The Pennsylvania chapter of powerful senior lobby group AARP recently launched a campaign to sign up more seniors for food stamps but Fox Business host Stuart Varney has dismissed it as an effort to “buy votes” to benefit President Barack Obama. …read more
Source: The Christian Post
By Tim Powers
Upon the recent passing of my father and the convergence of his seven sons into one place for his funeral, we were able to reflect on the times when life was so much easier. As we were all taught to work hard and be respectful to others, it hit me that even these two simple principles have disappeared in American society.
We were raised in a time when my father could actually support a family of nine on one paycheck; my mom did not have to work (and could stay home and raise us children); and welfare (which we never needed) was comprised of a book of food stamps, a large jar of peanut butter, and a block of government-provided cheese.
These were times when all of the children in the neighborhood bounced from house to house, played baseball, basketball, football, rode bicycles, and built forts in the woods. Everything was great…as long as we all came running home for dinner when my mom rang the dinner bell (yes, we had one.)
My older brothers would watch the demonstrations of the late sixties and early seventies on the evening news on a tube TV with rabbit ears and mock the hippies and beatnicks for what they were doing. These indeed were simpler times when wrong was still wrong and misdeeds in our family were still addressed with a good old-fashioned spanking.
Unfortunately, now that society has “progressed”, the hippies and beatnicks are now running things in this country, welfare is at an all time high and seen as a way of life, children seldom even play outside as video games (and cell phones have taken them over), social skills are all but dead, it now takes both parents working in order to support just themselves, and the groups being mocked now are the tea party and Constitution-loving Patriots who simply want to preserve the times when America was a moral and mighty nation. My father was blessed to live in such a time, and it is my sincere hope that I can be instrumental in restoring the simpler time that he enjoyed while he was on this earth. John J. Powers Jr., may God rest your soul; and I, your son, will make you proud! As always, stay safe and be aware of your surroundings.
Recently, IRS official William Wilkins has been implicated in the IRS scandal that targeted Obama’s political opponents. And Capitol Hill Daily has now learned he may have personally discussed his actions with President Obama – just days before Wilkins’ office released new procedures for how the IRS reviews conservative groups.
White House visitor logs confirm that a “William Wilkins” was at the White House on April 23, 2012, specifically to meet with Obama. Was it the same Wilkins? Unfortunately, everyone who can answer that question is hiding behind a lawyer.
Regardless, it’s now clear that directions were given to the IRS officials in Cincinnati from the highest levels of government to target perceived opponents of President Obama. This was no low-level operation. All of the testimony points up the chain of command.
This is a gross violation of the IRS rules intended to keep the agency above or outside of politics. The IRS should never be involved in promoting partisan politics.
If this was an isolated scandal, one might forgive the agency. But this is only one of multiple scandals that show the agency has become a nest of corruption.
A Laundry List of Scandals
Where to begin?
The IRS is giving incarcerated criminals who submit fraudulent returns tens of millions of dollars in refunds. These are dollars that felons aren’t eligible to receive. The fraud figure increases every year, and at last tally, the IRS dealt north of $35 million to crooks, according to a federal audit.
The IRS also gave one million noncitizens, most in the United States illegally, approximately $9 billion in tax credits – even though they didn’t provide valid Social Security numbers on their tax returns.
The IRS also handed out $33 million in bogus electric car credits.
Recently, two dozen IRS employees were charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government welfare, including food stamps and housing vouchers. The scheme fleeced U.S. taxpayers out of at least a quarter of a million dollars, according to federal prosecutors on the case.
Another scary prospect is the empowerment of the IRS as part of Obamacare. The IRS will be the go-to agency for enforcing the fines on Americans who don’t buy the expensive, mandated health insurance plans.
As the abuses multiply, it’s time to seriously consider the only real fix.
A Clear Solution
The fix that will end this pattern of scandals is total abolition of the IRS.
And I’m happy to report a movement is building on Capitol Hill to actually abolish the IRS. You see, only abolition can protect us from an agency which has become bathed in scandal.
Abolishing the agency would be easier than most understand. All Congress would have to do is simplify the tax system. With a changed system, we could end the aggressive, highly discretionary and unfair targeting by the IRS. Either a flat tax or a national consumption tax would allow the agency to be eliminated while improving compliance and increase revenues.
Several members of Congress have taken up the battle and called …read more
By The Huffington Post News Editors
WASHINGTON — About 47 million Americans received food stamps last year, but only a relative few are required to work or look for a job as a condition of receiving the aid.
Now, House Republicans are considering whether the work requirement should be strengthened as they seek cuts to the $80 billion-a-year program, which has doubled in cost over the last five years. One in seven Americans used the federal food aid last year.
Read More…
More on House Republicans
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
John Boehner is known as the Speaker of the House who easily cries. Now, it seems that he’s got good reason to cry, as he may not hold his job much longer. You see, the Republican caucus is restless.
This past week Boehner was able to muscle a farm subsidies bill through Congress, but only after he agreed to ditch the 40-year linkage to the Food Stamps program that I wrote about in May.
Boehner has a small majority, with only 234 Republicans out of the 435 House members. But the majority is actually smaller than it looks – and it’s fractured. Tea Party Republicans, who make up about 50 members, are disheartened by Boehner’s continued attempts to work hand-in-glove with President Obama. And another 25 members of the Republican caucus are reliably willing to vote with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.
Not only that, but John Boehner is also surrounded by Republicans in his leadership team who are waiting in the wings, ready to take his job. One of them is Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate, has been quoted by friends as being interested in the top job. With friends like these two, odds makers are beginning to count the days until a rebellion. One member privately told me, “None of us are too impressed with Boehner’s ability to negotiate with the White House. The tax deal at the end of last year left most of us with a bad taste in our mouth and mad constituents to mollify.”
He was, of course, referring to the fiscal cliff deal that forced many Republicans to support massive tax increases. And now these Boehner-pushed tax increases are partially to blame for 2013’s sluggish economy.
We Won’t Get Fooled Again
Boehner’s new farm bill will be opposed by the U.S. Senate because it failed to include additional money for EBT cards and free food for the working poor and disabled, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Originally, Boehner included SNAP (otherwise known as food stamps) in his first bill, but it failed to garner enough votes to pass.
Because it cut SNAP by more than $20 billion, most Democrats voted against the legislation. Tea Party-aligned Republicans believed it was still too expensive while the country has a staggering $17 trillion debt.
Additionally, many committee chairmen voted against the original bill, including Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce.
Faced with his initial failure, Boehner was able to corral more Republican votes by splitting the bill into two bills: one becoming an actual “farm” bill, and the other covering SNAP. Tea Party Republicans consider this an energizing chance to actually cut food stamps by even more than the $20.5 billion spread out over 10 years, as was proposed in the failed farm bill.
Let’s hope this division can withstand the forces of Washington. The two bills …read more
By Regina Schrambling With so much animosity in the cyber-US this week, I almost hesitate to post this. But I got a nice lift last Saturday on walking into the Tribeca Greenmarket and spotting this blackboard. I had headed there with all of $19 in my wallet and no ATM for blocks but walked out with everything I needed: fish (striped bass from Blue Moon, in fact), corn, peaches and even shisito peppers. And I liked the notion that even those who depend on food stamps could have spent the same amount and gotten even more, thanks to this bonus program. I squander way too much of my life online, and on “legit” newspapers and magazines where the narrative seems to be that only the desperately poor need help with food and that when they accept that care they become dependent on the government dole. So this was a great reminder that foods stamps kick the benefits in two directions. The people who get them can both nourish themselves/their families and contribute to society. And everyone who sells food gets, in essence, a government subsidy while keeping shoppers nourished enough to come shopping next Saturday. I always get push-back on the notion of how useful food stamps are at stereotypically overpriced farmers’ markets. To which I’ll respond that a huge proportion of the people buying at my neighborhood Greenmarket are cashing in SNAP coupons. And even in a super-rich neighborhood like Tribeca, the nannies who rock the rich cradles gotta eat, too.
Source: Epicurious
After the Zimmerman verdict, Black Panther activist Malik Shabazz told audiences that blacks must retaliate: “You want freedom you must go out and kill some crackers.”
Thousands of African-Americans marched in protest of the “innocent” verdict for Hispanic Zimmerman. Ironically, no whites threatened blacks after the “innocent” verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial where he killed his wife and her new boyfriend with a knife. If you questioned that verdict, or the racial makeup of the jury — you were a racist. This past weekend, a jury found Hispanic George Zimmerman innocent. If you’re not out on the street complaining about it — you’re a racist. Would this have even been a national story if the killer turned up black and the victim happened to be white? Not a peep from the national media. Black on white crime occurs daily without media attention.
With endless irony, in the 513 days since Zimmerman dispatched Trayvon Martin, 11,300 black people suffered deaths at the hands of nearly that same amount of black people. In other words, blacks kill blacks with growing alacrity.
Another black leader yelled to kill whites, but a blogger responded, “Who will pay for your welfare checks and grow your food?”
A blogger named SemperFiDave made an interesting comment, “Has there ever been such focused inattention as the case has produced? Nothing of importance is noticed, and everything lacking it is. The crucial fact to come out of the whole adventure—crucial, and therefore utterly overlooked–was that Rachel Jeantel, a prosecution witness and black girl aged nineteen years, can´t read. The grim implication of this fact is confirmed by the illiteracy of tweets from blacks regarding the case. ‘Ima kill dat dumass cracker be racis.’ Here we see as neatly displayed as if in a jewelry box why so many young blacks will go nowhere in the remaining fifty years of their lives. They can´t read, or barely can. In a fading techno-industrial civilization—I use the latter word frivolously—this consigns them to a life on charity. Is this not of more note than who started what?”
Black illiteracy starts with the 76 percent high school dropout/flunkout rate in areas like Detroit, MI as reported by Brian Williams at NBC. Most other major cities feature at least 50 to 60 percent black dropout rates from high schools. A whopping 68 percent of black children face life with a single mother; and 99 percent of them live on welfare checks, assisted housing, and food stamps. (Source: Dotty Lamm of the Denver Post) A huge percentage of blacks utilize food stamps out of the 47 million Americans dependent on the program. A mind-numbing 40 percent of African-American men lack jobs because they lack a high school diploma and skills. They suffer functional illiteracy; they cannot read, write, or perform simple math.
We see a self-induced complete breakdown of the black family unit in America that rivals anything in America’s history. Entrenched poverty, illiteracy, and joblessness faces 40 to 50 percent of black Americans. Blacks find themselves in the richest country …read more
By Doug Book
This week, CNN was once again referring to George Zimmerman as a “WHITE Hispanic,” meaning apparently that the defendant in the Trayvon Martin shooting case was not one of the garden variety Hispanics known to be deserving of welfare, food stamps, social security and of course a pathway to citizenship. White Hispanics it seems are the devious, racial profiling sort who enjoy shooting blacks while claiming self-defense. Naturally, CNN wanted to make certain its shrinking, viewing audience understood the difference.
Upon concluding a thorough investigation of the February 26th, 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the Sanford police found there was not enough evidence to charge George Zimmerman with a crime. According to then Sanford police chief Bill Lee, “…from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense.” How did a man who legally defended his life from a drug impaired, known thug come to face a possible lifetime in prison?
Obviously the prosecution of George Zimmerman had everything to do with the politics of race. The black in the White House who claimed his son would look like Trayvon, the black Attorney General who famously keeps prosecutors away from “his people” and professional race hustlers Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson–all brought immense pressure on Florida politicians from Governor Rick Scott to Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett. It was this pressure which caused officials to ignore evidence and police findings of self defense. It prompted the weak-kneed Governor Scott to appoint Special Prosecutor Angela Corey who could bypass the state’s Grand Jury system in order to bring her own charges against Zimmerman. (The grand jury would have based its findings on fact and evidence, far too dicey a situation for an individual who had to be prosecuted whether guilty or not.) It’s now known that Corey withheld exculpatory evidence favorable to Zimmerman’s claim of self defense.
And the efforts of race-baiters and the Obama Administration to secure a guilty verdict against George Zimmerman were ongoing. Trial Judge Debra Nelson disallowed video evidence of Martin brandishing guns; suppressed evidence of Martin’s criminal background including information of stolen jewelry and burglar tools found in his backpack on the night of the shooting; excluded testimony from audio experts who would have shown it was Zimmerman screaming for help, not Martin; allowed prosecutors to present the lesser charge of manslaughter at the last moment when it became apparent their 2nd degree murder claims were not proved; ignored 6 formal defense complaints against prosecutors for withholding exculpatory evidence and asked Zimmerman about his plans to testify in a manner contrary to the law.
The American public watched as a thoroughly biased judge did her best to secure a conviction against a man who should not have been on trial in the first place. Had George Zimmerman been found guilty, race hustlers and corrupt politicians would have succeeded in robbing an innocent man of his liberty while making those who would defend a life seem no better than those who would take one.
Fortunately, a jury of 6 had …read more
The loudest, most-heated debate in Washington this week wasn’t over immigration, skyrocketing student loan rates or even the uncertain fate of food stamps.It was about rules.
more People on Welfare than they do Employed!
fiscal year 2012, between food stamps, housing
support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits, the
average U.S. Household below the poverty line received
$168.00 a day in government support. What’s the
problem with that much support? Well, the median
household income in America is just over $50,000,which
averages out to $137.13 a day.
equivalent of $30.00 an hour for a 40-hour week, while
the average job pays $25.00 an hour.
