Obama's Creepy 'Call to Service'

Great Debates
21

I don’t know how this is all going to be paid for either…but I’m thinking that all that flood of money coming back from the Bush Tax Cuts™ is getting stretched awfully thin at this point (if we get back half of that supposed ~$80 billion/year I will be shocked). There is only so much of that to spread around after all.

Out of curiosity to any of the Obama faithful that might know…where do you think all the money for all this stuff is going to come from? Just the things I can think of off the top of my head (such as his proposed health care system, environmental programs, expansion of several of social programs I’ve read about, etc etc…not to mention the fact that we’ll STILL be in Iraq and Afghanistan at least 16 more months after he is elected, if not longer) seem to indicate that taxes will HAVE to go up…and not just on the ‘rich’. I can’t see where all the money is going to come from.

-XT

22

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Obama is probably counting on this and perhaps people don’t mind, but once a few kids started doing this, it’d become de rigeur for everyone else. That’s the way the college admissions process works in my experience- there’s a ton of copycatting and trying to catch up to the kids with the fullest resumes. So the meaning of “voluntary” probably varies here: it’s not compulsory, but it’ll probably get to the point quickly where not doing it will be seen as a demerit in the appication process. The more people feel compelled to do it, the more bored, unenthused kids you probably get.
[/QUOTE]

I’d rather kids feel compelled to do service projects than all the other sorts of useless crap they do to pad their college apps. I’d love to have had the opportunity to get paid for service projects rather than for scooping ice cream, which is what I did with most of the shreds of spare time I had left after my academic commitments. As it stands now, kids who don’t need to save money for college by working minimum-wage jobs, like I did, have less time in their shcedules to do things that are a lot more interesting on a college application than scooping ice cream is.

23

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
In another speech somewhere, he referred to it as a program to give summer jobs to students.
[/QUOTE]

And there lies the fundamental wrongness of the concept – it denegrates the service done by people who simply go out and find jobs without government direction and hand-holding. The even worse message is that it equates service to the nation with service to the state – which is, as stated in the OP, a fascist notion.

24

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I only skimmed the transcript, but I didn’t see where he mentioned how we will pay for all this new stuff.
[/quote]
Same way Bush paid for the war, the tax cuts, etc.

25

Our local school district apparently mandates something like this. I don’t know if it is totally optional, or compulsory only for some “advance placement”. Most students who inquire about volunteer opportunities at this organization fall into the later category.

Some are indeed unenthusiastic; many swiftly find that the work done here is unappealing to them. But some, and more than a few, see it as an opportunity to learn and to grow, and they put in their couple of hours a week for several months quite willingly.

None seem unable to find or hold a paying job while doing volunteer hours with us. Their private lives (from their own voluntary testimony-- people, including high school kids, talk about their everyday lives) seem not to be negatively impacted.

And, if I say so myself, those who do finish their 25 (I think the requirement is in fact 25 hours) actually seem to have gained some information, and frequently some maturity, from the effort.

Their efforts require us to train and supervise them, but this is no different than using any other volunteer. And volunteers, these kids included, perform valuable services for non-profit organizations like this one.

But not a single such student ever suggested that they would have independently been moved to volunteer here.

26

[QUOTE=Steve MB]
And there lies the fundamental wrongness of the concept – it denegrates the service done by people who simply go out and find jobs without government direction and hand-holding. The even worse message is that it equates service to the nation with service to the state – which is, as stated in the OP, a fascist notion.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks. That’s the point I was trying to make with my ‘fascist’ comment. Obama is saying that spending your time working for the state is somehow more noble and more valuable to society than spending your time working for a private company.

The other reason I threw out the ‘fascist’ remark is because when Robert Heinlein suggested that citizenship be granted only on the condition of completing a certain amount of state service, the left called the notion Fascist. But here’s Obama proposing almost the same thing, and the left now seems okay with it. I find that strange.

As for whether or not this will be ‘voluntary’… don’t kid yourself. If he ties federal funding of schools to the existence of these programs, then there will have to be oversight and accountability to make sure these programs are doing what he wants them to do, else schools would set up useless ‘service’ programs that no one signs up for just to collect their federal money. And that would just be a waste of the school’s time.

And Obama called out the goal - 50 hours of service a year per kid. You you have to believe that any real program that was instituted would have quotas for the number of kids taking part, and that would put pressure on the schools to force the students to do it - either by giving them extra class credit so that kids who don’t ‘volunteer’ get worse marks, or by pressuring the parents into forcing their kids to do it, or something like that.

And by the way, shouldn’t you worry about schools actually doing a better job of teaching kids how to read and write before turning them into labor pools for state service? How are schools supposed to manage these programs? Who’s going to make sure the kids show up to work, do what they’re told, and ‘earn’ their service credit?

And speaking for myself, if you had forced me as a kid into annual state service, it would not have had the effect you think it would have for my love of the state and society. Personally, I think kids forced into this would not learn to love their neighbors and become communitarians. Instead, they’d grow up to be cynical and angry. You can’t force people to be charitable, and trying to do so will just breed resentment.

27

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Same way Bush paid for the war, the tax cuts, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like we’re gonna need some more of these!

28

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
I’ll bet if John McCain was saying this stuff it would be giving you the creeps.

Comments?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah. I generally at least give McCain a chance to clarify what he means before jumping all over his ass, other than to just be snarky when he says something stupid, like not knowing that Iraq and Pakistan don’t have a troubled (or any kind) of border.

29

Sam Stone, citizenship conditional on state service is almost the same thing as requiring students to perform some limited community service works as a part of their education.

WTF?!!?!!?!!?

30

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Same way Bush paid for the war, the tax cuts, etc.
[/QUOTE]

By going even further into debt? Besides, a couple of things: First off, Obama is STILL going to have to pay for the war, at least for the foreseeable future. Unless he’s planning to drastically cut the budget of the military, even after he supposedly brings the troops home that means he’s going to have to dig up money somewhere else. Also, Obama’s programs seem, at least from what I can tell, to be pretty costly ventures. No one thinks health care reform is going to be cheap, for instance. Nor does his environmental plans seem particularly cheap to me.

If Obama was simply saying that we were going to balance the budget by getting rid of the Bush tax cuts then that would be one thing…I think a lot of people would be fine with that. If he said he was going to cut government spending by getting rid of some of Bush’s initiatives, they that would probably be fine with most people to. However, simply saying he’s going to get rid of the Bush tax cuts and that he’ll get the troops out (in theory) in 16 months while at the same time proposing all of these new (and seemingly costly) programs…well, something has to give here. Where is the money going to come from? We can’t have all of the residual Bush programs, the war, a quasi-recession, new environmental programs and legislation AND new programs and fund it all on the supposed money we’ll be getting back from taking out the Bush tax cuts…it’s not realistic. Even if we got back every cent we have supposedly ‘lost’ to those cuts (assuming for a minute I believe that money was actually lost) it’s not enough to pay even for what I understand his new health care system would cost…let alone all this other stuff.

-XT

31

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Thanks. That’s the point I was trying to make with my ‘fascist’ comment. Obama is saying that spending your time working for the state is somehow more noble and more valuable to society than spending your time working for a private company.
[/quote]

How is this “working for the state”? I’m reading it more as working for a nonprofit org.

If it turns out that this program is meant to be anything other than voluntary, I will feel very differently about it.

The devil is in the details on this one. My school had an office that maintained listings of local private-sector employers who were willing to hire HS students. Why would this necessarily be any different? Why does it need to be any more elaborate than just providing a clearinghouse of information?

I’ll pass judgment once I see the details. Schools already track all sorts of student activities: National Merit/National Honor Society and various other honors, athletic achievements, college recommendations received, GPA, etc. I’m not going to assume quotas until I see evidence of such.

Any school admin types or teachers around here want to comment on what burdens might be imposed on schools by complying with this initiative? It’s hard to do if we have no idea of the specifics; I’m just brainstorming here.

Why are you calling this “state service”? And yes, I do think many schools need to do a better job on many fronts, but why are the two mutually exclusive?

As for who can ride herd on the kids, I assume the orgs where they are serving would do that easily enough.

32

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Same way Bush paid for the war, the tax cuts, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, except Obama wants to extend the tax cuts to the middle class, and give them further tax cuts (80 billion a year, in fact). And, he wants to increase the size of the military. So no savings there.

Obama’s economic program is incoherent, and completely unattainable. His own campaign says his programs will cost an extra $130 billion per year, but no one believes that. Hell, his ‘civilian defense corps, funded as well as the military’ is 500 billion. I assume that he won’t do a lot of this wackier stuff, because frankly, it’s sounding more and more like he doesn’t have the foggiest notion what he’s talking about.

But if you add up his big proposals that he’s invested his entire campaign on (health care, energy research, education spending, etc), they amount to about $200 billion per year. Repealing Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy will give him about $60 billion of that, assuming there are no negative economic effects of hiking taxes on the rich.

33

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
And the worst, craziest idea of all (hear it at 16:45 of his speech):

WTF? A civilian national security force? Just as powerful and well funded as the U.S. military? What, are you going to spy on your neighbors? Hire people to search handbags of people going in and out of buildings?
[/QUOTE]
I can’t find the context of the remarks, but the current defense secretary has said repeatedly that the State Department is an essential element of national security that has been chronically underfunded. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Obama is saying a roughly similar thing.

34

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Yeah, except Obama wants to extend the tax cuts to the middle class, and give them further tax cuts (80 billion a year, in fact). And, he wants to increase the size of the military. So no savings there.
[/quote]
Well, like I said. Geez, can’t you read?

You’re acting as if only Dems have to actually pay for stuff, but we get to sprinkle Magical Budget Fairy Dust over GOP spending and tax cuts.

[quote]
Obama’s economic program is incoherent, and completely unattainable.[/qote]And McCain’s is coherent and attainable? AFAICT, it’s an order of magnitude more costly with respect to blowing up the deficit.

Cites?

Ah yes, the paragraph you complained was removed from the transcript.

Might that be a hint that he misspoke?

OK, so that’s $140 billion a year, rather than the $130B that “nobody” believes.

Ohmygoshgolly.

35

Sam, you are aware that when Mike Harris was premier of Ontario, a requirement that high school students must do 40 hours of community service before they could receive a high school diploma was added?

36

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Where is the money going to come from? We can’t have all of the residual Bush programs, the war, a quasi-recession, new environmental programs and legislation AND new programs and fund it all on the supposed money we’ll be getting back from taking out the Bush tax cuts…it’s not realistic. Even if we got back every cent we have supposedly ‘lost’ to those cuts (assuming for a minute I believe that money was actually lost) it’s not enough to pay even for what I understand his new health care system would cost…let alone all this other stuff.
[/QUOTE]
This was covered in my comment that you quoted.

37

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
For me, this is one of the big deal-killers with Obama. And I would think this would cause Liberals to worry the most. I’ll bet if John McCain was saying this stuff it would be giving you the creeps.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t like it, but neither do I think it will get through Congress. I still think Obama will be a better president than McCain.

Community service is meaningless if it’s not voluntary. I wouldn’t even make people do it as part of their probation or whatever; it demonstrates nothing and accomplishes nothing.

As a side note, I’m a bit amused at the people working themselves into a tizzy asking, “How are we going to PAY for all this?” who never asked that question about the money pit over in Iraq.

38

Yes, you are right. Creepy liberal-fascist stuff this call for service as an ethical obligation, and the naivete!

I am sure you are horrified.
Of course this was from GWBush’s 2002 State of the Union address

Obama can be criticized here - for unoriginality and standard claptrap. Bush, Clinton, Kennedy (Ask not what your country can do for you …) and on and on. Standard issue politicking, yes.

39

[QUOTE=John Mace]
How many college students pay $4000 in federal income taxes? You’d need that in order to take advantage of a tax credit. Am I missing something?
[/QUOTE]

I think so. Tax credits aren’t like deductions - they don’t offset taxes or reduce your tax burden. They raise your net income by providing a payment to you through the tax system, presumably for behavior the government wants to encourage or a social welfare benefit it needs to provide.

In any case, I’m all for volunteerism, but this sort of thing goes too far in my mind. And Obama, who basically made a living for years helping various churches and charitable groups do their various volunteer work, ought to understand government’s necessarily limited role in this sort of endeavor.

40

[QUOTE=Frank]
As a side note, I’m a bit amused at the people working themselves into a tizzy asking, “How are we going to PAY for all this?” who never asked that question about the money pit over in Iraq.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I can’t speak for the rest of those working themselves into a tizzy about it, but from my perspective A) I DID worry about how Bush was going to pay for this, and became more worried as we sank deeper into the quagmire and B) Obama STILL has to pay for the Iraq war (and Afghanistan) AS WELL AS all this new stuff.

So, even assuming there are any around here who were unconcerned about how Bush would magically pay for this (and to be honest I think the only ‘conservatives’ left in these parts are of the libertarian type…so you would be preaching to the choir on this), it’s a valid concern to ask how Obama plans to pay not only for Bush’s fuckups but for a bunch of new magical unicorns to. No?

-XT