Dems Claim Moral High-Ground They Don't Deserve
If It's That Important, Fund It Yourself. We Know You've Got the Money.
You can shout, scream, pout, and blame all you like. Whatever it is that AmeriCorps does ought to be done by private non-profits funded by the Democrats shouting the loudest about the injustice of its sudden DOGE-inspired demise.
Injustice, if there is any, can be corrected by returning the majority of its budget to taxpayers who can then decide for themselves if AmeriCorps does things it thinks need doing. Or, more accurately, if what the non-productive budget-swallowing overhead is what needs doing.
It is as if AmeriCorps exists to fund the lifestyles of non-productive staff. Resources that, if their directors had to fight for donor dollars, would be leaner and efficient as opposed to what most governments do to everything they touch.
Anyone who thinks AmeriCorps serves an essential local service is welcome to fund it with their own money. But therein lies the issue. Most Americans wouldn't put a check in the envelope or click the inviting plea for funds online. That includes Democrats who are trying to cash moral superiority checks from the bank of I'm defending AmeriCorps.
Dems are happy to take credit for ensuring someone else pays for the things for which they then claim credit. From Welfare, to Social Security, to this or that health care. Then there's my favorite; the I got grants for this local thing email newsletter.
Pat me on the back. Instead of keeping local money at home, I ensured that I could get credit for bringing some back. Not all of it. And it's for some pet project favored by donors or lobbyists that no one would have funded otherwise, but look what I did.
I have two Letters in response. F and U.
Picking on Vermont again, 'cuz it's easy.
The $2.4 million in terminated Vermont grants funded positions that focused on “everything from housing placement services, food security, to job training, to after school programming” and flood recovery, said Philip Kolling, who oversees AmeriCorps programs in the state.
No one should be paying for any of that but Vermonters. That holds true for every state, including mine. Not only is it not the Federal Government's job to do any of that, but its interference in these areas suppresses a long list of things from accountability to value.
Questions Unasked
The first question anyone should ask when the Feds stop funding anything is whether there are top-down regulations in place that create costs the government should pay (or could alleviate by repealing the rules). If so, we should repeal federal rules unless they have broad interstate impacts that can't be addressed by regional agreements or coalitions (even if Congress needs to approve them).
If there is no direct top-down cost, is this something we need?
Is the state or local government taking any action to exacerbate it or create unnecessary costs?
Did the government displace local or private interests more capable of addressing it?
And the most important question of all. Why can't people trying to claim moral high ground to which they are not entitled, lining up to replace or fund programs they claim are so necessary?
Instead of funding protesters to convince people to let the government rob them to fund waste, fraud, and abuse, couldn't George Soros fund services that help with housing placement, food security, job training, or after-school programming? He could, but that won't trigger the Cloward-Pivening of the American Economy and drive Democratic Socialism to its goal: Marxism.
There's plenty of money out there. The Political Left is reported to have raised and spent more than two billion dollars on a 100-day failed presidential campaign.
That's a lot of scratch, but it does not even scratch the surface of how much there is.
The whiners could fund any of the things they claim are in danger because of Trump or DOGE, but that has nothing to do with what they truly want. They don't give a damn about any of it. They can't. The system of government they pursue would have to defund most or all of it to stay afloat. What they want is to stand on a moral authority, at the expense of someone else, until they achieve enough power to secure a one-party state completely lacking in morals.
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