Current Events - April 4, 2013

Obama: Constitution 'Constrains' Me

In his pursuit of overarching gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Barack Obama has been dogged. He's been relentless. He's been demagogic, too, whether flanking himself with schoolchildren (the implication being that his political opponents don't care about dead kids) or suggesting that if just one life can be saved by his legislation, we ought to buy into it wholeheartedly (a proposition that would justify almost any sort of government overreach).

But on Wednesday, President Obama took his gun control push a step further: He admitted that only the Constitution stands between him and full gun confiscation. Rejecting concerns that new background checks might be a prelude to gun seizures, Obama suggested that worries about gun seizures were empty, and were only designed to feed "into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: 'I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can't do background checks because the government's going to come take my guns away.' The government's us. These officials are elected by you. ... I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place."

This is deeply frightening language. The notion that government tyranny is impossible in an elective republic is insanity of the first order. Hitler was elected chancellor. Mussolini manipulated his way into power through constitutional means. Hamas was elected in the Gaza Strip. Mohammed Morsi and his thuggish Muslim Brotherhood were elected in Egypt. If rights are dependent on votes -- if we only have a right to bear arms because a majority of the population elects politicians who say we have a right to bear arms -- then we have no rights at all. 

The point of rights is to guarantee them against government. That is why the founders stated that rights descend not from government -- not from "us," as Obama would have it -- but from God or nature. And in truth, Obama feels the same way about rights he thinks are universal, including the so-called right to same-sex marriage or the right to abortion. Reverse Obama's argument by stating that radical feminists worry about a complete ban on abortion, but that feeds into fears about government, which after all, is only "us." 

Would Obama agree with this? Or would he say that true rights cannot be violated, even by a majority vote?

Government is not us. Government is a group of people elected by us, who then use their own judgment. If government were us, we would be a pure democracy. And even if we were a pure democracy, that would not give us the right to violate the rights of others. The logic Obama uses with regard to gun control is the root of fascism and oppression. Liberalism is reliant on the concept of rights that supersede popular whim. And the greatest right -- the right that protects all other rights, especially when popular whims turn against human liberties -- is the right to bear arms.

If Americans weren't afraid of government violation of rights before Obama spoke about guns this week, they should be now. This is a president who cannot understand or willfully ignores the notion of tyrannical government. And if he refuses to see that possibility, then American rights are very much in jeopardy.

http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2013/04/04/obama-constitution-constrains-me-n1557384/page/full/ 

Government Pays $400K for Condom Study

 Indiana University received a $423,500 stimulus grant to study the proper use of condoms, reports the Weekly Standard:

“Sexually transmitted infections (STI), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), pose significant health risks,” a synopsis of study reads. “Consistent and correct use of condoms can be a highly effective method of preventing the transmission of HIV and many STIs, yet studies show that problems with condom use are common. This project is one of the first to examine under controlled conditions the role of cognitive and affective factors and condom skills in explaining condom use problems in young, heterosexual adult men.”

The study was completed but no results have been presented. Additionally, the project did not create or retain any jobs.

http://freebeacon.com/government-pays-400k-for-condom-study/

$30,000 Federal Study Aims to 'Increase Intake of Tap Water' Among Latino Youth

U.S. taxpayers are funding a $30,000 study aimed at getting Latino youth to increase their "intake of tap water" and decrease their intake of sugary drinks. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued the $30,000 grant to the University of California at San Francisco in 2012.

The study regards “Increasing Water Intake In Lieu of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages among Latino Youth.”
Now in its second year, the project is focused on California’s Central Valley, described as “an agricultural region with a large low-income, Latino population,” according to the NIH grant description.

“The overall objective of this proposal is to enhance an existing academic-community partnership that will inform priorities for an intervention to increase intake of tap water in lieu of SSBs [Sugar Sweetened Beverages] among Latino children and adolescents,” the description states.

According to the research grant summary, drinking water instead of sodas and sugary drinks  “can reduce children’s total daily caloric intake thereby reducing obesity.”

“This issue is of particular significance among Latino youth as they are more likely to drink SSBs and less likely to drink tap water than White and Asian children,” the description states.

It added: “Even though Latino youth are more likely to be obese and to drink SSBs than their non-Latino peers, there is very limited research in this area. Such investigation is critical in designing and implementing interventions and policies to encourage intake of water instead of sugary drinks among Latino children.”

The NIH did not have an answer as to whether the study could have been conducted without federal funding, but stressed the impact of soda drinking on obesity and long-term health care costs.

In an e-mail response to questions from CNSNews.com--which had specifically asked “Could the study have been conducted without federal funding?”--NIH spokesman Robert Bock said: “We really couldn’t speculate.”

“What’s important to keep in mind is that overweight and obesity and their associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the U.S. health care system,” Bock told CNSNews.com.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/30000-federal-study-aims-increase-intake-tap-water-among-latino-youth

Federal Govt. Spends $2.1 Million to Study 'What Animals Really Think'

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $2.1 million grant over five years for a research project titled, “Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think.”

The research project is designed to study how animals think and to promote “the evolutionary link between animals and humans,” as well as animal welfare “in the wild and in our homes,” according to the award abstract on the NSF Web site.

The New York Hall of Science, the Institute for Learning Innovation, Hunter College of the City University of New York, and a consortium of five regional science center/zoo partnerships received $2,131,193 in funding, which began Sept. 1, 2009 and continues until Aug. 31, 2013.

“The project's primary goal for public audiences is to foster a deeper understanding of similarities between people and animals in terms of cognition, i.e., how we think,” the grant description states.

“Wild Minds will explore two interrelated hypotheses: (1) a deeper insight into how animals think will create or strengthen the awareness of an evolutionary link between animals and humans; and (2) that this sense of a strong connection can stimulate interest in the welfare of animals in the wild and in our homes,” the abstract states. The project, which includes a 1,500 sq.-ft. traveling exhibit “exploring animal cognition,” will also place human behavior under the microscope.

“The Institute for Learning Innovation project will conduct applied research that will expand on the results of the summative evaluation of the exhibition by investigating whether changes in awareness, understanding, and knowledge about action are sustained over time and/or lead to attitudinal change, behavioral intention, and observable behavior,” the abstract states, referring to human beings.

The Institute for Learning Innovation states that its mission “is to study, support and advocate for free-choice learning – learning that fulfills the lifelong human quest for knowledge, understanding and personal fulfillment.”
The National Science Foundation is “an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 ‘to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; to secure the national defense,” according to its Web site.

The agency, which has an annual budget of around $7 billion (as of FY 2012), funds “approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/federal-govt-spends-21-million-study-what-animals-really-think

Gov’t Spends $2.4 Million to 'Improve the TV Diet of Preschool Children'

The federal government has spent $2.4 million to “improve the TV diet of preschool children,” in grants administered through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Seattle Children’s Hospital has received $2,415,519 since 2008 for a study, entitled, “Media Impact on Preschool Behavior,” which aims to steer children away from violent programming.

“Considerable research has established the adverse effects of violent Television programming on children's level of aggression,” the grant’s description reads.  “Research has also established that certain types of media programming can actually promote pro-social behavior. Unfortunately, the current viewing habits of most preschoolers lean heavily towards inappropriate programming at the expense of higher quality shows.”

“This study will attempt to improve the TV diet of preschool children, without increasing overall viewing time,” it states.

Though the project has been going on for five years, the researchers have only published two studies under the results section, both dealing with television viewing and children’s sleep patterns.

One published report in 2012 tested a “healthy media use intervention” on 565 children to try to replace violent or inappropriate television content through home visits and phone calls.  The researchers concluded that children in the intervention group had less of a chance for sleep problems when viewing educational content.

The project is being led by Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Hospital.  Christakis published a study in 2009 that found children in home-based child care settings are exposed to more television viewing each day than in day care centers.

The NIH grant, administered through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, says it is targeting children ages 3 to 5 because young children “may be especially vulnerable to the effects of viewing” violent or aggressive programming.

“This primary prevention effort will focus on young children, in an attempt to avert the emergence of violent behavior patterns later in youth and adolescence,” the grant states. The project will conclude in May 2013.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-spends-24-million-improve-tv-diet-preschool-children

Audit says $700M in Katrina aid may have been misspent

Federal investigators said Wednesday that as much as $700 million in federal aid intended to help some 24,000 Louisiana families elevate their homes after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 may have been misspent.

A report by the Housing and Urban Development Department's inspector general said some homeowners who got grants of up to $30,000 used the money for something else, and that others didn't provide sufficient documents to state officials to show that the work was done.

"The state did not have conclusive evidence" that $698.5 million in disaster recovery aid was used to elevate homes, the auditors wrote.

In response, HUD officials said the state is responsible for making sure the money was spent properly. But after seeing similar results in previous audits, department officials helped Congress put tighter reins on the program in distributing aid to victims of last fall's Superstorm Sandy in the Northeast.

"In the years since Hurricane Katrina, HUD has already implemented a number of the recommendations made by the inspector general, including additional controls to ensure recovery funds are used appropriately," department spokesman Jason Kravitz said.

He said the Obama administration fought for wording to be included in the Sandy aid measure to require enhanced reviews and internal controls on all money made available by HUD and other agencies for superstorm relief and recovery.

President Barack Obama in January signed the $50.5 billion measure, which Congress approved the measure despite opposition from conservatives. They said there should have been more time to debate such a large spending bill and to provide tighter spending controls.

"I commend HUD for discovering that millions of dollars that were intended to elevate homes along the Gulf Coast were either pocketed or squandered," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a frequent critic of government spending. "As the federal government prepares to spend nearly $16 billion on recovery efforts related to Sandy this is a mistake taxpayers, and citizens affected by the storm, can't afford to see repeated."

The measure was aimed primarily at helping residents and businesses as well as state and local governments rebuild from the storm.

The biggest chunk of money in the Sandy bill was $16 billion for HUD community block grants. Of that, about $12.1 billion will be shared among Sandy victims as well as those from other federally declared disasters in 2011-13. The remaining $3.9 billion was solely for Sandy-related projects.

Those grants can pay for rebuilding roads and hospitals, other public works projects, helping small businesses reopen, restoring utilities and providing rental subsidies. The grants are popular with state and local governments because of their flexibility on how the money is spent.

Louisiana Office of Community Development Executive Director Pat Forbes said the state is working to get the homeowners to document their compliance with the program. Forbes said that since August 31, 2012_which is when HUD's data was collected_more than 5,000 homeowners have done so. "We are working aggressively with HUD to get the remaining 19,000 homeowners in compliance," Forbes said.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/audit-says-700m-katrina-aid-may-have-been-misspent

Disability Trust Fund Ran Record $31.2B Deficit in 2012; In Deficit Every Year Under Obama

The federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which takes in money via a federal payroll tax and pays it out in disability benefits, ran a record $31.2 billion deficit in calendar year 2012, according to the Social Security Administration.

That means the trust fund has run a deficit in each of the first four years of the Obama presidency.

For fifteen straight years before Obama took office—from 1994 through 2008—the Disability Insurance Trust Fund ran a surplus. In 2007, for example, it ran an $11 billion surplus and in 2008 it ran an $889-million surplus.

In 2009, however, the Disability Insurance Trust Fund dipped into the red and has not returned to the black since then. In fact, each year since then the annual defiict has increased.

In 2009, the disability trust fund ran a $12.2 billion deficit; in 2010, it ran a $23.6 billion deficit; in 2011, it ran a $26.1 billion deficit; and in 2012, it ran a $31.2 billion deficit.

These deficits in the Disability Insurance Trust Fund have coincided with a massive run-up in the number of American workers taking federal disability payments.

In January 2009, when President Barack Obama was inaugurated, 7,442,377 workers took disability payments, according to data published by the Social Security Administration. In March 2013, 8,853,614 took disability payments. The 1,411,337 additional workers taking federal disability payments since Obama took office represents an increase of about 19 percent in the number of Americans claiming a disability.

Employed workers pay a 0.9 percent payroll tax for federal disability insurance and their employers pay an additional 0.9 percent. Self-employed workers pay the entire 1.8 percent themselves.

The aggregated revenue from the disability payroll tax is counted by the government as the Disability Insurance Trust Fund. When the value of the disability benefits paid by the government exceeds the value of the disability tax revenue received by the government, the trust fund runs a deficit.

The U.S. Treasury needs to borrow money--and increase the federal debt--to fund disability payments that exceed disability payroll taxes. As of the close of business on Tuesday, the federal debt equaled $16,804,876,955,116.78—or about $146,090 for each of the 115,031,000 households the Census Bureau now estimates there are in the United States.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/disability-trust-fund-ran-record-312b-deficit-2012-deficit-every-year-under-obama

"Navigators" Onboard Obama Gravy Train

Individuals and families seeking health insurance in the era of ObamaCare had better be ready for some pretty serious sticker shock.  

But it's an ill wind that blows no one any good.  Small business owners and other hard-working Americans may suffer as a result of ObamaCare's regulations, cost increases (and ultimately, rationing), but no one ever accused Barack Obama of forgetting to feather the nests of his political allies.

In the context of ObamaCare, just call those allies "navigators."

You see, if you jam down a huge, complicated and confusing piece of legislation -- and force everyone to be part of it -- you're going to need people to "explain" how it all works.  And that's where the "navigators" come in: These are to be new government workers who, under proposed rules, would make between $20 and $48 per hour (provided by you and me).  Oh, and bear in mind:

The rules allow navigators to come from the ranks of unions, health providers and community action groups such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood. They are required to provide unbiased advice.

What a transparent, cheesy effort to reward political cronies with patronage jobs.  Well, perhaps they'll be able to offer further "unbiased" guidance about how to vote to all the people they're supposed to register.

The navigators aren't the "civilian national security force" of the famed 2008 Barack Obama quote, but no doubt they've either enlistees in the new Organizing for America army -- or prime candidates for it.

 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/04/04/the-obamacare-gravy-train-rolls-on-n1558106

PK'S NOTE: We've known about his incompetence from before he was elected in 2008. Trust me, we've known and tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen. 

Oh-oh! The dreaded i-word starts attaching itself to Obama

We have already seen Peak Obama; from here on, it's going to get rougher and rougher for Barack Obama. Even worse, the one word he must fear the most has just been uttered by a man regarded as a bit of a truth-teller among liberal elites.

Joe Klein, the celebrated author "Anonymous," who wrote the best selling, truth-telling book Primary Colors about the 1992 primary campaign that brought us President Bill Clinton, has made it ok for liberals to apply the word "incompetence" to the Obama administration. This represents something of a breakthrough. Until now, it has been taboo to suggest that the first black president could be anything other than fully qualified and capable of his job. Obama has met his image Waterloo with Obamacare.


The problem Klein sees is that:

...we are now seeing weekly examples of this Administration's inability to govern. Just a few weeks ago, I reported on the failure of the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs to come up with a unified electronic health care records system. There has also been the studied inattention to the myriad ineffective job-training programs scattered through the bureaucracy.

There have been the oblique and belated efforts to reform Head Start, a $7 billion program that a study conducted by its own bureaucracy - the Department of Health and Human Services - has found nearly worthless. The list is endless. (snip)

...as a Democrat - as someone who believes in activist government - he has a vested interest in seeing that federal programs actually work efficiently. I don't see much evidence that this is anywhere near the top of his priorities.

One thing is clear: Obamacare will fail if he doesn't start paying more attention to the details of implementation, if he doesn't start demanding action. And, in a larger sense, the notion of activist government will be in peril.

My colleague Silvio Canto correctly forecasts today, based on the same Klein article in the Time Magazine website, that Democrats are going to start bailing out on Obamacare, taking it apart, but by bit, as they just did with the repeal of the medical device tax.


But I am concerned here with the broad and fuzzy conception of Obama in the heads of voters who are dissatisfied with the results of his stewardship but still tell pollsters they approve of him. They are bonded to him emotionally, and may be reluctant to turn against him. That's why the I word is so dangerous. One can still like someone without thinking they deserve support once the reluctant conclusion has been reached: likable, but over his head.


Coincidentally, a trivial incident on a basketball court has taken on mythological dimensions in the media --  his two-for twenty-two "off day" at the basketball court.

Of course, everyone has an off day in the real world. But basketball has been a central part of the Obama Legend, proving he is a manly man, a participant in the African American male culture, despite having played at Punahou in Honolulu. And he was supposed to be supremely competent. So much so that he publicly dissed that Irish guy, Bill O'Reilly, over his presumed athletic superiority:

Missing 20 out of 22 is an emperor has no clothes moment when it comes to Obama boasts. Taken by itself, it is not a huge deal. But it is also a brick in the wall, an image that lurks on the back of the brain of the public. This guy promises much more he can deliver.  In fact, it looks like he talks up a storm but he can't deliver.


Spread the word.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/04/oh-oh_the_dreaded_i-word_starts_attaching_itself_to_obama.html#ixzz2PVdwef6u

Bill Moyers: ‘The Pledge of Allegiance is a Lie’

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers told his viewers on March 29 that the next time they say the Pledge of Allegiance, they should “remember: it’s a lie. A whopper of a lie.” Bill Moyers’s “Moyers & Company,” which included the snippet, airs on taxpayer funded PBS.

“We coax it from the mouths of babes for the same reason our politicians wear those flag pins in their lapels – it makes the hypocrisy go down easier, the way aspirin helps a headache go away.”

“’Justice for all’ is a line item in the budget – sequestered now by the Paul Ryans of Congress and the Fix the Debt gang of plutocratic CEOs who, with a wink-wink from our president, claim, ‘Oh, we can’t afford that!’”

An inveterate and outspoken left-winger, Moyers has spoken in favor of liberal causes, including Occupy Wall Street, on “Moyers and Company.” He even went so far as to compare Occupiers to abolitionists and suffragettes. He has also called the gun-rights group the National Rifle Association “the enabler of death — paranoid, delusional and as venomous as a scorpion.” He went on to say that with “the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel and deadly hoax.”

Moyers has also launched a series of attacks against the non-profit American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC promotes state-based policy initiatives. In March 2012, a group of lefty organizations including Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy launched a campaign to pressure the corporations that funded ALEC to withdraw their support. Although Moyers openly publicized the attack against ALEC his program, he failed to note that he funded 4 of the 6 groups involved in the attack, to the tune of $1.3 million.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2013/04/03/bill-moyers-pledge-allegiance-lie#ixzz2PWBwf3Df

Schools push a curriculum of propaganda

 By George F Will

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named federal program VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are paid), urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.” A flyer that was on the DPI Web site and distributed at a DPI-VISTA training class urged whites to “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege,” to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out” and to conduct an “internal dialogue” asking questions such as “How do I make myself comfortable with privilege?” and “What am I doing today to undo my privilege?” 

After criticism erupted, the DPI removed the flyer from its Web site and posted a dishonest statement claiming that the wristbands were a hoax perpetrated by conservatives. But, again, the flyer DPI posted explicitly advocated the wristbands. And Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded indoctrination continues, funded by more than Wisconsin taxpayers. 

In Delavan-Darien High School’s “American Diversity” curriculum, students were urged to verify white privilege by visiting a Wal-Mart toy section and counting the white and black dolls. After objections, the school district is reconsidering this curriculum. 

Such distractions from the study of calculus and literature are encouraged by CREATE Wisconsin (the acronym stands for Culturally Responsive Education for All: Training and Enhancement), which is funded with federal tax dollars from IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The disability being rectified here is, presumably, the handicap of insufficient guilt — arising from false consciousness — about white privilege.

Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice reports that between 1950 and 2009, while the number of K-12 students increased 96 percent, full-time-equivalent school employees increased 386 percent. The number of teachers increased 252 percent, but the number of bureaucrats — including consciousness-raising sensitivity enforcers and other non-teachers — increased 702 percent. The report says states could have saved more than $24 billion annually if non-teaching staff had grown only as fast as student enrollment. And Americans wonder why their generous K-12 financing (higher per pupil than all but three of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations) has done so little to improve reading, math and science scores. 

 Higher education, from which much of such diversity and sensitivity nonsense trickles down, cries poverty while spending lavishly on administrative overhead irrelevant to its teaching and research missions. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald notes that in 2011, while the University of California at San Diego was pruning academic offerings, it created a “vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion” to augment a diversity apparatus that included an assistant vice chancellor for diversity; faculty advisers, staff, graduate and undergraduate diversity coordinators and liaisons; a director of development for diversity initiatives; the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues; the Diversity Council; the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion; and much more. Perhaps tens of millions could be diverted from progressive gestures to academic purposes by abolishing on every American campus every administrative position whose title contains the words “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “ethnicity,” “sustainability,” “green,” “gender,” “inclusion,” “identity,” “interconnectivity,” “globalization,” “climate,” “campus climate,” “cross-cultural” or “multiculturalism.”

No corner of the country is immune to propaganda pretending to be pedagogy. Lincoln Brown of KVEL-AM in Vernal, Utah, says one student from the University of Utah showed him required reading that told students to “list ways your family may have colluded with or benefited from the exploitation of African-Americans.” Another reading was titled “White Privilege — Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” 
 

Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan, paraphrasing Education Secretary William Bennett, said: “If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with.” But only until the soaring tuitions and taxes that fund this featherbedding for administrators of political correctness create a critical mass of parental and taxpayer disgust.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-schools-push-a-curriculum-of-propaganda/2013/04/03/6d25550e-9bc1-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html

Creating Dependency, One Mouthful at a Time

The number of Americans receiving "free" government benefits has soared, and this expansion seems unstoppable even as the economy recovers (see here and here).  Less obvious than the depressing numbers is how this assistance inculcates a dependency inimical to a free people.  The culprit is not free food, subsidized housing, and all the rest per se, though these certainly do not help.  After all, Americans have always received government help during tough times, but this aid scarcely undermined the spirit of independence.  Nor is the growing national debt the guilty party.  During World War II, for example, government borrowed billions, yet nobody spoke of this liability as breeding hopeless dependency.


The culprit is how these benefits are distributed.  It is their non-contingent, open-ended character that breeds destructive pathologies.  It is these traits that separate today's munificence from past generosity, and this element is all too easy obscured by burgeoning costs.


In a nutshell, receiving a temporary handout that depends on doing something worthwhile is wholly unlike receiving the identical assistance sans any obligation and for however long as the recipient remains legally eligible.    


To illustrate the pernicious character of today's largesse, consider the school free lunch program.  It is only oneof several food programs; others include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (commonly called food stamps), the WIC program for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and NSIP, which provides food for the elderly.  Administrative details aside, all share common traits.


Free school lunches started small shortly after WWII to reduce government surplus milk and cheese.  The program has, predictably, exploded in size and scope, far beyond what population increase would require.  A "mere" 2.9 million youngsters ate free school lunches in 1969; by 2012, that number was up to 18.7 million, and about two-thirds of all school lunches were now "free" (that figure was 15% in 1969).


Like the waistlines of many youngsters, the mission creep is ongoing.  There are free breakfasts, after-school free snacks, and summer meals for those who qualify.  Youngsters in non-profit schools and "migrant" sites are also eligible.  Uncle Sam, obviously, is evolving into Aunt Samantha.


Paralleling mission creep have been user-friendly eligibility requirements.  A youngster qualifies if his family falls below 130% of the poverty line ($24,817 in 2012 for a mother and two children), but -- and this is a big but -- all government benefits except cash welfare benefits are excluded when calculating income.  So Junior eats free even if Mom received food stamps, subsidized housing, and all the rest. 


To appreciate this historical shift, consider how billions of children long grasped how one gets fed.  Children typically see a connection between parental work and what appears on the table, and unemployment means cheap food or no food.  Children may have once heard parents complaining about their jobs, but kvetching never hinted of quitting and permitting the family to go hungry.  Moreover, at least in my family, special-occasion meals entailed telling guests about slaving away in the kitchen and the untold hours shopping to make the meal a success.  And to drive this point home, Junior might have been conscripted to help wash dishes.


Conversely, when income rose, steak may have replaced hamburger, and perhaps the family enjoyed a once-a-month visit to Red Lobster.  In a thousand ways, the work/food link became indelible.


This connection is especially apparent with those personally acquainted with agriculture.  Here even children might pitch in, and the labor/eating link is always on people's minds due to the vagaries of weather, pestilences, civil unrest, and multiple other disruptive factors.  Daily prayers thanking God for His bountifulness are predictably ubiquitous.


Within well-off families, Junior's meals are usually contingent, never guaranteed.  Good school grades may bring a special treat.  Bad behavior, on the other hand, can mean no dessert or being sent to bed famished.  Not finishing one's plate could mean having it again served the next day.  Eating can also bring lectures about the need to finish everything since children in Africa are starving or about the sin of wasting food.   


Charity, including government help, in the past linked getting fed with doing something -- usually some effort at self-improvement.  Myron Magnet in his overview of past charity is explicit.  "[Charity] abhorred the idea of dependency, it aimed to make its beneficiaries self-sufficient[.] ... Traditional American charity, therefore, stressed the attitudes and skills of personal responsibility."  Ironically, even successful beggars know that something more than lamely holding out a hand is necessary.


Even religious people who believe in "the will of God" as the source of their bountifulness must do something -- live the righteous life, pray daily, or sacrifice a goat -- to warrant His generosity.  Refusing to honor Him risks famine, so being religious is a serious "job," and woe to slackers. 


Now compare what transpires in today's school lunch program.  First, the historic connection between earning a living and eating is now reversed.  If an ambitious mom spends extra hours on her job, the entire family may become ineligible for Washington's food programs, including Junior's gratis lunches.  Idleness, not industry, now puts bread on the table.  No wonder that after years on the dole, paid employment is viewed as something for chumps -- it is, and rationally so. 


Nor can the school withhold food for any reason other than a documented change in parental eligibility.  Uncle Sam's bounteousness, unlike Mom's, is non-contingent -- just show up and get fed, guaranteed.  As the Declaration of Independence might put it, free government-supplied food is now an unalienable right (might America now possess a Declaration of Dependence?).  The recipient can sass his teachers, sleep in class, play with his broccoli, and otherwise misbehave in ways that would certainly draw swift parental rebuke, but schools are powerless.  Imagine a cafeteria worker who refused to feed Junior because of his disruptive behavior.  Lunch room monitors who scold youngsters for toying with their veggies risks reprimand or even termination (so, as usual, the bad person becomes the "victim").  This volunteered well-intentioned reproach may even be deemed "abusive."


It should come as no surprise that millions of Americans are hardly shamed by relying on Aunt Samantha for their daily bread.  Dependency is almost the new normal.  Those who cherish the spirit of independence should take heed.  Future entitlement reform requires more than tightening eligibility or cutting benefits.  Restoring contingency is essential: beneficiaries must do something to "earn" government's generosity -- e.g., keeping a tidy house or fixing Junior a healthy lunch.  Without this link, millions will come to believe that Washington is an all-providing God that demands nothing but self-inflicted poverty to bestow His/Her/Its blessings.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/creating_dependency_one_mouthful_at_a_time.html#ixzz2PW1ySHaR

The Fed's Deadly Instrument of Speculation

Yes. David Stockman is an author. He is interested in selling books, in particular his recent The Great Deformation. Points all considered and duly registered. But his cautions are real and his delivery blunt.
"The Corruption of Capitalism in America" is the title of his March 31, 2013 New York Times piece. His fundamental point is that the "latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode..."

Essentially he states that when the Fed decides it must rest or withdraw from its hyper-accommodative policies, the market will "panic." There is too much company leaning in one direction and it all relies on the "final word" of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke.

The American Thinker posted an article to just this point a few days before Mr. Stockman's New York Times op ed.

Mr. Stockman could not be more adamant about his position. He drives home the fact that the massive accommodations have had muted, masked, and artificial results. He cites the anemic economic output, slack real business investment, falling payroll job count, tepid median family income, and increased food stamp and disability recipient counts. (rising to one in five., i.e. 59 million).

Mr. Stockman observes:

... the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation's bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.

In a brief history lesson, Mr. Stockman relates to us the Greenspan accommodations and the effects of massive imports on our inflation numbers.

That Mr. Greenspan's loose monetary policies didn't set off inflation was only because domestic prices for goods and labor were crushed by the huge flow of imports from the factories of Asia. By offshoring America's tradable-goods sector, the Fed kept the Consumer Price Index contained, but also permitted the excess liquidity to foster a roaring inflation in financial assets. Mr. Greenspan's pandering incited the greatest equity boom in history, with the stock market rising fivefold between the 1987 crash and the 2000 dot-com bust.

The same imports that held down our inflation numbers, thus giving the Fed the green light in loose money policies, is the same factor that collapsed our manufacturing and forced us into a mere "service" economy. Those cheaply imported manufactured goods kept inflation down but also closed our production capacities. These factors now inhibit our real job growth making Bernanke's goal of 6.5% unemployment a pipe dream.
What gives Stockman some added credence is that his finger pointing is bipartisan:

This dynamic reinforced the Reaganite shibboleth that "deficits don't matter" .....allowed George W. Bush to dive into the deep end, bankrupting the nation through two misbegotten and unfinanced wars, a giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy that turned K Street lobbyists into the de facto office of national tax policy. In effect, the G.O.P. embraced Keynesianism -- for the wealthy. 

Mr. Stockman should write a position paper for the "Occupy Wall Streeters." It might send them on the right path. He lambasts former Goldman Sachs CEO Paulson for his friendship bailouts to his Wall Street cronies, and for insulating them from the loses they "so richly deserved."

Continuing with his across-the-aisle net casting, Stockman adds his comments on the wisdom of the Obama stimulus.

The Democratic Keynesians, as intellectually bankrupt as their Republican counterparts (though less hypocritical), had no solution beyond handing out borrowed money to consumers, hoping they would buy a lawn mower, a flat-screen TV or, at least, dinner at Red Lobster.

In a video interview regarding his March 31, 2013 opinion editorial, the former budget director and former economic advisor to Ronald Reagan uses strong verbiage to make his points of caution. He rings the "fire bell in the night".

"The Fed is a Deadly Instrument of Speculation" Stockman says, allowing Wall Street to recoup but doing little for the remainder of the country. "The Fed is a bubble machine that only works for the speculators and the traders and the 1%." This position is a blend of Ron Paul and the Occupy Movement.

Citing that the Fed has created the "greatest bond market bubble in history" which is none other than "a big arbitrage, the most dangerous thing any central bank in history has ever done", Stockman suggests any hint of a Fed policy change would be catastrophic to the markets.

Stockman notes that the Feds balance sheet was $500 billion the last time the Standard and Poor's Index was at these levels several years ago. Now, the Fed's balance sheet increases by nearly $100 billion... A MONTH!

Instead of moderation, what's at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices -- a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.

Stockman warns that there is no graceful exit. A small rise in rates "...will elicit a tidal wave of sell orders, because even a modest drop in bond prices would destroy the arbitrageurs' profits. Notwithstanding Mr. Bernanke's assurances about eventually, gradually making a smooth exit, the Fed is domiciled in a monetary prison of its own making."

Can anyone argue that asset evaluations are false when the cost of money is artificial?

Stockman asks if it is possible to "restore (ing) the central bank's original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism."

As noted in the American Thinker article of March 29th, the Fed has become something it once was not. Not only have they expanded their balance sheet, they have assumed new powers under emergency conditions, then made them permanent. They have focused on some mandates while ignoring others. This is quite a brew Ben has in his caldron. But now Bernanke may be more focused on his own exit strategy rather than from the Fed's apparently inextricable situation. There is no feasible way to drain this punch bowl. 

 http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/the_feds_deadly_instrument_of_speculation.html#ixzz2PWH6mdoI