zombie84 said:
Johnboy3434 said:
lordjedi said:
ne of his latest policy outlines is requiring community service in order to graduate high school and college.
The bastard. Why doesn't anyone realize that by making people help the community, you only inspire resentment towards the community? Think of it this way: would you live in an apartment building where you not only have to pay rent, but also wash your landlord's feet everyday? Would that endear him to you? No! You'd high-tail it out of there as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, in this case the entire country is an apartment building, meaning the only way to escape it is to jump the border and get a degree in Mexico or something. Who here wants our kids doing things like that?
Here in Canada this is mandatory and it hasn't stemyed our charity programs. I think its a good thing; kids ought to help out and learn the responsibility, even if they resent it, and its a good source of labor for charity. How many teenagers like work anyway?
I volunteered plenty during high school and I still do it from time to time today. The point is that no one but the parents should be forcing kids to volunteer (it's not really volunteering once it becomes a requirement anyway). Did I do 50 hours of service (Obama's plan)? I have no idea. I did a lot and I enjoyed helping people out. People are usually more than willing to help each other out if they aren't forced to do it by someone else. I even did plenty of volunteer work for ACS and CHOC a few years back. I loved every minute of it.
I have no doubt that it won't stimy the charity programs. I'm sure they'll grow and thrive. Afterall, since the government will be forcing the students to do it in order to graduate, they'll suddenly have an influx of students to help with all the work. The question then becomes, will the students continue to volunteer once they've graduated and completed the "requirement"? Something tells me you'll end up with the same percentage that would've done it regardless.
Of course, I think Obama is only requiring the "community service" if the students want the government money to put them through school. How about we cut government subsidized education instead of increasing the subsidies?
WXM said:
Oh. Well, if I smoked weed then I might just be be doing as sean wookie is on voting day I think. Ugh. The one set of people I wish could be made president and vice next term is Bush and Cheney. I would sincerely like to see them in the white house for another four years to deal with the big fallout from what they've caused that's very likely on its way (to me it's mostly about the debt -- I am very anti-big-debt -- as Mister Mackey would say, "Debt is baaad, m'kay?":)). As it is now, the next president is going to have almost no choice but to raise taxes to do something about the debt, and that president, whoever they are, is going to get hammered for that, which I don't think is fair (while Bush and Cheney will be retiring on some pretty big nesteggs/gifts I imagine). I am actually surprised anyone wants to step into that post right now; I can't think of anything more thankless than to become US President in 2009. Anything they do to try to address most big problems will make them f**king hated and despised by huge numbers of Americans I imagine. What a terrible situation to put ones self into, isn't it?
That depends. Reagan seemed to have no problem running against Carter. He even won in a landslide (lost only Washington state if I remember). He started cutting taxes and reigning in the government. By the end of his term, the economy was starting to get better. By the end of his second term, things were looking much better.
Carter got in because the people were sick of the current party. It didn't matter who was running, they just wanted the opposite. Unfortunately, they paid so little attention that the guy they hoped would fix everything ended up making things worse. Of course it didn't help that Ford pardoned Nixon. In the American People's eyes, Nixon was a crook that should've sat in jail.
sean wookie said:
Who ever gets elected next term will be hated because they will deal with this administrations problems poorly and someone from the opposite party will get elected the next term.
You've been doing your homework :) We can be almost assured that not only will someone of the opposite party get elected, but it'll probably be a repeat of the Reagan years. Tax cuts, government cuts, etc, etc.