Free Republic

To The Daily Sun, While I would argue some of his points, I agree with the main point in Alan Vervaeke’s Sept. 19 column titled “The Gravy Train is for my dogs”: America’s welfare system needs a lot of fixing. The fixes need to ensure that people who are truly incapable of caring for themselves are cared for while capable people have the opportunities and incentives to support themselves. Vervaeke expresses this view, perhaps a little harshly, in his comment, “Enough with the programs and freebies and giveaways — save them for those people who actually need them. Get the...

Hawaii state representative Chris Lee has introduced a bill to guarantee economic security for the state's residents. Amidst fears of technology leading to job automation, Lee's Universal Basic Income (UBI) measure would ensure that that all residents of Hawaii are able to receive a steady income, regardless of their employment status. Prominent billionaire businessmen including Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk have expressed their support for the bill. "In the modern world, everybody should have the opportunity to work and to thrive. Most countries can afford to make sure that everybody has their basic needs covered," Virgin Group founder...

We’re not all socialists yet but we’re getting there. A majority of Democrats are, in any case. The single-payer numbers in Morning Consult’s new survey not only aren’t surprising, they’re right in line with what other studies have showed this year.

If you sit down at a major national restaurant chain nowadays, you might be greeted by a sign, banner, or tabletop tent quoting some questionable statistics, and warning you that there is hunger in America. They quote a study (out of context) reporting that one in six American children “experiences” hunger at least sometimes. “That’s 13 million children, the population of Illinois” as the tabletop tent at lunch exclaimed to me, constantly, as I ate my lunch. This brings to mind a flood of questions, among them: Is it true? If so, Why? And What can or should we do...

Food stamp usage has declined every month since President Trump took office in January, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics on food stamp enrollment. Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dropped to 41,310,785 in June 2017, the latest data available from the USDA, from 42,691,363 in January 2017. Food stamp usage has been on a steady decline since Donald Trump began his presidency in January 2017, with the latest data showing that SNAP enrollment decreased by more than 1.3 million, or 3.23 percent, since the beginning of his term in office.

In perhaps the single most astounding passage of her campaign memoir What Happened, Hillary Clinton reveals a campaign proposal she formulated with staffers but never actually released: a universal basic income for Americans, funded by carbon and financial transaction taxes. "I wanted very much to convey a commitment to trying to figure ways to raise incomes," she said in an interview with Vox's Ezra Klein. "The Alaska model where they write a check to every single Alaskan every year based on a formula about the oil and gas revenues was really intriguing to me.” Here’s the relevant passage of the...

Society is society. Government is government. They are two entirely distinct, and completely separate things. Not in the land of Progressivism, however. For progressives, society is government and government is society. They are equally the same and there is no possible distinction. You can routinely see the rotting husk of this when someone proceeds to inform you that "they believe society should do x or y" but when talking of x or y they are instead referring to government action. "I believe that we as a society should take care of the poor, and that's why I support {insert name...

The Trump administration moved Wednesday to reimpose work requirements for Americans on welfare, revoking an Obama-era policy that had urged states to apply for waivers exempting the poor from having to show they were either getting job training or looking for work. Requiring work was a key part of the 1996 welfare reform law enacted by a GOP-led Congress and signed by then-President Clinton, and Mr. Trump’s move restores the law as written.

Denmark’s government is seeking to introduce requirements which will limit the access of foreign residents to the country’s welfare system. Savings made from new curbs could help to finance tax cuts in several areas announced by the government on Tuesday, reports broadcaster DR. New regulations proposed by the government would prevent in principle non-Danish citizens from being eligible for certain welfare payments (known in Danish as overførselsindkomster) from their first day in the country. “I was keen for people to be unable to come to Denmark and receive welfare payments before entering the labor market,” Finance Minister Kristian Jensen told...

Mother arrested after five children found eating dog food off the floor Police officers were immediately 'taken aback' by smell coming from the flat A mother has been arrested after five children were found eating dog food off the floor of her flat which was stained with faeces urine and cockroach carcasses, police said. Officers from the force in Middletown, Connecticut, were "immediately taken aback" by the smell emanating from inside of Chloe Edwards home. They were investigating the property after a fire safety officer alerted them to a large pile of rubbish by the 27-year-old's front door, as they...

llegals living in Los Angeles County were handed almost $1.3 billion in welfare payouts between the months of 2015 and 2016, Fox News reported, citing data. That’s billion with a capital “B.” That’s a quarter of what the county distributed to its entire needy population in those same months. Liberals and government elitists always like to make the case that citizens ought to support some cheap-sounding fee- or tax-paying cause by grandly pronouncing, “It’s just the cost of a cup of coffee,” or “If everyone just gave up their Starbucks lattes, it’d pay for itself.” Well, guess what $1.3 billion...

Days after announcing his support to a merit-based immigration system, President Donald Trump has said that migrants will not get welfare in the first five years after they arrive in the US. "You cannot get welfare for five years when you come into our country. You can't just come in, like in past weeks, years and decades--you come in, immediately start picking up welfare," Trump said in his weekly web and radio address to the nation....

Bipartisanship is suddenly the talk of Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats are now expressing a tentative desire to join hands after a brutal debate over Obamacare repeal... ....Republican and Democratic leaders on the health committee announced in a joint statement that they would hold hearings early next month on how to calm Obamacare’s tumultuous insurance markets.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants in Merced County don’t have health coverage, but advocates supporting the #Health4All campaign say there are ways Merced County could help that could possibly benefit everyone. This week, Building Healthy Communities Merced, or BHC, a nonprofit group funded by the California Endowment, released a report outlining ways the county could potentially provide services for undocumented immigrants. BHS has estimated there are about 25,000 undocumented residents living in Merced County. Last year in California, undocumented children under age 19 became eligible for full-scope health benefits under Medi-Cal, that was able to give thousands of children insurance. Elizabeth...

San Franciscans know they’ll see all walks of life along Market Street, but a new fixture on the colorful thoroughfare has shocked even the most hardened city dwellers: a 6-week-old, homeless baby girl. All day long, Megan Doudney, 34, sits on the sidewalk near the Four Seasons Hotel between Third and Fourth streets with little Nedahlia in her arms and a sign reading, “Anything helps.” The sight is alarming, even in this city where just about anything goes. *** Several people have called 911, including when another homeless person’s menacing dog got in the baby’s face. Police have responded numerous...

The news that President Trump is looking to remove the State’s Waivers on the Welfare to Work program has been greeted with howls of anger by the MSM. They are hunting down every single sob story they can find about how good people have been negatively impacted; and the stories are sad, and they shouldn’t happen in a civilized society, but the reality is that this program will help a lot more people than it will harm. What is being largely ignored by the MSM are the perimeters of the program. Here are the people who will not be asked...

In the super-charged public debate on health care, many advocates are rightly calling attention to the importance of protecting the health needs of people with disabilities. But for many in Southwest Washington who are living with a disability — and for their families — having health insurance coverage is just one part of the struggle. Severe and chronic disabilities are often associated with a significant decline in earnings. For families with children who have disabilities, for example, parents are often forced to step back from work to care for their child — making it even more difficult to shoulder high...

Woman brags she’s “raping the government” by gaming the welfare system [VIDEO] By Lexie King | July 19, 2017 | Comments A new viral video shows a “Brooklyn mother of 3” bragging about how she takes advantage of welfare programs so that she doesn’t have to work. She is “proudly raping the government,” as she puts it. This video is proof that at least some Americans take advantage of the system. As of 2016, the Department of Agriculture claimed that approximately 44 million Americans relied on food stamps. On May 23, the Trump administration released the White House budget which...

Nearly no newly arrived immigrants who have low or no education want to sit on the school bench and even get a basic schooling. It shows new numbers from the Employment Service, writes Ekot. It is only about a few individual percentages of immigrants. Two years after receiving a residence permit, only three to four percent of low-skilled immigrants attend adult education. It shows the Employment Service's latest figures. But the number was as low as 2016. And the catastrophically bad numbers will come despite the government's efforts to get immigrants to take action. {..snip..}

I first heard the term “basic income” in the socialist magazine Dissent in 2005. I was a 15-year-old leftist with a taste for weird, radical plans to restructure society: say, having the government buy up majority stakes in every company and then distribute them equally to every American; converting all companies into worker cooperatives; trying a planned economy where the planning is done by decentralized worker and consumer councils rather than a government bureaucracy. Basic income, wherein the government gives everyone enough cash to live on with no strings attached, struck me as an idea in that mold: another never-going-to-happen...