PrairiePundit

Issues & Insights: Gov’t Dependency Plunges Under Trump — Why Aren’t We Celebrating? ... ... There is much more. Relieving these millions from the grind of dependency is something we should all be celebrating.

Slate: Nancy Pelosi addressed a gathering of presidents of Christian colleges this week in Washington, where she thanked the evangelical community for its leadership on immigration and refugee policy reform. To this end, the speaker of the House quoted a favorite bit of biblical wisdom in her opening statement: “To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.” OK, actually, she said, it might not technically be from the Bible. “I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time,” Pelosi said as she introduced the quote. “I keep reading and reading the Bible—I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah. I heard a bishop say, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation … ’ ” To clarify: It is not “there someplace.” “The Pelosi passage is not in the Bible,” Will Kynes, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Whitworth University, told me by email. The closest analog ...

NY Times: What Could Hold Back a Democratic Wave? Economy, Confidence, Independence In battleground districts across the nation, a “life is good” ethos may make swing voters harder to persuade than some Democrats anticipate. It could be their problem is their policies and not Trump.  They are proposing to increase taxes and instead go back to putting poor people on dependency rather than giving them a job.  That is just a bad idea from several perspectives.  I can understand why those who are gaining the self-respect from working and providing for themselves and a family would not want to go back to Democrat handouts.

John Sanchez: As lieutenant governor of New Mexico, I have had the privilege of living and serving in a state with over 50 percent minority residents. Now that I’m in the last few months of my second term, I want to share a little bit about my story and explain why many Hispanics should and will vote for Republicans in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and was the youngest of eight children. We were raised by a single mother in absolute poverty. When I got older, I realized I had been raised with solid conservative values. My mother was never political. However, she taught us the values of personal responsibility and hard work. She showed us that taking advantage of opportunity was the way out of poverty. When I use the word “poverty,” what I mean is this: there was a time in our life when we didn’t have running water. I grew up using an outhouse. I know what it is like to have holes in my shoes. However, it wasn’t poverty itself t...

NY Times: Why Subways in the Northeast Are So Troubled Transit systems in Boston, New York and Washington need billions of dollars to replace old infrastructure and to meet rising demand. In the meantime, riders are bracing for the worst. Blame liberal vote buying schemes.  They focus spending on groups that they believe will  become dependent on the government and therefore reliable voters.  It is not just the Northeast.  Illinois and Califonia where liberals dominate also have the same problem of generous spending on government pensions and Democrat constituencies while infrastructure crumbles.

Washington Examiner Editorial: Shortly before she and her fellow Democrats lost their House majority in the 2010 midterm elections, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a warning that, if voters put Republicans back in control, the nation would soon be afflicted by a return to "the politics of personal destruction." If that term sounds familiar, it's how Hillary Clinton described what she viewed as vicious, unfounded, anonymous attacks on her husband when they were in the White House. Now Pelosi has made good on her warning by personally bringing back the politics of personal destruction in an especially shameful manner. Speaking to the California Democratic Party state convention, Pelosi said the following : “I asked a Republican friend why his party was so opposed to extending the vital lifelines for struggling families and really hungry children. This colleague's response was telling in its blunt nature and stunning in its honesty. What he said to the Republican ca...

Michael Tanner: ... But the contretemps over “job lock” obscured another, perhaps even more important, issue raised by the CBO report — the way in which taxes and welfare benefits create a “poverty trap” for the poor that makes rising up to the middle class far less likely. Because the subsidies under ObamaCare are phased out as incomes rise, it creates situations where, “the phase-out effectively raises people’s marginal tax rates (the tax rates applying to their last dollar of income), thus discouraging work.” In fact, for those low-wage workers who fall into this phase-out range, CBO estimates that it will increase their marginal tax rate by an average of 12 percentage points. As CBO points out, “[f]or those workers, the loss of subsidies upon returning to a job with health insurance is an implicit tax on working.” Unfortunately, ObamaCare is not the only government program creating such a poverty trap. Most programs for the poor have similar phase-outs, leading to a similar conun...

Thomas Sowell: The Wages of Victimhood   Those who score the lowest on tests are those who have been told they are victims and must have government benefits.  This is true regardless of race.

Michael Barone: This is painful for a liberal to admit,” writes liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof , “but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in soul-crushing dependency.” Kristof is writing from Breathitt County, Ky., deep in the Appalachian mountains, about mothers whose Supplemental Security Income benefits will decrease if their children learn to read. Kristof notes that 55% of children qualifying for SSI benefits do so because of “fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation,” far more than four decades ago when SSI was just a new program. Evidently SSI administrators decided to be more generous to parents of such children. But, as Kristof notes, giving parents an incentive to keep children from learning to read works against the children’s long-term interest. Kristof’s column makes a point similar to that in my De. 2 Examinercolumn on the vast rise in people receiving Social Secur...

S.E. Cupps: ... Despite the feigned shock and awe of the pundit class -- which includes many slack-jawed Republicans -- over the damage Romney's comments will do, introducing the theme of dependency could turn out to be a boon for the Romney campaign.  There's plenty of evidence, in fact, that dependency -- even if Romney got the numbers wrong and managed to indict red state voters, veterans, the elderly and millionaires in the process -- is a winner in terms of voter appeal.  The Washington Post yesterday outlined just how well Romney's comments -- as well as what people perceived as his honesty -- were playing in some key states like Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin: “I worry a lot about the society we’re turning into, more of an entitlement mentality,” said Randy Schumaker, a Denver-area IT manager.  And just today, a new Rasmussen poll finds that a majority of Americans -- 64% -- think too many of us are dependent on government financial a...

What I find interesting about this piece is that the path to prosperity that his family took is the same one one of my uncles took.  With only a sixth grade education he worked hard built a motel business and more motels and other investments turned him into a millionaire.  He started conversations with people eating in his restaurant and heard where the interstate highway would be going that would bypass his current property.  He bought land near an off ramp an built a new motel.  He then noticed that most of his business was not from traffic on the interstate but from a town 20 miles away, so he built a motel there too.  He added others and helped to acquire land for a motor speedway that drew more traffic to the area. This man's story ring true to me and it is a reflection of the character of many of the hard working Hispanics I know too.  But it is a dream that can be destroyed if we push people into a culture of de...