Free Republic

... Mitt Romney said he was "not concerned about the very poor" but would fix America's social safety net ... But if he wants to see a welfare system that lets almost no one fall through the cracks while at the same time ensuring that its beneficiaries don't become lifelong dependents, he could look to his own church. (snip) Launched during the Great Depression, the Mormon welfare system was designed by church leaders as a way to match the ... unemployed faithful with ... temporary labor. As storehouse manager ... explains, goods and services were traded so that if a...

One of the central, driving questions in our politics is this: Why are people who are themselves reliant on government programs so prone to electing anti-government politicans who want to put them on the chopping block?Paul Krugman talks to experts about this conundrum and comes away with some important conclusions that are directly relevant to this year’s presidential race:Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent...

Although Michigan’s unemployment rate has been dropping lately, there’s been a disturbing counter-trend developing over the last decade. One in five people in the state received government food assistance in 2011, up from 1 in 16 in 2001. Michigan has seen the number of food assistance recipients climb dramatically during the same time period, increasing from 623,335 in 2001 to 1.9 million in 2011, according to James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The state’s population has remained about the same over the last decade. There were 9.9 million people in 2001 and...

COLLIER COUNTY - NBC2 Investigators discovered there are parents living in Florida illegally, but their children are getting millions of your tax dollars in public assistance. The amount they're receiving is growing. Despite little Sergio's smile, the Collier County kindergartener doesn't live an easy life. "He travels with his family. They don't know where they are going to sleep and eat when they get to another place," says Barbara Mainster, director of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association. The non-profit of 70 schools cater to poor migrant workers' children. Born in United States, Sergio's parents moved to the U.S. illegally to...

As the junior senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum shepherded welfare reform through the U.S. Senate in 1996. Given his limited tenure — he’d been elected to the Senate only two years before — the fact that Majority Leader Bob Dole selected Santorum to lead the effort is nothing short of remarkable, Santorum’s former colleagues say. It also is a testament to an overlooked virtue of the ex-senator’s: his pragmatism.

Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday evening praised the Republican Party for consistently fighting for individual freedom over the last 150 years, and criticized Democrats for pursuing "handouts" to the less fortunate that he said are a modern form of slavery. "Our party firmly believes in the safety net," West said in a late Wednesday floor speech. "We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock. "For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us," he continued. "Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact...

ART CASHIN: The Unemployed Are Now Going On Disability And It's Costing The Government Billions Sam RoFebuary 14, 2012 In this morning's Cashin's Comments, Art Cashin points to some disturbing research regarding the recent bump in disability benefit applications: I’m Sick Of Being Unemployed - A couple of strange and rather disquieting reports circulated among the Friends of Fermentation yesterday. The topic was unemployment or, more specifically, where do those people go who have stopped looking for work. Their absence is credited with distorting the unemployment rate and making it lower than most expect or believe. The reports I allude...

Skyrocketing food-stamp enrollments over the last few years have played a notable role in this year’s presidential race, but it’s not just food stamps that have exploded — it’s entitlements, generally: housing subsidies, Medicaid rolls, college loans and much, much more. And the trend is threatening to chip away at the very pillars that keep America’s civil society functioning. Today, one in five Americans — 67 million of us, all told — rely on federal aid in obtaining housing, food, income, health care or education. The dependent population has been growing for years, of course. But the “Index of Dependence...

Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don't qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.

Point of Order No. 4,321,458: A recent study released by the Heritage Foundation states that the depedency index under President Obama has grown an astounding 23% during his reign er I mean presidency. In just a mere two years 67 million (yes that's MILLION) people are now relying on federal aid in one form or another. Investors.com explains "In 2010, for the first time ever, average spending on dependence programs per recipient exceeded the country's per-capita disposable income." The Left would have you believe that the reason behind this spike is mainly the crap economy, but WE'RE NOT BUYING IT....

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

New York (CNNMoney) - More than one in three Americans lived in households that received Medicaid, food stamps or other means-based government assistance, according to a new report. And when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half of the nation lived in a household that received a government check, according to the analysis of third-quarter 2010 Census data done by the Mercatus Center at George Washington University. That's more than 148 million Americans.

A Florida lawmaker is pushing a bill that would ban the use of food stamps to purchase snacks and sweets, such as cookies and cakes. Republican State Sen. Ronda Storms, of Valrico, says her goal is to stop a small percentage of recipients who misuse food stamps. Her bill would also require food stamp recipients to take state-run classes on healthy eating and how making your own baked goods is cheaper than store-made sweets. The bill is moving through state committees in Tallahassee. Critics say the government shouldn't be telling people what to eat.

President Obama was trying to bring Jesus in as a class warfare warrior today, saying that as a Christian, Jesus expected him to fleece the rich: The rich should pay more not only because “I actually think that is going to make economic sense, but for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said at the Washington Hilton, delivering remarks at an annual event that every president has attended since Dwight D. Eisenhower. “We can all benefit from turning to our Creator, listening to him,”...

So, we shouldn’t worry about the poor because we have a welfare state that keeps them on a crutch (or “a float”). I understand that his focus is on the middle class and that he believes these were the people hurt the most by the financial situation in America, but is the underlying philosophy here to just “fix holes” in the “safety net” or should we be trying to fix the entitlement mentality that helped pull us into this debt? This should be red meat for Newt who worked to reform welfare. Some are defending this as being taken out...

Newt Gingrich on Wednesday ripped GOP front-runner Mitt Romney for comments he made about not caring about the poor. Gingrich went on to say he's "fed up with politicians in either party dividing Americans against each other." Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7397249n#ixzz1lBB3wXIy

Standing Athwart History Yelling "Thank You Sir, May I Have Another." It is days like today that make me thankful I think they all suck. At least I’m thankful I’m in the firmly not Romney camp. Having told us only Romney was viable (with half-nods to Huntsman and Santorum) and having trotted out Elliot Abrams to smear Newt Gingrich with out of context quotes, even National Review is having trouble defending their candidate today. This morning Mitt Romney said he wasn’t concerned about the poor. The poor, after all, have food stamps and Medicaid. But don’t worry. If the safety...

Money meant to help families on welfare provide the necessities of life are apparently being used inappropriately by some recipients.

I got this in my email this morning and was struck by how relevant it remains even today. It may be a clever fakery but it's still pretty good.

House GOP seeks to bar the use of welfare funds at strip clubsBy Russell Berman - 01/31/12 01:47 PM ET House Republicans don’t want Uncle Sam paying for any more lap dances. A bill that GOP leaders are bringing to the House floor Wednesday would require states to prevent welfare recipients from accessing or spending their benefits at strip clubs, casinos and liquor stores. Republicans included the proposal in the payroll tax bill the House passed in December, and are bringing it back up for a vote separately as part of a package of bills they want included in a...

I saw an article a little while ago that I believe said the state of Maine had more people on the dole than there were taxpayers. I have been trying to figure out how many of the 19,378,102 persons living in New York are pulling the cart verse riding. I have tried all sorts of searches and all sorts of sites but I can’t seem to get the numbers for my state (New York). I am sure these numbers were figured on the last census and I have searched the census site and can’t seem to get up to date...

Outrageous! The Government Is Giving Out Free Cell Phones And Free Cell Phone Minutes To Welfare RecipientsMichael SnyderJanuary 29, 2012 Did you know that the federal government is giving out free cell phones and free cell phone minutes to welfare recipients? It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Right now, there are companies that are running advertisements specifically targeted at low income Americans informing them of the fact that all they have to do is sign up and they can get a free cell phone and hundreds of free cell phone minutes every single month and it...

TOPEKA, Kan. - Some legislators said Wednesday they plan to review a state policy that has reduced or cut off food stamp benefits to hundreds of U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants...lawmakers acknowledged that they're sympathetic to Gov. Sam Brownback's administration trying to ensure that families with illegal immigrants aren't being treated more generously than families whose members are all legal residents. The administration said the change means all Kansas families are treated the same. ...lawmakers worry that the effect will be felt by children whose families were eligible for food stamps under the old standard but have since lost the...

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 - 30 July 1898), better known as Otto von Bismarck, is credited with being the father of socialism, the modern-day welfare state. He said, "My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare." Politicians were quick to see the power and simplicity of Bismarck's concept. Convincing the public that government existed for their sake and their welfare enabled politicians to expand into areas...

Scary stuff.

While politicians may debate whether or not America is the most "generous" (with other generations' money of course) socialist welfare state in the history of mankind, the undoctored numbers make the affirmative case quite clear and without any chance for confusion. The single most disturbing statistic: in 2011 nearly half of the population lived in a household that receives some form of government benefit, which in turn accounted for 65% of total federal spending, or $2.5 trillion, and amount to 15% of GDP. And yet some people out there still think these people, long since indoctrinated to do little but...

“My Time at Walmart” looked at the incredible and outrageous abuses of the welfare system that I observed while working summers at Walmart. My follow-up looked at how those who didn’t like my message made me the message. This one will blow your mind. Some like to make the issue of welfare a complicated mess, filled with statistical anomalies and outliers. The solutions, while not always politically correct, are simple. And they meet the standards of common sense. 1. Welfare recipients should pass a drug test before they receive benefits of any kind. I had to be drug tested to...

So I live overseas, and due to the vagaries of my employer, I wasn't able to file my taxes until late last year. I filed the 1040A, and due to a brief period of work in the US before moving here, I did have some taxes withheld. I completed my form, ignoring the "other credits", including the so-called "Making Work Pay" credit (which I figured I didn't qualify for, and didn't really want anyway), and mailed it in. I was expecting a refund of about $1400 for the taxes I had had withheld, since I was withholding for a high...

A little more than 74,000 people in Michigan exhausted their state unemployment benefits through the first 11 months of 2011. That still left about 232,000 receiving unemployment benefits through the end of November, the most recent data the state has released. How long unemployed workers should receive benefits has been a hot topic. Michigan’s unemployed have had the opportunity to receive benefits up to 99 weeks via 26 weeks of state benefits and a combination of federal extensions. Michigan recently reduced the number of weeks someone can claim state unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks before the federal...

Madison - In just two months, private investigators found nearly a half-million dollars in overpayments and cost savings in two state aid programs for the needy in Milwaukee County, with much more expected to be added up in the coming weeks. The findings of fraud in public food assistance and health care programs come after budget cuts left such investigations painfully neglected in many parts of the state, including Milwaukee County - the state's largest urban area. For the past year, the Journal Sentinel has been reporting about fraud and other problems in the FoodShare program. The contractor looked at...

My recent excursion into the welfare system has left me scratching my head. Prior to writing and researching this project, my only impression of food stamps and similar welfare programs was that the credit only worked for certain items at certain stores and that an individual had to be in a particularly dire financial situation to receive such aid. I was wrong. An EBT card works and looks like a debit card, but instead of the user withdrawing money from a checking account, the government prepays an amount of money it deems necessary for the user’s food expenditures. Several of...

Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, mentioned an uncomfortable truth in a radio address this month: Maine has more welfare recipients than income tax payers. Democrats challenged the accuracy of this assertion. The Bangor Daily News fact-checked LePage and discovered that 445,074 Mainers paid state income tax, while 453,194 received some sort of state aid.

Rick Santorum - “I wrote the welfare reform bill in the Contract with America. I was the ranking member on that subcommittee. And when I came to the Senate, through a quirk, I ended up managing the bill on the floor of the United States Senate and working with President Clinton and getting a bill signed after he vetoed it twice to end welfare. We bloc-granted the program, got rid of the federal entitlement -- the only one in the history of the country that’s ever been done. And I was the principal author of it in the United States...

GAINESVILLE, Ga. (BP) -- On a recent Saturday morning, I was waiting to pick up my son, John, from a musical practice at church, so I decided to walk around the building for some exercise. While walking, I encountered a man knocking on the front door of the building. Allow me to describe him to give you a better context of my experience. "Bill" (a pseudonym to protect his identity) is a healthy, white male about 50 years old. He was visibly angry, agitated and seemed ready to explode. Although I was a little frightened by his demeanor, I told...

Greek disabled groups are angry at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs. But the Labor Ministry on Monday said categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

Economics Professor Jack Chambless of Valencia College in Florida had his sophomore students write a short essay on what the American dream means to them and what, specifically, they wanted the federal government to do to help them achieve that dream. The results demonstrate the sheer magnitude of the idiocy of a public education system dead set on indoctrination rather than education: I took the essays from three classes – about 180 students… About 10% of the students said they wanted the government to leave them alone and not tax them too much and let them regulate their own lives....

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.

As the junior senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum shepherded welfare reform through the U.S. Senate in 1996. Given his limited tenure — he’d been elected to the Senate only two years before — the fact that Majority Leader Bob Dole selected Santorum to lead the effort is nothing short of remarkable, Santorum’s former colleagues say. It also is a testament to an overlooked virtue of the ex-senator’s: his pragmatism. Santorum first entered the House in 1991; two years later, he became ranking member of the subcommittee on human resources. “How I got to be ranking member of that subcommittee does...

California ...has one-eighth of the nation's population but one-third of all welfare recipients. ... The main reason California has such a high percentage of the nation's welfare cases is because it is one of the few states that continue to provide welfare checks for children once their parents are no longer eligible.

To say that the past two weeks have been a little crazy would be like saying Ronald Reagan “squeaked by to win reelection” in 1984. I had my first television interview, I’ve appeared on countless radio shows, and was featured on The Blaze, National Review, and HotAir.com. The Associated Press ran a story about me throughout the country. Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin and Howie Carr all gave my blog post either a shout-out or an on-air discussion. To say I’m floored would be an understatement. This has been the most exciting week of my life. One...

It was a proud day in Medellín, Colombia. Mayor Alonso Salazar smiled as he announced the city's latest accomplishment, and a sycophantic press reported his happy message verbatim. The 12,000 desperately poor people of Medellín's Comuna 13, a shantytown set high atop a steep hill, had spent generations climbing up and down some 530 mountainside stairs to reach their homes. It has always been a 35-minute walk, each way, a challenge for even the healthiest among them. But it is no longer. What did the city do to alleviate the pain of its most destitute? The city of Medellín, long...

Interesting timing, especially when some biomass companies are switching from wood chips to corn, because they couldn’t turn a profit on wood chips. Looks like all the wheels are coming off the bus now.To Survive, Some Biofuels Companies Give Up on Biofuels – Technology Review Gevo, a prominent advanced-biofuels company that has received millions in U.S. government funding to develop fuels made from cellulosic sources such as grass and wood chips, is finding that it can’t use these materials if it hopes to survive. Instead, it’s going to use corn, a common source for conventional biofuels. What’s more, most of...

Can American civilization collapse? You bet. All others have. We don't need a Mayan calendar to foreshadow the end. Signs are everywhere, we just need a brain to process the onslaught of information. Of the various cataclysms that 2012 may herald, the first significant one is the Dissolution of the American State. In America, when we speak of "the state" we mean something like New Jersey. In Europe and elsewhere, it is the central government, including provincial and local governments. It is an entity or apparatus with a life of its own. For most of the history of the world,...

Barack Obama's manifold failures over the last three years have left him in a political tough spot as we enter 2012. He will have a challenging time running on a record that has resulted in massive unemployment, stagnant income growth, a record number of people on food stamps, and a gargantuan level of debt that Americans will be paying off for decades after Obama has retired to the golf courses of Hawaii. As was clear from his recent speech calling forth the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, he will campaign on the idea that he will bring "fairness" to struggling Americans....

There are more Mainers receiving welfare benefits than there are income tax filers paying taxes, Republican Gov. Paul LePage said Saturday. ... the governor said in his weekly radio address that Maine had 453,000 people receiving welfare benefits in 2010. At the same, he said, the state had only 445,000 people who paid taxes.

he Blaze/AP) — A 20-year-old college student has developed a following and gotten at least five marriage proposals after writing a column about her experiences with welfare recipients as a Wal-Mart cashier. She says she wants to be the next Ann Coulter. Christine Rousselle, who attends Providence College in Rhode Island, wrote on the website The College Conservative about her experiences working as a teenager at a Wal-Mart store in her hometown of Scarborough, Maine.

Welfare workers are constantly trying to figure out how to make their jobs effective, how to do something to actually combat poverty. Their jobs are very high-stress, so they often meet after work on Fridays, when happy hours encourage them to philosophize. If only the clients had to look for work -- no, they're already under such a requirement. If the government built more public housing so the slumlords didn't grab every increase in benefits -- no, that's been tried. If food stamps and cash assistance were combined into one check -- no, that resulted in a class action suit,...

AROUND 1,000 men and their illegal multiple wives are thought to be claiming welfare benefits. The polygamous families could be costing the taxpayer millions of pounds a year by pocketing everything from dole cash to housing costs. But the Government has said it will not stop the controversial payments until 2013, when it will officially no longer accept group marriages for welfare handouts. Advertisement >> Polygamy is not recognised in Britain but was allowed within the benefits system under the former Labour administration. Tory MP Philip Hollobone blasted: “I can’t see why we have to wait until 2013 to stop...

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families. "Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses,...

Newt Gingrich’s recent utterances about poor children–they “have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works”–reflect not only the inability of conservatives to talk seriously about poverty, but a mean-spiritedness that, unfortunately, largely eludes public scrutiny. Apparently, Gingrich and the approving Iowa crowd have never heard of “the working poor”–folks stuck in low-wage jobs (often more than one), but still unable to escape poverty. Based on the crowd’s reaction, Gingrich’s November 28 speech achieved a key objective. Conservatives enjoy being told that poverty is caused by the bad behavior of its victims, a belief famously reaffirmed by...