Free Republic

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” “Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and support,” Johnson told the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. “But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the state and the local level and must be supported and directed by state and local efforts. Poverty in the United States stood at 19% in 1964, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Democratic former Texas U.S....

Anew piece in the Wall Street Journal by CTUP’s Stephen Moore and Casey Mulligan reports that the “stimulus” bill will reduce employment by between 6 and 8 million jobs because it pays people not to work. The new bill will create one of the largest expansions in government welfare benefits since LBJ launched the failed War on Poverty (poverty won). The bill includes six months of weekly $400 bonus unemployment benefits on top of the normal weekly benefits, a $3,000 per-child tax credit, an expansion of food-stamp and rental-assistance benefits, $2,000 per person checks, and expanded health-care benefits. A family...

Under a Vice President Kamala Harris, Americans shouldn't expect a war on poverty as much Harris to continue her prosecution of the poor. Catholic News Agency recently quoted several prominent Catholics who were positive about Joe Biden’s vice-presidential selection of Kamala Harris. Donna Toliver Grimes, for example, who serves as the assistant director for African American Affairs in the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, expressed her belief that a Biden-Harris ticket would have a “policy that is favorable to people on the margins.”That’s a curious comment, because Harris has spent considerable professional energy...

At a time our country faces a massive recession brought on by the coronavirus lockdowns, America’s welfare state exacerbates that stagnation. Ronald Reagan had an old adage about the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Recently, a new paper reinforced that truth and adds to the existing literature showing how America’s welfare state often traps generations in a cycle of poverty.At its core, a complicated set of welfare programs and tax breaks generate sizable incentives for many low-income Americans not to increase their incomes and improve their station in...

—Sargent Shriver, brother in law of JFK and the “architect” of the “War on Poverty,” to socialist Michael Harrington (who wanted much, much more of the American taxpayers’ dollars), 1964. Amity Shlaes’ newest book, Great Society: A New History is a sequel to her two studies of 1930s and 1920s, 2007’s The Forgotten Man, and 2013’s Coolidge. The eponymous Forgotten Man was the taxpayer, the man footing the bill to fund FDR’s New Deal. As a UCLA press release explained in 2004, “FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.” Even socialist Roosevelt worshiper Paul Krugman has been...

In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes revisits the welfare programs of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations to show not only how misguided they were but also what a warning they present to those who wish to resurrect and extend such programs. “The contest between capitalism and socialism is on again,” the author writes in her introduction. Despite the Trump administration’s thriving economy, or perhaps because of it, Democratic Party progressives are calling for new welfare programs even more radical than those advocated in the 1960s by the socialist architect of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Michael Harrington....

Has the United States ever fought a war that was justified? Apparently not, according to many students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., who were asked about that by Campus Reform. "I cannot think of a single war that America has been a part of that has been justified," one student told reporter Eduardo Neret. When asked specifically if World War II was a just war, the student said it was not. "I don't believe America fought that war for the just reasons,” the student answered. One young lady responded: "The only one that I can, like, reasonably, like, justify...

With the next round of Democratic presidential candidate debates upon us, we will surely hear more about government activism to fix racial inequalities. Inequality is real and needs attention. According to the Urban Institute, average white household wealth in 2016 was $171,000 compared with average black household wealth of $17,409. Sen. Cory Booker wants government to make deposits into savings accounts for low-income children to the tune of up to $50,000 each. Sen. Kamala Harris proposes $100 billion in government subsidies for black homeownership. These kinds of proposals may win some black votes, but should they? Will they really make...

Well, Trump really stirred up a rat's nest this time and was immediately condemned by all the usual suspects as a 'racist.' But all of his comments regarding Baltimore and the corrupt democrats' complete and utter disregard for the poor people forced to live in poverty and squalor are turning out to be TRUTH. Nothing makes the rats and vermin scurry more than when the light of truth shines forth. The corrupt democrats have been playing the minorities and poor for decades. We've spent untold trillions on the so-called 'War on Poverty' over the last 50 years, and for what?...

Billionaire Warren Buffett says America will continue to prosper overall, but government and philanthropists should do more to ensure that poverty doesn’t remain a barrier success. “The American dream has succeeded in aggregate. We have failed, in my view, to create the equality of opportunity,” Buffett said Tuesday at the national Purpose Built Communities conference in Omaha. Buffett supports the Atlanta-based nonprofit group that helps communities come up with holistic plans to redevelop high-poverty areas. Government should do more to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed through measures such as the earned income tax credit, Buffett said. And...

Modern government, at pretty much all levels, has become simply a jobs program that constantly seeks to increase its members. And of course 90+% of these members will vote for the Democrat party, the party of government. Anyone who isn’t a member of one of these jobs programs is a sap for playing

There's only one "program" that will make a difference. PBS NewsHour aired a story last year about Milwaukee, saying many residents call the city "the worst place to be a black man in America." It talked about last year's riots in the city after a cop shot a black man. One black Milwaukee resident explained that this is "what happens when you inflict poverty" on poor black residents. "Inflict poverty"? In the 50 years following President Lyndon Johnson's launch of the "war on poverty" in 1964, government spent over $22 trillion on welfare and various anti-poverty programs. The problem in...

How The Liberal Welfare State Destroyed Black America What Democrat voters and political leaders refuse to believe. May 5, 2016 John Perazzo    When President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 launched the so-called War on Poverty, which enacted an unprecedented amount of antipoverty legislation and added many new layers to the American welfare state, he explained that his objective was to reduce dependency, “break the cycle of poverty,” and make “taxpayers out of tax eaters.” Johnson further claimed that his programs would bring to an end the “conditions that breed despair and violence,” those being “ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough...

A man and woman who were apparently panhandling at the Topsham Fair Mall entrance were charged with assault on Saturday, after they allegedly became physical with a mother and daughter attempting to warn motorists of alleged fraud. Meanwhile, a video posted online of the confrontation has been viewed thousands of times. Topsham police were called to the mall at approximately 4:50 p.m. Saturday after the incident occurred, according to Police Chief Christopher Lewis. After speaking with witnesses and those involved, police issued summonses to Carl Brown, 79, with a last known address of Bath, and Mary Rousselle, 41, of Brunswick...

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's been 50 years since the War on Poverty was launched and after all that time and trillions of dollars spent about one of every seven people in the country is still living below the poverty line. Everyone on the right and the left seems to agree: in the war on poverty, poverty is clearly winning. So what should be done? You may have noticed that Paul Ryan and the Republican presidential candidates were guests of the Jack Kemp Center in North Carolina the other day, trotting out their ideas on how to combat poverty. But what about the Democrats?...

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...

In 1996, Reginald Dwayne Betts — a 16-year-old honor student with braces — used a pistol to carjack a man who had been sleeping in his vehicle. Shortly thereafter, he was caught, sentenced as an adult and sent to an adult prison, where he served more than eight years, including one year in solitary at a supermax facility. "I was 5 feet, 5 inches and 120 pounds. I went to prison with grown men, and I went into what people readily acknowledge as a treacherous and a wild place," Betts tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "My judge, when he sentenced...

Members of the Los Angeles City Council are expected Tuesday to declare a “state of emergency” on homelessness and commit $100 million toward housing and other services for homeless people.. The announcement coincides with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposal, issued late Monday, that the city devote nearly $13 million toward short-term housing initiatives paid for with projected excess funds. If approved, the pair of initiatives could significantly increase the resources dedicated to tackling homelessness in a city where the majority of the 26,000 homeless people live on the streets.

The outrage over another multiple murder of American military personnel on American soil by another Islamic extremist has been exacerbated by the fact that these military people had been ordered to be unarmed — and therefore sitting ducks. Millions of American civilians have also been forbidden to have guns, and are also sitting ducks — for criminals, terrorists or psychos. You might think that, before having laws or policies forcing fellow human beings to be defenseless targets, those who support such laws and policies would have some factual basis for believing that these gun restrictions save more lives, on net...