Obama Calls For Mandatory Volunteer Labor For Tickets To Speech

This is a result in the kind of mind-numbing robot-logic you could have seen during Mao’s Cultural Revolution:

Fox News reported the story:

Ticket Twist

Some Barack Obama supporters have been told they must complete six hours of volunteer work by Friday if they want a seat at Denver’s Invesco Field for the senator’s Democratic nomination acceptance speech. The Rocky Mountain News reports a campaign phone message says volunteering makes one eligible for a ticket, but does not guarantee one.

Well, that phone message is not going over too well.

One applicant says: “It’s not fair. It’s elitist. And they need to practice what they are preaching.” And another calls the conditions “blackmail,” adding he was told to volunteer for 12 hours to have a shot at two tickets for the August 28 event.

The campaign originally said the tickets were free and that it hoped to fill half the stadium with Coloradans. An Obama spokesman says only those who indicated on their application they would volunteer have been asked to do so. But no one has explained the phone messages indicating a service requirement for a ticket.

The story is also available on the Denver News.

“Must complete six hours of volunteer work”? That’s a change in logic you can believe in.

Hot Air ran a piece by Ed Morrissey, who said by way of comment:

This raises some questions about the event. If the campaign requires people to work for several hours to acquire them, doesn’t that make this an in-kind contribution rather than volunteer work? If people who have already contributed to the limit for Obama perform work as compensation towards these tickets, then they could break campaign law by doing so.

Even without the campaign-finance issues, this looks very much like a bait-and-switch by Obama. The entire point of the Invesco address was to welcome everyone for free, perhaps because they wanted to ensure that the place was filled to capacity. Now, with everyone excited about attending this free event, Obama suddenly tells them that they can’t get a seat unless they work for him first.

Like most of Obama’s plans, nothing is free. We’ll pay one way or the other for every supposed giveaway in his policies. And in the end, he wants everyone working for him, while tossing hosannas at his feet and giving him the best optics he can possibly get.

One last thing: Obama didn’t require Germans in Berlin to work for him in order to cheer him at the Tiergarten. Why does Obama treat Germans better than Americans?

I loved that last question!

Next there will be the mandatory volunteer self-criticism sessions, in which the proletariat are called upon to stand and tell their workers’ groups all the ways that they have failed their beloved party and their beloved great leader Obama.

Note to Democrats re: buyers’ remorse: You bought him, you own him (well, maybe he owns you).

Tags: bait-and-switch, free, Invesco Field, Obama, six hours, speech, volunteer work