Decius wrote:
One agenda item that remains up there is Obama's community service plan, which currently says:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.
Previously this text said something else entirely:
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
That bit of bald faced authoritarianism made a lot of people absolutely furious, myself included. If we have a bunch of people waltzing into the whitehouse who do not appreciate the full implications of the use of the word "require" by a policy maker we are in very serious trouble.
The question of exactly what Obama's agenda actually is has been somewhat difficult to nail down. If Change.gov was intended to help clarify things it is a complete failure at this point.
Mankiw scooped this as well as quoting a dissection of Kennedy's "ask not" speech.
I think people are going to get "change" alright.
