Category Archives: Welfare State

Good Friday Report

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I apologize for not posting yesterday. I had a dental appointment and didn’t get home until late in the day.

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For millions of Christians, today is a day of remembrance. Some ignorantly claim it’s a celebration. It is not. It’s an acknowledgment of debt to one who paid all for all of us. The celebration is on Easter. The unchurched and ignorant dcann’t discern the difference between the two days.

This blog, however, is political rather than religious. In many cases, the two views are in alignment. In one such arena is the choice of mass welfare. On one hand many claim that we should support those in need. I doubt anyone would argue against that. However, many of those in ‘need’ are not. They are in a situation of their own making and refuse to extricate themselves from that situation. They depend on the largess of others while doing nothing to better themselves, to remove themselves from a life of parasitism. Generations subsist in such environments and blame others for their own failings.

Those of us of a conservative bent prefer to help those who are willing to accept that help to better their livelihood, to better their skills in search of employment, to work, study, learn, to educate themselves so they need not be dependent on the charity of others. We had a small victory in the Missouri Senate this week. An attempt to extend dependency in Missouri, to bolster the cult of parasitism failed in Jeff City.

Missouri Senate defeats proposal to expand Medicaid

Mar 31, 11:33 PM CDT

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri senators have defeated a proposal to expand eligibility for Medicaid.

The Senate on Tuesday voted 25-9 against the measure.

Democratic Sen. Paul LeVota proposed adding the amendment to a bill that would ensure the state continues to receive certain funding for Medicaid.

The vote follows rallies in the Capitol and across the state calling on lawmakers to debate expanding the joint federal and state health care program for low-income residents.

States can receive additional funding for raising eligibility under Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law.

But Missouri’s Republican legislative leaders have called the measure a nonstarter.

This amendment should be a nonstarter. The democrats ignore one extremely important proviso of Obama’s assistance—it’s temporary. And when the subsidies expire, Missouri will be left holding the bag for ALL the costs of the medicaid expansion. Why? Because Medicaid is a primary component of Obamacare. The feds, by themselves, cannot pay for the enormous costs of Obamacare. They need to steal from us to do so…one way or another. Expanding medicaid is one such scheme.

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Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation yesterday permitting concealed carry by Kansas residents without a permit. Existing Kansas concealed carry permits will still issued as before to allow Kansans to carry out-of-state where the Kansas CCW permit is recognized.

A similar bill has been filed in Jefferson City. It too would allow concealed carry without a permit while retaining the existing CCW permit structure. The bill was filed late in this year’s session but it is being sponsored by well-known supporters. The bill, along with allowing CCW on public transportation was heard in committee this week.

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In local news, the liberals in Kansas City, lead by Mayor Sly James, are proposing to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 and hour. Seattle did so last year and the results are in—restaurants are failing and closing all over the city. Sly James would like to do the same to Kansas City—kill jobs and close businesses.

Many of Kansas City’s business owners are unaware of this proposal. During my visit to the dentist yesterday, he said he had just given his assistant a raise to $9 and hour. I told him that soon he’d have to raise her to $15 an hour if Sly James had his way. He was unaware that could happen. He’s a small businessman employing just three people. Wages and salaries are a significant portion of his business expense. A sudden increase in his cost of doing business could put him in dire constraints!

He asked if they knew of the consequences of such an increase. “How could anyone be so stupid?” he asked.

And stupid it is. The increase wouldn’t hit just the food industry. It would affect many small businesses like my dentist as well as large organizations…like the Kansas City School District.

Many (most?) of the school districts para-professionals are only paid $8-9 and hour. They would be affected too and the increase would bust the already horribly large school district budget. According to the Kansas City district’s payroll data, the increase of the minimum wage would affect 1,447 employees of the district who are currently paid less than $15 and hour. How many of these employees would have to be laid off?

This situation is what we’ve come to expect from the incompetency of the left. Money appears whenever they want it from an overflowing pot of money that is magically extracted from…somewhere. Taxpayers however, know who is the source of this rapacious demand for more and more money—democrats.

 

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The Rime…

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Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part II, Stanza 14.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Obama must be feeling as if he were that Ancient Mariner, who killed the Albatross and was condemned to wear its dead body around his neck. The difference is that Obama’s Albatross is Obamacare.

Some statistics were published today that is another weight, another burden, around Obama’s political agenda. Statistics, such as:

OBAMACARE POLL: THEY’VE TRIED IT AND THEY DON’T LIKE IT
Fifty percent of voters disapprove of ObamaCare, 43 percent strongly so, according to a poll out from the budget hawk group Public Notice. The survey, conducted by Tarrance Group, found that while 40 percent of respondents approved of the health law, a majority of key groups disapprove including women ages 18 to 44 (51 percent), employees of small businesses (57 percent), adults in households with children (56 percent) and voters who’ve tried to shop on ObamaCare Web sites (52 percent). The poll also showed that Members of Congress who voted for the president’s law are getting a negative reaction from voters, with 43 percent saying they less likely to re-elect those who voted for the health law versus 38 percent who are more likely to vote for their member if he or she voted for ObamaCare. — FOX Newsletter, 12-10-2013.

The critical issue is the age groups in the poll above. These groups are the demographic segment that Obama was planning on soaking to pay for his monstrosity. Now, they are opting out, refusing to play Obama’s game, a game he is losing badly.

But that isn’t the only damaging news about Obamacare. As we move closer to the implementation date, more failings of Obamacare are emerging. This time for prescription drugs—the list of covered drugs has been slashed. Many of us, forced onto Medicare, take maintenance drugs. Some are to control cholesterol, some to control blood pressure, plus many others. Now, with the list of covered drugs slashed, Obamacare and Medicare participants must pay for those drugs out of their pockets. Plus, for Obamacare enrollees, those out-of-pocket costs cannot be charged to your deductible.

OBAMACARE PAIN PILL
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former senior policy adviser to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told Megyn Kelly that many prescriptions may not be covered under ObamaCare. “The list of drugs that the plans cover, in many cases, aren’t very long.  And if the drugs aren’t covered you’re on your own, you basically have to pay for it entirely out of pocket, and the money that you spend on those drugs doesn’t count against your out of pocket limit or against your deductible,” Gottlieb said. “This could cost patients who need special drugs a lot of money, literally tens of thousands of dollars a year.” — FOX Newsletter, 12-10-2013.

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What a disappointment Paul Ryan has turned out to be. He ran in the last election, as a conservative, a tax conservative and a spending conservative. His current budget plan, with democrat Senator Patty Murray, exposes the lies he spoke during that campaign.

The Big Spenders Return

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  December 10th, 2013 at 04:30 AM

If Paul Ryan were a Peanuts character, he’d be the guy who pulls the football out of the way just as he himself is about to kick it. Over the past number of years, Congressman Ryan has come up with a few reform proposals.

From his roadmap to this, he has made as his starting point for negotiations that which should be his ending point.

Now, with liberal Senator Patty Murray, Congressman Ryan wants to raise spending today on the promise that Congress will restrain itself ten years from now (or whenever the benchmark will be). It’s a return to pre-sequestration Washington — spending increases today in exchange for promises of spending cuts later.

I opposed sequestration at the time the GOP came up with it. I figured they’d do an end run around it. But they did not. Surprisingly, they stuck with it if only because they couldn’t figure out a way to undermine it without rocking the boat with their base.

Now it’s looking like they are prepared to rock that boat.

The Democrats have repeated painted doom and gloom scenarios about sequestration. They said it would undermine economic growth, but the latest economic figures dispute that. They said it would cause increased unemployment, but the latest employment numbers dispute that. They’ve said a great deal, all of which has been nonsensical hyperbole.

Based on what has been reported so far, the Ryan-Murray plan seems like outright capitulation to the big spending, big government agenda of both parties’ lobbyist class. In fact, the op-eds already coming out for it are being written by those who stand to profit from more spending.

Congress should start at sequestration spending levels and reduce spending from there — not raise revenue and not raise spending. After all, like Obamacare, sequestration is the law of the land too.

A sellout in any form, is still a sellout. Actions like this, Ryan’s betrayal of his Tea Party supporters, makes me wonder if there are ANY national politicians, Cruz, Lee and a handful of others excepted, who are not traitors to their constituents?

Here is a link to another report on the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray Tax and Spend bill. It’s very informative.

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If you watch the news coming out of the Middle-east, you may have come across this article, the possible creation of strange allies, Saudi Arabia and…Israel! Neither country wants a nuclear Iran on their borders.

Saudis to Obama: We Will Not Tolerate a Nuclear Iran

By Karin McQuillan, December 10, 2013

Individuals who have even visited Israel, or who observe Judaism, or who carry a Bible are banned from Saudi Arabia.  Yet Saudi Arabia’s Israel-hating King Abdullah just flew in an Israeli scientist to have dinner with him, to enjoy some royal hospitality, accept a medal and the $200,000 “Arab Nobel Prize.”  It’s a not-so-subtle message to President Obama: the unthinkable can happen, so don’t assume the Saudis won’t join with Israel to bomb Iran.

Obama’s new Iran policy moves the Mid-East closer to war over oil and religion — Sunni Saudis versus Shia Iranians.  There is no more strategic commodity than Gulf oil to the entire world economy.  American national security stakes could not be higher.   Iran’s end game, some say more than an attack on Israel, is to seize the Saudi oil fields.  There is a Shiite majority in the oil province that the Saudi Princes fear could be turned by Iran.  The Saudis no longer see the U.S. as an ally in stabilizing the Middle East.  We have become a force for chaos. The UK Telegraph:

Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, said the great unknown is how Saudi Arabia will react to a move deemed treachery in Riyadh… The great question is whether they can live with this deal, or whether it is intolerable,” he said.

Mr Skrebowski said the Middle East is a tinder box, in the grip of a Sunni-Shia civil war comparable in ideological ferocity to the clash between Catholics and Protestants in early 17th Century Europe. Saudi Arabia has already shown how far it will go to protect its interests, helping to overthrow Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudis are signaling that they will unleash a pre-emptive war in the Middle East in response to Obama’s nuclear capitulation to Iran.  These signals are an effort to change Obama’s decision to prop up the mullahs and green light their nuclear program.  Can the Saudi threats become real?  It’s a wild card our President is willing to play.

The column continues, here, at the American Spectator website.

The Obama administration, acting as if by design, is alienating our friends and allies. If Obama’s plan is to isolate the United States from our friends around the world, he is being extremely successful. That’s is Obama’s only agenda item that is working.

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Poverty in America

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I was listening to the opening segment of Dave Ramsey’s radio program this morning when I heard him describe some criticism he has been receiving. These critics claim Ramsey is a fraud, hates poor people and is a tool of the “moneyed” people, whatever that is.

Their position is that capitalism is the root of the country’s ills, that capitalism purposely keeps people in poverty so that “moneyed” people can control everything. It was reminiscent of the union and socialist talking points that I’ve seen over the years.

My observations over the last forty plus years as an adult is contrary to those talking points. The Poverty Line didn’t exist when I was growing up. That was a creation of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Since that time, the government has spent trillions, yes that’s right, trillions with a T, on poverty and it still exists in higher levels than before.

Why is this so?

To a very large extent, in my opinion, it is cultural. The history of this country, until the middle of the 20th Century, was based on entrepreneurship. People worked to acquire assets and capital that was, in turn, used to bootstrap a business, an enterprise, a homestead, a dream that lead to prosperity and increased wealth. Many, many were successful. Just look at the winners of the 19th and 20th centuries. They were, are numerous.

Many also failed.

Some, who chose to be homesteader, failed due to disease and weather. The drought and subsequent dust storms of the 1930s is one example. The blizzards covering the northern prairie states in the late 19th century ruined ranches large and small.

Some of those who failed, tried again and succeeded. The farmers who lost their farms in the Dust Bowl, migrated to California and other states and were known as “Okies,” migrant workers moving from one agricultural job to another.

Others, quit. With FDR’s New Deal, some realized they didn’t have to support themselves, others, the government, would do that and that realization was the beginning of America’s welfare state, a  shift in American Culture which fed today’s welfare state.

But, even today, those in poverty need not remain there. The tools exist to allow anyone, with sufficient motivation, to rise out of poverty and to succeed. The obvious tool is education. When I was young and in school, we were taught basics: reading and comprehension, writing and grammar including composition—writing clearly, arithmetic and math, history, geography and natural sciences. But most of all, we were taught how to teach ourselves.

As bad as our current education policies are, it is still possible for an individual to rise above their economic level and succeed—but now without work and personal investment. That is where our dependency culture is failing us.

When I was in school, we had a number of students whose parents were on “relief.” I personally knew some of them. I played with their children, visited them at their home, rode the same bus to school, I knew them and their entire family intimately. The differences between their families and mine were unbelievable to one who had not known both of us.

My family was average for that time and place. My father worked as a coal miner and part-time farmer (I did more farm work when in school than did he), my mother was an elementary school teach as was my older married sister. We also owned a small farm and raised most of our food. We weren’t rich, nor had a lot of money, but we did have something else—a desire to succeed. I was raised in that culture.

The other family was raised in a different culture. My school friends never took school work home. Their parents, outside of a small garden, had no income other than relief payments from the government. When their allotment of relief ended, they would find some job and keep it long enough to qualify for relief once again. It was a cyclic existence. If their children brought school work home, it was destroyed or if the parent found any school textbooks, those text books were sold for whatever value could be received. Their culture determined that education was a hindrance to life—on relief…welfare as we call it now.

That dependency culture has grown over the decades. It need not continue. The tools to fight it still exists—education, learning how to learn, teaching oneself new skills, skills that can lead to a job, the basis of economic freedom. The path is there.

How does this work? Basically, get a job. Acquire, through education, self-education, work, skills that youj will be paid a wage or salary for exercising those skills. Learn more skills, gain expertise, and find a better paying job, or create a new business with those skills. Then, as your business grows, with your hard work and enterprise, you hire employees who have skills you need. The cycle continues.

The critics scoff at this idea. “All the wealth is controlled by a few! No one new can join them.” That is the basis of Keynesian Economics: wealth cannot be created nor destroyed.” Wealth must be controlled for the betterment of all. Wealth must be taken from those who have it, and given to those who do not.

Later versions of Keynesian Theory were based on the Zero-sum game theory. Nothing, wealth, can be added nor removed from a system, just manipulated internally. Poverty is created because the wealthy have acquired all the wealth—a view of economics is easily refuted.

In the 19th and early 20th Century, our currency was based on gold and silver standards. Gold backed the currency. On the face of each bill was the statement, “Redeemable in gold/silver.” Our currency was not Federal Reserve notes, backed by the federal government, but Silver and Gold Certificates redeemable by the appropriate metal. If you didn’t have sufficient gold, or silver, you mined more. Wealth, actual wealth in silver and gold in this case, grew. The economy grew, people gained jobs, saved, and created new jobs. Poverty was diminished.

We no longer have a currency based on gold or silver. Our economy has outgrown the available quantities of gold and silver. We do have a currency based on work. We have the tools available to anyone with the will to use them. Poverty will not cease in America due to the dependency culture. But, we need not feed that culture. Poverty is not a lack of money, wealth, it is a cultural affliction.

Those who are mired in it, can escape. All it takes is the will to do so, and by doing so, escape the trap of dependency created by progressive, socialistic economic thought and policies.

 

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Parades, Revelations, and Bread and Circuses

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I think I’m recovered now. Our neighboring town had a Veteran’s Day parade on Saturday and I walked in it with Mrs. Crucis and some friends. The parade wasn’t too long, a mile and a half, perhaps, but the wind was strong and cool.  According to my pedometer, we walked about 3,000 steps. I normally walk 4,000 steps, almost two miles, three times a week.

But, if you’ve ever walked in a parade, you know it is not a steady walk. The parade bunches up and you’re standing around waiting for the group ahead of you to move. Then they do, and you’re almost running to catch up. Repeat for the duration of the parade.

I think it was the cool wind and the approaching cold front that did me in. Temperatures overnight dropped to 16, locally last night. But today I’m inside perched next to my heater in my office and all is right in the world.

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The Obamacare news continues to get worse. According to Rasmussen, 55% of those polled want Obamacare to be repealed. The latest news, is that Obamacare, again, targets a specific segment of the country with less benefits than others—the military. One of the features of Obamacare that Obama and the libs have been bragging is that your adult children, until they are 26, can be added to your, the parents, health insurance. That’s true…unless you are active or retired military. Perhaps, that denial is a good thing.

Military members, veterans missing out on key ObamaCare provision

FoxNews.com

One of the most touted benefits of President Obama’s health care overhaul law is the provision allows parents to keep their adult children on their health insurance until age 26.

However, Trace Gallagher reported on “The Kelly File” Monday, this benefit is not being extended to a significant group of Americans: members of the U.S. military.

TRICARE, the Department of Defense program that provides health coverage to active duty and retired military members and their families, only covers young adult dependents up until age 21, or age 23 if they are enrolled full-time in college.

TRICARE recipients can then purchase a plan for their young adult dependents, according to their website.

Air Force veteran Eddie Grooms said he was disappointed to learn he could not add his 21-year-old daughter to his insurance provided by the military, as he thought he had been promised under the health care overhaul.

“It’d be nice if they leveled with everybody and let them know so that people could make plans, because this is going to hit all, I mean it’s going to hit thousands of retirees over time,” Grooms said.

Jessie Jane Duff of Concerned Veterans for America told Megyn Kelly the reason the benefit has not been extended to military members is the rates under TRICARE are very low because they are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

She said “unfortunately” this means adult children cannot be covered, saying there has to be some “give and take” for the reduced rates.

“We’ve been very fortunate because legislation was passed that exempted TRICARE from a lot of the ObamaCare standings, so that actually has benefited veterans to keep the rates that they’ve had,” Duff said.

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If you’ve been watching the news from south of the border, Venezuela is back in the headlines. The communists are still in power and still as stupid as ever. Those of you who have read anything from Ayn Rand, will recognize the term, ‘looters.’ Venezuela has become a nation of looters supported in their looting by the country’s military.

In their latest adventure, the army seized some retail outlets and forced them to sell their merchandise at a loss. They now expect to do the same to other retailers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when a company is forced to sell at a loss, it will soon cease to exist. No profit, no company, and no jobs, either.

Venezuela Becomes A Nation Of Looters

IBD Editorial, Posted 11/11/2013 06:48 PM ET

Looters: Venezuelan troops storm a local electronics retailer in the name of enforcing “fair prices,” brazenly blaming the private sector for state policies. Sounds familiar — and not just because it’s a communist takeover.

With municipal elections just around the corner on Dec. 8, it’s no surprise to see Venezuela’s failing socialist government turning to pork-barrel handouts to lure voters — as it always has.

Shovel the goodies to the red-shirted low-information voters and gain just enough votes in upcoming elections to claim a dictatorship is really a democracy.

Not coincidentally, President Nicolas Maduro declared that Venezuela would celebrate the beginning of Christmas in October — to distribute goodies.

But there’s a new twist here: Venezuela is out of money to shovel pork. Its foreign reserves have fallen to $21.4 billion as oil prices slump. Instead of using its vast oil earnings to buy votes, as in the past, Venezuela’s Marxist government is now making do by stealing from Venezuela’s battered private sector.

Which is what brought the bizarre spectacle of the Venezuelan military occupation of Daka — the country’s five-store equivalent of Best Buy, loaded with the flat-screen TVs, computers and smartphones favored by looters everywhere.

As troops stood by, crowds looted one Daka store, stripping its shelves bare. Call it government by looting.

Or in reality, call it communism. Because such destruction of private property in the name of redistribution has been a feature of every communist takeover from Russia to China, to Vietnam, to Cuba.

Defending his government-of-looters, Maduro officially blamed the store for charging “unfair prices,” a preposterous statement since Daka’s prices weren’t inconsistent with the official inflation rate of 56% in an economy that must pay for 90% of its goods imports, including consumer electronics, with dollars.

There is even some speculation, by bloggers such as Miguel Octavio of the Devil’s Excrement, that the viciousness of the government action could be due to the company engaging in high-profit arbitrage on the country’s two-tier exchange rates.

There’s also no doubt the government was sending a message to other retailers not to raise prices by making an example of one of them. Message received.

But the bottom line is, horrendous government policies forced retailers to do what they have. It wasn’t Daka that created price controls or a corrupt two-tier exchange system that made the resulting inflation.

The black market currency rate is now 10 times higher than the official rate, meaning they’re on the verge of hyperinflation due to a government that can’t stop spending. This explains why imported basic commodities, such as chicken, milk and toilet paper, are now scarce, just as in the old Soviet Union, or in today’s Cuba.

Were Venezuela a true democracy, such a destructive economic record would bring down the ruling party.

But this is Venezuela. It has benefited not just from having the U.S. as its top oil customer and consumer goods supplier, but also from a lot of White House love — from President Obama’s and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s embrace of late strongman Hugo Chavez at a 2009 summit, to ex-President Jimmy Carter’s dishonest endorsement of Venezuela’s fraudulent 2004 recall, which the Bush White House meekly accepted.

And now the results: Venezuelan troops occupy electronics retailers while yelling about “fairness.”

Doesn’t this tale sound familiar? If you substitute Obama ‘phones, welfare EBT cards and Food Stamps, isn’t our federal government doing much the same? Delving into history, I hear the refrain, “BREAD and CIRCUSES!” The Roman emperors kept the Roman mob satisfied with bread and circuses—food and entertainment, (now you understand why the liberal elite controls Hollywood,) while looting the empire to pay for the bread and the circuses, and to quiet the mob. In the end, the empire could no longer pay, having been picked clean by Roman tax collectors and the Roman empire collapsed to the barbarians outside the empire…and the barbarians within.

Now, with Obama’s Redistribution of Wealth, we’re facing the same situation as did the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is just a memory from history, its cities are a pile of rubble, some carefully preserved but most destroyed for the materials in them.

What will the United States be in a few hundred years? A viable nation leading the world, or a pile of picked rubble, destroyed by the liberal tax collectors and the Washington mob?

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Kansas City is #26

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An article appeared today listing 19 cities with a greater number of public employee to resident ration than Detroit. Detroit’s statistics are:

DETROIT

Residents per employee 61
Population: 713,777
Employees: 11,645
Annual payroll: $651,437,244
Average compensation: $55,941
What’s not included?

Number 1 on that list is, not surprisingly, Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON DC

Residents per employee 25
Population: 601,723
Employees: 23,631
Annual payroll: $3,477,829,176
Average compensation: $147,172
What’s not included?

What isn’t shown in these demographics is the income to debt ratios. We know that Detroit’s ratio was negative…more debt than income. Decades of deficit spending came home, finally, to roost.

Detroit has been ruled by democrats since 1962. Louis Miriani Mayor of Detroit.jpg Louis Miriani, a republican, was Mayor at that time. Being a ‘pub didn’t excuse him from being corrupt. In 1969, he was convicted of federal tax evasion and served approximately 10 months in prison.[96]

The city really didn’t go downhill until the election of Coleman Young. Young was elected in the aftermath of the 1967 riots and the resulting “white flight“ from Detroit. Coleman blamed his predecessors and called them an “occupation army.” Young used the falling economy of Detroit to build his power base. It was  the beginning of the end for Detroit.

You can find the list of failing cities via this link. Kansas City isn’t in the top 19 but at #26, it’s close.

KANSAS CITY

Residents per employee 69
Population: 459,787
Employees: 6,646
Annual payroll: $357,365,988
Average compensation: $53,771
What’s not included?

Kansas CIty, like Detroit, has been suffering under decades of democrat rule who, like all democrat pols, blame everyone else for their failings while ignoring the very visible fact that it is their policies and actions that was the root cause of their continuing failure. That is also true of other major cities across the US.

Mrs. Crucis and I are fortunate we moved from Kansas City and Jackson County nearly two decades ago. Kansas City’s finances are as shaky as is Detroit. The city’s allegiance to unions and their opposition to Right to Work result in more and more businesses and industries moving across the state line into Kansas, a Right to Work state.

The real tragedy is that Kansas City and Jackson County (MO) residents have swallowed the democrat line, hook, line and sinker. They ignore the warnings, if they see them at all. The Kansas City ‘Red’ Star certainly won’t report the coming danger. No, they are part of the problem—becoming the democrat’s propaganda organ for Kansas City.

The best we can do, to lessen the impact of Kansas City’s coming failure, is to isolate the consequences to Kansas City and Jackson County. When Kansas City and Jackson County inevitably arrive at Jefferson City with their hands out, we, the citizens of Missouri, our Legislature and Governor, must be ready to say, “No!”

Kansas City, like all the democrat ruled cities,  has created their problems. It must be up to Kansas City, and those other cities in similar circumstances, to get themselves out or their predicament. The day of cities sucking off the rest of their state is over.

Oh, by the way, St. Louis is in that list at #11…higher than Detroit!

ST LOUIS

Residents per employee 50
Population: 319,294
Employees: 6,335
Annual payroll: $600,533,640
Average compensation: $94,796
What’s not included?

 

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BOHICA

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Yes, today’s title is an acronym. No, I won’t explain it, look it up. It’s an appropriate title because John Boehner is about to stick it to us again on the Foodstamp Bill. What Foodstamp bill? It’s the one Boehner tries to pass as a Farm Bill. Yes, that nearly $1Trillion bill that is 80% for food stamps and 20% for pork, and not the four-legged kind.

Our local congresswomen is bragging how she deleted a duplicate catfish provision, saving a few tens of million dollars. Will she vote against the entire bill? I doubt it. She voted for it the last time and this time around she has her name on one little piece of eliminating a minor duplication. Of course she’ll vote for it.

But, let’s get back to Boenher. Here’s his plan that he released to the Washington Times.

John Boehner: Time is right to bring latest farm bill to House floor

By Sean Lengell – The Washington Times, Monday, June 10, 2013

After punting last year on a farm bill, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday he will bring his chamber’s 2013 version to the floor this month — a move sure to divide his fellow Republicans.

The announcement came the same day the Senate easily passed its own farm bill — a five-year, half-trillion-dollar measure that calls for expanded government subsidies for crop insurance, rice and peanuts while making small food stamp cuts.

Last year, Mr. Boehner declined to bring a farm bill to the House floor in a move designed to avoid a nasty intraparty fight during an election year, as farm state Republicans pushed for crop subsidies while other GOP conservatives demanded widespread cuts.

But with midterm elections almost a year and half away and the Senate passing its farm bill Monday evening by a vote of 66 to 27, the Ohio Republican decided the time was right to hold debate and a possible vote on the measure.

Mr. Boehner suggested his decision also was based on “a number of positive reforms” in his chamber’s bill shepherded by House Agriculture Chairman Frank D. Lucas, Oklahoma Republican — particularly provisions that would end direct payments to farmers and cuts in the food stamp program.

“As a longtime proponent of top-to-bottom reform, my concerns about our country’s farm programs are well known,” said Mr. Boehner in a prepared statement.

“But as I said on the day I became speaker, my job isn’t to impose my personal will on this institution or its members. Rather, it’s to ensure we have a fair process and an open debate, leading to a product that reflects the will of our majority, the will of our members and the will of those we represent.”

Farm bills usually are among the most bipartisan legislative matters on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers from agricultural states and districts — despite party — come together to ensure their success.

The most recent multiyear farm bill expired at the end of September, although programs continued through temporary funding extensions.

The House Agriculture Committee last month passed its latest farm bill with broad bipartisan support. The measure would make much larger cuts to food stamps than the Senate version in a bid to gain support from Republicans who have opposed the measure.

The Senate bill would cut the food stamp program by about $400 million a year, or half a percent. The House bill would cut the program by $2 billion a year, or a little more than 3 percent, and make it more difficult for some people to qualify.

Three percent cut in food stamps. THREE LOUSY PERCENT! The House brags it cut a billion from foods stamp when the total for food stamps is in the neighborhood of $600Billion.

But it’s uncertain whether the cuts will be enough to placate House conservatives. And even Mr. Boehner hinted he may not support the measure in its current form, saying he has concerns about some of the measure’s dairy provisions and “will support efforts on the House floor to change them appropriately.”

The speaker added that if House members “have ideas on how to make the bill better, [they should] bring them forward.”

Because the food stamp program — now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — makes up almost 80 percent of the bill’s cost, some conservative groups have suggested splitting off the program from the agriculture-related portion of the bill.

“The urban and rural logrolling deemed necessary to pass this bill has created an unholy bipartisan alliance that has long served to thwart fiscally responsible efforts to restrain spending and limit the growth of government,” said a group of more than a dozen conservative organizations in a letter to House members dated Monday. “Separating food stamps and considering them in an alternate piece of legislation is not only sound policy, but also good politics.” — The Washington Times

Separating Food Stamps from the Farm Bill would be an exercise of Truth in Advertising. It’s time to end the subterfuge. A Food Stamps Bill and a Pork Bill. If crop subsidies are really necessary, and I question that (I grew up on a farm,) then let them be evaluated on their own merit, not hidden inside massive pork and welfare legislation.

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It’s Thursday?

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It’s been a busy week. Electioneering and the election earlier this week seemed to just soak up the time. The aftermath yesterday…checking the winners and losers, was busy as well. Some of my favorites won, some lost. It’s been a whirlwind and time has leaped in passing.

I woke up this morning thinking it was Wednesday. I had lain in bed thinking over the election results and some impacts when it occurred to me that I was repeating yesterday. 

That’s when I woke up.

***

In the run-up to the election, current events has been pushed aside.  Imagine my surprise to learn that Mexico has surrendered to the drug cartels!  Mexico’s PRI party regained control in the last election. Once in office, they promptly surrendered to the de facto government that rules large portions of the country.

Mexico Dissolves Its FBI, Moves to Legalize Drugs

by Chriss W. Street 1 Aug 2012

In a stunning development, President-elect Enrique Peña and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who won control of Mexico’s government on July 1st, moved to dissolve the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI).  

Modeled after the United States FBI, the AFI was founded in 2001 to crack down on Mexico’s pervasive government corruption and drug trafficking. With rival drug cartels murdering between 47,500 to 67,000 Mexicans over the last six years, the move by the PRI represents the total surrender of Mexico’s sovereignty back to the money and violence of Mexico’s two main drug cartels, the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas. Coupled with the Obama Administration’s “Dreamer” Executive Order curtailing deportations of illegal aliens, a hands-off policy on both sides of the border foreshadows a huge increase in “narco-trafficking” violence and corruption flooding into the United States.    

The PRI ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 71 years between 1929 and 2000.  Although the PRI claimed they were the socialist peasant’s party, they operated as a corrupt political organization that siphoned off wealth from Mexico’s nationalized oil industry with bribes for protecting the drug cartels that trafficked in marijuana and narcotics into the United States. As a glaring example of the level of official PRI corruption, in 1982 the oil workers’ union donated a $2 million house as a “gift” to President López Portillo. Mexicans often joke: “Our Presidents are elected as millionaires, but they leave office as billionaires.” 

But on December 1, 2000, Vicente Fox, the former Chief Executive of Coca-Cola in Mexico and founder of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), was elected President of Mexico. Mr. Fox ran on a platform of reforming Mexico’s pervasive police corruption, and his first move as President was to form the AFI. Under the leadership of President Fox and his party’s successor, President Felipe Calderón, the AFI grew over the next 11 years into a 5,000-member force with an international reputation as a premier drug enforcement agency.  The U.S. provided extensive equipment and training to the AFI. The AFI reciprocated by capturing numerous drug kingpins and extraditing them to face criminal prosecution for murder and drug distribution in the U.S. 

Over the first six months of 2012, the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas carried out a vicious war across Mexico to expand their areas of operations and intimidate the local population. Both cartels engaged in “information operations campaigns” by displaying large numbers of dismembered bodies in public places. The shock value of body dumps was designed to broadcast that the cartels are the dominant authority in Mexico. 

The AFI under President Felipe Calderón retaliated against the major drug cartel kingpins’ horrific bloodshed by partnering with the U.S. and Guatemala to capture Horst Walther Overdick in Guatemala, followed by the capture of Francisco Treviño and Carlos Alejandro “El Fabiruchis” Gutierrez Escobedo and the killing of Gerardo “El Guerra” Guerra Valdez in Mexico, along with the capture of José Treviño in the U.S.

Two days after the election, President-elect Peña came to the U.S. to announce that he would “welcome debate on the issue of drug legalization and regulation in Mexico.”  In an interview by PBS News Hour, President-elect Pena clearly stated:

I’m in favor of opening a new debate in the strategy in the way we fight drug trafficking. It is quite clear that after several years of this fight against drug trafficking, we have more drug consumption, drug use and drug trafficking. That means we are not moving in the right direction. Things are not working.

These are “code words” to signal the PRI intends to cut a profitable deal with the cartels to legalize drugs in exchange for collecting tax revenue on drug sales. The month before, Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) called a Congressional hearing to accuse Peña Nieto of advocating “a reversion” back to the old PRI policies of “turning a blind eye to the cartels” as long as they weren’t perpetrating grisly violence.   

President-elect Peña’s announcement of the PRI’s new cozy relationship with the drug cartels directly followed President Obama’s announcement of his “Dreamer” Executive Order curtailing deportations of “undocumented” aliens. These actions have caused major alarm among rank-and-file border agents that the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas are now unrestrained to flood into the United States with drugs and violence. In a joint union press conference by the customs agents and the border patrol unions, Chris Crane, President of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council (ICE) warned:  

It‘s impossible to understand the full scope of the administration’s changes, but what we are seeing so far concerns us greatly… There is no burden for the alien to prove anything.

No good will come from this. The security of our southern border has just become more critical than ever before.

***

Claire McCaskill ran an ad prior to the Missouri primary declaring Todd Akin to be, “a dangerous Tea Party extremist,” and, “outside the mainstream.” Various pundits believe she ran the ads because she, McCaskill, believed Akin was the easiest ‘Pub opponent to beat for the Senate.  Whatever her logic, it appears to have helped Akin win some votes in the primary. A quick scan of grassroots websites across the state appeared to confirm the opinions of those pundits.

Personally, I think Ol’ Claire made a strategic mistake.  Breitbart TV has this report.

Claire McCaskill Says Conservatives Are ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Outside of Mainstream’

by Dana Loesch 9 Aug 2012, 2:53 AM PDT

Claire McCaskill’s campaign wasted no time in attacking Todd Akin after his senate primary win. This evening McCaskill sent an email to supporters claiming that Akin is a “dangerous” tea party extremist:

Akin’s Rap Sheet Makes It Clear: Tea Party Congressman’s Outside Of The Mainstream Views, Dangerous Policies Are Wrong for Missouri, From his record to his rhetoric, everything about Todd Akin’s Tea Party policies are outside of the mainstream and dangerous for Missouri families.  

When Missouri Republicans nominated him last night,  they pinned their Senate hopes on a far right,  Tea Party Congressman whose candidacy diminishes the party’s prospects for November.

This coming from McCaskill, a Senator so far removed from the will of her people that after she championed for Obamacare in Missouri, 76% of voters voted to repudiate it via Proposition C. Prop C, or the Health Care Freedom Act, was the first legislative challenge to Obamacare. 

McCaskill again rubber-stamped the Obama agenda when she sided with him against Missouri jobs and coal by voting in favor of the MACT rule and effectively shutting the doors of numerous coal plants. McCaskill once claimed she hated coal, odd considering she represents a big coal state, the industry of which employs thousands. McCaskill has rubber-stamped the Obama agenda on most every policy that would adversely affect Missouri coal and jobs. 

McCaskill cheerleads for an administration that has quadrupled the deficit, run women from the job pool, and devalued the dollar, while trying to persuade seniors that the government knows best how handle their social security. McCaskill has never addressed why government-run social security is the best when that very same government spent it all. The idea that individuals should have a choice between their own responsibility or government irresponsibility is “extremist” to the incumbent. 

McCaskill also attacked Akin over oil subsidies while keeping mum on her support for green tech subsidies. (Akin, in fact, has before said on my show that such subsidies should cease.)

The Democrat incumbent is desperate to cast this race as Harry Reid v Sharon Angle except McCaskill has been trailing in the polls for the past several states, her state repudiated her efforts to cheerlead for Obama, and unlike Reid, McCaskill is attempting to legislate Missouri into the poorhouse with job-killing regulations. Dangerous and “outside of the mainstream?” That sounds like McCaskill.

One way or another, McCaskill will get what she asked for.

***

The Washington Times has a piece about illegal aliens that is putting to bed the excuse they are all productive and here only for jobs.  Truth be told, almost half are on the welfare rolls.  Just think of the savings that could be made if we just cleaned the rolls and limited welfare to US citizens?  Our parasite class is big enough as it is without importing more.

Slow path to progress for U.S. immigrants

43% on welfare after 20 years

By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times, Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Immigrants lag behind native-born Americans on most measures of economic well-being — even those who have been in the U.S. the longest, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which argues that full assimilation is a more complex task than overcoming language or cultural differences.

The study, which covers all immigrants, legal and illegal, and their U.S.-born children younger than 18, found that immigrants tend to make economic progress by most measures the longer they live in the U.S. but lag well behind native-born Americans on factors such as poverty, health insurance coverage and homeownership.

The study, based on 2010 and 2011 census data, found that 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the U.S. at least 20 years were using welfare benefits, a rate that is nearly twice as high as native-born Americans and nearly 50 percent higher than recent immigrants.

The report was released at a time when both major presidential candidates have backed policies that would make it easier to immigrate legally and would boost the numbers of people coming to the U.S.

…

Federal law requires that the government deny immigrant visas to potential immigrants who are likely to be unable to support themselves and thereby become public charges.

On Tuesday, a handful of Republican senators wrote to the Homeland Security and State departments asking them to explain why they don’t consider whether potential immigrants would use many of the nearly 80 federal welfare programs when they evaluate visa applications.

Neither department responded to messages Tuesday seeking a response to the senators’ letter.

There is more in the complete article. I urge you to read it for yourself.

***

I read some reports today that Citibank, AT&T, and GE are shifting the majority of their contributions to the GOP.  In addition, so are their employees. Usually these corporations suck up to whomever they think will be the winner. They’ve made cozening an art form. Now, they’re abandoning Obama in the hope to gain favor when Romney is in charge.

Corporations are not the only ones. Unions see the writing on the wall, too. The United Mine Workers Association (UMWA), the coal miners union is sitting this election out.

In politics as well as the inevitable sycophants, self-interest is always the top priority.

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