Story Of Obama

Very interesting website: http://obamaisntworking.com

 

Good point! So let's have a look at the Congress of 1929...

 

The Welfare Work Requirement: Obama Obliterates Clinton’s Best Achievement
By Herman Cain

President Obama likes to blame everything on George W. Bush, but apparently he does not discriminate. This week, Obama obliterated one of the best things Bill Clinton ever did.

Conservatives don’t look back fondly at the Clinton years, and for good reason, although he looks decent compared to what we have today. But you have to give credit where it’s due: Clinton did some good things, and one of the best – at the prodding of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress to be sure – was the signing of the 1996 welfare reform act.

The bill “ended warfare as we know it” as Clinton liked to say, and introduced stringent requirements that able-bodied welfare recipients either work or spend time preparing for work. It was a good idea and it reversed the expansion of the welfare rolls for the first time in decades. The key was that states were not allowed to waive the work requirements. Congress wrote this section of the law very carefully because they knew that some state bureaucrats would try to do just that.

Now the work requirement is gone, not because new legislation was passed to remove it, but because Obama once again decided the law does not apply to him.

On Thursday, the Obama Administration issued a directive allowing states to waive the work requirement – and only the work requirement. The directive explains: “The Secretary (Kathleen Sebelius) is interested in using her authority to approve waiver demonstrations to challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation that seeks to find more effective mechanisms for helping families succeed in employment.”

In fact, Sebelius has no authority to grant such waivers. The bill makes that very clear by limiting the allowance of waivers to one section only, and it very explicitly excludes the work requirement from that section. This was not an accident. The power of the bill, and of the whole idea, was that it would only succeed if the work requirement was mandatory for all states and for all recipients.

And there’s no need for the Obama Administration to “find more effective mechanisms.” Welfare reform has been a roaring success.

Of course, that depends how you define success. It only took four years after the bill had eliminated the old Aid for Families with Dependent Children program, and replaced it with the new Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, for poverty to plummet while welfare caseloads were cut in half, according to a report from the Heritage Foundation.

So why would Obama get rid of the work requirements? I can think of two reasons – one ideological and the other political.

The ideological reason is that liberals hated welfare reform from day one. They predicted it would push millions more children into poverty. When it did exactly the opposite, their hatred was not abated in the slightest. They are convinced that the only way for people to get by is the reliability of a check from the government, and to them, the notion that you would replace this security blanket with this strange thing called a job is simply absurd.

The political reason is cynical but simple. People who depend on the government to be their primary benefactor vote Democratic, and if their dependence is permanent, then they vote Democratic for life. Even if these folks don’t vote, expanding the welfare rolls will allow for the expansion of the programs all across the country – and the newly hired welfare bureaucrats will vote Democratic, because their subsistence is dependent on the government as well.

Ronald Reagan liked to say that he defined compassion not by how many people we help, but by how many people no longer need our help. Obviously, and not surprisingly, Barack Obama’s view is exactly the opposite. The more people who depend on government largesse, and the easier it is for them to get it and keep getting it, the more job security he creates – for himself.

And he’s even willing to grant waivers that the law expressly forbids in order to make it happen.

I wonder what Bill Clinton thinks about what Obama did to one of his most positive achievements. After all, Clinton (who was re-elected the same year he signed welfare reform) worked with a Republican Congress to pass this bill, to cut the capital gains tax and to balance the budget for several years running.

Now the first Democratic president to follow him is undoing all of the above, or trying to. It’s almost enough to make you wonder, when Clinton walks into that voting booth in November and closes the curtain behind him . . . what he will really do.

 

More Truthful/Informative Than The Liberal Media

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Single Women Switch To Romney

http://www.dickmorris.com/single-wo...s&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

 

It could be that the rise in the number of private schools is a backdoor way of re-introducing "tracking" into secondary education. Tracking in public schools essentially ended with the advent of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". Some people believe that this was harmful to educational outcomes. I am one of those who believe this. I don't think it is smart to force square pegs into round holes. I believe tracking was best for everyone in the long run, not just college bound students, because it recognizes that we are not all alike in our innate physical and intellectual capacities.

In my opinion the message to children by the time they reach junior high age should not be: "You can achieve anything," but rather the truthful positive message, "You can likely do many things well, but it will take hard work and dedication. Overtime you will discover and naturally gravitate toward those things that you can succeed at, and your success will be your own reward. We will do our best to help you reach the goals you set for yourself."

This encourages self-reliance and puts responsibility for one's education where it belongs, viz., on the student, not on the teacher or the school. It was the move away from this principle that occurred with the well-intended changes resulting from Johnson's education initiative that, to a greater extent then any other factor in my opinion, resulted in the slow deterioration of public school outcomes.

I am reinforced in this view by my own educational experience, and my personal observation that in the top achieving private secondary schools blaming one's underachievement on the school or the teacher is simply not an option. You can try it, but it is not going to get you anywhere but out the door.

Deterioration of public school results, brought on by a wrongheaded move away from tracking, is sadly being exacerbated by the draining away of academic talent and dollars from our public schools into private schools. This, while undesirable in any case, might not have been as damaging in a Republic where only landed gentry, who were on average very well-educated, could vote. Now however, that a few elements of democracy have been introduced into the Republic it is essential that not just the landed gentry, but the majority of the population be well educated. In that respect, we are failing badly as a country. This bodes ill for the country's future.

With regard to Coulson's noting that the private schools achieve a better outcome at roughly a third lower cost, one has to look carefully at the cost details and the reasons for better outcomes to draw valid conclusions. Coulson's conclusion is that private schools are more efficient. On the surface anyway, this seems to be the case. What is the effect, however, on public school graduation and achievement statistics of taking the better students out of public schools and shuttling them, and possibly some education tax dollars as well,off to private ones? This is a subject that those giddy with the prospects for school choice and voucher programs want to ignore.^*

When comparing costs one has to recognize that public schools have many more expenses than the typical private school. A few of these would be nutrition programs, transportation, special facilities and education for disabled students, health programs, textbooks and mixed vocational and academic programs in some public school districts-- and please don't forget the cost of the body scanner at the door of the public high school and the extra security personnel. These are but a few common differences between public and private school expenses. And too, is it any wonder that teachers confronted with rudeness and physical danger will not work for peanuts. Teachers in private schools may be happy with less pay if they don't have to deal with the less savory aspects of public schools.

Yes, you can compare public and private school graduation rates and the dollars spent to achieve them and conclude that private education is more efficient, but is it a valid comparison? Hardly!

__________________________
^*Coulson states "...even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics." I do not accept that this can be done at all accurately, nor do I believe that the effect on physical facilities and teaching quality of taking the better students, and perhaps teachers too, out of public schools has even been considered, let alone "corrected for".

 

Nice message. Could we also add, "yes, because you were born into the peasant class, even if you work hard the other guy working hard but starting with an elite class birth will undoubtedly exceed you, and will probably be your manager, and your kids' manager, and so on for all time until you drop their heads in baskets." Just a suggestion. : )

 

There is truth in your cynical comment. My hope would be that by revitalizing our public schools through a return to tracking and a change in the focus of responsibility we might be able to return to effective public schools and a better educated population overall. A good education gives one the best chance of breaking out of the peasant class.

It is inefficient in the extreme to maintain too parallel school systems with public money (vouchers). We need one good school system rather than two school systems, one good and the other bad but expensive. Those that are concerned with efficient use of tax dollars should think about that!

 

I agree with you philosophically for the most part.

But, whenever I state my core beliefs on this, liberals go crazy... For example:

* Replace state funding of education with a solid/well run voucher system.
* Do away with/buy back pension/health care obligations of the state.
* No tenure system.
* Make all schools for profit, let them compete for customers, take care of special cases, inner city challenges etc through loan and tax incentives.
* No federal or state support of any kind for state or private institutions that do not support a politically balanced philosophy and practice.
* Faith based education to be protected and encouraged, let them operate on their own terms.
* Stop this nonsense about special support of student loans: those who borrowed $100,000 to get a BA in geography from a private college are now asking their peers, who took three jobs to complete a BS in Engineering without loans, to pay for their folly... Or, those who borrowed $200,000 to get a JD from Harvard and then got a job that pays that much per year and more, are getting a break in interest rates at the expense of the taxpayer... How's that fair?

Oh well.

 

Sorry, but that's BS. How about the kid who was born poor but to a loving family (eg, Hermann Cain or Condi Rice or Will Smith) vs the kid who's rich but with no emotional support or ever being able to relate to his parents? How about the poor but healthy kid, vs the rich kid born with a deficient heart? How can we tell who's more fortunate in life? Can the State do anything about that, really?

Give kids the same opportunity without trying to get into specifics and let them compete and create their own reality. Life is tough for all of us in its own way.