HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): US Foodstamp Usage Rises To New Record High.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

ELECTION 2012: An Army Of Davids vs. . . An Army of Peggy Josephs?

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

Related: Where Do “Obama Phones” Come From?

A STATE-BY-STATE GUIDE to EBT fraud and abuse.

Like the song says, they’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? US Poverty on Track to Rise to Highest Since 1960s.

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature: They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .

MONEY POLITICS: “American liberals find high incomes more upsetting than poverty.” They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .

With, ahem, certain exceptions.

MICHAEL WALSH: What’s Really Behind The Debt Fight. “The debt-ceiling cage match is the culmination of the Democrats’ 75-year-long fight to establish a voting bloc of dependents under the false flags of ‘compassion’ and ‘social justice.’ It’s sapped our strength, created a welfare mentality and, if unchecked, will reduce us to a nation of aging, resentful beggars with eyes cast permanently toward Washington.”

Like the song says, They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

GOOD GRIEF: Pelosi: Health-Care Reform Will Finally Allow Artists to Focus on Being Unemployed, Comfortably. Translation: They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: The Sad Tale of Juan Diego Castro: How the federal government turns givers into takers. Like the song says: They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

THE WHITE HOUSE ENCOURAGES SANTELLI, ON PURPOSE: “They’d rather the opposition be identified with Santelli and stock brokers than with, say, a Joe the Plumber type.”

Related item: “My husband and I always discuss, ‘Why do we try to better ourselves, when it seems if you do nothing, you get all the help in the world?’”

Like the song says, they’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

UPDATE: C.J. Burch isn’t buying the White House strategy: “It was a stupid attack all the same, and will look more stupid next week as their plans for the bank bail out become more obvious. Not even a press as supine as this one can allow itself to become the president’s red headed step child.” I dunno, I’m expecting heavy orders for henna . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Frank Hosford notes Obama’s thin skin: “The Obama White House started with Hannity, then Rush, & now CNBC?? I’m confused: I thought we had freedom of the press?”

MORE: Reader Kyle Lagrois isn’t buying the White House take (via Ambinder, above) either:

Have you ever noticed Marc Ambinder is the reliable, go-to guy to give a reasonable or political explanation AFTER Obama does something that may look like a screw-up? . . .

Today, Gibbs called out a reporter in a very unseemly way, and Ambinder wants to paint it as some sort of strategic genius.

Keep an eye on it. He is- somehow- able to channel how Obama might want you to view what’s happened.

Meanwhile, Dan Riehl thinks that the White House isn’t upholding its dignity very well. “Although I might be concerned about any private info on file with the government were I Santelli. I think we’re seeing a WH that looks like it’s being run more like a Chicago Ward, than the house that most presidents lived in. This is about attacking everyone and everything that opposes you. In the end, it demeans the office and raises serious concerns as to whether these people can be trusted with the power they now have.”

Plus, Tom Elia wonders what, exactly, Gibbs brings to the table:

The most interesting thing about White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs response to CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s criticism of the Obama Administration’s anti-foreclosure plan was Gibb’s assertion that Santelli ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

Before joining CNBC, Santelli spent 20 years in the trading business, both on and off the trading floor.

Gibbs has spent his whole life in politics and apparently has no business experience, spending most of his professional career as a political spokesman.

To be fair, Gibbs has at least as much business experience as Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

MORE: The Anchoress emails:

Can anyone imagine Bush calling out Randi Rhodes, or his press sec mocking a member of the press?

Bush’s White House did not go after members of the press, or get defensive toward them. The press hated him, and his whole staff, but the admin never returned in kind.

Class tells.

Indeed it does.

THE STIMULUS BILL: Undermining welfare reform? “Specifically, it would apparently reward states that expand their welfare caseloads–even if the increase is only the product of loosened work requirements rather than a worsening local economy. . . . If a state somehow succeeds at placing would-be recipients in jobs, it’s out of luck under this provision. To get the extra federal money, it has to get more people on welfare.”

Like the song says, they’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: From Market Economy to Political Economy. Like the song says, “they’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE HOUSING BILL:

Instead of moving to put FM/FM into a more easily understood model–either nationalizing them, or privatising–they’re making the GSEs even weirder, and of course, piling on more debt.

It’s time for Congress to bite the bullet: nationalize them, or take them private. But keeping pet companies on a leash so that you can use them as a sort of housing market slush fund, while pretending that the liabilities you thereby create don’t really affect the government, is the kind of thing one expects to see in a banana republic, not a free and prosperous nation.

I sometimes think that our political class would prefer a banana republic, as they’d be able to steal more and lord it over the common folk to a greater extent. And then there’s the bill on oil speculation:

The first thing I think is that my liberal friends should stop saying their party is more credible on economic issues. Because this is even stupider than McCain’s doubling down on the gas tax holiday–and McCain’s gas tax mania is plenty stupid. At least McCain’s gas tax manipulations won’t actually do something except give a small amount of additional money to oil companies and loathesome governments. This monstrous bill, on the other hand, might actually do some damage.

As the song says, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

THOUGHTS ON RETIREMENT, FROM JERRY POURNELLE:

I discovered to my horror just how much the Feds tax retirement including Social Security! Having collected taxes for my lifetime — including to this day — on self-employment to pay into the Social Security account, they hand me a miserable pittance compared to what I would have got had I simply put the money into a money market account; then they tax part of it away.

Same with retirement accounts. They tax Roberta’s State Teacher’s Retirement income. They tax my TIAA retirement income from my academic years. Incidentally, a few years of TIAA/CREF generated a very sizable fraction of the income I get from Social Security from paying into that all my life. I have taken the “minimum distribution” option from TIAA, so I could get a lot more; my theory is that Mr. Heinlein was right, we writers are professional gamblers, and it’s well to have your house and car paid for and sock something away for a bad year, because you are likely to have one. Robert ran scared all his life.

Clearly the government wants us to spend ourselves broke and throw ourselves on welfare. Then they will stop fining us every year. They fine us for speeding, for spitting in the streets, for doing things they don’t want us to do: they also fine us for improving our property, investing money to grow the economy, saving money; the implications are pretty clear?

As the Rainmakers sang, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

HMM: There’s this: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.”

And there’s this: “The stock market was in meltdown today as nearly £60billion was wiped off London shares as fears of a US recession sparked a global sell-off.”

Coincidence, I’m sure.

UPDATE: “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Landless Americans Are The New Serf Class.

The share of homeownership has dropped most rapidly among the key shapers of the American future—millennials, immigrants, minorities. Since 2000, the home ownership among those under 45 has plunged 20 percent. In places like Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Indianapolis, and elsewhere, households with less than the median income qualify for a median-priced home with a 10 percent down payment, according to the National Association of Realtors. But in Seattle, Miami, and Denver, a household needs to make more than 120 percent of the median income to afford such median-priced house. In California, it’s even tougher: 140 percent in Los Angeles, 180 percent in San Diego, and over 190 percent in San Francisco.

Rents are rising as well. According to Zillow, for workers between the ages of 22 and 34, rent costs claim upwards of 45 percent of income in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Miami, compared to closer to 30 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

The basic reality: America’s new generation, particularly in some metros, increasingly seems destined to live as renters, without ever enjoying equity in property.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. Plus:

In many regions of the country, conscious government planning discourages single-family home construction, a policy often described oddly enough as “smart growth.” Advocates of this approach suggest that most people, particularly millennials, do not want single-family homes, and prefer to live chock-a-bloc in dense multi-family units.

This does not reflect reality. In survey after survey, an overwhelming majority of millennials, including renters, want a home of their own. A Fannie Mae survey of people under 40 found that nearly 80 percent of renters thought owning made more financial sense, a sentiment shared by an even larger number of owners (PDF). They cited such things as asset appreciation, control over the living environment, and a hedge against rent increases. Roughly four in five purchases made by people under 35 are for single-family detached homes (PDF).

The real problem is a growing gap between what people want and what they can afford. Jason Furman (PDF), the former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has warned that price escalations associated with strong housing regulation push many people “out of the market entirely.”

Meanwhile, if the Congressional GOP were smart (I know, I know) they’d amend the Fair Housing Act to pre-empt local zoning and environmental laws that limit the construction of new housing. For the benefit of the less fortunate.

WELL, YES: School choice is crucial for African-American students’ success.

Here’s what I need to say to them, to the people of this nation, to people of color — I am involved in the school choice movement because the future of my life and your life depends upon it. Starting the state’s first charter school was one of the most significant accomplishments of my life. Because of our willingness to look beyond traditional divisions and leave beyond our tendency to only work with those with whom we are comfortable, our children of color are closing the achievement gap. African-American students in charter schools are scoring 4% higher on reading tests than those in traditional public schools and Florida charter school students are more likely to attend college. Hispanic students do 12% better than their peers at traditional public schools. These are but two of the many indicators that point to increased success for students of color because their families were empowered to find schools that better met the needs of their children.

Far too many people and organizations, like the NAACP, refuse to acknowledge this. Their recent recommendations to curb charter schools, reduce their numbers and their independence, are wrong, and they expect falsely that all people of color should follow their lead because the color of your skin should dictate who you believe. I have worked a lifetime to change this misperception, to help people see that good policies for our kids do not have a color.

“They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

YOUR SCARY-ASS CHART OF THE DAY: How Obamacare Destroyed The Middle Class In One Chart.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

JOEL KOTKIN on why Blue cities are such cesspits of inequality.

There’s little argument that inequality, and the depressed prospects for the middle class, will be a dominant issue in this year’s election, and beyond. Yet the class divide is not monolithic in its nature, causes, or geography. To paraphrase George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some places are more unequal than others.

Housing represents a central, if not dominant, factor in the rise of inequality. Although the cost of food, fuel, electricity, and tax burdens vary, the largest variation tends to be in terms of housing prices. Even adjusted for income, the price differentials for houses in places like the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles are commonly two to three times as much as in most of the country, including the prosperous cities of Texas, the mid-south and the Intermountain West.

These housing differences also apply to rents, which follow the trajectory of home prices. In many markets, particularly along the coast, upwards of 40% of renters and new buyers spend close to half their income on housing. This has a particularly powerful impact on the poor, the working class, younger people, and middle class families, all of whom find their upward trajectory blocked by steadily rising housing costs.

In response to higher prices, many Americans, now including educated Millennials, are heading to parts of the country where housing is more affordable. Jobs too have been moving to such places, particularly in Texas, the southeast and the Intermountain West. As middle income people head for more affordable places, the high-priced coastal areas are becoming ever more sharply bifurcated, between a well-educated, older, and affluent population and a growing rank of people with little chance to ever buy a house or move solidly into the middle class.

Ironically, these divergences are taking place precisely in those places where political rhetoric over inequality is often most heated and strident. Progressive attempts, such as raising minimum wages, attempt to address the problem, but often other policies, notably strict land-use regulation, exacerbate inequality.

The other major divide is not so much between regions but within them. Even in expensive regions, middle class families tend to cluster in suburban and exurban areas, which are once again growing faster than areas closer to the core. Progressive policies in some states, such as Oregon and California, have been calculated to slow suburban growth and force density onto often unwilling communities. By shutting down the production of family-friendly housing, these areas are driving prices up and, to some extent, driving middle and working class people out of whole regions.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

SCOTT JOHNSON ON Venezuela’s New Forced-Labor Decree.

In his column “Socialism for the uninformed,” Thomas Sowell observed: “socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”

Sowell cited the slow-motion catastrophe in Venezuela as a case in point: “While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.”

All is proceeding as Sowell foretold. This week’s news brings the latest chapter in Venezuela’s descent. Andrew Pestano reports for UPI: “At the end of last week, Maduro signed a decree that would give Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power for Social Process of Work the ability to order any Venezuelan with the physical or technical capabilities to join a government effort to work in the agriculture sector for up to 120 days.” If you have a problem with that, they will help you get your mind right.

Pestano adds that “Venezuela’s farming association in June said only 25 percent of the country’s agricultural land is being used to farm.” Gee, why would that be?

Yeah, that’s some seriously bad luck.

Related: Don’t Be A Sucker For Socialism.

It is a common misconception that socialism is about helping poor people. Actually, what socialism does is create poor people, and keep them poor. And that’s not by accident.

Under capitalism, rich people become powerful. But under socialism, powerful people become rich. When you look at a socialist country like Venezuela, you find that the rulers are fabulously wealthy even as the ordinary citizenry deals with empty supermarket shelves and electricity rationing.

The daughter of Venezuela’s socialist ruler, Hugo Chavez, is the richest individual in Venezuela, worth billions of dollars, according to the Miami-based Diario Las América. In Cuba, Fidel Castro reportedly has lived — pretty much literally — like a king, even as his subjects dwelt in poverty. . . .

But poverty isn’t a byproduct of socialism: It’s a requirement, as illustrated by Cato Institute analyst Juan Carlos Hidalgo’s report concerning Venezuela:

A couple of years ago, the then minister of education admitted that the aim of the regime’s policies was “not to take the people out of poverty so they become middle class and then turn into escuálidos” (a derogatory term to denote opposition members). In other words, the government wanted grateful, dependent voters, not prosperous Venezuelans.

As the Rainmakers sang, back in the 1980s, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.” That’s socialism in a nutshell. The “equality” talk? That’s just for the suckers. Don’t be a sucker.

Well, don’t be.

QUOTE OF THE DAY “‘A couple of years ago, [socialist Venezuela’s] then-minister of education admitted that the aim of the regime’s policies was ‘not to take the people out of poverty so they become middle class and then turn into escuálidos’ (a derogatory term to denote opposition members). In other words, the government wanted grateful, dependent voters, not prosperous Venezuelans.’”

Or to put it another way, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .”

POINTS AND FIGURES: What’s Up With The Democrats In Illinois? “I hate to see the Democratic Party continually demonize Americans that are successful. What? Should we all be failures?”

Yes. They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .

THE REAL REASON THE LEFT HATES WORK: Liz Peek offers up a variety of actual, real-life, shovel-ready jobs just waiting for the otherwise-exhausted Obama administration to promote, and concludes:

Some on the right think this strategy is part of a grand plan. They see an increase in the number of Americans who are dependent on the federal government as beneficial to Democrats, who largely win the votes of those to whom they offer ever-higher benefits and welfare. I refuse to imagine that any such insidious thinking is behind the left’s refusal to embrace job creation.

I believe, instead, that it springs from a wide-spread lack of private sector experience. President Obama believes the government can right all wrongs – that’s the wellspring from which community activists derive their inspiration. It is a philosophy that has done great damage to this country in recent years – and we’re not out of the woods yet.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please, to coin an Insta-phrase.

ROGER SIMON: The Democrats’ War On Work. “You don’t have to be a Freudian to see the truth in the father of psychoanalysis’ oft-quoted pronouncement that ‘love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness,’ really the keys to our daily sanity. If you undermine our ability to work, to be gainfully and fully employed, you undermine our self-respect, virtually no matter what our occupation. . . . People on the dole are almost always a depressed lot, sometimes terminally.”

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

KYLE SMITH: Here’s Proof The Obama Administration Doesn’t Care Whether You Work Or Not.

Such thinking is consistent with the elite character of the Obama administration — some 40 percent of the president’s men and women hold Ivy League degrees, with more of them receiving degrees from Oxford than from any American public school. When they shrug off jobs as limitations, Obama and Co. have in mind their gifted and talented friends.

This is magical thinking. Most people are not entrepreneurs, geniuses or novelists. Most people don’t have big ideas. Most people get by and advance in small steps, not giant leaps. Jobs are the principal way people improve themselves, their lives and the lives of their families, and leave their children better off than they were.

The White House response to the CBO report is in direct opposition to its supposed stance on inequality and class mobility. More long-term unemployment, even the unemployment of people who leave the workforce willingly in order to “pursue their dreams,” in the Oprah Winfrey-style phrasing of Jay Carney, means more people stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

You say, “mired in squalor and dependency.” They say, “reliable Democratic voters.” They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.