With the American economy showing about as much useful forward momentum as as a stripped-down Chevy up on cinder blocks in the front yard, people are naturally starting to get a bit curious as to whether the $700 billion Congress put to bailing out banks' troubled assets was a smart use of the peoples' dollars. Elizabeth Warren is wondering that too. Warren, a professor at Harvard Law, was Harry Reid's appointment to the Congressional Oversight Panel that was created under the same Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that launched the TARP program. "It's tough out there and it's scary, and frankly I'm worried," she admits in a recent YouTube video -- which is either endearingly forthright or downright terrifying, depending on how you look at it.

As the battle for the RNC Chairman gig heats up, Americans for Tax Reform is hosting a debate among the half dozen candidates vying for the job. The debate is happening now at http://rncdebate.org/. The live webcast by ATR is a step in the right direction for the GOP.

It's not specifically a tech-politics related event, but it's good to see the right opening up and broadcasting the debate publicly. ATR also opened up the discussion to the public and took questions online.

I'll recap the event afterward with thoughts. (UPDATED)

With the 111th session of Congress kicking off tomorrow and a mere 15 days until President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, getting his desired $700 billion (or so) stimulus package signed, sealed, and delivered before inauguration day would take a feat of super-human legislating. What could complicate that goal: a proposal promoted by top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell to put the stimulus plan online for a full week...Is it our turn yet? Pressure is building for Obama to finally name a Chief Technology Officer, the nation's first...The first round of Change.org's Ideas for Change in America contest, to which techPresident is a partner, has wrapped...and a good deal more.

We're still days into 2009, and now is the time to prepare for the epic interplay between tech and politics in the 2012 presidential cycle.