Yesterday, Chris, Melissa, Ijeoma, and I had the opportunity to meet with Virginia 5th District Congressman Tom Perriello. Congressman Perriello has had an extraordinary career: he has worked with child soldiers through the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Center for Transitional Justice in Kosovo, Darfur, and Afghanistan. Now, at the age of 34, he one of the youngest members of Congress. He has spent his life working in public service and from our meeting it is clear that he intends to continue supporting national service in any way he can. We were escorted through the Capitol by Congressman Perriello’s Legislative Counsel, Ericke Cage, who told us that building the U.S. Public Service Academy seemed like a “no-brainer” to him.
More on Congressman Perriello can be found at http://www.slate.com/id/2204124/
vi da nam responded on 28 Oct 2011 at 4:27 am #
[The worst thing] is the role fundraising plays both in affecting policy and taking up people’s time. … Given the gravity of the problems we have, I think - as much as possible — all of our time and energy needs to be spent on policy. And until we do serious campaign finance reform, we won’t be able to crack that nut.