Moral Side

Food Stamp Spending Has More Than Doubled Since 2008

In 2008, taxpayers spent $38 billion on food stamps. In 2013, that figure will be $82 billion.

Since 2007, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed 70 percent to 45 million people--or one out of every seven people living in America.

According to the Wall Street Journal (click here for article), the U.S. is experiencing a "food stamp crime wave," as the program is now rife with fraud, abuse, and waste.

As Rev. Jesse Jackson has stated, President Barack Obama should consider it "an honor to be a food stamp president." (click here for video)

- by Wynton Hall (click here for article)

"The Moral Side of the News" Topics for Sunday, November 20, 2011

The topics for "The Moral Side of the News" to be broadcast on Sunday, November 20, 2011, are found below.  You may comment if you like.

The program is broadcast on WHAS-TV on Sundays at 5:30pm and on the FAITH CHANNEL in Louisville via Insight at 12:00nn on Sunday.  On radio the program is broadcast on several Louisville stations on Sunday morning at 7:00am or 7:30am; and on Sunday evening on WHAS 840AM radio at 9:30pm.

TOPIC 1

Retail Employees, Shoppers Fight Black Thursday Openings

While many Americans are eager to take advantage of Black Thursday and Black Friday sales, Target employee Anthony Hardwick would rather spend time with his family and started a petition to urge his employer and its competitors to stay closed on turkey day.

Hardwick's petition on Change.org has about 100,000 signatures requesting Target open its doors at 5 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving rather than at midnight, which requires Hardwick, 29, and other employees to get to work at 11 p.m. Target announced it would stay open from midnight to 11 p.m. on Black Friday.

"A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation -- all Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones and get a good night's rest on Thanksgiving!" he wrote in the petition. "Join me in calling for Target retail stores to push back their original opening time of 5am on Black Friday."

Molly Snyder, a spokeswoman for Target, said Hardwick has never been scheduled to work on Thanksgiving or Black Friday. In early November, he informed his managers that he was scheduled to work at his other job on Black Friday and indicated that he needed the day off from Target, she said.

"We honored that request," she said in an email to ABC News. "Target does our best to work around the schedules of all of our team members, making every effort to accommodate their requests."

She added that Target will offer holiday pay to all hourly "team members" who work on Thanksgiving Day.

"Black Friday is one of the busiest and most competitive shopping days of the year," she said. "We have heard from our guests that they want to shop Target following their Thanksgiving celebrations rather than only having the option of getting up in the middle of the night. By opening at midnight, we are making it easier than ever to deliver on our guests wants and needs."

Hardwick said it was "bologna" that retail employees could not work on Black Friday if they choose.

"No one in retail requests Black Friday off and gets it. It's a blacked out date," he said.

Hardwick said he did not request Black Friday off and if his employer called to request that he work that day, he would comply "and not let my team members down."

When asked why he was not required to work on Black Friday, Hardwick said, "I guess if you start a petition and raise a national media stink" he made clear his preference.

"I didn't start this for my own personal gain," he said. "I started it for my team members and retail employees around the country."

Other stores have one-upped the midnight opening time. Toys "R" Us will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving night for the first time, the retailer announced on Monday. Walmart announced earlier this month its stores will open at 10 p.m.

Meanwhile, Best Buy, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Macy's, Kohl's and Target are embracing a midnight schedule.

WATCH STORY: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/target-retail-employees-fight-thanksgiving-openings/story?id=14963563

QUESTION: What are your thoughts on this?

 

TOPIC 2

White House Shooting Suspect Arrested

A 21-year-old Idaho man suspected of firing a semi-automatic rifle at the White House was arrested today, authorities said.

"On Wednesday afternoon at approximately 12:35 p.m. EST, based on information generated by Secret Service agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office, Pennsylvania State Police Troop A located and arrested Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez at a hotel near Indiana, Pa.," according to a statement from Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Edwin Donovan.

Donovan said that Ortega-Hernandez was in the custody of Pennsylvania State Police after being found at a Hampton Inn.

The Secret Service fanned out across the country, coordinating with local law enforcement to find the shooter. The agency said that it had received information that Ortega-Hernandez was using certain hotels during his travels.

This morning, a hotel employee reportedly recognized the suspect from photos distributed by the Secret Service and contacted the agency.

The Secret Service said Tuesday that it suspected that a bullet fired in the shooting incident Friday may have hit the White House after a round was found in a window. The agency said they feared the suspect in the incident might be a threat to President Obama.

The round was stopped by ballistic glass behind the historic exterior glass, while an additional round was found on the exterior of the White House.

Police believe Ortega-Hernandez is mentally ill. He has an extensive record, ranging from domestic violence to drug charges. Sources say a police investigation uncovered evidence suggesting Ortega-Hernandez has a fixation on the White House.

At 9:30 p.m. Friday, police received reports of shots fired in the bustling area of 16th Street and Constitution Avenue

Authorities later found a car in the area. The suspect had fled, but what police discovered inside the vehicle left them deeply concerned: an assault-style rifle and empty shell casings.

Police linked the car to Ortega-Hernandez and started searching for him.

Authorities suspect Ortega-Hernandez had been in the area for weeks, coming back and forth to the Washington Mall. Before the shooting, he was detained by local police at an abandoned house. U.S. Park police say Ortega may have spent time with Occupy D.C. protesters.

Obama, who is currently on a visit to Australia, was not present at the White House at the time of the incident, and has been out of town for the last week.

WATCH STORY: http://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-shooting-suspect-ramiro-ortega-hernandez-arrested/story?id=14966099#.TsQPuD0k6dA

QUESTION: What are your thoughts on this?

The Protestors Who Claim to Represent the "99%" Are Funded by One of the 0.0000001%

The "Occupy Wall Street" protestors claim to represent the 99% who alledgedly do not control the wealth of the USA. Really, the one's whom they do represent are the 47% who do not pay taxes against the 53% who do. Who is funding these protests?

There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans (one of the top 0.0000001%). Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada (yes, that is correct, CANADA!) that started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.

"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday. Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in.

Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.

Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.

The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.

BANKING LIFE SUPPORT

Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer." He urged the Obama administration either to recapitalize or to nationalize the banks and force them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.

The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch, the Tides Center, and MoveOn.org.

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation. Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

The Vancouver-based Adbusters, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."

SLOW START

Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder. "It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment. We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."

Lasn said Adbusters is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine. "George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."

Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore (easily one of the top 1% in wealth) has also pledged to donate money.

The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.

Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.

Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions. "Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."

Meet America‘s ’53%’ – And They Have a Message for the ‘99%’ Protesters

Meet The 53%. Who are they? The term 53% refers to the people who are actually parying taxes for themselves and for the rest of the country.  Click here for some of their stories.

An astonishing 43.4 percent of Americans now pay zero or "negative" federal income taxes (they have credits that allow them to receive income tax refunds without having any income). The number of single or jointly-filing "taxpayers" - the word must be applied sparingly - who pay no taxes or receive government handouts has reached 65.6 million, out of a total of 151 million.

Those numbers come from an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Neither is a low-tax or conservative advocacy group; the Urban Institute was created under the Johnson administration during the Great Society era, and it receives most of its funding from the federal government.

"You've got a larger and larger share of people paying less and less for the services provided by the federal government," says Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. "The concern is that the majority can say, 'Let's have more benefits, spend more,' if they're not paying for it. It's 'free.' That's not a good thing to have."

By historic standards, today's situation is an aberration. Between 1950 and 1990, the number of owe-no-money federal tax returns averaged 21 percent, dipping to 18 percent in 1986, according to a 2009 analysis of then candidates Obama and McCain's tax plans by the Tax Foundation (click here). In the 1990s, the owe-no-money percentage hovered around 25 percent of taxpayers.  But then politicians began another round of tinkering with the tax code, adding reams of new pages to an already incomprehensible set of rules.

Democrats wanted to lower taxes on the least affluent, while Republicans wanted to lower taxes on everyone. The result was bipartisan enthusiasm for tax credits aimed at everything from children and college students  to hybrid cars and homebuyers. Many of these credits dole out cash to people even if they report no income, making them mere government handouts.

"There's no difference at all in terms of the effects on the federal deficit," says Williams of the Tax Policy Center. "It's perfectly equivalent. It's just easier to say, 'I cut your taxes' as opposed to 'I created a new federal program to send money to people.'"

Of course, this posting refers only to federal income taxes, not other taxes like Social Security, Medicare, state income taxes, sales taxes, or car registration taxes, some of which are extracted through payroll deductions. The owe-no-money crowd tends to get hit by at least some of those.  The perils of today's situation should be obvious. The United States is close to a tipping point - where most people can skip the post office run on April 15 to mail a check because they're expecting one from the government instead.

"It is somewhat odd that you have a decreasing number of folks paying into the federal income tax system, a decreasing number of folks who have a stake in what the government pays for," says Matt Moon of the non-partisan Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C.  It then becomes tempting to vote for politicians promising more and more handouts, paid for by money forcibly extracted from an ever-shrinking number of their neighbors. In addition to being immoral, it's poor public policy: people who pay no taxes but nevertheless get benefits are less likely to be careful overseers of their elected representatives.

"At some point people become less and less invested in making sure their government is accountable and frugal," says Peter Seep, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union, a lower-tax advocacy group. "If you pay very little for getting all kinds of government benefits, you might view those programs as a bargain, even though they may waste tens of billions of dollars a year."

As a candidate, President Obama promised still more tax credits, including ones aimed at child care, "clean cars," and savings accounts. As the Wall Street Journal explained at the time: "You can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer - a federal check - from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this 'welfare,' or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a 'Demogrant.'"

Click here for the main resource for this post.

Time to Change Strategy in a Failing War - the War on Poverty

The 2010 statistics on poverty in America reveals a .8% (from 14.3% to 15.1%) jump in Americans living in poverty - an increase of 2.4 million people.

It is time that American people and political leadership recognize that our strategy in the forty-six year long War on Poverty has failed. The problem is not one of the worthiness of the goal of alleviating and eliminating poverty and its effects. There is both collective unity and will in America to do so.

Informed and caring people, however, should recognize that what we have done as a nation for the last forty-six years to prosecute this war has failed. The policies may have made us feel better about ourselves and fooled us into thinking that our efforts were successful, but these policies have been unsuccessful - especially for significant portions of our population.

In examining the data (see chart) one can easily see the failure of the strategies - big and costly programs from the federal government.

President Lyndon Johnson declared "War on Poverty" in 1964 and the initial programs in the war took effect in 1965 at the earliest. The data clearly points to the failure of the strategy. The data shows"

1. Both the number of persons in poverty and the percentage of the population in poverty were dramatically declining in the years (1959-1964) BEFORE President Johnson's "declaration of war."
2. The initial phase of programs (1964-1979) brought progress against povetry to a stnadstill.
3. As the initial strategy continued with more and increased spending (1980-2010) the number of persons in poverty has increased.
4. Though it is too early to say conclusively, the dramatic and historic increase in federal expenitures in 2009 and 2010 may have resluted in a numerical and percentage growth in poverty.

The War on Poverty is a war worth fighting. Before we surrender, let us change strategies.

American Morale - Confidence in the Future and in Government Lacking

From Rasmussen Reports.

Most Americans continue to believe today’s children will not be better off than their parents, but they are a bit more optimistic about the possibility of someone working their way out of poverty.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 18% of American Adults believe today’s children will be better off than their parents. That’s down six points from the previous survey in June and is just a point higher than the lowest level measured to date. Sixty-seven percent (67%) don’t believe that today’s youth will be better off than their parents, while 15% are not sure.

Thirty-two percent (32%) think it’s still possible for anyone in the United States to work hard and get rich. A majority (55%) disagrees with that assessment, and another 13% are undecided. These findings have shown little change since January 2009.

Just under half (49%) say it’s possible for anyone in the United States to work their way out of poverty, the highest level measured since May of last year. Thirty-five percent (35%) don’t believe this to be true. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure.

Americans remain divided on the possibility of someone finding work. Forty percent (40%) think it’s possible for anyone who wants to work to find a job, while 46% disagree. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure. Adults have been closely divided on this question since March 2009.

Adults under the age of 30 are more confident in the future of today’s children than their elders. Younger adults are also more optimistic in the possibility of anyone finding a job.

Twenty percent (20%) of Americans with children at home say today’s youth will be better off than their parents, a view shared by 15% of those without children at home.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of men say it’s possible for anyone in the United State to work their way out of poverty, while 43% of women say the same.

Americans are more pessimistic than ever that the Americaan economy will improve during the next year. Consumer confidence fell in August for the third straight month, as the Discover U.S. Spending Monitor(SM) dropped to its lowest level since March 2009.

The Rasmussen Employment Index that measures workers’ perceptions of the labor market each month, slipped a point in August to the lowest level measured in one year.

A majority of voters nationwide like the idea of state governments offering jobs instead of welfare payments to those seeking work.

71% Say Too Many People Get Welfare Who Shouldn't

From Rasmussen Reports

Americans overwhelmingly believe that the bigger problem with the welfare system in the United States is that there are too many overqualified recipients rather than not enough. Most also think legal immigrants should have to wait at least three years before being eligible for welfare benefits.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of American Adults say the bigger problem with welfare programs in the United States is that too many people get welfare who should not be getting it. Just 18% say the bigger issue is that too many people who should receive welfare do not get it, while another 11% are not sure.

Republicans (91%) and adults not affiliated with either political party (70%) believe much more strongly than Democrats (51%) that the bigger problem with welfare is that too many ineligible people are on it.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all Americans think immigrants who follow the law and enter the United States legally should have to wait three years or more before collecting welfare benefits, including 31% who believe they should wait more than five years. Seventeen percent (17%) think three years is enough, while 11% prefer a five-year waiting period.

Fourteen percent (14%) think one year is an appropriate waiting period for legal immigrants to be eligible for welfare, but 16% believe there should be no wait at all. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Editors Note:  Since the 1960s when the "War on Poverty" was announced the percentage of Americans in defined as living in poverty has increased .3%.  With the increase in total population this means that not only has there been statistically no effect of the billions of dollars government dollars spent, but the number of persons considered to be in poverty has increased dramatically.

The Moral Side of the News (May 15, 2011) - Gasoline and Planned Parenthood

The panel of clergy discusses Indiana's de-funding Planned Parenthood, and the high cost of gasoline.

The Moral Side of the News (May 8, 2011)

The clergy panel discusses cost of gasoline and a homeless mother who lied to enroll her daughter in a certain school.

 

Counting the National Debt for the United States

Watch the national debt for the United States grow at US Debt Clock.  You can also watch your state's debt grow.  Here is the clock for my state, Kentucky.  Find a lot of useful information related to government expenditures and taxation.  You may also follow the national debt for other countries at World Debt.