Free Republic

Drug-testing proposal gets mixed response State House candidate wants to require it for anyone receiving government assistance By Jason Spencer jason.spencer@shj.com Published: Monday, October 6, 2008 at 3:15 a.m. Last Modified: Monday, October 6, 2008 at 9:06 a.m. Some clapped, some looked confused, some looked downright apprehensive. A couple of women in the back of the room said a heartfelt “amen.” Order a Reprint Weldon DavisBut when state House candidate Weldon Davis announced at a recent county Democratic Party rally that, if elected, he would push legislation to require drug testing on virtually anyone receiving government assistance — aside from...

Excerpt... Measure seen as most significant housing legislation in decades. The number of homeowners who could lose their homes to foreclosure by the end of 2009 is estimated by some to be around 2.8 million. Under the legislation, 400,000 having trouble with payments could avoid it by trading their loans for new, more affordable mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration.Their banks would have to agree to allow the swap and to take a large loss in exchange for avoiding the lengthy and costly foreclosure process. To qualify, homeowners would have to be paying more than 31 percent of their incomes...

Greater work effort by poor families is associated with better child outcomes, according to new Child Trends analyses of the Survey of Income and Program Participation.  The Well-Being of Children in Working Poor and Other Families: 1997 and 2004 finds: Between 1997 and 2004, the well-being of children in working poor families improved significantly for 10 of the 15 measures available in both years and remained stable for the remaining measures. In contrast, the well-being of children in non-working poor families improved significantly for only five measures and deteriorated significantly for four measures. While the well-being of children in working poor families...

Twelve Republicans used the excuse of an inflammatory speech by the House Speaker, Congressperson Nancy Pelosi, to vote "no" whereas previously they had indicated a "yes". We heard parts of the speech, and inflammatory it was; though all the facts were correct as to how President Bush had wrecked the US budget over 8 years. But if she sought to blame the mess on President Bush, that would definitely be a no-no: this nonsense started during President Clinton's time, and strange as it may seem, there are Democratic Wall Street people as much as Republican Wall Street people. The Democrats...

Rep. John LaBruzzo thinks that he and other Louisiana lawmakers ought to decide which citizens of this state should be encouraged to have children and which should not. He proposes giving college-educated people with higher incomes -- like Rep. LaBruzzo and his wife -- a tax incentive to have more children. But, he argues, poor Louisianians should be given financial incentives to undergo surgical sterilization -- either a tubal ligation or a vasectomy. The Metairie lawmaker hopes to put these ideas, which he describes as "brainstorming," into legislation aimed at ending generational welfare and reducing the burden poor people put...

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Thursday denounced a Metairie lawmaker's proposal to pay poor people to undergo sterilization as "an egregious affront to those targeted and blatantly anti-life." "Our lawmakers would do better to focus on policies that promote education and achievement to counteract poverty and the bigotry of low expectations," Hughes said in a statement. Hughes spoke out in response to a proposal by state Rep. John Labruzzo, R-Metairie, to combat poverty by offering poor women and men $1,000 to undergo reproductive sterilization and vasectomies. In addition, the lawmaker said he is considering whether to propose tax incentives for college-educated...

Walter Ritte, coordinator of Hui Ho’opakele Aina presented 500 signatures September 18 to the Maui County Council demanding funding for an appraisal of Moloka`i Ranch--owner of 1/3 of Moloka`i--as part of an effort to have Maui County illegally use eminent domain to condemn the ranch and hand it over to Ritte’s group. Moloka`i is one of only three communities in the entire United States which were exempted from welfare reform allowing benefits to continue indefinitely.

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied."We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the...

"Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied. "We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it." LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to...

Tying poor women's tubes could help taxpayers, legislator says Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied. "We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it." LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent,...

Welfare is the culprit at the heart of the economic flim-flam that has the stock market reeling. In its various forms, welfare has long been recognized as harmful to the individual, the society, and the nation. In all its forms, welfare makes thoughtful Americans shake their heads and fear for the Republic. Corporate Welfare, Public Welfare, and now "Mortgage Welfare" are all based on the idea that the government should give your money to others so those others can do better than they have been doing. Companies who aren't competing well against their competitors get checks from the government, and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the prospect of a massive government bailout of the financial industry means that he probably would have to delay the spending programs he has called for during his campaign.

It’s funny how greed only afflicts the other guy. With John McCain jumping on the anti-avarice bandwagon, the consensus that the greed of rich Wall Street CEOs, analysts, and investors is to blame for the financial market turmoil now spans the New York Times editorial page, the Democratic punditocracy, and the highest reaches of the Republican ticket. Liberal columnists, university professors, and crusading politicians railing against market selfishness are all supremely confident that their own salaries reflect exactly their worth and not a penny more—because they would never seek to make a profit from their labor, right? It’s also axiomatic...

Over the years, I have selectively posted this to those threads and posters where it might apply and bolster the discussion. Given the critical nature of the upcoming election and what I believe is an increasing level of interest in the demographic mix in the country, I feel that posting this as a vanity thread for ALL to see (as opposed to being buried within another thread) might be beneficial to understanding the forces which will certainly influence events on November 4th. DB ******************************* An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading them or driving them out of it." What hate-mongering politician would be so politically incorrect as to suggest that things like higher minimum wages and more government handouts don't actually help the poor? I'll identify the culprit at the end of this column, but for now, I'm more interested in figuring out why that statement sounds so controversial. Poverty is one of the few national issues that, at least on the surface, unites us all. It's...

I've repeatedly heard the claim that Obama's mother was on food stamps and welfare, but I've never been able to find out the time period that this occurred. It couldn't have been in Hawaii when Obama was a boy since food stamps weren't available in Hawaii at the time. My guess is that it was near the end of her life if indeed she ever was on food stamps and welfare. If I'm right about the time period what was Obama's income during that period? Did he have the $$$ that he could have helped support his mother? I know...

The tax-funded Chicago organization cited as a probable model for programs to integrate youth into the social and political world under an Obama tenure in the White House is the epitome of "Big Brother" that shovels impressionable youth through a course of brainwashing, according to critics. The organization is called Public Allies and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of directors in 1992. He later resigned and his wife became executive director of the group. According to an editorial in Investor's Business Daily, Obama plans to use the non-profit, which is funded partly...

[O]ne issue still divides [Democrats]: education. It is a surprising fault line, perhaps, given the party’s long dominance on the issue. Voters consistently say they trust the Democrats over the Republicans on education, by a wide margin. But the split in the party is real, deep and intense, and it shows no signs of healing any time soon. On one side are the members of the two huge teachers’ unions and the many parents who support them. To them, the big problem in public education is No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law. Teachers have many complaints about...

Crippled by record unpopularity and uncharismatic, rudderless leadership, Germany's oldest political party has erupted into open revolt over the hot-button issue of welfare reforms. SPD, Germany's major mainstream Leftwing party, pushed through controversial liberalising reforms several years ago under the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroeder. But the reforms, which made it easier to sack workers and reduced unemployment benefits, have now come back to haunt the party, with its leading left-wingers demanding centrist economic policies be scrapped. The SPD, which governs in a grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, is currently at a historic low in polls. Since the...

A week ago I was at McDonald's ordering lunch. It was very busy and there was a large crowd present. I ordered the food and waited around for a few minutes. While I was doing so, a manager and another crewmemeber were getting ready to put the flags up on the pole. The manager showed him how to fold the flags up and they folded up old glory into a nice triangle with loving and patriotic care. While they were folding the McDonald's flag, a funny looking woman in her thirties with two tots in a carriage walked up to...

Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities. Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer...

Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities. Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer...

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — When John McCain and Barack Obama appear on the same stage today, they will vividly demonstrate the reach that has made the Rev. Rick Warren among the most significant evangelists of his generation. He's a megastar who leads the nation's fourth-largest church and reaches thousands of ministers through the Internet and crusades against poverty and AIDS. That globe-trotting work and his successful book — "The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?" — puts him at the vanguard of a movement that inspires young, socially conscious Christians. But his willingness to soft-pedal political issues...

Remember the good old days when Barack Obama was campaigning for president on the vacuous pledges of hope and change without saying exactly what changes we should hope for? Well, now he's beginning to fill in the blanks with actual policy proposals, and it's becoming clearer by the minute that vacuous was better. For starters, there's his comprehensive plan to control global warming and gain energy independence through a bureaucratic nightmare of controls, technological razzle-dazzle, discredited biofuel reliance and spending you wouldn't believe. In just a couple of decades, our oil consumption will be down 35 percent, he says, but...

The number of homeless families seeking help from Hennepin County is up dramatically over last year, alarming human services officials and forcing the county to use a downtown hotel as an overflow family shelter. In the first six months of the year, 27 percent more homeless families came to the county for help than in the same period last year. People who work with the homeless say the increase is driven by people losing their jobs, foreclosures on apartment buildings that displace renters and the effects of welfare reform that has recipients reaching the end of their 60-month lifetime limit...

Welfare recipients shopping in Hawaii? GOP shows it’s so More than $10 million in purchases with state-issued cards was done out of state, including locations as far away as Hawaii and Alaska. By MIKE KASZUBA, Star Tribune Everyone is talking about the $10.2 million of welfare money that is being spent outside of Minnesota. But there is one other number that … read more bothers me much more. It is the $496.3 million that the state spending on welfare. We need to readdress welfare reform!! Welfare recipients in Minnesota used state-issued benefit cards to make more than $10 million in...

An investigation into what the authorities say was a scheme that used homeless people to bilk tens of millions of dollars from federal and state health insurance programs began four years ago with a tip from a rescue mission employee. The employee, Scott Johnson, who works for the Union Rescue Mission in the heart of Skid Row, said he had noticed vans and cars loading up homeless people. “Sometimes they were so full of people that they put people in the trunks of cars,” Mr. Johnson said Thursday as he passed out bottles of water to the homeless. “I wondered...

Is Rhonda Tavey a Good Samaritan or a criminal? The Houston woman is now charged with kidnapping and is allegedly on the run from police after disappearing two weeks ago with five children she took in following Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

The most obvious solution to one of our worst problems continues to elude our political leaders, but at least, in Connecticut anyway, they seem to have admitted that fatherless children and the policies that encourage this destructive reality are destroying American society. Both the causes of this problem and the possible solutions are self-evident, but the will to try to solve them is largely missing. Our society is disintegrating because manufacturing jobs for unskilled and semi-skilled workers disappeared from the cities where most of these people lived, and the welfare programs that were put in place to cushion the blows...

The Associated Press injected an editorial comment into the news... again. A few days ago, the AP issued a piece headlined Senate Republicans block heating aid bill, in which the AP made it seem as if Republicans don't care about "the poor" and are only interested in mere political partisanship. This report featured quotes showing how wonderful and caring the Democrats are but not a single quote from any Republican to explain their stance. It also clearly discounted the GOP position while positively spinning the Democratic position. The story concerns the GOP's blocking of a Senate Democrat bill to double...

President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, exhorted the nation: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” This rally to selflessness has been trampled upon by a new class that has sprung up over the past 20 years or so. We are all familiar with environmentalists, but their influence is in danger of being surpassed by the “entitlementalists,” the new breed of Americans who have made taking what their country can ill afford to offer and offering not half...

Things wouldn't be so bad now if we had listened to Frank Field By Simon Heffer Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/07/2008 Have your say Read comments When one talks to older politicians they often observe that their lives consist of cyclical re-runs of the same old film. After 15 years of boom, the cycles have become somewhat extended. Now, the impending bust brings back to our screens a rather scary old favourite: unemployment. Barely a day passes that some analyst doesn't pitch in with a projection for the additional numbers that will go on the dole in the next year...

Massachusetts, which earlier this decade had the lowest percentage of eligible residents using food stamps, now has the fastest-growing food-stamp program in the country, a dramatic turnaround that state officials attribute to soaring food prices and a simplified application process.

Brought to you by none other than Baghdad Jim McDermott (D-WTF?). I must’ve done something truly horrible in a former lifetime to be sentenced to live in this guy’s district. The proposed legislation is to create a new program along the lines of the federal food stamp program. The press release and proposed bill is here. Some highlights: “Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, introduced legislation today to provide financial assistance to vulnerable Americans struggling to survive under crushing gasoline prices.” “The Emergency Gasoline Assistance Act (H.R. 6561) would...

Liberalism in action, California style: The mayor and others are now admitting what the grand jury reported - that a majority of those on the streets are not homeless. The head of the city's homeless program, Dariush Kayhan, estimates that 50 to 75 percent of street people live in supportive housing. "We just warehouse addicts," said the grand jury's Stuart Smith. "Granted, it is a nicer place for them, but it doesn't address the problem." Almost three out of four people on the street live in supportive housing. The article explains that people who live in or move to San...

That's it. NPR has declared Ohio a disaster area. Things are so bad. NPR gravely warns, that folks in the Buckeye state can't even afford to buy meat for their dinner tables anymore. It's the end of civilization as we know it. Doom and gloom. Oh the humanity. It's the end of the world as we know it... at least for one Ohio family that NPR found to act as stand in for the rest of the state. To NPR all of Ohio is the Nunez family. And what is NPR' solution? Government aid, of course. In a segment...

For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach by Yuki Noguchi All Things Considered, July 17, 2008 · A generation ago, the livelihood of Gloria Nunez's family was built on cars. Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver's education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class. Things have changed considerably for this Ohio family. Nunez's van broke down last fall. Now, her 19-year-old daughter has no reliable transportation out of their subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, 40 miles south of Toledo, to look for a job. Nunez and most...

All Things Considered, July 17, 2008 · A generation ago, the livelihood of Gloria Nunez's family was built on cars. Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver's education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class. Things have changed considerably for this Ohio family........(excerpted)

Feeling The Economic Pinch For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach by Yuki Noguchi Katia Dunn/NPR Angelica Hernandez (left) and her mother, Gloria Nunez, struggle to make ends meet on a very limited budget. All Things Considered, July 17, 2008 · A generation ago, the livelihood of Gloria Nunez's family was built on cars. Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver's education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class. Things have changed considerably for this Ohio family. Nunez's van broke down last fall. Now, her 19-year-old daughter has...

Maryland can't find any kids to eat free SCHOOL lunches during the SUMMER. One genius said, "We would go into alleys and hand out fliers about the program." Maybe they should check the dumpsters, landfills, and junkyards too. Or maybe the kids are just eating lunch at home. Undaunted, liberals will keep trying like hell to throw our money away.

RUSUTSU, Japan – The Group of Eight rich nations, meeting here to discuss global challenges from inflation to climate change, immediately faced more basic problems on Monday: Can they agree on anything significant, and will they follow through on any commitments? The question was highlighted on the summit's first day, which focused on Africa. Discussions appeared to produce no clear progress on aid to the continent -- and it appeared that the G-8 would only start to fix its aid promises next year. The G8 took up African development in a big way at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland,...

Even million-dollar housing vouchers bring crime to the suburbs. ___ What if Section 8 housing voucher recipients were given $15 million vouchers, good for use in Malibu or Beverly Hills? The only question would be whether it would take a full five seconds for elite support for this federal housing program—which provides welfare families with a monthly rental check to move from ghettos to more stable working-class neighborhoods—to evaporate. The gorgeous sea-and-mountain community of Topanga Canyon, just south of Malibu, may have gotten a little taste of what such an experiment in serious social engineering might look like. In 2000,...

Food inflation is hitting everyone - even if don't have to pay for food. According to the July 2 "CBS Evening News," part of its "The Other America" series - a title strangely similar to former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' liberal anti-poverty mantra of "Two Americas" - food stamp recipients are being hit by the rising the cost of food. "With food prices climbing, more and more Americans these days are struggling to feed their families," anchor Katie Couric said. "Nearly 28 million rely on food stamps for an average benefit that comes to only about $24 a week...

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction. "I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems." Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest...

Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office has begun convening a series of meetings involving a wide array of healthcare specialists to begin laying the groundwork for a new attempt to provide universal healthcare, according to participants. The discussions signal that Kennedy, who instructed aides to begin holding the meetings while he is in Massachusetts undergoing treatment for brain cancer, intends to work vigorously to build bipartisan support for a major healthcare initiative when he returns to Washington in the fall. Those involved in the discussions said Kennedy believes it is extremely important to move as quickly as possible on overhauling the...

Tammy Sue Barkhard, a third-generation Welfare recipient who lives in Tyrone, said that she gets a little misty when she hears the Star-Spangled Banner on July the 4th. It's a special day for her. "I think about George Washington crossing the Mississippi on that special day in July and creating a country that makes no distinction between the slothful and the truly needy," Barkhard said. "It's a good day to reflect on what this country owes me. Plus, a few of my babies were conceived on July 4th, too." Her live-in boyfriend, Dwayne Scott Arrington said he, too, enjoys the...

OCEANSIDE ---- While they're out of school for summer, students in Oceanside can pick up a free lunch at various school and community sites throughout the city. Through the federal Seamless Summer Feeding Program, Oceanside Unified School District employees are giving out about 1,000 meals a day at 10 different sites to anybody under the age of 18, district officials said. The program was designed to ensure that students, especially those from poor families, get nutritious meals while they're out of school. "During the whole school year, they get good nutritious meal, but in the summer, some of them are...

"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death," said Auntie Mame. In today's political climate, a liberal Auntie Mame might say that life is a banquet, which the government must pay for and that those who can't afford a place at the table should behave like it was an all-you-can eat buffet. This is the view of Sen. Barack Obama. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Obama expounded on the economic policies he would pursue as president. Among other things, he is concerned about the "winner-take-all" economy where, he says, "the gains from economic...

Sen. Barack Obama has a bad idea for "extending the life of Social Security." He has proposed applying the Social Security tax to incomes above $250,000, in addition to the current tax on incomes up to $102,000... Reporters cited the Obama statement without asking for the logic behind having someone making $100,000 pay on every dime and someone making $250,000 pay on just 41% of income, while someone making $10,000,000 would pay on 98.5% of income... Neither Franklin Roosevelt...nor the intervening three dozen Congresses thought they were imposing an "unfair" system on the middle class. There is a very good...

OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself! ------------------------------------------- MODERN LIBERAL VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the...