The Democratic Leadership Council says the Federal Government should spend $15 billion on Kindles or other ereaders. Textbooks? Not so much.

To be clear, this is only a proposal. But the DLC are serious people. On a tweet earlier today I said the education is the defense industry of the 21st century.

Defense has always been a high margin, critical path industry.

A plan to put an Amazon Kindle in every backpack | csmonitor.com:
"Could the Amazon Kindle help save the nation’s struggling school systems? Yes, according to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

On Tuesday, the DLC, a think tank in Washington, D.C., made a proposal asking the government to provide each of the nation’s 56 million K-12 students with a Kindle, or electronic reading device.

The group’s proposal, “A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools,” which was published on their website Tuesday, requests that the government fund a pilot program that would equip some 400,000 students with Kindles, or other electronic reading devices, for an entire year.

By providing each student with a Kindle, the DLC hopes to not only reduce the amount of money schools spent on textbooks, but to give teachers the tools they need to develop an interactive, digital curriculum. The proposal explains some of the advantages of having a Kindle in the classroom including the ability to instantly download updated versions of textbooks as well as literally lightening the heavy load of books students carry to class on a daily basis.

The initial cost of the program would exceed the $6 billion spent on paper textbooks each year by $9 billion. But the authors of the proposal, Thomas Z. Freedman, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, and Blair Levin, previously a member of the Obama-Biden transition team, estimate that the project would result in over $700 million in annual savings within five years as the demand for electronic reading devices increases and eTextbook costs begin to drop. If the year-long pilot program succeeds, the group eventually plans to expand the program to outfit every student in the nation with a Kindle, or electronic reading device, within four years.