We’re not in immediate danger of hitting the tipping point, but the trends are not good.

An already overpaid bureaucrat runs up a big bill for taxpayers.

A simple reform to help both low-income Americans and taxpayers.

I believe in free markets and small government, and I’m also against Washington corruption. Which is why I want to abolish the Department of Agriculture. And I suspect all sensible people will agree after reading excerpts from these three articles. We’ll start with Damon Cline, who produced a searing indictment of farm welfare for the Augusta Chronicle. Alexis de Tocqueville posited […]

Back in 2010, I put together a “Moocher Index” as a rough measure of which states had the highest levels of welfare dependency after adjusting for poverty rates. My goal was to answer this question. Is there a greater willingness to sign up for income redistribution programs, all other things being equal, from one state […]

The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories I’ve shared include: Using food stamps to buy luxury coffee at Starbucks. Buying steaks and lobster with food stamps. The Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp recipients. Proposals to make it […]

Remember Julia, the mythical moocher created by the Obama campaign to show the joys of government dependency? As illustrated by this Ramirez cartoon, Julia symbolizes the entitlement mentality. Unfortunately, there are many real-life Julias. I wrote a couple of years ago about Olga, a Greek woman who petulantly believed that government was responsible for her […]

In their never-ending efforts to buy votes with other people’s money (see the first cartoon in this post), politicians have been expanding the welfare state and creating more dependency. This is bad for the overall economy because it means a larger burden of government spending and it’s bad for poor people because it undermines their […]

In past posts, I’ve groused about food stamp abuse, including people using them to buy luxury coffee at Starbucks and to purchase steaks and lobster. I’ve complained about college kids scamming the program, the “Octo-Mom” mooching off the program, and the Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp recipients. Well, the Obama White House is doubling […]

I’ve written a couple of times about the Food Stamp program, citing ridiculous examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. These include: Using food stamps to buy luxury coffee at Starbucks. Buying steaks and lobster with food stamps. The Obama Administration rewarding states that sign up more food stamp recipients. Proposals to make it easier to […]