Because so many elite media journalists just can’t seem to get this passed their skulls.
Daily Archives: August 16, 2012
Over 100 Million Now Receiving Federal Welfare
Related:
CIS: 57% of illegal immigrant households on welfare – LINK
Welfare grew by 19% under Obama! Total Obama Stimulus Bills $2.5 TRILLION – LINK
5.4 Million Join Disability Rolls Under Obama – LINK
Real GDP Tanked at 1.7%. Food Stamps and Welfare at Record Levels – LINK
Food Stamp Spending Doubled Since 2008. Welfare Spending Nearing $1 Trillion a Year – LINK
“The federal government administers nearly 80 different overlapping federal means-tested welfare programs,” the Senate Budget Committee notes. However, the committee states, the figures used in the chart do not include those who are only benefiting from Social Security and/or Medicare.
Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large–and growing–chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. “Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011 and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) from 17 million to 45 million in 2011,” says the Senate Budget Committee. “Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach $800 billion over the next decade.”
The data come “from the U.S. Census’s Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that nearly 110,000 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011. (These figures do not include other means-tested benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or the health insurance premium subsidies included in the President’s health care law. CBO estimates that the premium subsidies, scheduled to begin in 2014, will cover at least 25 million individuals by the end of the decade.)”
Conservative Leader Pays George Obama’s Medical Bills
President Obama said that he believes that we should be our brother’s keeper and yet his real life brother lives in a shanty hut.
Conservative intellectual Dinesh D’Souza went to interview George Obama who has written a book. George is insightful, thoughtful, humble and very intelligent. He also rejects the collectivist, anti-colonialist ideology of his father and his brother.
George Obama’s son was very sick and the hospital bill was $1,000 so D’Souza paid the bill for him. See the video of the George Obama interview at The Blaze and read D’Souza’s column about the story HERE.
Charles Koch: Why We Fight for Economic Freedom
In 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I attended an economic conference in Moscow.
Like my father during his visits to the U.S.S.R. in the early 1930s, I was astonished and appalled by what I saw.
Simple necessities, such as toilet paper, were in short supply. In fact, there was none at all in the airport bathroom stalls for fear it would be stolen. Visitors using the facilities had to request a portion of tissue from an attendant beforehand.
When I walked into one of Moscow’s giant department stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. For those shoppers who were lucky enough to find something they actually wanted to buy, the purchase process was maddening and time-consuming.
Although the government provided universal healthcare, I never met anyone who wanted to stay in a Soviet hospital. Medical services might have been “free,” but the quality of care was notoriously poor.
Reality Check
My experiences in the Soviet Union underscore why economic freedom is so important for all of us.
Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way.
No centralized government, no matter how big, how smart or how powerful, can effectively and efficiently control much of society in a beneficial way. On the contrary, big governments are inherently inefficient and harmful.
And yet, the tendency of our own government here in the U.S. has been to grow bigger and bigger, controlling more and more. This is why America keeps dropping in the annual ranking of economic freedom.
Devil’s Bargain
Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.
It was President Franklin Roosevelt who said: “Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
Businesses can become dependents, too. If your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car – even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.
Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.
Cronyism
Under the Soviet system, special traffic lanes were set aside for the sole use of officials in their limousines. This worsened driving conditions for everyone else, but those receiving favored treatment didn’t care.
Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism.
Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.
After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.
Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us – customers and competitors alike – worse off.
One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides. Meanwhile, consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay an average of five times more for wind-generated electricity.
We see far too many legislative proposals that would subsidize one form of energy over another, penalize certain emissions from one industry but not another, or place protective tariffs that hurt consumers.
Legacies
Karl Marx famously said: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
The result of this approach is not equality, but rather a lowering of everyone’s standards to some minimal level.
Some people worry about the disparity of wealth in a system of economic freedom. What they don’t realize is that the same disparity exists in the least-free countries.
The difference is who is better off.
Under economic freedom, it is the people who do the best job of producing products and services that make people’s lives better.
On the other hand, in a system without economic freedom, the wealthiest are the tyrants who make people’s lives miserable.
As a result of this, the income of the poorest in the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest.
Elected officials are often asked what they would like as their legacy. I’m never going to run for office, but I can tell you how I would answer that question.
I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth.
Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc.
Obama Attorney General Eric Holder: Brainwash People to Surrender Second Amendment (video)
From a speech Eric Holder made in 1995:
Four Stages of Islamic Conquest (video)
I have seen this outlined in a lecture from Brigitte Gabrielle who watched this exact same method used to conquer Lebanon with the help of secular leftists who the Islamists later slaughtered.
Brigitte Gabrielle interview:
AWESOME: What the Ronald Reagan 2012 National Address Would Be (video)
What the Ronald Reagan 2012 National Address Would Be. We miss you Dutch.
McDonald’s: ObamaCare will cost us $420,000,000 per year in new costs…
So much for that McChicken only costing a dollar….
Papa John: I must raise pizza prices if ‘Obamacare’ survives – LINK
Cook Medical Scraps Plans to Expand Production in USA Because of ObamaCare Tax: Looking to Go Overseas – LINK
The Affordable Care Act could cost McDonald’s and its franchisees more than $400 million a year in additional health-care expenses, Chief Financial Officer Peter Bensen said on Monday.
McDonald’s estimates that each restaurant will incur between $10,000 and $30,000 in added annual costs, Bensen said in response to an analyst’s question on a conference call to discuss the fast-food giant’s second-quarter results, according to an unedited transcript of the call provided by FactSet. There are about 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S., meaning McDonald’s expects the total cost to the company and its franchisees to be in the range of $140 million to $420 million. McDonald’s owns about 11% of its U.S. restaurants, while the rest are franchised.
Bensen added that the wide range is due to a number of variables, including the number of employees per restaurant and how many are full-time workers. Spokeswomen for McDonald’s added that the final cost will also depend on what percentage of its eligible employees elect to accept health insurance from the chain, as well as any changes McDonald’s might make to its health-care plan. McDonald’s worked with its franchisees to analyze and estimate the potential costs, the spokeswomen said, which could be mitigated by higher menu prices.
Companies have moved ahead with planning for economic and other consequences of the law since a Supreme Court ruling last month upheld the vast majority of President Barack Obama’s controversial health-care law, even as congressional Republicans and that party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, vow to overturn it.
“Now that the Supreme Court has ruled,” Bensen said, “[we are] increasing our conversations and disclosures with franchisees” to educate them about the potential changes and how to minimize their impact.
To put the cost per restaurant into perspective, Bensen noted on the call that the commodity-costs increases it experienced in 2011, for example, added more than $30,000 in overhead to each restaurant that year.
Papa John: I must raise pizza prices if ‘Obamacare’ survives
Cook Medical Scraps Plans to Expand Production in USA Because of ObamaCare Tax: Looking to Go Overseas – LINK
McDonald’s: ObamaCare will cost us $420,000,000 per year – LINK
Get ready to pay more for your Papa John’s pizza if “Obamacare” goes into full effect … a whopping 15 to 20 cents more.
John Schnatter, chief executive of the pizza chain, is bashing President Obama’s healthcare reform law as a policy that will force the company to choose between its customers and its investors.
And if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rolls out as planned in 2014, Schnatter’s strategy is “of course … to pass that cost on the consumer in order to protect our shareholders’ best interest,” he said in a recent conference call.
Schnatter estimates that the legislation will cost Papa John’s about 11 cents to 14 cents per pizza, which equates to 15 cents to 20 cents per order. An average delivery charge runs $1.75 to $2.50.
The National Restaurant Assn. has criticized the healthcare legislation for having a chilling effect on expansion and hiring in the industry, which tends to be labor-intensive and burdened with thin margins.
Chains such as White Castle and Burger King have predicted surging costs due to the new regulations, which require businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to offer healthcare to such workers and their dependents.
And ObamaCare is designed to make the cost of that insurance rise dramatically.
Cook Medical Scraps Plans to Expand Production in USA Because of ObamaCare Tax: Looking to Go Overseas
When it comes to jobs Obama has proven to be the great destroyer.
Papa John: I must raise pizza prices if ‘Obamacare’ survives – LINK
McDonald’s: ObamaCare will cost us $420,000,000 per year in new costs – LINK
An Indiana company’s decision to scrap expansion plans due to a looming tax on medical devices has renewed pressure on the Senate to consider a House-passed bill repealing the tax.
House Speaker John Boehner, in a written statement, urged the Senate to take up the bill “as soon as possible.”
Companies in the medical device industry for months have been calling on Congress to strip the provision. Amid the complaints, though, several firms have already taken steps to cut back U.S. investment out of concern for the tax’s impact.
Cook Medical, an Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer, last week said it’s nixing plans to open five new plants in the next five years — claiming the tax will cost between $15 million and $30 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities in the Midwest.
“Unfortunately, we have had to shelve these expansion plans and look overseas for that,” Allison Giles, vice president for federal affairs with the company, told FoxNews.com. “It’s a huge amount for us.”
She urged the Senate to take up the repeal bill, even if it has to wait for the post-election lame-duck session.
“We’re hoping that members will look at this, not so much as a health care provision, but as a jobs provision,” she said.
The Affordable Care Act imposed the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices beginning in 2013. It is projected to raise nearly $30 billion over the next decade — the House voted to repeal it last month.
The Obama administration argues that claims the tax will shift jobs overseas are overblown.
Star Parker Calls Out Tavis Smiley and Cornel West to Debate Race and Poverty (video)
Star Parker Calls Out Tavis Smiley and Cornel West to Debate Race and Poverty. “Secular socialism vs Freedom” as Parker puts it.
National Counterterrorism Center: Sunni Muslim terrorists responsible for nearly 70% of terror-related deaths
According to a report by the US Government’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Sunni Muslim terrorists were responsible for nearly 70 percent of the world’s 12,533 terror-related deaths during 2011.
According to NCTC’s 2011 Report on Terrorism, “Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year.”
Not only did the Sunni jihadists account for the lion’s share of deaths, they also were responsible for 56 percent of all the world’s 5,700 terror attacks.
Classified by the NCTC as Sunni extremists, Al-Qaida and its affiliates were “responsible for at least 688 attacks that resulted in almost 2,000 deaths,” the report stated.
Also lumped into the NCTC’s definition of Sunni extremists, the Taliban of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, “conducted over 800 attacks that resulted in nearly 1,900 deaths.”
The report also cited the second largest category of terrorists during 2011 were “secular, political, and anarchist groups,” which were primarily identified as Marxists, Communists and their sympathizers.
The Marxists and Communists were responsible for “conducting 2,283 attacks with 1,926 fatalities, a drop of 5 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from 2010,” according to the NCTC report.
