Free Republic

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

America is being held hostage by the most destructive force in modern history. This malignant force didn't come from Russia or China, but the halls of good old Harvard and a cadre of ultra-left, America-hating higher educational organizations. The end result of this education is Barack Obama, a confused, disorganized, incompetent mentality who can only survive in the fish bowl of the cloistered halls of some Ivy League fairytale world of make-believe. As a nation, we find ourselves spiraling into the abyss led by a clueless narcissist who will stop at nothing to extend his failed regime, without a whit...

The Occupy movement is stepping up its confrontational tactics, plotting “alternative forms of protest,” including flash mobs that can be deployed nationwide. Citing the success of last week’s so-called Day of Action protests, Take to the Square, one of Occupy’s main online planning forums, has devised an “Alternative Day of Action” to coincide with international Human Rights Day on Dec. 10. “Our freedom and dignity are under attack as a result of market dynamics and corrupt government institutions that are turning our local and global societies into increasingly unjust places,” the site complains. The Occupy forum calls for “alternative forms...

The Obama amnesty plan officially begins this week, according to a mainstream newspaper that obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that will halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. Much has been reported about the administration’s intention to implement a stealth amnesty plan if congress doesn’t act to spare the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens, but this is the first confirmation that it’s come to fruition. Beginning this week the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will review all deportation cases and start a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents...

Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $4.4 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010.

Watch this video of strange group behavior. Effects of drug use? Mob rule psychology? Really strange people in control.

Having watched this clip all the way through several times, I still can't stop chuckling. Here's a quick primer to prepare you for what you're about to see: The video begins as civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis rrives at #OccupyAtlanta, hoping to express solidarity and articulate support with some brief remarks. Unfortunately for him, the Congressman is totally unacquainted with the gathering's "rules," which make the US Senate look like a model of efficiency. The group's "leader" (the hippie with the bullhorn) speaks in three-second intervals so the rest of the assembled group can chant his partial sentences back...

Kudos to the crowd on this one. No surprise that Frances Fox Piven would repeat the typical, brain-dead, rooted-in-unreality accusation that the Tea Party is racist — but rather a surprise that a little push-back inspired her to stop clutching her talking points quite so tightly.Early in her lecture on American democracy at the private Christian college in Pennsylvania earlier this week, Piven spouts the usual drivel, suggesting Tea Partiers aren’t comfortable with Barack Obama as president because he’s black. The comment drew displeased expressions and a few boos. Piven looks at the audience with an intrigued expression and asks,...

Frances Fox Piven Addresses Universities on OWS LIVE TONIGHT This is the URL for the live thread.

"Last night an AFL-CIO sponsored National Teach In was held on line."

VIDEO OF FRANCES FOX PIVEN'S LECTURE/Q & AVideo HighlightsTea Party racist comments: 49:20-50:20 More Tea Party racist comments and is America a Republic or Democracy: 62:14-65:40 Comments about the Occupy Wall St. protests: 66:32-68:32 Her answer about inciting violence: 71:23-74:20Courtesy of the Messiah College Swinging BridgeWritten by Derek Petrella and Phillip Strunk Jr.Messiah College invited socialist radical Frances Fox Piven to speak on "The Corporate War on the American People." Based on her past written articles and books, Piven and her husband Richard Cloward have become controversial figures in American politics. The infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy calls for the poor to...

Team Obama is out and about mourning a “double-dip recession,” while Fed head Ben Bernanke is warning of a faltering economy. I have described the current economic environment as the front end of a recession. But Obama’s attack on millionaires and billionaires, his new war on bank profits, his linking arms with the anti-capitalist protesters in New York, and his big-government stimulus plan will surely not solve this crisis. ... Here’s the real silliness of all this. The Obama plan would permanently raise tax rates in order to pay for a temporary tax cut. In other words, taxes are going...

Creative Destructionism    Capitalism has been described as "creative destructionism". Market Based Management (MBM) is a management system built on the logical framework of Austrian economic theory. The path of evolution of a politically effective plan built around the ideas of liberty more closely resembled the creative destructionism of capitalism than a well-organized management plan, but the finished product can readily be described in the terms used to describe MBM. As part of the Great Debate that defines the advantages of capitalism over the liabilities of socialism, one of the primary goals of our politically effective plan is to help people...

Politics: The hippie horde attempting to mob and "occupy" Wall Street this week has a method to its madness. It's all about getting President Obama re-elected by employing classic Alinskyite tactics. At first glance, the latest protests staged by left-wing rent-a-mobs in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere don't look terribly different from the World Trade Organization and global debt-amnesty spectaculars of a decade ago. Radicals swarm against some hated totem, chant, break a few Starbucks windows and leave scads of garbage for someone else to clean up. But the "Occupy Wall Street" mob that shut down the Brooklyn...

Today, the Occupy Wall Street protestors decided to finally list their demands. Mixed in with some generic references to items like restoring Glass-Steagall which has been called for by many on the left, are a series of unachievable and cryptic utopian demands. From forgiving all debt and eliminating the debt and credit system in general, to making wars ‘pay as you go’ and granting every person a minimum living monetary allocation so they can choose not to work, the demands seem to be a mishmash of societal changing goals. If one steps back and looks at the big picture of...

Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, testified before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight, and Government Spending on September 13. He was there to speak on the subject of job creation, but Schiff also knows a few things about how the government can destroy jobs. In his remarks before the subcommittee, which he also published in full at Forbes, he explained how he was fined for hiring too many people: Regulations have substantially increased the costs and risks associated with job creation. Employers are subjected to all sorts of onerous regulations, taxes, and legal liability. The...

Fla. Rep. Allen West was asked if President Obama is just inept or if he is intentionally harming the economy. West says he’s definitely doing this on purpose. (Video at the Fox News link.)

President Barack Obama will fulfill his vow to sell his jobs plan in the four corners of America Monday, after warning a Republican win in 2012 elections could "cripple" the country. Obama was to appear in a town-hall style meeting sponsored by executive social network LinkedIn in San Jose, before tapping donors in Democratic strongholds in San Diego and Los Angeles. Faced with a recalcitrant Congress and Republicans who accuse him of waging class warfare over his call to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, Obama told supporters Sunday to brace for a "tough" reelection campaign.

or, A Trojan Horse in the Animal Farm   caption="The Naath (or Nuer) of the Sudan bleed as well as milk their cows, then mix both together in a soup." This alert was posted by conservative legal analyst, "Toddy Littman" in his blog ChangingWind.org and suggested by Gulag Bound intel agent Heather. I suggest perusing it and sharing it with your representatives, if you have such things, in Congress. (Who of them, do you suppose, are reading the bill?)Pay to play, where states pay by giving up their sovereignty in wildly expanded areas affected by this act? -- like Esau giving up...

Liberals self-righteously wrap themselves in the mantle of public spirit. They ardently promote policies promising to deliver the poor and oppressed from their latest misery — policies which can only find solution in the halls of government. But no matter what issue one examines, over the last fifty plus years, the liberal prescription has almost always been a failure.Why is this so? Why does virtually every liberal scheme result in ever-increasing public spending while conditions seem to get continually worse? There are a number of reasons: The programs usually create adverse incentives. This is especially true in so-called “anti-poverty” programs....

It's hard to think of a more logical reason for Gunwalker to exist. PJMedia reader “eon� posted an insightful comment in response to my September 15 article on the Gunwalker scandal: To the best of my knowledge, no previous U.S. administration has ever destabilized the government of a putatively friendly foreign power purely for domestic political gain.The closest you can get would be the revolutionary movement in what is now Panama, that the U.S. nurtured to gain that area’s independence (from Nicaragua) — to facilitate building the Panama Canal. But that was a pre-existing revolutionary movement with pre-existing complaints against...

Liberals self-righteously wrap themselves in the mantle of public spirit. They ardently promote policies promising to deliver the poor and oppressed from their latest misery — policies which can only find solution in the halls of government. But no matter what issue one examines, over the last fifty plus years, the liberal prescription has almost always been a failure.Why is this so? Why does virtually every liberal scheme result in ever-increasing public spending while conditions seem to get continually worse? There are a number of reasons: The programs usually create adverse incentives. This is especially true in so-called “anti-poverty” programs....

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote? Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

UPPER DARBY, Pa. - As police in Upper Darby, Pa., search for more young people involved in last week's flash mob, more adults are thinking about arming themselves with guns. People are talking about how afraid they are of being caught in the path one of these flash mobs while they're out minding their own business, and they want to be ready. Law enforcement officials say it's a nightmare in the making because ordinary, private citizens are getting gun permits. "We have people now that are fearful and carrying guns because of children. How sad is that?" Upper Darby police...

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of theDemocratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article...

Blogs Obama: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED posted by Wayne Allyn Root on Aug 05, 2011 By Wayne Allyn Root, Former Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University Class of '83). I tried to warn the country that virtually all of my classmates and professors were marxist, despised America, and wanted to bring down capitalism. I tried to warn the country that Obama would follow the detailed plan of two Columbia professors named Cloward and Piven- a plan designed to destroy capitalism by overwhelming the U.S. economy with government spending, regulations, entitlements, taxes and debt. That is precisely...

...It has to do with the particularly insidious nature of the Left and its efforts at cementing total control over everything it touches. We have to understand an undeniable truth about the Left, which is that it seeks total, complete, unchallenged control over every aspect of society. In that sense, the Left is a true totalitarian philosophy, since it seeks to control society in toto. Leftists will use every tool at their disposal — the media, government agencies, the schools, whatever — to neutralize, discredit, and destroy any and all opponents. That's the essence of the Cloward-Piven strategy — isolate,...

Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power. Cloward-Piven is a much talked-about strategy proposed in the mid-1960's by two Columbia University sociology professors named Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The Cloward-Piven approach was sometimes referred to as the "crisis strategy," which they believed were a means to "end poverty." The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized...

We hear these same economic arguments all the time these days, to the point that these virtual and actual ideological skirmishes often take on an almost Ground Hog Day-ish repetitive cycle of nauseating repetition. The Political Right says "spend less," the Political Left says "tax more," so that, ultimately, many Americans are left feeling measurably unsure, if not completely confused, as to what the proper course of action should actually be for America as a nation, when in fact it's not so terribly difficult. Over these past few weeks, we have also further witnessed a depressing number of moderate Republicans,...

In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD. [snip] Another Reno protege, Perez has compared bankers to Klansmen. Only difference is, he said, bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print." He said this kind of racism, though more subtle, is "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood." Perez has put...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Wary of a new surge in gas prices, the Obama administration has decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the country’s emergency reserve as part of a broader international response to lost oil supplies caused by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Libya.</p>

Student Protests in Tucson Arizona are only the beginning of a much larger scale of protests and direct actions in planning stages right now. As the Ethnic Studies controversy continues in TUSD, orchestrated by County Redistricting Commissioner and Student Equity Director Augustine Romero, and Director of Ethnic Studies Sean Arce, even more groups that met at the communist May Day rally at Tucson Greyhound park on May 1 of this year are planning large scale Social Justice protests. The groups present included Derechos Humanos, Humane Borders, Border Action Network, members of the Pima County Interfaith Council, The Brown Berets, MEChA...

Tens of millions of American families are about to go through economic hell and most of them don't even realize it. Most Americans don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about things like "monetary policy" or "economic cycles". The vast majority of people just want to be able to get up in the morning, go to work and provide for their families. Most Americans realize that things seem "harder" these days, but most of them also have faith that things will eventually get better. Unfortunately, things aren't going to get any better. The number of good jobs continues to...

What the hell is going on over Memorial Day weekend among America's youts, specifically, "Eric Holder's People"?!IM SICK OF IT! Here in Little Rock, (which was just named No. 7 most dangerous city), I was talking to my friend yesterday, who is an LRPD officer. He asked if my wife and I were going to Riverfest that evening. I told him my son, age 9 mos. was sick, and we weren't planning to. He told me, "Good. There is a Rap artist playing at 9PM and there are not enough cops on duty so be very careful, and carry your...

The number of food-stamp recipients has skyrocketed in the last few years yet the Obama Administration keeps wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to recruit more participants in the name of eradicating “food insecure households.” The latest publicly-financed campaign to boost the food-stamp rolls—officially known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP—was announced this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency that administers it. The USDA is dedicating $5 million this year to “improve access to and increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” The money will go to state and local governments as well as “private non-profit...

Angry anti-GOP mobs are rampaging across the internet, screaming that this budget deal is the worst betrayal in US history, right up there with Nixon signing the Paris Peace Accords, The Compromise of 1877, and Art Modell's betrayal of the city of Cleveland We Have Not Yet Begun to Fight How would these critics of Boehner and the GOP have reacted after the battle of Lexington that began the Revolutionary War?  Would they have gone home in defeat because there were still British left standing?  This is just an early skirmish in a long war to reshape the federal...

The far left has attempted to portray their elderly hero, Frances Fox Piven, as a lonely shut-in who spends her time knitting mittens and eating Werther’s Originals in her New York apartment. But the truth is that age has not dampened Piven’s appetite for radical socialist political activities.Piven, an academic who is still on the board of ACORN-partner Project Vote, has announced that she will be co-hosting a 1960s-style “teach-in� April 5th, and she’s bringing in some heavy hitters.The national event, which will be simulcast, will also feature fellow socialist professor Cornel West and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.  SEIU is...

Those of you still collecting a paycheck should have noticed an increase in what you took home starting in January of 2011. Unless you got a raise, you might not notice the difference. However, we did, and when my husband asked the payroll department at his company what caused the difference, all they could tell him was the tax rates were different. Of course I immediately wondered what was done, but could find no answers. Then my husband came across a small article in our local paper taken from the Wall Street Journal that told about the social security rate...

My post concerning Stephen Lerner yesterday has generated a ton of hits. For awhile if you searched for Stephen Lerner on Yahoo my blog post was #3 on the list. As of the time this post is entered it was still in the top 10. I didn’t do anything to put the post in the top 10, I have no idea how to even do such things. It begs the question how little old Steven Birn, a lawyer from Michigan, could generate an entry that hits the top 10 on a major news story. The answer is simple, the media...

Speaking in Chile to defend his decision to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn, President Obama couldn’t resist taking a swipe at George Bush, in a clumsy attempt to make himself look superior. As reported by Fox News, the President declared: "In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden." As the folks at Fox quickly pointed out, Bush actually had twice as many international allies for the invasion of Iraq as Obama...

I was reading about bankruptcy, county, state, ... because that’s where I believe many locations are headed. I then read an article about personal bankruptcy. One of the things the lawyer was recommending in the article was to load up on unsecure debt. I consider it fraud to load up debt knowing that someone is getting ready or will declare bankruptcy. I believe the courts hold that view also. That’s when I had an epiphany . The government knows damn well they can’t pay all this debt off and won't even try. The deficit in February of this year alone...

Much has been made of whether or not Obamacare influences physicians to provide end of life counseling to elderly or very sick patients. Although that does not fit her description, the news media seems obsessed with tying that to Sarah Palin's allusion of a "death panel" being a part of the plan. Why? Apparently, because that diverts attention from the actual death panel — one that really will decide whether you get life saving treatment, or whether you are budgeted (and snuffed) out. It is called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research and it includes fifteen members, appointed...

We have a major oil crisis unfolding now and where’s Obama? He was last spotted giving aid and comfort to public union thugs in their battle against the taxpayers of Wisconsin. We now, this week, have oil prices busting through $100 a barrel. This will create major havoc to our already anemic economy. How did we get here? Our president has a moratorium on nearly all domestic oil production: we can’t drill off our coasts, nor Alaska and certainly not the gulf. We can’t build nuclear power plants, dam rivers, explore for natural gas or mine coal.

It’s a Lunatic Story: Kindly Grey-Haired Piven & NPR Go Into Mega Spin to Attack Beck for Daring to Discuss Her Theory http://www.theblaze.com/stories/its-a-lunatic-story-kindly-grey-haired-piven-npr-go-into-mega-spin-to-attack-beck-for-daring-to-discussing-her-theory/

A Wisconsinite is reminded he is in Madison, when, looking for a parking place, his car rolls by a lot with a sign that states, "Private Parking; Violators Subject to Karma." I did find a space, parked, participated, even found my car again, and write to you in a coffee shop in town - well, a Panera Bread, but complete with be-bop on the PA. No beret and goatee combos to be seen, though, at least not at a chain store shop, circa 2011. I'll use this space to click off a quick reflections, please pardon the first person voice....

I am reluctant to accept conspiracy theories. In 1966 sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven proposed to overwhelm the political and economic system with welfare recipients forcing the government to guarantee a minimal national income. It has been interpreted as a desire to push a greater degree of socialism, forcing a collapse that would require central government control. It may have been a grand socialist strategy, but that does not necessarily translate into a conspiracy meant to overthrow the capitalist system. Regardless, it seems that although the system has become clearly overwhelmed with public pensions, unsustainable deficits, and reckless...

Glenn Beck continues to suffer an onslaught of programmatic propaganda by progressives, who accuse him, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin's kitchen sink of inciting violence -- while at the same time assailing Beck for his exposing the true violation of Americans' lives and livelihoods by these neo-Marxists.

From deep in the article... The kill shot was taken six days later from a window of AmericanThinker.com, by former White House accountant, James Simpson, in his now famous, "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis." Now, that corpse still lays open and the autopsy goes on. Bio-testing of its body of evidence reveals the seed of many paramours, including two names that appear on numerous rap sheets: Soros and said Obama. It all tends to answer the oft repeated question, "They aren't that incompetent, what are they doing?" My only bone to pick with Kurtz' article is his...

You can forget all the screeching and babbling from the talking heads on TV. You can forget about the academic eggheads writing book after book that no one reads. You can certainly forget about the lamestream media, which is as useful as a screen door on a submarine. None of the above have Chairman Obama figured out like I do. I've got your number, Chairman Obama! You see, Chairman Obama is nothing more than an amalgam of three leftist theories: Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, Cass Sunstein's Nudge, and the Cloward/Piven strategy. There's no originality of thought to be found...

Paid ACORN consultant Peter Dreier is using a classic leftist trick: Accuse others of doing the terrible things you do. Dreier accuses Glenn Beck of inspiring potential violence against the radical communist-sympathizing Frances Fox Piven. In reality Dreier has it backwards. Piven has advocated the forcible overthrow of the United States government uninterrupted for the past 45 years ever since she wrote “The Weight of the Poor,” a call to arms for the insurrectionist left. The approach she advocated (along with her late husband) came to be known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy. The strategy has led to actual violence, including...