Obama Website Scrubs Mandatory Community Service Call
November 10th, 2008Via: Infowars:
Following a controversy over language that appeared on Barack Obama’s official website suggesting that Americans would be mandated to complete up to 100 hours of community service as part of a national service program, the original text has been memory-holed and replaced with a more sanitized version.
Despite numerous bloggers picking up on the switch, along with screenshots from before and after proving the language was changed, mesmerized Obama supporters are still claiming that that detractors had invented the language and that the website had not been altered.
The text from Obama’s change.gov website, which went online shortly after the election result, originally appeared as follows (emphasis mine).
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 college every year.
The text was changed at some point on Friday afternoon/evening to the following (emphasis mine).
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.
See the two different versions in the following screenshots (click for enlargements).
Related: Comment by anothernut
Well, in fairness to the O-Man, the change is probably an improvement. I doubt anything will come of it in either case. But the part about the mesmerized supporters saying that the website always said what it says now reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984 where the chocolate-ration was raised, and anyone who says it was lowered is a thought criminal and an agent of Goldstien!
To play Devil’s advocate, it sounds like the text was an elaboration rather than redaction of the earlier version, and $40/hour is pretty good. Naturally, the subsidies required to make that work economically will inflate the currency so that, eventually, $40/hour is slightly above minimum wage, but fuck it US taxpayers are already mortgaged to the hilt.
For better or for worse there will be a surge of non-profit activity in the US, think of all those middle and high school kids mandated into providing free labor.
I actually had to deal with something like this when I was doing catechism and later Catholic school, suffice to say I schemed about half the time through nepotic connections (my parents both work in the health-care industrial complex) but the other half was pretty interesting, working in a food pantry and at a nursing home. However, the fact that it was mandated made it somehow spoiled. I’m going to visit some kids in a burn unit with my girlfriend later this week because I want to, there’s a non-trivial difference there.
Welcome back to what the Democrats do best: triangulate so much that they never have the courage to see anything through. God forbid some focus-group finds something objectionable about one of their initiatives. Oh well, we shouldn’t expect too much from Good Cop, after all.