Free Republic

Ever wake up somedays and wonder why you work and put in the effort for others to leech off your hard work, especially those who are not even citizens. Ever just think about just throwing your arms up in the air and saying to hell with it and quitting your job or shutting down your business and becomming a deadbeat like the other people that some of your hard earned tax money goes to. Ever just wonder if we will never wake up again as country if you keep working hard to prop stuff up. Realizing that the only way...

MIAMI, Florida—once again is getting a hefty bonus from the feds “saving” taxpayer’s money. This year, the state’s Department of Children and Families managed to misspent only $47,829,887 in food stamp benefits. That’s out of almost $6 billion the state received from the federal government. Nevertheless, Florida’s error rate of .81 percent the second lowest in the nation, and only a slight dip from the previous year when the state received $8 million for having the lowest in the nation at 0.7 percent. Vermont had the highest waste rate at 9.66 percent, while the national average was 3.2 percent. “We...

Why do we tax corporations? No, seriously — why? If you’re like most people and all New Democrats, your response will be “because that’s where the money is,” or some variant thereon. Corporations have lots of money, the thinking runs, and are unlikely to mind if the government helps itself to some of it. And since they don’t vote, it doesn’t much matter if they do mind. An economist, on the other hand, would point out that, one way or another, all of the income earned by a corporation finds its way back to the people who financed it, whether...

Obamacare has pushed us over the entitlements tipping point. In 2011 some 49.2 percent of U.S. households received benefits from one or more government programs—about 151 million out of an estimated 306.8 million Americans—according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last October. Currently, around 6 million to 7 million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare are receiving taxpayer-provided subsidies (though the administration’s numbers cannot be trusted, it’s all we have to work with). There are another 3 million who have signed up for Medicaid. That means some 10 million Americans—or a total of about 161 million—are now getting government...

Jeh Johnson: Welfare State Doesn't Draw Illegal-Alien Children to U.S. June 13, 2014 - 5:25 AM By Penny Starr Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson spoke about the U.S. government's response to the growing number of youth crossing the border illegally on June 12, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) – Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the wide range of services the government is providing to unaccompanied minors who cross the border into the U.S. illegally will not encourage more of them to break the law.

In Friday's American Thinker, Thomas Lifson drew three valid conclusions from the recent study disclosing that the nation's total net employment gain so far during the 21st century has gone exclusively to immigrants, "while native-born Americans have suffered a decline in the numbers employed."  Here’s one additional conclusion: we're complementing the American welfare state by recruiting workers from the world's failed nations – and, in the process, setting ourselves up to also become a failed nation.Why does an America that each year spends over 6% of its entire gross domestic product on welfare transfer payments need to recruit replacement workers...

JOBLESS EU migrants who have been claiming benefits for the past six months and show no signs of being able to find work could be forced to leave the UK from Tuesday. It is one of a set of measures designed to give Britain the toughest controls on migrants in the world. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: “The public have sent a clear message that they are concerned that migrants should contribute to this country and not be drawn here by the attractiveness of our benefits system. “Freedom of movement is not a freedom to pick and...

Picture of graph only.

fter years of starts and stops, the next frontier has finally arrived for biodiesel. Starting Tuesday, Minnesota will require all diesel fuel sold here to contain at least 10 percent biodiesel -- except during the winter, when the requirement will be 5 percent biodiesel. Currently, state law requires every gallon of diesel fuel to contain at least 5 percent biodiesel -- and 2 percent during the winter -- so supporters are excited to see Minnesota raise the bar to a highest-in-the-nation level.

The primary driver of the flood of unaccompanied minors across the southern border is the belief they will be allowed to stay and afforded legal status, according Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. In an interview with USA Today Flake, a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight that pushed immigration reform legislation through the Senate last year, explained that while there are factors like violence and poor economies acting to push Central Americans northward, there has been a “dramatic spike” that requires a remedy from President Obama. (SNIP) He added that while he does not believe House Majority Leader Eric...

Authorities are investigating the deaths of 20 dogs at Green Acre Kennel, in Gilbert, Arizona. The place had billed itself as a "Doggie Disneyland" promising plenty of land for dogs to run free with no cages. To Ryan Ingraham and his wife, it sounded like a great place to board their two black Labradors while they took a vacation. Ingraham had contacted MaLeisa and Todd Hughes, owners of the business, two months ago. Then about a week ago, he decided to take the dogs to the Hughes' house for a trial run.

Chris McDaniel, the arch-conservative state senator who unexpectedly lost his primary runoff election yesterday to unseat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, is dead right: The race was decided by non-Republicans. And not just that, but a certain type of non-Republicans taking advantage of the state's open-primary system: African-Americans, or, as McDaniel referred to them in his defiant non-concession speech, “liberal Democrats,” which appears to be the de-racialized code word of choice for some conservative Republicans when talking about black voters. The evidence is in the maps and numbers. Turnout was up statewide compared with the June 3 primary in which McDaniel...

"...many of the children who were recovered were never reported missing in the first place — by parents, guardians and the entire child welfare system designed to protect them. "No one is reporting them missing. Hence, no one is looking for them," said John Ryan, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "But for operations like this, these children likely would never have been found." He said better laws were needed to require child welfare service to report children who disappear. Right now, he said, only two states have laws requiring agencies to report children missing from...

The Worldview that Makes the Underclass Anthony Daniels Writer and Doctor ANTHONY DANIELS, who often writes under the penname Theodore Dalrymple, is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Born in London in 1949, he qualified as a doctor in 1974 and has worked in various countries in Africa and elsewhere. From 1990 to 2005, he worked as a doctor and psychiatrist in a prison in Birmingham, England. He has written a column for the London Spectator for 14 years, and writes regularly for National Review and the Wall Street Journal. He...

A jobless father who has had 26 children by 15 different women while receiving ‘more than £500,000 in benefits’ has criticised the government’s welfare cap. Peter Rolfe was criticised earlier this year when he claimed in an interview that his local council’s ‘refusal’ to give him a bigger house violated his human rights. The 64-year-old is appearing in new Channel 5 series Benefits Britain: Life On The Dole, in which he claims his home in Newport, Isle of Wight, is not big enough and like a ‘prison cell’. It had been reported that Rolfe had 18 kids by 10 women,...

More at Reaganite Republican...

Bay State EBT card carriers spent nearly $50 million in welfare cash out of the state last year — including destinations as far away as the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, officials said yesterday. A total of nearly 27,000 welfare recipients used their state benefits elsewhere between July 2013, and this past April, the Department of Transitional Assistance reported. The DTA reported 2,741 food stamp accounts were shut off in the past year after the recipients spent more than 90 days out of state. Another 246 cash assistance accounts were also closed during the same time period after recipients lived...

Many Republican supporters of loose borders, along with quite a few Democrats, vehemently deny that they support amnesty. They contend that merely asking illegal aliens to pay a fine and back-taxes in return for legal status is not amnesty. Fox News’s Brit Hume passionately denounced those who refer to some of the immigration proposals in Congress as amnesty. But amnesty means “an act of forgiveness for past offenses, especially to a class of persons as a whole.” What else would you call granting legal status, let alone the privilege of full blown citizenship, to millions of people who came to...

The nation has seen an increasing trend among lawmakers, particularly those on the left, in utilizing the state to drive our consumer choices. Generally, these have come from punitive measures. In addition to added regulations on food producers, they have struck directly at the consumer, in the form of "sin taxes" on sodas and other foods high in sugar and cholesterol in an "altruistic" attempt to persuade Americans to eat healthier. While I tend to disagree with these tactics and believe that the usage of state power to drive our consumer choices is a form of tyranny, I do believe...

In 1994 California voters approved a ballot measure that blocks illegal aliens from receiving welfare benefits. Now State Senator Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a Senate Bill (396) that would overturn the 1994 vote and make these undocumented residents eligible for publicly-funded aid. "These people are the poorest of the poor," de Leon said. "They came to this country to escape the poverty of their native lands. It is inhumane for us to deny them relief at the end of their arduous treks." The Senator dismissed concerns that the State budget was already too strained to bear the...