The United States nation of “give me” at work here. (h/t Moonbattery)
Thirty thousand people turned out in East Point on Wednesday seeking applications for government-subsidized housing, and their confusion and frustration, combined with the summer heat, led to a chaotic mob scene that left 62 people injured.
At the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center, emergency vehicles passed each other, transporting 20 people to hospitals. Medical and police command posts were set up on scene. East Point police wore riot gear. Officers from four other agencies supported them. Yet no arrests were made.
All of this resulted from people attempting to obtain Section 8 housing applications and, against long odds, later securing vouchers for affordable residences. Some waited in line for two days for the applications.
The Democrats have succeeded in making this once great nation into a bunch of freeloaders who cannot be bothered to get off the couch to work. I mean why? The government will give you money for free….of course it’s the taxpayers money but who cares about them. They are the ones actually getting off their asses to work while the rest of the nation do nothing, and pay nothing.
Yeah, I’m ranting a bit…especially after watching the yahoo Ed Schultz and his guest Ron Mott in the video below. If you don’t want your blood pressure to rise intolerably skip most of the video and just go to the 10 minute mark.
I wanna puke. We ARE better than this. People shouldn’t be on welfare forever, they shouldn’t be in free housing forever, and they shouldn’t EXPECT to get everything for free. You need assistance for a few months, ok….but look for and get a job. There are jobs out there. You just need may need to take an entry-level position in your field.
Then there are people who have no intention of getting a job because why should they? They get it all for free anyways. Just like Schultz’s guest said….it’s just like winning a lottery ticket for these people.
A program that was intended to give someone in need a home FOR AWHILE, until they got back on their feet, has over the years morphed (thanks to the Democrats) into a freebie for life. You get a free home and you never move. That’s why there is never any additional Section 8 housing because none of the freeloaders leave.
Neil Cavuto:
Partial transcript:
…This is a sprint from sanity. Like folks from Atlanta yesterday, rioting over those subsidized housing handouts. Or illegal’s protesting being treated like oh, illegals!
Think about that for a moment.
People who shouldn’t even be here protesting their simple lack of rights here. Arguing it’s illegal to treat illegals as if they’re illegal. Even though….HELLO, YOUR ILLEGAL!
When people aren’t even entitled to be here feel entitled to demand entitlements here is it any wonder everyone feels entitled here?
No wonder so many refuse to get off the couch without first demanding someone first give them a check.
We don’t buy cars without a cash for clunkers program. We don’t buy homes without a housing credit program.
Everyone is a victim. And everyone wants a check. For the mortgage they cannot pay and the house they knew full well they could never afford.
We’ve gone from a nation doubtful of government benefits to giving all government aid the benefit of the doubt. But of this I have no doubt.
It is killing us.
By sucking the very last fiber of decency and self reliance from us. We now expect it. We now demand it.
On a side note, everyone should read Murray N. Rothbard’s essay on how we got to where we are as a welfare nation. It’s long but well worth the time.
Depressing too.
See author page
Looked a lot like what you see in Kenya or the average shothole in Africa. Where do they think things come from, out of the arse of the tooth fairy.
Hint:
If you learned to spell, and at least learned the _basics_ of English grammar, you wouldn’t reveal yourself as a TOTAL idiot. Pathetic. LOL!
Moby sighting Aisle 2.
Moby sighting Aisle 2.
@Kitten Mitten: Why so serious
If that raises your blood pressure, read _this_!!
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/foreclosures-mean-luxury-section-8-houses
I wonder what the first peoples to arrived in AMERICA survive, by not doing anything and not being able to collect a check from GOVERNMENT; they had to start with nothing and used their brains to
survive in the worst condititions, working hard to bring the food only, at their familly table.
MONEY? that was scarce, so much that they had to save it ,a penny at the time.
there was no handout, you work hard or you where lazy and pointed finger at you.
AND a NATION came out of thoses first with strong VALUES and GOD loving familys
they built a SUPER POWER NATION which is the PROUD AMERICA.
The fundamental problem is that in a modern industrialized society, there will never be a demand for workers sufficient to provide everyone with a job, or to provide everyone who has a job with a living wage–let alone enough income to provide for themselves when they eventually become too old or too broken down to continue working. Corporate America has already put many American workers in direct competetion with robotic manufacturing, automated services, and with overseas workers who’ll gladly work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 20 cents an hour. In the absence of social programs, what happens to the people who just aren’t profitable enough for the capitalist system to bother with?
GREG, I think if you start by protecting AMERICA on a whole, is one step,the busineses need to
be reconnize as helping society giving them job and fair wages, but the UNIONS have become the spoilers, that need to be corrected, and the illegals are too many are spoilers, the open wide immigration without any realistic restrictions are spoilers, as the open wide borders are spoilers. bye
Greg, they find their own way of creating wealth.
Necessity is the mom of invention or something like that…….
The liberal morons passing out all of this free stuff can’t even give it away with out creating stress and riot. They could have made the voucher applications available at all gov. facilities and then used a lottery to choose the few that that might have a chance at a liberal gov. handout. Or they could just pass out the forms at the club that I’ll bet many of the went to that night.
Buffalobob, that makes too much sense. That’s why similar solution(s) to yours will never be one(s) that the career beaurocrats choose.
Think like someone with the IQ of 90 coming up with a solution, then pick the one with the least amount of ingenuity and practicality.
“Greg, they find their own way of creating wealth.
“Necessity is the mom of invention or something like that…….”
Yep. A lot of them get so inventive they wind up in jail, at an average cost of $22,632 per year, per inmate. (As of 2006.) It costs U.S. taxpayers around $70 billion per year to keep people locked up. It’s a real growth industry, up 620% since 1982. Privatization of the prison system increasingly puts that money into corporate pockets. The more people we lock up, the greater their profits.
Which isn’t to say that a lot of people shouldn’t be locked up. There are many who should never be let out. But 51% of the prison population are in for non-violent offenses. 22% are for drug offenses.
After seeing the reports on TV and the internet, I suppose it would be “racist” to state that apparently, 90-95% of those clamoring for their “share” of what WE work our asses off for are black.
Jus’ sayin’
Sorry, but it’s not “we”, if we, speaking here, abhor these things, then it is “them”. And they are far too many. And counting.
@Greg: The robot excuse hasn’t worked for many years. If we eliminate the robots and do things by hand the cost would be prohibitive. The more things cost, the less they sell. It’s been this way since capitalism was invented.
The way to take care of retirement is like George Bush tried to get started. The money you are now paying into Social Security would EVENTUALLY go in a private account that you control how it is invested. It will be YOUR money.
There will always be SOME people who NEED more help because of things they had no control over. I don’t mind some of my money going to them. One thing that bothers me is illegals who are getting bigger Social Security checks each month that are bigger than mine. A great start would be to quit giving my SS money to those who haven’t paid into it.
Wodsworth,
You seem to have forgotten the democrat’s philosophy of getting votes:
(1) Get them on some kind of welfare or government job. There are now more Federal employees than non-farm civilian employees and they are getting at least 40% better pay and benefits.
(2) Guarantee them that if they vote for you that they will keep getting a government check.
(3) Guarantee them that if they vote for you that they will get a bigger government check.
Rides a Pale Horse You said what I saw and was going to comment on. guess I am not the only one who believes the demonrat party is responsible for the ills we as a Nation are feeling these days. It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy, and by the looks of it, it’s working just fine.
Rides A Pale Horse #13:
I guess I must be racist because I noticed that as well.
Is Michelle Obama proud of her country yet ?
.
Average Infidel #17 …. It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Thanks for mentioning the Cloward-Piven strategy in your post. I had never heard of it so looked it up.
http://cloward-piven.com/
Looks exactly like ‘Team Obama’s strategy. 😥 ….we need it wake up fast and clean house.
.
Progressive/Libtard policies are designed to keep people in poverty and looking for government to feed, house and cloth them. It was not coincidence that LBJ’s Great Society has kept so many in this condition.
Marxists always overlook the great flaw in their preferred system of government… The motivation factor of individuals. When there is no reward for effort… why bother.
If every newborn in the country were exempted from all future government entitlement programs and instead brought into the fold of capitalism through a single pre-paid entitlement, $50k in a private trust from birth from which all necessary safety nets (disability insurance, retirement, etc…) could be purchased from private entities, we’d all be better off and we’d get the government out of the business of enslaving people to government largess It would only take about 80 years.
@Donald Bly: The Fair Tax has the trust idea covered. It sounded stupid when I first read it. They would take whatever the poverty level is, divide it by 12, and issue a check each month to EVERY legal citizen of the USA. The poor are taken care of and they can still go out and earn all they want without paying taxes or a penalty on it. Sounds stupid until you think it through.
Ms. Rand was acutely prescient in terming “them” as Looters and Moochers. Democrat welfare programs supposedly ‘care’ about the unfortunates who cannot find work. The end results of their programs is to produce more people dependent on the government, and thus, more need for even more government involvement, creating more dependents, creating more need for government involvement, etc., etc.,……………..and it goes on and on.
Government looting of corporations and higher earners(many of them small business owners) creates an atmosphere that forces companies to look outside to maintain low costs. Jobs move overseas, unemployment increases. The Looters then come up with government programs to ‘help’ those unemployed, and pay for it by taking even more from the corporations and higher earners. There is no pro-business atmosphere in our country.
The Moochers believe their ‘rights’ are affected by the greed of companies and higher wage earners, because the Looters tell them whose fault it is, and the moochers don’t see that their own destructive support of the Looters is what leads to their ‘need’.
The people who engage in actual production get stuck footing the bill for this whole mess.
Ayn Rand broke it down to the basics. Either you are a producer or a consumer in the society. The moocher mindset has become pervasive and, encouraged by the Great Society nonsense, has become self-replicating. Until we can restore a sense of responsibility to contribute to society as a producer we will continue to falter.
The Tea Party movement toward smaller government and fiscal responsibility gives me some optimism that we haven’t fallen into the chasm yet.
>>I suppose it would be “racist” to state that apparently, 90-95% of those clamoring for their “share” of what WE work our asses off for are black.>>
Well now…c’mon! It’s only fair. After all…their ancestors were brought over here to be slaves working to support the massa, isn’t it only fair that their descendants get to make _us_ slaves???
@Smorgasbord….
It was my understanding that the monthly checks were a refund of the tax on the first $28,000 of income.
I’ll use 20% as an example…. the tax on $28,000 would be 28,000*.20 = $5600/12 = monthly check of $483.33
It really doesn’t fit into the same category as my idea of a private trust as it is simply a monthly refund of tax that people will have to pay out.
I must confess, that I haven’t read the book… but I have heard reports about its provisions. Which I find quite equitable. I’ll have to take the time to read the full proposal…
And the left says we have no ideas…. they should get their heads extracted before their sphincters snap their necks.
Suek….
If certain people think they are owed reparations… perhaps someone should figure out how much the interest on the cost of trans-atlantic ship passage would be along with room and board furnished, for use as an offset and present the bill to their descendants.
@Donald Bly: I’m talking about the Social Security checks that a lot of illegals are getting even though they haven’t paid into it. Since politicians have their own retirement plan (much better than ours) they can give out MY money that I have paid into for all of my working life to help them get more votes. They are using MY SS money to buy votes. It is also going to children and some young adults that have qualifying problems. It was never meant as JUST retirement money or it would have been put in a separate account that the politicians couldn’t tap into. Even now they won’t put it in a separate account.
@Smorgasbord, #15:
The underlying premise there seems to be that anyone who invests their money will most likely make a profit; that if everyone played, everyone would be a winner.
Things don’t actually work that way. Investment is a competition for shares of profit. Some win–sometimes on a grand scale–while others don’t.
Worse still, the game appears to be rigged to favor those who work for the house (the financial industries) and some of the biggest players. How can that not be obvious after 2008? By and large, it was the small trusting players and the taxpayers who took an enormous hit. The people who were most responsible for the debacle made out like bandits, escaping with their loot. They had the government over a barrel; either they’d be bailed out, or the entire system would crash down into smoking rubble, taking the national and global economy down with it. Anytime it was pointed out that they were, in fact, making out like bandits while the little guys were being left with the bill, they made the case that the government had no business interfering with the workings of the marketplace. That would be overstepping the bounds! Persecution!
I’ve noticed that those who argue most strongly for privatization also argue most strongly against regulation. It’s as though the abuses that culminated in 2008 never even happened. They continue to insist that a minimally regulated free market system works best for everybody, and blame our economic woes on the very mechanisms that are helping the unemployed and those who need help the most.
It’s often asserted that democrats buy votes with programs. I’d counter that by suggesting it’s stupid for people not to vote in their own best interest. Rational redistributive mechanisms are in the best interest of at least 80 percent of the population. Unemployment insurance, retirement insurance, and disability insurance clearly fall under that category. Dwight D. Eisenhower commented very clearly on the future of any political party that attempts to do away with such things:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1147.cfm
Putting a new spin on his words won’t change the fact that what he said was correct.
@Smorgasbord.
The reason social security was not an insurance plan is because the supreme court wouldn’t allow it for constitutional reasons… that’s why it has always been available to the government for use in general funding.
My plan is essentially fiat money… but limited in it’s scope to only newborns so it can’t get out of control.
No illegal alien should EVER GET SOCIAL SECURITY.
@Greg, Social Security was an FDR Ponzi scheme anyway, established way before GWB was born. Your Blame Bush business pretty much tells a lot about your bias and speaks poorly for your character.
@Greg
There are numerous companies that pay out dividends and have for years and years provided respectable returns. Proctor and Gamble pay 6%.
Since the money for these trust funds would come from the gov… and not individual contributions the government can put requirements on how it is invested and what can or must be done with the proceeds. IE: No investment could be made in a company that didn’t pay a yearly dividend of at least 6%. That individuals must have health insurance, paid with the premium paid from dividends from the trust or provided through employment. No investment can be made in a company where the CEO makes more than 25 times the average salary. No investment could be made in a company with more than 20% of its operations outside of the USA… and the list goes on… but all voluntary.
Businesses that wanted to have that trust fund money available for investing in their companies would have to abide by various regulations that would be totally voluntary… abide or no trust fund money. Don’t abide by the regulations, no big deal, business as usual.
I’ve done the numbers…. one would come out way ahead with this sort of program… upon death, any money left in the trust… would revert back to the treasury since it wasn’t their money to begin with. Individuals might be able to borrow from the fund for emergencies with repayment plus interest. People can get catastrophic health care for as little as $150 a month but the deductibles are high… they could buy cheap insurance and pay out of pocket for health care except for major illnesses.
etc… etc….
>>upon death, any money left in the trust… would revert back to the treasury since it wasn’t their money to begin with.>>
Would? or wouldn’t?
My understanding of Bush’s program was that first, it was optional – you could stay in the SS program just as it was, and second, if you chose the private ownership route, that money was _yours_. Whatever you had was what you had – for better or for worse.
By the way – Larry Elder has pointed out how unfair the SS system has been for blacks as for years their average death rate has been lower than whites. As a result, the average black pays in for 40 – 45 years, gets payments for 3-5 years, then dies and his estate gets nothing. Whites live longer, and hence collect more. If the program were privately owned, whatever was in the account upon your death would go to your heirs – which would benefit blacks as well as whites.
A few other things from your linked study to ponder, suek:
I’d say that in the USA, we have that here far more than in Britain, and most certainly in any Muslim country under a despot.
Yet, according to you, Americanized Muslim women are just frothing at the bit for a similar system here, where our laws preclude such Shariah judgment, and they have options in our single legal system. Yet Canadian Muslim women, also well assimilated into western culture, used their voices to protest. Canada’s attempts to set this up were beaten back… with the help of Muslim women.
It is exactly the same in American arbitation/mediation judgments.
The same happens with battered wives, and husbands that “threaten” everything from child custody to bodily harm or death.
Everything I see in this 38 pg report are good reasons for a Muslim woman *not* to agree. If she craves her freedom enough, and has US law at her back, she can most certainly do just that. She can not in Iran and other Muslim held countries. And I give her (the American Muslim woman) no more leeway than I gave myself, when I was drowning in my own erroneous judgment. At some point in your life, you choose life and freedom, or death and servitude.
@Greg: Galveston County TX would be a good example how it should work. They opted out of SS when it was created. I don’t know if the money goes into an individual’s name or if it’s a group account, but some of the retirees who have been there long enough are getting more money in retirement than they did while working. That will NEVER happen with a government run program. If the money is put in an employee’s name, then the retirement money won’t cost the county a cent and they will never have to worry about having the money for the pension fund like so many others are.
I still believe that people should have to WORK for their money. One community, I don’t remember where, started a program that if a person wanted welfare they had to take a job that was available. They could pick the job. The welfare recipients said that if they had to WORK for their money they were going to get a better job than they had, so they got a better job and got off welfare.
The welfare workers saw that if the welfare recipients got off of welfare, there wouldn’t be any need for welfare workers, so they sued and won. The welfare recipients no longer had to work for the money.
What I would like to see is to pass a law that says ANYONE who is getting SS, unemployment assistance, or any other Federal assistance, and those who will qualify in the future, will get their money even if those agencies are ended. Then we can start all over and do it the way it should have been done in the beginning.
One reason businesses are “Too Big Too Fail” is that they bought off the politicians so they can do what they want. That is how the banking bubble busted. I am no economy expert, but the usual way to handle bank failures, not matter how big, is to have the Feds take over the bank, find some other bank or banks to buy it, and reopen under the new name, usually within days of the failure. They could even sell it to different banks, this would go along with Obama’s “Spread the wealth” philosophy.
If General Motors would have failed, there are still plenty of other car makes who could have picked up the business without hurting the economy or hurting unemployment. The “Spread the wealth” mentality could be applied here too.
The idea wasn’t to keep jobs. It was to keep UNION jobs. I’m not for or against unions, but can anybody name one that isn’t connected directly or indirectly to the mob? There might be, but I haven’t heard of any.
@Donald Bly: Social Security was not meant as “insurance.” It was meant as “retirement” money. It was SUPPOSED to help people who didn’t have anything when they retire to have some money so they wouldn’t have to depent on welfare in their old age.
One reason SS will start paying out more this year than they are taking in is because when it was set up they let people pay into it. You paid in a certain amount and you got SS for the rest of your life. I know of one man who had plenty of money that did this and drew SS checks, and probably Medicare costs, for the rest of his life.
The average person who gets $50,000 all at once goes out and spends it. About 25% of those who win millions of dollars in the Lottery go bankrupt.
Before we comment any further about this, please read The Fair Tax book and see what you think of it. The ones who thought this stuff up are brilliant.
@suek, #32: “By the way – Larry Elder has pointed out how unfair the SS system has been for blacks as for years their average death rate has been lower than whites. As a result, the average black pays in for 40 – 45 years, gets payments for 3-5 years, then dies and his estate gets nothing. ”
A point of interest: It wasn’t too many years back that women’s Social Security benefits were calculated at a lower monthly rate than men’s, even though some hypothetical male and female might have totally identical work and contribution histories. The different monthly payment formulas were based on actuarial tables. All else being equal, women got less per month than men because women live longer.
@suek: Bush’s plan was to let people put 10% of their SS money in a private account. The other 90% would go into SS.
@Smorgasbord
Newborn children have a pretty hard time going out and blowing $50K. It is a trust… there would need to be trustees. I envision five total, two family members, two community members and one government bureaucrat familiar with the laws/regulations covering the program.
When social security was started the average life span was 58. Individuals were awarded a monthly pension commencing when they reached the age of 65. Most people never lived long enough to collect. It was in part a scam to raise revenue to offset the enormous cost of FDR’s new deal programs and hold down the deficit.
In 1933 Francis Townsend proposed a scheme whereby the Federal government would provide every person over 60 a $200 monthly pension. Townsend claimed that his Old Age Revolving Pension Plan could be financed by a Federal tax on commercial transactions. The plan obtained a great deal of public support and by 1935 his Townsend Club had over 5 million members.
In 1935 Townsend handed in to President Franklin D. Roosevelt a petition supporting the Old Age Revolving Pension Plan that had been signed by over 20 million people. In response to the petition, Congress passed the Social Security Act.
It established Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance that provided for compulsory savings for wage earners so that benefits may be paid to them on retirement at 65. To finance the scheme, both the employer and employee had to pay a 3% payroll tax.
Francis Townsend claimed that Roosevelt’s social security legislation was completely inadequate and in 1936 joined with Father Edward Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith to form the National Union of Social Justice. William Lepke was selected as the party’s candidate in the 1936 presidential election but won only 882,479 votes compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt (27,751,597) and Alfred Landon (16,679,583).
I’d go into further detail… but it is 94 degrees… this laptop battery has just roasted my chestnuts so badly that any swimmers I had left are now baked.
@Donald Bly: Please read The Fair Tax Book. They don’t cover retirement, but the rest is better than your idea. Yours sounds too complicated with all the people running one account, and they won’t do it for free. If the child doesn’t live long enough to get a job and pay into the tax system, then the money was taken out of the system without any return.
You are also guaranteeing the anchor babies, who’s mothers come here just so their baby will be born a US citizen, $50,000. That will just encourage more anchor babies.
It will also encourage American women to have more babies. Remember the women who have babies to get more welfare money?
@Smorgasbord
The fair tax system addresses taxation… my system addresses entitlements.
If the child doesn’t live long enough to get a job… all the principal plus interest is returned. NO LOSS.
For a child to qualify… One parent MUST be a US citizen.
You have to understand… none of this money can be spent… it MUST BE INVESTED. So there is no incentive for a mother to have more children. Her expenses go up but she doesn’t get a dime.
The return on the investment is what is used to finance privately what we currently provide via entitlements. $50K invested at 6% grows to 2 million plus dollars by age 65… most of the interest is left untouched for the first 18 years of the child’s life.
Being on the board of Trustees would be an unpaid situation…. two family members, and their choice of two other members from the community… the gov bureaucrat would be paid. They’d meet probably only once a year or once every other year.
This is really no more complicated than the concept that businesses do not pay tax, as it is all passed on to the consumer.
Did you think that eliminating all current government safety net programs while still maintaining the safety nets wouldn’t take some thinking outside of the box.
@Donald Bly: The Fair Tax Book covers all of this. Please don’t reply until you have read it.
The $50,000 has to come from some place to start off with, and each birth would add to that. This would just keep adding to the deficit.
I also want the law changed so that to be a Federal politician of the USA both of your parents and all four of your grandparents would have to have been born her. That would give the individual roots here.
@Smorgasbord…. I’ve already stated where the money comes from… it is fiat. Fiat money does not add to the deficit. The creation of fiat money has the effect of devaluing existing idle money. Thus it essentially becomes a tax on money that isn’t productively invested. Most recessions, depressions have as a component the hording of money by those that can afford to horde it. Currently there are trillions of dollars that are not in circulation because business is uncertain about future government action so they simply don’t invest it. This hurts everyone.
Money that is invested is not hurt by inflation. $100 invested in Company A is worth $100… with 10% inflation at the end of a year the value of Company A is now $110. $100 under a mattress is only worth $90 after a year when inflation is running at 10% Inflation really only hurts idle money.
In real dollars with the current birth rate what it is … this would mean an addition of about $200 billion into the money supply each year.