Advertisements

During an appearance of the Sue Jeffers show, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that the recent expansion the Americorps program is a dream comes true for those who want to rid America of capitalism because the Americorps program is really reeducation camps for young people.

Here are the main quotes from the interview courtesy of Dump Bachmann:

Advertisements

Bachmann said that Americorps is really “re-education camps for young people – and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward.” She continued, “It is a dream come true for people who want to transform our country from a free-market economy to a centralized government planned economy. It is completely different and antithetical to what our founders gave us and I think people should be shocked, they should be stunned with what is happening and the speed at which it’s happening and in particular, what is happening with the G-20 and the transnational aspects of what our President is committing our nation to.”

Americorps is a national service program open to people of all ages. Here are some of things that Americorps members do, tutor and mentor disadvantaged youth , fight illiteracy, improve health services, build affordable housing, teach computer skills , clean parks and streams, manage or operate after-school programs, help communities respond to disasters, build organizational capacity.

I know people who have served in the Americorps, and it is a great way to earn some extra money for school, or to pay back student loans. There is no reeducation camp, and no ideological requirement to be involved. I have Democrats and Republicans who have volunteered.

It is deplorable that Bachmann and many other Republicans would distort a good program that does important work in many underserved local communities just for the purposes of making a political point and feeding right wing paranoia.

Bachmann is obviously wrong, and she seems to know nothing about what the program really does.

These daily paranoid ramblings from members of the GOP are putting the United States on the verge of becoming a one party country. When Republicans make outrageous claims like Bachmann does, it makes them look crazy, and turns the choice voters in a contest between a party of the sane, and a party of the insane.