Food Stamps

Not News: Food Stamp Participation Jumped by Over 600,000 in September; Last Pre-Election Number Revised Up
By Tom Blumer | December 07, 2012 | 23:57

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its latest report on food stamp program participation through September today. I received the email alerting me to the release at 5:17 p.m., so it seems reasonable to believe that USDA and the Barack Obama administration wanted the new data to get as little attention as possible (as will be seen later, it’s currently getting none). If so, they have two probable reasons for wishing to minimize its impact.

The first and more obvious of the two is that the food stamp rolls increased by over 607,000 in September to 47.71 million, yet another all-time record. That’s awful enough, but here’s the real kicker: the participation figure for July, the last month of data available before Election Day, was revised up by over 150,000, changing that month’s reported increase from 11,600 to just under 166,000. As will be seen after the jump, no other month’s data was revised except August, where the changes were infinitesimal

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/07/not-news-food-stamp-participation-increases-over-600000-september-last-p#ixzz2GBYVzcIv

The Democrats’ economic and taxation policies at work in Illinois

Remember how our friends on the left were so appalled that the Michigan state legislature passed a right-to-work law? How about in just-across-the-lake Illinois, that liberal bastion and home of President Barack Hussein Obama?

Unions blast state on plans for underfunded pensions

By Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune | 1:26 p.m. CST, December 19, 2012

A coalition of public employee unions issued a report today blasting state legislation to address their vastly underfunded pension systems and offering instead to make increased worker contributions if lawmakers raised $2 billion by ending tax benefits to corporations and imposing new taxes.

Appearing at the James R. Thompson Center, members of the We Are One coalition said plans backed by Gov. Pat Quinn and another proposal supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers would violate the state constitution by reducing pension benefits already guaranteed to workers. They predicted such a change would be overturned by the courts.

Moreover, the group said the plan Quinn was advocating would “cause deep harm to working and retired state employees and teachers, negatively impact the Illinois economy and yet still not solve the state’s primary pension problem — the failure to regularly fund its annual required contributions.”

The unions said their offer to require state workers and teachers to pay 2 percent more toward their retirement was conditional upon the state making an “ironclad guarantee” in state law that government fund its pension obligations.

To help fund those obligations, the unions proposed eliminating several corporate tax benefits as well as imposing new taxes on auto trade-ins, satellite TV service and downloaded digital entertainment. The new funds also could be used to help offset cuts in other public social services, the group said.

More at the link.

Illinois is an already-highly-taxed state, with significant companies considering leaving the state due to the already-passed increases in corporate taxes. Here’s another story:

Illinois Among Nation’s Worst State Business Climates, According To CEO Survey

Illinois has been struggling to keep big companies in the state since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn approved an income tax increase in January. Quinn has been widely criticized for the move, and a new survey ranking Illinois among the worst business climates in the U.S. will likely provide fodder to the naysayers.

According to a survey released Monday, California, New York and Illinois have the “least favorable business climates” to corporate executives in the U.S. Nearly 25 percent of the 322 corporate executives surveyed said Illinois was unfavorable due to high taxes and “anti-business climate/regulation.”

“With the battle for business more intense than ever, states and their economic development organizations need to pay close attention to the results of this survey,” Development Counsellors International (DCI) President Andrew T. Levine said in a statement. “Whether accurate or misguided, perceptions about a location’s business climate often play a crucial role in site selection decisions and where companies invest money and create jobs.”

Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina had the most favorable business climates, according to the survey.

More at the link. But Illinois’ business climate is so bad that the family of an Illinois state senator is moving their business out-of-state!

Mike Frerichs is running to keep his seat in the 52nd District Senate seat from Champaign County. He clams he’s all about small businesses in Illinois. Yet, things have gotten so bad during histerm in office that his own family is moving their business out of Illinois and into Indiana.

On the main page of his Senate website, Frerichs is all proud of the “job-creation program” he had a hand in but the best “job-creation program” would be to make Illinois more business friendly and tax-hike-Mike has no desire to do that at all.

The business climate in Illinois under Frerichs and Democrat Governor Pat Quinn is so bad that even Frerichs’ own family is moving its business out of the state.

Recently The Champaign News-Gazette reported that Frerichs cousin moved his trucking business from Illinois over to Covington, Indiana.

Frerichs’ cousin admitted that it is all true and that Illinois’ horrid business climate drove him out of the state.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that Mike Frerichs is a Democrat.

Illinois is doing just what our friends on the left say government should be doing as far as taxes and the economy are concerned, and the result is a loss of businesses, a state government which cannot fund its pension system, and calls for even higher taxes. Simply put, the Democrats’ economic policies are being put into practice, and they are not working!
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The section above the line was published on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL on December 21^st. Today, I found this on Patterico’s Pontifications:

Chevron Moves Hundreds of Employees to Texas from California

Patterico @ 10:32 pm

Interesting:

Chevron Corp. will move as many as 800 jobs to Houston from its California headquarters to support its exploration and production operations, the company told employees Thursday.

The oil giant will maintain its corporate headquarters in San Ramon – just east of San Francisco – where 6,500 employees work.

In an email to its workers, Chevron said jobs moving to Houston include employees in support groups involved with technology, procurement and business development.

“Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company email said.

I wonder how many businesses are relocating employees from Texas to California. Somehow, I suspect not many.

An interesting move. Chevron is moving support jobs to Houston, which will improve efficiency and (presumably) lower costs. “Moves in these groups are expected to take place over the next two years to support our growing upstream business,” the company e-mail stated, and it makes sense that such jobs would be closer to the physical activity involved. The corporate leadership remains in California, so most of the top executives don’t have to move.

California and Illinois are both following the Democrats’ preferred model for government: unsupportably high government spending, and a high tax regime. Now the Pyrite State is losing another 800 good jobs. Those jobs might or might not have been moved anyway, even if California were governed better, but the anti-business attitude on the Left Coast couldn’t have helped swing the decision toward keeping the jobs in San Ramon.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair

She’s the Bitch that took God out of School and nothing has been the same since. And this was over her son having to pray at Poly HS in Baltimore. Remember it well. She moved to Texas, went missing, found dead much later. And I think her son became a minister. Now today we had another PREYING at school, but it was of children. I wonder if each school shooting, the heat is turned up higher at her current residence.

Saw Obama comment on this. And honestly, I didn’t think he was going to get through his comments without breaking down. He did wipe away a tear or two. It was tough for him to handle. I will praise him for his words.

It happened in 1963 along with all the other things that altered the course of America and more or less derailed the core fabric of the country. To me, it was the start of the long slow descent we’re in now. What was commonplace in 1962 has been peeled back slowly to the point of what was normal life then, is now looked at as you could do that then. This woman was a starting point of all normal nuclear families complain of today. That is if normal nuclear families still exist anymore.

From Wikipedia: Madalyn Murray O’Hair (April 13, 1919 – September 29, 1995) was an American atheist activist. She was the founder of the organization American Atheists and served as its president from 1963 to 1986. One of her sons, Jon Garth Murray, was the president of the organization from 1986 to 1995, while she remained de facto president during these nine years. She is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ending official Bible-reading in American public schools in 1963. This came one year after the Supreme Court prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale. O’Hair later founded American Atheists and became so controversial that in 1964 Life magazine referred to her as “the most hated woman in America”.[1][2]

In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered, and her body mutilated, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters.

Boycott NBC’s Sunday Night Football

It was bad enough when they had uber-loon Keith Olbermann sit in with them on the pre-game and halftime, and when they engaged in doltish PC antics. Now, Bob Costas (who I already can’t stand for his condescending delivery of practically everything) decides to lecture us all about gun control:

“Our current gun culture,” [sports writer Jason] Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”

“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?”

“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Video here.

Because you’re an idiot, Whitlock. And you too, Costas. Belcher was obviously suffering from some severe mental and emotional issues. Thinking that because he may not have had access to a gun he wouldn’t have killed his girlfriend and himself is wishful thinking at best, and plain stupidity at worst. Not to mention that handguns enhance people’s safety every freakin’ day.

It’s bad enough I tuned in to see how my second favorite football team (Eagles) was faring against “America’s Team” (Cowboys) last evening. I certainly didn’t need this sanctimonious garbage on a football game yet again. It’s one thing for Costas to say “Looks like the gun control debate may resurface” or something to that effect, but don’t f’in lecture me.

I’ll never be tuning into Sunday Night Football henceforth. Who needs it. I’ll just scope the constantly updating ESPN.com game schematics.

The Most Important Person In The World

“The most important person in the world to you is you, and you hardly even know you.”

 

That was the most evil, most vile, most satanic, most sadistic, most corruptive, most destructive jingle and ad campaign of the 1970s. It created tens of millions of narcissists nationwide. 50 million of them voted for the biggest narcissist ever to sit in the Oval Office in history. And they have succeeded in destroying this once great (and now crumbling) nation. And it is the fault of that ad campaign and that jingle and the radical Socialist education establishment.

J Jesus first.
O Others second.
Y Yourself last.

The only way to true joy in your life is to dedicate yourself to Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. Any other — all other — routes will lead to despair and an overwhelming feeling of neediness. You will not ever feel at peace until you exercise JOY.

And this nation will never recover from its narcissistic Socialist, nation-destroying agenda until enough people exercise JOY to counteract all the narcissists who voted for the world’s biggest narcissist (eclipsing Adolf Hitler himself).