Free Republic

Able-bodied adults received work waiver even with record-low unemployment. Despite 10-year-low unemployment, California took advantage of loopholes in federal regulation to keep more than 800,000 federal welfare recipients from having to work. This conclusion is based on the response of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to an application to waive SNAP's work requirements for 55 of California's 58 counties, issued to the state in July.. California's waiver, which will last until August of 2019, exempts more than 800,000 able-bodied, childless Californians from having to work while on SNAP. This in spite of the fact that California's unemployment rate—4.2 percent—is at...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Russia’s Multiple Warnings About Tamerlan TsarnaevPosted By Matthew Vadum On April 25, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments Russian authorities warned the Obama administration repeatedly — not merely once — that Boston Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev could be an Islamic terrorist, but those admonitions went unheeded in Washington, D.C.It’s a depressingly familiar tale of intelligence failures, official lies, politically correct posturing, and bureaucratic bungles coming from an administration that has little interest in protecting Americans from the Islamic terrorist threat, a danger President Obama refuses even to acknowledge.Time magazine...

Buying fresh vegetables for children, heating an apartment, using Medicaid to manage diabetes. Those are all legal means of support provided by the government for low-income residents of the United States. But a new rule in the works from the Trump administration would make it difficult, if not impossible, for immigrants who use those benefits to obtain green cards. **SNIP** The administration’s plan is based on the more than 100-year-old law of “public charge,” later defined by government guidance in 1999: A person who is very likely to become “primarily dependent” on government services cannot become a legal permanent resident....

It’s the year of the Democratic Socialist and that means that some relatively crazy ideas are all the rage. One of the biggest is the dream-like vision of a society where you get paid whether you work or not. It’s known as universal basic income (UBI) and it fits in nicely with the idea of each according to his needs. Can it work in the United States, particularly in some of our cash-strapped major cities? We may find out soon enough because Chicago is looking at giving it a go. (Free Beacon) Officials in Chicago want to test the...

The Trump administration wants you to believe it's devoted to protecting American taxpayers from supposedly welfare-mooching foreigners. Don't. What President Trump is really doing is shutting the door on all but a small sliver of well-heeled immigrants — while telling the "tired," "poor," and "huddled masses" yearning to put cheap food on American dinner plates to get lost. There was a time when immigration restrictionists used to insist that they weren't motivated by nativist considerations because their beef was not with legal immigrants, but illegal ones who don't play by the rules. Trump has ripped the mask off that lie....

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Boston yesterday to throw a spotlight on what he called “theft from America” by 25 mostly illegal immigrants charged with massive government fraud that’s being blamed on shoddy oversight by the Registry of Motor Vehicles. “Operation Double Trouble” accounted for $200,000 in heisted Medicare, unemployment and public housing benefits. One of the suspects, the feds said, is a convicted killer who escaped from prison in Puerto Rico. “Across this city and across America, teachers, truck drivers, construction workers are going to work and paying taxes that are being stolen from the public treasury...

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will grant up to $12 billion in emergency aid to farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs in the ongoing trade fight with China and other American trading partners. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that the plan, which will provide direct assistance and other temporary relief for farmers through the USDA’s commodity program, is meant as a stopgap to give Trump time to negotiate a long-term policy with China, the European Union and others. The plan was announced as Trump spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City, where he...

(snip)Just how expensive is Hawaii? According to the Hawaii Public Housing Authority, a single person can qualify for housing assistance on Oahu while earning as much as $54,850 annually. A family of four only becomes too rich for housing assistance at $78,300. What would classify as middle-class America as a whole (median income around $56,000), is poor in Hawaii. (snip)As of 2016, the average home price in Hawaii was $905,000, far “ahead” of second-placed Massachusetts, at $580,000. In Honolulu, the average home price is $1.2 million. According to CNBC, Hawaii has the second-highest tax burden in the country, just behind...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) tells @burgessev and me outside GOP lunch that $12 billion in trade assistance to farmers from Trump administration "this is becoming more and more like a Soviet-type of economy here" with "commissars" sprinkling around benefits.

When pork prices collapsed amid a global trade war during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration in 1933 had an idea—slaughter six million piglets. Put a floor under prices by destroying supply. It didn’t work. Now the Trump Administration may try its own version of Depressionomics by using the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to support crop prices walloped by the Trump tariffs: Hurt farmers and then put them on the government dole. How about not hurting them in the first place? That’s the question as Mr. Trump escalates his trade war, on Wednesday proposing 10% tariffs on $200 billion in...

WASHINGTON — The government announced a $12 billion plan Tuesday to assist farmers who have been hurt by President Donald Trump's trade disputes with China and other trading partners. The plan focuses on Midwest soybean producers and others targeted by retaliatory measures. The Agriculture Department said the proposal would include direct assistance for farmers, purchases of excess crops and trade promotion activities aimed at building new export markets. Officials said the plan would not require congressional approval and would come through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a wing of the department that addresses agricultural prices. "This is a short-term solution that...

The U.S. Agriculture Department on Tuesday plans to announce a $12 billion package of emergency aid for farmers caught in the midst of President Trump’s escalating trade war, two people briefed on the plan said, the latest sign that growing tensions between the United States and other countries will not end soon. Trump ordered Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to prepare a range of options several months ago, amid complaints from farmers that their products faced retaliatory tariffs from China and other countries. The new package of government assistance funds will be announced Tuesday and is expected to go into effect...

The journalistic hounds at CNN have a new target, a politician whose sin is so egregious – so unthinkable – that it can hardly be spoken aloud: the recently elected congressman from Minnesota disagrees with CNN orthodoxy on race. And now, with enthusiasm we have not seen since hordes of reporters descended on Rick Perry's boyhood hunting grounds where they found a 30-year-old racial expletive written under a rock, CNN has set out to punish Congressman Jason Lewis. The sins of the congressman were easy to ferret out. They came during a stint as a talk show host in Minneapolis...

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration may have declared it over, but a new War on Poverty is coming anyways. It will be fought largely over the "work requirement" -- should the government require welfare recipients either to get a job or to train for one? It's a philosophical as much as a practical question. A work requirement addresses a dilemma of all welfare programs. If you make eligibility and benefits too generous, you destroy the incentive to work. People will just collect their welfare checks. But if the program is too stingy and strict, many genuinely needy people may lack...

Food stamp participation dropped below 40 million for the first time in eight years, according to the latest numbers on food stamp enrollment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The most recent USDA data reveals that 39,604,428 people were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the program that administers food stamps—as of April 2018. The last time enrollment dipped below 40 million was in February 2010, when 39,588,993 people received SNAP benefits. The latest data on enrollment shows that overall enrollment in the food stamp program has reached historic lows, reaching its lowest point in eight years. But...

Most SNAP recipients spend ... early it increases food insecurity. 39% spend 2/3 of monthly benefit in the first 4 days. 14% of GA households are food insecure. Over 1.6 million (16%) utilized $2.54b in SNAP in GA. Few statistically significant differences explain why spending patterns are so different. We hoped we would be able to find something that said the ‘patient’ people do this and ‘impatient’ people do that, but we did not, Dorfman said. I guess it comes down to personality. Many households are connected to SNAP through local food banks and caseworkers at state agencies, DFCS, Camardelle...

A White House report said Thursday most Americans living in poverty who receive government benefits are not working, even though they are able to -- a published backing for the Trump administration's plan to impose new work requirements for welfare recipients. The 66-page report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said poverty numbers of non-disabled adults are "a deeply flawed reflection of material hardship." The study said most non-disabled working-age adults who receive Medicaid, 61 percent, do not work or work very few hours. The other two major welfare programs, Medicaid and food stamps, have similar numbers. The...

This is the land of opportunity, and anyone who wants the come here can…legally. That’s not the issue. For the Trump White House, it’s been their stated position to shift our immigration policy toward allowing more high-skilled workers into this country.  As for the families of the low-skilled working immigration population in the country, 51 percent (76 percent counting immigrant-led households with children) are collecting some sort of check from our welfare services. Is that good? No. Does that mean we shut it all down? No. That figure comes from the Center for Immigration Studies, who noted the need for...

I cross river, Poor and broke, Take bus, See employment folk. Nice man Treat me good in there, Say I need Go see Welfare. Welfare say, 'You come no more, We send cash Right to your door.' Welfare checks, They make you wealthy, Medicaid It keep you healthy! By and by, Got plenty money, Thanks to you, TAXPAYER dummy. Write to friends In motherland, Tell them 'come, fast as you can' They come in buses And Chevy trucks, I buy big house With welfare bucks. They come here, We live together, More welfare checks, It gets better! Fourteen families, They...

Summary The 2018 "official" U.S. debt figure of $34 trillion is 120% of GDP and projected to double as a percent of GDP within the next 20 years. It's big.If we add "off-the-books" net obligations like Social Security and Medicare, our all-in debt, or so-called "fiscal gap", rises to $110 trillion, or 390% of GDP. It's scary.Raising taxes and reducing benefits won't restore solvency. Something is going to break, and it won't be pretty. We're broke and no one seems to care. We're all aware that this country owes a lot of money, but no one cares because we're leading...