Brian T. Schwartz » rant

Obama will “ask us” to serve

Brian — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:18:55 +0000

In his speech at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Barack Obama says he will “ask Americans to serve” and “ask for your service.” But will he ever actually ask? Sure, he can ask for our vote, and there a point where all eligible voters can choose to vote for him or not.

But when will Americans have the choice to serve or not? In his speech he outlines several new government-run tax-funded service programs. But when do we have the choice whether to fund these or not? When does he ask us, and when do we have a chance to say “no”? Or is Obama saying he wants to take our money without asking, and then with it create government programs that give others the opportunity to serve? If so, why doesn’t he say that?

Perhaps this passage explains it:

There is a lesson to be learned from generations who have served – from soldiers and sailors; airmen and Marines; suffragists and freedom riders; teachers and doctors; cops and firefighters. It’s the lesson that in America, each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose.

“We must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose.” Says who? Why? Who determines what this common purpose is, and what “higher” means? What happens to Americans who peacefully refuse to cooperate with this? For example, those who “must” fund the programs Obama suggests? What powers does he grant law enforcement to do to those who do not cooperate?

Here are some selections from his speech:

…I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate – I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program – this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges. …

We need your service, right now, at this moment – our moment – in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course.

And some of his proposals on how to spend taxpayers money without their consent:

As President, I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots, and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their efforts connected to a common purpose….

I will launch a new Social Investment Fund Network. …

We’ll expand USA Freedom Corps …

We’ll call on Americans to join an Energy Corps to conduct renewable energy and environmental cleanup projects in their neighborhoods …

And we’ll also grow our Foreign Service …

We’ll enlist them in our Energy Corps,…we’ll expand the YouthBuild Program

Wow, what a great guy! Dear President, do relieve us of starting our own charities or figuring out which one we should donate to! I mean, one could argue that your programs unfairly compete with these charities, and to remedy that, taxpayers should receive a full tax credit for every dollar they donate to a non-government charity, and a competing government charity loses that dollar.

Sure, voters could hire someone one, like an investment adviser, to advise him how to donate money based on their own personal values and whether the charities actually do a good job. You know, just they do for their financial investments. Similarly, these are investments in non-profits. That is, if they don’t like Charity Navigator or GuideStar’s ratings.

But hey, we don’t want to give taxpayers too much choice, do we? The political ruling class knows that voters cannot handle that. They need to me led, and told how to donate to charity! Even after all they learn in government schools, they cannot handle the responsibility.

But wait, doesn’t Obama mention a tax credit? Yes, he does, but it’s different:

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we’ll require 100 hours of public service. You invest in America, and America invests in you – that’s how we’re going to make sure that college is affordable for every single American, while preparing our nation to compete in the 21st century.

In other words, unless you do 100 hours of public service, the IRS will “ask” you for $4000 in taxes. If you don’t pay, you end up in prison. If you want it back, you must do 100 hours of public service. How is this different from legalized extortion?

Ari Armstrong has similar comments here.

Show some respect Young Americas Foundation:F.A. Hayek is not a conservative!

Brian — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:25:00 +0000

Submitted to their website:

As a former co-chair of the campus group OMF, a market-anarchist student group at the University of Colorado, Boulder, I was quite angered to receive YAF posters in the mail of George W. Bush and Anne Coulter [click here at your own risk, cringe!] is admirable defenders of freedom. I was even more offended (though a bit appreciative I admit but upon further reflection…even more pissed]) when someone truly deserving of this, F.A. Hayek was included.

Surely you’re not the first to hear this, but libertarians are not conservatives! Just because we are not Lefties, were are not conservatives, and nor are we, unlike G.W. Bush, Big Government Conservatives! How can you in good conscience pair Bush with Hayek when Bush has expanded government more than Clinton, and lacks the back bone and principles to veto *any* of the garbage legislation his GOP cronies proposed?!

Why not replace Bush with a poster of Milton Friedman – a true defender of liberty and capitalism? I appreciate your honoring him on your website, but your putting Bush and Coulter on a poster is like spitting in his face.
Please remove me from your mailing list.

Brian Schwartz
———

Post script, not submitted:

And somehow I missed the irony in their including a poster of Hayek in their letter that starts “Thank you for efforts to advance conservative ideas on your campus!” You see, there’s a well-know essay called “Why I am not a Conservative” by…guess who? By one Friedrich August von Hayek! Crazy huh? Here’s an excerpt:

Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments.

Sounds like a pretty good description of what’s going on, huh? Well, he wrote that in The Constitution of Liberty — in 1960!

(For more photos of Hayek, just enter “Hayek” into a Google image search. Woo ah!)

Bag it.

Brian — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 18:20:00 +0000

I was at Trader Joe’s the other day and it was rather crowded. It’s amazing how many people are there on a weekday afternoon. Don’t they have jobs or something? Anyway, the woman in front of me had a fair amount of groceries and was just standing there as the checker scanned the items and the items accumulated by the bags. How could she not bag? I suppose there’s a good argument for that: the store made a decision about how many people would work that shift, and effectively chose to save money on labor at the expense of slower lines and possibly fewer customers. Yet, some reasons for you, as a customer, to bag your own groceries are (1) you get out faster, (2) wouldn’t you want the people in front of you to get out faster?, (3) What else are you doing at that time? (4) For stores like TJ’s that have paper bags with handles, bagging is a spatial relations challenge and the items don’t collapse and spill out as they do with plastic ones. And how can anyone resist that?

I mentioned the above musings to the woman behind me in line, and yes, I felt like Larry David.

That’ll be $1.58. WTF?!

Brian — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 02:06:00 +0000

I bought a book (State of Fear. Yeah, I know, I’m a bad person for even touching this book.) at the local library used book cellar. The books are priced at increments of 50 cents, so you might think the retired ladies (women?) at volunteering there would have it easy making change. But no. The book prices do not include tax. Please. Would it be too difficult to charge 95 cents for a book instead of a dollar? That’s not even the simplest solution. It’s not as if they run inventory on their collection, so they would not even have to change the price tags – just declare that taxes are included in the marked prices. Really. When the lady said $1.58 to me, there must have been a fleeting look of absolute disgust on my face.

Goodness, don’t they realize how much easier their lives would be if they did this? That is, if they simply listened to me? [smiley] OK, maybe I’m missing something. Some arcane county regulation from 1878 on resale books for non-profits that cost less than a cup of coffee. That must be it.

“Turn luggage cart brake to on…”

Brian — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:20:00 +0000

(I hesitate to post this because it’s minutae, but almost surely no one else will comment on this…)
Cringe! I did so each time I heard the pre-recorded warning messages on the AirTrain at the San Francisco International Airport. Even worse was that the previous sentence also ended with “on.” Even the web site above phrases it better: “For your safety, please set the brake once you board an AirTrain car…”. Ah, “set” is much better than “turn to on.” I thought “engage” would work, but perhaps that’s too technical. Thousands of people hear this recording every day, the least SFO could do is make the syntax pleasant.

Graduation Really Achieves Dreams Act

Brian — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:18:00 +0000

S. 676, March 17, 2005: ” This Act may be cited as the `Graduation Really Achieves Dreams Act’ or the `GRAD Act’.” Sigh. Reading this ever-so-contrived title made me laugh inappropriately at work. I was sort of embarrassed. I can hear them now on the Senate floor: “Really, graduation really does achieve dreams!” Earlier today I came across the title of a bill that contained the words “caring” and “children”. Ah, found it, S233, Feb. 1, 2005: “The Caring for Children Act.” Now how can anyone vote against that?

Send in the acronym police!

Brian — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 22:01:00 +0000

Why? Well, H.R. 3700, the “Reducing Immigration to a Genuinely Healthy Total (RIGHT) Act of 2005,” otherwise known as the “RIGHT Act.” Oh dear. I guess the PATRIOT Act is worse. Do bureaucrats hire acronym consultants? That can be a whole job, disturbing as it is.

Tip of the iceberg…

Brian — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:24:38 +0000

Man arrested for tipping Yikes. And hypnosis really changes your mind…skeptical?

Fear This!?

Brian — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:43:14 +0000

A few people, men, I assume, have a sticker across the top of their windshields that say “Fear This!” I don’t get it. Sounds a bit Hobbesian.

Last week I saw John Deer hats and t-shirts on sale in a department store. Apparently the “farmer look” is in among upper-middle-class suburban youth. There at least one web site devoted to this stuff. About ten years ago the “grunge” was in, where again rich kids dressed to look poor, or at least like someone of a different socio-economic class. Actually, this was the subject of my first article published in college. Hmm, my style has mellowed out a bit since then. So, what’s next, the plumber look? We’re almost there with low-cut jeans. How about a black smith?

Found on Geekpress: optical illusion, and a funny but costly error in translation.

Let’s race

Brian — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:50:13 +0000

I was biking home from work the other day, and a two kids, 6 and 9 years old, I’d guess, were riding toward me on “my side” of the street. Amused, I go the the left side, and suddenly they turn around on their tiny bikes, and say “Let’s race.” So we did, until I turned off to my driveway. Perhaps they were inspired by the Tour de France. In any case, it was nice; especially because my street has many immigrants from Mexico, and I suppose there are some cultural/language barriers, among the adults, at least.

How about this article about how the 9/11 hijackers passed through airport “security.”

Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been known to be associated with al-Qaida since early 1999 by the National Security Agency, and were put on a terrorism watch list on Aug. 24, 2001.

Hmm, if I ran an airline, I might want to know something about my customers, and perhaps not sell tickets to such people? Might that even be something to advertise, along with, of course, pilots and crew who are trained to respond to terrorists with appropriate self-defense skills and tools.