Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Despite our eloquent and cogent arguments against publicly funded "volunteerism," the huge AmeriCorps bill now is law, and President Obama has hailed it as "just the beginning of a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to involve our greatest resource – our citizens – in the work of remaking this nation."
Whoa there! People who voted for Obama wanted "change," not a remaking of the nation. Of course, Obama wants a socialist/fascist state, as was clear to anybody who looked closely at his positions on the issues, as is clear from his actions as president.
The Associated Press reported Obama credited "his work as a community organizer in his early 20s for giving him direction in life. The president cited his work in Chicago as an example of how one person can make a difference."
Well, let's see: You could make a difference by serving on the board of a publicly funded organization and nominating your wife to be its paid executive director. This could enhance her credentials in a career of "public service" that eventually pays her more than $300,000 a year.
(You could always say you had quit the board when she was hired by your adoring colleagues. So, no improper influence, no conflict of interest, right? Way to fight poverty, President Obama!)
Democratic Party mouthpiece Bill Press asks, "When is a protest not a real protest?"
Then he proceeds to answer, "When it's all about partisan politics rather than issues, when it's staged by the media, and when nobody knows why they're there."
Press ascribes these attributes to the recent tea parties staged in opposition to the insane spending by the Congress and president. (Of course, Press doesn't call it "insane.") He avers that the protests were "hatched, planned and paid for by three right-wing organizations" and "exclusively hailed" and virtually "created" by the Fox News Channel.
Finally, he says the protests were a bust, anyway.
Interesting stuff. Apparently, the only well-heeled organizations allowed to fund political activism are those like MoveOn.org, which calls its billionaire-backed activities "democracy in action." As for Fox News: We thought its attention to the tea parties was news coverage, but if it was biased, well, it provided balance to the non-coverage by the other networks.
As we are sequestered in the Mother Lode town of Sonora, we can't say that the folks who attended tea parties across the nation knew why they attended, but we dropped by the party in Sonora's Courthouse Square, and everybody seemed to have a pretty good idea that they didn't like the leftward sprint of the president and Congress.
They knew very well that while Press might think 95 percent of them will get an Obama tax cut, the inflation that inevitably will follow Washington's mad spending will be a tax, draining value from their paychecks and their savings. And they had a non-partisan contempt for every legislator who voted for the Henry Paulson, bait-and-switch TARP bill.
The question for Press would be: If the tea parties were a bust, why are you so exercised about them?
Sticks and stones
A new "hate crime" bill is wending its way through the House, borne on the concept that an assault and battery is a worse crime if it is tied to a racial, ethnic or sexual epithet. Thus, it is a serious offense if I strike you with a baseball bat, but terribly more serious if I call you, say, a "dirty Martian," as I wield the implement.
Despite the legislation's pious bow to the First Amendment, it contains language that would penalize ill-defined hate-crime incitement, however vague and tenuous the connection might be between language and action.
This abomination passed Congress once, and George W. Bush vetoed it. If it passes again, Obama will sign it, making the USA more like Canada, where you can be hauled before a quasi-judicial body and penalized for preaching against the supposed cultural decay attendant on the influx of illegal immigrants from Venus.
(I apologize to all Martians and Venusians who may be reading this. I know you aren't dirty and that you don't bring cultural decay. I'm just posing hypothetical situations.)