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How many of America’s “poor” are like this lady and her husband?

The way that many welfare recipients think was revealed in a call to a radio talk show on KLBJ-AM in Austin, Texas. Lucy, a 32 year-old married mother of three, whose parents also had been on welfare, said this about her situation:

“I just wanted to say while workers out there and people like you that are preaching morality at people like me that are living on welfare, can you really blame us? I mean, I get to sit home, I get to go visit my friends all day, I even get to smoke weed, and people that I know that are illegal immigrants, that don’t contribute to society, we still going to get paid. Our check’s going to come in the mail every month and it’s going to be on time. And we get subsidized housing, we even get presents delivered for our kids at Christmas. Why should I work?”

“So you know what? You all get the benefit of saying, ‘Oh, look at me. I’m a better person,’ because you all are going to work. We’re the ones getting paid. So can you really blame us?”

Asked if her husband works, she said he does sometimes, but “he doesn’t really see the need for it.” Has she ever worked? “A couple of times.” Does she ever feel guilty about gaming the system and taking money other people have earned? “But you know, if someone offers you a million dollars, would you walk away from it? It’s easy to preach morality, and that’s the only reason why I called. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, you’re making your living off of other people’s backs.’ But, you know, if somebody gave you a million dollars, and said that, here, you don’t got to work for it, no strings attached. Here, just take it, you can do whatever you want to do with it. You would take it, too.”

The host asked if she was calling in on an “Obamaphone” (a cell phone provided by the federal government) and she answered that she was. Then, when asked how much she received each month, she said she only pays $50 a month for rent that should be $600, so that’s $550, $425 in food stamps, $150 for her electric bill, and $100 on her water bill from the City of Austin. That comes to $1,225 a month, $14,700 a year, just less than the current federal minimum wage. Plus the cell phone.

She also said that when you are in government programs, “they are always coming to you and offering more programs,” and will even pay you to go to find out about where you can get more money. “They encourage you to stay on the programs.”

Asked if her money was cut off, would she get up every day and go to work, she said, “yes, I’d have to.”

This situation makes perfect sense to people like Lucy and her husband, who never learned the lesson that mature, responsible human beings make their own way in life, and who now live a relatively comfortable life without having to do anything to help themselves. They are a product of the failed War on Poverty for which we can thank President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), the namesake of the radio station Lucy called. They are among a large and growing number of Americans being taught that the government will take care of them, and they don’t have to do well in school, or learn a trade, or look for a job, or do much more than draw breath.

Last year the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans were in “poverty.” But how many of those are really poor and need some help, and how many are like Lucy and her hubby; playing a system that allows those eager for a free ride to get one?

Census Bureau data reveals the following about people classified as “poor”: eighty percent of poor households enjoy air conditioning; nearly three-fourths own a car or truck, and 31 percent own two or more cars or trucks, nearly two-thirds subscribe to cable or satellite television, 50 percent own a personal computer, and one in seven owns two or more computers; 43 percent subscribe to Internet access; one-third own a wide-screen plasma or LCD television; one-fourth own a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo; more than half of poor families with children own a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

Poverty ain’t what it used to be.

It isn’t government’s job to help individuals who are down on their luck, and as the War on Poverty has demonstrated, it does a lousy job of it. And it surely isn’t government’s job to give taxpayer’s money to people who don’t really need it, or to actively recruit people who don’t need welfare onto welfare roles. That is the epitome of government disservice, and elected official’s self-service.

George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote has been used a lot recently, but it has never been truer than today: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

The “progressives”: Advancing un-American ideas for fun and profit

Commentary by James H. Shott

They once called themselves “liberals,” but as practiced here in the U.S. through the years that word gathered lots of negative energy, casting adherents in a bad light, so they changed their moniker and now call themselves “progressives.”

But the term “progressives” is a misnomer, unless you consider it progress for America to slowly abandon the freedom that was once our hallmark, and move instead toward being more under the thumb of an increasingly over-reaching government.

To demonstrate how off-the-mark some progressives’ thinking is, consider the following:

On ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” a frequent guest named Kevin Blackistone said that football games should not include the singing of the national anthem during the pregame, calling the “Star-Spangled Banner” a “war anthem.”

Mr. Blackistone was addressing controversy over Northwestern University’s American flag-themed football uniforms, designed to raise money for the Wounded Warriors Project. In the “Buy or Sell” show segment he said he would “sell” the uniforms: “I'm going to sell it for the same reasons. If you sell this along with me, you should also be selling the rest of the military symbolism embrace of sports. Whether it’s the singing of a war anthem to open every game. Whether it’s going to get a hotdog and being able to sign up for the Army at the same time. Whether it’s the NFL's embrace of the mythology of the Pat Tillman story. It has been going on in sports since the first national anthem was played in the World Series back in 1917. And it’s time for people to back away.”

Mr. Blackistone clearly is a man who neither understands nor cares for America.

And this from Mary Margaret Penrose, a Texas A&M School of Law professor, who expressed her frustration with the fact that President Barack Obama has failed to pass more gun control since the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Prof. Penrose said gun laws should be decided on a per-state basis, versus the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The beauty of a states' rights model solution is it allows those of you who want to live in a state with very loose restrictions to do so." She went on to say that her problems with the Constitution are not limited to the Second Amendment, and advocates in her law courses redrafting the entire U.S. Constitution.

Is advocating abandoning the supreme law of the land acceptable in helping law students learn about and understand our system of laws?

More wisdom from the halls of academia comes from Professor Noel Ignatiev of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, who tells his students things like this: “If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but what can a white male do? He’s good for nothing. Slavery, genocides against aboriginal peoples and massive land confiscation, the inquisition, the holocaust, white males are all to blame! You maintain your white male privilege only by oppressing, discriminating against and enslaving others.” He suggests that all white males should commit suicide.

Two thoughts arise from this; first, we should enthusiastically applaud the professor’s recent decision to stop “teaching,” and second, since he is a white male, ask why he is still alive and see if he will continue to be a hypocrite, or if he will follow his own advice.

Not to be outdone in the expression of un-American ideas, The Washington Post had its own expert academic opinion from Jonathan Zimmerman, who professes history and education at New York University.

“Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re-election just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him,” he wrote. “Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves.”

The professor must have missed that part of his history education when Congress proposed an amendment to the Constitution to limit the president to two four-year terms, and why it did so. The 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, following FDR’s election to four terms, having been approved by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. It prevented the likely possibility of a “president for life” evolving and creating a situation like the one the Colonies suffered under that led to armed revolt. A “president for life” is not unlike a monarch.

Maybe he thinks monarchy is superior to the form of government the Founders created, the obligation of which was to guarantee basic freedoms to the people it was created to serve. If it’s oppression he wants, there are many countries to which he can relocate.

A major feature of progressivism is to limit the liberties our ancestors fought and died for in the naïve hope of creating a perfect society. Over the last century or so they have chipped away enough of the protections and guarantees that the system doesn’t work as it was designed to, and their solution is to continue to destroy it, rather than to restore it.

Cross-posted from Observations

Do Social Security and Medicare show that Obamacare can be successful?

The loyal defenders of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) keep pointing to Social Security and Medicare as examples of successful government programs whenever someone points out that government doesn’t do anything very well. The nearly perfect record of dismal performance in federal programs is a key reason that critics doubt that the massively flawed rollout of health insurance reform lovingly referred to as “Obamacare” will eventually turn into a success.

Liberal commentator Juan Williams proudly notes how “popular” both Social Security and Medicare are, citing them as having received 70 percent support among those asked whether they like the programs or not. But just because lots of people like a given federal program doesn’t mean it is a beneficial or successful program.

It is certainly true that Social Security and Medicare are very popular and proponents vigorously oppose balancing the budgets of the two programs by reducing benefits. But, again, by the “popularity” standard, programs that create dependency like welfare, food stamps, and free cell phones are successes, too.

However, reality paints a far different, and much less rosy picture of Social Security and Medicare.

These programs are not giveaways funded by taxpayers, they are funded primarily by payroll taxes on employers and the employees who benefit from them. Even so, because of mismanagement and a failure to adapt to changes in demographics, both programs are broken and broke, running annual deficits.

This is the typical sort of success we find in “successful” government programs, and we have to wonder if there isn’t a better solution to most problems the government thinks it can solve. And the answer is, “yes, there is.” The private sector can do it better, as evidenced by multitudes of successes over our 230-plus-year history.

What too often happens is that when government sees the private sector not completely solving a problem, it thinks it can do better, and a new federal program is born. But the ultimate result is that the federal government does no better at trying to solve the problem than the private sector, and often does much worse.

In contrast to the self-funding process involving the beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, other programs give handouts to both those who need help and to those who really don’t need it, and these recipients pay little or nothing in taxes to support the giveaways.

These programs are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, because government does not manage them efficiently. You can make a very good argument that government is inherently unable to manage these expansive programs competently.

Giving people money is one of the first priorities of politicians; it’s how they buy popularity, which translates to votes.

But as examples go, Social Security and Medicare, while intended to be self-sustaining without support from general tax revenue, are not examples of good government programs because they have been mismanaged and neglected.

Social Security began running a deficit in 2010, will run a deficit near $75 billion this year and the projected deficit will reach $344 billion in 2035 if something isn’t done. Social Security is beginning to fail in its ability to take care of seniors because government has failed to properly operate the program.

A panel determines Medicare reimbursements, a panel that meets in secret and relies heavily on the recommendations of the American Medical Association. Many doctors already do not treat Medicare patients because the low reimbursements don’t cover costs. Medicare providers have to balance low Medicare payments by shifting lost dollars to insured patients.

So that’s a brief glimpse into Juan Williams’ idea of successful government programs. Is this what the ACA also promises, or will it somehow be different?

Even if we believe the ACA is a good idea, even if it had been competently designed and implemented, and even if we overlook the disgraceful manner in which it was created and jammed through Congress before being read by the Democrats who enacted it, it is still a government program that supposes it will be more effective at running 18 percent of the nation’s economy, and one of the most important personal concerns Americans have, than the private sector.

And now $716 billion will be taken out of Medicare to fund Obamacare, meaning reimbursements and senior care will suffer, or the deficit will increase.

Obamacare attempts to do by force what Republicans attempted to do by choice through initiatives focused on the problem areas of the then-current system, and Democrats opposed and defeated those efforts.

Despite Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ phantasmagoric redefining the fines imposed by Obamacare as taxes, the U.S. Constitution did not intend for, and does not authorize government to commandeer one-sixth of the economy.

Those who think government is the answer to everything need to remember that the only reason there is a government of the United States of America is because the people – remember “of the people, by the people, and for the people?” – created it by assigning government limited powers in certain specific areas.

It is perverse in the extreme for the people now to be controlled by that which they voluntarily created.

Is Congress finally getting serious about spending and the debt?

The Congressional Fiscal 2014 Budget Conference Committee met for the first time last week. It is a bipartisan, bicameral committee that includes all members of the Senate Budget Committee, and the Chairman and Ranking Members on the House side, is about even politically, with 15 Democrats and 14 Republicans, but is heavily weighted towards the Senate, with 22 senators and seven representatives.

The budget reform panel was mandated in the bill that raised the debt ceiling and ended the government shutdown, and has until December 13 to find a budget compromise or face the likelihood of another government shutdown in mid-January when funding for the government runs out.

The group is reportedly focused on finding ways to replace across the board spending cuts, known as sequestration, with more sensible reductions in federal largess.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is chair of the joint committee, and in opening remarks said that the debt held by the public has doubled in just the last 5 years and is only getting worse. It’s a drag on the economy, he said. With 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day, Medicare and Social Security are going broke.

The debt, he said, hurts economic growth and job creation, and noted the message from the Congressional Budget Office, which warned that if something isn’t done soon, there will be a debt crisis. “We’ve got to get a handle on our debt, and we have got to get a handle on it now,” he stated, and the way he believes we must work our way out of this is through tax reform, including getting rid of carve-outs and kickbacks, and through a growing economy, and not by raising taxes.

The federal budget is a huge mess. In FY2013 the federal government took in revenue of $2.8 trillion, but spent $3.5 trillion, and owes $17 trillion to debt holders.

This compares to a family of four that earns $36,000 annually, but spends $45,000 each year and has accumulated debt totaling $219,000. This family clearly needs to cut down on its spending.

But the federal government cannot do that. At least not if we believe House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), who said in an interview in September on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “The cupboard is bare. There’s (sic) no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.”

Ms. Pelosi is apparently unaware that the federal government spent your tax dollars on such important things as exotic dancers, robotic squirrels, studying pig poop, and a reality TV show in India. And she also doesn’t know about the Government Accountability Office estimate of roughly $17 billion of improper Medicare payments each year, or the billions of dollars of mismanagement, corruption, and wasteful spending in federal housing subsidies, and the fraud and abuse in the food stamp program, school lunch, and child care programs, and in Veteran’s Affairs.

Maybe she’s forgotten that we pay people with our tax dollars at the NSA to record terabytes of information about us, and IRS employees to harass Republican/conservative organizations applying for non-profit status, and federal SWAT teams to kick down the doors of people whose student loans are in arrears and besiege a mine operation in Alaska to check for compliance with the Clean Water Act.

And then there are the 31 areas of spending on duplicative federal programs, spelled out in a report by the Government Accountability Office that waste billions annually, such as at least 23 different federal agencies running hundreds of programs to support renewable energy, and the 29 Department of Homeland Security contracts that partly or completely overlapped with research being done by another part of the same department.

Despite these examples of waste, fraud and abuse, and also despite the record $2.8 trillion in revenue the federal treasury collected in FY2013 – which provided President Barack Obama the opportunity to claim credit for a sizeable reduction in the annual budget deficit – Nancy Pelosi thinks that in negotiations about debt reduction “revenue needs to be on the table.”

But, no, Ms. Pelosi. You and your big spending comrades don’t get another dime.

Before the middle class or even the wealthiest Americans are further burdened with additional taxes, the federal government needs to get its act together and start operating efficiently. It must eliminate the billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse, and eliminate duplication.

Taxes should be evenly applied and high enough to support only essential government services. And, the most important word in that concept is “essential.”

Congress must get rid of carve-outs and kickbacks, eliminate pork barrel projects, stop the unconstitutional passing of Congressional responsibility to Executive Branch agencies, and restrict legislative activity to necessary and useful laws.

And the federal government must begin to operate with an attitude that demonstrates the obligation every federal worker – from the President of the United States, to Cabinet Secretaries, to Members of Congress, to the lowest paid employee – owes to the people they work for, the taxpayers. Perhaps then each of them will earn through job performance the high status some of them assume they are due “just because” they hold a high elective or appointed position.

The Tea Party, the most serious challenge to the American way of life

“The modern Tea Party doesn’t understand history, so it can’t be expected to appreciate irony. It is a mongrel movement, its leaders self-proclaimed, its agenda by turns unfathomable and incoherent, its philosophy grounded in vehemence. So how can it possibly be dangerous? Here, in no particular order, are my four Rs of the Tea Party,” writes someone named Mike Appleton, a guest blogger on a site hosted by law professor and legal analyst Jonathon Turley. First, it is racist, he states, and it is a religionist movement that is revisionist and repressive.

He is not alone in his disdain for the Tea Party. Florida 9th District Democrat Representative Alan Grayson compared the Tea Party’s popularity to that of the Ku Klux Klan, and used a burning cross to replace the T in “Tea” in an email he sent out last week.

New York Democrat Representative Charlie Rangel told the Daily Beast: “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police."

West Virginia Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller said a while back that they are "People who will do absolutely extraordinarily bad things that are extraordinarily bad for the country and not care about it." He added he believes some members of the Tea Party are "extremists" who have "hijacked" the Republican Party.

Many Republicans also sharply criticized the Tea Party faction’s behavior, including the party leadership in both the House and the Senate.

The Tea Party has been blamed for the government shut down earlier this month, and during and after Congressional wrangling over raising the debt limit to prevent the shut down, the Republicans and Tea Party were called “arsonists,” “terrorists,” “extremists” and “anarchists,” accused of “waging a War on Women,” compared to Thelma and Louise, and have been blamed for healthcare.gov’s failed rollout, as well as for Standard & Poor's downgrading the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ for the first time, and the non-existent recovery from the 2008 recession.

Such power. No wonder most Democrats and establishment Republicans fear the Tea Party.

However, after months of digging into documents in the National Archives and elsewhere a research firm has discovered that the Tea Party was also responsible for the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Fast and Furious, the Benghazi terrorist attack, as well as Eve’s temptation of Adam, the Edsel, the Black Sox scandal, New Coke, and choosing the name of the Washington Redskins, although there is a strong argument that most of these things were really Bush’s fault.

It won’t come as a shock to all those blaming the Tea Party for destroying the country that there is no such thing as “the Tea Party,” per se.

Several organizations use the words “Tea Party” in their name, but “Tea Party” signifies a movement, not a formal organization. It is a loose affiliation of national and local groups that independently set their own agendas, based upon a broad set of principles.

The original form of the name was TEA Party, for “Taxed Enough Already” Party, obviously opposing existing high taxation and proposed new taxes and higher rates on existing ones.

The broad goals of the movement are to advance the principles of limited federal government, individual freedoms, personal responsibility, free markets, and returning political power to the states and the people.

Radical stuff, that.

These are essentially the same principles sought by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution 220-odd years ago. It says more about the Tea Party critics than about the Tea Party movement itself that the critics attack the founding principles as extreme.

The Republicans/Tea Partiers who opposed Obamacare and tried to repeal or defund or delay it earned themselves the enmity of Democrats because it interfered with their strong desire to control the healthcare of every American, and also of establishment Republicans because the political price of what they did was thought to be very high for Republicans.

There may be a high political price to be paid, but that remains to be seen. However, the Tea Partiers weren’t playing politics – and in Washington, DC not playing politics may be the worst sin of all. They were standing for a principle: that Obamacare, which cedes control of 18 percent of the economy to government, is bad for the country from its dishonorable smoky backroom origins, to its passage with only Democrat support, to the idiotic “that depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” acrobatics of Chief Justice John Roberts to find it constitutional.

With only control of the House of Representatives, the Tea Partiers had no chance at repealing Obamacare and their efforts earned them great anger, though now delay seems the smart thing to do. But the decision to try to repeal, or defund, or delay was a decision based on a principle, whereas the decision not to try is a political decision.

If elected officials make a mistake, wouldn’t we rather they did so supporting a founding principle than considering political repercussions?

And what does it say about our country when taking a stand for one of America’s fundamental principles is considered radical or extreme?

Random thoughts on the passing scene

Some of those who think the American health care system needed to be trashed and reformed in the image of the Canadian system might be interested in the opinion of Bacchus Barua, a senior economist with Canada's Fraser Institute.

"Healthcare in Canada is anything but free," he states, noting that the average family of four pays more than $11,000 a year in taxes for hospital and physician care. However, he explains in an article for The American "surely such expenditure is justified if Canadians receive a stellar healthcare system in return for their tax dollars. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case."

Specifically, he lists some problems with his country’s system:

** Canada has fewer physicians, hospital beds, and diagnostic imaging scanners, and performs fewer medical interventions than its American and European counterparts.

** Canada has one of the lowest physician-to-population ratios in the developed world.

** A recent survey found that Canadians must wait an average of about 4 1/2 months for medically necessary elective procedures after referral from a general practitioner.

** The wait for diagnostic imaging technologies like MRIs is over two months on average.

** Patients in Canada are likely to wait two months or more to see a specialist, six days or more to see a doctor when sick or needing care, and four hours or more in the emergency room.

** Due to the lengthy waits, about 40,000 Canadians leave the country for treatment elsewhere each year [like the U.S.].

** Public drug plans covered only about a quarter of the new drugs approved for sale in Canada between 2004 and 2010.

He concludes: "These realities serve to dismiss the mythical notion that a Canadian-style healthcare system" is highly desirable.

We are headed in that direction.

*****

During the mortgage banking crisis the federal government pressured large banks like JPMorgan Chase to take over the bad mortgage loans sold by failing banks Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns. Now the government is fining JPMorgan $13 billion for helping the feds deal with the crisis. Can you say “shakedown?”

*****

Planned Parenthood involves itself with topics other than planning parenthood on its Facebook page, discussing topics like why some types of sexual activity are painful, transgender issues, and promoting Obamacare. Not exactly family planning.

An article on the Internet site bighealthreport.com reports that on Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page for teens it answers the question: “Is promiscuity a bad thing?” and that the organization defended doing so with the statement, “there’s nothing bad or unhealthy about having a big number of sexual partners.”

Isn’t this the mentality that has led to 40 percent of our babies being born out of wedlock, and males with multiple children from multiple “baby mamas?”

This “advice,” such as it is, increases the likelihood of HPV and cervical cancer among females, in addition to STDs. “Even the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, considered ‘a person to be at direct risk for STDs if he or she had had two or more partners during the 12 months preceding the interview’ during one of their research studies,” Big Health Report said.

The article notes “a person with low self-esteem has been shown to engage in sexual relations earlier, and engage in riskier, unprotected sex with multiple partners.” Does that sound like “nothing bad or unhealthy” to you?

Seriously? This is what we get for $542 million in federal subsidies?

*****

The “government shut down” really amounted to about 17 percent of the government being “shut down,” and that is somewhat like going to a mall that has 100 stores and finding only 83 that are open for business. So, while things were uncomfortable for some folks, it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the government actually shutting down.

Of course, if the mall management blocked off stores that otherwise would be open, things would be more uncomfortable. No sensible businessperson would do that, but a petty, politics-dominated administration would, and did.

*****

The emotional push to raise the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour for those working the least skilled jobs in the fast food industry puts the spotlight on a fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics.

Advocates think the wage ought to be based upon concerns totally unrelated to the job and the business the job is a part of. “I flip burgers at Burger King, and can’t support my family on what I make, so raise the minimum wage,” is the mentality behind this ill-advised movement. In their mind, if a PhD. in English, mathematics, biochemistry, or any other field somehow ended up ringing up Happy Meals at MacDonald’s, the wage ought to be based upon his/her training, or some arbitrary “living wage” concept.

A job is worth whatever the employer says it is worth. Anyone who doesn’t like the wage is free to not take the job, or to look for a better one. If the employer can’t find people to work at the selected wage, he or she will have to raise it. Anyone who tries to find a better job, but can’t, needs to pipe down and do the job the employer allowed them to have until they can find a better one.

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How many of America’s “poor” are like this lady and her husband?

The “progressives”: Advancing un-American ideas for fun and profit

Do Social Security and Medicare show that Obamacare can be successful?

Is Congress finally getting serious about spending and the debt?

The Tea Party, the most serious challenge to the American way of life

Random thoughts on the passing scene

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