Kerry's Slave-Labor Plan and Shell Game

Kerry's website used to carry a statement about his position on national service. The statement was taken off the site, but intrepid (no doubt pajama-clad) bloggers have found a cached version. Here's a bit of it, courtesy Say Anything:

As President, John Kerry will ensure that every high school student in America performs community service as a requirement for graduation. This service will be a rite of passage for our nation’s youth and will help foster a lifetime of service. States would design service programs that meet their community and educational needs. However, John Kerry does not believe in unfunded mandates. No state would be obligated to implement a service requirement if the federal government does not live up to its obligation to fund the program.

So, Kerry would make slave laborers of high-school students. But he wouldn't make the States fund the slave-labor program. No, he'd simply ship the money to the States from Washington, D.C., where money grows on trees. Oops, no, that's not it; Washington's money comes from the citizens of the very States that he'd ship the money to. Nice try, John, but we've seen that move before.