It’s not a “safety net”, it’s a cultural phenomenon. An unholy alliance of special interests – starting with the big one, Big Government, and then getting into corporations who naturally rise to meet the business opportunity – works to keep it that way:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-tvNbGy1M[/youtube]
Via Mike Krieger’s blog.
Bonus (via Ace): Mark Steyn on the American Banana Republic.
Cloward-Piven, Line one….
Interesting. Isn’t business good for America? Where are the job creators to get these people back to work? Blaming Obamacare was a really nice touch. I weep for that poor Papa John’s guy who has to reduce his workers time. He must be in tears every night in his moat encircled castle.
Your cluelessness, Kevin, is shown by your demonizing business owners as evil and awful people at the same time that you demand they put people to work.
It also shows the power of those who produce. We know already that Obama Party leaders like you are wishing death on our children and bragging about how you will deny us health care, and we now see you as the violent and bigoted enemies you are.
And as a result, we will treat you like enemies and starve you out.
Anyone who has worked with the Poor knows Food Stamps are probably one of the most vital programs the government operates Many of the most vulnerable kids are dependent on Food Stamps for basic nutrition. – But Food Stamps are also shamelessly abused by some.
Don’t like the abuse?
Reform it.
But don’t just make harsh cuts that don’t reform the system. ILC is exactly right, big business has made Food Stamps and programs like it much worse by intruding on something that should be quite simple.
But instead of just making cuts that hurts the most vulnerable, make reforms that curb the shameless abuses we see of those programs.
Mark Steyn’s article touches on what I think could become a potent bullet in conservatives arsenal if they choose to use – Higher Education Costs.
The costs of higher education has become crazy and is surly being fueled because students can get easy credit backed by the Feds. Conservatives could highlight this and come up with new programs on what type of funding is available for federally backed loans.
For Example, if you get loans totally XXX you must keep your grade point at XXX
or make the feds only back XXX of your education.
If the feds did that, you can bet your bottom dollar that schools would begin to lower costs so they can ensure that those students can go to their school.
Instead of throwing radical tea party pleasing bombs at the budget, use targeted cuts/reforms based on Conservative principles and you will see a revolution in this country backed by moderate conservatives across the nation.
Ah yes, and what are the so-called “moderate conservatives” like mike doing with a five percent — FIVE PERCENT — cut in food stamps?
Demagogue, demonize, slander, and rant. No facts, no logic, no rationality, just a screaming tantrum from the party that insists not a single dime can be cut for any reason.
So mike, your own behavior proves you’re a liar. “Moderates” like you, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama will not make a single cut or reform, and you will demonize anyone who does as a child-killer.
If you were principled, you would denounce these statements and actions from your Obama and Pelosi, which are demonstrably fact-free and completely irrational, not to mention malicious and slanderous. But you are not principled; you are, like your Obama, a malignant liar who hates conservatives and gorges himself at the government trough.
Is that “radical tea party” or “radical bombs”?
The moronic repetition of the mantra that conservatives and tea party people wanting to starve, pollute, increase suffering and grow rich on greed is very revealing.
Why wouldn’t a liberal want to reform abuse in any system in order to make the money go further and be more effective on the targeted group?
Why do liberals scream and kick and lie and wail about granny being reduced to dog food whenever abuse and profligacy is addressed in their vaunted saving the the universe schemes? Liberals only see waste and fraud in the military and the corporation boardroom.
The sheer blooming ignorance of people who do not know the fundamentals of the market system is astounding. Naturally the soft drink companies want a piece of the food stamp action. As long as the program is basically unmonitored and growing like Bernanke’s “quantatative easing” charade, why would a smart corporation deny itself potential sales? They don’t care who the product is sold to or how the buyer pays for it. Why should they? Do you expect them to put a guard at each soda display and keep a diabetic welfare recipient from buying a liter of Pepsi?
It is underwhelming to read liberal and “moderates” in scold overdrive.
We do not have soup lines because of food stamps. We have people dropping out of the job market at record rates. We have people reduced to working part time in order for the employer to escape Obamacare. We have a greatly extended unemployment payment period. “Disability” compensation has skyrocketed. Rent subsidies are at an all time high.
Do the math. People are moving into the welfare groove and adjusting to virtual “retirement” on the government dime. Why not? That inclination is not different in terms of the greed of living on other people’s money than the inclination to get soft drinks covered by food stamps.
When a society depends on the common morality to police itself and pays no heed to those who over-indulge in the common treasure, morality collapses.
Liberals turn up the flow to meet the endless demand without paying attention to the cause or legitimacy of the demand.
What liberals refuse to admit is that just on the other side of the 10% who barely qualified is another 10% that almost qualified. That 20% is always volatile in any program which has a cut-off line. Those on the program “work” to stay covered and those seeking to get on the program “work” to qualify. (Not everyone! But it is a critical dynamic.)
So, tell me, oh liberal and moderate scolds, who is it, exactly, that is out there encouraging people and leading them away from the welfare world?
Community organizers? ACORN? Juicy Jackson? The American Federation of Job Creators? David Letterman?
Of course, “moderates” like mike scream about starving children — which doesn’t jibe with their support of using food stamps to buy liquor and pron, as well as wine and gourmet ice cream for Obama-voting hipsters.
And, as I showed above, “moderates” like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, who mike supports, block any attempts to stop these abusers with screams of starvation and murder.
As always, the facts clearly show that “moderate” mike is in fact a malignant liar who supports government waste and fraud, takes good stamps away from children so that he and his fellow Obama voters can buy gourmet food and liquor, and demonizes as a murderer anyone who would dare intervene.
The horror soundtrack and editing take useful information into the realm of parody.
Possibly, yes. I didn’t especially notice them; I took them as a nod to convention (or what’s de rigueur these days) and focused more on the useful info.
It’s true: Democrat politicians demagogue and lie about these issues without conscience, and Democrat supporters (whether admitted, or unadmitted) happily sit by and let them.
Why? Because they, too, hope to live off the public trough…someday, if they are not living off of it already.
Exactly. Also, once in the game, why would they not have lobbyists to keep the game going? They’re just playing the game, as the government has set up.
The real problem is, as always, the game that Big Government set up. The fact that the government has decided to involve itself in these matters (thus deciding the fate and prosperity of corporations, and many others) to begin with.
So, lower case mike is concern trolling in his moderate drag again.
Isn’t it curious how you never see “moderates” trolling left wing sites telling democrats they have to be more fiscally conservative?
Touche!
Uh huh. And why is it that anytime “reforms” are brought up, the wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues to the point where any proposed reforms go nowhere?
A number have tried to introduce “common sense” reforms (that is, true common sense reforms, not the phony “common sense” reforms seen in the gun
controlgrabbing debate). Like making an approved purchase list for the SNAP program, similar to the WIC program—which always gets shot down with charges of ‘paternalism’, ‘micromanagement’, and ‘dehumanization’. As if someone is trying to reach into someone’s bank account and attempting to tell them how to spend their money instead of help them spend someone else’s (ie, the public’s) money more wisely.Then there’s another “common sense” reform such as putting photo ID on EBT cards in places like Massachusetts, where public assistance abuse is rampant (despite Governor “Mini Me” Patrick’s insistence that any abuse is merely “anecdotal”), in order to cut down on outright fraud. But no, such a measure is consistently blocked by Democrats, using some of the same arguments as—wait for it—requiring positive voter ID.
Then there’s the whole issue of places accepting benefit transactions which shouldn’t be allowed to do so in the first place, something I have firsthand experience with, but won’t get into now.
So when even very minor reforms are blocked, why should anyone be surprised that wholesale restrictions on funding to the program are met with the usual “throwing granny off the cliff” arguments?
“Reform it” — yeah, like the Free Sh-t Army is gonna let that happen. Didn’t Obama gut the welfare reforms Bill Clinton signed back in the nineties?
Since when is calling for conservative solutions to big problems on a conservative website “concern trolling”?????? I think you need some new words…
I get it you don’t like me. You don’t like that I dont mindless agree to whatever insane notion radicals like you dream up.
But you are going to have to pander to folks like me because your ideology is poisonous to the country and unelectable. Mine is right in the Chris Christie center.
Hopefully you will be on that bandwagon in ’16
I think at the very least they should have to provide proof of income every month-and prohibit the purchase of pure junk food like soda and chips.
I also think the documentary made an interesting point-many of the people receiving benefits aren’t so poor they have to have the safety net-they are using the program to free up extra cash to buy boobs, weed, and other stuff.
Maybe the income limits are too high or maybe the program should be more diligent about rooting out and prosecuting fraud.
Yes, he did. He removed the work requirement (I believe it was 20hrs per week).
‘Maybe’ the federal government shouldn’t be involved in the first place.
‘Maybe’ no government entity at any level should be involved. There isn’t anything in the Constitution that allows the Feds to act as a ‘charity’. And a perverse charity, at that; my money is not donated of my own free will, but taken by force, or the credible threat of force.
No facts, no logic, just irrational screaming and namecalling that anyone who disagrees with him is an “insane radical”.
You namecall us as insane and extreme, and you wonder why we don’t like you.
I really can’t figure out if you are that mentally deficient or simply that narcissistic.
One doesn’t pander to irrational, fact-free people who do nothing but scream and namecall, because said people can’t be reached by rational fact or intelligent appeal.
You voted for Obama because you believed Mitt Romney was going to ban tampons, reinstate slavery, and put gays in concentration camps.
Frankly put, mike, you’re too stupid to be pandered to.
Just like you were in the McCain “center” in 2007 and in the Romney “center” in 2011.
And then when your precious Obama came, you started screaming and ranting that both were too “insane” and “extreme”, just like you’ve already admitted you’re going to do to Chris Christie when your Hillary! comes along.
I repeat myself, mike: You voted for Obama because you believed Mitt Romney was going to ban tampons, reinstate slavery, and put gays in concentration camps.
Only an imbecile would believe that pattern will not repeat with the next extremist Obama Party candidate.
There’s a very good possibility that he’s…….both.
Another thing that should be done, in the absence of a truly sane approach like abolishing these programs entirely (at the federal level), is to tax all monies received as earned income.
We do it with state and federal unemployment benefits (and the Feds shouldn’t be doing this one, either).
Let’s do it with monies derived from ALL welfare programs, so that the recipients of this largesse have to put something back in the ‘kitty’.
The one difference between UE benefits and the panoply of welfare programs is this: you have to have some record of WORK to qualify for them.
Another difference: UE has some time and benefit limit attached; at some point, the money runs out. I would guess that there isn’t a federal welfare program extant where that’s the case.
Darn, littlelettermike, how much pandering do you require to get your vote? You have food stamps, Obamacare, unemployment, section 8, disability, and a free service dog.
Should we step up and offer government massages, free cable and heroin popsicles on demand? What the heck do you demand as the price of your whore vote?
Clearly, you are marginally illiterate, but it is becoming apparent that you are struggling to comment at an altitude significantly above your intelligence potential.
I hereby award you high kudos and a gold star for consistently driveling when bright, shiny posts attract your momentary attention.
Also, you highly impress me as a possible/probable strategy advisor to John Boehner. There is a whole world of country club blue-blood Republicans who would be delighted to let you shine their shoes.
What heliotrope said.
Helio
The difference between you and me is I think Food Stamps are important social safety net programs. I have seen how they work, who they help and how people need them to feed their kids.
However, as NDT rightly points out abuse of these benefits is real, but it doesn’t mean they should be abolished. They need to be reformed with conservative principals – means testing, drug testing, and made 100% non transferable into cash (this last one might’ve already been done) Furthermore merchants who abuse them need to be punished the hardest soas they won’t risk their livelihood to help others cheat. But arbitrary cuts is just the wrong way to go about it.
Hi, mike! You’re still a lying partisan shill!
littlelettermike,
Show me where I said Food Stamps are NOT an important social safety net program or called for abolishing Food Stamps or anything remotely akin to those claims.
The problem with “moderates” is that they will sorta, kinda go along with chit-chating about abuse and profligacy and outright demagogic corruption so long as only conservatives lose and nobody in the center or left feels slighted in the least.
The problem with liberals is that they have firehouse diarrhea which splatters other people’s money all over the general direction of some amorphous target.
You do not bring any argument to the debate other than your vaunted “feelings” and blame-placing accusations of the difference you perceive between you and those you would reform.
You come here whoring your vote on the condition that we pay your unnamed price. That works with liberals, but for those who are sound of mind, it is like handing out signed blank checks.
Where is it written that the US needs moderates to tickle the edges of profligacy while attempting not to irritate the socialist crocodile?
I am astounded at how you feign to want the police arm of the socialist state to crack down on miscreants. I suppose you are all hot to round up all the illegal immigrants and their offspring and truck them back home, as well. And may I assume you prefer the war on illegal drugs to crack down on the users so that the demand dries up?
Here is a really nifty conservative solution for food stamps, littlelettermike. Let’s take everyone on food stamps and feed them in fascist style food halls and make certain they get a Moochelle approved diet. After eating, the monitors will show them core curriculum videos and later they will be Head Started out along the highways to pick up trash and cut weeds. It can be a blend of Pinochet, Mussolini, Mao and Pol Pot all with a re-education, rehabilitation, and the grand socialist aim of serving the person as he works as a village unit to raise a child, keep the trains running on time and putting a chicken for every pot. Heck, why not equip him with a solar powered skateboard?
Think your agenda through, littlelettermike. You could be the dance master for the kinder, gentler government handout cotillion. And, if they don’t dance according to how you want them to dance, you can put them in Puritan style stocks and let the politically correct citizens pass by and tsk-tsk them and as they sneer and shun along with ideological fervor and superiority.
It is important to remember that in 2012 little letter mike had a chance to vote for a ticket that did want to reform food stamps. Instead, he voted for free contraception, Obamaphones, and subsidies for Big Bird.
(And this is how we know he’s full of crap.)
EBT (known as Food Stamps) is now part of the modern equivalent of “panem et circenses”. Hail Caesar.
Jman in Europe most countries do tax the recipients for their various welfare programs.
I actually think this would be a good first step towards reforming the welfare state.
Also, I am pretty sure Obama gave permission for states to lengthen the time between decertifications for food stamps. I remember another video posted with the homeless surfer who didn’t want a job and bought sushi with his EBT card-he only had to recertify once a year. You can plan for a whole lot of fraud if you only have to worry about being poor one month once a year.
A good first step in reforming the welfare state would be to start phasing these programs out entirely at the federal level. I’d say in a minimum of 3 years and a maximum of 5 years. If we’re going to provide benefits like this through government (and we shouldn’t; they should be provided by private charities), then it should be done predominantly at the municipal level, where the people administering the programs have the greatest likelihood of knowing the people who are applying for and receiving these benefits.
We’re well past the point in this culture where the ‘welfare state’ is the biggest problem; our biggest problem is the ‘welfare state of mind‘, AKA the ‘culture of dependency‘.
But the Left approves of “big government” bureaucrats administering such relief programs as it eliminates the “shame” rightfully or wrongfully associated with being on the Dole.
It’s “easier” to face some faceless drone than a panel consisting of your neighbors, your minister, or your co-workers.
It’s a criminal racket (run by the federal government), as well.
“if you get loans totally XXX you must keep your grade point at XXX or make the feds only back XXX of your education”
Get straight A’s pursuing a useless degree will still land you with a mountain of debt. Some sort of GPA requirement is a silly band-aid; they whole government subsidy racket needs to be radically overhauled.
And even for a useful degree, the amount of debt is outrageous. Too many pigs making fat bucks on a corrupt welfare system.
No one has mentioned the biggest culprit of the national student debt scheme: for-profit ‘educational’ institutions, replete with heavy marketing campaigns urging Shaniquia, DeShawn, and Ramòn to sign up for an intensive study program towards a degree and/or certificate to be a future worker in the dynamic fields of computer technician/cosmetology, all in “as little as 18 months!” and destined to make gammy so proud to see that one of her 27 grandchildren is a “college graduate”. All, of course, with guaranteed acceptance and financial aid (including living expenses).
Now why banks—no longer allowed to shill high-rate credit cards upon the student masses—haven’t started buying up some of these diploma mills to compensate for the loss is beyond me.
You have the cart before the horse here.
If the feds had never gotten into the business of providing/backing Pell grants, etc. to any charlatan with the words ‘school’, ‘institute’, ‘academy’, college’ or ‘university’ on a letterhead or business card, there’d be a lot fewer of these hokum joints around.
I attended one in the Boston area in 1983. A full time, 6 month course of study in computer programming (COBOL, FORTRAN, Assembler, etc.) and came out knowing a hell of a lot more than a college grad with a B.S. in computer science. It was a damn good school and worth every penny that I spent to study there.
Then again, the feds weren’t handing out school loans like penny candy 30 years ago.
Agree. Nothing wrong with for-profit educational institutions. In fact, they should all be non-governmental (meaning a mixture of for-profit, secular non-profit, religious non-profit, etc. Also, they are all for-profit on some level; the ones called “non-profit” simply pay out their profits in the form of budgets/payroll.)
The problem is the government subsidies. Economics 101…Subsidies drive costs up and quality down, over time. The bigger and longer the subsidies, the worse the effects.
Kids today are hounded into crappy degrees they can’t use, not because of for-profit institutions, but because of *subsidized* instititutions….subsidized, in effect, by all those student loans…which the institution gets the benefit of, when it enrolls the 98-degree body and puts it on financial aid. That’s the problem. And all the institutions do it.
I’m in favor of requiring all educational institutions (for-profit or not) to co-sign their student loans. Institutions would get real smart, real fast, about which kids are going to pay back the loan – that is, which kids can really use the education.
#28 – A clear sign of a partisan knee jerk radical is you see someone uses the word “Obamaphones” as if they were a real thing.
#27 – You called Food Stamps “Pandering” and likened them to providing “heroin popsicles” It seemed to me you thought of them as a program to buy votes – which it is not. If I misunderstood your point, I apologize.
However:
“The problem with “moderates” is that they will sorta, kinda go along with chit-chating about abuse and profligacy and outright demagogic corruption so long as only conservatives lose and nobody in the center or left feels slighted in the least.”
Wrong – When I talk about means testing Social Security, Medicare, Drug Testing Food Stamps, crack downs on abuses, limiting Federal Student Loans my liberal pals call me “Ayn Rand” or worse, “Tony Perkins”
However, in my experience the folks on the left are more pragmatic than the radicals on the right and will negotiate in the spirit of good governance if the other side is good faith – which is one reason I voted for Obama. Unfortunately from what I see in today’s GOP, the moderates are being eaten by the radicals and they refuse to reform gov, instead they only want to use slogans and score points at the expense of good governance.
The left is made up of good and reasonable people who just want good governance and the right are a bunch of radical extremists who just want to score points… said the non-partisan “moderate.”
“No one has mentioned the biggest culprit of the national student debt scheme: for-profit ‘educational’ institutions”
Completely false: These for-profit institutions are small potatoes compared to the traditional “non-profit” institutions that you prefer, and they are a recent phenomenon besides. The vast, vast, vast majority of the students who find themselves saddled with immense debt are graduates of non-profit institutions.
I suppose Obama’s absolute refusal to negotiate on the budget, Obamacare, or the debt ceiling is an example of his reasonableness and pragmatism.
Very true. And Obama’s scheme to “score” colleges and universities (which is a stupid waste of money anyway since there are several free market college rating services) appears to be nothing but a scam to increase Federal education subsidies.
About the level of pragmatism and reasonableness one would expect from a rabble-rousing community organizer.
Whew! Obviously, you have no clue whatsoever how the good men and women, independents, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians who make up the TEA Party define “good governance.”
The tell in littlelettermike’s plaint is that “folks on the left are more “pragmatic” and will “will negotiate in the spirit of of good governance” …..
I have met face to face with nearly 150 senators, governors, former Presidents, members of the House and prominent political science academics. I ask them to speak into my recording machine. I ask them to compose a paragraph or two which could be used in an average high school text book which explains clearly the Constitutional method by which The Affordable Care Act became the law of the land.
To this date, not one single person has been willing to go on the record. None. Not one.
This is not a trap. I would be delighted for Dick Durbin or Joe Biden or Ed Schultz or Hillary Clinton to take the time and patience to write out the process of “good governance” utilized in passing The Affordable Care Act into law so that our young minds can understand the process and be given an understanding of the process of representative democracy in our republic.
Rest assured that when someone finally takes my challenge and succeeds, I move on to ask about the process of using executive orders as a basic Constitutional tool for advancing the needs of representative democracy in our republic.
So, littlelettermike talks with liberals and finds them “pragmatic.” I understand that to mean that they will get the job done and the Constitution be damned.
The dictatorship of the statists is fundamental to socialism of all stripes. If you start from a belief in state socialism, then everything which follows is how about how “good governance’ (statism) micromanages the sheeple.
I have yet to see anyone cite what policies of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul are “radical” and/or “extreme.”
Forcing people to buy Government-mandated health insurance policies, that’s pretty radical. Supplying weapons to Al Qaeda and Mexican Drug cartels while making it illegal for Americans to possess them… that’s radical and extreme. Dismantling the coal industry by executive fiat… that’s radical and extreme. Using the IRS to target and harass political opponents, that’s radical. Forcing Americans to share their private medical records with the Federal Bueaucracy, that’s radical.
V the K,
I am operating on some fairly dated information, but as I understand the one area in which the SCOTUS has seriously dealt with “privacy” it is in the area of protecting medical records.
Obamacare is going to produce an artesian flow of a person’s medical records into the mainstream of opening, prying and broadcasting for nothing less than salacious purposes. The below average hacker will be able to get into those records. Perhaps we can rely on the security clearances which the government farms out like just more bureaucratic chaff.
Anyone who shrugs this off as “good governance” needs a lobotomy.
Anyone who shrugs this off as “good governance”
needs ahas already undergone a lobotomy.I would very much like to see a Medical Records Privacy Act put forth by Rand Paul to keep the Federal Government from collecting the private health information of citizens and mandating prison terms for public officials and bureaucrats who release private citizens data.
But, I guess that would be an extremist, radical wingnut, whackobird piece of legislation.
Forgive me, little mikey, but how, exactly, is it “good governance” to shove through a law in the middle of the night—nearly on Christmas Eve, appropriately enough—which NO ONE HAD read and which did not receive a SINGLE Republican vote? Please DO explain.
I think by “pragmatism” and “good governance”, what mike means is: A wants one thing and B wants another, they get together and decide each of them gets part of what they want and neither gets everything. In other words, compromise. Anything else is radical. Don’t think constitution or principle figures into the consideration set.
Debating with leftists is hell if you are fond of logic. I just had a new recruit at my firm argue with me that capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income and hell no, that won’t affect people’s investment choices. I had to say to him “so, you want me to take all the downside risk and give most of my upside to the government”… he hastily assured me that was not what he was saying. I asked him to please explain how that was not what he was saying, and he couldn’t. And he went to Wharton – it is frightening.
The really silly part about littlelettermike, and the real proof of his overall insincerity, is his promotion of two completely contradictory lines of argument:
1. Democrats are paragons of reasonableness, pragmatism, and “good governance.” Republicans are radical, extreme and dangerous (although he can’t actually point at any extreme, radical, or dangerous policies Republicans promote).
2. He wants us to believe that he doesn’t want the paragons of reasonableness, pragmatism, and “good governance” to control Congress; but wants Republicans to control Congress.
It makes no sense, and neither does he.
And he went to Wharton – it is frightening.
Sounds to me like he is parroting what his left-wing economics and business professors… who have never worked outside academia and don’t associate with people outside of academia … have been indoctrinating him to believe.
Actually I’m OK with that… IF (and only if) it means lowering ordinary income rates. 😉
Downside risk is still handled OK for you, because you are allowed to deduct your capital losses (with carryforwards, etc.). People/companies have a lot of discretion about whether to pay out profits as capital gains or as income, and I see no reason why the rate structure should push them into doing more one than the other.
But…we know that any changes would NOT be done as a lowering of the income tax rates… sigh.
mike trolled y’all.
Or: mike was himself…and that stimulated some good comments.
Ah ILC,
haha… yes. if it means lowering ordinary income tax, I may jump on board 🙂
Perhaps a better way to state my argument is that higher capital gains taxes appear to change my risk profile. “All” is an exaggeration on my part, but with lower real returns (ceilings for loss deductions are so low and carryforwards are helpful, but the value of the $$ I am recovering is going down every year). Honestly, never sat and modeled this stuff out, but I know that at high tax rates, I would rather put my money into safer investments — even if the return is low and government will take a huge chunk of it, if I can keep up with the inflation, at least will keep my savings.