” The USDA does confirm, however, that an average of 1.37 million people received food stamps in Puerto Rico each month in fiscal year 2012. The island, which is a U.S. territory, has a population of 3.7 million, which means that 37% of Puerto Ricans get food stamps from Uncle Sam. Though the figure of 47.7 million in the U.S. shatters records, it still marks only 15.2% of the nation’s population of 313 million.”
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Boston Bombings 2 Weeks Later – What We Do and Still Don’t Know
” Previously, we brought you reports on the Boston Marathon bombings investigation and details into the lives of the suspects, first in The Lives of the Boston Bombers: What We Do and Don’t Know and then in a follow-up,New Developments in the Boston Marathon Bombings Case.
As the investigation continues two weeks after the bombings, several US officials have been questioning the parents of the suspects overseas. The FBI is also investigating, both in the US and overseas, to determine whether or not the suspects received any training that may have aided in the attack. Authorities have said that, so far, there has been no evidence to indicate that the bombings were linked to any major groups. But they continue to probe for any evidence that might indicate otherwise.”
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” State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.
In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state. “
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TIME Executive Editor: ‘We’re All Welfare Queens’ and ‘Socialists From the Day We’re Born’
“We’re all socialists from the day we’re born. You know, you don’t have to be poor or unemployed to be on Welfare. We’re all at the trough. We’re all Welfare queens.”
So said TIME magazine executive editor Michael Duffy on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):”
Video at the link … As someone who has never taken a dime in unemployment benefits or any other type of government provided , tax-payer funded largesse , I can say that neither I nor any of my successful small business owning family members have ever lined up at ” the trough” . This comment is very revealing of the leftist mentality that everyone expects something for nothing .
It is indicative of the problems that we as a society are faced with today . The people who most adhere to this philosophy control , or have controlled , the narrative for two generations and have succeeded in beating the life out of the American ” can do ” spirit . No longer are we a people that when faced with adversity , buck up and do what must be done to elevate our condition … No , today all you hear is ” the government must do something ” or ” there ought to be a law ” . For shame …
Benjamin Franklin said it best two hundred plus years ago : “ When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
How prophetic .
” This story is about a municipality in Sweden, but it could be about any number of countries in Europe, and for that matter it could also be about the United States.
Muslim immigration leads to high costs in violence and welfare, and the elderly end up suffering as all the money goes to pay for integration course for violent Muslim teens and their father and his four wives and their nineteen kids.
The money has to go somewhere and the social safety net paid into by the natives is embezzled, hijacked and looted to pay for the medical and criminal expenses of the Islamic colonists and settlers.”
” With six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a huge kitchen and the very latest in energy-saving eco-friendly design, it is a house that a great many of us would be very happy to buy and move into.
We’d probably be even happier – and perhaps a little humbled – if it was being specifically built for us and paid for by the taxpayer.
But not Heather Frost.
Far from simply being grateful for her good fortune, the jobless mother of 11 says that if she doesn’t like the house she’ll just tell the council to build her another one.
She is due to move into the property – valued at £400,000 – in July after ‘struggling’ to survive in two adjacent houses in Churchdown, Gloucestershire, which have been joined together by the council.”
Furious neighbour: ‘It’s a disgrace. She treats her womb like a clown car’
HT/Instapundit
” A prominent Muslim cleric in the United Kingdom reportedly urged a group of fellow Muslims to collect government benefits as a “jihad seeker’s allowance,” saying non-Muslims who work 9-5 jobs will end up “committing suicide” at the end of their lives when they realize it wasn’t worth anything.
Sun News secretly filmed the man’s remarks at three different meetings where he said, among other things, that it is natural for Muslims to take money from the kuffar (derogatory term for non-believer), that Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama are the devil, and that Islam is taking over Europe.
He explained the benefits of not working (all subsequent emphasis added):
“You find people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7 o’clock. They go to work at 9 o’clock. They work for eight, nine hours a day. They come home at 7 o’clock, watch EastEnders, sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is called slavery.
“And at the end of their life they realize their pension isn’t going to pay out anything, the mortgage isn’t going to pay out anything. Basically they are going to lose everything, commit suicide. What kind of a life is that, honestly? That is the life of kuffar (non-believer)…”
” The Pentagon has begun a “deep dive” review of more than 170 military family and recreation programs on bases worldwide to identify redundancies and efficiencies — all the while insisting that the effort is not aimed at scrapping facilities in the new era of tight budgets.
Pentagon officials said that Army daycare programs, the focus of an ongoing investigation over the hiring of more than 30 workers with criminal backgrounds Fort Meyer, Va., were also included in the 120-day task force review.
“We’re going to be peeling these back, looking for redundancies,” said Charles Milam, the acting deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy, about the programs targeted for the data-driven review that he leads.
“The services are working through preparations planning for cuts,” Milam said. “[This review] has nothing to do with looming sequestration or budget cuts. There is no goal to do that.”
However, several other participants at the Family Readiness Council meeting last month suggested that sequestration would likely be a factor in Milam’s review. The military stands to lose $500 billion from planned defense spending over the next ten years should Congress fail to come to an agreement that averts sequestration cuts scheduled to start on March 1.”
” The legal prohibition on new immigrants becoming primarily reliant on government assistance for subsistence — or public charges — is never enforced, Chris Crane, an ICE agent and president of the ICE agent’s union told reporters on a conference call Thursday afternoon.
“It is certainly part of what we are supposed to be doing, it is definitely a federal statute within the [Immigration and Nationality Act],” he said when asked about the enforcement of the century-old public charge restriction. “However I will say this: that in my career, I have never seen or heard of the charge being applied in any case to anyone.”
Crane — whose union is in the midst of a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, ICE Director John Morton, and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas over the administration’s changes to immigration policy — noted that even officers who have been in the agency longer than his ten years have told him they have never seen or heard it employed.”
” The U.S. government ( Taxpayers ) 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 review of five top recipients of Lifeline support conducted by the FCC for the Journal showed that 41% of their more than six million subscribers either couldn’t demonstrate their eligibility or didn’t respond to requests for certification.
Suspecting that many of the new subscribers were ineligible, the Federal Communications Commission tightened the rules last year and required carriers to verify that existing subscribers were eligible. The agency estimated 15% of users would be weeded out, but far more were dropped.
The carriers—AT&T T +0.62% Inc.; Telrite Corp.; Tag Mobile USA; Verizon Communications VZ -0.05% Inc.; and the Virgin Mobile USA unit of Sprint Nextel Corp. S +1.04% —accounted for 34% of total Lifeline subscribers last May. Two of the other largest providers, TracFone Wireless Inc. and Nexus Communications Inc., asked the FCC to keep their counts confidential. Results for the full program weren’t available.
The program is open to people who meet federal poverty guidelines or are on food stamps, Medicaid or other assistance programs, and only one Lifeline subscriber is allowed per household.
The program, which is administered by the nonprofit Universal Service Administrative Co., has grown rapidly as wireless carriers persuaded regulators to let people use the program for cellphone service. It pays carriers $9.25 a customer per month toward free or discounted wireless service.
Americans pay an average of $2.50 a month per household to fund a number of subsidized communications programs, including Lifeline.”
The aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), USS Enterprise (CVN-65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) are in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. US Navy Photo
” The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News.
Lincoln was scheduled to be moved to Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Newport News Shipyard later this month to begin the 4-year refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the ship.
“This delay is due to uncertainty in the Fiscal Year 2013 appropriations bill, both in the timing and funding level available for the first full year of the contract,” the message said.
“CVN-72 will remain at Norfolk Naval Base where the ships force personnel will continue to conduct routine maintenance until sufficient funding is received for the initial execution of the RCOH.” “
Currently, 95% of spending on means-tested poverty assistance falls into four categories: cash assistance, health assistance, housing assistance, and social and family services. Welfare spending has increased on a year-over-year basis regardless of whether the economy has improved or unemployment has declined, and is projected to continue this dramatic rise indefinitely. Spending on these poverty programs will rise approximately 80% from FY2013-FY2022, representing a total cost of $11 trillion – roughly one quarter of cumulative federal spending. Slowing the growth rate from 80% to a still massive 60% would thus result, according to standard congressional budget accounting, in a $1 trillion savings over ten years. “
Poverty has won the War On Poverty
” Here’s the real reason, folks: Government
welfare isn’t an effective method for fighting
poverty. In fact, it looks like welfare is
keeping poverty alive.
Check out the chart, from Economist Daniel
Mitchell’s International Liberty website.
LBJ’s War On Poverty was the equivalent of
spreading top-notch fertilizer on a weed
patch. Poverty was dying until Washington
D.C. got involved in killing it. Incredible,
isn’t it? “
By all means read the whole thing .
“Welfare facts:
- For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance
- For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government.”
” In the recent past we noted the somewhat startling reality that “the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.” While mathematics is our tool – as opposed to the mathemagics of some of the more politically biased media who did not like our message – the painful reality in America is that: for increasingly more Americans it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is such an important topic that we felt it necessary to warrant a second look. The graphic below quite clearly, and very painfully, confirms that there is an earnings vacuum of around $40k in which US workers are perfectly ambivalent toward inputting more effort since it does not result in any additional incremental disposable income. With the ongoing ‘fiscal cliff’ battles over taxes and entitlements, this is a problematic finding, since – as a result – it is the US government that will have to keep funding indirectly this lost productivity and worker output (via wealth redistribution).”
Even with our current technical challenges we have te ability to post some things . We stretching the learning curve … Lol . Hopefully things will be put right presently and the you will enjoy one more bright spot in your day through he tireless efforts of those creative geniuses at ,
” It’s true that the “good old days” weren’t always good, but we should also remember that our belief that we’re completely superior to previous generations of Americans doesn’t even remotely square with reality. It’s fine to pat ourselves on the back for being wealthier, more educated and considerably less racist than we used to be, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that those less educated, backward people in their antiquated clothes were head and shoulders better than we are in a myriad of other ways. We should remember that the real problem isn’t having a problem; it’s having a problem and not even realizing that we have a problem. We have a problem and most Americans don’t realize it.
1) Dependency: Our ancestors were some of the most independent people on earth. They spent months traveling across an unforgiving landscape, fought off Indians, built their own houses, ate the food they grew and carved out a life for themselves. Today, a large number of Americans are claiming that they’re incapable of paying for their own birth control. There are 47 million Americans on food stamps, which is an all-time high. That’s more than 1 out of every 7 Americans. Since 2008 more Americans have gone onto Social Security disability than the net number of jobs that have been created in that same time period. Within the living memory of some Americans there was no Social Security or Medicare in this country; yet we’ve gone from 16 workers for each retiree in 1950 to 3.3 today to an estimated 2 workers per retiree in 2025.”
Liberals Find out Women Aren’t Amused
” I’ll admit that as a man I don’t always understand women. They are girly and often smell powdery. That and the insides of their purses intimidate me. But I know that they have a healthy respect for money. This I understand.
If you gave them a choice between a job that pays money and free birth control, the ones I know would pick a job.
They aren’t buying into the R-WoW credo that the GOP is somehow hostile to women. And it’s not just the girls I know. According to the latest AP survey the vaunted gender gap that Obama counted on to get re-elected has disappeared. The seven-point advantage that Obama had with women in 2008 has vaporized in 2012.
“Less than two weeks out from Election Day,” reports CBSNews “Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Obama’s 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows.” “
” The government spent approximately $1.03 trillion on 83 means-tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone — a price tag that makes welfare that year the government’s largest expenditure, according to new data released by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.
The total sum taxpayers spent on federal welfare programs was derived from a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on federal welfare spending — which topped out at $745.84 billion for fiscal year 2011 — combined with an analysis from the Republican Senate Budget Committee staff of state spending on federal welfare programs (based on “The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government Finance”), which reached $282.7 billion in fiscal year 2011.
The data excludes spending on Social Security Medicare, means-tested health care for veterans without service-connected disabilities, and the means-tested veterans pension program. “
“Obama administration officials have insisted that their decision to grant states waivers to redefine work requirements for welfare recipients would not “gut” the landmark 1996 welfare reform law. But a new report from the Congressional Research Service obtained by the Washington Examiner suggests that the administration’s suspension of a separate welfare work requirement has already helped explode the number of able-bodied Americans on food stamps.
“This report once again confirms that President Obama has severely gutted the welfare work requirements that Americans have overwhelmingly supported since President Clinton signed them into law,” Cantor said in an emailed statement. “It’s time to reinstate these common-sense measures, and focus on creating job growth for those in need.” “
