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President Joe Biden will invest $400 million from his $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue bill to build a Public Health AmeriCorps, the White House announced Thursday. “The program will focus on building a diverse pipeline for the public health workforce and providing direct service to communities across the country,” a release from the White House explained.

The Need for a Mandatory National Service Program By Steve Cohen April 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/4/1,418 COMMENTARY FacebookTwitterRedditEmailShare COMMENTS The United States has a history of big, bold initiatives. Americans as individuals, however, have largely forgotten them. The New Deal is barely taught in school, most students do not understand why the United States fought World War II, and the Apollo space program might be remembered as an okay Tom Hanks film. Yet, big challenges and ideas have been at the core of American exceptionalism—itself a barely-remembered concept—since the founding of the Republic. Today, in the shadow of a devastating...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Republican senators asked Monday for a congressional hearing to look at whether President Barack Obama acted appropriately when he fired the national service agency's inspector general earlier this month. Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Orrin Hatch of Utah said they were concerned about "significant questions raised regarding the propriety of the decision to remove the IG." Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other programs that are part of the Corporation for National Community Service, saying he had lost confidence in him. The firing followed an investigation by Walpin finding misuse...

On Friday, Trump fired the inspector general of the State Department, Steve Linick. In accordance with the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act, which protects inspectors general from being fired without cause, Trump informed Congress in writing about the intent to fire Linick, expressing that he no longer had the “fullest confidence” in Linick, who was appointed to that position in 2013 by Barack Obama. Democrats naturally have come out of the woodwork to express their faux outrage, and to launch an investigation into the firing over allegations that Trump acted to protect Pompeo. But where were these Democrats in 2009...

FULL TITLE: GOP Lawmakers Ask For Docs On Potential Misuse Of Taxpayer Money Related To Abortion Services, Referrals Lawmakers are asking for the reports on AmeriCorps’ potential misuse of taxpayer money related to abortion services and referrals, as well as building renovations, a letter from ranking members on the House Oversight Committee reveals. Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina are requesting the release of documents from the Corporation for National Community Service (CNCS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concerning the potential misuse of taxpayer money by AmeriCorps. The lawmakers are also requesting the...

Harris Wofford, a former U.S. senator and long-time Democratic political operative who ran AmeriCorps from 1995 to 2001, died last week at the age of 92. The New York Times hailed Wofford as “America’s volunteer in chief” and Clinton administration fixer Paul Begala saluted him as “a pragmatic idealist” who “believed in progress, not perfection.” Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson gushed, “Cynicism melted around Wofford as if he were a bonfire in the snow.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that the White House budget office has prepared a list of programs that could be eliminated in Trump’s first budget proposal. Among those programs are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and AmeriCorps. From the NY Times: Work on the first Trump administration budget has been delayed as the budget office awaited Senate confirmation of former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, as budget director. Now that he is in place, his office is ready to move ahead with a list of nine programs to eliminate,...

Hillary Clinton announced Friday that she wants to enlist 5 million new volunteers into a “national service reserve” aimed at 18- to 30-year-olds. “What if we strengthen the culture of service in America? So it wasn’t just something we did one day a year, but it became a regular part of our lives,” she asked in a Florida rally on the topic of national service Friday. The former secretary of state argued that her volunteer plan would help combat growing self-segregation in America, where people surround themselves with people who think, talk, look and read the same news as them....

Gerald Walpin, the inspector general who was at the center of controversy in 2009 when he was fired by the White House amid an investigation of an Obama friend, died today. He was 84. Walpin's son-in-law, Allan Tananbaum, said Walpin was struck by a car while crossing a street in Manhattan. Walpin was fired in June 2009 for his investigation of the misuse of money in AmeriCorps, the service organization that was part of the Corporation for National and Community Service, where Walpin served as inspector general. The investigation focused on Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who became mayor...

The fit finally hit the shan for Sacramento mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson. His latest troubles are a stark reminder of the despicable White House role in railroading a vigilant government watchdog who red-flagged Johnson's corruption years ago. Sports fans buzzed last week after ESPN shelved a documentary celebrating Johnson's efforts to keep the Sacramento Kings basketball team in his city. The public relations disaster came at the hands of the weekly Sacramento News & Review, which has published damning reports all year long on Johnson's use of public resources for personal gain — along with sports website...

Resilience. That word is defined as being able to recover quickly from difficulties. But if the Obama administration and a controversial Progressive group get their way, it will mean Progressively so much more. The Rockefeller Foundation has a long history of pushing controversial Progressive ideas. From Population Control through family planning and Eugenics, to funding the Marxist affiliated Tides Foundation, to openly awarding Obama’s Communist Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, an award, the Rockefeller Foundation has done everything but hide their true Progressive motivations from those who care to notice. But now the Rockefeller Foundation wants to dabble in one...

With the attempt to limit the deductibility of contributions to charities by high-earners, the Obama Administration has opened a multi-front attack against the American tradition of “neighbor helping neighbor” and financially successful people turning large portions of their wealth over to charities that improve the American culture in august manners. The governmental power grab competes with the attempts to control the financial sector for its significance and may exceed it in the long-term effect upon our culture. One first has to marvel at how liberals can twist logic to rationalize a tax increase. It happens regularly from the local government...

As 2014 dawns, we have the spectacle of federal AmeriCorps “members” becoming liable to the Obamacare law’s penalties for individuals who fail to have up-to-snuff health insurance. Why are AmeriCorps' semi-volunteers in trouble? Because the health plans provided by their federal employer don’t meet the feds’ own law. Needless to say, the young people involved didn’t realize joining a federal program would bring federal punishments, and they feel betrayed. Sarah Sklaw, a 22-year-old Vista member from New York City, says AmeriCorps’ parent agency, the Corporation for National and Community Service, repeated the Lie of the Year, “If you like your...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has told Vista volunteers and other AmeriCorps workers that their government-provided health coverage does not measure up to the standards of the new health care law, and that they may be subject to financial penalties unless they obtain insurance elsewhere. The notice has surprised and worried workers in AmeriCorps, the federal community service program that is often described as a domestic version of the Peace Corps. Mary Strasser, the director of AmeriCorps’ Vista program, described the changes in a bulletin to members on Dec. 16. The coverage provided by the agency — the AmeriCorps Health...

Consider the following recent activities: • In April, AmeriCorps recruits in Tuscumbia, Mo., released 70 blue balloons outside the county courthouse to draw attention to the plight of abused children. • In March, Providence, R.I., AmeriCorps members at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence hosted a hip hop/poetry competition. • Members of a Nevada AmeriCorps program busy themselves these days by encouraging local residents to drink tap water and watch out for bears ("bear awareness"). • AmeriCorps members in Austin, Texas, hosted a trivia night in April at a local bar called Cheer Up Charlie's to whip...

A recent high school graduate from the Midwest who moved to New Orleans in hopes of making a difference in the lives of others, was gunned down on a New Orleans street corner Monday night. Joseph Massenburg, 18, had been eager to embark on his first project in New Orleans as an AmeriCorps member, friends and family said.

Says Obamacare leading U.S. down pathway to socialism The surge of bullet-buying confirmed by the federal government – purchase estimates run into the billions of bullets – even as the U.S. military scrimps to find training ammo is raising lots of questions about the government’s so-far unexplained actions. But a video that has been around since last year is being forwarded across the Internet as an explanation. The six minutes recorded by Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, retired, warns that America is well along the pathway that other societies have used to bludgeon and beat their populations into submission...

Graham Greene’s observation has lost none of its salience in 50 years: innocence remains “like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.” The latest illustration comes from Wisconsin, where the state’s Department of Public Instruction website devotes a page to “Power and Privilege.” Caucasians who volunteer in the state’s AmeriCorps VISTA antipoverty programs are instructed to “set aside sections of the day to critically examine how privilege works”; “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege”; and, in order to underline white guilt, “find a...

Dear Mainstream Media, Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama went off his teleprompter and added a couple of sentences to the text of a speech about expanding the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. Over rolling applause, the soon-to-be president of the United States said: “We cannot continue to rely only 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.” At the time, Joseph Farah of WND.com wrote a column calling on you to help shine a light...

By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent 07/18/09 9:45 AM EDT Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who was summarily fired in June amid controversy over his investigation of a politically-connected supporter of President Obama, has filed suit alleging that the firing was "unlawful," "politically driven," "procedurally defective" and "a transparent and clumsily-conducted effort to circumvent the protections" given to inspectors general under the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008.