Free Republic

Yes, there are plenty of reasons, and here is just one! California gives over and above what the feds give to Illegal Aliens. Yesterday I was at my doctor's office and picked up a booklet funded 'with a generous grant from the Calif. Bar Foundation', titled, "Seniors & the Law" A Guide for Maturing Californians. They pointed out many programs, such as property tax deferment for seniors in financial trouble, that have been eliminated because of budget cuts...but they didn't cut this one! Pg. 3 (click link to see original document) Is there any financial assistance available for seniors who...

Something we have always known, animals are smarter than people.

You hear it everywhere you turn. On street corners, at the water cooler, in advertising … it is everywhere. Get cash now for that worn-out old automobile sitting in your driveway. Even Larry Kudlow, television commentator and a supply-sider if there ever was one, has been extolling the economic healing powers and virtues of the federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program. I can’t blame anybody. Who can argue against a program that is getting old and possibly dangerous automobiles off the road and putting Americans into more fuel-efficient, safer, new automobiles? Even members of my own family have taken advantage...

Hundreds of thousands of migrants here for handouts, says senior judge By STEVE DOUGHTY 29th July 2009 Judge Ian Trigger said the cost of handouts has helped to double the national debt Hundreds of thousands of immigrants come to Britain just to get welfare benefits, a senior judge declared yesterday. Judge Ian Trigger said the cost of the handouts has helped to double the national debt. He spoke out as he gave a two-year jail sentence to a Jamaican drug minder who disappeared from the notice of immigration authorities after claiming asylum. He told Lucien McClearley, 31, at Liverpool Crown...

This week, thousands of people are getting stimulus checks in the mail. The problem is that a lot of them are dead. A Long Island woman was shocked when she checked the mail and received a letter from the U.S. Treasury -- but it wasn't for her. Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. The Santopadres are not alone. The Social Security Administration, which sent out 52 million checks,...

The city's experimental anti-poverty program that pays poor New Yorkers for good behavior like seeing the doctor and attending parent-teacher conferences handed out an average of $3,000 per family in its first year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration said it is too early to know whether it is a useful tool to fight poverty. Officials say it will take five years for a full evaluation of the program, which is the first of its kind in the nation. But a report released Tuesday by the mayor's Center for Economic Opportunity did contain some preliminary data. It said 80 percent of the...

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Stemming home foreclosures in Hispanic communities is crucial to restoring financial stability and ending the nation's economic crisis, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros said Tuesday. “It is critical for this country to grow the backbone of its economy, its middle class, and the future middle class in large measure is going to be Latino,” Cisneros said. Cisneros made the comments during a telephonic symposium on Latinos and the economy — “Back to Basics: Restoring Latino Financial Security” — sponsored by the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic rights organization, and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning...

The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect wildlife in the US. After a sweeping Democratic Party victory in the November elections, animals that were formerly self-sufficient are already modifying their behavior to take advantage of what they expect to be a new set of societal norms in the next four to eight years. This black bear from Montana has ceased hunting for a living and is sitting outside the US Fish & Wildlife Service office in Kalispell, apparently waiting to be fed and to have his winter den dug by government employees. The residents of...

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., says the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package the House of Representatives is heaping on Americans is nothing more than a huge spending bill with projects in it for people the Democratic-led Congress wants to buy off. Inhofe, who says the bill will do nothing to stimulate the economy.....that the superfluous bill will provide tax refunds to people who don't pay any taxes, and would even give government checks of up to $1,000 to illegal aliens. "You have a stimulus bill that's supposed to stimulate the economy," Inhofe explains. "We know how to do that. We did it...

THE single mother of octuplets born in California last week is seeking $2m (£1.37m) from media interviews and commercial sponsorship to help pay the cost of raising the children. Nadya Suleman, 33, plans a career as a television childcare expert, since it emerged last week that she already had six children before giving birth on Monday. She now has 14 below the age of eight. Although still confined to an LA hospital bed, she intends to talk to two influential television hosts this week - media mogul Oprah Winfrey, and Diane Sawyer, who presents Good Morning America. Her family has...

Voters in the 40 of the most competitive Democratic-held congressional districts favor the economic stimulus legislation passed by the House this week, according to a new Democratic poll. Democracy Corps sampled 1,200 people combined in those districts, dividing them into two groups: the 20 most competitive districts in the first tier and the next 20 in a second tier. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who conducted the poll, reported that 62 percent of voters in the 20 most competitive districts favor the $819 billion stimulus plan, while 66 percent in the next tier favored the legislation. In a broader, nationwide poll...

WASHINGTON: A top Republican congressional aide says the $800 billion-plus economic stimulus measure could steer government checks to illegal immigrants. Republican officials are concerned that the Democratic-written legislation makes people who came to the United States illegally eligible for tax credits of $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple. A House-passed version of the bill and one making its way through the Senate both disqualify nonresident aliens from receiving the credits. But neither requires a worker to have a Social Security number to get the credits. An economic aid measure enacted in February 2008 that sent rebates to most wage...

The two-story house on 17th St. looks typical of the working-class homes on Racine's west side. Three bedrooms, one bath. Assessed by the city at $122,000. Yet inside, a young woman has tapped into a home-based money-making operation that netted her and her three sisters more than half a million in taxpayer dollars since 2006. And they did it with the blessing of the state. All four had been in-home child-care providers. Collectively they have 17 children. For years, the government has paid them to stay home and care for each other's children. Nothing illegal about it under the rules...

Alaska's new Senator Mark Begich says Governor Palin is not asking President-Elect Obama for enough help in the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package he has proposed to rebuild the nation's economy. Wednesday, Palin sent Alaska's congressional delegation a three-page letter only requesting five stimulus package projects. The letter only added Kodiak Missile Launch Facility upgrades to the four gas pipeline road projects Palin already requested. Begich says in an estimated $800 billion dollar economic recovery package he wants to know why Palin is only asking for about $150 million dollars. "I think the 4 projects she's identified, in my view,...

Despite just receiving $13.4 billion in government loans, General Motors (GM) hopes to make another federal cash withdrawal, probably in early 2009. GM spokesman Greg Martin noted the automaker had originally requested $18 billion in "bridge loans" and revolving credit from the government in late November to help survive the recession. Instead, talks stalled in Congress and the Bush administration acted on its own to approve $17.4 billion in loans, with $4 billion going to Chrysler.

For nearly 30 years, politicians have poured more than $65 million into downtown Buffalo hotels — an average of more than $50,000 per room. The strategy produced five hotels — and a lot of red ink. Some of downtown’s largest hotel operators say the last thing they need is more competition, especially subsidized competitors. But that’s exactly the course City Hall is pursuing. One heavily subsidized hotel is under construction, and development agencies in the last month have approved two others that would involve significant tax breaks. The new projects would increase the inventory of downtown hotel rooms by 22...

If you've been elected to something somewhere in California, you're probably writing a wish list for President-elect Barack Obama. With the inauguration about nine weeks away, Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster is seeking $111 million to replace 28 miles of storm drains. State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) is talking up $321 million for sewage-treatment plants and clean-water facilities. Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl wants a light-rail line to Los Angeles International Airport. And money for homeless veterans. And did he mention universal healthcare? "The sooner he focuses on healthcare, the better," said Rosendahl, who represents coastal neighborhoods such as...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former American International Group Inc (AIG.N) Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg said on Tuesday the U.S. government support for the giant insurer will have to continue until the hobbled company is back on its feet.

For the nation's labor union leaders, it's time to cash in. Having mobilized an army of workers to help elect Barack Obama, top union officials have not been shy about their plans to push a legislative wish list blocked under President Bush, and they say they will not wait. On the other hand, business leaders have not been shy about warning the president-elect against such early moves. "American workers turned out for the election. American voters voted for Barack Obama. And American workers won this election," Anna Burger, chairman of Change to Win, an activist coalition of unions including the...

Pack away that "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt with the old disco clothes. While President-elect Barack Obama said in his victory speech Tuesday that some of the changes he promised will take time, New Jersey Democrats expect a lot to happen quickly. Within days of inauguration, the new administration might reverse policies on offshore drilling, chemical plant security, stem-cell research and children’s health care — issues that have bedeviled New Jersey Democrats during the Bush years. Even before the inauguration, change appears to be happening. WHAT NJ WANTSWish list for our sharePresident Bush indicated Wednesday he is open to discussing another...

Last week, as federal regulators seized Washington Mutual in the largest U.S. banking failure, Congress was grappling with whether to spend $700 billion of public money to fix the financial industry's troubles. Lawmakers' initial reaction to the Treasury Department's staggering request: shock. That sum amounts to about a quarter of the U.S. government's annual spending. It's more than the Pentagon's annual budget, more than the nation pays out each year in Social Security benefits and more than the federal government's cost for Medicare and Medicaid. Members of Congress then asked the questions that continue to be on many Americans' minds:...

BOCA RATON — A crowd of more than 500 people waiting for hours this morning for housing voucher applications were dispersed by police in riot gear at the Boca Raton Housing Authority when the applications ran out sooner than expected. The action prompted complaints that officers used excessive tactics and housing authority officials were incompetent in their planning. Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal. Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line, were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30...

With Tuesday's record-setting turnout, California Hispanics for the first time performed as well as any other racial group in a statewide election. The outpouring was especially strong on the Democratic side, with Hispanics accounting for 30 percent of Tuesday's presidential primary vote. Hispanic Democrats nearly doubled their percentage from the 2000 and 2004 primaries. And they matched their percentage among California adults, suggesting the state's fast-growing Hispanic population is finally being reflected at the polls. Analysts cited a variety of possible reasons for the uptick in Hispanic voting, from the voter registration drives that developed from the 2006 immigration protests...

A monstrous week! From Cloverfield to monster primary campaigns, not to mention the monstrous problem with the economy. The scariest thing isn’t that the economy’s sick … it’s that the government’s playing doctor! Uncle Jay explains the government’s “stimulus” plan to make our economy as secure as our borders. http://www.unclejayexplains.com/

<p>WASHINGTON — House Democratic and Republican leaders are looking for imminent agreement with the White House on an emergency package to jolt the economy out of its slump after negotiators on all sides made significant concessions at a late-night bargaining session.</p>

The number of Washington residents living in poverty is up sharply since 2001, with increases in every county except Garfield, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The agency reported this week that 12 percent of the people in the state were living in poverty in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. In 2001, just 9.9 percent of the state's population was in poverty.~snip~ The largest county, King, had the largest number of poor people at 167,720 in 2005. That amounted to 9.6 percent of the population, up from 7.5 percent in 2001.

In his latest attack on the free market and what appears to be a calculated political move to appeal to Michigan voters, John McCain wants to create a new welfare program for manufacturing workers. According to the Detroit Free Press, Senator McCain announced yesterday a plan to use federal dollars to make up the salary difference for workers who lose manufacturing jobs and are forced to accept lower-paying jobs until they find new careers. This is exactly the kind of plan you expect to hear from the Democratic candidates, not an alleged economic conservative, The government should not be in...

paritial excerpt: "Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program , to be administered by the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, to provide, upon appropriation by the Legislature, competitive grants , loans, loan guarantees, and revolving loans to public agencies, California-based businesses and projects, public-private partnerships, vehicle and technology consortia, workforce training partnerships, fleet owners, consumers, recreational boaters, and academic institutions to develop and deploy innovative technologies that will transform California's fuel and vehicle types to help attain the state's climate change policies"

Try this experiment. Put a bird feeder in your yard and fill it with bird seed. It doesn't take long before the birds learn that a free meal is in the offing. They come by the hundreds. Now, empty the feeder. What happens? No more birds. Take away the free medical care. Take away the free schooling. Take away the free welfare. Take away the jobs. What happens? No more illegals. WOW!! What a simple solution! No need for a border fence at the cost of hundreds of millions of tax dollars. Do you think this could work? Duuhhhhh...!

Americans are worried about the economy and believe that a recession is looming, but their faith in real estate remains fierce, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. ... [SNIP] ... The poll respondents narrowly favored government aid for low-income buyers facing foreclosure, 50% to 41%. Black respondents were strongly in favor, 85% to 12%. The rising tide of foreclosure is expected to hit African Americans especially hard, and civil rights leaders have urged government intervention. David Poulnot, an insurance agent in Charleston, S.C., is not an advocate of aid. Many people may be just one misfortune from disaster, he...

One in five young people rely on handouts By Amy Iggulden Last Updated: 12:47am BST 10/04/2007 A "lost generation" of unemployed young people is costing the economy billions of pounds a year in benefits, youth crime and educational under-achievement, a major report discloses today. The first large-scale study of its kind also shows that the population of "Neets" - people not in education, employment or training - is more than double that of Germany and France and is still growing. Roughly one in five young people faces a lifetime on government handouts, under-achieving in education and runs the risk of...

Kent Conrad's Web site proclaims that the North Dakota Democrat "has been a leading voice for fiscal responsibility" in Washington... ...$4.9 billion, which is the amount of emergency drought relief the parsimonious Mr. Conrad is attempting to shovel into a Senate military construction bill in this week's lame duck session. If this is the sort of "fiscal discipline" we can expect from the new Democratic majority, K Street ought to be popping the champagne corks. Farm-state Senators have been pushing for this handout for months, and the only good news is that they've modestly scaled back their demands. Nebraska Democrat...

Despite soaring revenues from gambling, Indians are receiving an increasing amount of federal funding. Indian Finances: Going Up While Oklahoma Indian tribes earn more money than ever from gaming and other businesses, they continue to collect federal grant funds for housing, medical care, education and other needs at an increasing rate, federal records show. The pattern is the same across the country. During a three-year period examined by the Tulsa World, gaming revenues among all tribes increased about 30 percent while federal grants and loans to tribes and tribal entities jumped 44 percent. The World analyzed a database that tracks...

"Adriana Hernandez, 20, said that her ceiling leaked and the air conditioning didn't work but that the apartment she shared with her 9-month-old baby and her parents isn't the only one in the city with problems. "There are worse," Ms. Hernandez said as she carried clothes to a truck. "They have much bigger problems." She didn't apply for the rental assistance, she said, because too many documents were required. Forms handed out to residents stated that they needed Social Security numbers or birth certificates, recent pay stubs and a copy of their lease, among other documents. But some people did...

A talk with federal officials tentatively set for late August The League of United Latin American Citizens and others have requested to meet with U.S. Department of Education officials about the denial of $3.4 million in federal grants for educational assistance programs that would affect 12 area schools. Feliberto Valdez, director of the Corpus Christi LULAC National Education Service Center, said he will continue to seek alternative local sources of funds but plans to shut down the center's operations Aug. 31. "We're trying to get members of the community to send letters to the Department of Education," he said. "We're...

Access to universities improves as federal reform stalls Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO - When he started high school, Matias Bernal's English was so limited he stumbled over the words for numbers and colors. Four years later, he was on the wait list at Princeton. But Bernal is an illegal immigrant from Mexico City. Without access to financial aid, grants and most scholarships, he had to push aside the Ivy League brochures and prepare to attend California State University-Fresno, where he can live with family and pay tuition with money from jobs he's not supposed to have. ''I was crushed,'' he...

Wearing work boots and carrying flashlights on a spring day last year, a band of architects and developers picked their way through the dim interior of the American Brewery. They looked like archaeologists combing through an ancient ruin, which, in some ways, is exactly what the brewery is. Built in the 1800s, the American Brewery has stood empty these past 33 years, a ghostly reminder of a distant past when the city's manufacturing muscle was on display in working-class neighborhoods such as this one in East Baltimore. Rain drips from a hole in the roof and puddles on the floor....

The New York Times had some terrible news recently from the West Bank and Gaza. It reported on a World Bank study which showed that if Israel continues to withhold revenues from the Palestinian Authority, and donors reduce international aid, the Palestinian economy would shrink 27 percent this year. Unemployment would rise to 40%, and 67% of the population would be living beneath the poverty level. By 2007, unemployment would hit 44%, with 72% living beneath the poverty level. These numbers are hard to fathom until one realizes how the average American's standard of living would be affected if suddenly...

WASHINGTON -- The Senate has agreed to put an additional $1 billion this year into a program to help poor people with energy costs, but only after overcoming resistance from warm state senators who said those suffering from summer heat weren't getting their fair share.The additional spending would increase to $3.1 billion the amount the federal government will have this year for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a decades-old program that subsidizes heating and cooling costs for poor families.The legislation, which still must be considered by the House, passed by a voice vote Tuesday, but only after a...

Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren are senior fellows. Peter VanDoren is also editor of Cato's Regulation magazine. To the casual observer, one of the most striking things about President Bush’s State of the Union address on Tuesday was his wholesale adaptation of the Democratic party’s rhetoric regarding energy. Vowing to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy,” after all, is heady stuff and the sine qua non of the environmental Left. Careful viewers, however, will note that the energy initiatives forwarded in the speech amounted to little more than modest increases in the amount of money already going to programs in...

On Wednesday December 14 an event occurred which does not leave much space for doubts that the “gas blackmail” exercised by Russia has got nothing to do with the gas itself. The “Gasprom” stand with regard to the price of gas had undergone a miraculous change. The price that the Russian monopolist is demanding for its product has gone up from $160 per 1000 cubic meters to $230. This means that a fair price is absolutely out of the question if to consider the Russian motivation in this matter. Simply because prices for such a commodity never undergo rapid changes,...

As Congress struggles to complete work on the 2006 budget, the White House tells the Pentagon to cut between $13 billion and $15 billion from the 2007 defense budget and billions more in coming years. The military is in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, has what Robert Kaplan calls "imperial grunts" in scores of countries fighting terrorism and protecting American interests and must prepare against increasingly dangerous and assertive rogue states, unstable alliances and rising or resurgent powers. The Bush administration proposing defense cuts raises serious questions about both its fiscal policy and military strategy. The administration wants to reduce...

Bills to Cut Social Programs Move Forward in Senate and House By DAVID ROGERS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 26, 2005; Page A6 WASHINGTON -- Deficit-reduction bills advanced in Congress as Senate Republicans completed a $39 billion five-year package and House Republicans began work on a more-ambitious effort demanding bigger cuts in social-service and health programs. Lawmakers neared agreement last night on legislation that would mandate disclosure by the Food and Drug Administration of any waivers of conflicts-of-interest rules for people selected to serve on its advisory committees. The FDA would be required to publish on its...

IT SHOULD come as no surprise that some Hurricane Katrina evacuees were found to be blowing their federal cash handouts on booze and strippers, as the Boston Herald reported on Tuesday. Behaviors that beget poverty are not instantly overcome with the receipt of taxpayer money. First, people were shocked to discover that huge sections of New Orleans were deeply poor. Now people are shocked to find that some of those same poor people are wasting their government aid. How do they think these people became poor in the first place? If there is a cycle of poverty in America, it...

'Insane' black leaders prove Einstein right Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. More than $7 trillion has been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson declared his "war on poverty" 40 years ago, with effectively zero impact on overall black poverty. Yet 40 years of failure doesn't seem to be enough to suggest to liberals, black and white, that their approach to poverty might be wrong. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards, among others, riding the post-Katrina poverty-in-America theme, are making predictable speeches calling for...

A City Council panel recommended Monday that Los Angeles provide $266 million in subsidies and loans to the developers of a 55-story hotel next to the Convention Center, but opponents threatened a referendum drive to put the matter before the city's voters. The financial deal was endorsed on a 4-0 vote by members of the council's Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention Center Hotel, with Councilman Tom Labonge and others saying that the project would make the center more competitive and breathe new life into downtown. (snip) The project also was endorsed by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and...

Trying to fend off increasingly tough competition from other states and foreign countries, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce a plan soon to grant tax breaks for film companies to help them meet production expenses and stay in California. J. Scott Davis

Will Somebody Say Thank You? Turn on TV, read the local newspaper or listen to your local radio station, and all you are going to hear, see and read are accounts of people knee-deep in playing the blame game. What you don't hear is anybody saying "thank you." From the safety of France, Pierce Brosnan took the time to tell the world: "This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for. I don't know if this man is really taking care of America. This government has been shameful." Instead of lifting a finger to help Katrina's victims, this...