Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s last three vacations cost $6.2 million. As a friend made me think, when he sent me this story, if this man ever opens his mouth again about “income inequality” and “economic injustice,” someone needs to tell him to shut up. A Secret Service agent would be perfect. The next two years can’t be over soon enough. I’m sure he’ll add another $5-$10-million to this obscene bill to shove down our throats before he’s done. According to the Washington Examiner,, “Taxpayers get stuck with $6.2 million tab for just 3 Obama vacations; $40m over 6 years.” Three recent...

SIOUX FALLS, SD - U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Annette Bosworth is standing strongly in support of a controversial Facebook post she made on Monday. "The statement is tongue and cheek; it's meant to stir discussion," Bosworth said. Stir discussion it has. Bosworth is receiving national attention for a Facebook post she made earlier this week. The post, which has now been shared by nearly 60,000 people, is a photo comparing the country's food stamp program to a national park warning about feeding the animals, which goes on to say the animals would grow dependent on the handout. "It did ruffle...

A mother-of-nine who claims £38,000 a year in handouts and demanded a bigger council house for her huge family is pregnant again - this time with twins. Cheryl Prudham, 32, and her husband Robert, 29, are set to receive at least a further £1,400 in handouts when the baby girls arrive. Mrs Prudham said she will 'not be made to feel guilty' for having children' as she and her husband both work part-time. Last year the couple, from Sittingbourne, Kent - who were living in a three-bedroom council house at the time - said they were entitled to a bigger...

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who has decried the failure of Congress to extend unemployment benefits before its December recess, is talking about changing the vocabulary of assistance. In a speech Jan. 8 on the House of Representatives floor, Jackson Lee suggested renaming government welfare. "Maybe the word 'welfare' should be changed to something of, 'a transitional living fund,'" Jackson Lee said, according to a post on The Minority Report blog. "For that is what it is - for people to be able to live," she said....

"....Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's office will cancel food stamp benefits for anyone who participated in a fraud and shopping spree catalyzed by an EBT malfunction....More than 12,000 people were sent an insufficient funds notice when the problem with the EBT cards was fixed on Oct. 12; those who transgressed may lose their EBT cards for a year....On October 11-12, at least 17 states experienced problems with their EBT card systems. In Springhill and Mansfield, Louisiana, cards indicated they had no spending limits, so EBT holders went wild with purchases..... The stores that were cheated are bound to come up with...

Posted: Oct 30, 2013 2:11 PM CST Updated: Oct 30, 2013 2:50 PM CST By Carolyn Roy A Louisiana senator is calling for SNAP users who took advantage of the EBT card glitch earlier this month to lose their benefits. U.S. Sen. David Vitter on Wednesday sent a letter to Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and the director of the state's Department of Children and Family Services asking for "aggressive action on the fraudulent events during the recent outage of the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system which led to massive theft of groceries in several Louisiana locations." "The outrageous theft...

By now you’ve probably heard about the EBT card breakdown during a power outage in which shoppers at a couple of Louisiana Walmarts purposely took advantage of the situation by “buying” a huge number of groceries for amounts that greatly exceeded their EBT limits in normal times. You might say the Walmart managers were stupid not to ban the use of the cards for the duration of the problem, or limit the amount that could be charged on them. And if you said that, perhaps you’d be right. But perhaps they thought that if they did that they would face...

Full carts abandoned at Chicago grocery stores were a common sight as shoppers in Illinois and many other states have been unable to use their food stamp debit cards. More than two million people in Illinois use a so-called Link Card. That's one in six residents in the state. So when suddenly the system went down Saturday morning many customers just walked out of the store. "Now I'm going to have to unfortunately do the fast food thing now. No cooking tonight," said Link Card user Rob Lee. "That's how people starve," said shopper Sean Wright. "People starve if they...

DETROIT - Michigan residents in a federal food program are being denied purchases with their debit-style cards because of technical problems. A woman from Fenton, who asked not to be identified, spoke with WWJ about her experience. “I’ve been in two different stores and in both stores, I was told that food stamps could not be authorized so I was not able to make a purchase. I’m absolutely outraged and furious,” she said. “Today is Saturday, my only day off to go grocery shopping for my children and I’m very, very angry that this has happened.” Officials said they’re not...

A record 23,116,928 American households were enrolled in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—AKA food stamps—during the month of June, according to data released this month by the Department of Agriculture. That outnumbers the 20,618,000 households that the Census Bureau estimated were in the entire Northeastern United States as of the second quarter of 2013. According to the Census Bureau, the Northeast region includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Thus, in June, the households receiving food stamps exceeded the total combined households in all of these states. The 23,116,928 million...

The entitlement class is starting to get a little pushy and the cash cow they are leaching off of is starting to get ticked off. I'm sitting outside the Oakland international airport and a guy walks up asking for money. ( I don't give anything to people who ask, only those who don't) This isn't the first time somebody has asked me for a handout and probably won't be the last. I didn't have anything on me anyway. I replied to the guy that I didn't have any cash on me. Sorry I couldn't help him. He looks at me...

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Trayvon Martin's parents are scheduled to hold a news conference in Miami Beach. Martin's parents, their attorney Benjamin Crump and members of the National Bar Association are set to meet with reporters Monday morning. They are expected to discuss their plans to address what they say are inequalities in the U.S. justice system.

DNC: Nearly $500,000 of equipment was lost or stolen in Charlotte To stage last year’s Democratic National Convention, the local host committee raised millions of dollars, much of it for computers, phones and other communication devices. Now it appears a sizable amount of that equipment was lost, stolen – or perhaps kept by the staffers it had been assigned to. The Democratic National Convention Committee said it recently sent the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department a spreadsheet detailing $496,000 worth of missing equipment. CMPD created an incident report in May. Among the missing items: MacBook Pro laptops, iPads, iPod Nanos, computer printers,...

SALEM, Ore. - Tough economic times in recent years have led to heartbreaking decisions for many pet owners. But now, there may be more help on the way. Marissa Jenkins' 6-year-old Dachshund, Olivia, is more than a dog. "She's been part of our family, she's definitely not a dog," Jenkins said. "She's a kid to us." Recently, the Salem, Ore., family welcomed a new addition - and a new challenge. "My husband lost his job in February and we just had a baby in December, and so all the costs of having a baby and a dog and a family...

A Berlin family of three has been living on practically nothing but love and the goodwill of others for more than two years and counting—not as a victims of the rough economy, but as activists who are on a money strike to protest what they call our “excess-consumption society.” ... Though Fellmer uses no money, he said Palmer does use a little, mainly in the form of child support she receives from the government, which is granted to all children.

SINGAPORE -- While the U.S. unemployment rate "dropped" to 7.7 percent last month -- a figure even the Washington Post acknowledged was due "in large part because the labor force fell by 350,000" -- here in this modern and prosperous city-state of slightly more than 5 million people, unemployment is practically nonexistent at 1.9 percent. In part, this is due to a work ethic that seems to be in the genes here. But there is something else at work that should astound Washington politicians struggling with expensive "entitlement" programs and with those who receive them. The Economist wrote about it...

When black voters gave President Barack Obama 93 percent support on Election Day in defiance of predictions that they might sit it out this year, black leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief. That encouraged those leaders to try to leverage more attention from both Obama and Congress. Although they waver over how much to demand from the president —particularly in light of defeated GOP challenger Mitt Romney's assertion that Obama gave "gifts" to minorities in exchange for their votes — they are delivering postelection wish lists to the president anyway. "I think the president heard us loud and clear....

Mayor Cory Booker is known for his social media savvy, having helped direct emergency services in Newark, New Jersey to stranded citizens during snowstorms and field questions during Hurricane Sandy. Now he's taking the talk offline as he bet a Twitter trash-talker that he could live healthfully on food stamps for a month. The Democratic politician got into a dispute with a woman on Twitter who took issue with his dispelling of some free advice via Plutarch. 'An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,' Booker wrote on Sunday morning. User @MWadeNC...

The election revealed the true nature of the supporters of Barack Obama: they do not care about anyone but themselves. The Free Obama-phone Lady from Ohio is now the face of America. If you don’t give her free stuff you suck. After a hard day of ranting about how great Obama is and how evil conservatives are goes home to watch her flat screen TV she got with her Obama bucks EBT card. Voter Suppression The only Americans who were denied the right to vote were the men and women selflessly serving this nation overseas, Obama supporters and no—show Republicans...

Ever since I moved to the inner city one thing has puzzled me more than any other, and that is how my low-income neighbors get by. Assuming they aren't doing anything illegal, how do they afford their homes, their meals, their gadgets, their cars? Few seem to work, even part time, for they are home in the morning when I leave for work, home if I stop by for lunch, and home when I return in the evening. They can't work the graveyard shift, for they keep me up half the night with their raucous music. I am left to...