Free Republic

The cost of a product that half the world’s population needs multiple times a day, every month for approximately 30 years, is simply too much.When I got my first period, I was in the most embarrassing place my then-11-year-old self could have imagined: my grandparents’ house. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just put on extra pairs of underwear and threw them away one-by-one, scrunched at the bottom of the bathroom trash bin, as I bled through them. Finally, with nary a pair of panties in sight, I was forced to tell my mother. I have never been...

It’s a mystery why one person can be poor but still be proud, independent, and reasonably content while the guy next door is only content to slide into a swamp of misery, blame, slovenliness, dependence, and cigarette smoke. I agree that Alchemist summed things up pretty well by observing, “Poor is a state of finance. Poverty is a state of mind.” But why? Entire tomes have been written about poverty, of course. How soul-crushing it is. How it leads to crime. How it’s everybody’s fault except the individuals who are in that state. How it’s increasingly becoming institutionalized among entire...

Poverty is stuck at record levels in America, and it's spreading in neighborhoods that are already blighted and impoverished, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.So-called concentrated poverty spurs high crime rates and can worsen health, schools, and housing conditions, according to Brookings. While poverty was once viewed as an urban problem, more and more of America's poor live in the suburbs.The Brookings report analyzes the poverty levels in metro areas and their distressed neighborhoods, examining the change between 2000 and the period of 2008-2012, which includes an average from a five-year Census estimate and shows the effect of the recession.Brookings...

Representative Paul Ryan has a bold, ambitious proposal “Expanding Opportunity in America,” to completely remake the American welfare state. Along the way he would also change the federal government’s approach to education, revamp what we are doing in our prison system and much more. Here is a surprise. Although Ryan’s approach is based on well-known conservative ideas, some on the left are actually praising parts of the proposal – including the editorial page of the Washington Post. Ryan’s plan shows something I have believed for a long time. All the innovative thinking on how to solve public policy problems for...

There is perhaps nothing which so perfectly exposes the partisan instincts of the political press as do our various National Conversations on poverty issues. When poverty again becomes a major focus of the media, as it often does when Republicans are on the political ascendancy, the intentions of Democrats are almost always framed as pure and decent. Republicans, meanwhile, are morally bankrupt, indecent, and self-serving – often simply for refusing to throw money at the problem at hand. Does that characterization sound a little unforgiving of the press? It should, and they have earned it. The most recent example...

Finally, the change in net worth has made the mainstream media. The statistics, as reported in the NY Times, are horrific, as are the implications for the future of the country. Net worth may be the best single measure of a country's well-being. Median net worth is a reasonable marker for the standard of living. Medians (or averages) are not good measures to capture what is happening at the lowest or highest ends. (More about that below.) In the simplest terms, net worth is the value of a person's assets minus his liabilities. If this measure is growing, a person...

July 24, 2014 Ty Andros Adam Smith in his seminal book, Wealth of Nations, outlined how all great empires rest upon an educated, productive and prosperous citizenry. The United States is no exception as its schools over the centuries from grade school to colleges provided the teachings of history, reading and writing, logic, self-reliance, independence and the principles of the constitutional republic brought to us by our founding fathers and God. The United States was founded by people seeking shelter from Despots, authoritarian governments and dictators. Independent souls who were not afraid of providing for themselves (snip)There are FIVE ELEMENTS...

So you want to write about poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and general misery in America. Let me give you some advice, and I'll cut right to the chase and be as blunt as possible. First, consider your audience. It’s white people. If you are trying to tell a sob story that ends in “we need more social services” most minorities are already on your side and the ones that aren’t have their own sources of information. You’re talking to mainstream white America, so you need to tailor your story to them. Start with a young white couple who has fallen on...

Author and broadcaster Tavis Smiley during the Kansas Conference on Poverty on Friday spoke out about Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget and called for a 2016 presidential debate that would focus solely on poverty and income equality. “Budgets are moral documents,” Smiley told a crowd gathered in the Sunflower Ballroom of the Capitol Plaza Hotel, 1717 S.W. Topeka Blvd. He said Brownback gave tax breaks to the “rich and lucky” and “cut K-12 education.” “The tax cuts are a good sound-bite politics but unsound policy,” Smiley said. He also said what Brownback has done to the state is “shameful.” Education is...

Hillary Clinton has served America for decades; in January 1993, she made history as she became the country's first co-president along with her husband, Bill. After her tour in the White House ended, she answered the call from her adopted state of New York and voluntarily gave up a lucrative career trading cattle futures to act as one of only two US senators from that state. In 2008, after tirelessly devoting herself to helping Barack Obama become America's best president, she looked forward to retiring to a quiet life in a small cottage somewhere. Once again her country called, pleading...

WASHINGTON - Republicans have a wealth of political issues that will dominate the 2014 midterm election races and determine their outcome. The national news media has done its best to try to bury these issues, play them down or sugar coat them, but the American people know better. They have persistently put these issues at or near the top of every voter poll in the last six years of Barack Obama's scandal-ridden, trouble-plagued administration. It's hard to break through and overcome the power of the Washington news media that has worked hard to cover up the Obama White House's blunders....

This is an article that was written and sent to me by Alessandra Nucci, an Italian journalist and friend. It describes what the European Union has done to Italy. Since it's a very long article, I've broken it down in 4 parts. Here is the first part. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How would you feel if for years you had been picking up shipwrecked penniless migrants from Africa, dumped by criminal agents all over the Mediterranean, ferrying them to your shores and taking them in by the thousands, only to see yourself made the butt of sarcasm, reproaches and even pecuniary fines...

Elias Benjelloun’s, the UNLV student body president, and Daniel Waqar’s, the student government’s public relations director, protest that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s $225,000 fee for a single speech is excessive was slapped down by the lady herself. “Students angry that their tuition fees are being increased shouldn’t try to take it out on me,” Clinton angrily exclaimed. “I have unique credentials. I’ve been a First Lady and co-president, a United States Senator, and Secretary of State. Audiences should expect to pay more to hear me.” Clinton compared her fee with the $230,000 per game salary paid to the...

By a mixture of ideology and fiscal and social policies, the family has been systematically fractured and destroyed in England, at least in the lowest part of the society that, unfortunately, needs family solidarity the most. Certainly the notions of dependence and independence have changed. I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and...

div class="article_body top">Isn’t it amazing how people can make a career decrying poverty and end up collecting big bucks from taxpayers for not much work? Consider the case of University of North Carolina Law School Professor Gene Nichol, who teaches one course per semester, and pulls down almost $213,000 per year in that state-funded school, as professor and head of the school’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.Add in his wife, also on the UC payroll ay the medical school and Health Care System, and this fun couple pulls down over 600k per year. The College Fix has the goods...

She may be an A-list movie star, but Keira Knightley gives herself an annual allowance of only $50,000 to live on. “It’s something around that,” the 29-year-old British actress told Glamour’s July issue. “I mean, if I want or need something that goes over that, I get it, but, yes, around that.” But why so little to begin with? Keira Knightley Reveals Why She Was Bullied for Wearing “I think living an [expensive] lifestyle means you can’t hang out with people who don’t live that lifestyle,” Knightley told the magazine. “It alienates you. Some of my best, most hilarious times...

Hillary Clinton has served America for decades; in January 1993, she made history as she became the country's first co-president along with her husband, Bill. After her tour in the White House ended, she answered the call from her adopted state of New York and voluntarily gave up a lucrative career trading cattle futures to act as one of only two US senators from that state. In 2008, after tirelessly devoting herself to helping Barack Obama become America's best president, she looked forward to retiring to a quiet life in a small cottage somewhere. Once again her country called, pleading...

Noah mentioned this in his piece about the ridiculous Democratic race to the bottom income bracket, but it deserves its own space. This kind of mess will continue to happen until reporters stop asking the question because there’s really no good answer. “Income inequality” is an evil of American society, according to the Democratic Party. In running against Republicans, especially Mitt Romney, every high-profile Democrat has made it his business to equate rich with evil. And, not just evil, but congenitally unable to understand or adjust policy to reflect the problems of real people. If that’s true for Romney,...

It’s a basic human right: water. But could the United Nations soon help the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department provide the service to struggling customers? Water department spokeswoman Curtrise Garner says it’s a possibility — but for now, the water bills must be paid. “We do have programs that do help those that are just totally in need; can’t afford it — but we also know that there are also people who can’t afford it would can not pay and we know this because, once we shut water off, the next day they are in paying the bill in full....

Controversial billionaire Chen Guangbiao placed a full-page advertisement in Monday’s New York Times and a half-page advertisement in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, inviting 1,000 underprivileged Americans to dine with him. “I want to spread the message in the US that there are good philanthropists in China and not all are crazy spenders on luxury goods”. Chen said he was “teaming up with a famous American charity to host a charity luncheon for 1,000 poor and destitute Americans, who each will receive 300 dollars”. The underprivileged will be invited to the Boat House restaurant in New York’s Central Park, where Chen...