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Barack Obama: the ‘food-stamp president’?
“We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food stamp president in American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.”
— Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Dec. 6, 2011, on CNBC
As speaker, Gingrich helped push through the signature welfare overhaul that then President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996. When Clinton, after two vetoes, agreed to accept the legislation, he shrewdly noted that he was eliminating the welfare system forever more as a campaign issue.
Read full article >>Glenn Kessler
Report details theft, fraud committed by postal workers
The overwhelming majority of the U.S. Postal Service’s 574,000 employees show up for work and deliver and sort mail without a problem — and some get recognized for outstanding work, including even helping to save lives.
But there are bad actors everywhere, and according to a new watchdog report, dozens of postal workers steal mail, burn it, hoard it or claim thousands of dollars in fraudulent workers’ compensation claims.
Read full article >>Ed O'Keefe
Obama’s Kansas speech: some suspect facts
“I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century.”
-- President Obama, Dec. 6, 2011
Read full article >>Glenn Kessler
Chile Indicts Ex-U.S. Officer in 1973 Killings
Clash Between NATO and Pakistani Forces Defused
States face bleak economic forecast, report says
States are caught in a fiscal vise as weak economic growth, dwindling federal help and increasing appeals from hard-pressed local governments squeeze their budgets.
Things have improved since the worst of the recession, but states still face a dire fiscal situation, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO).
Read full article >>Michael A. Fletcher17135018592050707580
Despite earmark ban, lawmakers try to give money to hundreds of pet projects
Members of the House and the Senate attempted to pack hundreds of special spending provisions into at least 10 bills in the summer and fall, less than a year after congressional leaders declared a moratorium on earmarks, congressional records show.
The moratorium, announced last November in the House and in February in the Senate, is a verbal commitment by the Republican leadership to prohibit lawmakers from directing federal funds to handpicked projects and groups in their districts. Lawmakers have tried to get around the moratorium by promising to allow other groups to compete for the funds. But the legislative language is so narrowly tailored that critics consider the practice to be earmarking by another name.
Read full article >>Kimberly Kindy
Editorial: Schools are overreacting to misbehaving students
ASTUDENT MISBEHAVES and gets sent to the principal and then home. It’s a scenario that gets played out in countless classrooms every day; so commonplace is the practice that it’s generally seen as no big deal. But as a new report on school discipline in Virginia makes clear, the effects of lost school time can be devastating and — contrary to conventional thinking — do little to improve student behavior or make schools safer.
Read full article >>Editorial