Free Republic

In his successful drive for the presidency, Barack Obama went out of his way to cultivate churchgoing Americans. Obama spoke frankly and fluidly about his faith, he participated in Pastor Rick Warren's candidates' forum at the Saddleback mega-church, he reached out personally and persistently to evangelical and Catholic leaders, and his campaign targeted American religious groups like no other Democratic candidate for president has in recent times. Moreover, Obama and his campaign downplayed his socially liberal views, stressed his commitment to tolerance and civility toward those with whom he disagreed on social issues, and sought to underline the ways in...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised to save American taxpayers 40 billion dollars a year by slashing waste in government contracting, with a special eye on bloated spending on defense. "I reject the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars," Obama said on a day when he signed a presidential memorandum reforming the contracting system across the entire government. "In this time of great challenges, I recognize the real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich,"...

snip whatever one thinks of Darwin and genetics, assuming he was even partially right about genes, is there any hope for the children of such a hopelessly odd mother, not to mention a man who provided his seed because he was "in love" with her? The political culture of today says we can't answer this question publicly, but assuming Suleman's story is merely the tip of the iceberg, politicians who control the purse strings are eventually going to have to stake out a position here. Whatever side is taken, it would surely be interesting to know how many women, desirous...

General Motors was founded in 1908 in Flint, Michigan and grew to be the largest corporation in the world. Its market capitalization reached $50 billion in 2000. In the past week its market capitalization dropped below $1 billion to levels last seen during the 1920’s. The story of General Motors is the story of America. In 1953, at the peak of its dominance, its President Charles Wilson declared before Congress that what was good for the country was good for GM and vice versa. Its rise to power and decline towards insolvency parallel the rise and fall of the Great...

The so-called stimulus bill appears to be on the verge of passage following a “compromise” crafted by Republican Senators Specter and Collins and Democratic Senator Nelson. It demonstrates a stunning ignorance of how business works and how jobs are created. For example, in its over 1500 pages, there is not one single mention of increasing profits in American businesses, yet any business owner knows that sustained profits are the only way that businesses can expand and create new jobs. Without a clear focus on increasing profits, the long-term result of a huge increase in government spending can only be one...

Six years ago I wrote a book called "Uncle Sam's Plantation." I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it. I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism. I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps. A vast sea of perhaps well intentioned government programs,...

(CNN) -- Iceland's ruling coalition resigned Monday, three months after the collapse of the country's currency, stock market and several major banks, and following months of public protests, Kristjan Kristjansson, a spokesman for the prime minister told CNN.

Even without the election of Barack Obama and Democratic gains in Congress, conservatives were going to have to reassess much of their philosophy on the key issues of taxing and spending. The financial crisis has already led to a vast expansion of spending, and even if John McCain had won, there was going to be a lot more to come. The aging of the baby boom generation alone means there will be increasing demands for Social Security, Medicare and other programs for the elderly in coming years. (The first baby boomer turns 65 in 2011.) Moreover, Americans’ zeal for tax...

PARTS of the United Kingdom have become so heavily dependent on government spending that the private sector is generating less than a third of the regional economy, a new analysis has found. The study of “Soviet Britain” has found the government’s share of output and expenditure has now surged to more than 60% in some areas of England and over 70% elsewhere. Experts believe the recession will tighten the state’s grip still further as benefit handouts soar and Labour directs public sector organisations to create jobs to soak up unemployment. In the northeast of England the state is expected to...

President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed $775 billion stimulus package, being sold as a cure-all for the ailing economy, is little more than a checklist for funding the pricey social-services agenda that he promised during his campaign. Some experts say that the Trojan horse of pork and welfare spending will ultimately worsen the recession and drive the nation deeper into debt, according to financial experts. Most of Obama’s costliest promises have found their way into the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which now includes everything from an expansion of Pell grants for college students, to health care for the unemployed, to...

Slideshow: President-elect Barack Obama Play Video Barack Obama Video: Illinois House impeaches Gov. Rod Blagojevich AP Play Video Barack Obama Video: Web only: Obama names intelligence team WRAL Raleigh Reuters – President-elect Barack Obama arrives to make a speech on the economy at George Mason University in Fairfax, … WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that he and Congress will "hone and refine" his nearly $800 billion economic recovery plan, as he seeks to patch fissures with senior Democrats over key features of the still-emerging plan. The job was made more urgent with the release of a Labor Department...

Barack Obama has dubbed his behemoth fiscal stimulus proposal the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." But if truth in advertising were required of White House plans, only one title would fit the trillion-dollar-plus-and-growing bill: The Generational Theft Act of 2009. President-elect Obama was at his most candid when he told the country Tuesday that we face massive deficits for the foreseeable future. "Potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come," he said, "even with the economic recovery that we are working on." But one word is glaringly out of place in that warning. It's the word "even." Washington will...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The number of homicides in Maine reached 31 in 2008, the highest number since 1989, when 40 people were killed in the deadliest year in Maine history. The number of fire deaths, meanwhile, was lower than average. Of the 2008 homicides, 19 were domestic related, or roughly two-thirds of the killings, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Normally, about half of Maine’s homicides are domestic related, he said. The latest domestic killing was a baby boy who was allegedly beaten in Wilton.

A mother of eight living on housing benefit in a £2.6million home provided by her London council said today: "I'm not going to pretend it isn't great." Francesca Walker was given the property because of a loophole which means Kensington and Chelsea council had to fund a suitable home in the borough for a family of that size. The 33-year-old Muslim convert has told of her new life in the Notting Hill townhouse with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, double living room, study and roof terrace on four floors which costs taxpayers £90,000 a year. Miss Walker, whose children by two...

Liberal-progressives presume they can do no wrong, so long as they take other people's money for the benefit of the secular and socialistic welfare state. Liberal-progressives presume they can do no wrong, so long as they take other people's money for the benefit of the secular and socialistic welfare state. Citicorp's Robert Rubin is getting harsh words from investors who ask why he should receive $115 million in annual compensation, while shrugging off any suggestion of personal responsibility for the banking giant's horrendously imprudent investment policies. Mr. Rubin says that he was merely a broad-gauge policy advisor, that problems arose...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Martin Durkin, the producer of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. He is preparing a documentary series on the social history of Britain. FP: Martin Durkin, welcome back to Frontpage Interview. Durkin: Thanks for asking me. FP: I would like to follow up with you a bit on our last interview, as we hit on many profound and significant themes associated with the Left and its main causes and agendas. I’d like to touch on social engineering with you today. Tell us your thoughts and observations in terms of welfare. Where has it caused...

The bottom just fell out of the state budget. A new state forecast released this morning estimates tax revenues will drop an additional $1.9 billion below projections. If that number holds true, state lawmakers could face about a $5 billion shortfall when they meet in January to put together a new two-year budget. That's up from a $3.2 billion gap projected in September. "This is as bad as I've ever seen it," said Victor Moore, the governor's budget director. Growth in state tax revenues have fallen sharply...

Before the election, Howard Stern's Sirius radio show conducted interviews in Harlem, N.Y., in which the interviewer, not identified with the show, recited John McCain's economic proposals but portrayed them as Barack Obama's. Not knowing whose ideas they actually were, these people raved and gave them their full support. The election of Obama is an example of Americans voting against their own self interest. It's also further evidence of the dumbing down of America. Trying to explain how our economy works and why lowering taxes is always better for them and America than imposing higher taxes is an economic bridge...

At Savannah State University, where I teach American government, international law and American judicial process, I am constantly waging intellectual warfare against my college students to forsake dependent, slavish ideologies rooted in emotivism, like liberalism, socialism, welfare statism and feminism, and instead to embrace critical thinking in all of their intellectual pursuits. Recently during a mock presidential debate I had organized where I played Sen. John McCain (as if he were a true conservative), I even slammed my fist on the table and in the spirit of Justice Clarence Thomas' grandfather, who told young Clarence as a child, "The damn...

<p>The White House on Friday threw its support behind a plan to speed release of $25 billion in existing loans to the Big Three automakers but rejected a Democratic proposal to use money from a financial bailout to help the troubled industry.</p>

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by: Creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization; Satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation; augmenting primitive feelings of envy; Rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government. "The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains...

The global credit panic has swept away many illusions, and we're about to find out if that includes those of the politicians who have feasted for years on Wall Street tax revenues. Ground Zero is New York, which has lived a tax-and-spend fantasy thanks to the long bull market and "progressive" tax rates. Reality is now biting. The financial services industry employs between 2% and 3% of nongovernment workers in New York, the same as it did in the late 1970s. What's changed is the share of total wages in the state represented by Wall Street jobs, which had skyrocketed...

Pack away that "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt with the old disco clothes. While President-elect Barack Obama said in his victory speech Tuesday that some of the changes he promised will take time, New Jersey Democrats expect a lot to happen quickly. Within days of inauguration, the new administration might reverse policies on offshore drilling, chemical plant security, stem-cell research and children’s health care — issues that have bedeviled New Jersey Democrats during the Bush years. Even before the inauguration, change appears to be happening. WHAT NJ WANTSWish list for our sharePresident Bush indicated Wednesday he is open to discussing another...

The Death Of An Americam Idea An electorate living high off the entitlement hog. By Mark Steyn ‘Give me liberty or give me death!” “Live free or die!” What's that? Oh, don't mind me. I'm just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs. My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a “center-right” country. Americans didn't vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a Dancing With The Stars election: Obama's a star and everyone wants to dance...

Sorry to break the bad news to Joe the Plumber. But the winner of Campaign 2008 is Peggy the Moocher. Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life." Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my...

Is the U.S. graduated income tax — a tax that ties both the amount of taxes paid and the rate of taxation to wealth — "socialistic," as certain politicians have been arguing lately? It's hardly likely, since the U.S. graduated income tax in its present form has been around since 1916. The Sixteenth Amendment authorizing a federal income tax had been ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1913. It has been vetted by economists great and small, and endorsed by none others than Teddy Roosevelt, Adam Smith and, yes, Karl Marx. Maybe the problem is the term "progressive," which...

What a difference four years make. "Rarely have the stars been aligned as they are right now for (President) George W. Bush," Kenneth Walsh wrote in U.S. News and World Report in November 2004. "And he intends to take full advantage of the fact." After Bush beat Democrat John Kerry, some talked of a permanent Republican majority. Democrats were down. Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times, "Democrats are now, understandably, engaged in self-examination." Krugman concluded, "But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as...

In 2004 the American Prospect staged a website "debate" over whether President Clinton's domestic policy had been sufficiently liberal. Ann Lewis insisted that Clinton's presidency had been "good for our country," an argument the former communications director in the Clinton White House could have made under sedation. Disputing her claim was Max Sawicky, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. His central accusation was that Clinton had failed to "rehabilitate the reputation of the welfare state by proposing well-founded expansions. This, I submit, is the mission of the Democratic Party; otherwise, it has little purpose." He...

The personnel director for San Francisco's welfare department was escorted out of her office the other day and put on unpaid leave as part of an investigation into whether she has been using city workers and city equipment to run her private business. Lydia Chan, who has headed the Department of Social Services' human resources office since 2005 and oversees some 2,000 employees, came under administrative investigation after two whistle-blowers in her agency accused her of having employees make calls and do other work for a day care center she runs.The whistle-blowers also said they had seen Chan carrying city...

I hope to God that someone in the McCain reads this forum on a regular basis. Please, but please, attack Obama on his attempting a simple, deft, re-birth of the collectivist concept of the Great Society's Welfare State: 1. Obama is attempting to provide that 40% of the population that does not actually pay taxes with an earned income tax credit (this is a result of his allegedly providing 95% of the "taxpayers" with a tax cut.... 40% of those filing taxes don't pay taxes) 2. Witness Obama's insistance on raising capital gains, even though he acknowledged to Charlie Gibson...

If the Obamanation is elected and further corrupts our entire system of government, the number of those who actually pay income taxes will become the minority; subject to the increasing tyranny of the parasitic non-taxed. Tape-worm city...

A MINORITY VIEW BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008, AND THEREAFTER Destroying Liberty Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government. While imperfect in its execution, the founders of our nation sought to make an exception to this ugly part of mankind's...

"..removed from her post Saturday, after she said the Democratic Party made black people "dependent on the government." "I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that," she said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The spokeswoman for the Republican Party in Nevada's most populous county was fired Saturday, after she said the Democratic Party made black people "dependent on the government." Didi Lima, the Clark County GOP communications director, also was removed from her volunteer role as a Hispanic community liaison for Republican John McCain's presidential campaign over the remarks made earlier in the day while working at a McCain campaign booth. "We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create...

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...