{"id":5865,"date":"2013-07-18T09:12:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T13:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=5865"},"modified":"2013-07-18T09:13:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T13:13:05","slug":"wash-times-americorps-national-service-charade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/18\/wash-times-americorps-national-service-charade\/","title":{"rendered":"Wash. Times: AmeriCorps&#8217; National Service Charade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/image-Wash-Times-b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-5866\" alt=\"image Wash Times b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998\" src=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/image-Wash-Times-b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998-513x800.jpg\" width=\"359\" height=\"560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/image-Wash-Times-b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998-513x800.jpg 513w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/image-Wash-Times-b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998-96x150.jpg 96w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/image-Wash-Times-b1-bovard-222ah_s640x998.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 359px) 100vw, 359px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2013\/jul\/18\/americorps-national-service-charade\/\">Washington Times<\/a>, July 18, 2013<br \/>\n<strong>BOVARD: AmeriCorps\u2019 national service charade<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Paying youths to push big government makes a mockery of volunteerism<\/p>\n<p>by James Bovard<\/p>\n<p>At a White House ceremony Monday, President Obama announced a Task Force on Expanding National Service. He is jumping onto a popular bandwagon: Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson recently promised that \u201cNational Service can heal a divided nation,\u201d while a Politico headline promised that \u201cNational Service is Key to National Strength.\u201d A Time magazine cover story urging compulsory service for all young people approvingly quoted a retired Air Force veteran: \u201cThere isn\u2019t an 18-year-old boy who doesn\u2019t need to get his butt kicked by someone in a position of complete authority.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Mr. Obama and many other service advocates, AmeriCorps \u2014 the federal program created by President Clinton in 1994 \u2014 is the epitome of idealism. One of Mr. Obama\u2019s first legislative successes was the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, which authorized tripling the number of AmeriCorps recruits to 250,000. The president hailed AmeriCorps for embodying \u201cthe best of our nation\u2019s history, diversity and commitment to service.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, AmeriCorps is fashionable largely because it puts a benevolent sheen on government action. Some of its 80,000 members have truly helped people they encountered, but most AmeriCorps programs resemble busywork with messianic pretensions.<\/p>\n<p>AmeriCorps is beating the bushes to recruit more handout recipients. In Washington state, WithinReach AmeriCorps members sway low-income residents to accept food aid, Medicaid and subsidies for their utility bills. A Columbus, Ohio, program specifically requires AmeriCorps members to sign up at least 75 households for food stamps. Hunger Free Colorado brags that its AmeriCorps recruits are \u201cvital\u201d in efforts to \u201cincrease participation\u201d in food stamps and \u201cto ensure [recipients] do not fall off of the programs once enrolled.\u201d While many AmeriCorps programs implore people to accept more free food, AmeriCorps also bankrolls FoodCorps in the same locales (officially labeled \u201chigh-obesity communities\u201d) to plant astonishingly inefficient school gardens and harangue people to reform their diets.<\/p>\n<p>AmeriCorps set a goal for itself in 1997 of \u201ceffective education and literacy for every child\u201d in the nation. The agency then apparently decided that reading to children was \u201cclose enough for government work\u201d to teaching children how to read. AmeriCorps members recently visited elementary schools across Montana to read a short story about Martin Luther King Jr. \u201cAfter hearing the story, the kids draw, color and imagine what peace looks like to them,\u201d the Great Falls Tribune reported. Puppet shows with environmentaladmonitions are another favorite AmeriCorps shtick.<\/p>\n<p>While Mr. Obama boasts that AmeriCorps members \u201cconnect deeds to needs,\u201d many of its projects spawn little more than sanctimony. The president recently met an AmeriCorps recruit serving with Playworks, which brings \u201csafe and inclusive play to all students\u201d in elementary schools via \u201chaving grown-ups play alongside of children\u201d to add \u201can important element of silliness and shared humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Obama and many other liberals would like to see AmeriCorps-type programs vastly expanded, but the dirty little secret is that AmeriCorps recruits sometimes have little or nothing to do. Nicole Patterson, who received a Congressional Bronze Medal for Community Service, vented in an online blog headlined \u201cTen Reasons to Cut AmeriCorps\u201c: \u201cI spent six weeks playing Scrabble and kickball for America. I spent another two months sitting in a tool shed for America. We annoyed more people than we ever helped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last summer, in a piece featured on the Huffington Post, Olga Rodriguez caterwauled that serving in AmeriCorps was destroying her work ethic. She admitted taking lengthy breaks in the middle of the day for \u201cpower yoga\u201d and spending much of her time doing nothing or applying for better jobs. A 2011 inspector general report found that AmeriCorps members in a large program run by the New York City mayor\u2019s office \u201cwere told to work from home with no substantial assignments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Mr. Obama signed legislation expanding AmeriCorps in 2009, he promised that \u201cwe will measure our progress not just in number of hours served or volunteers mobilized.\u201d The program has continued relying on Soviet-style accounting to gin up bragging points, though. The Government Accountability Office slammed the agency in 2000 for making no effort to gauge AmeriCorps\u2018 impact on purported beneficiaries. In 2010, GAO again condemned the agency for using performance measurements that \u201cdo not demonstrate results\u201d and are \u201cpoorly aligned\u201d with stated goals. GAO noted that AmeriCorps made little or no effort to \u201ctest the accuracy of performance data submitted by grantees\u201d and that \u201cnone of the measures\u201d AmeriCorps uses measures \u201cthe quality of service provided\u201d by its programs.<\/p>\n<p>In his Monday announcement, Mr. Obama ordered federal agencies to \u201cdevelop a mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of national service and volunteering interventions.\u201d However, there is no reason to expect more substantive results from this edict than from earlier attempts to compel AmeriCorps to justify its existence.<\/p>\n<p>AmeriCorps is little more than social work tinged with messianic delusions. Its impact is negligible compared with that of scores of millions of Americans who don\u2019t need federal bribes to do good deeds. Abolishing AmeriCorps would be a small step toward recognizing the principle that politicians do not have a divine right so spend Americans\u2019 paychecks as they please.<\/p>\n<p>Tagline: James Bovard is the author most recently of an e-book memoir, \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Public-Policy-Hooligan-Rollicking-ebook\/dp\/B00AKZH97W\/ref=cm_rdp_product\">Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(Sixth Street Books, 2012).<\/p>\n<p>[thanks to Alexander Hunter for the great art work!]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Times, July 18, 2013 BOVARD: AmeriCorps\u2019 national service charade Paying youths to push big government makes a mockery of volunteerism by James Bovard At a White House ceremony Monday, President Obama announced a Task Force on Expanding National Service. He is jumping onto a popular bandwagon: Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson recently promised that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[40,670,274,27,275,669,38,165,151],"class_list":{"0":"post-5865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"tag-americorps","9":"tag-buffoonery","10":"tag-lying","11":"tag-national-service","12":"tag-obama","14":"tag-paternalism","15":"tag-waste"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wash. 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Times: AmeriCorps&#8217; National Service Charade"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/","name":"James Bovard","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f","name":"Jim","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Jim"},"description":"Bovard's homepage is at http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5865"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5873,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5865\/revisions\/5873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}