I knew it! We’ve been calling him a fascist for years!
Smash the state!
BTW I screwed up the quote tag in Post #55 - the second quote is Sam Stone’s, not mine. If someone could fix it now that the edit window has expired, I’d appreciate it.
And yet (again) your proferred quotes includes no “or else” for the actual service. Yes, an “or else” that schools have programs that make such service easier to do and that encourages it, but no “Help out - or else.”
As a kid, I didn’t do any public service. However, I did work in a grocery store after hours, working 25 hour weeks in addition to going to school, to help the family pay the bills. Does that make me a worse person than the rich kid who didn’t need a job, but who’s family had him serve soup in a shelter once a week?
Americans work more than people in most other 1st world countries. They take fewer vacations. Is that somehow less noble than living in a country where the government mandates a 30 hour work week and six weeks of vacation, but where people put in 100 hours a year of service to the state?
Come on guys…
If you’re arguing that the money currently being spent in the wars could be redirected to this program, great. See many prior posts that address that point.
But, really, the blatant Bush bashing is getting tired…
By the way, does anyone have any ideas on how to address the issue of how this will impact the national private labor market? Or the corruption that will surely arise when the public service hours are distributed?
And, would you also support a plan to use prisoners in unpaid “public service”?
Sam, when did it become a mandated 300 hours? And, despite all your “ifs”, this is nowhere close to the withholding of citizenship. And… and… What Eva Luna said first.
(Damn. Slow reload.)
Our school district requires a certain amount of community service every year. If they’ve been graduating zombies, I haven’t noticed. It can be in the schools or in the community. When I was organizing activities for gifted kids in the district it was much easier to get my kids’ friends to help since this counted. My daughter raising a guide dog counted also.
He’s not talking about assigning kids to work. I suspect just about any nonprofit can qualify, even church ones. I don’t quite get how working in a food bank, for instance, is service to the state.
As for summer jobs, they are almost impossible to get around here this summer. I don’t think summer service jobs are going to hurt businesses. Plus, the money will help to cut the indebtedness of students when they leave college, which will make their lives easier and allow them to spend more when they get jobs.
You also might be underestimating the kids. I understand that Teach for America is so popular that it is hard to get selected.
As for adult service, maybe he thinks that things are going to get so bad that we need another WPA.
In the course of providing ‘service opportunities’ (as a 501c3 charity) I’ve met a bunch of kids who had no economic need for an after school job. I’ve also met many whose economic situation required major sacrifices of their personal time to help support their families.
Not one was harmed by their unpaid service. Virtually every one was proud of their accomplishment afterward. All offered their own evaluation of it as “personally valuable” to them.
But none of them would have done it were it not a requirement.
Such is the reality of choice, freedom, and personal growth. We rarely choose that which is objectively best for us, if it requires an expenditure of effort and if it can be avoided. But having expended the effort, we are in fact the better for the experience. And so is our society.
To me, it just sounds like he wants to channel JFK as much as he can. At the same time, he wants to stay true to the “change” message so he had to overdo it. Also, he needs to project strength to hide the fact that he’s a lightweight in so many ways.
That’s my take, too. I’m always skeptical of these promises that candidates make and whether they’ll actually be able to implement them or not. The only thing to keep in mind is that Obama might have a very friendly Congress, depending on how badly the Republicans do in Senate races this fall. I would not like to see the Dems get a 60 set majority in the Senate.
You say it so much better than I ever could! 
I don’t know about “noble”, but less admirable? Sure, IMO. Even to be pitied.
IMHO, this whole thing smacks of desperation on the part of Sam and the wingnut bloggers that he’s been linking to. National service is a good symbolic issue at best, a third-tier issue from a practical standpoint, and there ain’t much ‘there’ there in Sam’s and the bloggers’ main talking points: that this is somehow compulsory or semi-compulsory service (which is a blatant twisting of words: there are real disincentives if schools don’t participate, but no consequences if people don’t.
And the major talking point is the whole “as well-funded as the military” bit, which can be inferred from Obama’s words, but still isn’t what he said in so many words. And judging by the absence of those words from the transcript, it evidently wasn’t what he meant. Yet Sam is desperately trying to pin those words to Obama, as if it meant something.
If that’s the best you’ve got, Sam, you might should just throw in the towel now.
What isn’t noble is the absence of any paid-vacation or paid sick leave requirement at all in the United States. Like universal health care, it’s the sort of thing we should have had decades ago, but still don’t.
It isn’t like most Americans work as much as they do by choice.
I pity us. I want a 30-hour work week!
The individuals who voluntarily push themselves to achieve a goal of their own choice; they’re admirable and noble. But there’s nothing noble whatsoever in somebody requiring their employees to work long and hard hours - and there’s not even anything noble in acceeding to the order under the implied threat of losing your job.
Yes.
He has realized the “New JFK” mantle that the public has bestowed on him, and he ran with it, and now he’s getting way too full of himself and over his head. And he’s only just getting started. People have egos, all of us - even politicians, believe it or not. And his ego is telling him, “you’re the public’s darling and the media’s darling, everyone loves you, anything you say is going to be celestial music.” And he’s letting it get to his head, and my speculation is that he’s just going to keep making more outlandish pronouncements like this one - flush with his success among the youth and their rabid enthusiasm for his cult-like mantra of “change” - and in the process, only hurt his own chances of getting elected.
Gee, no matter how calmly and soothingly he talks, some people always hear the dread crunch of liberal jackboots, drawing ever nearer, ever nearer… Heck, we can probably employ thousand upon thousands of college kids, just in the “rounding up all your guns” phase!
(Somebody with Master Po-level Google-fu: find hysterical conservative reactions to JFK’s Peace Corps advocacy, bound to be there. Fetch!)
But seriously, folks…I’m in favor of initiatives just generally that have the intent to get more people more education. A better educated citizenry is the best possible investment.
Ah, but – and I’m surprised nobody has brought this up – what if this initiative is in part a way to get favor from the churches and charitable groups, by proposing a program that will incentivize participation in them?
I’m a Dem and I’m cool with incentivizing service, but the man is being a trifle overenthusiastic, I think. He’s got to be careful that when inevitably what gets passed is well short of this, it doesn’t look like the promise was empty.
Well, I personally find the whole idea of forced “volunteerism” to be dishonest, unethical, and probably destructive regardless of who proposes it. In my eyes, it undercuts the whole idea of volunteerism by associating it with coercion. It will likely undercut the labor market lowering wages, much like prison labor. Schemes like this show contempt for young people, rubbing their faces in the fact that they are regarded as inferior, as exploitable assets - the government isn’t demanding that 40 year olds be forced to “volunteer”, after all. In fact, it treats them rather like criminals, who are also used for coerced labor.
And, the end result is likely to be a huge number of people doing inferior work; draftees are seldom as good as actual volunteers, because they actually care about success, instead of being indifferent or outright hostile.
Four years in the army taught me a healthy hatred of people who try to do things to me “for my own good.”
We can volunteer if we please, when we please, and how we please, and I’ll thank the government to keep its grubby hands out of what we do on our off time.
I mean, Jesus, look at the government! Look at the government’s track record over the last, ohhhh 25 years or so. Is this the institution that’s going to take the children of America and show them the true path? I’d sooner trust our starry-eyed youth to the schizoid homeless crack dealer on my corner (I live in a **great ** neighborhood). At least that guy knows what it’s like to work in the real world. I mean the real world he sees once he filters out visions of the midget army trying to steal his dogshit collection.
You know, it’s not that the Republican plan of action makes a lot of sense. It just makes more sense than this crap.