favored authors and publishers who write to children primary on the topics of race, gender and sexuality grievances, climate change, diet and assorted atrocities in American history, not necessarily in that order.