From the desk of the Scriptorium
May I see a show of hands…..How many recall the early days of the Obama presidency and he called for a Civilian Response Corps?…..volunteers in service to America, if you will….if you recall then you will also recall that some on the Right were calling this the attempt to take over the US by organizing an army that is indoctrinated in “socialism” or Fascism or whatever other pipe dream they had at the time…..any way, the CRC was a group of volunteers that would be first responders to problems across the world, the volunteers would come from many different agencies and would provide “expert” assistance. It was a big deal on Right nutcase radio for awhile, Limbaugh, Beck, Bachmann and the rest of the pea brains…..
And then nothing…it has gone silent…..
Before Obama’s CRC there was Clinton’s AmeriCorps which was put together to assist in education to environmental clean up…..GW Bush even went along for the ride and the program was expanding by 50%.
Okay, enough of the history lesson…where are you going with this, Professor?
Why have not the “volunteers” been used in the clean up? Presidents have called on Americans to volunteer in service to the country, but yet NOTHING concerning the spill. Why? We are asked to donate to every situation that crosses the wire…it is Summer…school is out….why not ask Americans to do their part and volunteer in the Coast region?
What happened to the “Case for National Service”?
Obama’s position has considerable support. Last year Time magazine profiled the calls of a number of prominent Democrats in a cover story, “The Case for National Service,” supporting a plan to mandate universal service and establishing a cabinet-level Department of National Service. The plan envisioned 419,000 jobs annually for young people between the ages of 18-25 doing one year of “national or military service.”
What happened to this “plan”? It is like all other ideas that come out at election time….once said, soon forgotten…..and you wonder why I have little use for today’s politicians?
The pundits want jobs…then use the “volunteers” to assist in the clean-up in the Gulf….granted it would be temp jobs but at least people could feed their families….
BTW, there is a phone scam going on asking for donations to assist in the oil spill clean-up…..sick bastards!
Scriptorium:
If you want to volunteer to help clean up the oil, no one is stopping you, so what are you waiting for? It makes me wonder if possibly you are more concerned with forcing others to do this work than in actually seeing the oil cleaned up? It’s just a thought.
You also seem to have misunderstood the term “volunteer”. In the context you are discussing, this means to donate one’s time, energy or capital to a cause. But you make it clear that you are not talking about volunteers, but instead are speaking of government employees — paid with tax dollars taken from other productive people. Calling these people — like those paid through all the agencies of the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps, etc.) — volunteers is the same as calling every employee who gets up each day and goes to their chosen job a volunteer. In other words, it is a perversion of the English language, done by the government as a form of double-speak, in order to conceal the true agenda from those who refuse to think.
Of course, as your quote above indicates, Obama’s true agenda has nothing at all to do with volunteerism. Instead, he seeks to actually create a mandatory national service requirement for all citizens, making them literal slaves to the state, forced, against their will, to perform government-mandated work as a requirement of merely existing. Yes, it’s a real shame that he hasn’t yet acquired the totalitarian authority required to impose this upon all of his subjects. But hang in there. He has been working tirelessly to totally invalidate the Constitution, and concentrate unlimited poser in the hands of the presidency. And if he does manage to succeed, then you may once again finally have some use for your politicians. Of course, it’s going to be the other way around; it they who will have a use for you ….
In the meantime, you might consider Venezuela. Today, they are much closer to the worker’s paradise that Obama only dreams of.
For an alternative view to those expressed in this article, see:
http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/
Regards,
—
C. Jeffery Small
Thanx for the visit Mr. Small……I live on the Gulf Coast I want the spill to go away and go away soon……I do not see any good playing politics right now…afterwords I do not care……my point was that people keep bitching that not enough is being done….organizations like VISTA and the jobs created by some vague corp0s could go to helping the situation….as far as what Obama is doing to the country……about the same as every president since Eisenhower…..
And when was the last time you heard of one of these “bright ideas” that was put forward at election time actually being implimented?
This football is too big for politicians to just stop playing with it. Instead of solutions, they have given us rhetoric from the WH on down. They all want to point-fingers, and then act as if they are problem-solvers, yet problems don’t get solved in the blame-game. If I lived nearby, I’d call down to any organization that would have me for the little time I could spare, even if it was to stand as a flagger to direct trucks or something. But this is why I would make a terrible politician… I believe actions speak louder than words.
Hi LOUDelf nice to see you again….I agree with you and we do….we try to do as much as they will let us…..BP has this code that we must live by….and they make it seem like they do NOT want our help…..
This is the joyous mixture of politicians, lawyers, and PR. If BP allows volunteers to come and “save the day”, then they look bad in the eyes of the world for not cleaning up their own mess. Bigger loss for BP than they already have. If they sanction volunteers, they are then liable for them in most cases — something that may cause mass lawyer-immigration to the area. The politicians would have a field day as none of them are results-focused, and getting a quick and efficient result would ruin their games.
It’s a quagmire within a mess within a disaster. It’s a true lose-lose, but somehow BP and the pols will emerge from this largely unscathed in the long-run. I can’t imagine how the region can rebound (AGAIN).
It will be difficult to rebound….where I live we were a bit more fortunate than others…the shape of Louisana has limited our exposure so far…but it will not be permanent…..Hell BP is losing paperwork…..losing checks, etc….all the stall tactics….and the lawyers…they are jerking off in the corner and drooling…..