Free Republic

Bernie Sanders, the Senator representing the socialist paradise of Vermont, has apparently never seen a poor white person. This is understandable since about 1% of the state's population is black. But Sanders considers himself an expert on the racial divide in poverty. And at last night's debate with Hillary Clinton, the Senator expounded on his theories of race and poverty. Daily Caller: During the CNN Democratic debate Thursday night Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed that if someone was white they don’t know what it’s like to be poor or live in a ghetto. “When you’re white you don’t know what...

The best that can be said about Sunday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is that it was more decorous than the Republican one the previous Thursday. Nothing about anatomy came up. However, things said during the debate were actually more frightening. An example occurred when Bernie Sanders, the venerable socialist from Vermont, said, "When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.”

It seems the line from Sunday night's debate causing the biggest amount of buzz on social media came from Bernie Sanders when talking about race in America. After Hillary Clinton said that she, as a white person, has "never had the experience" of so many African-Americans in regard to discrimination, Sanders tried to amplify the point: • "When you are white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto, you don't know what it's like to be poor, you don't know what it's like to be hassled when you are walking down a street or dragged...

ROMANIA: Overturning the disaster of socialism is a daily battle. Socialism will eventually die with the older people who grew up under the mentality of socialist dependency To say that poverty induced by socialist dictatorships is hard to shake would be an understatement. Ask Cubans and now Venezuelans what is like to live in workers’ paradise that Fidel forced upon his people while he stashed away billions he has stolen with his cronies. The socialist dictator Hugo Chavez left behind billions in personal bank accounts while Venezuelans struggle to survive under his socialist successor Maduro, who mismanaged the economy just...

Poverty and energy poverty go hand in hand. It is estimated that three billion people [1] still rely on solid fuel (firewood, cornstalks, etc.) for cooking, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes four million deaths per year from the indoor air pollution. But instead of promoting electricity generation that would take the pollution out of the house altogether, there is a push by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves [2] to merely reduce the amount of solid fuel burned inside theses poor houses. Their goal is to replace 100 million stoves that burn "firewood; agricultural waste, including corn...

Craig Johnson | Virginia Free CitizenLast Monday, my good friend, Don Blake, asked me to participate in a local television interview with him about a racial video, entitled “Structural Discrimination,” which upset his granddaughter and other students at Glen Allen High School. Having handled hot topics in talk radio for years, I was happy to oblige, and you can view it here: NBC12 - WWBT - Richmond, VA News On Your Side After providing additional commentary on Fox News, (see clip http://video.foxnews.com/v/4752034287001), the story gained national attention, and the video is now a worldwide viral sensation, which has been discussed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8dzkygDKDU http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article45444474.html http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/Derby-store-shooting-321395561.html Julie Dombo - James Michael Phillips http://i.imgur.com/5vCo32L.png Sadly, I believe a seriously emotionally damaged James Michael Phillips is a victim of America's expanding and shameful *National Epidemic of Child Abuse and Neglect,* aka *Poverty*, that for decades has deprived untold numbers of emotionally abused and neglected young developing children from experiencing and enjoying a safe, fairly happy American kid childhood. Depraved acts of violence as well as other 'people and community' harming anti-social behaviors often occur when emotionally or physically abused and neglected developing young children mature into depressed, frustrated, sometimes suicidal *(NY Times May 18, 2015...

Black History Month should be a time of celebration of achievements and honest reflection on the impediments to freedom for all. Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer is one of many who broke through the generational shackles of poverty to live a life devoted to helping free others from the same bondage. Hamer was born into poverty in 1917 (the youngest of 20 children), which according to Planned Parenthood's philosophy, was a circumstance worthy of eliminating her. Since the age of 6, she worked in the cotton fields with her sharecropping family and was forced to leave school at the...

Black poverty is fundamentally distinct from white poverty--and so cannot be addressed without grappling with racism. There have been a number of useful entries in the weeks since Senator Bernie Sanders declared himself against reparations. Perhaps the most clarifying comes from Cedric Johnson in a piece entitled, "An Open Letter To Ta-Nehisi Coates And The Liberals Who Love Him." Johnson's essay offers those of us interested in the problem of white supremacy and the question of economic class the chance to tease out how, and where, these two problems intersect. In Johnson's rendition, racism, in and of itself, holds limited...

The Trump phenomenon is driven in large part by working-class voters under economic strain. Republicans are increasingly talking about antipoverty programs as a way to help lift some up. Well before Donald Trump ever became a political phenomenon, Rep. Paul Ryan told his fellow Republicans that poverty should be a Republican issue. Now, the Trump rebellion is beginning to make his case for him. The overarching message of the Trump campaign isn't directed at the usual targets of federal poverty programs, such as isolated pockets of extreme poverty in Appalachia or the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. It targets people...

A prominent African American pastor in Chicago issued a strong cry against abortion in the bitter cold on Sunday during the March for Life Chicago. As the temperature neared zero degrees, the Rev. Corey Brooks, pastor of the New Beginnings Church of Chicago on the South Side, urged more than 5,000 pro-lifers in attendance to take a stand against abortion, especially in the black community. He pointed out that abortion kills more black Americans than any other cause. The Chicago Sun-Times reports more about Brooks’ remarks: “No longer will we stand on the sideline and let these abortions happen in...

President Obama's upbeat assessment of the economy is not likely to sit well with low-income families living in major urban or metro areas. For them, economic decline is a harsh reality, not "fiction."

The city, in an attempt to save money, planned to stop buying water from Detroit and sign up with a regional water system; in the interim, it was getting its municipal water from the Flint River, which is as much a garbage dump as it is a body of water. Residents complained that the water smells of chemicals, that it isn't the right color, etc. Children's lead levels are dangerously high, and an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease may also be linked to city water. The city knew about this, and did approximately nothing in response until the problem was well...

That intact families are more economically solvent than fractured ones has long been observed outside of academe. Arguably, as with many other policy questions, on this one as well, academics tend to be the last to notice. The Fall 2015 issue of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy features an article by Glenn T. Stanton on "Family Formation and Poverty: A History of Academic Inquiry and Its Major Findings." Stanton is the director of Global Family Formation at Focus on the Family. His 20-page treatise takes us through half a century of seminal research on families and...

Republican Presidential candidates will have an opportunity to show voters an alternative to the half-century War on Poverty at a policy forum January 9 that recalls a legendary public servant who empowered individuals over the welfare state. Jack Kemp, former Cabinet Secretary, Congressman and Buffalo Bills quarterback, left a void in conservatives' ability to connect with people on both an emotional and practical level about the plight of the homeless, the addicted and the unemployed. Fortunately, the Jack Kemp Foundation, which is hosting the "expanding opportunity" forum in the key primary state of South Carolina, has preserved official correspondence and...

We reach the end of the year with yet another tale of crazy, one percenter wingnuts trying to claim that jacking up the minimum wage won’t do much to alleviate the issues facing the poorest Americans who the Democrats are seeking to help. This time the hateful claims are coming from… a study published by the federal government. Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale.David Neumark, visiting scholar at the...

The latest dilemma facing economists is why "unequivocally good" low oil prices haven't sparked excuberant consumer spending across America. We have discussed the simple (though awkward for the establishment) answer many times - soaring costs for 'shelter' and healthcare have hoovered up every penny saved (and more); and now, a new study proves it- exposing the reality that many Obamacare customers pay more than 10 percent of their incomes toward coverage (and some paying considerably more). The shocking findings show that, as CNBC summarizes, One in 10 Obamacare customers who earn between just two and five times the federal poverty...

Two of the oldest and most venerated public policy institutes in Washington, D.C., the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, have produced a new joint report dealing with the issue of fighting poverty in America. The report, "Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream," is noteworthy for a number of reasons. One is that it reflects a consensus view between long established Washington institutions representing opposite sides of the political spectrum, with AEI being right of center and the Brooking Institution left of center. But also noteworthy is the nature of...

ISLAMABAD - Tashfeen Malik - who the FBI says pledged allegiance on Facebook to the Islamic State before helping her husband kill 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. - was born in Saudi Arabia to a middle-class Pakistani family mainly associated with agriculture or private businesses. Her father, Gulzak Malik, previously lived in the Karor Lal Esan locality of District Layyah in Pakistan's tumultuous Southern Punjab province. Tashfeen Malik, 27 years old when she was killed Wednesday in a rented SUV in a shootout with law enforcement, went to that province several years ago to study pharmacy in Multan city...

When is the last time you heard Hillary Clinton talk about poverty? How about Barack Obama? Or Bernie Sanders? Granted, they use the word "middle class" a lot. But when is the last time you heard them talk about what they want to do for the "poor"? I can't remember. Take housing. On any given day about 565,000 people in the United States are homeless. That problem isn't going away any time soon. In fact, at the current rate of progress it will take 40 years before the homeless disappear from our shelters and streets. I don't recall any Democratic...