American 'volunteerism' bleeds taxpayers

January 10, 9:49 AMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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In a recent article the Boston Globe lauds a "hunger for service and belonging that was sweeping across the nation's high schools, college campuses, and online communities."

Young people are hungering to volunteer their services in growing numbers, it seems, and plenty of organizations are snapping them up.

The only problem is, very few of the organizations explicitly mentioned in the Globe article are actually "voluntary" ventures.

The Globe, in fact, conflates volunteering with coercion-based government boondoggles and calls it all voluntary

One such group the Globe glamorizes is AmeriCorps, which, since it's a federal government program, cannot be called a voluntary organization because taxpayers, by definition, do not voluntarily pay for it. AmeriCorps, in fact, appears to be just another typically corrupt bureaucracy awash in unaccountable public funds and fraudulent flimflammery.

Back in 1995, according to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), AmeriCorps gave 1.1 million of our taxbucks as a grant to an organization called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a radical-left "progressive" group better known as ACORN. Because of its overt political activity even back then the grant had to be returned.

CAGW also reported that in 1998 operational costs for Americorps amounted to $27,000 per "volunteer" per year. That's 27,000 taxbucks, not 27,000 voluntary dollars. 

An NGO that trains youth to be activists for freedom.
(source: Bureaucrash)
 

In 2003 the libertarian magazine Reason reported that AmeriCorps' parent agency, the Corporation for National and Community Service, violated federal law by hiring more people than Congress had authorized and spent 64 million taxbucks more than was legally allowed. Again, that's 64,000,000 taxbucks, not voluntary bucks.

Any bets that AmeriCorps was not at the forefront of Obama's frontal lobes when The Politico headline proclaimed, "Obama vows to cut bad programs"?

The AmeriCorps gag lines (gag as in "retch," "vomit" or "drive the porcelain bus") go on and on.

Another bunch back-patted in the article is Teach for America, "which sends top college graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools." CBS News pegged their 2007 budget at $75 million but noted, "about a third of its money is your tax dollars." So those top college graduates may have volunteered but taxpayers did not "volunteer" $25 million of their own money to pay for their teaching. Teach for America is two-thirds voluntary and one-third BigGov coercion.

Another "volunteer organization" glorified by the Globe is Youth Service America which numbers amongst its partners and sponsors the National Education Association, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U. S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State.

Tax-eaters all.

On the bright side, the Globe did manage to find two non-government organizations (NGO) to call "volunteer." Neither Seeding Labs, a volunteer-run non-profit that puts unused lab equipment into the hands of foreign scientists, nor Ashoka, which tries to turn teens into "change-makers" appear to accept any taxpayer largess from the government.

They are true through and through volunteers, it appears.

For all the rest, if this be volunteerism, libertarians want none of it. There are many legitimate non-profit, non-tax-money-taking organizations anyone, young or old, can easily sign up to work with. But once the government grabs you by the wallet you're no longer a volunteer, you're just fodder for yet another politicized social welfare boondoggle.

And there's simply no excuse for it. Quoting from the libertarian think tank Cato Institute: "Three-quarters of American households give to charity. About 90 million adults volunteer; the value of their time has been estimated at nearly $200 billion."

So go ahead and volunteer. Unlike politicians, no libertarian would dream of forcibly making you serve others.