I know that recently Clinton in 3Q 1998? referred to Y2k in a presidential address, but when did he first bring it to the Nation's attention.

In the UK the Labour, although being aware of the problem in opposition, did not form Action 2000 until a few months later in 1997. In March 1998 Blair started spouting on about it.

Surely politicians should be on a win win situation, if it turns out to be bad they could say you didn't heed them, if its a bump in the road they can say you did, especially if they're in opposition.

The original UK Taskforce 2000 formed by the Conservatives was started in 1996, this was shut out (but not shut up) by Action 2000.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), December 22, 1998

Answers

July 14, 1998. His first, and only "dedicated" time. Review Ed's summary of it in the TB 2000 "top level" page (www.yourdon.com) under "My Captain, My Captain.

In the whole thing, less than half the words related to Year 2000 issues.

For a more chilling summary of Clinton's actions to date, see today's column. worldnetdaily is now routinely running 1-3 new articles on national/international Y2K issues each day.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/19981222_xcbtl_clinton_an.shtml

(I do wish they would change that "d**m headline though.)

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 22, 1998.

And precious little good it did, too. My local newspaper printed a tiny article about it, and completely missed the point. I went to Whitehouse.gov to read the speech, and was amazed at the difference between the speech and the article about it. Clinton was much more bold than I expected, but no one would know it from the article. I wrote a letter to the paper to ask by what justification they shielded us from the words of our president, but they didn't print my letter.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), December 22, 1998.

I don't know of any other Year 2000 speeches made by Clinton, nor of any administration-level Year 2000 issues brought up "voluntarily" that is by a national speech, publicity, or other concious raising event.

By the way, yesterday, last night, today, and I believe tommorrow; Gore made a speech about excessive 'wordiness" in government documents - joking about Christmas carol titles - that got 3 minutes of air time by CNN and other national news media (MSNBC, Fox News Network, etc.). President Clinton and Bill did book readings (on camera) to kids in DC, served soup (on camera) to people in DC, etc.

Nothing - as usual - about next year's coming crisis.

Like I said - look at the way worldnetdaily - alone among the national media - focuses on the problem. So why are Democratic/liberal/nationalist media ignoring y2K?

Because their President, Bill Clinton, and the Vice-President are ignoring Y2K issues.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 22, 1998.

Robert, the term is "downplaying" Y2K issues.

Behind the scenes they and Washington are quite active.

Go to Government Information Xchange http://www.info.gov/ Search: http://www.info.gov/cgi-bin/search_gov and search on [Y2K or year 2000 or millennium] and youll see 80,921 -- eighty thousand references.

Search results for "(Y2K or "year 2000" or millennium) NOT MESH field (GlobalX,FOIA2,IND4,KIDS1,NEWS1))". Documents 1 - 50 out of 80921 available:

Start reading some of the hits. Interesting stuff. Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble to identify Key Passages.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 22, 1998.

Richard,

Clinton gave a speech that included Y2K at the National Archives sometime in the summer of 1997. It can be read at this link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/announcement.html

Clinton's 19-minute speech on Y2K from July 14, 1998 can be seen at this link:

http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/y2k/CSPAN/19980714/Clinton.ram

RealPlayer required to see this video.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), December 22, 1998.

I was in the audience for Clinton's speech. To correct some misinformation: it was not at the National Archives. Check out http://www.well.com/user/declan/y2k/ for my TIME.com article.

-- Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com), December 22, 1998.

In clinton's 1997 speech, y2k was way down the list (even following something about preserving documents). Surely the Gov. Depts had been working on it for some time, he must have known the extent of the problem just in his own public sector.

He should have sounded a warning to the nation. Did he do so when people still had time to do something about it.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), December 23, 1998.

To summarize: we have identified two short public speeches by Clinton on Y2K in six years of office. In each speech, the actual y2K information was presented in less than half the words used - the rest was compliments, introductions, and other topics.

And nothing else?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 23, 1998.

It's sad, very sad.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), December 23, 1998.