My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Dependency

If you want to get depressed or angry, the New York Times has an article celebrating the effort by politicians at all levels of government to lure more people into the food stamp program. New York City is running ads in foreign languagues asking people to stick their snouts in the public trough. The City is even signing up prisoners when they get out of jail. The state of New York, meanwhile, actually set up quotas for enrolling new recipients. And on the federal level, there apparently is a program that gives states “bonuses” for putting more people on the dole. No wonder one out of every eight Americans is receiving food stamps.

By the way, this is not just the fault of Democrats. The ranking Republican on the Agriculture Committee is a big defender of the program, in part because of the sordid pact among urban and rural politicians to support each other’s handouts. And President George W. Bush’s food stamp administrator actually had the gall to assert “food stamps is not welfare.” No wonder the burden of federal spending skyrocketed during the reign of so-called compassionate conservatism.

The correct policy, of course, is to get the federal government out of the welfare business. If Mayor Bloomberg thinks it is a “civic duty” to expand food stamps, he should see whether New York City voters agree with him – and want to foot the bill.

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Tags: Big Government, Bloomberg, Bush, Dependency, food stamps
Posted Feb 12th 2010 at 10:19 am in Congress, Economics, News, federal spending | 7377082 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dmitchell/2010/02/12/my-country-tis-of-thee-sweet-land-of-dependency/My+Country+%27Tis+of+Thee%2C+Sweet+Land+of+Dependency2010-02-12+18%3A19%3A21Dan+Mitchell

Michelle Obama, Liberal Government and Obesity

First Lady, Michelle Obama, has decided to take a whack at solving the American obesity epidemic. Splendid.

She should start by looking at one of the biggest roots of the problem: liberal government and its most favorite project of the past 40 years, the welfare state.

There is a surprising, yet undeniable, correlation between skyrocketing obesity rates and race and socioeconomic status. The group most disproportionately affected by obesity is poor black women.

A survey of the available research on obesity was conducted in 2004 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Human Nutrition. Among the results:

• The U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 13 percent to 32 percent between the 1960s and 2004.
• Women 20–34 years old had the fastest increase rate of obesity and overweight.
• 80% of black women aged 40 years or over are overweight; 50% are obese.
• Less educated people have a higher prevalence of obesity than their counterparts.
• 16% of children and adolescents are overweight and 34% are at risk of becoming overweight in 2003-2004.
• White children and adolescents had the lowest prevalence of overweight and being at risk of overweight compared with their black and Mexican counterparts.

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Tags: agribusiness, CDC, childhood obesity, Food Industry, Michelle Obama
Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 12:17 pm in Culture, Healthcare, News, Obama | 73338253 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kashiver/2010/02/10/michelle-obama-liberal-government-and-obesity/+Michelle+Obama%2C+Liberal+Government+and+Obesity2010-02-10+20%3A17%3A01Kyle-Anne+Shiver

Political Alchemy, Part I: Turning Spending Increases into Tax Cuts

Politicians in Washington have come up with something far more impressive than turning lead into gold or water into wine. Using self-serving budget rules, they can increase the burden of government spending and say they are cutting taxes instead.

This bit of legerdemain is made possible, thanks to the convolutions of the personal income tax, by adopting or expanding refundable tax credits. But in this case, “refundable” does not mean the government is returning money to taxpayers. Instead, it means that money is being redistributed to people who do not earn enough to be subject to the income tax.

This is hardly a trivial issue. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the amount of income redistribution being laundered through the tax code is now so large that the bottom 40 percent of the population has a negative “effective” income tax rate. In simple terms (though perhaps with profound political implications), the income tax is a revenue generator for a big share of the population.

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Tags: 1040, Big Government, EITC, federal spending, Flat Tax
Posted Feb 8th 2010 at 12:57 pm in Congress, Economics, Flat Tax, News, Obama, Politics, Tax Reform, Uncategorized, federal spending | 7025055 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dmitchell/2010/02/08/political-alchemy-part-i-turning-spending-increases-into-tax-cuts/Political+Alchemy%2C+Part+I%3A+Turning+Spending+Increases+into+Tax+Cuts2010-02-08+20%3A57%3A34Dan+Mitchell

ACORN Saga: Founder Wade Rathke Wants YOU — To Go on Welfare

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system.

He said so in his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which he serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing. Rathke’s currently on a cross-country book tour.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke (to the right of the microphone) at an ACORN-SEIU rally.

Rathke, a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare, devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls “The ‘Maximum Eligible Participation’ Solution.” It is a strategy for orchestrated crisis that savvy leftist groups across America are likely to embrace. He writes:

“[I]t is hard to believe that we cannot assemble the troops to mount a campaign for maximum eligible participation that harvests the opportunities and dollars already available if we could achieve full utilization of existing programs.”

Rathke acknowledges his support for the Cloward-Piven Strategy, an approach to radical social and political change articulated by Marxist university professors Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in a 1966 Nation article, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” The two academics called for “a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls” in an effort to overwhelm the system. [Italics in original.]

The strategy helped to bankrupt New York City in 1975. Years later, the Big Apple’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, denounced the academic activists by name. “This wasn’t an accident,” Giuliani argued in a 1997 speech. “It wasn’t an atmospheric thing, it wasn’t supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare.”

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN International, American Spectator, Barbara Ehrenreich, Citizen Wealth
Posted Sep 29th 2009 at 7:45 am in ACORN | 9958106 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/29/acorn-saga-founder-wade-rathke-wants-you-to-go-on-welfare/ACORN+Saga%3A+Founder+Wade+Rathke+Wants+YOU+--+To+Go+on+Welfare2009-09-29+14%3A45%3A29Matthew+Vadum

Taxpayer Funded Serve.gov Filtering Activists to ACORN

The Obama Administration has placed a large premium on what it calls “national service.” It has launched a website, www.Serve.gov, that is reported to act as a clearing house for Americans eager to “give back” to their communities. Unfortunately, Americans looking for an opportunity to volunteer may get something they weren’t expecting.

By typing “ACORN” into the search field entitled “What interests you” at Serve.gov, you’re transported to allforgood.org where you can choose from a list of volunteer opportunities, including “healthcare activist.” This particular “volunteer” opportunity is with the Tuscon ACORN office:

The description after clicking:

They’re unclear regarding financial reimbursement; though past recruitment, like the Craigslist ads in St. Louis, advertised for “paid progressive activists, $90 a day, call Lorna 314-732-0131.”

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Tags: ACORN, AmeriCorps, Barak Obama, Corporation for National and Community Service, national service
Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 5:30 am in ACORN, Featured Story, Healthcare, Politics | 4634350 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dloesch/2009/09/18/taxpayer-funded-serve-gov-filtering-activists-to-acorn/Taxpayer+Funded+Serve.gov+Filtering+Activists+to+ACORN2009-09-18+12%3A30%3A12Dana+Loesch