To GIVE and To SERVE: The $6 Billion National Service Boondoggle

Townhall.com ^ | March 25, 25, 2009 | Michelle Malkin

[Islander7]

Obey the Rules!

Y'all need to get with the program!

[Islander7]

“...A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle...”

Calm down.

Read the line above. It applies to those in the Mandatory Volunteer Service org. Not your ordinary keyboard warriors like you and me.

Of course, this is subject to change as time passes. This will have to be watched carefully.

[anglian]

Look Who Supports Americorps
by Michelle Malkin (January 20, 2001)
Where have all the fiscal conservatives gone? Have these Republicans forgotten the countless examples of AmeriCorps-sponsored projects that paid participants to lobby for left-wing causes? Like the tax-subsidized AmeriCorps volunteers who lobbied against the voter-approved California initiative to put violent criminals in prison for life after a third violent crime. Or the recruits who showed their community spirit by disrupting Republican political events while working for the liberal advocacy group, ACORN.

Or the AmeriCorps foot soldiers who pressed for rent control, expanded federal housing subsidies, and enrollment of more women in the Women, Infants, and Children welfare program. Or the AmeriCorps enrollees who distributed low-flush toilets as part of a government campaign.

What about the millions of dollars that were wasted during the program’s first three years, when nearly 3,000 recruits were sent to do busy work for bureaucrats at the Department of Justice, the Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Legal Services Corporation, and the National Endowment for the Arts?

Citizens Against Government Waste, the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, has vigilantly tracked such stomach-churning examples since AmeriCorps’ inception. In a recent report, the group concluded that Clinton’s pet cause “has become a showcase for the waste, abuse and cynical political manipulation inherent in many federally subsidized civic enterprises.” Both private and public investigators have deemed AmeriCorps’ financial books “unauditable.” AmeriCorps’ own inspector general documented cases in which recruits received grants for working at McDonald’s, not working at all, and while incarcerated in prison. Nearly half of the participants drop out before their service term is over.

Nevertheless, government spending on AmeriCorps is up 248 percent since its creation. And there’s no end in sight.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=155