Look, Mr. Beck--I have very, very strong disagreements with President Obama on a number of issues, but you're talking out your ass here.  I WAS an Americorps volunteer.  I joined Americorps in May 2002, two weeks after graduating college, and left after completing my term of service a year and five days later. 

Americorps partners with local organizations in needy communities.  I served a year in Mount Vernon, Kentucky, teaching preschool for the Christian Appalachian Project, one of many, many organizations Americorps partners with.  The Christian Appalachian Project, CAP for short, is an interdenominational social service organization founded by a Catholic priest, Father Ralph Beiting, in 1957, when he began Cliffview Lodge, a summer camp for disadvantaged boys.  It was incorporated as CAP in 1964. 

In addition to running preschools in some of the poorest areas of the country, CAP provides elderly visitation services, home repair, food pantries, thrift stores, adult education and GED classes, respite care for mentally retarded adults so their families can get a break from caring for them 24/7, teen centers, domestic abuse shelters, medical clinics, and the summer camps for disadvantaged children that started it all. 

CAP volunteers (not all of whom were affiliated with Americorps) served completely voluntary terms ranging from two weeks to one year.  We worked 40-hour workweeks.  Unlike a military enlistment, all of us were free to walk away at any time.  We lived in groups of 6-10 people in houses paid for by donations to CAP, we divided up household chores amongst ourselves, we ate supper together and prayed together four or five nights a week.  We were encouraged to join a local church of our choosing, but this was not in any way required.  The utility and grocery bills for the volunteer houses were paid for with CAP donations—I was the appointed bookkeeper in our house, and back in 2002 we had a food budget of $3 per person, per day.  We each received a spending-money stipend of $125 per month, again paid with CAP donations.  All of our toiletries, clothing, entertainment, cigarettes, personal vehicle expenses (if we had our own cars) or gasoline money for personal trips (if we were using CAP vehicles), etc. had to come from that stipend or else out of our personal money.  Our health insurance was paid either by CAP (if we were NOT affliated with Americorps) or the federal government (if we WERE Americorps volunteers in addition to being CAP volunteers). 

At the end of our service year, Americorps volunteers walked away with a stipend of about $4,700.  If we chose, we could sign on for a second year and get another $4,700 stipend.  This was not directly payable to the volunteer, however…it could only be used to pay back student loans, or to pay for tuition and/or room and board at an accredited school.  You had to use it for educational expenses, or else lose it.  (Since I’d already paid off what little undergrad debt I had, I used my Americorps grant to pay for my first year’s room and board in the dorm at the University of New Orleans. This allowed me to bank most of my paltry graduate assistantship stipend that first year and completely avoid ALL student loans my first year of grad school.)

So more or less, for the cost of a year’s health insurance for a healthy 22-year-old and less than five grand, the taxpayers got a college graduate to teach school full-time for an entire year in one of the most Godforsakenly poor parts of the country (at least one of my students DID NOT HAVE INDOOR PLUMBING IN HIS HOUSE), and I got work experience and the peace of mind that comes from having decent health insurance upon getting out of college and a small financial cushion while beginning graduate school.  It was a win-win situation. 

Americorps is not the Hitler Youth, Mr. Beck.  At its cliquey worst, Americorps and CAP were like an overearnest Girl Scout or church camp jamboree.  There was no indoctrination.  We were not government propagandists sent into low-income communities, unless teaching 3-year-olds to sing the days of the week to the tune of “O My Darling Clementine” and “give a stomp stomp stomp and a clap clap clap, look up, look down, turn yourself around let’s make believe we’re dinosaurs” is sinister brainwashing.

Find something real to run your trap about.