A Version Of Obama’s Civilian Service Corps Approved By House

Is the media through giving Obama a free pass? It sure looks like it. That’s good, because there’s stuff coming down the pike that needs to be investigated, and closely scrutinized, and fast.

It’s time someone in the MSM took a good look at Obama’s plans for a volunteer/mandatory Civilian Corps; a version of which was just approved in the US House of Representatives.

WND reports:

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a plan to set up a new “volunteer corps” and consider whether “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people” should be developed.

The legislation also refers to uniforms” that would be worn by the “volunteers” and the “need” for a “public service academy”, a 4-year institution” to “focus on training” future “public sector leaders.” The training, apparently, would occur at “campuses.”

Instead of camps?

The vote yesterday came on H.R. 1388, which reauthorizes through 2014 the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, acts that originally, among other programs, funded the AmeriCorps and the National Senior Service Corps.

It not only reauthorizes the programs, but also includes “new programs and studies” and is expected to be funded with an allocation of $6 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many, however, are raising concerns that the program, which is intended to include 250,000 “volunteers,” is the beginning of what President Obama called his “National Civilian Security Force” in a a speech last year in which he urged creating an organization as big and well-funded as the U.S. military. He has declined since then to elaborate.

Canada Free Press reports:

The Give Act puts the finishing touches to Public Allies New Leadership for New Times, modeled after Saul Alinsky’s “Peoples Organizations” and operating under Michelle Obama with an alleged operating budget of more than $75-million a year.  According to a Fact Sheet About Public Allies, “President Obama was a member of the founding advisory board of the non-profit organization.

Michelle Obama was the founding Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago from Spring, 1993 until Fall 1996 (italics CFP’s).  She served on Public Allies national board of directors from 1997 until 2002. Obama was no longer on the board when Michelle was hired.

Michelle was also a pioneer in the social entrepreneur movement–leaders who create new approaches and organize to provide new solutions to social problems.

Like most things Saul Alinsky, H.R. 1388 sounds noble in stating why wide-sweeping change is necessary.  “The Give Act” aims to “leverage investments to increase State, local, business and philanthropic resources to address national and local challenges.”

Comprehensive in its power, H.R. 1388 goes straight to the heart of volunteerism in America, impacting everything from the lemonade stands of neighbourhood children, to the residents of senior citizens homes.

So far, the only media to have taken an interest in these disturbing plans have been right wing blogs. First, our ears perked up when we heard Michelle Obama speak these weirdly authoritarian words:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed.”

Then, last summer at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Obama took the occasion to introduce his plan to implement a “National Civilian Security Force”, in which he described an organization “as big and well-funded as the U.S. military”.

Media outlets were so perturbed by Obama’s bizarre words,  they airbrushed them out of the  published transcripts of the speech.

And then, right after he was elected, he raised eyebrows again with this audacious change.gov “Office of the President Elect” website post:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve america, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school, and 100 hours of community service in collge every year.

See? There’s that word, “require”, again, which was eventually scrubbed from the site when an internet uproar ensued.

And who can forget Rahm Emanuel’s words from his 2006 tome, The Plan: Big Ideas for America, which we didn’t hear about until after the election:

It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.

How about not?

Now that a form of this plan has been passed by the House, could we possibly get someone in the media to please take an interest? I suspect most Americans would be creeped out by this. But they have to know about it, first.

MORE:

Republicans Awol On Obamas Expanded Americorps

Obama Organizing For America Volunteer: We Will “Have An Army”

UPDATE:

It’s Ba-ack: Obama’s Mandatory Civic Service Act