Free Republic

When President Obama entered office in January, the greatest problem America faced was neither the war in Afghanistan nor the recession. It was the imminent crisis of the welfare state. Not only has Mr. Obama failed to deal with this crisis, he is pursuing policies that will bankrupt America. In March, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, led by former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, calculated the total value of the federal government's "unfunded liabilities" as they stood at the end of fiscal 2008. These liabilities include the publicly held portion of the national debt plus the amount the government must...

Good video talks about government regulations, the welfare state, etc.

California is a mess, but I love it all the same--especially the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years. I went to Berkeley in 1962--a refugee from Amherst College, which at that time was dominated by frat boys with high SAT scores. I didn't go to Berkeley to go to school, but to be a bus ride away from North Beach and the Jazz Workshop. In a broader sense, I went to California for the same reason that other émigrés had been going since the 1840s. I was knocking on the Golden Door. Immigrants from Europe had come to...

UTICA, N.Y. -- Twelve Utica residents face federal charges for approximately $2 million in food stamp fraud. These charges come after an 18 month state and federal investigation. Police say those indicted were accepting food stamp benefits in exchange for cash, which is a violation because these benefits are only to be used for eligible food products. A federal grand jury indicted the 12 Tuesday. Only eight were actually arrested and charged Tuesday with defrauding the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. They include: · Muteea Alfahdd, 41 · Najeeb Abdullah, 44 · Hamoud...

Providers are reducing staffing and services and increasing rates, and hospitals are closing or facing bankruptcy. And the Obama administration wants to extend medical insurance to the uninsured. What they won't face is the role immigration has played in driving up the number of uninsured and the rising cost of health care for native-born Amereicans. Here is some substantiated research data: *Between 1989 and 2007, immmigrants and their U.S.- born children accounted for 71% of the increase in the uninsured. *Approximately 65% of illegal aliens in the U.S. are uninsured. *In many hospitals, as much as two-thirds of total operating...

Almost nine months into 2009, at least 219 New Orleanians have attempted to take their own lives; 47 of them have succeeded. The number and rate of suicides is higher than in previous years and approaches twice the national rate.

New reports from the Tax Foundation show that President Obama's policy proposals will increase the financial dependence of middle-income Americans on the federal government. "Attempts to put 'price tags' on health care and cap-and-trade proposals vary among government agencies and think tanks," said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge, "but one vital question has been left unanswered: Counting all federal taxes and spending, how would these policies affect American families' financial ties to the government? The foundation's new 'fiscal incidence model' answers that question." "Currently the bottom 60 percent of the income spectrum receives more in federal spending than they pay...

[On Sept. 16th Heritage scholar Robert Rector appeared on the Lou Dobbs Show and outlined the shocking results of his latest research about how Obama is rushing us into the complete welfare state.] Welfare or aid to poor and low-income persons is now the third most expensive government function. Its costs rank above spending on national defense. Welfare spending has grown enormously since Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty. In his first two years in office, Obama will increase annual welfare spending by ONE-THIRD from $522 billion to $697 billion. After adjusting for inflation, this increase is two and...

It is almost irresistible for conservatives to snicker as Democrats in Massachusetts hold hearings and seek ways to justify an attempt to change the law in Massachusetts to allow the Democratic governor of the Commonwealth to appoint a Democratic senator--presumably available to vote for President Obama's initiatives. It was just a few years ago when Senator John Kerry was running for president and the governor was a Republican that the Democratic state legislature thought it imperative to change the law to prevent governors from appointing senators. It is just too delicious, the hypocrisy too obvious, for conservatives to ignore. Yet...

In an interview with Philadelphia-based radio host Michael Smerconish, President Obama said the following about critics who called his healthcare proposal “socialist:” “FDR was called a socialist when he passed Social Security. JFK and Lyndon Johnson - they were both accused of a government takeover of health care when they passed Medicare. This is the process that we go through, because understandably the American people have a long tradition of being suspicious of government until the government actually does something that helps them.” Obama is right. What we often call “socialism” is simply the same old welfare state most Americans...

Those of us who oppose a massive increase in the role the national government plays in health care ("ObamaCare") do so because we fear the immense and unsustainable national debt it would incur and because we are certain that medical care in America would deteriorate. But there is a bigger reason most of us oppose it: We believe that the bigger the government becomes, the smaller the individual citizen becomes. Here are five reasons why bigger government makes less impressive people. 1. People who are able to take care of themselves and do so are generally better than people who...

A lame rally from a bunch of Obama robots pretending to be grassroots, pictures show it's from the Obama campaign for Health Care, (big surprise) and they say we are astroturfing....

NEW YORK (AP) - About a thousand people rallied in Manhattan on Saturday in support of federal health care reform legislation. The event near Times Square began shortly after the funeral for U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, and took-on the feel of a tribute to the liberal leader. One person carried a sign that said, "TeddyCare for all."

President Obama took his case for what he now calls "health insurance reform" to the faith community. He made his pitch in a phone call, also broadcast over the Internet, to clergy who called in and logged on from around the nation. In his remarks, the President ticked off points of contention that dissenters have with his proposals -- "government takeover of healthcare...government funding of abortion...death panels" -- and dismissed these concerns as "fabrications." In one swipe, Mr. Obama reduced his opposition to liars. And why, according to the President, are dissenters supposedly making all this stuff up? Because, he...

We are berated, ad nauseam, with imprecations that America is the only advanced nation that fails to have universal health care. This statement is often followed by the rueful remark that the debate over government controlled health care has been going on without progress for 60 years and, ipso facto, it is time to settle it. All right, let's do that. Let's look a little deeper. Why is there no settlement of the issue, and why is America unique in its obstinate reluctance to follow the example of our older cultural brothers in Europe? When a debate continues for decades...

Stockholm, Sweden. Do you think America would be better off with a Swedish-type welfare state? This question tends to evoke strong reactions from both the left and right, yet few understand Sweden's economic history and the revisions it has been making to its welfare-state model in recent years. Sweden was a very poor country for most of the 19th century. The poverty of those years caused many to emigrate from the country, mostly to the U.S. Upper Midwest. Beginning in the 1870s, however, Sweden created the conditions for developing a high-growth, free-market economy with a slowly growing government sector. As...

Combined with the overall lack of adult supervision in the Congress, I can pretty much say with a great deal of confidence (at least as much as Barack Obama has when he says he can deliver health care at lower cost, and with greater access and no change in your doctor) that what we’ve been seeing since last January is a concerted effort to yoke Americans even more to a dependency on their government that is not only ill-advised but also ultimately tragic. I say ”tragic” because programs like Cash for Clunkers and ObamaCare — both of which are nothing...

"There is a perception that when we talk about government spending for the 'have nots,' we're talking about taking from hard-working white people and giving to lazy black folks."

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A $200 back-to-school giveaway for needy kids sparked a mad rush for money on the streets of New York on Tuesday. "It's free money!" said Alecia Rumph, 26, who waited in a Morris Park, Bronx, line 300 people deep for the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for her two kids. "Thank God for Obama. He's looking out for us." Thousands of people lined up at banks and check-cashing shops to withdraw the cash that magically appeared on their electronic benefit cards. Some rushed out because of rumors the money would vanish by the end of the day. "Rumors,...

Lost in the vigorous national debate over health care reform is the potentially transformative effect any major legislation will have on the nature of American democracy. The deeper question we should be debating is this: What happens to our democracy when a majority of American voters depend on the government for a paycheck? Our nation's founding generation was profoundly aware of the relationship between economic independence and democratic participation. In classical Athens, Aristotle had argued that political participation required property ownership, since those who did not own property "have no share in the state." Likewise, our founders largely restricted voting...

Why a website defending government? Because for decades, conservatives have been attacking government and not enough has been done to defend it. Ever since Ronald Reagan declared in 1981 that "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem," Republicans have been waging a political war against this institution. Their core message: the free market is good and government is bad.

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August. Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system. Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based...

It’s worth recalling that when the Founding Fathers led the American colonists in revolt against British oppression, they weren’t rebelling against torture on the rack or being chained in galleys or having to let aristocrats deflower their daughters. They were rebelling against taxes. To them, having to pay duties they hadn’t voted for themselves was a tyrannical taking of property—theft—and, in true Lockean fashion, they concluded that since government exists to protect life, liberty, and property, a regime that does the opposite renders itself illegitimate. What would they make, then, of today’s New York City, where 1.2 percent of the...

The Boston Tea Party was a prelude to the Revolution, not the start of it. A recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg had the predictable effect of rekindling interest in the founding of our country, and brought to mind the character of colonial life and important events in the prelude to the American Revolution. One of the informational talks at a historical site described how the revolution began, arising slowly from mounting discontent with the degree of control imposed by King George and the British Parliament over the day-to-day lives of the colonists. One of the best known of those is...

snip Nineteen years later, they will see another long-awaited increase beginning this month, bringing a subsidy for a typical family of three to $321 a month, from $291, city and state officials said. For a family of four, the subsidy will rise to $413.70 a month, from $375.70. The increase was a small line in Gov. David A. Paterson’s budget this year, but a hard-fought victory by advocates for the poor, who have long argued that the welfare subsidy was too low. “It was way overdue,” said Mark Dunlea, the executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York...

PHILADELPHIA - For students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, there really is such a thing as a free lunch - and a free breakfast, too. With no strings attached. The Philadelphia school district's unique program provides free food for all children in schools with a high percentage of low-income students, dispensing with the cumbersome forms parents must fill out elsewhere to qualify their kids for free meals. Although federal officials recently threatened to kill this paperless model, other cities are looking to replicate it. Food service directors say it eliminates the costly bureaucracy that both deters needy families from applying...

... Despite budget cuts, many schools and community groups are expanding their efforts to feed children from poor and struggling families this summer as the lingering recession deepens longstanding concerns that those who qualify for free meals go hungry once classes end. The number of students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches was up about 5 percent nationwide this spring, to nearly 19.4 million from 18.4 million the previous year, according to federal officials. These new programs extend beyond school hours to feed children on weekends and in the summer, and they have spread from impoverished urban areas to suburban...

<p>Raised in an individualistic culture, Americans dislike the concept of the "welfare state" and do not use the term. But make no mistake, the United States has a welfare state, and its future is precarious. The true significance of General Motors' bankruptcy lies more with this welfare state than with the battered condition of American capitalism.</p>

The Democrats' health care initiative reminds me of the joke about the Boy Scout fighting on a street corner with an old lady. When a passerby asked what was going on, the scout said, "I'm trying to help her across the street but she refuses to go." Health insurance, so far, is not mandatory by law, and we've got 16 percent of the population -- 47 million or so -- without it. Auto insurance is mandatory by law, and according to the Insurance Research Council, 14 percent of drivers nationwide still don't buy it. Government can't make people do what...

Many years ago, I took a class in behavioral psychology. The professor was a rather sadistic proponent of B. F. Skinner. He loved to experiment in behavior modification using various reinforcement schedules of pain and reward to change the behavior of monkeys. The monkeys were taught to pull a lever to receive a pellet of food. Later, he added the element of electric shock to the reinforcement schedule. Every time the monkey pulled the lever, he would get a shock along with his food pellet. As typical in behavioral experiments, the professor varied the schedule, in this case increasing the...

Supervisors suggest putting unemployed parents to work caring for their own children as part of proposed changes to CalWorks and other state government aid programs. With steep state budget cuts under debate in Sacramento, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to push for changes to CalWorks and other government aid programs they said would save nearly $270 million. Included in their suggestions is a novel proposal: Put unemployed parents to work caring for their own children. "What we're saying is do not cut Welfare to Work outright: Target the cuts to the people who are the most expensive," said Miguel...

Included in their suggestions is a novel proposal: Put unemployed parents to work caring for their own children Parents now receiving assistance must attend job training and search for work. While they fulfill those requirements, they are eligible for subsidized child care, which typically costs the state about $500 a month per child in L.A. County. The parents of children under age 1 may stay home and still receive benefits. Now, county officials propose expanding that to parents who have one child under age 2 or two children under age 6. Monthly job training and child-care costs for such parents...

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." - James 1:27 The Obama Administration and both houses of the US Congress are fast-tracking a number of programs designed to increase the size of what's commonly known as the Welfare State. And while Christian church leaders and members may wag their fingers at this socialist strategy of "forced charity," we must remember that in order to remove the specks from the eyes of liberal-left politicians, we must first remove the boards...

In his elegantly written essay Going Dutch (The New York Times Magazine, April 29), Russell Shorto sounds the praises of the Dutch welfare state. He raves about the ‘kinderbijslag,’ or child benefit, he receives quarterly and the annual check to cover the expenses for his children's schoolbooks. Of course Shorto loves the welfare state. The top income-tax rate of 52 percent for all income above 65,000 dollar doesn't hurt him. As an expatriate Shorto's income tax is reduced by 30 percent for a period of ten years. Other mortals in the Netherlands, however, face a marginal tax rate of over...

Joe Biden addresses students at Bellevue Elementary School in New York on May 10th: BIDEN: How many of you kids want to go to college? Well, guess what? Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to make sure that every single one you who qualify are going to get to go to college even if you don't have the money in your family to go. We're going to make sure you get there.

With little fanfare, the Government Accountability Office released a document last week that points to the day when the American dream dies and is buried beneath a middle-class welfare state. You can see death coming for the American dream as surely as you can see cirrhosis coming for a drunk. We are bringing it upon ourselves—although not all Americans deserve what is going to happen. For one, our children don’t deserve it. For another, Americans who have tried to live independent, self-reliant lives don’t deserve it, either. But they are going to be dragged down with everyone else, if we...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The state's congressional delegation sent a letter Wednesday asking for more assistance from the man overseeing efforts to help Michigan communities cope with the fallout from the troubled domestic auto industry. Ed Montgomery, President Barack Obama's director of recovery for auto communities and workers, is bringing a host of federal officials with him for a two-day visit, his first to Michigan since April 1. The bipartisan letter from Michigan's two U.S. senators and 15 U.S. House members asks Montgomery to assist Michigan communities by making sure they get a large share of federal grants to develop...

President Obama may be determined to use the current economic crisis as an excuse for "Obamanomics" to transform the United States into the world's largest socialist state. Data emerging from the Congressional Budget Office and various international agencies, including the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD, indicate the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget will dramatically increase government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, on a scale that rivals even the European Union social welfare states of France, Great Britain and Germany.

When it comes to African poverty, everyone, it seems, wants to help—and “help” usually means foreign aid. ... Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work—and it might even make things worse. That’s the argument of Dead Aid, a new book by Dambisa Moyo, an economist born in Zambia, educated at Oxford and Harvard, and who is currently raising major hackles in development circles. In Dead Aid, Moyo does not mince words. Despite the fact that over $1 trillion has gone to Africa over the past 50 years (according to Moyo, nearly $1000 for every person on the planet), “millions in Africa...

Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Great Society, in "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream": In his determination to get Congress and America moving again, Johnson demanded support for the Great Society and confidence in the capacity of government to improve all the conditions of society as matters of faith. . . . The intensity of his own belief strengthened his formidable persuasive powers. . . . In so expansive an era, filled with such benevolent intentions, the boundaries between fact and fiction, between the present and the future, no longer held. . . . And so...

Nadya Suleman will probably sign a deal very soon to feature her and her 14 children in a reality TV show, sources tell PEOPLE exclusively. Czech says Suleman doesn't have health insurance and that all medical costs associated with delivering the octuplets on Jan. 26 were funded by taxpayers through state Medi-Cal.

SPOKANE, Wash. - Two Washington state girls took their plea straight to President Obama after their dad was laid off from his job. The two mailed a letter to the president at the White House after watching their father, Henry, struggle to find a new job. Now they're about to lose their home. It's a simple letter - asking for help. "My name is Lilian Deck and my sister and I live in Spokane," the girls' letter begins. "We would like to ask you a question - where is the help you promised in your campaign?"

By sacking GM's CEO, packing the new board, and giving direction as to which brands to drop and what kind of cars to make, Obama takes ownership of General Motors. He may soon come to regret it. He has now gotten himself so entangled in the car business that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler. (Upon reflection, a job best left to the congenitally unmuffled Joe Biden.) Some find in this descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism. I have my doubts. These interventions are rather targeted. They involve global financial institutions that even the Bush...

The question posed by social scientist Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner this month could hardly have been simpler — Do Americans want the United States to be like Europe? He asked as someone who admires Europe and Europeans. He asked also because it is becoming increasingly apparent that restructuring the United States along the lines of the European social-democratic model is the change many in the new administration - perhaps including President Obama himself - believe in. Mr. Murray is convinced that Europeanizing America is a bad idea, and not only because the European model creates...

Roadblocks. That's what Barack Obama has been encountering on the audacious path toward a European-style welfare state he has set out in his budget and other proposals. He continues to insist that America cannot enjoy real prosperity again without higher taxes on high earners, a government health insurance program, a cap-and-trade program that amounts to a tax on energy and the effective abolition of secret ballots in unionization elections. The fact that there are large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress made it seem that the path was open. But roadblocks have started to appear. One has been set...

Play Video Video:Too Young for Birth Control? ABC News Play Video Video:Designer Babies FOX News AP – Graphic shows number of births in the U.S. since ATLANTA – Remember the baby boom? No, not the one after World War II. More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any other year in the nation's history — and a wedding band made increasingly little difference in the matter. The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom. Behind the number is both good and bad...

  Charles Murray delivers the 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture. Photo by Peter Holden Photography/AEI.   My thanks to AEI's Council of Academic Advisers for this great honor. As best I can estimate, tonight is the twentieth of AEI's annual dinners that I have attended. It has been a memorable series of evenings. There was, for example, the night in 1996 when Alan Greenspan reflected upon the "irrational exuberance" of American investors, and the next morning the Dow dropped two percent in the first half hour. The stature of the occasion has led most of the honorees to deliver a summum...

Dori writes... In these brutal economic times, a lot of people are upside down in their mortgages and are losing their homes. But there's one group of people who don't have to worry about that - the residents of 1811 Eastlake. The housing project for chronic alcoholics in Downtown Seattle. While I support many shelters and job training programs for the homeless, this project has always struck me as misguided - public funds are spent on housing that allows alcoholics to drink in their publicly subsidized apartments. That's why I found these pictures so disturbing. A Downtown Emergency Service Center...