Ready to work for change?
Collin
Posts: 4,931
Like Obama said, this is only an opportunity to change. Now the people need to work and take responsibilty.
So, how do you see this? What will you do (differently), what can you do? Will you take responsibilty and demand responsibility and accountability from Obama and his cabinet?
Tell me, how will you participate in the great change you want to see?
So, how do you see this? What will you do (differently), what can you do? Will you take responsibilty and demand responsibility and accountability from Obama and his cabinet?
Tell me, how will you participate in the great change you want to see?
THANK YOU, LOSTDAWG!
naděje umírá poslední
naděje umírá poslední
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I want to volunteer at the League of Women Voters. That would be a positive change and on my to do list.
I think of the work as fiscal responsibility. If we want less of a credit card lifestyle in government then we should live that way in our own lives. AET posters already created a thread on what they are doing to spend less.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
The government works for us, what they have done has been done under our watch.
Whatever happens next, happens under the watch of the American people.
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Personally, I'll be taking part in a new Congress watchdog group. Visit http://www.november5.org if you're interested in joining.
I've also just started volunteering for a high school mentoring group.
In the long run, I'm working on the logistics for getting back into school. Volunteering for Nader has been a great challenge, especially with all of the haters out there. I've realized that I want to be more civically active and I want to help others do the same. My goal is to become a Professional Citizen.
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"We've laid the groundwork. It's like planting the seeds. And next year, it's spring." - Nader
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Prepare for tending to your garden, America.
Another reason to miss hippiemom. I thought she was incredibly respectful in how she presented her views.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
i don't really see myself 'doing things' really any differently per se....but i believe i have been working otwards this change all along. in my views, in my actions......i share my opinions and i vote according to my conscience and desires for this country, and i think i try and hold my - our - elected officials accountable. i will continue to do so. i feel more positive b/c i think we truly do have a new administration who reflects similar ideals and desires to do so.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
After the new year I'll be looking for a new full time job ... I was going to anyway, but, instead of taking the easy route and getting some cushy Director of Finance job at one of the many companies in the tech industry or financial industry ... I'm going to limit my search to companies that are trying to do something good for the human cause ... wheter it be a non-profit, or a green company, or potentially one of the special interest legs of the bigger companies around here (companies like Google have amazing foundations attached to them doing some great work) ...
I was thinking about this for a long time after working for consulting firms, and software companies, and feeling a tad empty at the end of the day. I would have done this even if John McCain won. The message Obama had would not have been lost on me had he lost, I had been thinking about it for a while. I feel now is the time to do this.
It'll no doubt cost me a few bucks, but, I think I'll feel much better about it at the end of the day.
I will still continue to volunteer my time and money to the San Francisco Food Bank ... http://www.sffoodbank.org/ ...
"I don't believe in damn curses. Wake up the damn Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I'll drill him in the ass." --- Pedro Martinez
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/obamas_civilian_national_secur.html
Obama's Civilian National Security Force
By Lee Cary
Barack Obama's recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer's sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers.
Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." (emphasis added)
The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,
"People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve."
The range of his community service initiatives was outlined in an earlier American Thinker article. In his campaign document entitled "The Blueprint for Change: Barack Obama's Plan For America," Obama's "Service" section runs a close second to "Education" in complexity. But, with his Colorado Springs' statement, it grabbed first place in its projected costs to taxpayers. Obama did the cost projection himself.
He plans to double the Peace Corps' budget by 2011, and expand AmeriCorps, USA Freedom Corps, VISTA, YouthBuild Program, and the Senior Corps. Plus, he proposes to form a Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, Homeland Security Corps, Global Energy Corps, and a Green Jobs Corps. Here a corps - there a corps - everywhere a corps corps.
So it made sense in Colorado Springs when he said his call to community service "will be a central cause of my presidency." He couldn't be clearer in signaling his intentions, including a Social Investment Fund Network to link local non-profits with the federal government.
The entire plan is breathtaking in its scope. But it does not, as at least one internet writer has suggested, portend a "giant police force." It would be easier to rebut if it did. As it is, it's silly stuff born of naively fanciful dreams.
Senator Obama aims to tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda. It's Orwellian-like, with a novice social activist's mentality at the helm. In his speech he said,
"Now I know what the cynics will say. I've heard from them all my life."
Has he? Well, given his absence of noteworthy community organizational achievements, perhaps he might have done more listening to the "cynics" for constructive criticism.
It seems clear that he meant to say, in effect, that the security of the nation is as dependent on its unarmed community service providers as it is on its armed military personnel. Even the nomenclature "corps," as in Peace Corps, carries a martial connotation as does the name, Salvation Army. His point: national security begins with civilians. It's a message like the one America's home front heard throughout World War II. Except in his case, he means to marshal volunteers for social service and economic equality while saving the environment.
"Because the future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson, but is also depends on the teacher in East LA, the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans..."
That is, of course, true. But ultimate national security requires someone to carry, and, if necessary, discharge a deadly weapon with intent to kill. This is something teachers, nurses and after-school workers are typically unaccustomed to doing as part of their service obligations.
Voters haven't paid much attention to his "Service" plan because the old news media has ignored it. That will likely continue, even though Obama attached an approximate price tag to it in Colorado Springs. When Obama said that the "civilian national security force" would be just as "well-funded" as the Armed Forces, he stepped squarely into the giant sandbox and played with the big numbers. As the late Carl Sagan said, "billions and billions" of dollars. Here's how.
The FY 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) budget is about $482 billion. Obama has announced his intentions to cut "tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending," including $9 billion per month spent in Iraq and expenditures for the missile defense system, while increasing the force size of the Army and Marine Corps.
Let's imagine "tens of billions" in cuts eventually adds up to a whopping $150 billion. That would be a near one-third cut in defense spending, taking the DoD budget down to $332 billion. Even in such an extreme case of DoD budget reduction, for his "civilian national security force" to be "just as well-funded" would mean funding his community service initiatives at an equivalent $332 billion.
Consequently, another $332 billion in addition to the Pentagon's reduced budget of $332 billion equals a net increase of $182 billion in the annual federal budget, assuming we sponge-up the already existing expenditures for the relatively meager, by comparison, existing service programs he plans to expand. That's $182,000,000,000 in new federal monies, and that means higher taxes.
In his entire life, Senator Obama has never managed an organization larger than a Senate staff, or that of a law school publication. And, he's never operated a for-profit business or been responsible for any profit center within one. So, while words matter to Senator Obama, it's not clear if math means anything to him at all.