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Tyler Durden July 30, 2016 Excerpted from David Stockman's forthcoming book "Trumped! A Nation On The Brink... And How To Bring It Back" Because the main street economy is failing, the nation’s entitlement rolls have exploded. About 110 million citizens now receive some form of means tested benefits. When social security is included, more than 160 million citizens get checks from Washington. The total cost is now $3 trillion per year and rising rapidly. America’s entitlements sector, in fact, is the sixth biggest economy in the world.Yet in a society that is rapidly aging to the tune of 10,000 baby...

The American debt problem was almost entirely ignored at the Republican National Convention last week, and we can expect nothing more when the Democrats gather this week. Both parties support the entitlement spending system and the decrepit tax system that fails to support it. They compete on the fiscal side of politics with impossible promises to spend more and tax less. Imagine the U.S. Treasury as an airplane beginning to roll down the runway to take off. For a mile or so, the plane gains no altitude, then the wings start to generate lift. The wheels leave the ground and...

Our Constitution was ratified on Sept. 17, 1787, 11-plus years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. James Madison wanted to make sure that our unalienable rights were also in the Constitution in order to protect the citizens from the very government they created. It was not until Dec. 15, 1791, that the original Bill of Rights was adopted and made a part of the Constitution. Anyone who has read the Constitution knows that the words “health care” cannot be found anywhere in that document. It is not in the Bill of Rights. Some people assert that “health care”...

Concerned that some of the nation's resources may be out of their reach, Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn) and Chris Coons (D-Del) are demanding that "all businesses fully disclose where all their money is." "As President Obama said when he was nominated for his second term, government is the only entity we all belong to," Franken recalled. "It is every business' and every individual's duty to do the utmost to ensure the survival of this single unifying entity. At a minimum, this means making all of their financial resources known to the government so they may be appropriated if the need...

Entitlements are “the realities of how people live now” and “necessities of a 21st century economy,” so “we’ve got to retool our system,” Pres. Obama declared Tuesday. Speaking at the White House Summit on the United State of Women, Obama said America has “got to retool our system,” because guaranteed benefits are a vital and immutable way of life …

War on Poverty: Everyone who thinks the government “must do more” to help the poor should read the House Republican blueprint on welfare reform. The report is the result of years of work head by Speaker Paul Ryan to reform welfare and improve upward mobility.

full title : FRANCE: Sudanese Muslim freeloader sets fire to government welfare offices when they don’t give him a nice house right away A Sudanese Muslim who had just obtained the status of refugee was arrested after having set fire to the branch of the city council welfare offices. He claimed the employees had not found him a home "right away," which, according to him, was his "due," in view of his new refugee status. DVM The employees of Pôle Solidarités [Government Welfare Office] in Annecy still can't come back to it. On Tuesday 17 May, a so-called refugee locked...

Stan Druckenmiller ... when I look at the current picture of expected tax revenues combined with benefits promised to future generations, this is the most unsustainable situation I have seen ever in my career. The disaster that Druckenmiller sees coming for the United States is all about changing demographics and entitlement spending. They don’t add up to a sustainable situation. In 1940, entitlement payments, which include everything from disability payments to Social Security to Medicare, amounted to just over 20% of annual government spending in the United States. Today, entitlement spending has swelled to nearly 70% of the annual federal...

... What Trump implicitly promises is a closing of the gap between federal revenue and spending without any pain for ordinary voters. He claims that better management, led by him, is all it will take. It is the worst kind of wishful thinking and deception. On entitlements, Trump is essentially in agreement with most Democrats. He says he won’t make any changes to Social Security or Medicare benefits. In previous years, he also said Medicaid shouldn’t be cut. He says he now favors converting Medicaid into a block grant to the states, although he has not promised that this switch...

For rent: brand new one-bed apartments in the shadow of downtown Dallas, a short walk from one of the city's trendiest areas. On-site concierge. Successful applicants will be homeless, mentally ill and possess criminal records. . . . All for a rent of 30% of the tenant's monthly income - whether it is $1,000 or $10. The only requirement? "Be a good tenant," James says. That means no criminal or disruptive behaviour; but no pressure on residents to immediately go sober if they are addicted to alcohol, for example.

During this election year, we are destined to hear many words that are toxic in the way they misrepresent reality and substitute fantasies that can win votes. One of these words is "entitlement." To hear some politicians tell it, we are all entitled to all sorts of things, ranging from "affordable housing" to "a living wage." But the reality is that the human race is not entitled to anything, not even the food we need to stay alive. If we don't produce food, we are just going to starve. If we don't build housing, then we are not going to...

There is a letter titled "Isn't It Strange?" making the rounds in email boxes. It asks questions to which our fellow Americans should know the answers, save for those caught up in modernity. It starts off asking, "Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture but ... after a shooting, the problem is the gun?" In other words, after a shooting, it is the gun, an inanimate object, that is the culprit, but after a bombing, it is not the bomb that receives the blame but the evil individual. In both...

When Congress passed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act in 2000, it introduced a new concept called “voluntary suspension” of benefits, allowing those who had already started Social Security benefits to stop their payments and earn delayed retirement credits. In the process, however, the new voluntary suspension rules unleashed several additional Social Security claiming strategies, including various “claim now, claim more later” tactics involving File-and-Suspend and Restricted Applications for spousal benefits. Those may be going away. Under this week’s two-year budget agreement between Congressional leaders and the White House, Congress will close these loopholes in the Social Security rules....

(CNN) Mitch McConnell privately wants the White House to pay this price to enact a major budget deal: Significant changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and funding the government.

DailyCaller OPINION ‘Global Indifference’: Pope Francis’ Cure is A Cause ROGER BANKS @rogerbanksesq Writer While in America, Pope Francis will almost surely repeat his call for the “redistribution of economic benefits by the state” as a remedy for what his November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation calls “an economy of exclusion and inequality.” Presupposing a causal connection between a “culture of prosperity” and “global indifference” to the poor, the Exhortation reads as follows: We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all...

While markets hone in on the Federal Reserve's monetary policy hints, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan sees a bigger economic irritant—government spending. On Wednesday, Greenspan decried a rise in entitlement costs, which he contended have pressured the U.S. economy. "To me the discussion today shouldn't even be on monetary policy it should be on how do we constrain this extraordinary rise in entitlements," he said in a CNBC "Closing Bell" interview, calling the trend "extremely dangerous." Social expenditures in the U.S. were 19.2 percent of gross domestic product last year, up from 15.5 percent in 2005, according to data from...

Real estate baron and reality TV star Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination this week. In his announcement in front of a crowd—many of whom were paid $50 apiece to cheer him on—Trump pledged to secure government entitlements. “With the other Republicans in the race, you never know whether they might end up cutting or privatizing Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid,” Trump alleged. “Right here and right now I’m promising that these programs will be fully funded for as long as there is money to pay for them.” Trump...

Despite his socially-conservative bona fides, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has officially lost the support of Iowa’s influential talk radio host Steve Deace — a dramatic shift from their supportive relationship in the 2008 Republican Party primaries. Deace has been described as a “hitmaker” and “one of the most powerful Republicans you’ve never heard of” because his stumping for Huckabee was seen as a substantial contributor to the former governor’s 2008 Iowa caucus victory. But, in 2016, Deace is not thrilled with Huckabee’s support for entitlement programs. As MMfA first reported, during the May 6 edition of the Steve Deace...

New York real estate mogul Donald Trump said Thursday that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) could not prevent funding cuts to entitlement programs if elected president in 2016. “Huckabee is a nice guy but will never be able to bring in the funds so as not to cut Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid,” Trump tweeted. “I will.” Trump, a possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate, also argued Huckabee was stealing his potential campaign ideas. “Huckabee copied me,” Trump wrote. “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare &...

<p>AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — More than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the state's food stamp program since Republican Gov. Paul LePage's administration began enforcing work and volunteer requirements late last year, officials said.</p> <p>The number of people that have been dropped from the program has exceeded even the administration's expectations.</p>