Permanent link for article #0030:
10-01-2009

Permalink
Subject: Volunteerism ... For Credit and Money!

From Raleigh, NC comes the story: Wake Tech launches effort to promote volunteerism, where:
    "Wake Technical Community College launched a new program today that will encourage volunteerism and community service. The Volunteer and Service-Learning Program will coordinate service opportunities for Wake Tech students, staff, faculty, and others to address critical needs in the community."

OK, so the students are volunteering their time right? But wait, there's more:
    "As a member of the NC Campus Compact (http://www.compact.org), Wake Tech has been assigned an AmeriCorps volunteer who will help launch the program. The goal is to provide academic credit for students who participate in service-learning opportunities. Six North Carolina community colleges are members of the NC Campus Compact. Across the country, 60% of community colleges offer service-learning programs." [Emphasis added]

So let me see if I've got this straight. AmeriCorp personnel who are undoubtedly getting a salary at taxpayer expense from the $6,000,000,000 that the Obama administration just pumped into this sector, are called "volunteers". And college students who participate in "service-learning programs" and receive college credit are also "volunteers", with the entire process being one to "promote volunteerism". Yeah, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now. This is volunteerism, the same way that the IRS claims that the American tax system is voluntary. As The Future of Freedom Foundation reports:
    "For years, the IRS has proclaimed that the great virtue of America's tax system is that it's voluntary. How does the IRS define "voluntary"? It says that the tax is voluntary because everyone computes his own income tax liability and sends the amount owed to the government. In other words, if the government calculated the tax liability for the citizenry, the tax would be involuntary. But since the people themselves are permitted to compute the liability, the tax is voluntary.

    One can only wonder, of course, how many public-school-trained Americans believe this nonsense.    "

Well, I think the answer to that last question is pretty much resolved by Wake Tech and the in-depth investigative reporting done by The Apex Herald Newspaper reporting on that story. Apparently, just about all of them!
For the most recent articles, see the Home page.