Swiss Voters Reject Guaranteed Income In Referendum

[From article]
Swiss voters rejected by a wide margin on Sunday a proposal to introduce a guaranteed basic income for everyone living in the wealthy country after an uneasy debate about the future of work at a time of increasing automation.
Supporters had said introducing a monthly income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,563) per adult and 625 francs per child under 18 no matter how much they work would promote human dignity and public service.
Opponents, including the government, said it would cost too much and weaken the economy.
Provisional final results showed 76.9 percent of voters opposed the bold social experiment launched by Basel cafe owner Daniel Haeni and allies in a vote under the Swiss system of direct democracy.
[. . .]



Conservative Switzerland is the first country to hold a national referendum on an unconditional basic income, but others including Finland are examining similar plans as societies ponder a world where robots replace humans in the workforce.
[. . .]
Employers heaved a sigh of relief that Switzerland, where unemployment is only around 3.5 percent, had not become the first country to embrace the guaranteed income measure.
The Swiss government had urged voters to reject the campaign, saying the scheme would cost too much and undermine social cohesion.
Interior Minister Alain Berset said the vote showed Swiss voters supported the economic and social system in place "and that this system works well."
[. . .]



An advanced social safety net already supports people who cannot pay for their own livelihood. Fewer than seven percent of people lived in poverty in 2014, official data show.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/swiss-voters-decide-guaranteed-monthly-income-plan-103534182--business.html

Swiss reject free income plan after worker vs. robot debate
By Silke Koltrowitz and Marina Depetris
Yahoo News

(Reuters)

June 5, 2016

Updated: White House Sticking It To Whitey

Posted April 17, 2016 8:13 PM ET; Lat updated May 8, 2016 9:55 PM ET



Updated May 8, 20-16 9:55 PM ET
[From article]

Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.
The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real-estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.
Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.
It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.
Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).
[. . .]

In expensive ZIP codes, Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.
“We want to use our housing-choice vouchers to ensure that we don’t have a concentration of poverty and the aggregation of racial minorities in one part of town, the poor part of town,” the HUD chief said recently, adding that he’s trying to undo the “result of discriminatory policies and practices in the past, and sometimes even now.”
[. . .]
President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.
The 15-year experiment bombed.
A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.
Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.
“Males…were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.
Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago — and it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing.
Of course, even when reality mugs leftists, they never scrap their social theories. They just double down.
The problem, they rationalized, was that the relocation wasn’t aggressive enough. They concluded they could get the desired results if they placed urban poor in even more affluent areas.
HUD recently tested this new theory in Dallas with disastrous results.
[. . .]


United States Department of Housing and Urban Development used Dallas as a test — and the city is now experiencing much more violence.

Photo: Getty Images
Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and recently had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the tony bedroom communities north of the city. Three suburbs that have seen the most Section 8 transfers — Frisco, Plano and McKinney — have suffered unprecedented spikes in rapes, assaults and break-ins, including home invasions.
Although HUD’s “demonstration project” may have improved the lives of some who moved, it’s ended up harming the lives of many of their new neighbors. And now Castro wants to roll it out nationwide. Soon he will give Section 8 recipients money to afford rent wherever they choose — and if they don’t want to move, he’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Ironically, Hillary’s own hometown of Chappaqua is fighting Section 8 housing because of links to drugs and crime and other problems.
This is a big policy shift that will have broad implications, affecting everything from crime to property values; and it could even impact the presidential election, especially if Castro joins Hillary on the Democratic ticket.

http://nypost.com/2016/05/08/obamas-last-act-is-to-force-suburbs-to-be-less-white-and-less-wealthy/

Obama’s last act is to force suburbs to be less white and less wealthy
By Paul Sperry
New York Post
May 8, 2016 | 7:30am

* * *

Posted April 17, 2016 8:134 PM ET
[From article]
Is the Obama administration, or at least some officials in it, hostile toward whites? This is certainly an awkward, publicly unspeakable question -- and answering it is exceptionally difficult. Not easy to discern the motives of countless Washington bureaucrats.
Nevertheless, recent events outside of Baltimore, MD suggest that enmity toward whites does afflict some Obama administrators and our proof, though short of the smoking gun standard, is probably as good as it gets.
In a nutshell, thanks to Washington’s money and political pressure, thousands of poor blacks will now be re-located from Baltimore’s slums to upgraded housing in the surrounding, nearly all-white suburbs.
Baltimore County will spend $30 million over the next decade to help private developers build 1000 homes for low-income African American families in affluent suburbs.

[. . .]

To ensure that these new residences are family friendly, 500 units must contain three or more bedrooms. Housing access will be encouraged by requiring landlords to consider all sources of income -- including public welfare -- in assessing tenant creditworthiness. Participants will also receive help with moving expenses and security deposits. And to facilitate integration into new (white) neighborhoods, extensive counseling (called “Mobility Counseling Programs”) will teach newcomers about housekeeping and property maintenance, good neighbor skills, financial management and budgeting.
Government sponsored re-location of poor black city residents into affluent white suburbs is hardly new and rests on a theory positing the malleability of human behavior: pathological behaviors are environmentally determined and so just improve environments and “bad” behavior will vanish. Specifically, moving underclass African Americans to pleasant white, affluent towns will see a notable reduction of crime, illegitimacy, drug and alcohol addiction, welfare dependency, domestic violence and other tribulations currently plaguing black inner-city neighborhoods. In addition, the transformation will succeed absent any prior psychological changes of new arrivals. In effect, an industrious law-abiding African American who autonomously flees to the suburbs to live a better life is identical to his Baltimore neighbor motivated solely by the promise of a more spacious, cheap apartment.


Baltimore, MD

It is also assumed that pathologies will be mitigated by inter-racial, inter-class contact. For example, lower class black youngsters will improve academically if they encounter more studious white classmates. And osmosis will flow only one way -- white youngster will not gravitate toward crime when socializing with black inner city refugees.
It is hard to think of a more incorrect theory of human behavior. Tellingly, when such enterprises are discussed in official reports, the stress overwhelmingly is on the benefits to the recipients and advice on how to overcome (white) public resistance. The unspeakable harsh truth is that these newly relocated inner-city residents will bring their pathologies with them and after a few years the areas surrounding the freshly built homes and Section 8 apartments will resemble dilapidated crime-ridden Baltimore.
If the transformative power of a better physical setting were correct, how do you explain massive white resistance to such enterprises? Are the millions of whites who over countless decades fled the influx of underclass blacks hallucinating or being fooled by racial demagogues? If such population movement worked as advertised, why must Washington impose it by court decrees, fines for non-compliance and other cram-down measures? How can advocates of this alleged panacea explain why busing thousands of academically troubled poor black students to top-flight “white” schools has failed? Is leafy small town America the magic cure for drug addiction and illegitimacy? Recall Ferguson, MO: put troubled black residents of St. Louis into a nice white suburb, and you create a new St. Louis slum.
Now for the near-smoking gun proofs that this enterprise smells of contempt for whites. First, all this draconian coercion is outside federal law regulating discrimination in housing. Legal penalties for housing discrimination have nothing to do with coerced integration and to obscure the non-legal gun-to-the-head power, the consent of whites is officially deemed “voluntary.” 

[. . .]
Second, prudence would suggest a modicum of cost/benefit analysis of this enterprise, and this scrutiny is totally absent [. . .] Only the supposed benefits for blacks inform calculations, [. . .] Nor is there any mention of how the new arrivals will find employment in suburban areas with limited public transportation.
Total silence surrounds the inevitable costs for whites: loss of home equity, increased school violence, more crime, and the shredded social cohesion associated with imposed racial diversity and, in the long run, the costs of moving elsewhere. Indeed, HUD is already anticipating white flight and is trying to impose rules that would forbid real estate agents from openly discussing the negative consequences forthcoming racial shift.
Of the utmost importance for this near smoking gun evidence, these benefits provided to blacks need not come at the expense of whites. The same millions could have been spent in the city of Baltimore building nice homes for blacks adjacent to their old residences and if suburban whites were guilty of racial discrimination, just fine them versus (non-legally) imposing unwanted integration. Moreover, inner-city construction could have utilized nearby unemployed African American Baltimore residents who would, as an extra dividend, gain some job training (the model is Habitat for Humanity). Everything would be win/win politics. But, this sensible win-win solution fails to harm whites and so it is politically off limits.

Beyond these immediate problems inflicted on whites will be, in all likelihood, the political costs of changing these once relatively racially homogeneous suburbs. Ferguson, MO is the future: more communal racial strife, yet more whites will flee, civil rights groups demanding more “inclusionary” policies, and, eventually, Department of Justice intervention to remedy alleged race-related injustices [. . .]
One can only wonder why officials cannot foresee this racial-train-wreck-in-the-making. This is punitive policy-making that can only reflect the presence of deeply rooted racial animosities. Helping poor African Americans find decent housing is just the polite cover story. At least some government officials in the Obama administration want to punish suburban whites and given that Uncle Sam will foot the bills, inflicting this damage is irresistible.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/obama_administration_sticking_it_to_whitey_.html

April 8, 2016
Obama Administration Sticking it to Whitey
By Robert Weissberg

Bernie Sanders Believes Only Black People Are Poor, All Whites Are Wealthy, Powerful

[From article]
Bernie Sanders, the senator representing the socialist paradise of Vermont, has apparently never seen a poor white person. This is understandable, since about 1% of the state's population is black.
But Sanders considers himself an expert on the racial divide in poverty. And at last night's debate with Hillary Clinton, the senator expounded on his theories of race and poverty
[. . .]
“When you’re white you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor,” said Sanders. “You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street, or dragged out of a car.”
[. . .]
Clinton responded by saying, “being a white person in the United States of America I know that I’ve never had the experience that so many people in this audience have had.” Hillary went on to say, “I have spent a lot of time with the mother’s of African-American children who have lost them — Trayvon Martin’s mother.”
[. . .]
In short, Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about. In his effort to fully pander to black voters, he has made an ignorant statement based not on facts, but rather on urban myths. No doubt there are some blacks who are rousted, but is it racism or sensible policing?
And for Hillary to bring up Trayvon Martin's mother only feeds the false narrative that continues, despite the fact that the man who shot Martin was judged innocent and that the police had nothing to do with the shooting. Even Eric Holder's Justice Department couldn't find grounds to charge Mr. Zimmerman with violating the civil rights of Martin.
But why let the facts stand in the way of a good white-bashing narrative?
Neither Clinton nor Sanders has any shame.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/sanders_whites_dont_know_what_its_like_to_be_poor.html

March 7, 2016
Sanders: Whites don't know what it's like to be poor
By Rick Moran

US Government Policy Increases Income Inequality

[From article]
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.
[. . .]



This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
[. . .]
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market,
[. . .]



The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/the_causes_of_income_inequality.html

November 3, 2015
The Causes of Income Inequality
By Catherine Sellers

Students at Elite, Prestigious Harvard University, Whine They Are Victims, Just Like Poor Southern Black Teens

"organizers said the project developed in the midst of difficulties for the black community 'from Charleston to Baltimore,' emphasizing the need to reaffirm and empower people of color." This project equates the black community in Baltimore with black students at Harvard University? And "the things that black people as a whole were and are going through in America,” is the same as what Nigerian students at Harvard University experience? Really? Is this like the multi billionaire CEOs talking about the income gap?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/21/harvard-black-photo-campaign/

Black Students Share Experiences Through Photo Campaign
By R. BLAKE PATERSON
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
October 21, 2015

Cambridge MA Politicians and Journalists Speak For Others

In this interview, media darling (regularly cited in local papers and on public television), and City Councilor Nadeem Mazem, indicates he suffers from a common syndrome of Cambridge politicians. He says, " everyone knows it [minimum wage] should be $15 an hour." Really? Everyone? How does he know that? He adds, "everyone [in the Boston area] secretly feels in their gut that this just isn’t going to happen," Again. How does he know what people feel? Especially if it is a secret? He's not the only one who speaks for others, with or without their permission. In a recent interview published in the Cambridge Chronicle, City Councilor Carlone does the same thing. See at this link.

http://enoughroom.blogspot.com/2015/08/cambridge-ma-city-councilor-speaks-for.html

They are not the only ones. Former City Councilor Jim Braude used to do the same thing when he was a councilor. He also did it on his radio show. I asked in a phone call why he did that. It did not stop him. He continues to speak for others. Now he does a local PBS television show and continues the tradition. He added an upgrade. He has three guests for a seven minute segment. That allows for the four of them including the host less than two minutes each to discuss complex issues. In order to extend the time he asks a question of his guests and then cuts them off saying, "I got it." Meaning he is so smart he knows what the guest is going to say. Can he read minds? Is that why he speaks for others? Can the other city councilors also read minds?

Returning to this interview, Councilor Mazem refers to "high value construction that buoys our economy and empowers our local government to do incredible things for education." If that's true why are the educational results of all that money so disappointing? He adds, "we have academic powerhouses, we have everything we need to empower the upper middle class and above." He does not mention teachers unions and other government unions. Public policy is hindered by these unions and none of the politicians speak about them except to boast that they negotiated with the unions for the city. Why is that? Do politicians fear criticizing unions?

Those academic powerhouses are focused properly on educating their students and doing research. What does public school education have to do with that? Is academic excellence of the universities supposed to rub off on the city's students?  He suggests a problem without discussing it when he says, "we also have 45 percent of our public school kids on free and reduced lunch, which means that their parents are living around the poverty line." Oh? Cambridge has a large high income population. Why are so many of their children attending private schools? Is there a problem unmentioned with the city's public schools?

Showing off his knowledge of economics Mazem makes a remarkable comment. "if you financially benefit the wealthy, they will save it, but if you put dollars in the pockets of people who are working or middle class, they will spend it at local businesses. It happens right away." How does he know that? Wealthy people invest their money. Poor people have access to the internet and purchase items online anywhere in the world. The Council provided access to the internet for all Cambridge citizens defeating their campaign to buy local. Indeed they hire out of town consultants to make their decisions. What is up with that? Once the Council bought a book as a present for the City Manager. At a public meeting Mayor Reeves boasted that was purchased at Barnes and Nobles.

The final perplexing comment has to do with a proposed experiment of councilors living on $10 a day. Homeless people live on less. Free food is served at venues seven days a week in and around Cambridge. Free clothing, furniture and more. One can get free mental health services too. Some homeless persons abuse the system and pretend to be ill and call emergency services, which provides free rides to hospitals with a free overnight stay with meals. Why not address some solvable problems  instead of reinventing the wheel, grandstanding for journalists. The more things change, the more they stay the same imitating Washington DC.

[From article]
I watched, and I think everyone knows it should be $15 an hour, but I also think that everyone [in the Boston area] secretly feels in their gut that this just isn’t going to happen,
[. . .]
We have 105,000 people in this city [Cambridge], but we have an unbelievable amount of extremely high value construction that buoys our economy and empowers our local government to do incredible things for education. But how could we not take care of a very basic wage right? We have commercial development, we have academic powerhouses, we have everything we need to empower the upper middle class and above.
[. . .]
We want to house as many people as possible who need it, housing is a human right, but we also have 45 percent of our public school kids on free and reduced lunch, which means that their parents are living around the poverty line.
[. . .]
the fact is that if you financially benefit the wealthy, they will save it, but if you put dollars in the pockets of people who are working or middle class, they will spend it at local businesses. It happens right away.
[. . .]
We’re also going to do a challenge where councilors and others try to live on the current minimum wage. At the end of the day, the lesson will be that none of us really can live on $10 a day.

https://digboston.com/labor-revolt-in-the-peoples-republik/

LABOR REVOLT IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIK
August 24, 2015
By CHRIS FARAONE

Woman Unconcerned After Loss of $100 million. Feels Better. Can't Buy Me Love!

Suzanne Corso on the roof of her building in Battery Park City, where she now rents a two-bedroom apartment.

Photo: Anne Wermiel
[From article]
It’s November 2005 and we’ve been living in an 11-room suite at the Ritz-Carlton on West Street for a little more than two years. And first-grader Samantha has developed quite the habit of ordering in.
Far from finding it cute, I’m appalled — I grew up on welfare in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, so the charm and appeal of the whole “Eloise at the Plaza” scenario is wasted on me as I consider that we might be raising a spoiled child.
How ironic, then, that just three years later that privileged lifestyle would come crashing down around our heads. My husband, Anthony, now 52, lost his entire fortune — more than $100 million — in the Wall Street financial crisis, leaving us wondering where our next rent check would come from.
Looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened. Hanging out with the uber-wealthy was dull and empty. If someone handed me $100 million today, I’d give it back in a heartbeat. Why? Because I’ve found the fulfillment I’ve craved since childhood.
[. . .]
Born to a teenage mom, I was raised on food stamps. It was tough growing up in Bensonhurst and, when I was 16, my grandmother bought me a secondhand Smith Corona typewriter. Since I loved writing, she told me “to write myself out of this story.”
[. . .]
I was working as a temp for Chemical Bank and was running along Exchange Place to get to the office. Some guy came over to me, patted me on the shoulder and said: “Excuse me, miss, I think you’re beautiful. Can I take you for dinner or brunch?”
[. . .]
Our first date was cocktails at the Top of the Tower in Midtown East, followed by front-row seats at “The Phantom of the Opera” and dinner at Le Cirque, with limos in between.
[. . .]
And then the financial crash of 2008 happened. Anthony would come home stressed every night. After a while, he said: “You know, we’re going to have to get rid of the helicopter.” We started to cut back — I took my clothes to consignment stores and sold one of my Birkin bags to settle one AmEx bill — but there was too much being leveraged.
[. . .]
So I knocked the novel into shape and sent it to 50 agents. They all hated it but one.
Called “Brooklyn Story,” a thinly veiled memoir of my romance with the mobster, the book sold to Simon & Schuster within a week. To my amazement, I was offered a six-figure deal. And, when the book hit the best-seller lists in 2010, they asked me to write a trilogy, culminating in my last novel, “Hello, Hollywood,” published last month.

http://nypost.com/2015/06/05/i-lost-100-million-and-ive-never-been-happier/

I lost $100M — and I’ve never been happier
By Jane Ridley
New York Post

June 5, 2015 | 2:24am

Changing Skyline of Kendall Square

It is perplexing in extremely progressive Cambridge, loud voices oppose change. No longer a working class factory and college town, the people's republic is now an academic enclave. Like New York City rich people want to live here. They do not like having too many poor people nearby. Does Harvard University have any influence on what the city government does? With a Planning Board that approves projects, the city needs an approval board to make city-wide development plans. What role does state law play in restricting affordable housing?

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150518/NEWS/150516650

LETTER: Kendall Square sprawl is taking over with Mass+Main
Posted May. 18, 2015 at 3:54 PM
Updated May 18, 2015 at 3:56 PM
To the editor:
Marilee Meyer, Dana Street
Editor’s note: This is an open letter to the Cambridge City Council.

Political Parties Deceive Voters With Historical Images

In addition to Noam Chomsky's perspective this article does not recognize that both parties have extremely wealthy supporters. Both parties exploit poor people and mislead them. 

[From article]
The United States has begun the seventh year of leadership under the most liberal of Democrat Presidents the Oval Office has ever known. Further, this president had control of one or both Houses of Congress for all of his first six years in office. Thus it’s entirely accurate to state that the policy results in America today are thoroughly the result of Democratic Party rule. Has all this implementation of Democrat ideology and policy initiative benefited the poor, made fewer poor, and been detrimental to the wealthy similarly making fewer of them as well? An objective analysis of the data leads to but one inarguable conclusion – not so much.
Under the first six years of the Obama administration the rich have gotten very rich, the poor have gotten very poor.
[. . .]
A more appropriate way of looking at it would be to say “Obama so loves the poor that he’s made millions more of them.”
[. . .]
The past six years have been very, very kind to the rich and ultra-rich in America. The Obama presidency has fostered an explosion in the number of millionaires within our borders and has bloated the bank accounts of the ‘already-millionaires’ in ways the George W. Bush presidency could hardly have imagined. (Or any other presidency for that matter.)
[. . .]
Though he loves delivering swelling messages about the poor and middle classes and the need for government to do more to help those struggling millions, the facts are that while the lower classes continue to miser away on penny-pinching budgets, the economy on Obama’s watch has heaped huge windfalls on the already-rich.
[. . .]
Six years of an uber-liberal presidency has not helped the poor and lower classes nor has it harmed the rich and upper classes. It has done the exact opposite.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/the_party_of_the_poor.html

April 6, 2015
The Party of the Poor?
By Derrick Wilburn

Our Kids, Robert Putnam's Latest Tome, Book Review

Book Review
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
by Robert Putnam
(Simon & Schuster, 400 pp., $28)



[From review]
Our Kids relies on both a series of contrasting interviews with affluent and lower income-children about their families, their schools, and their communities, and an impressive collection of charts giving numerical heft to the differences that emerge from their tales. Adding to the breadth of the book is its geographical range: from Orange County, California to Port Clinton, Ohio, the author’s hometown and from Atlanta, Georgia to Bend, Oregon,
[. . .]
Skeptics may be most convinced by Putnam’s graphs and figures. In example after example, Putnam shows the “scissoring” of class-based children’s experiences since 1970 as conditions improved for rich kids and declined for the poor and working class.
[. . .]
The quality of family life, schools, and communities are mutually reinforcing, leading to success for rich kids and struggle for the poor. The gap, Putnam concludes, is bad for kids, bad for the economy, and—especially given the lack of trust and civic engagement among low-income families—bad for democracy.
[. . .]
Had Putnam ended there, he would have had a powerful book. But in the final chapter—“What is to Be Done?”—the social scientist yields the floor to the missionary in two notable ways. First, quoting Proverbs, Isaiah, and Pope Francis, among others, he reminds us that unequal opportunity “violates our deepest religious and moral values” and rues that we are “ignoring the plight of poor kids.”
[. . .]
School spending at all levels has gone from 4 percent of GDP in 1984 to 6.1 percent in 2010. Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University estimates the per-capita government spending on means-tested programs has increased by 74 percent between 1975 and 2007. The federal government spends over $800 billion on 92 such programs. Of course, that doesn’t include the billions doled out to nonprofit groups by grant officers at the country’s thousands of philanthropies. And, all along, inequality has risen.
It’s still possible that the money and effort are not sufficient to the scope of the problem. It’s also possible that while government efforts may have helped to keep people out of poverty, erasing the opportunity gap is beyond the reach of conventional public policy.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/bc0327kh.html

KAY S. HYMOWITZ
Robert Putnam’s Mission
The Bowling Alone author’s prescriptions for closing the opportunity gap have been tried—and found wanting.
March 27, 2015

Empty Dinner Plates Create Terrorists

[From article]
This is the confab where Obama again mentioned America’s Muslim founding fathers. You know, like Osama Ben Franklin. Then they floated their Jobs for Jihadis program for the genocidal ethnic cleansers, I mean aspiring rappers, who are turning their lives around.
You’ve surely seen the list of proposed new Islamist anti-poverty agencies: Be-Head Start, the Jobs Corpse, etc.
[. . .]
“In our era,” Kerry sniffed, “poisonous ideas can come from almost anywhere. … In some cases, they may come from … the contrast between one family’s empty dinner plate and a fancy restaurant’s lavish menu.”

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2015/02/carr_bloodthirsty_try_liveshot_s_menu

Carr: Bloodthirsty? Try Liveshot’s menu
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
By: Howie Carr
Boston Herald

Super Rich Planning Escapes In Case of Civil Unrest

Hideaway: Rich people are plotting to escape to remote parts of the world
[From article]
Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.
Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.
With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.
Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/panicked-super-rich-buying-boltholes-5044084

Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up
Jan 26, 2015 12:14
By Alex Wellman

World's Richest People, 35 of 80 Are Americans

[From article]
The richest 80 people in the world have been revealed... and 35 of them are American.
According to a new report from Oxfam International, the combined wealth of the 80 richest billionaires is the same as that of the bottom 50% of the Earth's population - 3.5 billion people.
The report, 'Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More,' was released as the World Economic Forum begins this week in Davos, Switzerland.
Oxfam's report explained that it calculated figures from Credit Suisse and based its list of wealthiest figures off Forbes' billionaires list, which was published in March 2014.
'By 2014, the 80 people who top the Forbes rich list had a collective wealth of $1.9tn,' the charity's report said.
According to the Forbes list, the five wealthiest people in the world are Bill Gates (net worth $76 billion), Carlos Slim Helu (net worth $72 billion), Amancio Ortega (net worth $64 billion), Warren Buffett (net worth $58.2 billion), and Larry Ellison (net worth $48 billion).[. . .]
492 people out of the 1,645 billionaires on the 2014 Forbes list are US citizens, Oxfam pointed out. Aside from Slim Helu and Ortega - who are from Mexico and Spain, respectively - all the billionaires in the top ten are Americans.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2919540/Oxfam-report-finds-80-world-s-richest-billionaires-wealth-bottom-50-percent-global-population-3-5-BILLION-people.html

Richest 80 people in the world revealed... and 35 of them are American citizens
The combined wealth of the 80 richest billionaires is the same amount as that of the bottom 50% of the Earth's population, Oxfam said in a new report
Eight of the top ten wealthiest billionaires are American
Oxfam found a steep drop and that 388 billionaires had the same amount of money as the bottom 50% of the Earth's population in 2010
The charity's report also said that the richest 1 percent of the population will own more than half the world's wealth by 2016
By ZOE SZATHMARY FOR MAILONLINE and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 02:34 EST, 21 January 2015 | UPDATED: 10:40 EST, 21 January 2015

Wealth Gap Growing, Especially in Aspen, Colorado

This Dec. 1, 2014 photo shows the Aspen Mountain ski area by Aspen, Colo. Resort towns like Aspen dramatically demonstrate an unnerving trend: Across the country, the rich are getting richer while the rest of the country is essentially treading water. (AP Photo/John Locher)


[From article]
The divide between the haves and have-nots in Aspen reflects a division that cuts across the country: The richest are getting richer while the rest of the population is essentially treading water. From 2009 to 2012, inflation-adjusted income for the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households surged 31 percent, according to economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. For everyone else, income inched up just 0.4 percent.
[. . .]
Aspen's dilemma is similar to that of other resort towns, from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Park City, Utah, especially those nestled in the jagged terrain of the western United States. [. . .] The jobs in these communities are largely in the lower-paying service industry, yet the resort towns are a destination for the global upper class, said Bill Hettinger, author of "Living and Working in Paradise," a book on resort towns.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/resort-towns-working-class-squeezed-142809570.html

In resort towns, working class squeezed out as rich move in
In resort towns, working class gets squeezed out while the wealthy buy vacation homes
By Nicholas Riccardi, Associated Press
January 12, 2015

Affordable Units Separated From Market Rate Tenants in Luxury Building

Erin McFadzen and her boyfriend, Erik Clancy, are literally caged in on their terrace. 
Photo: Brigitte Stelzer


[From article]
“Every time someone comes over, I have to explain why the fence is there . . . and tell them we’re rent stabilized, like it’s a badge I have to wear,” she said.
McFadzen’s boyfriend, Erik Clancy, who also lives in the two-bedroom pad, is outraged, too.
“I can’t imagine them saying [to market-rate tenants], ‘You get this beautiful view of Manhattan behind a giant metal fence,’ ” he said.
[. . .]
“It has come to our clients’ attention that you are exceeding your area of usage,” attorney William Slochowsky wrote on Oct. 28 — days after Q41 held a ribbon-cutting attended by Comptroller Scott Stringer, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and others.
The terrace is part of the building’s sixth-floor pedestal, with wooden dividers providing about eight units with private decks.
[. . .]
Once a stalled condo project, the 17-story building was revived by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Housing Asset Renewal Program. The city doled out $7.6 million in subsidies and, with Bank of America, provided $28 million in low-interest construction loans to Queensboro.
All but eight of the 117 units in the 41st Avenue tower are “affordable” middle-income pads, with $1,103-a-month studios and two-bedrooms costing as much as $2,186 a month.
The fenced terraces have drawn comparisons to “Poor Doors,” separate entrances for low-income tenants living in luxury buildings.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/07/luxury-bulding-fences-off-rent-stabilized-tenants-terraces/

Luxury building fences off low-rent tenants’ terraces
By Kate Briquelet
New York Post
December 7, 2014 | 1:24am

UK Health Care System Indicates What Is Coming To America

[From article]
What is happening in Great Britain’s vaunted in NHS (National Health Service) is of vital interest to Americans. Dr. Donald Berwick, one of the prime designers of the Affordable Care Act, proudly said in 2010 that the NHS was his model for our ACA. By seeing where the NHS is today, we can foresee where U.S. healthcare is headed tomorrow.
To reduce the escalating costs of their healthcare system, the NHS has been rationing care, either by stating what care will be denied or by restricting how much money is allocated and thus limiting the supply of authorized goods and services. That is why people wait forever for care.
[. . .]
British hospitals have begun advertising that self-funded patients can move up the queue, or they can get care that is denied by NHS rationing. In other words, those with money, who already paid for their health care through taxes, can get the care they need by paying (again) out of pocket. Those without sufficient resources to pay double are moved even further down the queue and are unlikely ever to get care.
Over the years, NHS medical rationing has gotten more and more severe. Early on, it was things like no transplants over the age of 70. Then, they denied heart surgery over 65. Next it was no kidney dialysis over age 55. Now, rationing is draconian: hip replacements, arthritis injections, and cataract surgery deferred, delayed, or denied -- the three “D” strategy most hated by Americans when used by U.S. insurance companies.
[. . .]
Just as in market-based systems, the affluent in single-payer systems can get care that is denied to the less fortunate.
[. . .]
ACA’s IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board, renamed for purposes of disguise as the HTAC, Health Technology Assessment Commission) [. . .] and all single payer systems, death is the preferred (read: cheaper) solution for those with chronic (read: expensive) illnesses.
So, Americans already have the medical half of the worst of all possible worlds: health care that is medically effective but is withheld from us by being classified as “Not Cost Effective.”

http://americanthinker.com/2014/09/in_the_toilet__british_nhs_today_us_healthcare_tomorrow.html

September 13, 2014
In the Toilet' -- British NHS Today; U.S. Healthcare Tomorrow
By Deane Waldman

Wealthy People Share Delusions of Poverty

But it not just Democrats. Republicans and academics share the same delusions 

[From article]
Why do all these exceedingly well-off people keep trying to convince us we’ll see them at the dollar store?
It’s all part of the increasingly delusional myth Democrats tell themselves that they are the tribunes of the middle class.
[. . .]
Democrats earn their money in ways that aren’t available to most Americans. Yet even for Democrats, the Clintons got rich in an exotic way. They accumulated something like $100 million not by building a business or inventing something or even writing some hit songs. Their entire fortune came from political celebrity. (Their daughter has even accumulated $15 million by being the offspring of political celebrities. Or did you think NBC News paid her $600,000 a year because of her obvious broadcasting ability?)
[. . .]
Drug dealers create more middle-class jobs than these people do.
[. . .]
Swanning around the world staying in five-star hotels, reading speeches drafted by someone else and signing your name to books written by someone else is not exactly quarry labor.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/28/why-democrats-insist-on-lying-about-how-poor-they-are/

Why Democrats insist on lying about how ‘poor’ they are
By Kyle Smith
New York Post
June 28, 2014 | 10:22am

Spike Lee, Poor Like Hillary Clinton

[From article]

“This country was founded on violence,” Lee told TheWrap. “Africans were brought here, to this land, and then the genocide of Native Americans, that's the foundation upon which this country was built. It's simple, not taught in schools. We're taught some other stuff, and particularly, how we're taught is through the media. And as African Americans, we were taught how barbaric Africa was, with the Tarzan movies and whatnot, and the savages of the Native Americans in the many, many John Ford, John Wayne films.”
Lee also thinks it's only getting worse.
“And the NRA is responsible for it,” he said. “These video games are not helping either.”

http://www.thewrap.com/spike-lee-says-america-is-addicted-to-violence/

Spike Lee Says America Is Addicted to Violence
By Jordan Zakarin

June 26, 2014 @ 2:07 pm

When Rich Become Poor; When Poor Become Rich

[From article]
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are worth between $10 and $50 million, according to their financial disclosure forms – but taxpayers will still pony up nearly $1 million this year to fund their post-White House lifestyle.
Like the three other living former presidents, Jimmy Carter and the two George Bushes, Clinton receives a $201,000 annual pension. But that just scratches the surface of the government benefits he shares with his wife Hillary.
The total for 2014 also includes $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills.
In all, The Washington Post first reported, taxpayers are providing Clinton with $944,000 in post-presidential pay and benefits.
That tab was $1.28 million in 2002, the year after he left office, according to a Congressional Research Service report cited by the Post and the Washington Free Beacon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2667949/Taxpayers-spend-944-000-support-multimillionaire-Bill-Clintons-post-presidential-lifestyle-2014.html

Taxpayers will spend $944,000 to support Bill Clinton's lifestyle in 2014 as he claims he and Hillary are not 'out of touch' because they 'talk to people in our town'
Bill Clinton said Tuesday his wife's claim that they were 'dead broke' after his presidency was 'factually true'
He and Hillary are not 'out of touch,' he insisted, because they go to the grocery store and 'talk to people in our town'
An April Congressional Research Service report found that the federal government has spent $15.9 million on Bill Clinton's retirement since 2001
He got $1.28 million in benefits the year after he left office
Clinton said Tuesday that attacking his wife as a wealthy elite in the run-up to the 2016 election is 'the wrong debate'
This year Clinton's costs include a $201,000 pension, $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills
Former president George W. Bush spends even more, costing taxpayers $1.28 million this year and averaging 4 per cent more per year than Clinton
The government inexplicably budgeted $102,000 for Bush's telephone expenses in 2014, and planned to spend $135,000 more on furniture, computers, office supplies and other miscellany
By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 16:08 EST, 24 June 2014 | UPDATED: 17:00 EST, 24 June 2014

* * *

[From article]
There are two sorts of stock human dramas that play out in every age of history. The first concerns people who were once rich but are now discovering they are poor. The second is their opposite; people who were once poor who suddenly realize they are rich.
[. . .]
The problem of course is what happens when the long-rich go broke. The once-rich-now-bankrupt become worse than bust, they become ridiculous. A modern example is John Kerry who is making a beggar’s tour of the Middle East.
[. . .]
Kerry is almost a central-casting perfect picture of a degenerate aristocrat. Just as Chelsea doesn’t do money, neither does Kerry do Foreign Policy. He at least does artistic gestures. Only the other day Kerry made an important announcement. Speaking at a the Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies Pride event at the State Department, he declared “I’m working hard to ensure that by the end of my tenure, we will have lesbian, bisexual and transgender ambassadors in our ranks as well.”
[. . .]
What Old Money and Power finds hardest to accept is that perhaps their scruffy, uncredentialed and coarse opponents might not only be their equals, but their superiors. One is beginning to suspect that the terror masters are better men — not better or more capable men than normal Americans — but better men than the aristocrats.
[. . .]
The men in the White House are like grifters who inherited a great fortune and have unexpectedly come into clothes, cars, houses and jets without the slightest clue how they were earned.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/06/24/our-ruling-class/

Our Ruling Class
June 24th, 2014 - 4:39 pm
By Richard Fernandez

Chelsea Clinton Is As Poor As Her Parents

[From article]
'I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,' Clinton told The Telegraph. 'That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life.'
[. . . ]
By comparison, her salary is higher than both of the last two editors of the New York Times.
The paycheck from her NBC contract has helped Chelsea and her husband Marc Mezvinsky buy a $10.5 million apartment next to New York's Madison Square Park last spring
[. . .]
The former secretary of state has participated in TV interviews across every major network in the last three weeks, making eyebrow raising statements of her about the Clinton family's financial outlook.
'We came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt. We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy,' Hillary said.
[. . .]
She graduated from Columbia in the spring of 2010 and married Mezvinsky that summer.
The high-profile wedding was held at the former home of millionaire businessman John Jacob Astor IV on 50 acres of land overlooking the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, New York. The wedding boasted 500 guests and was said to cost more than $3 million. Her custom-made Vera Wang dress cost approximately $25,000 alone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2666265/I-tried-care-money-I-says-Chelsea-Clinton-married-hedge-funder-lives-11m-home-paid-600-000-NBC-doing-nothing.html

I tried to care about money but I couldn't, says Chelsea Clinton, married to hedge funder, who lives in $11m home, and is paid $600,000 by NBC for doing nothing
Chelsea Clinton said in an interview published over the weekend that she doesn't care about money
Her admission comes on the heels of a report last week that she's being paid $600,000 a year to do a smattering of reports for NBC News
She and her husband bought a $10.5 million apartment last spring
Their 2010 wedding cost more than $3 million
Chelsea has three degrees from exclusive universities and attended a private high school
By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS and ASSOCIATED PRESS
Daily Mail (UK)

PUBLISHED: 14:43 EST, 23 June 2014 | UPDATED: 23:43 EST, 23 June 2014