Free Republic

Edgar K. Browning, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University, has a new book aptly titled "Stealing From Each Other." Its subtitle, "How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit," goes to the heart of what the book is about: The rise of equalitarian ideology has driven Americans to steal from one another. Browning notes certain kinds of equality have been a cherished value in America. Equality under the law and, within reason, equality of opportunity is consistent with a free society. Equality of results is an anathema to a free society, and within it lie the...

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 of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government...

Every once in a while, there is a news story that so perfectly illustrates one of today's political absurdities, no made-up illustration could ever be so effective. According to Michael Graham's article, "Bank unduly scapegoated": "activists for the newest civil right - the right to skip your mortgage payments - have taken to the streets of Roxbury." The protest is over the fact that a bank that loaned a certain Paula Taylor, $260,000 to buy a condo, now, "actually want her to pay it back!" If you think this is absurd, the politicians are on the side of Paula Taylor...

The conclusion of Margaret Knox, the grandmother of the 18-year-old boy stabbed to death in Sidcup last Saturday, makes the point well enough: it is down to parents to stop their children carrying knives, and using them

Food Stamp Recipients Pinched by High Food PricesFood stamp recipients get pinched by high food prices, struggle to feed familiesBy DON BABWIN Associated Press Writer CHICAGO May 16, 2008 (AP) The Associated Press Danielle Brown stands outside a South Side market at midnight, braving the spring chill for her first chance to buy groceries since her food stamps ran out nearly two weeks ago. Lynda Wheeler shops with her daughter, Jaime, 2, shortly after midnight at One Stop Food & Liquors... (AP Photo/Paul Beaty) Lynda Wheeler shops with her daughter, Jaime, 2, shortly after midnight at One Stop Food &...

As the legend goes, when the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in what is now Mexico in 1519, he ordered the boats that brought him and his men there to be burned. Obama seems to have something similar planned for NASA. Although the MSM has largely ignored Barack Obama's plans for NASA, the issue is likely to bubble up during the general election campaign, if he's the Democratic nominee. Here's why. There's a potential confluence of two events - one possible and one planned: an Obama presidency and a mission shift already underway at NASA. The Space Shuttle program will...

A "why bother?" economy has been created in Britain which has left thousands with no motivation to work, a report published today concludes. Successive governments have encouraged a welfare culture that has left every family facing a £1,300 bill because the poor stay poor, it claims. The findings by the public services think tank Reform suggest that increased welfare dependency has made it more difficult for those on the lowest incomes to do better.

Article is in PDF format. Quotes: "The welfare subsidy on single-mother homes was never really ended so much as it was shifted. Reformers essentially replaced welfare with child support, on the reasonable but largely irrelevant principle that fathers rather than taxpayers should be supporting their children (which is irrelevant for reasons we will see)." "Child support thus transformed welfare from public assistance into law enforcement, creating a federal plainclothes police force with no clear constitutional authority." "Perhaps the most striking aspect of this mobilization is that the initiative came entirely from government officials. No public outcry ever preceded these measures,...

Welcome to LittleDemocrats.net, home of Why Mommy is a Democrat and Why Daddy is a Democrat

Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, in their first one-on-one debate, in Los Angeles, were asked at the outset to distinguish themselves from each other. The question was motivated legitimately by a sense that there is really very little difference between these two liberal Democrats. Both noted a key difference in their approach to health care. Each wants extensive government regulation. But Clinton wants federal government mandates to force individuals to buy her plan and Obama rejects individual mandates. This key departure in health policy hints at a far more fundamental difference in the mindsets of these two candidates....

Trust Fund Fantasies by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 16, 2008 Young people watching a large chunk of their paychecks going to pay social security taxes may question why anyone would defend a program that, in an age of IRAs and 401 (k)s, seems to be such an anachronism. They might ask their professors, or just wait to hear them defend the status quo. “Social Security is a tried and true system, popular, successful and highly efficient,” University of Missouri political scientist Max J. Skidmore writes in The Montana Professor. “It would be foolish to revise it radically based upon tenuous...

Link below: Senior citizen property tax work-off program is a winner due to copyright issues.

Karl Rove's grandest aspiration was to create a Republican majority that would dominate American politics for a generation or more. But as the effects of his distinctive brand of fear-mongering fade, it's the Democrats who are poised to become the country's majority party -- and perhaps for a long time to come. Many conservatives have insisted that the Democrats' wins in the 2006 midterm elections, as well as their recent pickups in some 2007 races, were mere blips. They wish. Political, ideological, demographic and economic trends are all leading toward durable Democratic majorities in Congress, control of most statehouses and,...

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Saturday that election of a Democrat to the White House in 2008 would open the way for a welfare state where bigger government, higher taxes and defense cutbacks sap the country's economic and military strength. "Our country is at a crossroads," Thompson told several hundred people at a rally at a community clubhouse. "We know that the most liberal element of the Democratic Party has taken control of the Democratic Party, and if they win this next election we're going to go down the road of a welfare state," he said. After warning of...

ATLANTA, GA - An alliance of several minority groups announced a major campaign to secure Halloween candy subsidies for children in low-income and minority neighborhoods. The action comes on the heels of a recent survey that revealed the sobering fact that parents in these neighborhoods were less likely to send their children trick-or-treating. The groups claim the subsidies are necessary to bring justice to children with little or no opportunity to collect Halloween candy...

Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) issued an apology for remarks demeaning one of the Party’s key constituencies. “In an interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post I inadvertently wandered into forbidden territory,” Biden said. “While it is true that the District of Columbia schools are among the worst in the nation—inundated with the underperforming children of welfare mothers, infested with rampant drug abuse and terrorized by adolescent gang violence—my remarks implied that some of the fault might lie with the kids themselves or government programs that discourage responsible behaviors. This is not our Party’s position. It is...

One of the lessons we have learned in newspaper work is the importance of the long view. It often takes dozens of editorials, written over years, to get a law passed. We thought of that yesterday when we read a headline in the Daily News, "Feds eye bldg. sale at housing projects." The news was that the regional administrator of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, Sean Moss, said the New York City Housing Authority should consider selling some of its buildings in the city's expensive neighborhoods. It's an idea this paper and its columnists have been pushing...

On Thursday, Congress attempted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. SCHIP? Isn't that something to do with health care for children? Absolutely. And here is Bay Area Democratic Rep. Pete Stark addressing the issue with his customary forensic incisiveness: "The Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government. Clinton made the suggestion during a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus. "I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 government bond that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that down payment on their first home," Clinton said....

Conservative Activist Blames Poverty on LiberalismBy Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer September 17, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Blaming poverty on liberalism and the federal government, a conservative activist on Friday said: "It is very sad what the liberals have done with their war on the poor in this country." "After 40 years of failure, they still insist that they want to expand this war, that they think they should pour more money into this war," said Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. "Already, over $3 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty, and so...

It would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain and remove all 12 million people believed to be staying illegally in the United States, the federal government estimated Wednesday. Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave the figure during a hearing before a Senate committee Wednesday. She acknowledged it was based on "very rough calculations." An ICE spokesman later said the $94 billion did not include the cost of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs -- dollar amounts that are largely unknowable. He said the amount was calculated by multiplying the estimated 12 million people by...

Much of our country's simmering dialogue on immigration sooner or later turns to the question of hiring people to perform certain "jobs Americans won't do." Rarely, however, do policymakers address why Americans apparently refuse to do certain jobs while immigrants go to great trouble and expense to come here to perform those very jobs. Many of the jobs now commonly performed by immigrants were once filled either by students or by adults who saw work as noble and idleness as shameful. Today, our relative prosperity and appetite for instant gratification are becoming our enemy. In my hometown, summer or after-school...

Mr Brown will find it hard to regain the commanding heights on health FOR a chancellor of the exchequer turned prime minister, the irony must be galling. The National Health Service has dominated voters' concerns during the decade that Labour has been in power. Responding to these worries when he was at the Treasury, Gordon Brown sanctioned budget-busting increases in spending on health. Yet as the public became increasingly disenchanted with the government's handling of the NHS and more pessimistic about its prospects, Labour squandered its huge historic lead as the party most trusted to run the health service. The...

London's Times Online recently reported that, according to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI is working on his second encyclical, a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as "socially unjust." The pontiff will denounce the use of tax havens and offshore banking by wealthy individuals because it reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole. Pope Benedict could benefit from a bit of schooling. Tax avoidance is legal conduct whereby individuals arrange their affairs so as to reduce the amount of income that is taxable. Tax avoidance can run the gamut of legal acts, such as investing...

I was listening to Laura Ingraham this morning and on the air she asked her assistants to try to get a hold of SF Supervisor Sandoval who is part of a SF City/County resolution to condem Michael Savage for his saying that illegal immigrants who were on a hunger strike to get free college should "starve [themsevles] to death". For details about the controversy (does not include the bit about Laura)see http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57130

A married couple in Kinda in the south east of Sweden have lost a court bid to retain their current level of welfare payments. For almost ten years the husband and wife pair have asserted their right to opt out of the rat race and live on a combination of state support and their own crops. Östergötland county court disagreed however, ruling that there were no health issues preventing the pair from taking up employment and that their benefits should therefore be reduced, Corren.se reports. In a letter to the county court, the husband had argued for a reversal of...

Woman, 108, must wait 18 months for hearing aid Thair Shaikh Monday July 30, 2007 The Guardian A 108-year-old woman has been told she must wait at least 18 months before she receives a new hearing aid. Olive Beal, who has failing eyesight and uses a wheelchair, finds it difficult to hear with her five-year-old analogue aid and needs a digital version that cuts out background noise and makes conversation easier. Mrs Beal, a former piano teacher who was involved in the suffragette movement, would be 110 by the time she gets her new hearing aid. "I could be dead...

"Is God Dead?" was the famous/infamous Time magazine cover Easter Sunday 1966 that triggered a nationwide firestorm of criticism. Murder threats were commonplace for the self-described "apocalyptic theologian" Thomas Alrizer, a former Emory Professor of Religion, whose Death of God thesis posited God put himself completely into Jesus' body and died when Jesus was crucified. More recently, pundit Christopher Hitchins' "God is Not Great: The case Against Religion" unloaded both starboard and port broadside salvos that garnered more claps than boos from book reviewers. His smorgasbord of faiths — "Anglican, educated at a Methodist school, converted by marriage to Greek...

Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report entitled "Immigration's Economic Impact" which defended the President's promotion of the Senate's "comprehensive" immigration legislation (S.1348).[1] On June 25, the White House issued a follow-up editorial elaborating on the points made in the CEA report.[2] These publications criticized Heritage Foundation research on the fiscal costs of low skill immigration and amnesty. The Heritage research criticized by the White House made the following basic points about immigration and its costs: 1. Individuals without a high school degree impose significant net costs (the extent to which benefits and services received...

The title of Patricia Morgan’s new book, The War Between the State and the Family, is fighting talk. But the British sociologist has a lot of evidence on her side when she alleges that modern governments are engaged in “systematic discrimination against (married) couples in the tax and benefit system.” (62) In the words of her subtitle, she aims to show "How Government Divides and Impoverishes" the family. She chalks this ill-conceived policy up to an ideological cocktail of feminism, neo-Marxism and radical individualism. The fiscal result throughout the Anglophone world is an expansion of the welfare state and an...

About 1.2 million low-income Californians lost a chance for an increase in welfare benefits tied to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2003 rollback of state vehicle license fees Wednesday when the state Supreme Court rejected their appeal. Shortly after taking office, Schwarzenegger carried out a campaign pledge to undo a decision by his predecessor, Gov. Gray Davis, to triple the vehicle fee because the state was broke. At the time, state law entitled welfare recipients to a cost-of-living increase when state revenues triggered a reduction in vehicle taxes. San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren ruled in March 2004 that Schwarzenegger's action...

Move over, mac and cheese. The local food shelf could use a little variety. Twin Cities' food banks and food shelves are racing to stock more ethnic foods to keep up with the area's growing number of new immigrants. "Not all rice is created equal," said Renae Oswald-Anderson, vice president of community building at Neighborhood House, a community center on St. Paul's West Side that includes a food shelf. "The vast majority of our participants do not speak English as a first language," she said. "They're immigrants and refugees." But getting enough fufu, an African porridge, to go around is...

Sikandra, Dausa, June 4: You can feel the tension and fear from his voice as Hanumanji Gurjjar cautiously answers the mobile phone. There is no violence in his Bhalpur village in Dausa district but for the last 48 hours, the small village has been surrounded by the powerful Meena community — more than 5,000 of them — who have blocked the approach road. “There are two trucks with soldiers inside that keep coming in and going out of the village but we are all scared. The Meenas have blocked the road and are not allowing anyone in or out and...

We need a new avenue of attack to defeat the Kennedy/McCain/Bush Amnesty Act of 2007. I suggest the following: 1. Offer an amendment that calls for a CBO scoring of the bill as is. 2. Tie passage of the bill to full funding of the CBO score that must be in place before the bill can become law using the House's PayGo rules. 3. Establishment of a database using data from the Social Security Commission, Homeland Security, and Immigration be developed and implemented to determine the legitamacy of Immigration documents being used to secure employement 4. If the money isn't...

A core belief of liberals - or "progressives," their moniker of preference these days - goes something like this: "The true measure of a society is how it treats the weak and needy." This is a superficially noble and nice-sounding platitude. Politically, it's the foundational justification for the cradle-to-grave welfare state and its perpetual expansion. It's heard so often, I suspect many people who have never paused to critically appraise its validity simply accept this bromide as a truism. I don't. It's simplistic and absurdly narrow. You might say that one measure of a society is how it treats those...

Feral Britain Melanie Phillips The Daily Mail (UK) April 23, 2007 For many years, those of us who have been writing about the potentially catastrophic effects of epidemic family breakdown have been warning that its impact won’t be limited to damaged individuals or a rising crime rate. If it is on a large enough scale, it is also likely to cause the destruction of civilised values and even the most basic human instincts. One can’t help but think in these terms when reading about last week’s appalling court case which heard how a mother, Zara Care, from Plymouth goaded...

ORLANDO, Fla. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday she favors stricter home loan standards, clearer mortgage documents and better counseling for borrowers to stave off delinquencies and foreclosures. The Democratic presidential candidate proposed more leniency for borrowers in a financial crisis, allowing them a grace period from mortgage payments. She also called for more selectivity when screening people for loans to ensure they are qualified. "The loans need to be legitimate so people aren't strung out," Clinton told a group of about 20 people at a community center. The New York senator said borrowers should have more access to...

Harsh realities hit home in QuebecElection a 'real wake-up call,' Jarislowsky says Sean Silcoff, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 Laurent Verreault is chief executive of one of Quebec's most successful firms, Groupe Laperriere et Verreault. To compete, GL&V -- a global leader in technology that separates liquids and solids for mining, pulp-and-paper and water treatment facilities -- does some things a bit differently. Its corporate office is in Montreal, but the CEO works from his Florida condo. His three vice-presidents are in the U.K. and India; his son Richard, the president, is in the United States. GL&V...

Here we go again. Another Conservative, Capitalist friendly 'think-tank' - this time Swedish Timbro - launches a report based on highly creative, home-made statistical measurements intended to reveal the weakness of Socialism and big governments. So far so good. All sane people oppose these evils. Strangely enough, this report also 'reveals' that Britons and Italians are better off than US Americans. Often, Conservative think-tanks critizise Europe while they praise the US. Timbro and HUI are two Swedish organizations that specialize in producing reports making sensational claims like 'Sweden is poorer than Mississippi', reports that might mesmerize someone like Instapundit/Glenn Reynolds...

WASHINGTON The 108-year-old push to make Puerto Rico the 51st state is thriving on the Caribbean island. But powerful U.S. business interests continue to trump local politics, making it less likely than ever, experts say. More than half of Fortune 100 companies operate there, with billions invested in factories and trained workers. Eli-Lilly & Co., Abbott Laboratories and others, including Microsoft Corp. and Coca-Cola Co., don't want to lose Puerto Rico's tax-free commonwealth status, politicians and academics say. At a congressional hearing set for Thursday, corporate lobbyists are expected to remind statehood advocates that the lure of cheap labor and...

Boy dies of brain infection when tooth extraction could have saved him...

WASHINGTON - The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees. The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago. Critics of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race. "The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. "I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country," the Illinois senator said. Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic...

"If you can go toe-to-toe with liberals in Massachusetts and New York City and acquit yourself well, you are prepared for D.C.," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. ** Mead credits Giuliani with mental toughness rare among elected officials. Instead of seeking consensus, Giuliani openly defied many of the city's leading liberals on crime and welfare reform. "Giuliani confronted not only the bureaucracy, but the community groups and the academics and the journalists and all those who said you couldn't be tough on the poor," Mead said. "He said that you can be — you can demand...

Katrina evacuees say they need more than extension They welcome more time with housing help but say the problem is more long-term A six-month extension of emergency housing assistance will stave off an immediate catastrophe but will not solve the underlying problems preventing hurricane victims from rebuilding their lives, evacuees and their advocates said Monday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed that assistance would continue through Aug. 31 for about 128,000 households living in trailers, mobile homes or apartments, including about 14,000 in the Houston area. The assistance was scheduled to expire in February for victims of Hurricane Katrina and...

<p>Hillary's first conversation will be begin tonight at 7 PM. You need to register at the linked site to participate.</p> <p>Hillary's website asks people to "help make these webcasts a true national conversation by spreading the word."</p> <p>I'm doing my part.</p>

Iran actually is short of oil Roger Stern International Herald Tribune Monday, January 8, 2007 BALTIMORE - Iran has ensnared itself in a petroleum crisis that could drive its oil exports to zero by 2015. While Iran has the third- largest oil reserves in the world, its exports may be shrinking by 10 to 12 percent per year. How can this be happening? Heavy industry infrastructure must be maintained to remain productive. This is especially so for oil, because each oil well's output declines slightly every year. If new wells are not drilled to offset natural decline, production will...

As the new majority of Democrats takes over the House of Representatives January 4, they have big plans – plans the media have supported. Journalists have called arguments against a minimum wage hike “a lot of bull” and even came out in blatant endorsement of socialized medicine. “The only answer is going to be, eventually, some kind of national, universal coverage. A guaranteed system that everybody regardless of income will have at least basic health care,” said ABC medical correspondent Dr. Timothy Johnson on the Oct. 16, 2006, “Good Morning America.” In the “first 100 hours” of their reign, according...

Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth. In other words, consider it not as an event but as a narrative. You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use? The birth of a child. If Christianity is just a myth, then it is, so to speak, an immaculately conceived one. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn...