Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
President Bush doesn’t want Americans to do anything besides go shopping. But President Clinton would ask more of Americans. Senator Hillary Clinton has announced her plan to form a national Public Service Academy: “Modeled after the military service academies, the Public Service Academy would provide a four-year, federally subsidized college education for more than 5,000 students a year in exchange for a five-year commitment to public service following graduation. Graduates of the Academy would serve their country for five years, creating a new generation of young people dedicated to public service.” We could have a new, even greater Greatest Generation if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
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April 16th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Rusty, I’m delighted you have recognized how important the creation of the U.S. Public Service Academy will be to this country. I firmly believe the Academy will be a defining American institution of our generation. As co-founder of the U.S. Public Service Academy, I encourage you and the readers of your blog to learn more about what we are trying to accomplish. Please visit our website — www.uspublicserviceacademy.org — and if you like what you see sign our on-line petition. If you or any of your readers would liket o direct any questions to me, please email me at sraymond@susmangodfrey.com
Shawn Raymond
Co-Founder, U.S. Public Service Academy.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I see none of my senators has signed on to the bill, and neither has my rep and probably for good reason. Our state has several universities that offer graduate and undergraduate degrees in public adminstration, one of them among the top ten in the nation. Need-based financial aid is available at these schools, and the salaries of civil service positions are generally adequate to repay student loans.
There is no shortage of people applying for government service positions. However, the number of available government positions has dropped dramatically. This occurred in the years of the Clinton White House, when about half of all federal positions were eliminated and replaced by outsourcing to private entities. This was called the National Performance Review (NPR) and was a project of Al Gore.
Where will Clinton find the government positions to place all these graduates who will be working for free? Will paid government employees who graduated from state schools and are being paid a salary and repaying their student loans be bumped to provide room for these volunteers? And what happens to the volunteers when their five years is up? Do they then get dumped to make room for more people who will work for free? I wonder how AFSCME feels about this–I can’t imagine any of the unions representing the current employees would be pleased.
This proposal does nothing to strengthen government service, to provide different regions with qualified employees, to support our national state university infrastructure or to provide Americans with fair-wage jobs. The only benefit will be to whatever community the institution chooses to locate in and to the people who control the patronage to its free tuition.
Does anyone smell pork?
April 27th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Rusty didn’t reply to this one either.
August 5th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Unfortunately, I do believe that the purpose of such an animal as the Academy would be to inculcate its patrons with certain “values” that they would spread to the society at large. These values, however, may not be those that the society in general ascribes to. It would be like a manufacturing line for a certain type of public servant in which the appropriate ideals (think population control, neo-darwinism, social darwinism, Keynesian economics or its more contemporary hybrids, whatever they may be) would be inserted into the minds of the unsuspecting participants. Young minds are so malleable! Especially those that see a career course in front of them and are shown what they need to do to make it work. Wow, what an idea!
August 6th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I’m not entirely sure we could count on any specific variety of indoctrination, but I’d bet this would become a hotbed for all kinds of half-baked ideological brain children and ill-conceived educational reforms.
Even if it started up OK, a change in power at the top would leave this federal academy wide open to some kind of Kucinichean granolification, or a purge based on a Gingrichian blacklist of “anti-American” academics.
I pity the poor young people trying to milk a quality education out of a political hot potato. Good luck to them if it happens.
August 19th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I served time in Hillary’s Gulag, so you don’t have to. Hillary enacted the USPSA, twelve years ago this month. The Duke lacrosse team fiasco shows that liberal educators have created a phony cultural paradigm that distorts reality. And, nobody exploits a phony paradigm, obfuscates the truth, or games the system like the Clintons.
I Got Your Public Service Academy; Right Here:
Set the Wayback Machine for 23 August 1995: a hot day in the nation’s capitol. But 3000 miles due west on California’s Central Coast, a constellation of events was unfolding that would have a profound effect on Western civilization; plunge it into war. Yet, this cataclysmic upheaval was only part of the plan. Bill Clinton picked up the telephone. It was his Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, calling from a payphone in Monterey. Bill held the receiver at arms length and gazed at the tasteful floral arrangement that adorned the Oval Office. Leon’s disembodied voice filled the room. What now, asked Hillary. It’s that damn college, mouthed Bill. There was, no getting out. Hillary nodded, just tell Leon he’ll get whatever he needs: http://theseedsof9-11.com