Free Republic

A Mississippi state representative suggested that a woman buy her family's diabetes medication after she wrote to him to ask for help with increasing difficulties obtaining Medicaid assistance. Richland resident Nicole Nichols wrote to the Mississippi House of Representatives Monday morning to voice her concern that children with Type 1 diabetes "aren't getting the necessary diabetes supplies and meds they need to stay healthy." "We have recently begun having a lot of problems with Medicaid/CHIPS coverage of the essential diabetes supplies needed, not only to keep our kids healthy, but to literally keep them alive," Nichols wrote to Mississippi lawmakers....

Michigan will collect more taxes next year, but not as much as predicted a few months ago, leaving members of the Legislature looking at a sizable gap between what they want to spend and the money available to pay for it. The most constructive and efficient way to balance the budget is to eliminate the state’s corporate welfare programs and supporting bureaucracy. The budget the Legislature enacted for fiscal year 2016 included almost $178 million in six major items over which the Michigan Economic Development Corporation controls. Cutting this would not only help balance the budget, but could improve Michigan’s...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage may have considered a proposal to prohibit food stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy candy and sodas to be a sweet one, but the Obama administration disagrees. The friction between the Republican governor and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reignited a debate after the Obama administration denied LePage’s request to put restrictions on what can be purchased with food stamps. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, LePage said: “It’s time for the federal government to wake up and smell the energy drinks.” In an interview with The Daily Signal, LePage’s health...

If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called The Management of Savagery. In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online The Management of Savagery: The Most...

No sooner had it seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and surrounding villages, than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began outlining how it would govern its dawla (state). The best way to get a sense of ISIS’s blueprint for state-building is to look at how it has ruled al-Raqqa governorate and other territory in neighboring Syria. The group’s first move is often to set up billboards around town that emphasize the importance of jihad, sharia, women’s purity, and other pietistic themes. The group also has a surprisingly sophisticated bureaucracy, which typically includes an Islamic court system and...

An Arizona Democratic lawmaker who once voted against welfare fraud protections in her state has been indicted on felony charges of defrauding the food stamp program. According to the indictment unsealed earlier this week, state Rep. Cecilia Velasquez was charged with three felony counts: unlawful use of food stamps, fraudulent schemes and practices, and theft. The Arizona Department of Economic Security began investigating Velasquez in 2014. According to the Arizona DES, Velasquez fraudulently used $1,726 worth of food stamps between 2013 and 2015. This past February, Velasquez had voted against a bill aimed at giving the same state agency stronger...

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis) has introduced legislation that would require taxpayers to pass a drug test before being allowed to itemize deductions on their 1040 tax forms. The bill is in retaliation for state laws that require welfare recipients to pass drug tests in order to receive benefits. "I am sick and tired of Republicans forcing poor people to jump through hoops to receive the money they are entitled to under the law," Moore complained. "We enacted these programs to help the unfortunate. Few members of society are as unfortunate as drug addicts. They are slaves to chemicals that their...

Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., in February. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) A Congresswoman who is “sick and tired” of drug testing welfare recipients has introduced a bill in Congress that would subject the rich to many of those same requirements. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., unveiled Thursday the Top 1% Accountability Act, which would require those claiming itemized deductions of more than $150,000 on their tax returns to submit to drug tests or file for less generous tax deductions. The proposal is a shot across the bow at Republican governors in states, including Moore’s home state of Wisconsin, that require the...

A letter sent by a Federal Communications Commission commissioner suggests that taxpayers are footing the bill for half a billion dollars in fraudulent "Obamaphone" subsidies. Ajit Pai, the senior Republican commissioner at the FCC, says there may be as many as 4.2 million duplicate recipients of Lifeline Assistance subsidies, also known as the “Obamaphone” program. In a letter to chief executive of Universal Services Administrative Company (USAC), Pai requests an audit of how carrier sub-contractors vet the applications for new subsidies. In the letter, first published by The Hill, Pai says that cell phone carriers may have bypassed a safeguard...

War on Poverty: Everyone who thinks the government “must do more” to help the poor should read the House Republican blueprint on welfare reform. The report is the result of years of work head by Speaker Paul Ryan to reform welfare and improve upward mobility.

"Federal taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $20,000 just to settle each refugee and asylum seeker, who are then immediately eligible for cash welfare, food stamps, housing and medical aid, according to a new report on the "refugee industry."" "The report from the Negative Population Growth Inc. said that the U.S. is currently accepting about 95,000 refugees and asylees. That is in addition to the over 500,000 legal and illegal immigrants coming to the U.S."

Welfare work requirements, defunding of programs . . . and more. It’s just a start, and he says as much. It has to be. It doesn’t mention what to do with ObamaCare or entitlements, so we can expect that he and his colleagues in the House are still working on those and we’ll hear about them soon enough. This stuff is basic blocking and tackling, but that doesn’t mean it’s without value. Paul Ryan told us last week that he’s voting for Donald Trump for precisely this reason: A Republican legislative agenda has no chance if Hillary becomes president. With...

Among the many disturbing signs of our times are conservatives and libertarians of high intelligence and high principles who are advocating government programs that relieve people of the necessity of working to provide their own livelihoods. Generations ago, both religious people and socialists were agreed on the proposition that "he who does not work, neither shall he eat." Both would come to the aid of those unable to work. But the idea that people who simply choose not to work should be supported by money taken from those who are working was rejected across the ideological spectrum. How we got...

Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them." After decades of massive expansions of the welfare state, the answer seems to range from "not very much" to "making matters worse." Undaunted, people in a number of countries are coming up with new proposals that are variations on the theme of government-provided income — which amounts to relieving people from personal responsibility. Yet even some conservatives and libertarians are coming up with proposals for more "efficient" versions of the welfare state — namely direct cash grants for life to virtually all adults, instead...

A woman destroyed a convenience store in the US after being told her benefits card would not be accepted. Shocking footage shows the woman throwing stock from shelves and screaming before being restrained and physically removed from the store.

Can giving people money help solve wealth inequality? Y Combinator, a prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator program for startups, is wading into a new “world changing” project: basic income. On Tuesday, Y Combinator said in a blog post that it would conduct a short pilot study in Oakland, Calif., “a city of great social and economic diversity” that “has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality.” The accelerator has also hired Elizabeth Rhodes, a PhD in social work and political science from the University of Michigan, where she completed research on health and education in slum communities in Nairobi. Y Combinator defines...

Last week, I almost got my very own Obamaphone—by accident. I own a Tracfone; it is one of those prepay plans. The carrier was upgrading from 2G to 3G, and I was sent a new phone to replace my old one. And then the discovery! My perfectly good Tracfone had been mysteriously transformed into an Obamaphone. I might have had a tax payer-provided phone with free monthly minutes and unlimited text messaging for life! Plus a whole lot of free Internet access too! That’s how close I came to my very own Obamaphone. [snip] It’s a testament to the efficiency...

The EU would have “the second most powerful military” in the world if its members pooled its resources, insisted the co-director of the Institute of Studies on Conflict and Humanitarian Action in an interview with EurActiv Spain. “If we added the capabilities we have in the EU together, we would automatically become the second most powerful military force on Earth and the reason we aren’t is because there is no political will. This is because each national government would rather be the head of a mouse rather than the tail of a lion,” said Jesús Núñez, a conflict analyst. …

A report from the state House Fiscal Agency shows that there has been a steady decline in the number of police officers in Michigan, falling 15.4 percent from 1990 to 2015. The report does not go into why this is, but here’s one theory: Pension underfunding is crowding out government spending, including hiring decisions. Consider that the state police retirement system now costs between 57 percent and 63 percent of the Michigan State Police’s total payroll. It is not because the benefits are lavish. It is because the state is trying to pay for promises that it made in the...

Even though the official unemployment rate fell below 5%, most of us who live in the real world know better: there are still an estimated 30 million Americans who have either given up looking for work or are underemployed. According to the latest Pew Research, the American middle class has shrunk for the first time in decades and is no longer the economic majority. In the mean time, the number of low-income Americans is rising. Who should we blame for this economic reality? Many point their fingers at immigrants. Maybe you have heard this saying, “When you point one finger,...