Free Republic

We will see.Growing up of Mexican descent in the Southwest, I noticed that politicking often involves the cause of alleviating the suffering of the poor. The Democratic Party has successfully convinced the minority masses in the Hispanic community of their deep desire to lift them out of poverty. Liberal policies of forced equality and equal outcome, hurting the rich and sympathizing with the plight of the poor, have given Democrats the political influence that has turned the Hispanic community into an accessory that they often wear around their political neck during election time -- sparkling for everyone to see their...

With just two days to go, the New Jersey gubernatorial election has turned into a horse race among three candidates, a remarkable development considering that the incumbent, Democrat Jon Corzine, has huge unfavorable ratings. As one radio talk-show host put it: “Who is voting for Corzine?” The answer is simple: people who benefit from big government. In a high-tax, big-spending place like Jersey, much of the burden of funding government falls on a narrow slice of residents who pay steeply progressive taxes, while the benefits of expanding government are enjoyed by those who receive more in services than they pay...

It is almost irresistible for conservatives to snicker as Democrats in Massachusetts hold hearings and seek ways to justify an attempt to change the law in Massachusetts to allow the Democratic governor of the Commonwealth to appoint a Democratic senator--presumably available to vote for President Obama's initiatives. It was just a few years ago when Senator John Kerry was running for president and the governor was a Republican that the Democratic state legislature thought it imperative to change the law to prevent governors from appointing senators. It is just too delicious, the hypocrisy too obvious, for conservatives to ignore. Yet...

Combined with the overall lack of adult supervision in the Congress, I can pretty much say with a great deal of confidence (at least as much as Barack Obama has when he says he can deliver health care at lower cost, and with greater access and no change in your doctor) that what we’ve been seeing since last January is a concerted effort to yoke Americans even more to a dependency on their government that is not only ill-advised but also ultimately tragic. I say ”tragic” because programs like Cash for Clunkers and ObamaCare — both of which are nothing...

Now that Obama is the president, fasten your seat belts. During his first year in office, and particularly during his first hundred days, we are about to witness the most prodigious output of legislation since 1981-2 (under Reagan), 1964-5 (under Johnson), and 1933-36 (under Roosevelt). The combination of top heavy Democratic majorities in Congress and a mood of public fear bordering on panic over the financial crisis and the looming depression will speed his legislation through a compliant Senate and House. We will enter his Administration as the United States, buoyed by an aggressive free market economy. We will exit...

Many years ago, I took a class in behavioral psychology. The professor was a rather sadistic proponent of B. F. Skinner. He loved to experiment in behavior modification using various reinforcement schedules of pain and reward to change the behavior of monkeys. The monkeys were taught to pull a lever to receive a pellet of food. Later, he added the element of electric shock to the reinforcement schedule. Every time the monkey pulled the lever, he would get a shock along with his food pellet. As typical in behavioral experiments, the professor varied the schedule, in this case increasing the...

Dambisa Moyo, the Zambian economist, educated at Harvard and Oxford and a former employee of The World Bank and Goldman Sachs, has created an inspiring, and provocative argument in her book titled “Dead Aid" - Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. It’s a small volume book which suggests that foreign aid to African nations, totaling over a trillion dollars in the past 60 years was a waste. She argues that it's bad for Africa, and for Africans. In her opinion Aid keeps Africa and Africans in a sub servant’s role at a...

As the recession batters city budgets around the U.S., some municipalities are considering the once-unthinkable option of dissolving themselves through "disincorporation." Benefits of this move vary from state to state. In some cases, dissolution allows residents to escape local taxes. In others, it saves the cost of local salaries and pensions. And residents may get services more cheaply after consolidating with a county.

Opposition to anti-aid campaigner grows By William Wallis in London Published: May 22 2009 19:54 | Last updated: May 22 2009 19:54 A swell of opposition is building in the aid world to a new protagonist who has thrown down a strident challenge to the rock stars and liberal economists who have long dominated debate over foreign assistance to developing countries. Galled by the ease with which Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist and former investment banker, has risen to prominence this year, activists are circulating detailed critiques of her ideas and mass mailing African non-government organisations to mobilise support against...

A business colleague once told me that rewriting your life story line-by-line and chapter by chapter is a futile exercise. "If you want a new life," she said, "you have to throw your old life into the fire."A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

<p>Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as their whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil — the rule of law.</p>

When it comes to African poverty, everyone, it seems, wants to help—and “help” usually means foreign aid. ... Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work—and it might even make things worse. That’s the argument of Dead Aid, a new book by Dambisa Moyo, an economist born in Zambia, educated at Oxford and Harvard, and who is currently raising major hackles in development circles. In Dead Aid, Moyo does not mince words. Despite the fact that over $1 trillion has gone to Africa over the past 50 years (according to Moyo, nearly $1000 for every person on the planet), “millions in Africa...

We heard a lot about those who were unable to "make it in America" during the 2008 campaign. Despite the clear record of opportunity that America has delivered for more people across every race and from every nation in the history of this earth, we were reminded again and again from then candidate Obama that poor people existed. We were told a lot of things about them as well. We were told that they were inept in their efforts to help themselves. We were told they were too dumb to make clear choices. And we were told constantly that the...

We hear a lot about the poor and those going through hard times. I remember it wasn’t long ago some politicians were attempting to use the name of Jesus to sell their government programs. Implying or outright saying Jesus would support government programs for the poor,, Jesus would tax the rich,, I even heard some were saying Jesus would drive a Hybrid. The question is,, is it morally right to accept government programs when you know the money that is paying for those programs has been forcibly taken from another? A practical example would be,, to accept a stimulus check,,,...

In social-services jargon, Debra Autry had “multiple barriers to work” when the state of Ohio told her that she had to start earning her welfare benefits. Autry had been out of work and on public assistance for more than two decades, and she lacked many of the skills necessary for a modern economy. She was a single mother, too, like most welfare recipients, with three kids at home. Autry was skeptical about working in the private sector, so the state placed her in a publicly subsidized program that had her cleaning government offices in exchange for her benefits. Disliking the...

President Obama's recent town hall meeting brought visions of a classic movie. It felt like with great anticipation many followed the Green Brick road to Obama's Emerald City town hall give-a-way singing, “We're off to see Obama, the Wonderful Wizard of US....because, because, because, because, because...because of the wonderful things he does!” The straw woman asked for “a kitchen and a car. The cowardly kitty student asked for “more benefits”. This disturbing entitlement mindset is a far cry from JFK's, “Ask NOT what your country can do for you, but what you can do for you country”. From corporate tin...

Six years ago, I wrote a book called "Uncle Sam's Plantation." I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it. I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism. I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing and Food Stamps. A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all...

Led by President Obama, Democrats are leveraging the nation’s economic crisis and the aura of inaugural goodwill to build a “blue political wall” — new constituencies dependent on expanding government programs — that could lock in 2008 Democratic political gains for decades to come. Unless Republicans act to counter those initiatives, pundits and pollsters warn, they could find themselves on an extended vacation from power in Washington. The combination of former Rep. Rahm Emanuel, described by former Bush adviser Karl Rove as a “sharp-edged partisan,” and President Obama’s strategic mindset, could spell big trouble for Republicans hoping to return to...

President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed $775 billion stimulus package, being sold as a cure-all for the ailing economy, is little more than a checklist for funding the pricey social-services agenda that he promised during his campaign. Some experts say that the Trojan horse of pork and welfare spending will ultimately worsen the recession and drive the nation deeper into debt, according to financial experts. Most of Obama’s costliest promises have found their way into the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which now includes everything from an expansion of Pell grants for college students, to health care for the unemployed, to...

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. "Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail." And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom...

Before the election, Howard Stern's Sirius radio show conducted interviews in Harlem, N.Y., in which the interviewer, not identified with the show, recited John McCain's economic proposals but portrayed them as Barack Obama's. Not knowing whose ideas they actually were, these people raved and gave them their full support. The election of Obama is an example of Americans voting against their own self interest. It's also further evidence of the dumbing down of America. Trying to explain how our economy works and why lowering taxes is always better for them and America than imposing higher taxes is an economic bridge...

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by: Creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization; Satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation; augmenting primitive feelings of envy; Rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government. "The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains...

Pack away that "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt with the old disco clothes. While President-elect Barack Obama said in his victory speech Tuesday that some of the changes he promised will take time, New Jersey Democrats expect a lot to happen quickly. Within days of inauguration, the new administration might reverse policies on offshore drilling, chemical plant security, stem-cell research and children’s health care — issues that have bedeviled New Jersey Democrats during the Bush years. Even before the inauguration, change appears to be happening. WHAT NJ WANTSWish list for our sharePresident Bush indicated Wednesday he is open to discussing another...

Sorry to break the bad news to Joe the Plumber. But the winner of Campaign 2008 is Peggy the Moocher. Who is Peggy the Moocher? She's Peggy Joseph, a voter in Sarasota, Fla., who exulted earlier this week at a Barack Obama rally that this was "the most memorable time of my life." Why? As she told a Florida reporter on a YouTube video that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands: "Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my...

MARION, Ill. - A 24-year-old Williamson County man is accused of threatening to shoot workers at a state employment office in Marion. Sheriff's investigators say Daniel McRoy was arrested Monday, after the alleged threats. Authorities say McRoy called the Marion office and left a message saying he'd come in and open fire unless his unemployment check was issued by that afternoon.

"..removed from her post Saturday, after she said the Democratic Party made black people "dependent on the government." "I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that," she said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The spokeswoman for the Republican Party in Nevada's most populous county was fired Saturday, after she said the Democratic Party made black people "dependent on the government." Didi Lima, the Clark County GOP communications director, also was removed from her volunteer role as a Hispanic community liaison for Republican John McCain's presidential campaign over the remarks made earlier in the day while working at a McCain campaign booth. "We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create...

A "why bother?" economy has been created in Britain which has left thousands with no motivation to work, a report published today concludes. Successive governments have encouraged a welfare culture that has left every family facing a £1,300 bill because the poor stay poor, it claims. The findings by the public services think tank Reform suggest that increased welfare dependency has made it more difficult for those on the lowest incomes to do better.

Known as the "Shameless" family among horrified neighbours, the McFaddens "boast" three generations of adults who are not working. All ten members of the clan share a council house and live off benefits amounting to around £32,000 a year. And very happy they are, too.

TAIYUAN, China - It takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. It shows up as mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon's Willamette River. It increases cloud cover and raises ozone levels. And along the way, it contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea and health problems everywhere from Taiyuan to the United States. This is the dark side of the world's growing use of coal. Cheap and abundant, coal has become the fuel of choice in much of...

The U.S Comptroller General and head of the GAO, or Government Accountability Office, has described the entitlements crisis facing this country as a "tsunami" that approaches while we continue to party on the beach. What GAO head David Walker is talking about are the massive upcoming obligations under Social Security and Medicare that we have no funds to meet. Tens of trillions of dollars of supposed commitments, promises made to us by our government, that today we have no clue how we'll pay. In those rare moments when our political "leaders" screw up sufficient courage to acknowledge this dark and...

Conservative Activist Blames Poverty on LiberalismBy Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer September 17, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Blaming poverty on liberalism and the federal government, a conservative activist on Friday said: "It is very sad what the liberals have done with their war on the poor in this country." "After 40 years of failure, they still insist that they want to expand this war, that they think they should pour more money into this war," said Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. "Already, over $3 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty, and so...

As Fred D. Thompson moves around the country delivering his folksy stump speech, he routinely makes his way through a laundry list of top concerns: national security, immigration reform, federalism and activist judges, among others. But he seems most energized when he discusses the ballooning cost of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and what he calls a need for more fiscal responsibility and less government in Washington. It is a recurring campaign theme of his. Mr. Thompson, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, made his greatest plea for the presidency, for instance, at the end of such remarks...

On Tuesday, retired steel worker Steve Skvara tearfully asked Democratic presidential candidates, "What's wrong with America? And what will you do to change it?" The question was, according to a reporter on the CBS Evening News, an example of when "a moment of truth breaks through a political campaign event." On MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews told Mr. Skvara, ""You're a great American to speak so well to the needs of this country." Chrissy later gushed: "Well, can I pay tribute—can I pay tribute to you, sir?" I'll not attempt to minimize Mr. Skvara's plight. When I heard his question, though,...

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem. SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa... Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

For Aborigines, it's out with the "rights" agenda and in with mutual obligation, writes Michelle Grattan. The Howard Government is driving a revolution in Aboriginal affairs policy that is every bit as dramatic as its industrial relations agenda. Yet you'd have hardly known it from the election campaign, when indigenous affairs were not on the radar. The change in direction has been going on for half a year, but after the election it has picked up pace and it will transform the fundamentals of indigenous policy more radically than anything we've seen since the 1970s. In the Government's early years...

...To distinguish different shades, or varieties, of dependency, two psychologists, Aaron L. Pincus of Pennsylvania State and Michael B. Gurtman of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, administered an exhaustive battery of dependency-related questionnaires to 654 psychology students. The scales rated everything from social confidence to preference for solitude to urges to please others. The psychologists’ analysis of the answers suggested that there were three distinct varieties of dependent behavior patterns. One was defined predominantly by submissiveness (“I don’t have what it takes to be a good leader” or “I am easily downed in an argument”). Another was characterized principally by...

A Venezuelan-owned oil company will warm 12,000 rural Alaska homes this winter with an enormous gift of heating fuel that some elated residents in the Bush call a godsend -- and ironic. The donation from Houston-based Citgo will buy 100 gallons of fuel for every household in 151 villages. But the gift worth roughly $5 million comes courtesy of a country whose leftist president is pals with America's enemies and supports Iran's nuclear ambitions. Hugo Chavez also calls our president mean things, such as "genocidal murderer" and "madman." Margaret Williams of Hughes in the Interior said it doesn't matter who's...

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: "... Many blacks publicly, and even more privately, groused that there was a hidden racial hand in the turgid response. Many cheered hip-hop artist Kanye West's verbal lash of [President] Bush that he hates black people. Most whites criticized the sluggish federal response, but attributed it to bureaucratic bungling, not racial malice." Now, almost a year to the date the hurricane hit, the same issues are lingering as New Orleans and other cities affected are trying to bounce back. The difference is now, that promises of aid have gone unfulfilled, there still are thousands living in temporary...

RUSH: Larry in Bourbonnais, Illinois, training location for the Chicago Bears. It's nice to have you on the program, sir. Welcome. CALLER: Hi, Rush, how you doing? Long-time listener, long time Republican, ever since Reagan was elected. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: But I have a confession to make. RUSH: Yeah? CALLER: If Hillary or any other Democrat runs for president this next time around and offers some sort of national health care, I'm voting for them. RUSH: You can't be serious. CALLER: Serious as a heart attack. You know, I'm tired -- I got the kids here at home...

Suzette Strickland, a former welfare mother herself, sees plenty of families stuck in poverty in her outreach job at End Hunger Connecticut! Inc. From her perch in a converted house on Hartford's Hungerford Street, it's clear to her that welfare reform - exactly 10 years in - has left behind the single mothers most deeply mired in the cycle of desperation. Just last week, a 35-year-old grandmother came into Strickland's office to see about food stamps, with some of her extended family in tow. "She has a 21-year-old daughter with three children, plus custody of two grandchildren from another child,"...

JENNIFER A. MARSHALL: This is the first in a series of events that will focus on the tenth anniversary of the welfare reform of 1996. One of the most impor­tant features of that reform was to establish in policy that poverty is linked to lifestyle issues like fatherless­ness, unwed childbearing, and the loss of a culture of work. In 1996, work requirements and caps on ben­efits were some of the significant changes in federal welfare policy. As a result of that reform, black child poverty fell to its lowest level in history, and 1.5 mil­lion fewer children are in poverty...

It has long been an official pretense in Britain that we have so many teenage pregnancies—the most by far in Europe—because British girls don’t know where babies come from. The answer to the problem, therefore, is yet more sex education: ever more children putting ever more condoms onto ever more bananas at ever-earlier ages. A report from the charity, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, throws doubt on the official line. Its researchers interviewed 41 teenage mothers within a year of giving birth, some as young as 13, who reported wanting to have a baby. They also interviewed ten young fathers. Although...

The United States of America has historically enjoyed self-sufficiency in times of both war and peace but in order to better assess its present place in the world as concerns its military and economic strength, it is important to reflect on its foundation. There is daily talk from Wall Street to Capitol Hill with respect to spread sheets and global policy, but it perhaps falls short when it comes down to addressing the average U.S. wage earner, and how both will ultimately affect jobs and the country’s national security and defense. It is important to note, that as our forefathers...

Leftists have devised a simple yet amazingly effective formula to engender social discord: break up the family, marginalize fathers, and then blame the whole mess on men. The pattern can be traced back to LBJ’s Great Society which spawned welfare programs that withheld benefits as long as dad was around. Then came Roe v. Wade, which disenfranchised fathers from the most fundamental decisions involving their unborn young. Next, no-fault divorce laws set the stage for widescale child custody awards to moms. And finally draconian child support programs sent low-income dads shuffling off to debtor’s prison. Judging by Census Bureau reports,...

William Beach has just written a report for the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation titled "The 2005 Index of Dependency." Between 1962 and today, American dependence on government has more than doubled and shows little sign of abatement. The growth areas of dependency examined in the report are: welfare and medical care, housing, retirement income, education, and rural and agricultural services. The budgetary impact of dependency threatens perpetual budget deficits and high taxes, but to focus only on the budgetary impact is to trivialize the more devastating aspects of dependency.

Opponents of Referendum C counted on voters rejecting a bigger tax bite, $3,100 for the average family in the next five years, under the pressure of high prices for gasoline, home heating, health care and housing. We appealed to people's skepticism that the Democrat-led legislature would use the new money responsibly. Polling even last weekend suggested proponents hadn't made the sale. But they surged to victory with the help of respected Republicans like Gov. Bill Owens, former party chairman Bruce Benson and University of Colorado president Hank Brown. Those heavy hitters outweighed the more numerous antitax Republican voices, including the...

Saturday, October 15, 2005 'Slave syndrome' may still affect black behavior Professor's theory set for talk today By JOHN IWASAKI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER The troubling images of African Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' impoverished neighborhoods didn't startle researcher Joy DeGruy-Leary. "All Katrina did was reveal what was already there. I wasn't confused, wasn't surprised," she said. "I knew what the 9th Ward was about. The difference was, (before the disaster) everybody was OK about it. It was business as usual." DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor in Portland State University's Graduate School of Social Work, will discuss her theory...

Moral poverty cost blacks in New Orleans © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:What would you do?What would you do if you were black? Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer. To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like. For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question....

Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions -- especially his traps -- and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. It was a Saturday morning -- a lazy day -- when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town's local citizens. The traveler spoke. "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?" Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he...