Free Republic

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared “War on Poverty.” It sounded great to me. I was taught at Princeton, “We’re a rich country. All we have to do is tax the rich, and then use that money to create programs that will lift the poor out of poverty.” Government created job-training programs for the strong and expanded social security for the weak.... Johnson’s War brought further progress, but progress then stopped. It stopped because government is not good at making a distinction between needy and lazy. It taught moms not to marry the father of their kids because that...

Crapitalism author Jason Mattera wanted to ask Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) a simple question: How did Reid, who was born in poverty, become so rich while working for the government? So he caught up with Reid recently to ask him about it. Reid refused to answer at all. Suddenly, one of Reid’s bodyguards took it upon himself to stop the questioning. He attacked Mattera while Reid just kept silently walking on. Take a look. (Video at source) By the way, Jason has accepted Bob Beckel’s challenge to fight, after Mattera targeted IRS targeting scandal honcho Lois Lerner.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared "War on Poverty." It sounded great to me. I was taught at Princeton, "We're a rich country. All we have to do is tax the rich, and then use that money to create programs that will lift the poor out of poverty." Government created job-training programs for the strong and expanded social security for the weak. It seemed to work. The poverty rate dropped from 17 percent to 12 percent in the programs' first decade. Unfortunately, few people noticed that during the half-decade before the "War," the rate dropped from 22 percent to...

CNSNews.com) - The number of Americans on food stamps has topped 46,000,000 for 35 straight months, according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA). From September 2011 through July 2014, the latest month for which data is available, the number of persons participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has exceeded 46 million. As of July 2014, there were 46,486,434 beneficiaries of the SNAP program. Excerpt - - - Graphs at the source

The government's newly released food stamp enrollment figures reveal that the number of individuals in America on food stamps has topped 46 million for 35 consecutive months. According to the Department of Agriculture, the number of individuals in July (the most recent month figures are available) who received food stamps was 46,486,434. The last time food stamp enrollments fell below 46 million was July 2011.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins personally escorted the family of Ebola carrier Thomas Duncan to a 4 bedroom spacious home in a gated community Friday. It’s where they will live, miles away from their cramped apartment in Dallas while under quarantine. “I’m wearing the same shirt I was when I was in the car for 45 minutes today with that family,” said Jenkins about the car ride. “If there was any risk, I wouldn’t expose myself or my family,” he said during Friday’s press conference where city and county leaders called the move necessary. “Where they were living was...

Linda Tirado photographed by Scott Suchman near her home in Washington DC for the Observer New Review. Why do so many poor people eat junk food, fail to budget properly, show no ambition? Linda Tirado knew exactly why… because she was one of them. Here, in an extract from her book, Hand to Mouth, she tells her story in her own words •Q&A with Linda Tirado In the autumn of 2013 I was in my first term of school in a decade. I had two jobs; my husband, Tom, was working full-time; and we were raising our two small girls....

I read over Kathy Shaidle’s piece on the ways in which one can stay out of poverty. While a lot of the poor lifestyle decisions she points out make sense for avoiding poverty, such as finishing high school or not having numerous kids while a teenager, or even avoiding smoking, my experience as a therapist has taught me that education on how not to be poor is an important component for helping people to avoid poverty. Let me explain.Most books like Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future tell one how to get...

,,,,,I grew up in Ireland in the foster care system for most of my early life....In my late teens and early twenties, my drug use spiraled out of control, I was homeless on the streets, and I finally ended up in prison. It gave me a place to live. I heard the gospel for the first time and was converted through reading Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible.....The church has made mistakes in the past by farming out, almost exclusively, social justice-type ministries to parachurch organizations. The church has also been guilty of paternalism and malevolent generosity when it comes...

The overall poverty rate in the United States dropped for the first time since 2006, with Hispanics being the only racial or ethnic group that experienced the most significant change in income. The U.S. Census Bureau's annual report released Tuesday indicated that the poverty rate among Latinos in 2013 decreased by 2.1 percentage points from the previous year. In addition, income for Hispanic households increased by 3.5 percent between 2012 and 2013 to $40,963. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference that represents millions of Hispanic Evangelicals, attributed the rise in income to more Latinos...

Economy In Crisis: A new study by the Illinois Policy Institute shows in the past four years, the number of new food-stamp recipients in the state has outpaced new jobs nearly 2-to-1. Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, locked in a tight re-election battle with self-made billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner, has been arguing that Illinois, arguably the bluest of blue states, has turned the fiscal corner and is on its way back. The recovery may be slower than Quinn wants it to be — but, he says, it is real. It is an odd recovery, though, that makes more people dependent...

So far, if measured by household income, the 21st century has not been a good one for the United States of America. In its annual report on "Income and Poverty in the United States," released on Tuesday, the Census Bureau described real median household income as stagnating for two years after declining for two. "Median household income was $51,939 in 2013, not statistically different in real terms from the 2012 median of $51,759," said the Census Bureau. "This is the second consecutive year that the annual change was not statistically significant, following two consecutive years of annual declines in median...

The Census Bureau's annual report on poverty, released Tuesday, is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the war has failed because we didn't spend enough money. Their answer is to spend more. But the facts show otherwise. Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that's three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution. The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These...

For every job created in the state of Illinois, two people sign-up for food stamps—not exactly an encouraging statistic. The state ranked ‘dead last’ across America for job growth in 2014, according to the Illinois Policy.Not only is the economically-challenged state failing to create positions in the private sector, it actually lost nearly 6,000 jobs between January and July of this year. Since the financial crisis of 2008, Illinois has almost 300,000 fewer workers:  The pace at which Illinois has been creating jobs is simply not good enough for Illinois families, and policy mistakes, such as the historic 2011 tax hikes,...

This week, the U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to release its annual poverty report. The report will be notable because this year marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. In his January 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”[1] Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in...

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress on Tuesday that he would recommend deploying United States combat forces against Islamic extremists in specific operations if the current strategy of airstrikes was not successful, raising the possibility of the kind of escalation that President Obama has flatly ruled out. General Dempsey said that the ground forces would likely be Special Operations commands who could call in airstrikes from the ground. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said that while he was confident in the ability of the coalition of American, European...

Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise. Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

In June 2014, there were 46,496,145 recipients of the food stamp program, which is enough to fill the Yankee Stadium 925 times, according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Yankee Stadium is equipped to hold 50,291 persons, meaning that the 46,496,145 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in June 2014 could fill the stadium 925 times. The number of recipients was up 270,999 since the previous month in May 2014 when there were 46,225,146 individuals participating in the program. Similarly, the number of households participating in the SNAP program has increased as well from the 22,590,393 participating...

Recently we reported there are 92 million Americans out of work who didn’t look for employment last month – while there were 9 million out of work who were still looking. And you must understand, since the 92 million aren’t looking, they’re not counted as “unemployed” therefore giving the impression that American unemployment is only 6.1 percent. Well, we haven’t looked at the growth of the welfare nanny-state for sometime. As we are winding down the baseball season — which is the last season for Yankee stalwart Derek Jeter — I figured we could pay tribute to the Yankees as...

This is my third consecutive column about the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. I have focused on this because the circumstances that led to this tragedy point to more than narrow, parochial concerns of low-income minority communities. They point to things fundamentally wrong in America that are dragging us all down. Hopefully, remedial measures will be adopted that will lower the likelihood that a police officer will reduce a black youth to a racial stereotype and kill him. But even with such measures, we cannot continue to ignore circumstances...