Free Republic

Back in the booming, Ronald Reagan 1980s, homelessness not-so-coincidentally became a national epidemic. It was all over the news. According to members of the American left, Reagan’s policies were the cause. Interesting about the time in question was that immigrant inflows into the U.S., and in particular from Mexico, were on the rise. In a big way. The economically stimulating and moving arrival of the tired and hungry from Mexico and other countries existed as an inconvenient truth for emotional puddles on the left eager to reveal a downside to Reagan-era prosperity. If impoverished immigrants who didn’t speak English were...

Californians love sermonizing on the plight of America’s poor and disenfranchised—if only penny-pinching republicans would shell out for a bigger welfare state then all our problems would be solved. Why not build more homes for the homeless, or invest in better education for our kids? The state can solve the problem of poverty, they argue. And to be fair, they’ve put their money where their mouth is: over the last few decades California has built one of America’s most lavish welfare states. There’s just one problem: it’s not working. The sad truth of the matter is that California’s poverty rate...

The alleged success of the California model is one of the more intense controversies in the nerdier corners of public policy debate. For many progressives, California's metastasizing liberalism proves you can have Scandinavian-style social policies and tax rates and still have robust economic growth. For conservatives, California is like a bumblebee. On paper, the damn thing shouldn't be able to fly -- and yet it does. Thus the cottage industry on the right of prophesizing California's inevitable demise. What's always bothered me about the whole argument is how it leaves out important factors. For me, the biggest one was always...

According to the US Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure, California’s poverty rate hovers around 15 percent. But that doesn’t tell the full story. The Census Bureau measures poverty in reference to a uniform national standard, which doesn’t account for differences in living costs between states, ie. the cost of taxes, housing, and medical costs can differ greatly depending upon where you are. The Public Policy Institute of California found that, when accounting for these differences, California’s true poverty rate is 20.6 percent—the highest in America. In fact, it’s nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.

Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That's according to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.

This just in from what was once the best state in the Union: Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income. Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it’s worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased...

An excellent op-ed in the LA Times today by Kerry Jackson on why California - with its liberal politics and generous welfare system - is the "poverty capital of America." According to the Census Bureau, one out of five California residents are poor. This despite the state's per capita GDP rising twice as fast in the last 5 years as the national average. From 1992 to 2015, state and local governments spent nearly $1 trillion to help the poor. The state, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients....

Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income. Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it’s worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in...

Store owner Kamal Saleh was just hit with thousands of dollars in fines. His crime? He sold three cigars for $8.89. "Too cheap!" say New York City bureaucrats. "The cigars should have cost 11 cents more." Politicians want you to spend more for tobacco. They decided this after anti-smoking crusader Dr. Kurt Ribisl told the Centers for Disease Control, "Higher prices will deter children from smoking." A pit of socialist micromanagers called the New York City Council quickly embraced the idea. "It's also being considered very seriously in a number of jurisdictions in California," Ribisl told me. When health totalitarians...

Merriam-Webster has just announced its “word of the year” for 2017. Drum roll, please…it’s feminism! The word peaked as an online search after various events occurred this past year, beginning with the Women’s March in January, then again when the film “Wonder Woman” was released, and now it has spiked yet again as a result of the #MeToo movement, which Time magazine has recognized as its “Person of the Year.” The word feminism was simply “in the air” this year, notes Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large. Except it kind of wasn’t. For instance, nobody marched in the Feminist March...

The Democratic Party and the liberal left’s obsession with disparate impact race politics crept into K-12 public education. Their latest social engineering experimentation uses black and Hispanic kids in poor urban classrooms as pawns for political power. Education is secondary. Liberals believe they can artificially wipe away serious behavior problems that are cultural in nature. They do this by labeling reasonable standards of classroom discipline as racist or discriminatory. When urban schools with predominantly black and Hispanic students enacted protocols that create an environment where learning can take place, more suspensions and expulsions resulted, accompanied by a widening of the...

<p>On Friday, Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano urged her Twitter followers to watch Republicans debate the tax overhaul bill hours before its scheduled vote.</p> <p>“watching…..Senator Tim Scott “$100 a month is real money” to struggling families ? Is he F**KING kidding ? HOW MUCH does $100 buy in this day ? Costs me $50 to fill my f**king gas tank FFS,” replied Twitter user Cherl Criss.</p>

The 31-year-old mother of four made an announcement to family and friends on Facebook: She and her husband of four and a half years were expecting a fifth child. “We’re blessed,” wrote she. Most Christ followers believe an automatic blessing awaits mothers- and fathers-to-be, no matter the circumstances under which their newborns are brought into the world. But the Bible does not say that the actions of expectant parents can displease God, yet the arrival of their newborn guarantees the Almighty’s blessing. In fact, it teaches us the opposite – that God does not reward parents-to-be whose actions run contrary...

I thought there was a work requirement in order to get food stamps.

Addis Ababa — Roads and railways, bridges and harbours - that's what we need to invest in if we are to grow Africa's economies and provide jobs for the millions of young people who want to become part of the continent's growth. That - and the need for trade among African countries in goods ranging from cooking oil to cement - is the message coming from a major conference in Addis Ababa. The executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Vera Sogwe, told delegates at the conference that "overcoming infrastructure gaps remains critical if the continent is...

OAKLAND — For everyone who has ever passed one of this city’s sprawling homeless encampments and wondered how to help, Mayor Libby Schaaf has an answer — open your door to someone in need of shelter. The Oakland mayor is asking residents to offer their spare rooms, Airbnb units and rental properties to the city’s homeless, a radical proposition that has prompted both cautious optimism and scathing criticism from her constituents. In her annual “State of the City” speech, Schaaf challenged Oakland residents to “give up that Airbnb. Fix up that back unit,” and offer the space to people in...

MANILA - Investment pledges from Japan worth $6 billion are expected to generate at least 500,000 jobs in the Philippines, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said on Wednesday. "We had a successful visit, bringing home about $6 billion of fresh investments from various companies that are tying up with several Philippine companies," Lopez said on ANC's Business Nightly. The latest batch of 18 business ventures, which include investments in manufacturing, infrastructure, and information and communications technology, were secured following President Rodrigo Duterte's official visit to Japan, he said.....

Poverty remains, by far, the biggest killer of humans, and government-imposed regulations have been proven to create economic costs that make poverty more likely. As a result, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget estimates every $7.5 million to $12 million in regulatory costs imposed on the economy results in a life lost. Federal and state government regulatory costs top $1.9 trillion annually, amounting to $14,842 per U.S. household. That’s nearly $15,000 that’s unavailable to families to pay for health insurance, medicine or medical bills, college expenses, groceries, a new car, or vacations. These facts clearly show why substantive and...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) declared "it is everyone's human right to have a suitable house to live in. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness mean nothing if you don't have a decent place to live." Waters demanded that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson "implement a program that provides a house to everyone that needs it. For too long access to a decent home has depended on the ability of individuals to afford to pay for it and maintain it. This is an injustice when we have the means to solve this problem." Part of the Congresswoman's reasoning cited...

Video at https://youtu.be/Ru4SVUlNfMY