Free Republic

“We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape we will be smashed in inflation.” – Herbert Hoover This is financial tyranny. The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones who must foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity. We’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and...

This sudden soar in middle-class incomes is actually 1.6 percent less than in 2007, the last year before the economy collapsed. The richest 5 percent of the country continue to flourish, with a 21.8 percent jump in income. The top 5 percent reported over $350,000 in earnings — up 4.9 percent from 1999 and nearly 40 percent more than 1989. Meanwhile, the poorest Americans — 14.8 percent of the total population, or 46.7 million — are even poorer than they were in 1989. The highest household incomes were reported in Maryland and Washington, DC — at an average of $75,000...

It's easy to see the events in Dallas through a racial prism. It is harder to see them as the consequences of a political system which relies on keeping people in dependency, in which black Americans are the furthest advanced and therefore the most afflicted. As Mark Blyth, a professor of Political Economy at Brown University put it, the problem is global. In Europe the Romanians, Spaniards and the Greeks are given the part African Americans must play. Blyth points out that after one creates a class of dependents, the next and inevitable step is to control them.For the past...

Of the making of books there is no end; but seldom can there have been so appalling a spur to writing—or at least to dictating—a book as that felt by Tina Nash. She would never have sullied a page had her boyfriend Shane Jenkin not beaten and strangled her to unconsciousness and then gouged out her eyes with his bare hands, leaving her blinded for life. It was a crime that eclipsed all others in Britain that year (2011) in sheer malignity. The victim’s book, Out of the Darkness, is a classic of a kind. Though her narrative was ghostwritten,...

Although the chaos in Baltimore has seemingly come to an end, the damage is done. Buildings are in shambles, and owners have to rebuild their businesses with nothing left of their livelihood except some garbage and burnt pieces of plastic. There are so many heartbreaking stories of individuals affected by the riots, but this one takes the cake. This mom is trying to figure out what steps to take after the “peaceful protestors” destroyed her severely disabled son’s medical equipment, leaving him with nothing. According to the Washington Post, Laporsha Lawson grabbed her disabled son Khai’Lee Sampson and fled to...

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (D) is pushing for a law that would ban football game kick-offs before noon. “The early start times are really unfair to the poor and minorities, many of whom are still in bed at that hour,” Dayton claimed. “These start times may be okay for people who are used to getting up early to go to work, but they are out of sync with other lifestyles.” Setting a time more accommodating to these “other lifestyles” is important because “watching TV is a much bigger part of the lives of those on public assistance. They shouldn’t be...

"....Media sensationalism this year about two black deaths at the hands of white policemen inflamed the argument,.........Here, however, is one standup law-enforcement professional, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., who begs to disagree.Sheriff Clarke publicly condemns anti-police populism as the Left's deflection of an urban reality with which he's professionally all too familiar and for which the Left's all too politically responsible. "This deflects," says Sheriff Clarke:against the real thing that we need to have a conversation about in this country and it's the American ghetto. And that's where most of the policing unfortunately has to be applied. The...

[W]hat messages make young people feel as if they are in control of their future? Well here’s what doesn’t: The constant chatter about institutional racism and sexism that pervade our educational institutions and media outlets. If you want to give a kid the sense that he has some modicum of control over his destiny, that his efforts will be rewarded with success, it’s probably best not to tell him the decks are stacked against him. But that’s exactly what we do.

May 2014 "The Worldview that Makes the Underclass" Anthony Daniels Writer and Doctor -------------------------- ANTHONY DANIELS, who often writes under the penname Theodore Dalrymple, is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Born in London in 1949, he qualified as a doctor in 1974 and has worked in various countries in Africa and elsewhere. From 1990 to 2005, he worked as a doctor and psychiatrist in a prison in Birmingham, England. He has written a column for the London Spectator for 14 years, and writes regularly for National Review and the Wall...

The Worldview that Makes the Underclass Anthony Daniels Writer and Doctor ANTHONY DANIELS, who often writes under the penname Theodore Dalrymple, is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Born in London in 1949, he qualified as a doctor in 1974 and has worked in various countries in Africa and elsewhere. From 1990 to 2005, he worked as a doctor and psychiatrist in a prison in Birmingham, England. He has written a column for the London Spectator for 14 years, and writes regularly for National Review and the Wall Street Journal. He...

It is no coincidence but on the contrary highly significant that the British modern welfare state was born after the Second World War.  Having fought together against Hitler provided that sense of unity that is necessary for people to willingly financially support total strangers. For a welfare state to succeed that sense of an entire society's belonging figuratively to the same family is a conditio sine qua non. Another necessary condition is a general sense of trust, the perception that the welfare recipients will not exploit and take advantage of the welfare donors' generosity. Both these indispensable conditions have now...

<p>Among the number of plant closings announced in the United States this week: A printing plant in Greenburg, Ind., costing 220 jobs; a tomato processing plant in Westover, Md., with 103 people fired; an office-supply facility in Mattoon, Ill., with 129 jobs lost.</p>

Woman, 23, charged in Facebook-feud fatal crash By DAVID N. GOODMAN Associated Press Writer PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) -- A Facebook feud between two women who claimed to love the same prison inmate led to a high-speed chase and a crash that critically injured one of the rivals, killed her friend and left the second rival facing murder charges.

A controversial board member of Bundesbank has come under fire for claiming immigrants are making Germany ‘dumber in a simple way’. Thilo Sarrazin told a business group in Frankfurt that people arriving in the country from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa are less educated than those from other nations. The 65-year-old added: ‘There’s a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence.’ In his speech this week, Mr Sarrazin, a former finance minister, cited what he called ‘ample statistics’ for proof. He said the fact that immigrants tend to have more children than Germans - who have...

April 14, 2008, 6:00 a.m. The Hispanic Family: The Case for National ActionLooking at and for honest numbers. By Heather Mac Donald Those of us who have documented the growing underclass culture among second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans have grown accustomed to being called bigoted “xenophobes” by open-borders conservatives. For some reason, these same conservatives don’t object to anyone decrying the consequences of black illegitimacy rates, or the toll of black gang culture on community life. But point out the high Hispanic illegitimacy and school drop-out rates, or the march of ever-younger Hispanics into gangs, and you can be...

I've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks now that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is considering running for Governor. I finally found a news outlet that confirms this rumor, thanks to freelance journalist Jason Berry, who appeared on Informed Sources last night to predict that Nagin will run for Governor. Hat tip to Library Chronicles. As an aside, is this Jason Berry the author of Amazing Grace, an account of Charles Evers' run for Governor in Mississippi back in 1972? But back to the issue at hand - Ray Nagin running for Governor of Louisiana. This makes...

Nachum Shifren is an ordained rabbi in Los Angeles who spent 18 years of his life as a secondary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was also known as the "Surfing Rabbi" because of his abilities as a former professional surfer. He is quite familiar with youth culture and can be a pretty hip fellow -- despite his long beard, yarmulke and phylacteries that hang from his waistband. His level of coolness, however, never prepared him for a public school system where he received a death threat in class by a student and, on another day,...

WASHINGTON -- Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing. White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics last year, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. White adults were also more likely than black and Hispanic adults to have college degrees and to own their own homes. They were less likely to live in poverty. "Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not be direct discrimination, but it still matters...

In the West, gradual de-industrialization has created a new underclass of the unproductive and intellectually depraved. The spiritual cousin of the American phenomenon of "white trash," these strangers in their own land have become a serious threat to democracy. The modern-day member of the underclass is not hungry. He has a roof over his head, he is not disproportionately vulnerable to illness and he even has a bit of cash in his pocketbook. In every Western European country, he is both a citizen and a beneficiary of the welfare state, even if the state's services are no longer as generous...

THE HALLMARK OF THE UNDERCLASS Daily Policy Digest ECONOMIC ISSUES Thursday, October 06, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Versions of every program being proposed by the administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been tried before and evaluated. We already know that the programs are mismatched with the characteristics of the underclass, says Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. Job training? Unemployment in the underclass is not caused by lack of jobs or of job skills, but by the inability to get up every morning and go to work. A homesteading act? The lack of home ownership is not caused by...