I'm Back

I've been so focused on fighting the scourge of Common Core (1) that I've had little time for the many other threats to our American way of life. I do keep up by reading the (free) New York Times while working out at Equinox. It's the best source of what's wrong with America, and it gets my blood up. 

I've also been away from PalosVerdesBlog. My Education posts focusing on Common Core may be found on Facebook at ConcernedPVParents.

 Today there was an opinion piece by Paul Krugman accusing Republicans of being "enemies of the poor." The GOP is "the party that takes from the poor and gives to the rich." Republicans are "doing all they can to hurt the poor"; and "it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the GOP is hurting the poor as much as it can." Got it?

On the other hand, Democrats like "Krugtron the Invincible" (2) love poor people. In fact, they love poor people so much they want to keep them poor, and have more of them. Star Parker called it "Uncle Sam's Plantation" in the book of the same name.

On the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's "War on Poverty," Robert Rector reported in the Wall Street Journal (1/8/14) that the Federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and social services to poor Americans. The government spends nearly one Trillion dollars a year on those programs for the roughly 100 million Americans who benefit from them. That sums up to roughly 21 Trillion over the past 50 years "to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities."

The numbers, while astounding, hide an inconvenient truth. Rector calculates that if just one fifth of the Trillion dollars was divided (progressively, of course) among the poor, poverty would be eliminated in America. That's right, only 20% of what we spend on the war on poverty would raise every poor person above the poverty level.

Well, what about the other 80% ($800,000,000,000)? Not all of it is wasted on the Federal bureaucracy that administers the 80 welfare programs. No, most of it goes to the poor in ways that don't count as income, thus raising the poor to levels of prosperity above the working folks who earn just a bit too much to qualify for welfare. Nice trick!

So if you were a working person who could receive a handout from the government if only you worked a bit less, you may be tempted to cut back your hours or, even better, to go on disability. Thus begins "generational poverty."

As Star Parker put is so well: "The liberal establishment are involved in the slave trade, as surely as if they had put the chains on the people themselves. We work the ghettos instead of the field, dutifully putting 'massa' back in the Senate or House of Representatives."


(1) There is a connection to Common Core: Krugman's socialist crap is the sacred text within the academic establishment, especially in the schools of education.  Just wait for it in a K-12 school near you.

(2) Read about "Krugtron the Invincible" in the hilarious series by Niall Ferguson in the Huffington Post.