The Kerry/Edwards Draft, or Dodging History
Captain Ed
September 29, 2004
The Democrats have had a fine time this month spreading urban legends about the prospect of a reintroduction of the military draft during a second Bush term. Not only have they and their associates started a shadowy e-mail campaign, but several of their party leaders accused Republicans of hiding a "secret plan" to restart the draft, despite the numerous denials from the GOP -- and the fact that the only people to actually propose a new draft are two Democrats, Charles Rangel and Fritz Hollings. CBS helped out, again, by again treating rumors as fact and basing an entire news segment on the hoax.
But lost in the shuffle until now is John Kerry's proposal to require service for high-school graduation, found by Swimming Through The Spin. Brian found the original web page archived, as somehow this proposal has been mysteriously deleted from the John Kerry website. Since the Democrats brought this up, what exactly are the plans for American youth under a Kerry/Edwards administration?
As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service.
The more expansive PDF of Kerry's plan doesn't detail how the mandatory high-school service is supposed to work, nor does it clearly explain how they plan to pay for four years of college tuition for the 500,000 students per year they expect to put through this program, other than closing a loophole that allows lenders on student loans to keep extra interest paid. If a "typical public university" charges $5,000 per year for tuition -- a rather moderate amount these days -- then just the cost for the first year alone will be $10 billion, not the $12 billion over 10 years that Kerry claims. ($20,000 times 500,000 students = $10 billion.)
It seems that Kerry has once again been caught in a severe case of projection, and once again has deleted pages from his web site to cover his tracks. His party squeals about a draft which only they have proposed restarting while trying to back-door a plan for indentured servitude for the teenagers of America.
Posted by Captain Ed
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