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Are entitlements corrupting America?

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Author Topic: Are entitlements corrupting America?  (Read 6372 times)
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« Reply #30 on: January 12, 2013, 06:09:27 pm »

Section 8 housing voucher distribution canceled after thousands waiting in line get out of control

A chaotic scene erupted at the Taylor Human Services Center when the crowd waiting for a Section 8 housing voucher distribution got out of control.

The center is located at Eureka and Lange Roads. That's on Eureka, between Beech Daly and Inkster.

Police say thousands of people from all over the area were at the center. Many were homeless, single moms, or disabled.  They were hoping to get help paying for their housing from the government.

"There was elderly, disabled people, pregnant single women. They were here for help, to get their Section 8 vouchers.  It just shows you what a desperate need... some were here since yesterday," said Rhianna Rodriguez.

7 Action News is being told there were 1,000 vouchers available and 5,000 people showed up trying to get one.

The crowd had grown overnight as more and more people arrived.  Witnesses say the line stretched for a mile down Lange Road.

Police say, when the time came for the vouchers to be distributed, there was a mad rush for the door.  Officers tried to control the crowd, but couldn't.

Officers had to shut down several lanes of Eureka Road until the situation could be brought under control. The road is now reopened.

Several people were arrested. The rest were sent home. Today's distribution has been canceled and will be rescheduled.

"There was a lady with an oxygen tank. She was elderly. When they told everybody they had to go home and they weren't going to help, she was in tears," said Rodriguez.

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/wayne_county/section-8-housing-voucher-distribution-canceled-after-thousands-waiting-in-line-get-out-of-control#ixzz2HoG9Cfab
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« Reply #31 on: February 15, 2013, 04:27:57 am »

Is It Fair For People On Food Stamps To Buy Prime Rib And Lobster While Working Families Barely Survive?

Should we all quit working and jump on board the Obama gravy train?  Of course I am being facetious, but when you are barely surviving does there come a point when it just becomes easier to give up and totally rely on the government?  Today, the federal government runs nearly 80 different means-tested welfare programs, and many state and local governments have their own welfare programs on top of that.  If you become an expert on those programs and you learn how to game the system, can you live more comfortably than someone that lives honestly and works as hard as they can and yet still makes less than 10 dollars an hour?  Now, right from the outset of this article, let me make it abundantly clear that I do not believe that most people are abusing the system.  As I have written about over and over, the number of Americans living in poverty is rapidly increasing because there are not enough jobs.  There are not enough jobs because we are shipping millions of them out of the country to the other side of the globe, and we are also losing millions of jobs to technology.  There have always been those that need our help, and because of the foolish decisions that we have made as a nation, the ranks of the poor will continue to expand.  But it is also true that there are some people out there that are very brazenly abusing the system.  For example, is it really fair for people on food stamps to buy prime rib and lobster while many working families barely survive?  People like that are taking advantage of their fellow Americans, and they are making it harder for the people that really need the help to be able to get it.

Unfortunately, we are rapidly becoming an "entitlement society".  Close to half the country lives in a home that receives some sort of monetary benefits from the federal government each month at this point.

In particular, the food stamp program has experienced explosive growth in recent years.  Since Obama has been president, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by more than 49 percent, and more than 11,000 people a day have enrolled in the food stamp program since Obama entered the White House.

And if you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

Will we all eventually be on food stamps?

Actually, the truth is that there are millions upon millions of hard working American families that are desperately trying to make it on their own and that don't want to become financial dependents of the federal government.  Unfortunately, it can be a little disheartening when you are barely making it from month to month and yet you see others using government benefit cards to buy luxury items.

The other day my wife came across a discussion on Facebook that really caught her attention.  I thought that I would share with you all the post that got that discussion going.  As far as I can determine, this woman shared what she believed she actually saw at her local grocery store, but I have no way of determining if this story is true or not.  But I have seen quite a few similar stories of food stamp abuse in the past.  Either way, I think the following story will be good to help spark a conversation about whether our current system is broken or not.  All of the names have been removed so as to protect the identity of the woman that originally posted this on Facebook...

    Okay...so, I'm going to go on a rant for a minute...just to get it off my chest...

    **** & I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things because we were getting low...sooo, we pick up our 40% off chicken and buy one get two free items and proceed to checkout.

    There is a woman ahead of us with a child about 4 years old. The woman, I couldn't help but notice....had beautiful fingernails, clearly professionally done...and I also noticed her brand new IPHONE...which she was talking on, and I think that is rude while you are being checked out. Her little girl was commenting on the TWO live lobsters in a bag on the checkout, asked if it was going to hurt when they get cooked, her mom brushed her off...at that time I took a look at what else she had on the counter...A HUGE roast, sirloin tips, shrimp, beef ribs and pork ribs...only the prime cuts... I thought to myself....mmmmmm someone is having a yummy dinner and must have a great job as I could not afford these things (not that I'd get my nails done anyway)....

    So...the cashier gives her a total and what does she pull out of her wallet but a BENEFIT card!!!!!!! I had all I could do to contain myself...

    Sometimes people need help, and I'm okay with that, and those who need it should get it....BUT...if you can afford the latest IPHONE and fancy nails then why in the world are the taxpayers paying for your LOBSTER?!!!! If she really needed help and food, she should have been buying the "sale" items...40% off chicken, buy one get one free cheese ravioli...you know, like the rest of us working class have to buy!

    It especially makes me mad because there ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED HELP and can't get it...My son and his girlfriend and brand new baby aren't eligible for an ounce of help...they tried, she works days and he works nights so that they don't have to pay for day-care, they use inexpensive diapers and try to save money anyway they can, they struggle to make ends meet and to pay for their straight talk phones and to boot are paying off college loans...but they supposedly make too much...c'mon, really, he works at McDonalds and she works in a nursing home...lets be real here...those are the type that SHOULD get help...UGHHHH Our system is broken and something needs to be done about it!!!

    There, that's my rant...kudo's to you if you managed to read the whole thing as I know it was an awful long rant....Gotta go work now, Wink Thanks for listening.

In response to her story, dozens of people posted comments.  Quite a few people said that they had seen similar things where they lived.

And the truth is that food stamps are accepted just about wherever you look these days.  Just check out this shocking article: "Obama’s food-stamp nation: ‘We accept EBT’ signs are everywhere".

So is this kind of thing fair?

If not, what can be done about it?

What everybody can agree upon is that the number of food stamp recipients is absolutely exploding.  The following is from a recent CNS news article...

    When Obama entered office in January 2009 there were 31,939,110 Americans receiving food stamps.  As of November 2012—the most recent data available—there were 47,692,896 Americans enrolled, an increase of 49.3 percent.

But this didn't just start under Obama.  Back in the year 2000, there were just 17 million Americans on food stamps.

30 million more have been added to the program since then.

And of course food stamps is not the only federal welfare program that is being abused.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there has been a tremendous amount of abuse in the free cell phone program as well.

    The U.S. government spent about $2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven't proved they are eligible to receive them.

    The Lifeline program—begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren't cut off from jobs, families and emergency services—is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless-phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service.

A lot of people refer to those free cell phones as "Obamaphones", but the truth is that the program has been going on for a long time.  It just has accelerated greatly under Obama.

So what is the solution to all of this?

Well, what we really need are a lot more jobs, but in the State of the Union address last night Obama simply rehashed a lot of the same tired proposals that he and our former presidents have been promoting for years.

If we continue to do the same things that we have been doing, we are going to continue to get the same results.

There is a reason why the percentage of the civilian labor force in the United States that is employed has been steadily declining every single year since 2006.  We keep pursuing foolish policies, and those policies are steadily destroying our economy.

Sadly, many of our politicians appear to be engaged in some form of "doublethink".  The things that they tell us will solve our problems are actually the things that are making our problems even worse.

For example, Barack Obama says that we need even more "free trade agreements" and that we need to integrate our economy into the emerging one world economic system even more deeply.

But as I have shown in article after article, the "free trade" agenda of the global elite has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. businesses and millions of good paying U.S. jobs.

For much more on this, please see the following article: "55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America".

And of course Obama once promised that he would never "rest" until he had fixed our employment problems, but that hasn't exactly been the truth either.  The following is from a recent article by Dan Gainor...

    Back in 2009, the president promised never to "rest" until the job situation was fixed. Nearly four years later, he's done a lot of resting.

    According to The Weekly Standard, Pres. Obama has had 83 vacation days overall and Factcheck.org says he took 26 of those in 2009. That means the president has taken at least 57 vacation days since his vow not to "rest."

But hey, he needs his rest.  Life is rough.  U.S. taxpayers only spend about a billion dollars a year on the Obamas.  How is he supposed to scrape by on such limited resources?

Meanwhile, Americans are still incredibly pessimistic about the economy.  The following is what one recent survey found...

    Eight in 10 Americans are skeptical that career and employment opportunities will be better for the next generation.
    More than half of Americans say the economy will not fully recover from the 2007-2009 recession for another six years; 29% believe the economy will never fully recover.
    73% of Americans were directly impacted by the recession: individuals surveyed had either lost a job themselves or a family member/close relative had been out work because of the economic downturn.
    The majority of survey participants said college would become unaffordable for most young Americans.
    56% reported having fewer savings than before the recession.
    More than half of those who were laid off or lost a job said they cut back on medical treatment or doctor visits.
    40% of Americans have borrowed money from family or friends.
    Nearly 25% of participants said they have sought professional help for stress or depression.

And as you can see from the charts in this article, U.S. businesses remain very pessimistic about the future of the economy as well.

Unfortunately, those that are pessimistic about the economy have very good reasons to be so.

And as bad as things are right now, they are going to be getting much, much worse.

That means that millions more Americans are going to be wanting to sign up for food stamps and other welfare programs.

But what will happen someday when the safety net breaks and all of those welfare programs start getting cut back dramatically?

What kind of riots will we see in major U.S. cities when the international community insists that the U.S. implement its own version of "austerity" in response to a massive debt crisis?

Will we eventually end up just like Greece and Spain or even worse?

Please share this article with as many people as you can, and please feel free to leave your thoughts on this article above by posting a comment below...

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/is-it-fair-for-people-on-food-stamps-to-buy-prime-rib-and-lobster-while-working-families-barely-survive
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« Reply #32 on: February 15, 2013, 09:21:10 am »

Yeah, while it makes me upset too seeing people on food stamps buying all these luxury items et al, at the same time I'll admit if I had these EBT cards from the government, I too would probably start getting complacent and act like all the riches of the world are in my hands.

Gal 5:17  For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Rom 7:22  For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
Rom 7:23  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Rom 7:24  O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?


Yeah, just b/c you're a born again Christian doesn't mean you are exempt from these temptations.

1Cor 10:14  Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

Mat 4:1  Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
Mat 4:2  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Mat 4:3  And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
Mat 4:4  But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.


There will come a time one day, potentially in the near future, that when the government pulls the plug on these "benefits", there's not going to be alot of happy people.

John 6:26  Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.
Joh 6:27  Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

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« Reply #33 on: February 15, 2013, 11:39:26 am »

Yeah, while it makes me upset too seeing people on food stamps buying all these luxury items et al, at the same time I'll admit if I had these EBT cards from the government, I too would probably start getting complacent and act like all the riches of the world are in my hands.


Id take some..
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« Reply #34 on: February 26, 2013, 04:54:19 pm »

Jeremiah 9:4-6 KJV
Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the Lord .

 Good thing you Brothers know the Lord!
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Joshua 22:5 KJV
But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.


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« Reply #35 on: March 12, 2013, 06:16:27 am »

Record 47,791,996 People On Food Stamps In December '12

On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture quietly released new statistics related to the food stamps program...The numbers reveal, in 2012, the food stamps program was the biggest it's ever been...

http://www.onenewsnow.com/latest-headlines-from-the-web/2013/03/11/americans-on-food-stamps
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« Reply #36 on: August 24, 2013, 07:02:20 am »

If You Could Make More Money By Going On Welfare Instead Of Working, Would You Do It?

If you could stay home and relax all day and actually make more money than you do at your current job, would you do it?  That sounds crazy, but this is actually a very real dilemma for millions upon millions of Americans.  According to a shocking new study that was just released by the Cato Institute, people on welfare are actually better off than minimum wage workers in 35 U.S. states.  And in 13 states, those on welfare actually do better than those making $15 an hour.  So why bother?  It is very difficult to find a job in this economy, especially a good one.  As I mentioned yesterday, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" since Barack Obama has been president have been part-time jobs.  Why slave away flipping burgers, stocking shelves for some retail giant or working for some temp agency when you could just sit home and make more money collecting government checks?  Yes, there is definitely a minority of Americans that hate the idea of becoming dependent on the government and would never want to take advantage of the system like that, but that minority seems to be shrinking.  At this point, about half the country gets money from the government each month anyway, so why not collect "your share"?  If someone is offering to give you something for free, it is only human nature to be at least a little bit tempted.  And right now the federal government is making it extremely tempting to give up on work entirely and become a permanent welfare check collector.

(Read More....) http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-you-could-make-more-money-by-going-on-welfare-instead-of-working-would-you-do-it
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« Reply #37 on: August 24, 2013, 09:48:34 am »

Secularism is what's corrupting this nation....Hedonism is the obvious result of pushing Secularism....Jersey Shore lifestyle is the ideal lifestyle for secularism.

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« Reply #38 on: August 24, 2013, 03:07:18 pm »

Secularism is what's corrupting this nation....Hedonism is the obvious result of pushing Secularism....Jersey Shore lifestyle is the ideal lifestyle for secularism.



Or Idolatry - this "consumerism" economy came about in the 1980's has all but put the final nail in the global economy collapse that Satan's minions planned a long time ago. This "consumerism" economy is pretty much rooted in how the economy is driven by people in America going out and buying things(to their hearts' desires, pretty much).

Whatever happened to "Godly contentment is great gain", and being content when what we have?

From what the article posted above implies, it looks like slowly but surely tempting and getting people on government welfare is yet another step toward the MOB system. 5 years ago when I got layed off from my job, I thought about doing just that, but my parents strongly advised me not to, which is why I am very thankful they did so.
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« Reply #39 on: August 30, 2013, 10:15:58 am »

Amen! I'm here to testify after 15 weeks of being unemployed the Lord has taken care of me just fine!

Matthew 6:19-20 KJV

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

Matthew 6:25-34 KJV

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
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« Reply #40 on: August 30, 2013, 01:11:37 pm »

Thank you Father in Heaven.
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« Reply #41 on: October 26, 2013, 07:07:01 am »

25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed

The 25 statistics that you are about to read are solid proof that the middle class in America is being systematically wiped out.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world.  It seemed like almost everyone owned a home, had a couple of nice vehicles and could provide a very comfortable lifestyle for their families.  Sadly, that has all changed.  In America today, prices are rising at a very brisk pace but incomes are not.  There aren’t nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore, and most of the jobs that are being “created” are jobs that pay very little.  The largest employer in America is Wal-Mart, and the second largest employer is actually a temp agency (Kelly Services).  In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families endlessly pile up more debt, and millions of other American families find themselves forced to turn to the government for help.  At this point, more than 49 percent of all Americans receive benefits from the federal government each month.  The percentage of Americans that cannot financially take care of themselves is rising every single year, and our independence is being whittled away as we become increasingly dependent on the government.  Unfortunately, our politicians continue to stand aside and do nothing as our jobs are shipped overseas, inflation steals our purchasing power and the middle class continues to shrink.  The following are 25 stats that prove that the American Dream is being systematically destroyed…
 
1. According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program.
 
2. The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.
 
3. An increasing number of employers are encouraging their low wage employees to supplement their wages by going on government welfare programs.  For example, McDonald’s workers that need help making ends meet are being instructed to go on food stamps…
 

McDonald’s workers who are unable to pay their bills or stay above the poverty line should find help from food pantries or enlist in government benefit programs instead of seeking higher wages, according to a company resource line meant to help employees.
 
Nancy Salgado has worked for the fast-food corporation for over 10 years yet still earns $8.25 an hour, barely more than the $7.25 federal minimum wage. With help from the worker’s rights group Low Pay Is Not Ok, she phoned the company’s employee hotline, known as McResource, attempting to find some answers on how to improve her situation.
 
A recording of the call was made available to CNN, which reported that Salgado asked the helpline operator multiple questions regarding how McDonalds would help her pay her heating bill, buy groceries, and whether she could afford to help pay for her sister’s medical treatment.
 
Despite never asking how much money Salgado earned per hour or asking how many hours a week she worked, the McDonalds representative said she “definitely should be able to qualify for both food stamps and heating assistance.”
 
4. Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
 
5. Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.
 
6. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.
 
7. Right now the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
 
8. Ordinary Americans are being priced out of the housing market.  Today, nearly half of all home purchases are all-cash deals.
 
9. The homeownership rate in the United States is now at the lowest level it has been in nearly 18 years.
 
10. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is at an all-time record high.
 
11. U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
 
12. Every single day, thousands of Americans are receiving letters in the mail informing them that their old health insurance policies have been canceled.  According to a recent Kaiser Health News article, some companies have already sent out hundreds of thousands of cancellation notices…
 

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state.  Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.
 
13. Those that are losing their current health insurance policies will have to replace them with new policies that are often much more expensive.  According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, 16 million people could ultimately have their health insurance policies canceled because of Obamacare…
 

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
 
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law’s benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
 
14. Back in 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance.
 
15. More Americans than ever find themselves forced to turn to the government for help with health care.  At this point, 82.4 million Americans live in a home where at least one person is enrolled in the Medicaid program.
 
16. The U.S. labor force participation rate is at a 35 year low.
 
17. Only 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point.
 
18. It is hard to believe, but in America today one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency.
 
19. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.
 
20. After accounting for inflation, right now 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.
 
21. Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
 
22. At this point, almost half of all public school students in America come from low income homes.
 
23. The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
 
24. Right now, one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.
 
25. An increasing number of Americans do not even believe that they have a pleasant retirement to look forward to.  One recent survey found that the percentage of middle class Americans that “plan to work until they die” is now higher than ever.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/25-signs-that-the-american-dream-is-being-systematically-destroyed
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« Reply #42 on: October 26, 2013, 12:58:27 pm »

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25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed

"The American Dream"? Seriously - when this came about in the 1980's, it SHOULD have been called "The American Nightmare" instead! Debt played a LARGE role in all of this, always has! No wonder why the divorce rate has skyrocketed since then!
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« Reply #43 on: October 26, 2013, 07:38:11 pm »

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/362259/print
October 26, 2013 1:00 AM

The Republican Embrace of the Welfare State
The establishment GOP has accepted progressivism’s central premise.


Charles Krauthammer has come to my rescue. You see, I’ve been on the receiving end of some spirited reaction since asserting in last weekend’s column that what we commonly call the Republican establishment — i.e., not all individual Republicans but GOP leadership — “is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty.” The statement may have been provocative in the sense of expressing a truth that people on the political Right prefer not to talk about. But it was not controversial because it is indisputably true.

This week, Dr. Krauthammer, Washington’s most influential expositor of mainstream GOP thought, obligingly spared me the need to prove my point. He gave as clear an account of the modern Republican conception of “conservatism” as you will find. Fittingly, he did it on the program of progressive commentator and comedian Jon Stewart. Today’s smartest Republicans, self-aware enough to know their core views deviate significantly from those of conservatives in the tradition of Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan, are more likely to say what they think to Jon Stewart. His audience is apt to be receptive, maybe even won over, by a mature progressivism portrayed as what conservatives really think. It is not likely to go over as well with, say, readers of National Review.

Stewart claimed that conservatives are anti-government. Initially, Krauthammer appeared to reject this caricature, replying, “The conservative idea is not that government has no role.” But, alas, when he got around to what the proper role of government is, Krauthammer sounded more like Stewart than Buckley.

To begin with, he largely buys the caricature. It would have been credible, he told Stewart, to have argued that conservatives were anti-government “in the Thirties, when conservatives opposed the New Deal.”

That’s just wrong. Conservatives who opposed the New Deal were not anti-government. They believed, as they believe today, in constitutionally defined, limited government. And “limited” does not mean “small” — where the Constitution assigns the central government an authority, such as national security, it must be as big and strong as necessary to execute that authority.

Having accepted Stewart’s central premise — namely, that what Stewart called the “responsibility of governance” embraces the massive, centralized welfare state — Krauthammer pronounced that today’s conservatives unquestionably accepted the great achievements of liberalism — the achievements of the New Deal, of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. The idea that you rescue the elderly and don’t allow the elderly to enter into destitution is a consensual idea [accepted by] conservatives, at least the mainstream of conservatives.

With due respect to Charles, no, the New Deal and the centralized welfare state that is its progeny is accepted by the mainstream of Republicans. What Charles describes, moreover, is as fanciful a portrayal of what the New Deal did as it is of what conservatives believe.

Conservatives, including most of those who were against the New Deal, are not opposed to social welfare for the truly needy. We believe, however, in the constitutional framework, which reserves the promotion of social welfare to the states and the people. Social-welfare policy is not one of what Madison described as “the few and defined” powers delegated to the central government. It is, instead, a paradigmatic power of the sovereign states because, as Madison elaborated, it “concern[s ] the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” The Constitution thus enables Congress to tax and spend for the general welfare — on public goods, related to Congress’s carefully enumerated Article I powers, that benefit all Americans; not on redistributionist schemes that fleece some citizens for the benefit of others.

This is not just sound constitutional federalism, it is good policy. Private charity is reliably based on need; it will target the people whose straits are truly dire. Government, to the contrary, is a poor delivery system for social welfare because redistributions of wealth determined by politicians using the compulsory force of law are inevitably made based on political considerations — buying votes — rather than need.

If welfare policy is made at the state level, there are important disciplines in the equation that can prevent the programs from bankrupting the state and unduly punishing productivity. Economic conditions vary widely in a nation of our size, so welfare programs are best designed and run at the local level, by elected officials directly accountable to the people who live with the consequences — officials who can easily alter the programs if conditions change. States know they are in competition with each other, and if wealth redistribution is too onerous in one state, people and businesses can move to others. States and localities also may not print money, and they have incentives (and often constitutional requirements) to balance their budgets that do not exist at the federal level. At the state level, there can be a sensible balancing of “internal order, improvement, and prosperity.”

This is not so at the federal level, as the last 80 years have affirmed. Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are not, as Krauthammer contends, “great achievements of liberalism.” They are prosperity killers — and inevitably so. In part, this is because they have little if anything to do with what Krauthammer describes as the “consensual idea” that “you rescue the elderly and don’t allow the elderly to enter into destitution.” If that were the idea that we all agreed on — and assuming for argument’s sake that we similarly agreed that destitution was a concern of the central government — we would establish a transparent welfare program. That is, we would define what “destitute” is and enact a tax commensurate with what was necessary to provide reasonable relief — structured in a manner that gave people incentives to avoid or escape destitution.

The New Deal and its Great Society successor programs, by contrast, are frauds designed to create permanent dependency on government (and fealty to the party of government). They pretend to be insurance programs, not for the destitute but for all Americans, who pay “contributions” and “premiums” into “trust funds” and derive an “entitlement” to “benefits.” By loading everyone onto the gravy train, even if that meant the poor and middle class would subsidize the rich and near rich, progressives hoped to ensure that no one would object to the arrangement — people would just expect to get theirs in due course.

Unlike transparent, accountable welfare programs, however, these “entitlements” never had a sound relation between what was paid in and what was to be paid out. The government, meanwhile, raided the “trust funds” for its sundry profligacies, so the accounts we are deceived into thinking we are paying into — and which would be there for us, compounding interest, if these were not government redistribution programs — do not exist. The result is unfunded liabilities that, even in rosy-scenario analyses, exceed $60 trillion dollars over the next 75 years — around 400 percent of GDP. (Senate Republicans estimate that Obamacare adds another $17 trillion to that tab.)

It is pointless to try calculating a more realistic (i.e., much higher) figure because it is inconceivable that what has been promised could ever be paid. As a retirement program, Social Security is a lousy deal for “beneficiaries.” As health-care programs, Medicare and Medicaid (and soon, Obamacare) combine farcical market practices with poor-quality treatment. And even if these worsening problems could be remedied, the federal welfare state’s central flaw is incorrigible: In the absence of any constitutional grounding, supporters contend that retirement insurance and health care are fundamental rights that the central government must guarantee, not commodities subject to the assumptions of ordinary commerce (i.e., individual choice, controlled by one’s personal resources and priorities). Inexorably, this results in the one-way political ratchet that plagues all redistributionist schemes: Our permanent political class’s sustaining itself by promising more benefits to ever more people and demagoguing all who resist or attempt even the slightest reforms.

There is, furthermore, an equally destructive corollary. Once one accepts the premise of federal control over these matters of social welfare, there is no principled case against federal control over any matters of social welfare. Every aspect of life becomes potentially subject to central-government regulation. And so it has, through a metastasizing federal code and bureaucracy that regulates everything from cradles to graves.

In the Framers’ construct, the states would experiment and compete, developing best practices — or at least practices that best suited the conditions and sensibilities of the local communities. By contrast, there is no disciplining or escaping Leviathan. And if, as is inevitable, federal officials expand their outlandish schemes and promise favored constituencies more than they can deliver, they just borrow or print ever more money: Government borrows from its tapped-out self, monetizing its debts, degrading our currency to reward sloth and punish thrift even as it steals from future generations.

What Dr. Krauthammer calls “the great achievements of liberalism” have undermined the Burkean intergenerational trust at the core of conservatism. As I argued a couple of years ago, in jousting with Pete Wehner, another very smart, mainstream Republican who seeks to redefine conservatism to accommodate the modern welfare state, conservatives revere an enriching cultural inheritance that binds generations past, present, and future. It obliges us to honor our traditions and our Constitution, preserve liberty, live within our means, and enhance the prosperity of those who come after us. The welfare state is a betrayal of our constitutional traditions: It is redistributionist gluttony run amok, impoverishing future generations to satisfy our insatiable contemporaries.

The Republican establishment aspires to preserve the Washington-based entitlement culture. Charles Krauthammer thus suggested that Jon Stewart look to Paul Ryan as the best exemplar of today’s “conservatism.” It made perfect sense. Representative Ryan, as I’ve observed before, has supported creation of the Bush prescription-drug entitlement (adding trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities to our burden), TARP, Keynesian “stimulus” spending, and the auto-company bailout.

Ryan’s proposals are markedly better than Obama’s. Though AWOL on Social Security, he would restructure Medicare to allow younger people the option of transferring into a federally supervised private voucher system. He would also preserve Medicaid, but block-grant it to give states more spending autonomy. And he’d reduce the rate of projected federal spending such that we’d add “only” another $3 trillion to the national debt over the next eight years — less than half as much as the president proposes.

This is not constitutional conservatism. It is moderate statism. Or, to repeat, the current Republican establishment “is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty.”
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« Reply #44 on: October 27, 2013, 04:55:51 am »

"The American Dream"? Seriously - when this came about in the 1980's, it SHOULD have been called "The American Nightmare" instead! Debt played a LARGE role in all of this, always has! No wonder why the divorce rate has skyrocketed since then!

That "dream" has been promoted for a lot longer than the 80's.

I'd say it really got it's start when the military started coming home from WW2. That's when the US housing boom started and many land developers took off with their push to sell shiny, new homes to the military because they were getting money from the government when they returned home.

Debt has always been the M.O. of bankers and has always been their plan. They "get gain" through usury (when we are exhorted to "freely give"), which is actually a sin under the law. The US even has usury laws on the books, but it's not really enforced, and the bankers are allowed to get gain from people at absurdly high rates these days. A personal loan/credit card with 24% interest? The way they "compound interest", that is outright robbery!

It's definitely the love of money, as why else would somebody do such a stupid thing as charge low income people, those who can least afford it, higher interest rates? They use the excuse of "rewarding" a person for making payments on time and in full with lower rates, but that mentality isn't consistent down the financial ability line. It SHOULD be just the opposite, where the rich pay the highest rates, and those with good credit would be "rewarded" in some other way, but interest rates would be the same for everybody.
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« Reply #45 on: November 01, 2013, 09:09:02 am »

Wal-Mart to Widows Will Feel U.S. Food Stamp Cuts From Today

Annie Crist says she dreads telling her two daughters that cuts in food-stamp benefits taking effect today means less chicken and fewer hamburgers for dinner.

And with deeper cuts looming as part of a possible U.S. budget deal, Crist and other recipients may feel an even greater pinch -- along with retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT:US), Target Corp. (TGT:US) and Kroger Co. (KR:US)

“I don’t bother them or worry them with adult issues or adult problems,” Crist, a 30-year-old self-employed babysitter in Lancaster, Ohio, southeast of Columbus, said in a telephone interview. “But if they ask me, ‘Well, why can’t we get this? We always get this,’ how am I going to explain that?”

Food-stamp spending reached a record $78.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, due in part to a temporary boost in benefits passed as part of the 2009 economic stimulus that expires today. Lawmakers battling over U.S. farm and budget policy are looking to cut deeper by tightening eligibility rules that could drop as many as 3 million people from the program.

With an estimated 8 percent of shoppers using food stamps, the impact will probably be felt most acutely by discount retailers such as Dollar General Corp. (DG:US), Family Dollar Stores Inc. (FDO:US) and Wal-Mart, said Bryan Gildenberg, chief knowledge officer of Kantar Retail.

“You’ll find the effects will happen quite quickly,” Gildenberg said. “These are shoppers that have probably already allocated their spending down to the dollar.”

Few Extras

Crist said her budget leaves little room for extras. The $547 a month she received in food benefits for herself and her daughters, ages 13 and 8, will become $497 today, as a roughly 5 percent benefit cut takes effect nationwide. With utilities and other expenses, she said she will be spending less on fresh meats, fruits and vegetables at the grocery store.

Grocers say they’re watching the situation closely. “We’re a little concerned about the food stamp cut, I can tell you that,” Dennis Eidson, president and CEO of Spartan Stores Inc. (SPTN:US), a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based grocer, said in a conference call Oct. 24. “That could be a meaningful event for us.”

Kroger, the biggest U.S. grocery chain, said it doesn’t expect the food-stamp drop to affect its sales. “Customers may shift to spending more of their cash on food and less cash on other things,” Keith Dailey, a spokesman for the Cincinnati-based company, said in an e-mail.

Monthly enrollment for what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program peaked last December at 47.8 million. It was 47.6 million in July, according to the most-recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up from 28.2 million five years ago, when the program’s annual cost was $37.6 billion.

Feel Impact

“All retailers who sell food are likely to feel the impact of cuts, since people receiving assistance often don’t have excess income to make up the difference,” said Jennifer Bartashus, senior analyst for food retailing for Bloomberg Industries in Skillman, New Jersey.

Nearly half of all food stamp redemptions are in big-box supercenters such as Wal-Mart or Target while most of the rest are in supermarkets, she said. Of the total $72.9 billion in food stamps redeemed, $36.2 billion went to supercenters like Wal-Mart and Target and $25 billion to supermarkets, she said.

Stores with a higher portion of low-income customers will lose some revenue, though it could partially be offset by those trading down to discount-style stores, Bartashus said. The cuts could change shopping patterns for those on assistance toward store-brand items, which are generally cheaper than name-brand, she said.

Benefit Seen

Target spokeswoman Amy Joiner said in an e-mail that “we are monitoring the situation but aren’t going to discuss or speculate on impact to the business.”

Asked for comment, a Wal-Mart spokesman referred to remarks made by Chief Executive Officer Bill Simon on Oct. 15. Simon told analysts that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company, which is the biggest U.S. food-seller and retailer, may see some benefits from the reduction.

“Price will become more important” as food-stamp recipients pay more nutrition costs out of pocket. “And when price is more important, we’re more relevant,” Simon said.

rest+page 2: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-11-01/wal-mart-to-widows-will-feel-u-dot-s-dot-food-stamp-cuts-starting-today
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« Reply #46 on: November 01, 2013, 10:09:49 am »

I'd say it really got it's start when the military started coming home from WW2. That's when the US housing boom started and many land developers took off with their push to sell shiny, new homes to the military because they were getting money from the government when they returned home.

I’ve heard about that from an old-timer. It’s not exactly in the history books. He also said that that program profoundly changed the social structure of America. By building lots of smaller houses in teeny subdivisions, the nuclear family was born. Prior to that, the standard was multiple generations under the same roof on a much larger chunk of land, like the Waltons. People in other countries still maintain a “family house” as a fallback for economic hardship. American culture seems to have abandoned this idea.
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« Reply #47 on: November 01, 2013, 02:25:44 pm »

Levitt & Sons of New York is considered one of the founders of "suburbia" subdivision concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York

Quote
...Levittown gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. founded by Abraham Levitt on August 2, 1929, which built the district as a planned community between 1947 and 1951. Sons William and Alfred served as the company's president and chief architect and planner, respectively. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country.[citation needed] William Levitt, who assumed control of Levitt and Sons in 1954, is considered the father of modern suburbia...

This not really new building concept, which was based on the love of money, moved people off family farms and into small houses with small land lots, forming what we have today, the "subdivision". My dad's house is in that style, less than 800 square feet on a lot of 50x150 feet, built in the mid 50's. My grandparents bought it new back when my dad was in high school. It sits in an older subdivision that's full of that type house. It's kind of strange in that the same area, though a few miles west of my dad's house, was the area my mother's dad grew up as a kid when it was all medium size family farms back then.
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« Reply #48 on: November 01, 2013, 03:17:45 pm »

That scourge got worse with the development of the duplex, then quadraplex. I wonder if apartments were popular back then. It definitely expanded the slumlord profession…all driven by greed. America went from recognizing the need for “elbow room” in the 1800’s to putting up with this. I suspect that office cubical farms arose for the same reason.
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« Reply #49 on: November 01, 2013, 03:33:49 pm »

The original Levitt homes were rentals. Then they got into what we know today as a general home builder of what's known as "spec homes". which are homes that are built with the intent to sell, without a buyer, "spec"ulating that you will find a buyer for the new home you just built.

If I'm not mistaken, the "apartment" dates to at least Roman times. They apparently had many apartment type residences in Rome, some 3 stories I think.

Seems like it's a living concept that is a result of people wanting to live close to resources, and towns grew out of that, and of course out of the love of money, people looked to capitalize on people wanting to be close to a town. The greedy logic is, Why rent a house on an acre of land, when you can rent four apartments on a half acre? More dollars per square foot of real estate, and all your tenants are in one location, instead of spread out over several square miles. So yeah, I do think the "office cubicle" is of the same mentality, a modern offshoot of looking to cut costs and increase profit.
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« Reply #50 on: November 02, 2013, 11:33:09 am »

Food stamp cuts create high demand for food bank supplies

The holiday season is approaching in November and December, the time of year when most food banks receive more than half of their donations for the year. The flip side: More people turn to food banks for help during that time, too.

Food banks across the country, stretched thin in the aftermath of the recession, are bracing for more people coming through their doors in the wake of cuts to the federal food stamp program.

Food stamp benefits to 47 million Americans were cut starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without new funding from a deadlocked Congress.

Under the program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, or SNAP, a family of four that gets $668 per month in benefits will find that amount cut by $36.

"It may not sound like a lot but to a person like me, it is," says Annie Crisp, 30, a single mother of two girls in Lancaster, Ohio. "It's not just a number."

She says she received a little less than $550 a month in food stamps and now will receive $497. Crisp, a babysitter who brings home about $830 a month, says the food stamps help her buy her family fresh fruits, vegetables and meat.

Crisp worries now that she may end up trying to supplement her family's groceries by going to a food bank or cutting into her electric or gas money for the month. The cut, she says, also means she will have to buy more canned fruits and vegetables, forgoing her daughters' favorite fruit, kiwi, and buying packaged meat.

Food banks served 37 million Americans in 2010, up from 25 million in 2006, according to the most recent numbers from Feeding America, an umbrella organization for 200 food banks nationwide.

"Our network is already overburdened with a a tremendous increase in need," says Maura Daly, a Feeding America spokeswoman.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, says the cuts will hurt more than 1.8 million Ohioans. "This is taking food off the plate and out of the mouths of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors," she says.

She says seniors, children, people with disabilities and veterans will be among the groups hardest hit by the cuts because they are the groups most reliant on food stamps.

The saving grace, she says, is that the holiday season is approaching in November and December, the time of year when most food banks receive more than half of their donations during the year. The flip side is that more people turn to food banks for help during that time.

Michael Flood, CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, says the full impact is still too soon to tell, but he says the cuts are immediate, which means that the 656 agencies that run pantries and soup kitchens in his county may start to see more people in the next few weeks. The problem, he says, is that food banks will not have sufficient food to meet a great demand.

He says agencies will do one of two things when their food supply runs low: They will serve a set number of people and cut off the line when they run out of food baskets or they will put less food in the baskets so they can make more of them.

Diana Stanley, CEO of the Lord's Place, which runs job and housing programs for the homeless in West Palm Beach, Fla., says the clients her agency work with do not have any discretionary income. Even the smallest cuts can cause major upheaval in their lives, she says.

"The food stamps help as our families move into independence," she says. "So these cuts are scary for us." She says more than 80% of the 250 people a day the agency works with receive food stamps.

SNAP, which benefits one in seven Americans, is administered by the Department of Agriculture and is authorized in a five-year omnibus farm bill covering all agricultural programs. Congress is currently debating the bill, which has additional cuts to the program totaling up to $40 billion. A cut that size, say advocates, such as Hamler-Fugitt and Flood, would be devastating.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/02/food-stamps-cuts-food-banks/3356667/
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« Reply #51 on: November 02, 2013, 12:11:31 pm »

Just curious - does anyone really trust these food bank organizations? I dunno, and this just just my opinion, but like any other "non-profit" organization, they too are likely corrupted. I mean how many times do they complain how they have a "shortage" of food? But at the same time, they like any other NFP org are loaded with money.
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« Reply #52 on: November 02, 2013, 12:28:15 pm »

Just curious - does anyone really trust these food bank organizations? I dunno, and this just just my opinion, but like any other "non-profit" organization, they too are likely corrupted. I mean how many times do they complain how they have a "shortage" of food? But at the same time, they like any other NFP org are loaded with money.

My wifes Grandpa works for a food bank. They arent corrupt, and they are always needing food. And they really have no money at all.
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« Reply #53 on: November 03, 2013, 02:59:42 am »

I can't speak about other food banks, but the major one here in Phoenix, St. Mary's Food Bank, is a MAJOR source of food for the poor. We've been there a couple times, as well as use them for patients or employees who are having a tough time. The food bank never hesitated to help with extra boxes of food. If you have no money, you can still get lots of food items, but their main way of doing it is to charge $10 for WAY more than that in food items, including a meat box with several types of meat. Charging the money when they can really helps with trying to keep the food supply up.

Corrupt? In the world, it's all corrupt somehow. However I don't think they are corrupt in the traditional sense. Yes, it's "St. Mary's", which it's a Catholic affiliation, and that speaks all on it's own, but the food bank itself helps a lot of people with food they wouldn't have. The items we were able to get from them was really a lot of usable food.

Personally, I think food banks are doing what they can when they can, in a "works" sort of way. It's what they know and their way of considering the poor. Do they use these food banks to hide cash, etc? Who knows. That's a whole 'nother topic.

Corrupt? Nah. It's just the world, and we know the world to be corrupt itself.
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« Reply #54 on: November 11, 2013, 11:00:30 am »

Obama using food-stamp cash to fund Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’

As you dig into your Butterball with all the trimmings this Thanksgiving, remember that millions of famished schoolkids around America may be forced to forgo classic turkey — and chow down instead on vegan black-bean patties and organic locavore quinoa salad.

On Nov. 1, sizable cuts were gouged into the federal food-stamp program (or, as it’s now called, SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which feeds 47.6 million people, or nearly one in six Americans. In the city, 1.9 million folks get the bulk of their Jell-O and Campbell’s Soup from stamps.

But news has spread among the poor, like leafy green vegetables, that it wasn’t heartless Republicans who triggered the cuts.

Rather, some of the food-stamp cash was snatched to pay for Michelle Obama’s pet project, Let’s Move. What?

It’s come to this. Some 76 million meals a year will vanish from this city — poof! — partly because the president diverted money from SNAP to the first lady’s signature program, part of her Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative — the bean-sprout-heavy, $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The rest of the $5 billion annual food-stamp cuts was taken when 2009 stimulus funds dried up. But with ObamaCare woes stealing the oxygen in Washington, there’s little urgency to replace dandelion greens served on recyclable trays with family-friendly buttered mashed potatoes.

Right now, the country’s poorest families of four are seeing food-stamp allotments cut from $668 a month to $632. It may not sound like much, but understand that $36 is enough to buy a truckload of Kool-Aid and ramen noodles. (Lose the noodles if the Food and Drug Administration succeeds in banning trans fats.)

How did this happen?

Hunger activists are livid. In fact, the cuts will bring on no less than civil unrest, according to the head of the Food Bank for New York City.

“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people can’t afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, Food Bank president and CEO, told Salon.com.

“We were told, you know, by the president . . . these cuts will not happen,” she said.

“Well, guess what. No one has restored that money.”

“It is bad policy to take away a child’s dinner and put it in his lunch,” Triada Stampas, director of government relations for the Food Bank, told me.

An administration source told me that the president wants to fund SNAP and healthy lunches in the latest budget, both of which he finds important. But getting it past Congress seems unlikely.

The great food grab began in 2010, when President Obama, with Michelle and US Department of Agriculture honchos at his side, signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. At the time, he admitted taking cash from one pocket to feed the other.

“Some of the funding [for the lunch program] comes from rolling back temporary increases in food-stamp benefits,” he said, starting in the fall of 2013.

“I’m committed to working with [Congress] to restore these funds in the future.”

It proved to be magical thinking.

Part of the problem is that the food-stamp program has grown like wildfire under Obama — to $80 billion last year, with a more than 70 percent increase in recipients just since 2008. Do they all need the help?

Hunger activists have lately rolled out hard-luck cases to the media, like grandmother Katherine McKinnon, who became a single mom of three after her daughter died.

McKinnon was last seen on CNN, walking the streets of New York hunting for cans to sell for a nickel apiece.

“No matter how people look at you, keep your head up,” she said.

Things will get even tighter. The Republican-controlled House wants to cut $39.9 billion over the next ten years from stamps under the farm bill now being negotiated, by eliminating fraud and asking able-bodied recipients to work or join jobs programs.

The Democrat-controlled Senate, which has asked for no such provisions, wants to cut $4.5 billion.

Maybe a good source for food money is the school-lunch program, as kids around the nation rise up against government-approved grub.

One school district’s kids said it “tastes like vomit.”

Ending obesity is a laudable goal. But cardboard lunches should never replace Christmas ham or Hanukkah chicken soup. Stop moving — and sit down.

http://nypost.com/2013/11/11/obama-takes-from-kids-dinners-to-fund-michelles-project/
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« Reply #55 on: April 19, 2014, 05:51:29 am »

18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels

Did you know that the number of Americans getting benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million?  In other words, the number of people that are taking money out of the system is far greater than the number of people that are putting money into the system.  And did you know that nearly 70 percent of all of the money that the federal government spends goes toward entitlement and welfare programs?  When it comes to the transfer of wealth, nobody does it on a grander scale than the U.S. government.  Most of what the government does involves taking money from some people and giving it to other people.  In fact, at this point that is the primary function of the federal government.

Just check out the chart below.  It comes from the Heritage Foundation, and it shows that 69 percent of all federal money is spent either on entitlements or on welfare programs…

Heritage Foundation



So when people tell you that the main reason why we are being taxed into oblivion is so that we can “build roads” and provide “public services”, they are lying to you.  The main reason why the government taxes you so much is so that they can take your money and give it to someone else.

We have become a nation that is completely and totally addicted to government money.  The following are 18 stats that prove that government dependence has reached epidemic levels…

#1 According to an analysis of U.S. government numbers conducted by Terrence P. Jeffrey, there are 86 million full-time private sector workers in the United States paying taxes to support the government, and nearly 148 million Americans that are receiving benefits from the government each month.  How long can such a lopsided system possibly continue?

#2 Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

#3 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

#4 Today, the federal government runs about 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and almost all of those programs have experienced substantial growth in recent years.

#5 Back in 1960, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages was approximately 10 percent.  In the year 2000, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages was approximately 21 percent.  Today, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages is approximately 35 percent.

#6 While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the total number of Americans on food stamps has gone from 32 million to nearly 47 million.

#7 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#8 It sounds crazy, but the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of the nation of Spain.

#9 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps is now greater than the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#10 According to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, 43 percent of all immigrants that have been in the United States for at least 20 years are still on welfare.

#11 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, more than 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#12 The number of Americans on Medicare is projected to grow from a little bit more than 50 million today to 73.2 million in 2025.

#13 Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.  That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

#14 If the number of Americans enrolled in the Social Security disability program were gathered into a single state, it would be the 8th largest state in the entire country.

#15 In 1968, there were 51 full-time workers for every American on disability.  Today, there are just 13 full-time workers for every American on disability.

#16 It is being projected that the number of Americans on Social Security will rise from about 62 million today to more than 100 million in 25 years.

#17 Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.

#18 According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.  Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.

Many will read this and will assume that I am against helping the poor.  That is completely and totally not true.  There will always be people that are impoverished, and this happens for many reasons.  In many cases, people simply lack the capacity to take care of themselves.  It is a good thing to take care of such people, whether the money comes from public or private sources.  In every society, those that are the most vulnerable need to be looked after.

But it is a very troubling sign that the number of people on government assistance is now far, far greater than the number of people with full-time jobs.  This is not a sustainable situation.  The federal government is already drowning in debt, and yet more people become dependent on the government with each passing day.

The long-term solution is to get more Americans working or starting their own businesses, but the federal government continues to pursue policies that are absolutely killing the creation of jobs and the creation of small businesses in this country.  So our epidemic of government dependence is going to continue to get worse.

And many of these programs are absolutely riddled with fraud and corruption.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Natural News article…

    To understand the extent of this fraudulent waste, go no further than Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who raked in $20.8 million from Medicare in 2012 alone. Dr. Melgen isn’t the only one bathing in the fraud of this crony government program. Medicare dished out over $1 million to almost 4,000 doctors in 2012, according to the new data release analyzed by The Washington Post.

    Jonathan Blum, principal deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is calling on the public for help in identifying fraud. He says, “The program is funded by and large by taxpayer dollars. The public has a right to know what it is paying for. We know there is fraud in the system. We are asking for the public’s help to check, to find waste, and to find potential fraud.”

Instead of fixing their own problems, they want us to help them do it.

Just great.

And of course they always want more of our money to help fund these programs.  In fact, according to Americans for Tax Reform, Barack Obama has proposed 442 tax increases since entering the White House…

    -79 tax increases for FY 2010
    -52 tax increases for FY 2011
    -47 tax increases for FY 2012
    -34 tax increases for FY 2013
    -137 tax increases for FY 2014
    -93 tax increases for FY 2015

    Perhaps not coincidentally, the Obama budget with the lowest number of proposed tax increases was released during an election year: In February 2012, Obama released his FY 2013 budget, with “only” 34 proposed tax increases. Once safely re-elected, Obama came back with a vengeance, proposing 137 tax increases, a personal record high for the 44th President.

The more we feed the monster, the larger and larger it grows.

And yet poverty is not decreasing.  In fact, the poverty rate has been at 15 percent or greater for three years in a row.  That is the first time that has happened in decades.

Barack Obama promised to “transform” America, and yet poverty and government dependence have just continued to grow during his presidency.

Not that anyone really believes anything that he has to say at this point.  In fact, one recent survey found that only 15 percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama always tells the truth and 37 percent believe that he lies “most of the time”…

    A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows that six out of every ten Americans believes that President Barack Obama lies to the American people, at least some of the time. A plurality – 37% – say that he lies “most of the time,” while another 24% say he lies “some of the time.” Another 20% say he lies once in awhile, while only 15% say that he never lies.

So what do you think?

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/18-stats-that-prove-that-government-dependence-has-reached-epidemic-levels
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« Reply #56 on: November 13, 2016, 02:53:22 pm »

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« Reply #57 on: March 20, 2017, 03:32:25 pm »

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