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... The cards, known as P-EBT (for Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer), are entirely legitimate. As it happened, every child enrolled in public school in New York City would receive one regardless of family income. The program, which delivers $880 million to New York State, was paid for by the federal government, a result of the economic relief package passed by Congress in the earliest phases of the coronavirus outbreak. The sum of $420 was meant to equal the cost of meals that a child would have received in the spring had school been open. While the notion of people who...

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif) used the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer while he was resisting arrest to bolster her charge that "black lives have never been treated as fully human in America. It is yet another instance of an innocent black man being victimized by police brutality and another reason why voters need to elect Joe Biden and me to bring an end to this sorry history." President Trump lost no time in challenging Harris' notion that blacks would be better off under a Biden Administration. "In the last three years, my Administration...

Most people agree that politics is a dirty game and that political powers will inevitably be used to further the agenda of officeholders and their cronies. That said, despite being immersed in the current thinking regarding UBI for three years now, I have seen precious little worrying as to what the government — or a future government — might actually do once it has seized control over everyone’s purse strings.

President Trump's effort to break the Congressional deadlock on the next iteration of coronavirus relief by threatening to issue an Executive Order has Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) incensed. "His insistence that the coronavirus relief bill be focused on stimulating the economy after it was shut down to slow the spread of the contagion is too narrow," he said. "We want to include bailouts for states that have crippled their economies with reckless spending and high taxes. There are hundreds of thousands of government employees in my state who could face layoffs, pay cuts, or deferred pensions if federal...

BART’s ridership is only 12% of what it was before the coronavirus pandemic and it’s facing a projected loss of $975 million over the next three years — nonetheless, the transit agency’s workers got a 2.75% raise July 1, bringing the top salary for station agents and train operators to $93,085.20 a year, plus benefits.“It was clear from the beginning of the budget process that staff and a board majority was committed to maintaining status quo,� BART board Director Debora Allen said. “That meant no layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts.�

I’d really prefer to go to the beach but it’s tax day in the MOTUS household. We’ve delayed this year’s inevitable day of reckoning as long as possible – well technically we have till October with our extension but even I’m not that much of a procrastinator – so meeting with our accountant this morning. This is how I always feel by the time we’re done gathering everything required together in order to turn over a substantial portion of our annual income to the government for redistribution as they deem fit: Current mood: (fill-in-the-blank) So you do what you have...

By preserving culture and supporting children, the nuclear family consequently becomes the highest and most effective form of empowerment. By now, people are realizing that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is less an organization committed to improving the black community, and more a Marxist group exploiting racial tensions to push its agenda. According to a recent poll, “70 percent of respondents think that the movement has not improved race relations, with 38 percent saying Black Lives Matter has made race relations worse.” After so much agitation and protest, BLM has little to show for itself besides fomenting chaos in urban America...

No excerpt from Bloomberg, story here.

In the last Presidential election, Donald Trump was lauded for his performance among black voters – he scored 4 percent of female black voters and a whopping 13 percent of black male voters, the highest since Richard Nixon. This isn’t shocking. Black voters have voted en masse for the Democratic Party since the mid-60s and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the social welfare programs of the Great Society. This solidified black voters behind the Democratic Party, but they had been moving there since the New Deal. However, it’s a historical anomaly in...

Donald Trump is looking to replace the $600 a week Pandemic Unemployment Benefit with a back-to-work bonus that will incentivize working for many of the 30 million people currently receiving the enhanced benefit. The benefit is set to expire July 31 and Democrats want to expand it into next year. A study done by the Federal Reserve found that the federal unemployment benefit was making it difficult for companies to hire workers as the economy reopens following the lockdown.Barrons: Even though the unemployment rate is expected to register over 20% for May in the jobs report the Bureau of Labor...

This is a subject that we’ve been covering here ever since the coronavirus stimulus bill was first being debated in Congress. Having passed a measure providing enhanced unemployment benefits with no cap on the amount of the payments based on the worker’s previous rate of pay, a condition was created where a majority of the unemployed are now collecting more than they did on their last job. That doesn’t provide much of an incentive to go back to work, particularly if you can point to your concerns about the virus as a reason to stay home.In Idaho, Republican Governor...

At a time our country faces a massive recession brought on by the coronavirus lockdowns, America’s welfare state exacerbates that stagnation. Ronald Reagan had an old adage about the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Recently, a new paper reinforced that truth and adds to the existing literature showing how America’s welfare state often traps generations in a cycle of poverty.At its core, a complicated set of welfare programs and tax breaks generate sizable incentives for many low-income Americans not to increase their incomes and improve their station in...

(I wrote this essay in 2012 for Western Rifle Shooters Association . .. I’m reposting it here in American Partisan on May 31, 2020, during the George Floyd riots, without revision.) In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town. . . as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots. . . New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance....

Imagine that you are an unborn spirit in heaven. God condemns you to a life of poverty but will permit you to choose the country in which you will spend your life. Which country would you choose? I would choose the United States of America. A recent study by Just Facts, an excellent source of factual information, shows that after accounting for income, charity and noncash welfare benefits such as subsidized health care, housing, food stamps and other assistance programs, "the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in the world's...

The House of Representatives on Friday evening passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, the most expensive legislation approved by that body in history, that Democrats hailed as the unprecedented response needed to deal with the pandemic and its economic fallout. The record-breaking bill narrowly passed by a 208-199 vote. Fourteen Democrats defied their party and voted "no," while one Republican, Rep. Pete King of New York, broke with the GOP and voted “yes.” “I’m thrilled," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after the bill's passage. "I'm so proud of my members. They just did something so monumental for the American...

The California Department of Social Services announced that it will be providing state-funded disaster relief assistance to undocumented immigrants through the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants (DRAI) Project.

Rush Limbaugh said these next four months are going to be a "veritable war" like we have not seen.... On the Tuesday broadcast of his nationally-syndicated radio program, Limbaugh said Democrats will (SNIP) blow up their own country's jobs to ensure a Trump loss in November. RUSH LIMBAUGH: I’ll tell you something else that’s starting to send red flags up. You probably have already noticed this. All these blue state governors that want to keep their states locked down, it’s purely political. But what are they depending on? They’re depending on the red states — the red states that are...

The Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to block the Trump administration's "public charge" rule during the coronavirus health crisis. A group of state attorneys general had asked the court to issue an injunction against the rule, which links a migrant's eligibility for legal status with the likelihood that he or she will rely on public assistance. The court had decided earlier this year to allow the rule to go into effect, but the group of state officials, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), had asked the justices to revisit the decision in light of the...

Why have the Democrats in Congress decided to punish small businesses? Make no mistake, that is exactly what Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the congressional Democrats are doing in their latest politically tone-deaf move by denying funding for the small business loan program. As of last week, the program officially ran out of money, leaving millions of small business owners and their employees wondering how they’ll survive the government-mandated lockdowns. It makes you wonder why Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues would possibly risk being so out of touch with the needs of our country’s small businesses—despite small businesses being the driver...

WASHINGTON - The financial conditions of the government’s two biggest benefits programs remain shaky, with Medicare projected to become insolvent in six years and Social Security on track to no longer be able to pay full benefits starting in 2035. And that’s without accounting for the impact of the coronavirus, which is sure to impose further pressure on the two programs. For Social Security, the projected 2035 date for exhausting the trust fund reserves means that it would be able to pay only 79% of benefits at that time. The projected timetables, which remained unchanged from last year’s estimates, were...