Obama Ends Welfare Reform As We Know It

This afternoon, President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive undermining the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that have been the foundation of that law - one of the most successful domestic policy reforms in the 20th century.

Welfare reform replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.

The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among blacks and single mothers plummeted to historic lows. What was the catalyst for these improvements? Rigorous new federal work requirements contained in TANF.

Contrary to some perceptions, the formula that made welfare reform a success was not giving state governments more flexibility in operating federally funded welfare programs. The active ingredient that made the difference was requiring state governments to implement those rigorous new federal work standards.

Today the Obama administration issued a dramatic new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements will be waived or overridden by a legal device called a section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).

Section 1115 allows HHS to "waive compliance" with specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: All provisions of law that can be overridden under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself.

The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, "mandatory work requirements"). Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, is deliberately not listed in section 1115; its provisions cannot be waived. Obviously, if the Congress had wanted HHS to be able to waive the TANF work requirements laid out in section 407, it would have listed that section as waivable under section 1115. It did not do that.

In the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as "work." Welfare reform instituted work standards to block these dodges. Now that the Obama administration has abolished those standards, we can expect "work" in the TANF program to mean anything but work.

Obama's new welfare decree guts sound anti-poverty policy. The administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices - a pattern that has become all too common in this administration.

The result is the end of welfare reform as we know it.

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The "Law of the sea treaty

It sounds harmless but the Devil is in the detail. It was not negotiated by honest brokers

President Reagan strongly opposed the Law of the Sea and he very publicly refused to sign it. He also dismissed the State Department staff that helped negotiate it. And in case anyone didn't get the message, he sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld on a globe-trotting mission to explain his opposition and urge other nations to follow suit.

NOW 20 Republican Senators including john mccain Are REFUSING to oppose a United Nations Global Taxation Scheme that was intentionally designed to hand Over Our Sovereignty To The Third World insisting that Reagan would gladly sign on today.

I knew President Ronald Reagan well and he would still refuse to subvert our national sovereignty to an unaccountable international governing body and certainly not give control of anything to the UN. At all costs. LOST must be stopped.

Senator DeMint is championing the fight against LOST, and has already lined up the signatures of 27 Republican Senators who have pledged to oppose LOST; and since treaties must pass the Senate by a two-thirds vote, that means we are just SEVEN VOTES SHY of the 34 we need to doom the passage of this United Nations global taxation scheme.

But DeMint needs our help, because it's not going to be easy. Just days ago, The Hill reported that Senator Kerry is "bringing some big guns in" to persuade these 20 Republican hold-outs to stab you in the back before you're any the wiser.

Here Are The Names Of The 20 Republican Senators Who NEED TO BE REMINDED THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL NOT GIVE AWAY ITS SOVEREIGNTY! - Lamar Alexander, Kelly Ayotte, Scott Brown, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Michael Enzi, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Johnny Isakson, Mike Johanns, Mark Kirk, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Olympia Snowe and Patrick Toomey.

The UN LOST Treaty is not an olive branch but instead is a deadly barbed wire fence. Yes, we're talking about the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). a United Nations scheme that would impose a "global tax" on us and - as former-President Ronald Reagan said - force us to hand over "sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World."

U.S. Senate ratification to this treaty would pilage America's treasury for billions of dollar, then REDISTRIBUTE that wealth to the rest of the world. LOST, which was a product of the Left/Soviet/non-aligned move-ment agenda of the 1960s and 1970s, created the International Seabed Authority (ISA). ISA is a new supranational organization with unprecedented powers:

* The power to regulate the oceans or 70% of world's surface area;

* The power to levy international taxes;

* The power to impose production quotas (for deep-sea mining, oil production, etc).;

* The power to regulate ocean research and exploration;

* The power to create a multinational court system to render and enforce its judgments!

* The power to sue the United States over global warming issues.

* The power to undermine U.S. national security interests in our ports.

Such provisions were among the reasons President Ronald Reagan rejected the treaty in 1982. As Edwin Meese, U.S. Attorney General under President Reagan, explained recently, ".it was out of step with the concepts of economic liberty and free enterprise that Ronald Reagan was to inspire throughout the world."

LOST was rejected THIRTY YEARS AGO, in 1982, when President Ronald Reagan made the very public refusal to sign the treaty! If the treaty is signed NOW, the United Nations can regulate fishing, oil production, and even United States Navy exercises. All of our activities can be monitored by the United Nations!

LOST requires the United States to transfer billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties.to the International Seabed Authority or the UN for redistribution to the developing world

The treaty effectively prohibits two functions vital to American security: intelligence-collection in, and submerged transit of, territorial waters;

Mandatory information-sharing will hand to U.S. enemies data that would be used to facilitate attacks on this country by forcing, detailed imagery of underwater submarine harbor access routes and off-shore hiding places.

THIS IS NOT A FIGHT WE CAN AFFORD TO LOSE

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Latest update here.

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The Left’s False Claim of Suppression From Voter ID Laws

On Monday, Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP, decided to confront the issue of Voter ID. Unfortunately, he embraced the left’s absurd ideology that it is voter suppression and an assault on the rights of minorities. He likened the movement of opposition to Voter ID laws to the Civil Right Movements with his reference to “Salem and Montgomery times”.

This rhetoric is nothing but divisive. I’m sure Mr. Jealous invoked this resemblance to create an emotional response to a momentous time in history. What he neglected to inform the oldest civil rights organization in the nation is that voter id prohibits voter fraud, which currently serves as the biggest hindrance to voting, (itself a sacred honor in this country that came via sacrifices and battles). It's time to rebuke the racial oratory that compels people to think that voter id is a race-driven agenda. Efforts to combat voter fraud are not meant to suppress minorities, or any ethnic group for that matter.

What needs to be rejected is the notion that minorities are too simple-minded or naïve to get a government-issued ID. The liberal left claims they are defending minorities, but they are really insulting people's intelligence. They imply that minorities are incapable of completing a small task like obtaining ID. I find it ironic that many liberals claim they are pro-choice when it comes to women making their own decisions about abortion, but then suggest that those same women might not be smart enough to make the right choice about getting an ID, which is needed to do just about anything these days.

Those who labored in the Civil Rights phenomena would be insulted by these partisan attacks. Voter ID is not designed to benefit a Republican or Democrat individual. It is for the American people. It transcends political ideology and demands that a fair election process be made for the general public.

The issue of racism was elevated to an higher level when embattled Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP. During his speech he compared voter ID to poll taxes. "Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes." Ironically, a photo ID was required to attend Holder’s speech. The hypocritical stance of the left is amusing and yet sad to witness because it shows a continuing disconnect from reality.

The Left is turning the push for voter ID laws into a mechanism of class warfare. They are willing to ignore abuse instead of implementing safe and secure checks against fraud. The reason why they continue to sing the known chorus of racial bigotry is because they fear that minorities and seniors will turn a deaf ear to liberal policies and that their influence among these voting groups will diminish.

Liberal opposition to voter ID has nothing to do with concern for minorities. It’s about power and dominion. If the left was so concerned about voter oppression, they would be advocating pro-growth economic policies instead of baseless racial rhetoric that seeks to divide Americans.

The NAACP, Attorney General Eric Holder and any other organization or individual who stands against voter ID laws are making a mockery of our election process. It’s not complicated. You are either an ambassador for fairness and justice in voting or you tolerate corruption for the sake of political power.

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Democrat voting miracles

Who says there are no miracles in our post-modern 21st century world? The first miracle happened in early June 2012, during the election to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Madison is the capital city of the state of Wisconsin, located in Dane County. After the votes were cast and counted, a Madison City Clerk discovered that 119% of registered Democrats in Dane County had voted! What a feat! Maybe Democrats can also walk on water!

Despite the miraculous 119% Democrat voter turnout, Gov. Walker still succeeded in defeating the recall 53.1% to 46.3%. Imagine what his winning margin would be without the miracle!

Back on June 13, I wrote a post on the miracle of dead people voting in America. Briefly, a report from the Pew Center on the States found that a whopping 24 million - or 1 in 8 - of active voter registrations in the U.S. have serious errors. Those errors include 1.8 million dead on America's rolls of registered voters, as well as 2.75 million who are registered as active voters in more than one state. (Source: NY Daily News, Feb. 14, 2012)

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America's coming civil war -- makers vs. takers

To start rewarding the makers -- the private sector -- instead of shafting them -- would be a major step towards avoiding war

Call it America's coming civil war between the Makers and the Takers. On one side are those who create wealth, America's private sector-the very ones targeted by President Obama's tax hikes announced Monday.

On the other are the public employee unions; left-leaning intelligentsia who see the growth of government as index of progress; and the millions of Americans now dependent on government through a growing network of government transfer payments, from Medicaid and Social Security to college loans and corporate bailouts and handouts (think GM and Solyndra).

Over the past century America's private sector has been the source of productivity, innovation, creativity, and growth-and gave us the iPhone and iPad. The public sector has been the engine of entitlement, stagnation, and decline -- and gave us Detroit and the South Bronx.

The private sector built the strongest economy in the world. It armed the free world in World War Two, and then in the three decades after the war turned America into the most prosperous society history had ever seen. It revived America in the Reagan and Clinton years, and thanks to the Bush tax cuts brought this country back from economic collapse after 9/11.

In those same years a growing public sector, by contrast, turned Europe into a cesspool of debt, stalled economies, and chronic social dysfunction that's set the streets of Athens -- and perhaps other European capitals--on fire. That's where we're headed, too, more rapidly than we like to think.

That public sector-state, local, and federal -- now consumes 40% of GDP, compared to 33% just twelve years ago. It's brought us to the point where 48% of Americans are now on some form of government handout, from 44% when Obama took office-almost a fifth more than during the Reagan years. And too many of them have been programmed to believe they have no future unless the government takes more from the Makers -- precisely what Obama promised on Monday.

So we know which side Obama and the Democratic party are on. Like John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, ObamaCare has been a wakeup call to what's at stake-just as the turbulent events in Wisconsin showed how far Democrats are willing to go to win.

We're not Greece yet -- or on the brink of Bull Run. But it's time for Romney and Republicans to make clear which side they're on -- and to make it clear there can't be government transfer payments, from Medicaid to Social Security, without a strong vibrant private sector to pay for them.

They don't have to stoop to the Democrats' tactics. They just have to give our free market, private sector economy the robust defense it deserves.

A country where more Americans go on Social Security disability than get jobs -- as happened last month--can't stand.

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my old Facebook page as I rarely accessed it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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