A Photo of The Pinnacle of Arrogance!

This is the man many so-called "Americans" want to see as President... AGAIN!

If this almost ever-present look of Mussolini-like arrogance is not enough to dissuade the 47% of our country that depend on him for their freebies, then nothing will.

It's difficult to believe that almost half the people living in the USA - not all of whom are Americans - are willing to destroy our once-great nation to insure they continue to get their own personal version of the infamous "30 pieces of silver". But... they ARE!

There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime." Our government is giving fish out on a daily basis - why would anyone be motivated to learning to fish, when they can take the proverbial fish from those who "fish" in the workplace?

The government has been passing out fish to those who choose not to learn the art of fishing, for decades. It began as a purely altruistic exercise in 1972, when the Social Security Amendments of 1972 established the Supplementary Security Income (SSI) program. This federally administered welfare program was undertaken to replace the state/federal programs of "aid for the aged, blind and disabled" populations, many of whom were undoubtedly in need of financial assistance. This new federal public assistance program removed the limitations of "aged, blind and disabled" - loopholes the size of the Grand Canyon were discovered by those unmotivated to support themselves, and the program was corrupted beyond belief. Generations of families turned welfare into the family business, milking the working taxpayers for all that they could get with virtually NO restrictions or requirements.
Then, on August 22, 1996, President William J. Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, ending welfare as it had been known until that time, and introducing Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). The law tied welfare to work requirements - as it should have done all along - placing time limits on public assistance, and turned over benefits allocations to the states. The core concept of welfare reform was that recipients would be required to work, prepare for work, or at least look for a job as a condition of receiving aid.
In July of 2012 the Department of Health and Human Services announced the agency will issue waivers for the federal work requirement of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program - considered a central facet of welfare reform in 1996

As of several years ago, the details of these work requirements turned out to matter less than the general signal they sent, that no-strings welfare was over and even low-income single moms were supposed to work. As a result, the welfare rolls shrank so rapidly (roughly by half) that many states never faced the detailed work requirements (since they got credit for everyone who left welfare).

Am I the only one to notice the Grand Coincidence of the Obama administration eliminating the work requirement for welfare during an election year?

Health and Human Service’s rationale is not the recession, but the alleged need to find “new more effective ways to meet the goals of [the reformed welfare program], particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment.” In short, job prep, counseling and training. That’s how HHS would loosen the statutory work requirements–by allowing “an extended training period for those pursuing a credential,” or “multi-year career pathways” or something ominously called “a comprehensive universal engagement system” (a system with which I am unfamiliar, but which definitely sounds like stay-on-the-dole-while-we-keep-you-busy-with-anything-other-than-actual-work system).

As a political gambit, this position just doesn't compute. Requiring that welfare recipients work is a political winner–proven, again and again. Welfare horror stories helped elect Ronald Reagan. A promise to “end welfare as we know it” elected President Clinton–every time Clinton got into trouble he’d just start running welfare reform ads.  And in 2008, Barack Obama didn’t dare suggest that he wanted to do what he has done today. Obama’s given his opponents a huge opportunity to raise the “welfare” issue, to associate him with the unpopular idea of subsidizing women who have children they can’t support, usually out of wedlock–even giving them free community college training that hard-working people who don’t go on welfare can’t get! The GOP doesn’t even have to move their heads into the 21st century by calling Obama the “food stamp President.” They can dust off their attacks on the old, hated AFDC program–the welfare part of the welfare state.
What’s the payoff for Obama ? When he took executive action to effectively impose the DREAM law that Congress wouldn’t pass, he was trying to mobilize a large, reliably Democratic constituency–Latinos. Cynical? Maybe... but rational. What does he get for this move, in exchange for possibly getting hammered by the Republicans (and by some endangered Democrats)? Who supports it? Well, community colleges surely support it–they’re a powerful lobby, and they’ll get lots of subsidized students-on-welfare. Unions support it–they want public aid recipients to stay on the dole, or in training, lest they join the work force and compete for jobs. They especially don’t want them performing public “workfare” tasks that well-compensated, pensioned Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) workers might be performing.
But it doesn’t add up. The downside seems to emphatically outweigh the upside. There just aren’t a lot of voters–even union voters–fuming about the work requirements in the 1996 reform law. That’s why I suspect this wasn’t another Axelrod Special, but rather the action of committed anti-reform activists in HHS, who realized that this was their last best opportunity to undo those parts of the 1996 reform that they opposed in 1996. If they waited until closer to the election, it would be more likely to be noticed and attacked. If they waited until after the election–well, they might not win the election.
 Obama could turn the HHS rule into a big political plus if he dramatically ordered Secretary Sebelius to withdraw it, saying he wanted to encourage people to work, not go on the dole. But that’s not his style.
People - particularly people who get something for no expenditure of personal time or effort - tend to be quite selfish. It's not "love" that "makes the world go 'round" - it's greed! And in this particular case, it's not just "going 'round"... it circling the drain!