Peter Beinart Displays Lefty Lunacy Equating Iran’s Islamic Hates of 2012 with Bureaucratic USSR

 

Bibi’s Botched History Lesson

by Peter Beinart

Benjamin Netanyahu loves history. And he loves deriding his critics for not understanding it as well as he does. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly last year, he attacked journalists for their weak grasp of past events, calling for a “press whose sense of history extends beyond breakfast.”

But while Netanyahu’s sense of history may extend beyond breakfast, he doesn’t remember events the way most historians do. Take his comments in this year’s U.N. speech, delivered yesterday, about the cold war. In his argument for why the United States and other world powers should draw a “clear red line” specifying when Iran’s nuclear progress would trigger military action, Netanyahu approvingly cited NATO, whose charter “made clear that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all.” According to Bibi, “NATO’s red line helped keep the peace in Europe for nearly half a century.”

Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2012 in New York City. (John Moore / Getty Images)

Yes, but NATO established a red line against Soviet attack. If the USSR invaded West Berlin, to use the most often-discussed scenario, the United States would be obligated to come to West Germany’s defense. What NATO self-consciously did not do was draw a red line against a Soviet bomb. To the contrary, the Truman administration rejected calls for a preventative military strike aimed at stopping Moscow’s quest for atomic power. Then, during the Kennedy administration, the U.S. and its NATO allies rejected calls to establish a red line that would have prompted military action against communist China before it joined the nuclear club. Netanyahu may believe that NATO’s policies of containment and deterrence won’t work against Tehran because its leaders—unlike Stalin and Mao—are bloodthirsty tyrants who sometimes speak in messianic, apocalyptic terms. But people whose historical memory extends beyond breakfast should remember that NATO’s “red line” was not the equivalent of preventative war; it was the alternative to preventative war.

Similarly, Netanyahu told his U.N. audience, “President Kennedy set a red line during the Cuban missile crisis.” Yes, but Kennedy also conducted secret diplomacy with Nikita Khrushchev, which led not only to the Soviets ceasing their nuclear missile construction in Cuba, but to the U.S. removing its nuclear missiles from Turkey. (Imagine what Mitt Romney would have said about that). Kennedy, in other words, gave the Soviets something in return for meeting his red lines. When they circumscribed their nuclear capabilities, he circumscribed America’s. Netanyahu, by contrast, hasn’t given any inkling of what Israel might concede if Iran stops short of building a bomb. Forget offering to limit Israel’s own nuclear program; Netanyahu hasn’t even suggested that if Iran halts its nuclear progress the West should lift sanctions.

But Netanyahu’s deepest misreading of the cold war is more subtle. In his U.N. speech, he spoke about “the medieval forces of radical Islam” as a unitary actor. “They seek supremacy over all Muslims. They’re bent on world conquest. They want to destroy Israel, Europe, America. They want to extinguish freedom. They want to end the modern world.”

In the first decades of the cold war, uber-hawks like Barry Goldwater, James Burnham, and William F. Buckley talked about communism this way, too, as if the differences between various leftist movements and governments were trivial because Marxist ideology itself bound them in a common, evil purpose. But that turned out to be wrong.

At the very moment American right-wingers were lumping all communists together, George Kennan—who had lived for years in Eastern Europe and spoke Russian—was predicting that national rivalries would soon split the communist world. Kennan worked feverishly to exploit the feud between Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Marshall Tito, and Stalin. And early on, he predicted that the world’s two Marxist giants, China and the USSR, would turn viciously against each other. In the 50s and 60s, China hands like John Paton Davies, who understand East Asia in the same textured way that Kennan understood the Soviet bloc, saw the folly in depicting communist North Vietnam as an agent of communist Chinese power, given the historical enmity between the two nations. And, tragically, it was only after tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese had been killed, that men like Davies were proven correct—when communist China and a unified communist Vietnam went to war.

None of this is to suggest that Netanyahu is wrong to worry about a nuclear Iran. Where he’s wrong is in forgetting that Israel’s foe is one particular regime, influenced by ideology, to be sure, but also representing various national traditions and interests. (Iran’s nuclear program, after all, began under the Shah). By instead defining Israel’s enemy as an amorphous behemoth called “radical Islam,” Netanyahu is making it harder for Israel and America to exploit divisions among Islamists, as Kennan exploited divisions among communists. By turning Israel’s foe from a nasty government into a demonic ideology, he’s forgetting that even the most evil of regimes (Stalin’s Soviet Union, for instance) have rational security concerns, and that understanding them is critical to keeping the peace.

If Benjamin Netanyahu really understood the history of the cold war, he’d realize that he’s treading the path of those American leaders whose grandiose ideological formulations concealed their deep ignorance of the countries against which they waged war. Netanyahu fancies himself our era’s Winston Churchill. That’s wrong. He’s our Robert McNamara.

Comment:   Peter Beinart is contemptible for writing such nonsense as the above.   (What can one expect of the Marxist professor spreading words without substance of truth.)

His statement, “In the first decades of the cold war, uber-hawks like Barry Goldwater, James Burnham, and William F. Buckley talked about communism this way, too, as if the differences between various leftist movements and governments were trivial because Marxist ideology itself bound them in a common, evil purpose. But that turned out to be wrong.”

How can anyone in one’s right mind compare the lunacy of world Islamic fascism with the bureaucrats running the Kremlin after Josef Stalin, none of whom believed in an after life much less one offering  them 72 virgins at their arrival at any Red Gates of Communist imagination.

With shameful  Marxist and Muslim sympathiser,  Barack Hussein Obama in charge of the White House and laughably the ‘free world’,  Israel has no support from anyone anywhere at any time.

When Nikita Khrushchev bragged “We’ll bury you”, the ‘you’  meaning Americans,   he referred to the economic prowess of Obamalike Marxism’s economic potential. …….which turned about to be ZERO then as it has been at home here for the past four years.

Yes, the Soviets were a legitmate worry for free societies and peoples of the former colonial world particularly after the Reds  developed their own nuclear arsenal.   Perhaps without their faith for  the virgins,  no Soviet  leaders after World War II boasted about wiping the USA off the maps of the world.   Instead they pumped money into the nonSoviet world including the United States to infiltrate and sabotage including buying off propagandists in Hollywood for assistance in fomenting Revolution.    Sean Penn’s father is thought to have been one of these fellow travelers.

Israel is presently alone in the world.   

It is shocking to think that 75% of  American Jewry is still so  Left, so antiChristian and anti Orthodox, that this population  will still  be voting  for Barack Hussein Obama’s  re-election to further his  anti American agendas.

Peter Beinart is to be read as often as possible as a teaching  standard for LeftWing attacks upon Truth, present or past no matter what the topic.

How About some of that Snobby Establishment Republican Money for Todd Akin?

 

It’s  time for the Republican

establishment to back Todd Akin

from PowerLine:

The deadline for Todd Akin to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race has passed, and Akin remains a candidate. No surprise there; it’s been clear for quite some time that Akin is committed to fighting for this seat.

And it looks like he has a chance to win it. That, at least, is the view presented pretty persuasively in two articles by Politico. The most recent Rasmussen poll had Akin 6 points behind, but that was two weeks ago. I don’t believe there have been any polls of this race since.

Akin’s advantage is that the fundamentals in Missouri strongly favor his candidacy. Missouri recently has become a pretty conservative state. Even the polling services that show big leads for Obama in states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida haven’t produced polls showing Obama ahead in Missouri. The RCP average has Romney up by more than 7 points, with only Rasmussen showing the race closer than that.

Moreover, Akin’s opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, is closely intertwined with the unpopular president. She was one of his earliest backers, and has supported him in Washington on the big ticket items, most notably Obamacare.

That’s why Akin began the race with a healthy lead. The lead turned into a healthy deficit following Akin’s dumb comment about rape victims and child birth. But as the race proceeds, that statement recedes and the fundamentals begin to reassert themselves.

Akin’s other big problem is lack of funds. This week, for example, McCaskill is outspending him by 10-1, according to Politico. This is because the Republican establishment walked, no ran, away from Akin in the aftermath of his foolish remark. It has not returned, though the NRSC’s executive director this week called Akin the “far more preferable candidate” in the race, and signaled that the group may finally be ready to assist him.

With the Senate quite possibly in the balance, it’s past time for such help. The Republican establishment needs to get over Akin’s remark, which in no way warrants his excommunication.

In one of the Politico articles, a former Missouri State Senator speculates that the race may well be determined within a week or so:

If Akin can withstand McCaskill’s furious TV/radio ad onslaught and stay within 4-5 points while holding McCaskill under 47 or 48, national money returns and it’s probably a 1-2 point race either way. If he can’t stay close in the next week, good night, Todd. The cavalry doesn’t do charity cases.

But the cavalry should have arrived by now to help prevent this from becoming a charity case.

Obama Channel MSNBC Playing Nazi Again: Doctors Romney Video

If management is corrupt, the company is corrupt.   If the President is a Liar, a Deceiver, his adherents will be liars and deceivers.

The following video is at realclearpolitics;

MSNBC Caught Wrongfully Presenting Clip From Romney/Ryan Rally

Townhall.com puts together a clip that ties MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” misreporting the story of the Romney/Ryan rally, Pat & Stu of Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” radio program getting a call notifying them of MSNBC’s actions and a C-SPAN clip of the rally as it happened.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/28/msnbc_caught_wrongfully_presenting_clip_from_romneyryan_rally.html

Samuel L. Jackson Exposes Black Culture in Urban America with Obama Ad

Video: Samuel L. Jackson stars

in first-ever boring role

from HotAir:

by Allahpundit

My working theory about SLJ until today was that a production simply cannot be dull when he’s onscreen, but I was looking to bail after 90 seconds of this one. It’s hard to sit through a political vid for more than a minute or two; it’s doubly hard when you disagree with the politics being pushed; put the whole thing in verse and make the joke obvious from the beginning on top of all that and there’s no way you won’t be grinding your teeth by the end. In fact, this is actually a satire of a satire, Jackson’s audio-book reading of the fake children’s bedtime story, “Go the F*** to Sleep.” (The book’s author wrote the script for this ad too.) If you loved this gag the first time, you’ll love it the second time, I guess. And that, in turn, will … influence your decision on the next presidential election? I guess? The bit with grandma and grandpa at the end is amusing, at least.

The video:  http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/27/video-samuel-l-jackson-stars-in-first-ever-boring-role/

The punchline is that Jackson’s been open about why he supported O in 2008 and it had nothing to do with any of the policy choices he rattles off here in rhyme. Quote: “[Obama’s] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me.” Fair enough, but it means something to me. Wake the f*** up, America.

Update: An excellent point from the comments. I stand corrected:

“First-ever boring role”. Someone forgot about Mace Windu.

Comment:   I have no idea who  this Mr. Jackson is.   From the advertisement for Obama he must be part of a reality show on American television.    In many ways, but not all, the American inner city black plantation is a culture unto itself.   Most civilized persons would reject its behavior and values.

The American taxpayer has spent between $6.5 and $8 TRILLION DOLLARS OVER THE LAST GENERATION AND A HALF,  to correct  this civilizational  disorder.

My fellow  Americans who recognized honesty know exactly the truth of what I write here.    They, the black leadership, are most to blame for accepting the government bribes and accepting them to sustain the ever befouling civilization such payoffs are bound to create.    They should have protested rather than complied with the handout-handback  politics

A fundamental difference between classic American conservatives and the Modern Obama Democrat, both white and black,  is the racist belief  of the American Left that the inner city black is  inherently inferior to others  and requires the Democrat Party and to handle its affairs.  

Five decades of  this order of corruption became established  before Obama’s  arrival  in Washington.     It has  created the MOST RACIST COMMUNITIES IN AMERICA today in a nation that in the general has otherwise cleansed itself of this miasma.

Krauthammer: Obama Has our Foreign Policy in RUINS…..Nail Him, Mitt!

Go large, Mitt       

by Charles Krauthammer    at   the Washington Post:

In mid-September 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the bottom fell out of the financial system. Barack Obama handled it coolly. John McCain did not. Obama won the presidency. (Given the country’s condition, he would have won anyway. But this sealed it.)

Four years later, mid-September 2012, the U.S. mission in Benghazi went up in flames, as did Obama’s entire Middle East policy of apology and accommodation. Obama once again played it cool, effectively ignoring the attack and the region-wide American humiliation. “Bumps in the road,” he said. Nodding tamely were the mainstream media, who would have rained a week of vitriol on Mitt Romney had he so casually dismissed the murder of a U.S. ambassador, the raising of the black Salafist flag over four U.S. embassies and the epidemic of virulent anti-American demonstrations from Tunisia to Sri Lanka (!) to Indonesia.

Obama seems not even to understand what happened. He responded with a groveling address to the U.N. General Assemblythat contained no less than six denunciations of a crackpot video, while offering cringe-worthy platitudes about the need for governments to live up to the ideals of the United Nations.The United Nations being an institution of surpassing cynicism and mendacity, the speech was so naive it would have made a fine middle-school commencement address. Instead, it was a plaintive plea by the world’s alleged superpower to be treated nicely by a roomful of the most corrupt, repressive, tin-pot regimes on earth.

Yet Romney totally fumbled away the opportunity. Here was a chance to make the straightforward case about where Obama’s feckless approach to the region’s tyrants has brought us, connecting the dots of the disparate attacks as a natural response of the more virulent Islamist elements to a once-hegemonic power in retreat. Instead, Romney did two things:

He issued a two-sentence critique of the initial statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on the day the mob attacked. The critique was not only correct but vindicated when the State Department disavowed the embassy statement. However, because the critique was not framed within a larger argument about the misdirection of U.S. Middle East policy, it could be — and was — characterized as a partisan attack on the nation’s leader at a moment of national crisis.

Two weeks later at the Clinton Global Initiative, Romney did make a foreign-policy address. Here was his opportunity. What did he highlight? Reforming foreign aid.

Yes, reforming foreign aid! A worthy topic for a chin-pulling joint luncheon of the League of Women Voters and the Council on Foreign Relations. But as the core of a challenger’s major foreign-policy address amid a Lehman-like collapse of the Obama Doctrine?

It makes you think how far ahead Romney would be if he were actually running a campaign. His unwillingness to go big, to go for the larger argument, is simply astonishing.

For six months, he’s been matching Obama small ball for small ball. A hit-and-run critique here, a slogan-of-the-week there. His only momentum came when he chose Paul Ryan and seemed ready to engage on the big stuff: Medicare, entitlements, tax reform, national solvency, a restructured welfare state. Yet he has since retreated to the small and safe.

When you’re behind, however, safe is fatal. Even his counterpunching has gone miniature. Obama has successfully painted Romney as an out-of-touch, unfeeling plutocrat whose only interest is to cut taxes for the rich. Romney has complained in interviews that it’s not true. He has proposed cutting tax rates, while pledging that the share of the tax burden paid by the rich remains unchanged (by “broadening the base” as in the wildly successful, revenue-neutral Reagan-O’Neill tax reform of 1986).

But how many people know this? Where is the speech that hammers home precisely that point, advocates a reformed tax code that accelerates growth without letting the rich off the hook, and gives lie to the Obama demagoguery about dismantling the social safety net in order to enrich the rich?

Romney has accumulated tons of cash for 30-second ads. But unless they’re placed on the scaffolding of serious speeches making the larger argument, they will be treated as nothing more than tit for tat.

Make the case. Go large. About a foreign policy in ruins. About an archaic, 20th-century welfare state model that guarantees 21st-century insolvency. And about an alternate vision of an unapologetically assertive America abroad unafraid of fundamental structural change at home.

It might just work. And it’s not too late.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Thomas Sowell: Clueless Obama Starring on Letterman during Murders in Libya

Our Feckless First Leader

By Thomas Sowell –    at realclearpolitics:

 During the same week when the American ambassador to Libya was murdered and his dead body dragged through the streets by celebrating mobs, the President of the United States found time to go on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his sense of humor and how cool he is.

But Barack Obama did not have time to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a nation repeatedly threatened with annihilation by Iranian leaders, who are working feverishly toward the creation of nuclear bombs.

This was an extraordinary thing in itself, something that probably no other President of the United States could have gotten away with, without raising a firestorm of criticisms and denunciations. But much of the media sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil when it comes to Barack Obama — especially during an election year.

Nor was this public rebuff of a publicly requested meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu unique in its expression of disrespect, if not contempt, for both the man and his country. Despite his glowing assertions of his commitment to Israel, especially in speeches to American Jewish groups, Barack Obama has been working against Israel’s interests from his first day in the White House. As in many other contexts, Barack Obama 1 speaks but Barack Obama 2 acts — often in the opposite direction.

The vision in which Obama has been steeped is one in which white Western nations have oppressed and exploited non-white, non-Western nations, becoming rich and arrogant at other people’s expense. It is a vision that calls out, not for justice, but for payback.

When Jeremiah Wright said, “white folks’ greed runs a world in need” — and Obama, by his own account, was moved to tears — this captured in a few melodramatic words what a whole series of Obama’s mentors and allies had been saying for decades. No wonder it resonated with him.

Despite hopes that Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States would mark the beginning of a post-racial era in America, no hope was ever so completely doomed from the outset. Anyone who looks beyond Obama’s soothing words about race to his record, from his joining self-segregated black students in college to his appointing Al Sharpton as a White House adviser, can see the contrast between rhetoric and reality.

Barack Obama is not the first leader of a nation whose actions reflected some half-baked vision, enveloped in lofty rhetoric and spiced with a huge dose of ego. Nor would he be the first such leader to steer his nation into a historic catastrophe.

In Barack Obama’s case, the potential for catastrophe is international in scope, and perhaps irretrievable in its consequences, as he stalls with feckless gestures as terrorist-sponsoring Iran moves toward the production of nuclear bombs.

The rhetoric of Obama 1 says that he will protect Israel but the actions of Obama 2 have in fact protected Iran from an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities — until now it is questionable whether Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities can be destroyed by the Israelis.

Those deeply buried facilities took time to build, and Obama’s policies gave them that time, with his lackadaisical approach of seeking United Nations resolutions and international sanctions that never had any serious chance of stopping Iran’s movement toward becoming a nuclear power. And Barack Obama had to know that.

In March, “Foreign Policy” magazine reported that “several high-level sources” in the Obama administration had revealed Israel’s secret relationship with Azerbaijan, where Israeli planes could refuel to or from an air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The administration feared “the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran,” according to these “high-level sources.” Apparently the risks of an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel are not so much feared.

This leak was one of the historic and unconscionable betrayals of an ally whose very existence is threatened. But the media still saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil.

The only question now is whether the American voters will wake up before it is too late — not just for Israel, but for America. 

 

 

Over $6,000,000,000,000 of Tax Payer Money has been spent since 1965 bribing blacks to vote Democrat

How is that Investment Going, America?   

         *  *  *

TANF and Federal Welfare

 by Michael Tanner and Tad DeHaven

 

Overview

The federal government funds a large range of subsidy programs for low-income Americans, from food stamps to Medicaid. This essay examines Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which is a joint federal-state cash assistance program for low-income families with children. When most people think of “welfare,” they are thinking of this program.

Since a major welfare reform in 1996, federal spending on TANF has been held fairly constant at somewhat less than $20 billion per year.¹ The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided an additional $5 billion in federal funding over several years. About 1.8 million families receive TANF payments each month.²

Before 1996, federal welfare was an open-ended entitlement that encouraged long-term dependency, and there was widespread agreement that it was a terrible failure. It neither reduced poverty nor helped the poor become self-sufficient. It encouraged out-of-wedlock births and weakened the work ethic. The pathologies it engendered were passed from generation to generation.

The welfare reforms of 1996 were dramatic, but the federal government still runs an array of welfare programs that are expensive and damaging. The federal government should phase-out its role in TANF and related welfare programs and leave low-income assistance programs to state governments, or better yet, the private sector.

Government welfare cannot provide the same flexibility and diversity as private charities. Private aid organizations have a better understanding that true charity starts with individuals making better life choices. Federal involvement in welfare has generated an expensive mess of paperwork and bureaucracy while doing little to solve the problem of long-term poverty.
 

A Brief History of Federal Welfare

The first federal welfare program was Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), which was created as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935. The program was intended to supplement existing state relief programs for widows and to provide support to families in which the father was deceased, absent, or unable to work.³

Although it was originally supposed to be a small program, ADC expanded rapidly. By 1938, almost 250,000 families were participating in the program.⁴ Despite rapid economic growth and declining levels of poverty during the 1950s, ADC rolls continued to grow. By 1956, over 600,000 families were receiving benefits.⁵

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy took office amidst rising concern about poverty in America. But beyond renaming ADC to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and expanding it to include two-parent families in which the father was unemployed, Kennedy actually took little action on welfare. But Kennedy’s general support for expanding aid to the poor set the stage for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

After Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson had a free hand in Con­gress, and he was determined to use it to remake government and society. Johnson declared that the federal government would wage a War on Poverty and his administration proposed a huge array of new subsidy programs for individuals and state and local governments. America had not seen such an expansion of government or such a proliferation of anti-poverty programs since the New Deal. Among the major Johnson initiatives were Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start.

The proliferation of new urban programs, job training, health care, and other welfare activities during the 1960s coincided with further expansions in AFDC. By 1965 the number of people receiving AFDC had risen to 4.3 million.⁶ By 1972 the number had more than doubled to nearly 10 million. The welfare rolls were rapidly expanding even though this was a period of general economic prosperity and low unemployment.⁷

After Johnson left office, there was a bipartisan consensus in Washington to preserve and even expand his legacy. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter all added new anti-poverty programs. Between 1965 and 1975, measured in constant dollars, spending for AFDC tripled.⁸ A series of court deci­sions that established “rights” for welfare recipients helped fuel the spending growth.⁹ After 1975, the growth rate of welfare slowed but still continued upward.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan came into office with strong views about shrinking the welfare state. Unfortunately, welfare-related spending actually grew during Reagan’s two terms. Reagan did shift the funding emphasis among welfare-related programs. For example, fund­ing for AFDC declined by 1 percent during his tenure, but spending for the Earned Income Tax Credit doubled.

By the time President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, a broad national consensus had developed that traditional open-ended welfare had failed. This led to a period of state-government experimentation with welfare within the constraints that the federal government allowed them. Many state experiments—particularly work requirements and recipient time limits—would become part of federal welfare reform in 1996.
 

Welfare Reform in 1996

In August 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which represented the most extensive revision of federal welfare in more than 30 years. By one important measure, welfare reform was very successful. The number of Americans on welfare plunged from 12.6 million in 1996 to 4.2 million individuals by 2009, a dramatic 67-percent decrease.¹⁰

The reform bill made a number of significant changes in the way welfare was provided. AFDC had provided cash payments to families with children where the parents were absent, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed. The program was funded by a combination of federal and state funds (the federal portion varied from 50 to 80 percent), with states setting benefit levels and the federal government determining eligibility requirements. States had an incentive to expand benefit levels because that would draw more federal payments. And recipients could stay on the program for years on end.

PRWORA replaced AFDC with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant. The block grant was a fixed amount of federal funds for each state, largely based on the pre-reform federal contribution to that state’s AFDC program. However, this caused states that had offered more generous welfare benefits to receive much more federal money per poor family than other states received.¹¹

Welfare reform in 1996 abolished most federal eligibility and payment rules, giving states much greater flexibility to design their own programs. The reforms eliminated welfare’s “entitlement” status so that no one would have an automatic right to benefits. States could choose which families to help. States were, however, required to continue spending at least 80 percent of their previous levels under a “maintenance of effort” provision.

In recent years, federal spending on TANF has been held fairly constant at somewhat less than $20 billion per year.¹² Combined federal and state TANF spending was about $26 billion in 2006.¹³ About 41 percent was for direct cash assistance, with the remainder of the subsidies for childcare, transportation, work support, and education and training.¹⁴ Administrative costs accounted for almost 10 percent of expenditures.¹⁵

That represents a significant change in the distribution of expenditures from pre-reform welfare. Prior to reform, cash assistance accounted for 73 percent of welfare spending under AFDC and related programs.¹⁶

Under the old AFDC system, many welfare recipients seemed trapped in almost permanent dependency on government aid. To combat this, welfare reform established time limits to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life. PRWORA set a federal limit of five years, but allowed states to set shorter time limits if they wished.

While this sounds fairly strict, it was undercut somewhat because states were allowed to exempt up to 20 percent of their caseloads from time limits, and were also allowed to use their own funds to continue benefits for families that exceeded the federal five-year time limit. In addition, so-called “children only” cases, where the child is eligible for welfare benefits, but the adult parent is not, are not subject to federal time limits. Children-only cases account for almost half of the total TANF caseload.¹⁷

The 1996 welfare reform imposed widespread work requirements on recipients. States are required to have at least 50 percent of eligible welfare recipients from single parent families participating in work activities. For two-parent families, the participation requirement is 90 percent. As of 2006, every state except Indiana had technically met the mandate for all families.

However, states were given various credits and exemptions that significantly reduced the number of recipients required to work. For example, states receive a credit based on their caseload reductions. Because welfare rolls have plummeted, the average effective minimum work participation requirement in 2006 was only 5.0 percent for all families and 18.7 percent for two-parent families.¹⁸ In fact, for 17 states and two territories, the credit has reduced the effective work requirement to zero, and only 21 states have an effective minimum greater than 10 percent.¹⁹ Thus, nearly all the states have carved out large exemptions from their work requirements.

After all the credits, waivers, and exemptions are taken into account, only 32 percent of welfare recipients were working in 2009.²⁰ While this is low, it does represent a substantial improvement over pre-reform welfare. Under the old AFDC program, only about 10 percent of recipients were working.²¹

Note that just because a recipient is participating in “work activities” under today’s welfare does not mean that the individual is actually working. For example, in almost all states, simply looking for work constitutes a “work activity,” which allows people to continue receiving their welfare check.

The work component of welfare reform was a big step in the right direction, but the actual changes to work behavior have been modest. Because of exemptions built into the 1996 law, most states are not really required to make a large number of recipients work, and few states have chosen to do so on their own.
 

Breaking up Families

The tragedy of government welfare programs is not just wasted taxpayer money but wasted lives. The effects of welfare in encouraging the break-up of low-income families have been extensively documented. The primary way that those with low incomes can advance in the market economy is to get married, stay married, and work—but welfare programs have created incentives to do the opposite.

The number of single-parent families has risen dramatically since the 1960s. The most important reason for the rise in single-parent families is births to unmarried women. In 1965, less than 8 percent of all births were out of wedlock. Today the figure is 39 percent.²²

The policy concern about the increase in out-of-wedlock births is not a question of private morality. The concern is that out-of-wedlock childbearing remains overwhelmingly concentrated at the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Having a child out of wedlock at an early age for someone without career skills can mean a lifetime of poverty.

Of more than 20 major studies of the issue, more than three-quarters show a significant link between welfare benefit levels and out-of-wedlock childbearing.²³ Higher benefit levels mean higher out-of-wedlock births. Children living with single mothers are seven times more likely to be poor than those living with two parents.²⁴

Welfare removes some of the negative economic consequences of out-of-wedlock births, and thus encourages more such births. More than 20 percent of single-mothers start on welfare because they have an out-of-wedlock birth,²⁵ and 75 percent of government aid to children through means-tested programs like TANF goes to single-parent families.²⁶ Moreover, once on welfare, single mothers find it difficult to get off, and they tend to stay on welfare for longer periods than other recipients.²⁷

Focusing solely on the out-of-wedlock birthrate may actually understate the problem. In the past, women who gave birth out of wedlock frequently married the fathers of their children after the birth. As many as 85 percent of unwed mothers, in the 1950s, ultimately married the fathers of their children.²⁸ Therefore, while technically born out of wedlock, the children were still likely to grow up in intact two-parent families.

However, the increasing availability and value of welfare have made such marriages less attractive for unwed mothers. If the father is unskilled and has poor employment prospects, a welfare check may seem a preferable alternative. Studies indicate that young mothers and pregnant women are less likely to marry the fathers of their children in states with higher welfare benefits.²⁹ Nonetheless, 70 percent of poor single mothers would no longer be in poverty if they married their children’s father.³⁰

Welfare is also likely to entrap the next generation as well. The attitudes and habits that lead to welfare dependency are transmitted the same way as other parent-to-child pathologies, such as alcoholism and child abuse. Although it is true that the majority of children raised on welfare will not receive welfare themselves, the rate of welfare dependence for children raised on it is far higher than for their non-welfare counterparts.

Children raised on welfare are likely to have lower incomes as adults than children not raised on welfare. The more welfare received by a child’s family, the lower that child’s earnings as an adult tend to be, even holding constant such other factors as race, family structure, and education.³¹ According to one study, nearly 20 percent of daughters from families that were “highly dependent” on welfare became “highly dependent” themselves, whereas only 3 percent of daughters from non-welfare households became “highly dependent” on welfare.³²
 

Disincentives to Work

The choice of welfare over work is often a rational decision based on economic incentives. Empirical studies confirm that welfare is a disincentive for work. For example, an analysis of interstate variation in labor force participation by economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Robert Lawson found that such participation declined as welfare benefits increased.³³ Similarly, Robert Moffitt of Brown University found that the work effort of welfare recipients was reduced by as much as 30 percent.³⁴

Such studies may understate the work disincentive of welfare because they consider only a small portion of the total package of federal and state welfare benefits. Benefits available to people in the welfare system that are not available to the working poor create an incentive to go on welfare and remain in the program once enrolled.³⁵ For example, one study shows that education and training programs available under TANF may induce people to go on welfare.³⁶

Perhaps most troubling of all is the psychological attitude toward work that can develop among those on welfare. Studies have found that the poor on welfare do not have a strong sense that they need to take charge of their own lives or find work to become self-sufficient.³⁷ Indeed, they often have a feeling that the government has an obligation to provide for them.

Of course, these psychological effects are also true for other government subsidy recipients, including farmers, the elderly, and businesses that are hooked on federal hand-outs of one sort or another. Farmers that are major subsidy recipients, for example, are less likely to make tough decisions to cut costs or diversify their income sources because they know they will be bailed out if market conditions sour on them. It is not healthy for any group in society to depend on government welfare for their long-term survival, whether they are farmers or poor inner-city families.
 

Relationship to Crime Levels

Children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.³⁸ As welfare contributes to the rise in out-of-wedlock births, it thus also contributes to higher levels of criminal activity.

A Maryland National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) report concluded that “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today.”³⁹ The NAACP’s conclusion is confirmed by additional academic research. For example, research by M. Anne Hill and June O’Neill shows that a 50-percent increase in welfare and food stamp benefits led to a 117-percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.⁴⁰

Barbara Whitehead noted in an article in the Atlantic Monthly:

The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family breakup as the most important source of rising rates of crime.⁴¹

Welfare leads to increased crime by contributing to the marginalization of young men in society. As author George Gilder noted, “The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family.”⁴² Marriage and family have long been considered civilizing influences on young men. Whether or not causation can be proven, it is true that unwed fathers are more likely to use drugs and become involved in criminal behavior than are other men.⁴³
 

Replacing Welfare with Private Charity

The 1996 welfare reforms were a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. The next step should be to transfer full responsibility for funding and administering welfare programs to the states. The states would have freedom to innovate with their low-income programs and would have strong incentives to reduce taxpayer costs and maximize work incentives.

The ultimate reform goal, however, should be to eliminate the entire system of low-income welfare for individuals who are able to work. That means eliminating not just TANF but also food stamps, subsidized housing, and other programs. Individuals unwilling to support themselves through the job market would have to rely on the support of family, church, community, or private charity.

What would happen to the poor if welfare were eliminated? Without the negative incentives created by the welfare state, fewer people would be poor. There would also likely be fewer children born into poverty. Studies suggest that women do make rational decisions about whether to have children, and thus a reduction in welfare benefits would reduce the likelihood of their becoming pregnant or having children out of wedlock.⁴⁴

In addition, some poor women who had children out of wedlock would put the children up for adoption. The government should encourage that by eliminating the present regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to adoption. Other unmarried women who gave birth would not be able to afford to live independently and they would have to live with their families or boyfriends. Some would choose to marry the fathers of their children.

Despite the positive social effects of ending government welfare, there will still be many people who make mistakes and find themselves in tough situations. Americans are an enormously generous people, and there is a vast amount of private charitable support available, especially for people truly in need.

Private charity is superior to government welfare for many reasons. Private charities are able to individualize their approaches to the circumstances of poor people. By contrast, government programs are usually designed in a one-size-fits-all manner that treats all recipients alike. Most government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or services without any attempt to differentiate between the needs of recipients.

The eligibility requirements for government welfare programs are arbitrary and cannot be changed to fit individual circumstances. Consequently, some people in genuine need do not receive assistance, while benefits often go to people who do not really need them. Surveys of people with low incomes generally indicate a higher level of satisfaction with private charities than with government welfare agencies.⁴⁵

Private charities also have a better record of actually delivering aid to recipients because they do not have as much administrative overhead, inefficiency, and waste as government programs. A lot of the money spent on federal and state social welfare programs never reaches recipients because it is consumed by fraud and bureaucracy.

Audits of TANF spending by the Health and Human Services’ Inspector General have found huge levels of “improper payments,” meaning errors, abuse, and fraud. In 2005, the state of New York had an improper TANF payment rate of 28 percent and Michigan had an improper payment rate of 40 percent.⁴⁶ During 2006 and 2007, Ohio had an improper payment rate in TANF of 21 percent.⁴⁷ There are similar high levels of waste in other states.⁴⁸

Another advantage of private charity is that aid is much more likely to be targeted to short-term emergency assistance, not long-term dependency. Private charity provides a safety net, not a way of life. Moreover, private charities may demand that the poor change their behavior in exchange for assistance, such as stopping drug abuse, looking for a job, or avoiding pregnancy. Private charities are more likely than government programs to offer counseling and one-on-one follow-up, rather than simply providing a check.

In sum, private charities typically require a different attitude on the part of recipients. They are required to consider the aid they receive not as an entitlement, but as a gift carrying reciprocal obligations. At the same time, private charities require that donors become directly involved in monitoring program performance.

Those who oppose replacing government welfare with private charity often argue that there will not be enough charitable giving to make up for the loss of government benefits. However, that assumes that private charity would simply recreate existing government programs. But the advantage of private and decentralized charity is that less expensive and more innovative ways of helping smaller groups of truly needy people would be developed.

If large amounts of aid continue to be needed, there is every reason to believe that charitable giving in the nation would increase in the absence of government welfare. In every area of society and the economy, we have seen that government expansion tends to “crowd out” private voluntary activities. So, in reverse, when the government shrinks, private activities would fill in the gaps.

A number of studies have demonstrated such a government crowd-out effect in low-income assistance.⁴⁹ Charitable giving declined dramatically during the 1970s, as the Great Society programs of the 1960s were expanding. The decline in giving leveled out in the 1980s as welfare spending began to level out and the public was deluged with news stories about supposed cutbacks in federal programs. Then, after the passage of welfare reform in 1996, there was a large spike in private giving.⁵⁰ Studies have also shown that when particular charities start receiving government funds, there is a decrease in private donations to those charities.⁵¹

Americans are the most generous people on earth, contributing more than $300 billion a year to organized private charities. In addition, they volunteer more than 8 billion hours a year to charitable activities, with an estimated value of about $158 billion.⁵² Americans donate countless dollars and countless efforts toward providing informal help to families, neighbors, and others in need. There is every reason to believe that the elimination of government welfare would bring a very positive response both from recipients of government welfare and from Americans wanting to help those who are truly in need.

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Krauthammer Again on Obama Deceit…..this time it’s Obama’s Libyan Scenario

Krauthammer: Obama Deceived Americans On Libya Hoping That The Media Would Let It Slide

from realclearpolitics videos……..view  the video by clicking below below

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: At question is not the wisdom of the Libya operation, at question is the honesty of the Obama administration. This was clearly deception on part of the administration in sending Susan Rice to say this was a spontaneous demonstration, when as you reported, it was known inside the administration within a day that it was not. It was a terror attack. So why did they deceive? It’s obvious. Because the attack took place five days after the Democrats had spent a week in Charlotte touting, spiking the football on Osama.

And essentially, since it’s the only foreign policy achievement of the four years they repeated it over and over again, the great triumph over al-Qaeda. Well, within a week, al-Qaeda sacks a U.S. embassy, kills an ambassador and the administration did not want to admit it so it spent a week deceiving Americans to think it’s about demonstration, its about a film, thinking, I think correctly that if it strung it out long enough the media would let it slide and now that it becomes it’s obvious and true, nobody will care, I guarantee you. This is not a headline in the mainstream media.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/27/krauthammer_obama_deceived_americans_on_libya_hoping_that_the_media_would_let_it_slide.html

Will Obama Ever Pay a Price for his Deceit and the Evil it Causes?

Rove: Obama’s Biggest Opponent Is the Truth

Voters expect Mitt Romney to blow the whistle in the debates.

 

By KARL ROVE

When George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney in a Sept. 14 “Good Morning America” interview what he’s learned about President Obama as a debater, the former Massachusetts governor replied, “I think he’s going to say a lot of things that aren’t accurate.”

If Mr. Obama’s debate performance mirrors his campaign, Mr. Romney’s prediction will be dead on. To get a sense of how comprehensive the president’s assault on the truth has been, consider some of his false claims in recent speeches and ads.

One Obama spot says, “To pay for huge, new tax breaks for millionaires like him, Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class: $2,000 for a family with children.”

That claim has been thoroughly discredited, including by PolitiFact Virginia and editorials in this newspaper. Mr. Romney, unlike the president, is committed to cutting taxes for everyone, including the middle class.

Another ad says, “As a corporate raider, [Mr. Romney] shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” In response, the Washington Post editorialized, “On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue.” As recently as Sept. 17, Mr. Obama claimed in Ohio that Mr. Romney’s “experience has been owning companies that were called ‘pioneers’ in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China.” But that claim, too, is a fabrication.

There is more. An Obama ad aimed at northern Virginia women intones, “Mitt Romney opposes requiring coverage for contraception.” In fact, Mr. Romney opposes the president’s unprecedented assault on religious liberties—in this case, the federal government forcing religious institutions (like church-sponsored hospitals, schools and charities) to provide insurance coverage for contraception in violation of their fundamental moral values and, incidentally, the First Amendment.Candidates always have disagreements, arguing over the meaning of events or evidence. But Mr. Obama has taken ordinary political differences beyond anything we’ve seen. Every day, it seems, he attempts to disqualify his opponent through deliberate and undeniable falsehoods.

This is only one side of a two-sided coin. The president can’t tell the truth about his own record either.

For example, Mr. Obama said at a Univision Town Hall on Sept. 20 that his biggest failure “is we haven’t gotten comprehensive immigration reform done.” The president then did what is second nature to him: He pinned the blame on Republicans. The problem with this excuse is that the Democrats controlled Congress by huge margins in the first two years of his presidency—and Mr. Obama never introduced an immigration bill or even provided the framework for one.

In the same interview, Mr. Obama claimed that his Justice Department’s botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning program was “begun under the previous administration.” This time it was ABC’s Jake Tapper correcting the record, pointing out, “it was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.”

The most troubling recent example of Mr. Obama’s serial dishonesty is his administration’s effort to deny that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi was a premeditated terrorist assault, as if the truth would somehow tarnish Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy credentials.

Voters expect politicians to stretch the truth. But when the offender is as persistent with mistruths, half-truths and no-truths as Mr. Obama is, voters expect the other candidate to blow the whistle. They want their leaders to show toughness and be competitive. Which brings us back to the coming Oct. 3 debate, to be followed by two others on Oct. 16 and 22.

During these widely watched events, Mr. Romney must call out the president. That is not so easy: Mr. Romney can’t call Mr. Obama a liar; that’s too harsh a word that would backfire. Mr. Romney must instead set the record straight in a presidential tone—firm, respectful, but not deferential. And a dash of humor is worth its weight in gold.

While Mr. Romney must point out the president’s misrepresentations, he can’t take on the role of fact-checker-in-chief. He should deal comprehensively with several of Mr. Obama’s untruths and, having done so, dismiss the rest as more of the same.

By carefully calling into question the president’s veracity, Mr. Romney will have the opportunity to provide context: Mr. Obama doesn’t shoot straight because he can’t defend his record and has no agenda for the future except the status quo, stay the course.

What exactly about the past four years do Americans like? And why would they want four more years like them? Mr. Obama knows how most Americans would answer these questions, which is why he is being so fast and loose with the truth. Mr. Romney’s job is to shine a light on this for voters.

Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is a co-founder of the political action committee American Crossroads.

A version of this article appeared September 27, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama’s Biggest Opponent Is the Truth.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech at UN MUST BE ABSORBED!

As Obama Becomes More False,   Israeli Leader’s

Speech Reveals the Reality of Nuclear Iran

 

Netanyahu at the UN

The text of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech has been posted here by the Israel News Agency. C-SPAN has posted the video here. As with Churchill’s great speeches, there is a bracing clarity in the truth of the words and in hearing them spoken in a forum where the truth is at a premium.

by  Scott Johnson   at PowerLine      Please read the Prime Minister’s entire speech.