This video from RightChange.com highlights the timeline of response from the Obama Administration.

Oil Spill Timeline from RightChange on Vimeo.

It would be nice to pretend that we have an experienced leader in the White House, but do we really want Obama interfering? He could have acted pro-actively, such as lifting the Jones Act and accepting international aid far earlier, but do we want more? His idea of action would be to nationalize all oil companies.

Every time Obama gets involved with something, it gets worse. While the economy is the biggest example, consider his involvement with elections. No candidate that the President has campaigned for has won. That’s bad for a President who once enjoyed 70+ approval ratings, especially when stumping for fellow Democrats.

Look at other situations where Obama has gotten involved: Beer Summit, college football playoffs, and the Toyota recall. Things get worse when the President steps in with this administration.

While the White House needs to stop pretending that they’re on a West Wing episode and actually start leading, perhaps it is best that Obama keeps playing golf. Nashville seems to be recovering, and he never even acknowledged the disastrous flooding there.

Face it folks, we’re never going to get presidential reassurance from Obama. He’s not capable of giving an FDR-esque speech about fear in the face of an economic depression or soothe the nation like Reagan did after the Challenger explosion. In his 18-month tenure, he’s proven to be incapable of anything but a stump speech. Let’s stop complaining about his lack of emotion and be thankful that he isn’t more involved. At that point, get ready for your doomsday scenarios.

Nope. They need volunteers…

According to Voices for National Service, there’s a proposal to create a new branch of the Corporation for National Community Service:

On June 30, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced H.R. 5654, the Gulf Coast Restoration Act, which will create new “wage-earning jobs and national service positions to clean and restore the Gulf Coast waters, beaches, and habitats as well as rebuild local communities and economies.” In creating a Gulf Coast Community Conservation Corps (CCC), the bill recognizes the expertise of the Corporation for National and Community Service and the agency’s grantees in responding to past disasters – such as Hurricane Katrina and 2008′s severe flooding in Iowa.

The original co-sponsors of the Gulf Coast Restoration Act include Reps. Steve Israel (D-NY), Jim Himes (D-CT), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Jim Langevin (D-RI), Betty Sutton (D-OH), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), John Lewis (D-GA), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). The Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the House has endorsed the bill as well.

Download the press release here.

Never let a crisis go to waste, and why waste this opportunity to expand the funding and power of the federal governments’ bastion of socialism–the Corporation for National and Community Service?

While the Gulf Coast does need help to clean up and restore, it can be done with…volunteers. They don’t need paid volunteers. They don’t need expensive government programs with layers and layers of bureaucracy. There are thousands upon thousands of environmental NGOs. Why aren’t these groups empowered to clean up the Gulf? Why do we have to spend additional money in creating another government program from an agency that has extensive corruption and ethics violations that are consistently overlooked? (Honestly, CNCS should be investigated as the next ACORN. It’s just as bad.)

If we are going to spend federal money in the clean-up project, why don’t we pay private companies employing local people who are already trained in how to deal with this disaster? Creating a new government program is immensely expensive. Once legislation passes, it can take months until policies are drafted to implement them. Then there’s marketing, recruitment, hiring, transportation, administration, etc. If this is created, it could be six months to a year before the first oil-covered duck is washed by a GCCC volunteer.

The spin on this bill is that it will create jobs in the economically-devastated Gulf. Perhaps it will create “jobs” but can people actually live on those?

The entire point of Corporation for National Community Service is to fight poverty. Ignore the mission creep of putting the GCCC under the CNCS, but no program under the Corporation actually pays what liberals like to call a “living wage.” Unless you are in management and a full federal employee, you only earn a small stipend or 105% of the poverty level. They are happy to provide you with a $5,000 grant for college or to forgive student loans, but that money doesn’t pay the rent or put food on the table.

105% of the poverty level will definitely fill the gap of high-paying jobs on oil rigs or decent jobs that shrimpers or fisheries provide…

While this program will supposedly be funded by BP,* why not put the money into actual clean up? By creating a new government program, the Democrats sponsoring this legislation are creating an additional pork project that will eventually run out of money and force more Americans to be dependent on government. When the eventual monies run out from BP, they’ll whine and complain about this hurting the children and demand expanded government funding. This is a blatant attempt to create more federal jobs and destroy the private sector.

My biggest problem with liberals is the deep faith that no matter the problem, a government agency should be created to deal with it. It doesn’t matter if the original problem was created by an existing government program. They just create another pork project or add a layer of bureaucracy.

Keep in mind that the Corporation for National and Community Service already saw a massive, and I mean, massive increase in funding with the Obama Administration. Shouldn’t they have an existing reserve fund for disasters? Every time there’s an emergency, they go back to Congress for additional aid. They did it with Katrina and with the Midwest flooding a few years ago.

This would be like going to your boss for a raise every time you get sick, have a car accident or need to replace a kitchen appliance. The American people are broke. It’s time that this entitlement mentality from government programs end. We will never be fiscally sound as long legislation this ridiculous is even allowed to be considered.

*Why is Congress looking at BP as a bottomless cash cow? Their stock has already declined in value. Eventually, they’ll run out of money. What happens when the company goes under because President Obama and Congress are determined to teach them a lesson? Jobs will be lost and even more lives destroyed. Also remember that many retirement funds have stock in BP. While BP’s culture needs to change, and the company should take responsibility for their wrongdoing, a witch hunt will ultimately hurt American taxpayers.

The tag line is the scariest part: It’s Not TV, it’s Reality. I wish it was just TV. If this was just a really, long awful episode of The West Wing, think about how much better life would be.

I really like the concept of I’m a Politician. Get Me Out of Here. As close as Democrats are to Hollywood, why has this not already happened? Imagine Blago, Eliot Spitzer, Jack Abramoff and other dishonored political types fighting it out in the jungle. That’s reality TV that I would watch. Politicians go on reality TV in the UK. Why not here?

What if the book every conservative needs to read was published fifty years ago?

At only 100 pages, The Conscience of a Conservative has inspired conservatives for decades, yet there has been no revival of this book in the recent groundswell of conservative thought in the United States.

Written by Barry Goldwater in 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative built momentum for his unsuccessful 1964 presidential election. He may have lost that election, but the influence of his legacy continues to shape the conservative movement.

This classic political book should be required reading for anyone who attends a Tea Party. Goldwater’s slim manifesto still accurately explains our philosophy and political movement.

Far too many conservatives struggle to articulate why he or she identifies with the movement. It’s easy to express what we’re against: higher taxes, big government programs, the welfare state, and intrusion into our private lives. But what do we support? What does it mean to be a conservative?

Writing in a similar era when Republicans were also painted as the “party of no,” Goldwater opens his book by defining conservatism. He writes:

…the Conservative looks upon politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.

He also explains the difference between conservatives and liberals:

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature. The conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual need spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man’s nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man’s spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand—in the name of a concern for “human beings” –regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness the society’s political and economic forces into a collective effort to compel “progress.” In this approach, I believe they fight against Nature.

Goldwater outlines the three aspects of what a conservative believes. All three should be memorized and understood by anyone claiming the label of conservative.

1. Every person is a unique member of human species.

“The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.”

2. The economic and spiritual are “inextricably intertwined.

“He cannot be economically free, or even economically efficient, if he is enslaved politically; conversely, man’s political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the State.”

3. Each individual is responsible for his or her own material and spiritual development.

“The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings.”

The Conscience of a Conservative continues to cover the dangers of big government, states’ rights, civil rights, labor, education, taxes and spending, and education.

If busy conservatives only took the time to read the first chapter, “The Perils of Power,” “States’ Rights,” “Taxes and Spending,” and “The Welfare State,” the Tea Party movement would be much better off.

Again, if you’re searching for a book on the path that conservatives should take to restore our nation to the vision that the Founders intended, The Conscious of a Conservative is a smart place to start.

While Goldwater grew more libertarian and antagonistic towards social conservatives towards the end of his life, The Conscious of a Conservative is a fast read that articulately lays out the timeless case for conservative values.

Over the last fifty years, our goal still remains the same. The charge Goldwater wrote in 1960 still applies today:

Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom.

In a time when millions of Americans are seeking alternatives to the Big Government, Chicago-style tactics of the Obama Administration, conservatives should read Goldwater’s classic.

Cross-posted at Smart Girl Nation.

President Tech-Savvy?

Remember the 2008-2009 Barack Obama? The one who praised Facebook, online fundraising and online organizing for his victory and forced the National Security Agency to build a super-deluxe secret security system for the official POTUS BlackBerry?

Either the 2010 Obama has done a 360 on his tech-love, or the most transparent administration evah was lying about its integration of technology and social media. Per The Guardian:

Yesterday however, the president admitted he could not operate an iPod or iPad, as he warned the students against becoming distracted by technology when they are already graduating “at a time of great difficulty for America, and for the world”.

“With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

Ironically, David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, was in Richmond to discuss the integration of the 2008 campaign with technology. The very same weekend Obama revealed his Luddite side, Plouffe told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “…the use of technology to communicate through online and social media was ‘the heartbeat and engine’ of Obama’s groundbreaking and historic 2008 run for the White House.”

Which was it? Does Obama suddenly have technology amnesia or did the campaign cleverly hide Obama’s ignorance by feeding him the right talking points through the help of his BFFs–the Teleprompter and CrackBerry? The campaign did nimbly use Facebook and online fundraising (their use of Twitter frankly sucked), but time is proving that these areas were further down the campaign totem pole than previously believed.

If the 2008 Obama campaign viewed technology as a lower-tier activity, that’s fine. Plenty of campaigns, particularly on the right, have used digital media from the candidate on down. We’re no longer arguing the legitimacy of engaging online. However, if Obama is a techno-phobe, and evidence points that way, he is most definitely not the first Tech President.

As soon as I heard Obama’s comments, I remembered his 2009 admission that he had never used Twitter before. While answering a student’s question in China, he said:

“I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

In order to be the true first Tech President, the candidate should personally employ technology to spread his or her message and connect with supporters. Given that there are a number of candidates in 2010 races running their own Facebook profiles and tweeting, this should be expected from a presidential contender. It is absolute hypocrisy to award Obama this designation when he clearly has an axe to grind with the technology that got him to the White House.

While the Obama campaign obviously misled the American people about the importance of technology, Plouffe’s statements he made in Richmond are accurate:

Plouffe said the campaign was built using the Internet to engage voters in volunteering, contributing money and “sharing the message” amongst themselves. Connecting these people — not only to the campaign but to each other — helped them build trust with prospective voters they engaged both online and face-to-face.

“There is a lack of trust — in government, in business leaders, in academic leaders, even in faith leaders,” Plouffe said. But, he said, “People trust each other.”

Now, in the future, those grass-roots campaigners will be equipped with interactive mobile devices that allow them to pull down voter lists, videos and the latest campaign information to help make the case for their candidates.

The keys to success will be making campaigns more accessible, providing fast responses and striving to not appear slick.

It is possible to have technology as a focal point without the candidate being directly involved. However, they appear to have blatantly lied about being authentic. Either Obama was involved with the use of technology or he wasn’t. It’s time to put the “Obama is so tech-savvy!” myth to rest and admit to the sleight of hand. Perhaps Plouffe should remember his own advice:

“You’ve got to be authentic. People are looking for authenticity,” Plouffe said. “They are hungering for it.”

H/T TechRepublican

The annual Politics Online conference is this week. This is definitely a conference for the sausage makers and is aimed at those working in nonprofit, government or political technology. When I first attended in 2006, this conference helped my thesis come together, so I’ve always been grateful for it.

As I sat through the sessions yesterday, something seemed off. It seemed…flat. The panels weren’t insightful, and I’d heard most of the case studies. Honestly, the energy felt deflated.

While the conference is nonpartisan, about 20% of attendees and panelists are right-of-center. I’m not complaining because up to this point, the best people were on the left. The developers and strategists that I wanted to see belonged to the other side of the aisle.

After I sat through the pre-lunch talk with Joe Trippi, it hit me how much the online situation has changed.

Trippi did a lot of really cool things…back in 2004. I highly recommend his book, The Revolution Won’t Be Televised, but now it’s part of history. It shouldn’t be viewed as a current strategy piece.

Over and over, he kept discussing MoveOn, Meetup and the resistance of the GOP to the web. He and the other speaker, Rod Martin from Paypal, were interesting, but I got the overall impression that not much had changed for Trippi since 2007. I wouldn’t discount his career since you can influence politics in DC from beyond the grave (i.e. Reagan, FDR and JFK), but it was sad.

When was the last time that MoveOn made the news? Oh, they still send emails. I’m on their list. But they’re formulaic and boring. Online email strategy has evolved (disclosure: email fundraising is primarily what I do professionally), and they seem stuck in the anti-Bush frame. How much longer will that message resound? At some point even MoveOn will need to move on.

Then there was the Q&A from the audience during various sessions.

Since the overwhelming majority of the audience were Democrats or left-leaning nonprofits, almost all of the questions surrounded the Obama election.

The Obama election? That was 17 months ago. In the online world, that’s practically a lifetime. Everything that can be studied has been analyzed and dissected.

Then it hit me. After years of self-flagellation and bemoaning (and I was one of the many bloggers doing the moaning), the right has actually achieved success on web. Note that I didn’t say Republicans, but the right. There are still pockets of resistance, especially among standing members in Congress and state legislatures. I’m not the only one to notice. Look at these stories at The Hill and The Weekly Standard.

Since 2008, conservatives have seen McDonnell, Brown and Tea Parties. All of which were fueled by the web.

The Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown campaigns expanded on lessons learned from the Obama campaign and took it to the next level. Just look at online ad spending. Obama’s people spent 4%. McDonnell spent 10%. (Correction: McDonnell spent 8%, Brown spent 10%.) Google is now advising all campaigns at least spend 10%.

Without the technologies that liberals and Democrats used in 2006 and 2008, the tea parties wouldn’t exist. Ironically, the liberal developers are the ones who gave those crazed masses their tool box.

This post isn’t to mock the left or proudly announce that we won. We haven’t, and we’re far from it. As Rod Martin declared, the web has made politics more and more volatile.

The internet embodies populist politics. Since populism swings back and forth from left to right depending on the economy, foreign policy, wars and other factors, our political cycle could resemble a roller coaster going forward.

In other words, the web is the tool of the angry and upset. In 2006 and 2008, BDS ruled the interwebs and motivated the folks agreeing with that message.

Now the tables have turned, and the formerly silent majority has literally taken to the streets.

I would argue that tea parties are slightly different. Polls show that 25% of Americans identify with those values. At no point in history has one-fourth of our population marched with liberal or progressive movements.

I would also argue that tea parties are the first truly grassroots movement that we’ve seen in decades. Grassroots movements are marked by chaotic order, widespread issues and are leaderless. Those are three attacks that the media has repeatedly made on tea partiers.

Yes, Obama had millions of small dollar donors. Yes, he got 53% of the vote, but most of them now disapprove of his performance. Further examination of his fundraising shows that traditional big dollar donors were the backbone of his election machine. It’s a nice Alinsky-esqe story to say that Obama appealed to the little guy–the $5 donor–but his muscle came from the established monied left.

The fate of Organizing for America serves as further evidence that the Obama campaign was just grass-washing. What happened to them? Much like MoveOn, when was the last time you heard from them? Even the overall netroots haven’t done much. The plot to infiltrate the April 15 tea parties bombed. What ever happened to the plan of getting OFA members to call talk radio?

:::grasshoppers chirping:::

While the left may have convinced themselves that they created the first “grassroots” energetic movement online, the evidence suggests that it was still a very top-down campaign that Democrats have always run. Now that the powerful are in charge, they can ignore the little people they leveraged to get there.

I saw this firsthand last fall. The project that I was working on was the subject of a high-profile story from an arm of Center for American Progress. Overnight, our hate mail quadrupled and our traffic certainly increased. However, when I drilled down and studied the blog posts that were complaining about us, I noticed that they all copied one of the major liberal blogs, primarily Think Progress. And by copy, I literally mean copy. We got hundreds of hits from small bloggers who cut and pasted the Think Progress post.

I had never seen anything like it on the right. Almost all of the posts lacked attribution. I think this example highlights the very hierarchical nature of the netroots that is symptomatic of the entire left.

But what about the success stories on the right? The Politics Online conference did highlight those. As I listened to the the case studies, I realized that I had already heard them. Through sheer desperation, the right has organically built ways to communicate. Blogs such as The Next Right, weekly events like Heritage’s Blogger Briefing and annual conferences like Americans for Prosperity’s RightOnline communicate activities and educate members about emerging technologies.

Last year, I taught a couple of sessions at RightOnline and was shocked to see 80 year-old grandmas in the audience. They recognized that technology had changed, and they as individuals, needed to change in order for the conservative movement to win.

The morning after election day 2008, the establishment also started listening. We know that Red State has become influential on the Hill, and CPAC has done a great job of incorporating digital media and bloggers into the conference. Also, The Heritage Foundation has integrated digital media into every aspect of their activities. Their hard work should be applauded. Like their policies or not, their work is always imaginative. Do you get much more old-school conservative establishment than The Heritage Foundation and CPAC?

A telling comment at Politics Online captures the state of the liberal netroots. During a panel on social media apps, an audience member asked what it would take for more people to embrace smart phones. Since the next wave of technology is mobile, it’s dependent on individual users to voluntarily opt-in.

The panelist replied, “subsidized smart phones.”

That’s right! In order for the left to reach the next level, the government needs to subsidize smart phone adoption for the average tax payer. Unlike adoption on social networks, which only required a computer and an internet connection, mobile adoption requires the average user going to AT&T or Verizon and forking over $100 or more a month to access Facebook on the road.

I was floored. Cost is an issue, and I hate how phones are attached to carriers. But expecting the government to subsidize smart phones so that someone under the poverty line can become the Mayor of Taco Bell on FourSquare is too much.

This is another area where the right may have an advantage. Since polls show that tea party members make more money, they’re more likely to adopt new technology and use smart phones.

With recent court decisions making a national broadband plan and Net Neutrality a giant question mark, I think momentum has finally shifted right. This isn’t accidental. Conservatives at every level, from executives at think tanks to frustrated mommybloggers, have gotten involved and fought to get here.

As I mentioned earlier, we still have a tremendous amount of work ahead. If Republicans are lucky in November and regain control of both Houses, they need to enact swift fiscal reform and dramatically cut spending and taxes. Conservatives have the message, but the biggest question remains–has the GOP learned?

Makes you upset, doesn’t it?

Then I read some favorable reviews of Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda and put the book on my April reading list. Since the book was around 200 pages and only $8.16 at Sam’s Club, I bought it.

I was pleasantly surprised.

What Hannity did was brilliant. He took very philosophical and wonkish ideas and put them into paperback form. He purposely kept the cost of the book low and made it short. He didn’t dumb down conservatism. Rather, he packaged it in an accessible way.

Hannity splits the book into two parts. The first part builds the case against Barack Obama. For most people, this is old news, and only serves to make you angry. I read it mostly at the gym and could funnel my anger into the treadmill. Otherwise, I was quite likely to call and email every Obama voter that I know and yell at him and her.

The second half focuses on the path to conservative victory. Hannity does good job of explaining the history and rationale behind conservative politics. He goes in depth into the legacy of President Reagan and why pundits like David Frum are harmful.

The biggest surprise is that Hannity correctly blames Bush for causing most of the problems that we face today. Big Government Republicanism only caused huge divisions in the party and created distrust among American voters. Unless we get a crop of true fiscal conservatives in office this November, I don’t know if that trust can ever be restored.

I do wish that Hannity had included history of the conservative movement prior to Reagan. For example, Goldwater was mentioned twice in passing. Without the early work of Goldwater, Reagan may not have been so successful.

With the exception of national security, I agree with his 11 points. If someone is upset by the actions of Washington but doesn’t quite want to be brandished with the tea party label or called a wing nut, I’d recommend this book. It concisely explains conservative objections to Barack Obama and displays that we’re not the Party of No, just the “Party of Not These Ideas.”

Imagine that you’re graduating from college soon. With unemployment at 10%, do you have a chance of getting a job when competing with experienced workers? What are your options?

For many recent college graduates, they take internships. It’s not ideal, but it often gives new workers experience and puts their foot in the door when openings do come up.

That option may not exist much longer.

According to the New York Times, labor commissioners in Oregon, Washington, New York and the U.S. Department of Labor are investigating if internships are legal:

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Step back and think about this for the moment. Unemployment is highest among teenagers and recent college graduates. Often, the only opportunity to get professional experience is to take an unpaid internship. In addition to requiring young people to buy insurance, raising our taxes and taking away freedom in purchasing student loans, the government is going to destroy the internship market? This will be an additional burden from an Administration with policies that attack the futures of its most ardent supporters.

What’s wrong with internships? Well, according to the Labor Department, they violate minimum wage laws. That means the college grad who brings you coffee and makes copies should be paid $7.25 per hour. Per the Labor Department:

The Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that fail to pay interns properly and expanding efforts to educate companies, colleges and students on the law regarding internships.

“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.

This is going to to have widespread and adverse effects on college students and recent graduates. The vast majority of career fields that employ liberal arts majors have unpaid interns. It’s part of life. If you want a career, you do what it takes to succeed. I guess that’s not good enough for the Obama Administration.

The kicker: this only affects for-profit businesses. That’s right. The ones that make those icky profits. Notice that government and nonprofits are exempt from these standards.

Regulating internships is another attack on the free market. If it were in the best interest of businesses, they would pay interns. Paid internships always attract the best talent and are the most competitive. Hiring interns also allows companies to see if a prospective employee is a good fit. The Obama Administration  just found one more back-door way to keep the private sector regulated and force more people to go into bureaucratic fields or nonprofits. Since the government will soon be the only employer, how do you think they’ll keep up with payroll? Higher taxes of course!

Companies are already burdened with additional taxes and mandates from health care and soon (heaven forbid) Cap and Trade. Now, the government is going to eliminate another pool of inexpensive labor that helps both parties. Internships give new workers critical skills and often help get the grunt work done. If the government forces companies to pay these unskilled workers, they’ll just pull the programs completely. That leaves only government or nonprofit internships available to students. Since more and more Americans are earning college degrees, internships are the only way to separate yourself from the competition. The Labor Department is creating a vicious Catch-22 with this policy.

The administration has already clearly stated that they want young Americans to leave for-profit sectors and work in government or philanthropy fields. Look at Mrs. O’s comments to a group of AmeriCorps (federally paid volunteers) last year:

What placed them in this position, Mrs. Obama said, was their decision to “move out of the money-making industry”–both had worked in corporate law–”into the helping industry.” Again, the term “helping” is loosely defined: After leaving their law firms, he went to work for the Illinois state senate, she to Chicago city government and then a nonprofit hospital. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she said.

Ugh. Those dreadful profits. Those things that actually fund* the philanthropy industry and make jobs in the “helping industry” possible. Good heavens! Whatever would possess a college grad to have aspirations of working for the private sector?

It’s perfectly fine to want to work in nonprofits. I did for the first six years of my career and three out of the four internships I had in college. However, I chose to work under those conditions (and conditions are generally sketch. Burnout rates are far higher at nonprofits than for-profit entities). The Obama Administration is destroying all choices that college graduates have. They  just eliminated all choice in where they go to fund their college tuition and health insurance. Soon, they won’t have many choices in where they go to get a job.

*In his controversial book, Who Really Cares?, Arthur Brooks found that for every dollar of government aid given to philanthropy, private sector dollars drop by .50. Having worked in nonprofit fundraising, I can tell you that his statistics are accurate.

In hindsight, it would have been a good investment in protest attire.

FreedomWorks has issued a call for another protest on March 16 to kill the Obama healthcare bill. The President has declared that the bill must be through the House and Senate by March 18, so he can conveniently schedule a photo-op before he flies off to the Pacific.

Wouldn’t you hate for the overwhelming opposition of the American people to conflict with Obama’s tight schedule? How rude of us.