Federal Dollars Are Buying The State’s Independence

State Government Dependence On Federal Funding Growing At Alarming Rate

 

 

Click For Interactive View

 

 

 

” Only 11 states depended on the federal government for more than one-third of their total revenues in 2001. By 2012, 24 states found themselves in this situation.

  State-by-state data from the U.S. Census Bureau, compiled by the State Budget Solutions nonprofit, illustrates the trend of increasing state dependence on federal financial assistance.

  Forty-one of the 50 states have become more dependent on the federal government since 2001 — with federal dollars accounting for an increasing share of their total revenues.

  This trend of increased state dependency on Washington reduces state and local control, while threatening the states’ long-run autonomy.

  The reason is that with federal patronage comes federal leverage. The original Obamacare plan, for example, was to force states to expand Medicaid by threatening them with loss of all federal matching Medicaid funds if they refused.”

 

Story continues at The Examiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nick Gillespie’s One Christmas Wish … No Government Santa Claus

“My One-Item Christmas List: A Government That Stops Playing Santa”

 

 

 

” I’ve got a new column up at Time’s Ideas section. Here’s the opening:

  Forget a new car, Beats by Dre, or even affordable health care. You know what I really, really, really want for Christmas?

  I want a government that spends less money. I’m not alone in such a wish. Even President Obama, who has asked for more and more spending in each of his annual budget proposals, has called the nation’s long-term spending patterns “unsustainable.” “

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday Steyn

The Post-Work Economy

 

 

 

” “Work” and “purpose” are intimately connected: Researchers at the University of Michigan, for example, found that welfare payments make one unhappier than a modest income honestly earned and used to provide for one’s family. “It drains too much of the life from life,” said Charles Murray in a speech in 2009. “And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors — even more to the lives of janitors — as it does to the lives of CEOs.” Self-reliance — “work” — is intimately connected to human dignity — “purpose.”

  So what does every initiative of the Obama era have in common? Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security disability expansion, 50 million people on food stamps . . . The assumption is that mass, multi-generational dependency is now a permanent feature of life. A coastal elite will devise ever smarter and slicker trinkets, and pretty much everyone else will be a member of either the dependency class or the vast bureaucracy that ministers to them. And, if you’re wondering why every Big Government program assumes you’re a feeble child, that’s because a citizenry without “work and purpose” is ultimately incompatible with liberty. The elites think a smart society will be wealthy enough to relieve the masses from the need to work. In reality, it would be neo-feudal, but with fatter, sicker peasants. It wouldn’t just be “economic inequality,” but a far more profound kind, and seething with resentments. “

 

 

Must read , as usual

 

Illustration by Chip Bok

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome To Dependency , USA

The New Normal: Welfare Is Now America’s Most Popular Occupation

 

 

 

” New data has revealed what is perhaps the most depressing economic statistic of the year: More people in America are on welfare than have full-time jobs. Yes, you read that correctly. Welfare is now America’s most popular occupation.

From the U.S. Census Bureau, reported by Investor’s Business Daily:

At the end of 2011, the last year for which data are available, some 108.6 million people received one or more means-tested government benefit programs — bureaucratese for welfare.

Meanwhile, there were just 101.7 million people with full-time jobs, the Census data show, including both the private and government sectors.”

 

 

This aspect of Obama’s “Hope & Change” can only end badly , for as Alexis de Toqueville said : 

 

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe

the public with the public’s money.” 

   It would appear that we’ve reached the endgame , which has been the progressive goal all along . A nation of dependents will continue to elect those that dole out the “entitlements” but another wise , departed soul had the last word on government largesse …. Lady Thatcher’s famous quote immediately comes to mind as we tumble headlong into insolvency : 

 

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

For those that haven’t noticed , we’ve run out of other people’s money .

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Queen Of The Dole

 

Jobless Mother Of 11 To Get Six-Bedroom Eco-House After Moaning Her TWO Council Homes Are Cramped

 

 

” 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.”

 

Best Quote :

Furious neighbour: ‘It’s a disgrace. She treats her womb like a clown car’

 

 

HT/Instapundit

 

 

Related articles

• Outrage as designer ‘eco mansion’ built for benefits mum with 11 children (express.co.uk)
• Mum of 11 gets free designer ‘eco mansion’ paid for by you (express.co.uk)
• Lets all not work and have a large family and live of the state. (xymalf.wordpress.com)
• “I’ll ask for a bigger one if I don’t like it”: Mum of 11 may reject council “mansion” (mirror.co.uk)
• A palace fit for a dole queen (thesun.co.uk)
• Anger over mother of 11’s ‘mansion’ (independent.ie)
• Anger over mother of 11’s ‘mansion’ (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)

EBT BOYZ- You’re Everything (Food Stamps Song)

EBT BOYZ- You’re Everything (Food Stamps Song)

 

Dear Generator-Owning Homeowners …

… Do Not Invite Nick Kristof Over Next Time There Is A Hurricane

 

 

 ” Until then, we have to suffer through a mind-numbing series of non-sequiturs in which the decline in marginal tax rates over the last 50 years is responsible for … well everything that has gone wrong in the real or perceived world, including the supposed failure of the electric grid during Hurricane Sandy, A Failed Experiment:

In upper-middle-class suburbs on the East Coast, the newest must-have isn’t a $7,500 Sub-Zero refrigerator. It’s a standby generator that automatically flips on backup power to an entire house when the electrical grid goes out.

In part, that’s a legacy of Hurricane Sandy. Such a system can cost well over $10,000, but many families are fed up with losing power again and again…. “

Related articles

• NICK KRISTOF WRITES A LOT ABOUT FOREIGN COUNTRIES. But given this dogs-breakfast of a column about A… (pjmedia.com)
• Tax cuts for wealthy? It’s a failed experiment (wnd.com)
• RESPONDING TO MARGINAL TAX RATES: Reader Alex Clay writes: After the election, my wife and I are… (pjmedia.com)
• Hurricane Sandy (jadulski.wordpress.com)
• Some Homeowners Unexpectedly Hit With ‘Windstorm Deductible’ (insurancejournal.com)

Reagan Warned Us About Obama

5 Signs Of Societal Degeneration In America

 

Mores ? What Mores ? 

 

 ” 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.”

Related articles

• Hipsters On Food Stamps, Part 2 (thelastpsychiatrist.com)
• Retirees face estimated $240,000 in medical costs (fidelity.com)
• Medicare premiums going up $5 a month for 2013 (aegisnewsagency.wordpress.com)
• Ron Paul: We Must Fiscally Restrain Our Government – OpEd (eurasiareview.com)
• How to Explain the Entitlement Spending Crisis to Kids (heritage.org)

It Takes An Obamaville …

Democrat Death Spiral

Coming Soon To A City Near You 

 

 

  ” The objective of liberal politics is to induce the Democrat Death Spiral, a vicious cycle by which miserable economic conditions lead to government dependency and class envy, leading to Democrat electoral victories, leading to higher taxes and crippling regulations, leading to still more miserable economic conditions. Once the Democrat Death Spiral has been initiated, the more damage left-wing bureaucrats inflict on the economy, the more certain they are of reelection.

Detroit entered the Democrat Death Spiral decades ago. As a result of the city’s utter wretchedness, the Democrats who inflicted it receive upwards of 90% of the vote. There is no possibility of Democrats losing control, or of the city ever regaining its lost greatness. “

  

Worst City in America Votes 98 Percent for Obama

” Barack Obama defeated Governor Mitt Romney by astounding numbers in Detroit, Michigan, amassing 98% of the vote to Romney’s 2%. In a city of over 700,000 people, Mr. Romney was only able to get 6,016 votes according to government tallies.

Mr. Obama received a staggering 281,382 votes, over forty-five times that of the governor. Democrats won heavily in Detroit, though no Democrat who faced a Republican challenger received a higher percent of the vote than the President.”

Related articles

• What Mitt Romney Could Never Overcome (huffingtonpost.com)
• Obamaville 2014 (ifaynsh.wordpress.com)
• HELLO: Obama Likely Won Re-Election Through Election Fraud (conservativeread.com)
• Some Interesting Voting Trends that are Scaring Democrats (godfatherpolitics.com)

Vote Like Your LadyParts Depend On It … Thoroughly Debunked

Ok, Liberal Women. I’ve Tried To Explain This In Really Simple Terms So Even YOU Will Understand It.

” If you’re on our facebook page ever, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been absolutely bombarded with liberals lately.  They’re in epic panic mode now that the election is just a day away, and their hysteria is at an all time high.

Case in point.  Leslie Vaughn wrote this in response to the post/picture I put up last night about liberal feminists.

She had so many talking points in it I thought it might be a good idea to address each one in the same post, so that perhaps these misguided, misinformed, mistaken women might learn something. (I know, not likely, but I wanted to at least give it the old college try.)

1. “Support contraception!” Leslie says.  Newsflash, Leslie.  Many many many conservatives DO support contraception.  We have nothing against it.  In fact, I consider contraception to be sort of a hallmark of one of the basic guiding principles of conservatism – which is TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.  You want to have sex and not get pregnant?  Protect yourself.  It’s really simple.  What we do NOT support, is forcing others to pay for your desire to have sex.  Which leads me to Leslie’s next talking point. “

Related articles

• “When I saw her I marveled greatly…” (illinoisreview.typepad.com)
• Too Many Young Women Have No Idea How Contraception Works [Pill Baby Pill] (jezebel.com)
• Catholic Contraception Conundrums (traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com)
• The HHS Mandate and the Vice Presidential Debate (palamas.info)

The Public Teat

64% of Americans Say Too Many
Dependent on Government

The graph speaks for itself .

Gimme Mine

“Mitt’s right:Handouts do win votes”

” This is nothing new. There’s a classic book that’s taught, or used to be taught, in college political
science classes. “Democracy in America” — it was written more than 150 years ago by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. He had the
same take as Mitt on what has become the American welfare state:

“A democracy … can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy.”

  Can someone say QE3, the Fed’s third round of so-called quantitative easing? “

Varney & Co. Found the USDA Ad Saying Food Stamps Will Help You Look and Feel Good

In Line For ‘Obama Money’ In Detroit

Listen to this oldie but goodie and tell us that Romney was wrong about that 47% that will never vote for him . Those 47% will never vote for ANY candidate that talks about personal responsibility . We all know it .

Julia To Take Center Stage in Charlotte

” Democrats walking into “war on women” trap of their own making ”

  ” Do Democrats still plan to feature a “war on women” theme at their convention? If they do, I
argue in my column today for The Fiscal Times , they may well find themselves hoist with their own petard, after a week of watching
accomplished Republican women speaking from the dais in Tampa. Not only does the emphasis
entirely miss the issues about which voters care most in this electoral cycle, the entire argument
diminishes women to, well, to exactly what Code Pink reduced them in protests at the GOP
convention:

   The message from the Obama campaign and Democrats in general seems to be that women are somehow incapable of finding
birth control on their own unless some paternal entity dispenses it to them, despite all evidence to the contrary. They’re so incapable of this task that employers and schools have to hand it for them, no matter how much income they
derive nor how much tuition they manage to pay otherwise. This has already backfired during Team Obama’s “Life of Julia” campaign, which offered a creepy, solitary vision of a woman’s life approaching that of the song “Eleanor Rigby.” Former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown wrote in The New York Times that “Julia” was “a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of
their lives for help.” “

The Government Teat

100 Percent FED Up

 

The Entitlement Nation

The Weekly Standard

 

“A new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details a startling statistic: “Over 100 Million People in U.S. Now Receiving Some Form Of Federal Welfare.” “

Steyn

Read the whole thing

” Italian tanks may have five gears for reverse and only one for forward, but in a Fiat the size of
your cupholder it’s a different story. The French may plant trees on the Champs-élysées because the Germans like to march in the shade, but they’ll still pass you at 120 on the Grande Corniche. When you’ve done your last surrender-monkey crack, that cloud in your
windshield is a dinged deux chevaux leaving your fully loaded SUV for dust. Continentals
would never for a moment tolerate the restrictive driving conditions of the United States, and they don’t understand why Americans do. Mon dieu, is not America the
land of the car chase?”

Mass Shootings , Liberalism , Hopelessness

Kevin Jackson at American  Thinker offers this theory on the rise in mass shootings over the past decade or so .

  ” The evidence is pretty clear that we are having far more mass shooting these days than we had in the past. You might want to make the natural jump to guns, as that is what the media will tell us to do. Guns are easy to blame. Relatively easy to get, guns make good culprits. But if people were killing people by driving into crowds with Chevy Volts, I suspect the media would not blame the Volt.

  It should come as no surprise that the rise in mass killing sprees in America is in direct proportion to the rise in liberalism in American politics.

  The old America was about hope. Kids were taught that they could do anything, be anything. And though America has never been nor will ever be perfect, she has always found a way to allow everybody to thrive. All it took was a person willing to capture the American spirit, and have dogged determination to pursue the American Dream.

  Over the years, liberalism has destroyed that spirit. Today, liberalism offers an easy answer to everything, and government is that answer. Government will help you through all crises, even those it creates. Government should educate you, feed you, and make sure you have everything except the confidence to do for yourself — which is why government promises what even God doesn’t. Government promises you deliverance from everything, including yourself.

  Such is the definition of liberalism, which always circles back to hopelessness and despair. What happens when somebody gets that free education and can’t find a job? What happens when that person who got that government-mandated mortgage loses his home? What happens when unemployment insurance runs out, when there is no health care available, when there is no food on the table? “

Government Cheese

HT/Instapundit

Obama to Americans: You don’t deserve what you’ve earned

All your earnings are belong to us .

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.”

Video at the link . View it and puke .

The man’s true colors are really starting to show through . Add to this sort of statement his skyrocketing foodstamp enrollment and the current effort to gut welfare reform , oh and let’s not forget  “Julia” and  his list of accomplishments reads like something Oren Boyle and Wesley Mouch would have attempted .

Earned Success and Learned Helplessness

From Arthur Brooks at the WSJ we get a lesson in what sets America apart from Europe and the cradle to grave government run life of security and dependency . Face it , regardless of what the progressive moral equivalency crowd would have you believe , American Exceptionalism is real . No nation in history has ever emerged from obscurity to dominate the world stage in such a brief period of time . No nation has contributed more to the improvement of human welfare , no nation has risked it’s blood and treasure defending strangers around the globe , asked nothing in return and voluntarily withdrew to it’s own borders once the crisis had been averted . Is that not exceptional ? 

This is American Exceptionalism :

This is American Exceptionalism :

And this :

Need more :

Still not convinced ?

Get the picture ?

  All the moral equivalency and attempts to rewrite history cannot eliminate the fact that American Exceptionalism has bettered and continues to improve the world . As we teeter on the precipice of statism ala Europe it is worth remembering what America is all about . Before you utter the progressive mantra that it was government that accomplished these things remind yourself that unlike most nations we are , at least for a little longer , a nation ” of the people , by the people , for the people . 

Paging Wesley Mouch

  “The Occupy Wall Street protesters
ultimately cannot entertain arguments about the value of the free market because they seek out and embrace a culture of dependency, where advocating for more benefits for themselves and others fulfills their deepest values.”