Rahm Emanuel is widely rumored to be Barack Obama’s choice for White House Chief of Staff. As a Chicagoan, I’ve seen a fair amount of news coverage of this local congressman. The picture that emerges is remarkably consistent: very smart, very substantive, and very partisan – as one person put it, a man with a sharp mind and sharp elbows.
I doubt that Obama could find a more competent chief of staff, someone who would be part administrative director, part policy wonk, and part Karl Rove.
We know a lot about Barack Obama’s agenda, but what about Rahm Emanuel’s? He laid out his “Plan for America” in a 2006 book with Bruce Reed.
Excerpt from Emanuel and Reed’s The Plan/Big Ideas for America:
America has plenty of unfinished business, and all of the reforms we'd like to see — some of which appear in this book — would make for a very long list. But if we're going to turn the country around, we need a bold agenda that can be counted off on one hand:
1. A new social contract — universal citizen service, universal college access, universal retirement savings, and universal children's health care — that makes clear what you can do for your country and what your country can do for you.
2. A return to fiscal responsibility and an end to corporate welfare as we know it.
3. Tax reform to help those who aren't wealthy build wealth.
4. A new strategy to use all America's strengths to win the war on terror.
5. A Hybrid Economy that cuts America's gasoline consumption in half over the next decade.
THE PLAN
A new social contract, or what you can do for your country and what your country can do for you
The economy of the twenty-first century demands new skills and will require all of us to live up to new responsibilities. We believe that four mutual obligations that follow should represent the first terms of a new contract between the people and their country.
Universal Citizen Service
If you forget everything else you read in these pages, please remember this: The Plan starts with you. If your leaders aren't challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen service.
Universal College Access
We must make a college degree as universal as a high school diploma. More than ever, America's success depends on what we can learn. We have an education system built in the last century, with a school year left over from the century before that. In this new era, college will be the greatest engine of opportunity for our society and our economy. Just as Abraham Lincoln gave land grants to endow our great public universities, we will give the states tuition grants to make college free for those willing to work, serve, and excel.
Universal Retirement Savings
From now on, every job ought to come with a 401(k). An aging society cannot afford to keep saving less and risking more. We need new means to create wealth, based on the needs and responsibilities of twenty-first-century employees and employers. Employers should be required to offer 401(k)s, and workers will be enrolled unless they choose otherwise. If they switch jobs, they can take these accounts with them. When their paycheck goes up, so will their savings. Instead of a work force in which only half the workers have retirement savings plans, every American will have one.
Universal Children's Health Care . . .
A return to fiscal responsibility and an end to corporate welfare as we know it . . .
Tax reform to help those who aren't wealthy build wealth . . .
A new strategy to win the war on terror . . .
A hybrid economy that cuts America's gasoline use in half . . .
Ask what you can do for your country
The premier component of the new social contract The Plan promotes between citizens and their government is universal citizen service. . . .
John Kennedy was right: A nation is defined not by what it does for its citizens but by what it asks of them. If your leaders aren't challenging you to do your part, they aren't doing theirs. We need a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing for the first time an ethic of universal citizen service. All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft, nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of a natural disaster, an epidemic or a terrorist attack. Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background together to make America safer and more united in common purpose.
Chief of staffs don’t set policies, presidents do. Nonetheless, both Obama and Emanuel have proposals to use universal service for young people to remake American society, though their plans differ. If Emanuel ends up running the White House staff, one should expect a universal service proposal that is, at a minimum, competently worked out and well presented.
Foolish. most folks don't need or want a college degree. Expand that to include community college vocation training, and I agree. Rahm is a prisoner of his upper-middle class Jewish cultural outlook.
Who do these guys think they are?
I hope this 3 months is not one of them.
The rest of the 'contract' reads like a utopian wish list whereby the government controls service, college access, healthcare and retirement and whatever else might be added on later. The policy implications of such a wish list will be very enlightening in the coming months.
This will be very easy if there is a new attack on the US; in the meantime they'll lay the groundwork with something like this.
Honestly, as much as it will upset me to see this happen, I'll have a hard time feeling sympathy for people who should have seen this coming.
Universal health care for children is a good idea. Universal college is a very bad idea. To be successful in most jobs, college is unnecessary. And with the advent of continuing education, especially through the internet, the non-economic benefits of college are easily attainable.
This mandatory service idea is just stupid.
WTF, can't he even get his hero worship right? Kennedy said ASK NOT what your country can do for you! He didn't say "try to get something out of your country by promising universal service in return".
Why mangle the sentiment now? What "country doing for you" program is so important that he wants to toss Kennedy's formulation out the window, while still borrowing from its mystic?
Let em try to pass the gazillion dollar college for everybody and mandatory boot camp
Love to see the MSMers spin this one and the enlightened here
In some places, 25% of the students don't finish High School. And, judging by some interviewees, it appears possible to receive a H.S. diploma and not be able to read simple English (small town newspaper level, not the NYT), write a grammatical three sentence paragraph, or do simple math. Maybe we should fix the basics, first.
Second, when "everyone" has a college degree, college degrees will have the value of the HS diploma. What's next? universal post graduate degrees
Government mandates, programs and entitlements have destroyed work ethics and volunteerism in the US. I'd like to see these folks be the first to volunteer to do "service" for their country. Sure sounds like AH or Stalin to me. If government hadn't made everyone think they wer entitled to things by virtue of being born, we might not have the problems we have. College students today often have the expectation that grades, and a great job, should be given to them without any effort on their part.
An interesting point made about the "Bush" versus "Kerry" states was that "Bush" states out give to charity when compared with the "Kerry" states. Kind of a pattern there. But then it will be OK when the government takes your hard earned money and spreads it around. Reminds me that taking money from one private party and giving to another violates something in the Constitution, like the 5th. Read Cooley, Tucker, Story, and the other early writers on the Constitution. But then we know better today cause we're so much smarter than those hicks from the 19th century.
I don't think the plan is to require people to attend college, only make is available if they want to. Since college is generally available to most any one now anyway, I dont' see this as a huge expansion. I agree it should be expanded to include trade school, though.
This is undoubtedly what he meant, given how Democratic "reforms" have dumbed-down American public education during the last half-century. (For anyone who cares to dispute this, try and see how many current high school seniors have the reading comprehension to read an 8th Grade McGuffey Reader from the 19th Century.
persons can find it.
If you guys are going to be an effective opposition party, you need to start addressing the actual proposals, instead of your own paranoid nightmares.
Liberals own the courts in this country. Do you seriously believe some words in the 13th amendment are going to stop them? They wanted to gut the second amendment. They'll gut the 13th.
Rahm Emmanuel wants to enslave all the children that survive the abortion policies of the Infanticide Candidate.
No one has ever tried to draft people for civilian service. The got away with doing it for the military because the military and the national defense get so much deference from the courts. But a universal mandate to serve in a civilian capacity has never been tried. I think it might run into serious Constitutional problems. But they will try to get away from that by saying that it is "in return for recieving government benefits".
Honestly, the Obama Youth programs scare the hell out of me. I don't have children but if I did, and I may have them in the next four years but won't be old enough to have to join the Obama Youth, I would practice civil disobedience and refuse to send my children. I think there would be millions like me. The draft was different. People feel the military is necessary and were willing to do their part, especially when there is a war on. But, no way will people be coerce into BS liberal community indocrination. If they are, then they are not worthy of their freedoms.
Obama has talked about community service being required to graduate from all public schools down to middle schools. It is the Obama Youth.
Time will tell. I would however assume that if he did that you would object?
Also, the thing you'll never hit is bad.
The lesson is, never try.
Can you see a difference? I know I can't!
The winners, to whom the Constitution* is no object.
*Not to mention the great victory over the elite in the Middle ages which ended the peasant labor levee. Back to the future!
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Really? You mean people like Sarcastro weren't really sincere when they said Bush was turning the US into a police state and won't complain when Dear Leader actually tries to? I am shocked.
Can you see a difference? I know I can't!"
Yes because there is nothing fascistic or police state about forcing children to work for the state. What could possibly be wrong with that? How dare the little gutte snipes want to enjoy their freedom without paying their debt to the state.
Really folks, this could come out either way.
Huh? Three months of basic first aid and duck-and-cover drills? Can anyone think of any more useless waste of time and money?
As a libertarian, I am adamantly opposed to mandatory service of any kind, but at least citizens of countries like Israel, Singapore, etc learn valuable skills like shooting, orienteering, wilderness survival, etc during their military servicd.
Rahm's program sounds like some kind of half-assed encounter group which will cost everyone young person in the country three months of their life and every one of us a lot of $$$.
Which one of the three words "universal citizen service" is so difficult to understand? Obama has been very clear about his committment to it. Now he names one of its biggest proponents his COS. I don't think concerns over coerced civilian labor is exactly out of line given that the newly elected President has been so strident in his endorsement of it.
How could this be more clear? The American people have demanded socialism. If Barack Obama does not deliver on his campaign promises, how will be able to look them in the eye? So socialism it is.
Also, death to Israel. Sorry, but we live in a democracy.
Can you imagine the morons they would get to run it? If I were really partisian I would support the program. I can think of nothing that would turn people off to liberals than being forced to work with them.
I fully agree. You've already seen that with jobs that didn't use to but now does require a BA/BS. It is sort of like inflation.
I think the 401(k) idea could work, but not if the government was in charge. In the long run it could potentially undercut the need for continuing Social Secruity, which would be good.
In some of the local school districts here it is closer to a 50% graduation rate. Probably only around 20% of the population acrually needs a 4 year college degree, but many employers require them as a proxy for intelligence and having a minimal amount of responsibilty.
And around 20% of the population probably does not have the intelligence or discipline to even deserve a high school diploma.
First, I often choose the most fascist implementation of someone's proposal when judging it. That way I can call everyone a fascist and feel like the only true liberal in the room! There is no other way to understand this than mandatory drafting of all children into some kind of gay bootcamp.
I've long talked about how Norway, Israel, Australia till 1972, Finland, and about half a dozen other countries were totally fascist police states, but no one listened to me!
Those little Norewageon Nazis scare the bejeezus out of me!
[And I've never said Bush was turning us into a police state. I’m not one of those BDS-types, despite being a bit left of center. Crazy, I know!]
Say what you want about Bush, but he never came for my children. I pay 1000s of dollars in taxes. I don't owe Dear Leader or any of his lackies one damn think. There is nothing lower than mandatory national service, be it a draft or anything else. In any other context it is called slavery. No person who values liberty should support it.
I’ve been First Aid/CPR certified for work as a first responder for the last four-five years and it takes about a day (6 hours) to learn all of the training for basic first aid and CPR (including using a defibrillator). I’m actually in favor of making that training a mandatory part of junior high and high school (so long as the requirement comes from the local level and not the federal government). The bulk of the three months would seem to be the aggregate time spent at a government-approved “community service” program as a condition for graduation, receiving college welfare checks, or whatever additional strings they want to attach.
JohnK, consider the following hypothetical bill passed by Congress and signed by Obama:
Perhaps you wouldn't approve of such a bill, but is it really that offensive?
My point is not the details or even the desirability of such a law, but whether, as a policy, it can even remotely be compared to fascism of any sort.
I had no idea schools which require community service were basically slave plantations! I should go back to Fieldston and demand reparations!
They're Ethical Culture, so I have no doubt they'll comply.
Hmmm ... I homeschool my kids, so I'm not subject to this. (Although I do require my children to do age-appropriate community service - I guess that means I'm a Nazi)
Maybe I just don't understand the meaning of the word ethic. I had thought it meant that it would be socially admirable to do community service, there would be social pressure to do community service, and there might even be rewards for doing community service. Just like we respect people with a good work ethic, there is social pressure to have a good work ethic and there are often financial rewards for having a good work ethic. Instead it appears from comments above that ethic = slavery.
So in addition to federal financial aid programs inflating the cost of getting a college degree, by making it universal the value becomes diluted as well.
If I had to choose between the current OASDI/Medicare system and a sort of mandatory savings plan that is privately owned like they have in Singapore, I would opt for the latter as the lesser evil. However considering that Obama had proposed the federal takeover of private health insurance with his new “exchange,” I suspect that any universal 401(k) system would be an instrument to get private retirement programs under federal control similar to what Argentina is in the process of doing. That way when Social Security starts paying out more than it takes in in about four years, they can raid your 401(k) to pay out Social Security benefits.
The much vaunted 'youth vote' would become overnight Republicans.
Yes it is actually, although not as bad as an outright draft. It would have the effect of forcing people into community service. Government tuition aide just drives up the cost of education, so those kids who said no would be forced to pay the higher tuition that resulted from the increased aid.
Beyond that, if you have ever been around a community service project, they are worthless. Try getting a bunch of high school students to do something? They would be at best a waste of time and at worst a payoff to BS community action groups and rank indoctrination. Too many high school kids cannot read and write or do basic math. The last thing they need to be spending time doing is worthless "community service". They can serve the community best by becoming productive, educated citizens.
It seems that is not the proposal. The proposal is to make it a requirement for graduation. That is just the draft in different clothing and flatout immoral and wrong.
Come on Obama, raise the stakes. Let's put all the meat-eaters in jail.
He says that what needs establishing is an ethic of universal citizen service — not a requirement of universal citizen service. It's pretty plain that government can be interested in fostering certain sorts of attitudes, which leads to certain sorts of conduct, even if its legitimate authority falls short of requiring that conduct.
No you should sue them for taking your money and then wasting your time. But you were free not to got there. You chose to go there and freely took on the requirement. If it is a requirement for every school, kids won't have a choice. That is just the draft without guns and uniforms.
(1) Why should some committee other than MINE have jurisdiction over this means of spending money?
(2) How can I milk this for campaign contributions? There isn't much procurement pork in spiffy uniforms?
Wow Sarcastro, the state can require me to work on the country roads six to ten hours a day and not violate the 13th Amendment. I feel so much better now. Where can I join the Obama youth? Will they give me a cool uniform? is book burning and breaking windows one part of the community service? I sure Bill Ayers could write a good textbook on that subject.
Great point! Even three afternoons in high school learning first aid would be good, but three months?
It's clear that the purpose is not to accomplish anything concrete; it's to reform people (who are on balance already as good or better than the reformers who would train them) and to change the relation of people to their government.
To others: Obama is proposing over 4 months of service, but spread out over about 11-12 years, not 3 months in one stretch.
Really? Community service is worthless? You can't get High School age kids to do anything?
I have an 18-year-old daughter who has volunteered EVERY WEEK since she was 12 at a nearby nursing home. She makes people's lives brighter every day she is there. I guess that is worthless.
My 14-year-old son goes EVERY WEEKEND to the local Humane Society to volunteer his time to work with the animals. I guess that is worthless.
My 8-year-old daughter goes with me EVERY WEEK to work at a homeless shelter. She helps on the food line, but I guess that is worthless.
I required that they get started on community service, but now, for all three of them, it is one of the high points of their weeks. They all do far more than I have every required of them. The 8-year-old wanted, on her own, to start doing community service.
Maybe your kids think helping other people and their community is worthless, but that does not apply to all kids.
What was Jimmy Carters program? CETA. A complete waste of money and lives.
I hope everyone gets whats comming to them. and their children.
No, it forces no one into doing anything. Kids are not entitled to get $5k from the government for college.
Driving up the prices is silly -- by that logic, the government is depriving me of my liberty to buy oil by purchasing large quantities to power their tanks.
If the proposed bill (that you haven't read because it hasn't been written) does not contain adequate oversight to ensure that useful work that positively benefits the community is being done, I will oppose it.
Incidentally, a few of my friends that were sentenced to community service for various minor infractions and they didn't describe it the way you did.
There is no proposal yet. That's what I was trying to say -- there are ways of promoting community service that are quite objectionable (drafting) and there are unobjectionable ways (tuition grants). When an actual proposal comes out, we can evaluate it.
Yes it was. That is what is funny about all of this. It has been tried and failed miserably before. If community service is so wonderful, the people are free to do it. There is nothing wrong it Mohram's children busy beavering away at the nursing home. It is a free country and they should be able to do what they want. It is when the government gets involved that it is a problem.
No it is not. Why is college tuition so high? One of the reason is that we give so much aid. The students don't feel the effects of the increase and the product is less price sensitive. The more aid you give, the more colleges are free to charge. It is simple supply and demand.
The Obama alternative is something run by high school guidance counselors and probation officer wannabees. That would only increase the contempt that teenagers have for things.
But this is only a good idea if it is relatively limited. As soon as everyone (or a big enough percentage of everyone) gets the voucher, all colleges will jack up the prices by $5k. The net effect for the students would be the loss of their time, all to subsidize university administrators and professors.
Perhaps that is the goal. I doubt that a bunch of untrained high schoolers would be THAT useful to the poor and downtrodden, given how little use even trained social workers seem to be.
How about - It artificially drives the cost up. And the subsidies mean that the single Mom working two jobs is financing the education of a young middle class kid.
Here's a better question: What is wrong with personal responsibility?
And that's why they'll become Nazis.
Come on dude. Think federal non-military government mandated program that supposedly is college level material. I'm sure that you can easily convert 6 hours of course work, including testing, into a semester long course -- and maybe 2 or 3.
Will lawyers, doctors, and politicians be granted commissions in the Hanscar Division?
Of course not. Democrats are afraid of guns.
Not if they have them and are pointed at you. I don't recall Janet Reno being too afraid of guns.
Duh. That way, there will be increased demand for professors, so that Ph.D.s in post-colonial and transgender studies will be guaranteed employment.
The $5K amount will end up raising the college tuition by an equivalent amount. So in fact, no kids will be getting anything, but the kids who refuse to work will have $5K taken from them.
I think Kids*are* entitled to not have the government interfere in ways which increase their college expenses by $5K.
Good thing I support them now that Dear Leader is in power.
[Though I'd be fore a universal service requirement. Sue me, I don't see it as any more slavery than making everyone work to pay taxes is.]
Yes.
Oh wait, the Dems used that first. Nevermind.
Awesome.
Anyone who thinks that teenaged kids, in aggregate, are going to demonstrate the same level of commitment, or get the same intangibles out of that service, knows neither teenagers or for that matter human beings. The notion is ludicrous on its face.
Why would tuition rise if the cost of providing the education has remained the same? Any school that raises tuition just looks less attractive (comparatively) than those that don't.
Richard, you can hold me to my word -- if the service requirement become involuntary, I will oppose it.
So, what do you call the sanction, Phil, "Contempt of College"?
I'm not saying that this kind of "service" doesn't work better than jail. But inflicting it on the innocent seems to me pretty poor policy. Of course, truly voluntary (that is, unpaid) community service is a completely different thing.
No everyone has an interest in charging the best price they can. When you give all consumers more money to spend on something, the demand curve will shift up and the price will increase. It is basic economics.
The Founders had pretty much the right idea--that government exists for only a few limited functions, and otherwise people are free to pursue their own goals and purposes in non-coercive interaction. They wrote a Constitution that specifies only limited roles for the federal government. The more those Constitutional bounds are trampled, the less relevant the Constitution becomes, and the easier it is to conjure up more and more meddling in society and in the marketplace by politicians and their bureaucratic hacks.
The adages about the camel's nose under the tent, and about how to boil a frog, are well-worn for a reason. They're apt.
Oh, thank goodness. That makes involuntary servitude much more bearable.
I knew Joe Straczynski from the science-fiction round table on the defunct GE computer network (GEnie) and was the go-between for him and a number of computer game producers who wanted to have B5 names in their games.
Kids should spend their time learning stuff like that rather than picking up trash by the road. Heck, enough of it and they might go and volunteer voluntarily, just for a chance to get up from their desks. That's how the world used to work when we actually had communities instead of trying to impose them.
But the real problem is the following: A community organizer might well set out to organize a youth service group. That's in his mandate, and it's the sort of bottom-up initiative that people of all political stripes tend to support. (People with different leanings might support different projects, of course, which is why having lots of different bottom-up initiatives is good.) But is Obama actually intending to be President, or Community Organizer in Chief? The job descriptions are rather different, and the top-down nature of anything he plans to do from his new, cornerless office raises issues that the bottom-up approach does not.
I came looking around here because I heard about the overall intelligence and quality of the OP's/vlogs/whatever and also of the quality of the responses. Instead I find what's on this thread.
I actually did two days of judicially ordered “community service” in high school for a moving violation (I was saving money for college and because I didn’t have to miss work it ended up being cheaper than the fine).
The first day I was with a bunch of offenders in their 30’s and 40’s who were there for DUI’s and domestic disturbances and we spent the day painting water wells. I remember being told to “go really slow” so that they wouldn’t have to find a second project for us to do before the day was over. Even though we dragged our feet and did an overly thorough job of painting, I seem to recall that we were able to knock off early.
The second day, I was with about half a dozen other teenagers and we picked up some brush that had fallen after a storm but when we ran out of brush, we were told to pick up cigarette butts from around the county courthouse (we found about five between all of us) just so the supervisor wouldn’t have to find something else for us to do and we still got out about an hour early.
It will be interesting to see what “citizen responsibilities” will include.
Like, who has guns?
Citizen responsibilities will include education in proper thinking.
There, fixed that for ya.
By operant conditioning?
What a horrible phrase. Is it just bad word choice? Or is it backed by a horrible idea?