"One part political slush fund, one part window dressing, youth service program failed to grow up.
...AmeriCorps consists of 75,000 members ( who collect up to $17,800 a year in salary and education benefits for laboring on social, environmental, education and other projects authorized by the agency headquarters.
According to CEO Wendy Spencer, "For twenty years, AmeriCorps has been a powerful and proven solution to community needs across the nation." Many AmeriCorps recruits work hard and have helped their fellow Americans, but many of the agency's projects are spurred more by feelgood foolishness and political profiteering than by real community needs.
..AmeriCorps often sends its members to fill voids created by other government defaults. Thousands of AmeriCorps members are busy attempting to teach readingto young children -- a task for which public schools already spend billions.
Thanks to Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative, AmeriCorps is partnering with the Justice Department to enroll and mentor "disconnected youth" -- the same task for which the Job Corps was created 50 years ago.
...Congress recently enacted a law prohibiting federally-funded food stamp recruiting but AmeriCorps continues paying scores of members to entice people onto the dole.
AmeriCorps, along with USDA, is bankrolling the National Anti-Hunger and Opportunity Corps whose primary goal is "increasing participation" in food stamps.
Joel Berg, the director of that program, pockets a six-figure salary while issuing apocalyptic statements about America's injustice to the poor.
...After 20 years, AmeriCorps continues to be little more than social work tinged with messianic delusions.
It is time to draw the curtain on AmeriCorps' "body count" benevolence."
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