Did Thompson, Childers, Taylor vote for mandatory public service?

Justin Head writes "The new volunteerism" in The Daily Mississippian.

Things could really start getting interesting in Washington with the passage of HR 1388 by the House of Representatives. If there ever was cause for alarm in the minds of young people, this should be it. The name alone is yet another misleading government acronym created specifically for the purpose of confusion on the bill’s actual implications. Deviously entitled the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act, this legislation vastly expands on AmeriCorps. It is estimated to cost $6 billion over five years and increase the current national volunteer program by 175,000.

Of course, to call this “volunteerism” is a misnomer. Current AmeriCorps volunteers typically receive college scholarships and stipends after completing one of the programs. This idea of government funding and rewarding acts of charity runs contrary to the idea of charity and places morality in the hands of government while taking away private incentives to give back to their communities. The government will pick which areas they believe are in need of the most help, and all “volunteers” will go to work. This, of course, feeds off the idea government has a better understanding of what is best for a local community than the community itself. Not to mention, this is yet another form of criminality on the part of the American government.

The bill creates what is known as a Congressional Commission on Civil Service. This commission will, among several topics, explore, “whether a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the nation.”

The bill creates a commission to explore the feasibility of implementing mandatory social service, otherwise known as slavery.

And yes, Barack Obama is very much in support of this bill. It is scary to read his comments made last July at a campaign rally where he stated, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.
We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” Just what national security objectives has this man set? According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), American military expenditures in 2007 made up 45 percent of the entire world’s military expenses. The U.K. came in second making up only 5 percent. This is not to mention that our military expenditures have obviously grown since then.

We have the world’s largest military establishment with military bases in over 140 counties and combined troop totals of over 2.5 million worldwide. In 2007, the military budget far exceeded $500 billion and has since grown.

This makes me wonder how we are unable to meet national security objectives when our government spends more than nearly every other country in the world combined on defense. And how does Obama propose to match the funding of the military on this national security force of slaves?

I would also like to point out that Bennie Thompson, Travis Childers and Gene Taylor all voted for this bill.