I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
"We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."
-Mao Tse-tung
Talking Points for the campaign:
What He Said v. What He Did
"But what is certain is that a generation that was beginning to engage with government, with citizenship and service, will be abandoned, and will be given good reason to shrug back into an easy and familiar, "Well, what did you expect?" sort of cynicism. In fact, the best and most idealistic members of this generation are the ones who will feel most betrayed."
Wasn't that the whole point of gutting the program? Not only is it a thumb in the eye of the Clinton legacy, but it's extremely effective at making sure that young community-minded activists check out of the system altogether.
The $100 million infusion needed by Americor is 4.2 hrs. of continuing operations in Iraq.
What He Said v. What He Did
The site needs considerable expansion.
Indeed. Any remaining Kennedyesque idealism surrounding the idea of public service has been destroyed by the unremitting anti-government propaganda of the past 20 years. As cutbacks make government less able to provide decent services, the public decides that inept public employees are the problem, which leads to demands for further cutbacks and an increased inability to hire the best and brightest. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the entire government is either privatized or Christianized.
Could the intent be to steer them toward the military? Fresh bodies will be needed for our global expansion, you know.
There's something nice here - if they kill it we can run on it again.
It's a very nice piece of a Dem message. Go ahead, Republicans, kill or maim it. We'll bring it back.
The $100 million infusion needed by Americor is 4.2 hrs. of continuing operations in Iraq.
Yes, but Americorps doesn't offer fresh sacrifices to Cthulhu.
"Could the intent be to steer them toward the military?"
More probably toward college right-wing think tanks. That's one of the few growth industries this country has left.
Everybody go look at the site The Brewmaster links to upthread. Bloggers, spread that stuff all over the internet. Commentors, link to it constantly.
One of the principle lessons I learned as a labor organizer is that the employer is the best organizer. Let's use Bush to defeat Bush.
"More probably toward college right-wing think tanks."
Or toward religious charities, which, one suspects, are the only Patriotically Correct ™ outlet for volunteerism according to CLC philosophy.
"The $100 million infusion needed by Americor is 4.2 hrs. of continuing operations in Iraq."
Bob- I think that "X hrs. of continuing operations" in Iraq should become the standard unit for assessing all the slashed domestic programs used by liberal pundits and democratic presidential hopefuls. The Bush administration and the Rethuglicans need to have their noses rubbed into the Iraqi doo-doo they've put us into as much as possible. Assessing the costs in terms of what we're despirately needing at home is a good way to do it.
Well, once they bring back the draft the definition of service can be expanded...
Anecdotal: I know three people who were in Teach For America. One of them taught in Louisiana, as in this article, and quit in disgust; he felt the program was being used by corrupt and racist local school boards to skirt the need to make real improvements to their shabby districts. Who knows.
The other two were these white women teaching in South Central L.A. who told me that their middle school students were never going to get anywhere until they realized that "at some point you need to get over slavery." I wasn't impressed...
Hey, I was actually IN TFA for a while before I quit, and let me tell you: this program is a sham, a fraud, a hypocritical organization bent on projecting a shiny happy do-gooder image to hide the ugly reality. We trained in a hellhole of a dorm in Houston Texas, july 2001, and it was the worst month of my life. total chaos, no one knows what the hell is going on, meanwhile the spokespeople of TFA are giving glib 'idealistic' talking points to the local paper. The supposed (one-month, ha)'training' you get to be a teacher was laugable and non-existent. The teachers-in-training are treated with contempt by everyone, and I was sexually harassed by a 'mentor teacher' while there. I know it seems like such a good happy idea, that's why I did it, but this program really does nothing for the underpriveleged it claims to care so much about. It is BULLSHIT. If you know anyone who is thinking about doing this program, urge them to reconsider.
Americorps is a Clinton thing. Therfore, it must be destroyed at any cost.
I don't know about "Teach For America" as such but I know that here, Americorps funds the New York City Teaching Fellows, a nifty program designed for people who are coming into teaching as a career change. It tends to turn out very good teachers--intelligent, grown-up people with real-world experiences who are there because they actually want to teach. (You don't have to be from NYC to apply, BTW.) It's not very pricey either--the fellows train during the summer for a $2000 stipend, get into classrooms in the fall (while the B-of-E pays their salaries, like other teachers), during which they are supposed to be working on their Masters o' Ed for which there's a grant of $2 - 3000 for tuition.
One of those social programs that does just what it sets out to do, fills a real need for all participants, doesn't take much money and what money it gets isn't wasted--the fellows work hard and the administrators are mostly teachers themselves.
So naturally they don't know if they're getting funded.
* * *
And Alan's right--if Clinton had declared that he liked apples, Bush and his cronies would find an excuse to defoliate all the apple orchards.
Gee, do you think Eggers' op-ed piece had something to do with the fact that the paperback release of "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" has been a complete and total bomb?
Clinton sold the program in '92 as a way for EVERYBODY'S KIDS to go to college and get the federal government to pay for it in return for doing some idealistic, inspiring kind of work. It was always a sham. I remember watching the middle-aged middle-class folks faces as they listened to candidate Clinton pitch "National Service." They loved the idea; it was the answer to THEIR problem which was how to pay for college for THEIR kids.
It costs like $30,000 to create each National Service position and the positions cannot replace an existing federal job, it is all expense and it was always going to be a small program for a small number of people and the middle-class middle-aged folks should never have been pitched about it like it was something important to them.
Their is no political support for Americorps if politicians are truthful about it.
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