Democrats vs. America

From: GemStatePatriot.com                  

I remember one of the late Johnny Carson’s best one-liners in 1964 when he said, “I heard a guy was just told that President Johnson declared War on Poverty today, so he went out and threw a hand grenade at a beggar.’ Of course, it cracked me up at the time, but America should realize today that there is nothing funny about the results of the ill-fated War on Poverty program. Since that time, we have spent over $22 TRILLION dollars on anti-poverty programs.

The Heritage Foundation reports, “Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completelyIn fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.

A REMINDER

America was not founded as a magic place where aid is abundant and stuff is free. America is about FREEDOM! Freedom to be resourceful and pursue whatever level of attainment you wish. If you wish to work at a job providing for a small secure home, a car, a wife, a child, a dog and a TV and do so, you are no less a success than the man who owns a business, with a mansion and much else than you. Success is about reaching your personal goal. Levels of success are irrelevant, success is success.

Failure is not a measure of character, it is a learning experience and the character comes in at capitalizing on what was learned and moving forward. The trade-offs for guarantees like minimum wages and job security conversely harm our system competitively, de-incentivize and like all subsidies must be paid for by others. The trade-off for all the socialist programs pushed by Big Gov is that our commerce and our remaining taxpayers who still have jobs are taking the hit.

THE DIMMS’ TODAY

The Democrat Party presently is exactly antithetical to the precepts of what America stands for as created by our founders. We are not the land of freebies, guarantees, open borders, sanctuary cities or Sharia Law. We are about limited government, personal responsibility, moral codes such as the biblical Ten Commandments and the rule of law. Because the Democrat Party has been winning, America has been losing. Thanks to President Trump that trend is starting to reverse and America is starting to win again. The Dimms are in utter shock, ‘Big League.’

The donkey party has for decades rolled on a social bent promising and delivering programs and outright free money that conversely has dealt much harm to American freedoms and our necessary healthy commerce. Most ‘government programs’ have contained a lot of fat, political chicanery and socialist nonsense which is dis-incentivizing and eroding the American spirit to strive upward.

The Democrat Party today is not reaching out to voters so much anymore. They truly are no longer the party of Zell Miller. It is being led by a dictum of raw, far-left anger that is exposing their roots of blatant socialism and even fascism. The new ‘progressive’ Democrat leaders are leaving behind some very good Americans who don’t want any part of their new extreme socialism. It is apparent that the Democrat leadership is so arrogant that they don’t care, since they are buying and training new young socialists for Obama’s ‘Organizing for America’ legions who are out raising hell in the streets, protesting everything worthwhile and recruiting new upstarts for the attractive pay of from $15 to $18 an hour plus expenses and transportation courtesy of George ‘Take Down America’ Soros.‘ It is truly a sad party when the best they have is purely obstructionist Chuck Shumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elijah Cummings, Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters.

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial ‘Another Hard-Left Turn Ends Democratic Party As We Know It’ states, “The party has been largely taken over by government worker unions and left-wing billionaires and their PACs, including the omnipresent self-described socialist George Soros and climate change extremist Tom Steyer.

“With thousands of foot soldiers trained and battle-hardened in the Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders for president movements, they are pushing the party to the hard left. The battle for the DNC is emblematic of what’s going on across the Democratic Party, both in Congress and in the states. Moderates are purged, conservative Democrats are nonexistent, and the party’s leaders seem intent on turning it into a party of hard socialism as quickly as possible.

“Obamacare, the failed national health care takeover that Americans despise? Today’s Democrats would go even further into failure with single payer, if they could.

“Dodd-Frank’s regulation heavy smothering of the financial markets? Democrats seem to think that businesses owe their existence to the government, and there’s nothing that ails Wall Street that sending a few CEOs and entrepreneurs to prison wouldn’t cure.

“In case you’re wondering why consumer and business confidence is soaring and the stock market is surging, it isn’t because people think Dodd-Frank is going to survive.

“Get the picture? This is where the Democrats are going. It’s important to note that Obama’s progressive legacy is really one of political defeat for the Democrats.’

SUBSIDIES & FEDERAL PROGRAMS – SOCIALISTS’ ‘DREAM’ TOOLS

Government subsidies are part of socialism and have been running amuck for such as corn, tobacco, wheat, milk, lamb meat, livestock assistance, windmills, solar, rural electrification loans and loan guarantees, rural telephone loans and loan guarantees, public television, state library programs, AMTRAK, General Motors labor, Asian elephant conservation, rhinoceros and tiger conservation, Wildlife Without Borders – Latin America, the Caribbean and Mexico and refugee and entrant assistance programs to name just a few. There are a total currently of 1607 funding programs from our federal government to be precise, totaling $1,974,042,215,000 (that is trillion dollars)! There have been only our surviving businesses and those of us still working to pay for it all. Hopefully, with the Trump Presidency, subsidies will begin decreasing and disappearing as well the number of government programs, agencies and departments.

In the ‘perfect world’ expounded on endlessly from utopian progressives who control the media, Hollywood and the sorry socialist education system, to which we’ve been subjugated, they are constantly demanding fairness, assistance, social justice and redistribution. They do not want you to acknowledge the trade-offs for all their purported goodness and freebies. As certain as Newton’s Law of Physics ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,’ the same can be said for the balance sheet for life in America. There is no something for nothing!

Socialism’s trade-off of course, being that we give up individual freedoms, (in young-speak – let us make that ‘opportunities’). That means when an employer is forced to pay higher minimum wages his balance sheet’s reaction is to either raise prices or cut back on staff. Nothing for nothing. A business must make a profit. So what good is a $15.00 minimum wage if it kills the golden goose?

Every program the government creates has a very simple basis for its existence, ‘It must be supported with money derived from our taxpaying pockets.’ Therefore, like the business owner who must decide to cut back overhead (lay off employees) or increase prices, which may run off business, America, cannot sustain the magnanimity of all these programs and subsidies that are killing our nation’s balance sheet forever. Government itself is killing us!

Socialismlike the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. –  ‘The Law’ by Frederic Bastiat:

It is a testament to our Capitalist system’s resiliency that we have endured as well as we have so far while rapidly backsliding under such erosive abuse. But this erosion will finish us for sure if unchecked as sure as ancient Rome went away. Socialism fails. Socialism just takes and produces nothing that can be taxed. Capitalism succeeds. Capitalism’s profits are the roots to all our taxes. Nothing else.

Lastly, from that Investor’s Business Daily editorial, “The Democrats’ lurch to the left is a tragedy for a once-great party. But for the Republicans, it is an enormous opportunity to craft a governing majority for years to come — unless, like the delusional Democrats, they blow it.”

WORDS TO REMEMBER

Excerpts from ‘Overview of America’, a 29-minute video which will open your eyes to exactly what America is about:

“The Constitution was created to govern the government, not the people, and not the states, each of which is a guardian of its own sovereignty.

“The Constitution, our firm foundation:

“It wasn’t what government did that made America great. It was what government was prevented from doing that made the difference.

“What set America apart from other lands was freedom for the individual. Freedom to work, to produce, to succeed and especially to keep the fruits of one’s labor.

“America became great precisely because the stifling effect of too much government had been prevented.

“However, freedom in America was not totally unrestrained, Americans overwhelmingly chose to limit their actions with moral codes such as the biblical Ten Commandments.

“Personal morality and limited government; it’s the combination that characterized America and made it the envy of the world.”

And lastly summing it all up is one of my favorite statements in the video: “The essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government” – Unquote from ‘Overview of America’

AHCA Failure: One Too Many ‘Lying’ Ryans & Way…

From: GemStatePatriot.com                  

If pictures are worth a thousand words, this one truly is. Our well-intentioned new President has a lot to discover about trustworthiness in Washington DC. He must learn that many poker face leaders, advisors, and appointees whom he wants to believe in as swearing to their allegiance and patriotism are actually either naive, deluded or outright lying to his face. He must vet them all constantly.

Take Paul Ryan, for instance, a guy that I have admired in the past and would like to believe in today, but the proof is that I cannot trust him and President Trump most certainly should not. Ryan is one of those ‘Republicans in name only’ (RINO) people we need to be very aware of. He and his supporters of this truly ‘ObamaCare Lite’ bill, formally called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), would most certainly not accomplish what President Trump proclaimed he was going to do during his campaign.

Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on Friday the 24th that the House GOP leadership “lied to the President,” about not being able to fully repeal ObamaCare through the budget reconciliation process in the Senate because of the so-called ‘Byrd rule.’ See: Byrd rule.

“It [AHCA] isn’t going to work. We’re told that the prices [of insurance premiums] will probably go up 75% or so but maybe in the third year they may come down 10%.”

It really does appear that President Trump bought into Speaker Ryan’s assurances that this is the way to go without the advantage of the time to personally vet Ryan’s bill which blatantly violates what he intended to see offered the American people in his many campaign appearances.

As Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ video ‘Fundamentally False’: Ted Cruz CRUSHES Paul Ryan’s Lies About Repealing ObamaCare, “If Republicans hold a big press conference and pat ourselves on the back that we’ve repealed ObamaCare and everyone’s premiums keep going up, people will be ready to tar and feather us in the streets, and quite rightly.”

JUST THE FACTS

As detective Joe Friday on the old Dragnet TV series used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

“Cruz further stated that Paul Ryan’s deceptive and dishonest claim that ObamaCare can only be repealed under three phases and said that the ‘repeal and replace’ bill known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA) only repeals two of the 12 free market-killing mandates of ObamaCare that have made insurance premiums unnecessarily skyrocket.

“He also made the case that anyone who believes in the so-called “three bucket solution” with all the goodies in step three is being suckered because it takes eight Democrats and now you can’t get eight Senate Democrats to agree on even saying the words “good morning.”

I quoted Rand Paul’s complete comments on his four primary areas of contention in my last article: “Rand Paul’s Patriots vs. RyanCare’s (ObamaCare Lite), ‘Repeal and Replace’

Here is the crux of those comments of Rand Paul’s:

  1. “I think the reason why the House leadership bill is ObamaCare Lite is because it retains subsidies. ObamaCare had subsidies for people to buy insurance. In the Paul Ryan bill, they keep the subsidies — they just call them refundable tax credits.
  2. “The second thing that Paul Ryan’s ObamaCare Lite bill does is they keep the ObamaCare taxes — all of them — for a year. And then after a year, they keep the Cadillac Tax forever. That’s the tax on if you have really good insurance, Obamacare taxes that. So will Paul Ryan’s plan.
  3. The third thing they do that is ObamaCare-like is they keep the individual mandate. It seems like every Republican says they were against the individual mandate. That’s if you didn’t buy insurance you had to pay a penalty to the government, a tax. ObamaCare Lite, Paul Ryan’s plan, just changes it so you have to pay a penalty to the insurance companies.
  4. Then the fourth thing they do is they actually subsidize the insurance companies. Right now, insurance companies are losing money and ObamaCare has this rescue thing called ‘risk corridors’ to bail out the insurance companies. Paul Ryan has got the same thing, he just calls it reinsurance and its $100 million worth. I predict that might not even be enough.

Where tort reform has been mentioned as necessary to markedly help bring down out of control medical costs there has been nothing concrete specified in Ryan’s bill that deals with it, just cursory acknowledgments about something addressing it ‘down the road,’ so to speak. Imagine the strength of the lobbying effort pressures from the legal profession, and how cowering GOP leadership has been to similar pressures during the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) fight from the consortium of big business special interests spearheaded by the National Chamber of Commerce. Ryan capitulated completely.

REVEALING CRITICISM ABOUNDS

Senator Rand Paul speaking at the FreedomWorks rally against the health care bill said that the reason why a clean ObamaCare repeal bill has not been offered is that leaders in Congress, apparently referring to RINO Speaker Paul Ryan and his RINO henchmen are “weak-kneed.”

“The problem is this, though, the leadership in the House is weak-kneed,” a fired-up Senator Paul told 700 conservative grassroots activists at the FreedomWorks “Day of Action” in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “And they are afraid to lead with freedom and capitalism so they’re giving you something that’s half as much as ObamaCare but doesn’t fix the problem,” he announced.

Sarah Palin blasted the health care proposal in an interview on Breitbart News Radio, calling the bill “RINO-care,” meaning, “Republican in name only.”

“Remember,” she said, “this is government-controlled health care, the system that requires enrollment in an unaffordable, unsustainable, unwanted, unconstitutional continuation of government-run medicine, and even in this new quasi-reformed proposal, there is still an aspect of socialism.”

The Blaze reported that she later said that Trump will have to “step in and fix it.” She added, “I have great faith that President Trump is one who will fulfill campaign promises.”

Interestingly, FOX Business reported that Trump’s senior adviser, Steve Bannon, has been telling people that if the bill fails, Ryan should be replaced as Speaker of the House. One name Bannon has allegedly floated as a potential replacement is Freedom Caucus chief Mark Meadows (R-NC).

“Steve is telling people if this thing fails Ryan should go,” said one GOP insider. “And he has said Meadows could be the guy.”

Fox Business also reports that, “Other ObamaCare leftovers, sticking around, include that the bill does not immediately repeal all of the taxes originally included in ObamaCare. The revised health care bill keeps the ObamaCare provision for allowing people to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26 and insurance companies cannot deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions.”

So therefore, with the preexisting conditions feature included, it could be said that “Why would anybody want to buy insurance when you can just wait until you need it and buy it under this preexisting rule?” This could become the death knell for the insurance industry. Because the insurance industry is not unlike all other businesses. You see the sole purpose of a business is to make a profit. Doing something worthwhile and lasting is the means and a wonderful thing.

There is all too much being said about insuring all Americans. I guess we could house all Americans, feed all Americans, and guarantee all Americans an income, just like Sol Alinsky’s socialists would have things. In a truly free society it is up to an individual rather if he wants to insure himself and to what extent. For many young people, prudent coverage would most sensibly lie in the major medical arena since it features catastrophic coverage with very low premiums. Seniors on the other hand sure don’t need maternity and coverage for children up to the age of 26.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CONTROL

It is not up to the federal government to even be talking about insurance in the first place since it is not constitutionally enumerated as one of its powers. The best thing that can possibly happen to the state of insurance in the United States is for the Fed’s to get as far away from any involvement in it as possible. The Fed’s run absolutely nothing efficiently and truth be known, the root motive for their involvement is that it provides them a control mechanism over the people. It is purported to be that the 1st Rule in ‘Saul Alinsky”s Doctrine: 8 steps to topple a nation and create a socialist state’ is: 1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people.

The government shouldn’t be subsidizing anything, the free marketplace is the best answer to most that concerns patriotic Americans who understand what our freedoms can reap. One of my favorite people I enjoy quoting is former Treasurer Secretary to Presidents Nixon and Ford, William E. Simon from his book ‘A Time for Truth,’ where he said, “Most things work best that work most simply.” And most simply, insurance would work best if the states allow all insurance companies to compete everywhere and just monitor them for validation of their practices with contract law.

Republicans that don’t understand that the Federal Government doesn’t have the enumerated power to deal with insurance in the first place, are the same Republicans, like all Congressmen, that swore an oath to uphold our Constitution, and that should mean that they understand what that Constitution states. Those that are not following that oath are called RINO’s. We have far too many RINO’s today and they all need replacing at the polls ASAP. Too many RINO’s are being taken in by talented $PECIAL INTERE$T LOBBYI$T$ and the very deceitful influencers of the ‘Establishment’ aka the Council on Foreign Relations.

WHAT WE MUST DO!

There’s a very simple way of identifying which elected representatives need replacing in our Idaho statehouse and in Congress in Washington. You study The Freedom Indexes for both bodies which show exactly how they vote with criteria in keeping with Federal and State Constitutions and then cull the bad ones at the voting box. Here in Idaho, the 2017 IdahoFreedom Index is at IdahoFreedomIndex.com published by ‘The Idaho Freedom Foundation.’ Since the legislature is currently in session, go over on the right side of the page and click on 2016 to see the most recent index completed.

For the U.S. Congress see The Freedom Index at The New American.com/freedom-index “A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution” rates congressmen based on their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. In this fourth and final 6 month session of the 114th Congress just completed, abysmally our congressmen and senators in Washington, D.C. voted with the Constitution 34% of the time. So there you see now why we are where we are.

Don’t count on a thing politicians say, only believe what you see and judge them on how they vote! Then do your part in draining the swamp by culling them at the ballot box and replace them with Constitutional following patriots that understand the importance of upholding the oaths they swear to when they are elected.

Thank God for the House Conservative Freedom Caucus of which we are proud to proclaim that our very own Congressman Raul Labrador is a devout member. See: Membership Roster of House Freedom Caucus

Also see: ‘Conservatives Angry That Trump Healthcare Bill Could Cover Illegals’

‘Don’t Blame the Freedom Caucus’

Rand Paul’s Patriots vs. RyanCare’s (ObamaCare Lite), ‘Repeal and…

From: GemStatePatriot.com                 

Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) and the House Freedom Caucus oppose replacing ObamaCare with another version involving too much government control and a new version of subsidies called tax credits, while Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and  Jeff Flake (R-AZ) have warned Republicans against moving too quickly and overreaching.

The main reason Rand Paul and his like-minded patriots should be and could be opposing the Paul Ryan promoted ‘Replacement’ program of ‘The Establishment’ is that it is all about keeping the government’s controlling tentacles in place like a ‘Control the People Doctrine.’

States Rand Paul in his recent The New American article, “I think the reason why the House leadership bill is Obamacare Lite is because it retains subsidies. Obamacare had subsidies for people to buy insurance. In the Paul Ryan bill, they keep the subsidies — they just call them refundable tax credits. Some people are predicting that it’s actually going to be more expensive than the subsidies we have under Obamacare. This isn’t you getting your own money back, this is you getting somebody else’s money. So, a family that makes $30,000 a year could actually get $14,000 that they didn’t pay. Let’s say they paid zero in income tax, they could get $14,000 back. One, we don’t have the money — it’s a new entitlement program and two, if you get $14,000 back do you think the insurance company is ever going to sell insurance for less than $14,000? That becomes the floor. So, it actually pushes insurance rates up — it doesn’t allow insurance rates to fall. So, that doesn’t allow insurance rates to fall and it sets up a new entitlement.

“The second thing that Paul Ryan’s Obamacare Lite bill does is they keep the Obamacare taxes — all of them — for a year. And then after a year, they keep the Cadillac Tax forever. That’s the tax on if you have really good insurance, Obamacare taxes that. So will Paul Ryan’s plan.

“The third thing they do that is Obamacare-like is they keep the individual mandate. It seems like every Republican says they were against the individual mandate. That’s if you didn’t buy insurance you had to pay a penalty to the government, a tax. Obamacare Lite, Paul Ryan’s plan, just changes it so you have to pay a penalty to the insurance companies. I consider that to still be a mandate that isn’t consistent with those of us who want less government involvement. So they keep the subsidies, they keep the taxes, and then they keep the mandate.

“Then the fourth thing they do is they actually subsidize the insurance companies. Right now, insurance companies are losing money and Obamacare has this rescue thing called ‘risk corridors’ to bail out the insurance companies. Paul Ryan has got the same thing, he just calls it reinsurance and it’s $100 million worth. I predict that might not even be enough. So I don’t like any of it. Now, I do think we agree as Republicans on repeal. But I don’t think we agree on the replacement. That’s why I say we should separate them, vote on repeal and then vote the same day on a separate bill that’s called replace.”

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie of the 40 member House Freedom Caucus described the GOP plan introduced by Ryan called the American Health Care Act as a ‘stinking pile of garbage.’ “I think the [American Healthcare Act] was written by the same people that wrote Obamacare,” Massie told the Washington Examiner. “That’s why it looks so similar. It was the insurance lobby.” The Freedom Caucus is committed to “open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans.” Go to the above New American link to see Rand Paul’s plan.

I admired how Paul Ryan came up and have especially admired his work ethic, his sleeping in his office, exercise regime, driving home to Wisconsin on three day weekends while dedicating himself to serious work. But somewhere along the way, maybe by osmosis in the swamp he has become very obviously influenced by handlers of the Establishment or/and LOBBYI$T. He appears to have lost touch with his oath to our Constitution and how our system could work well if only we followed it instead of these influencers.

‘The Establishment’ aka The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), ‘the Mothership,’ as Hillary Clinton glowingly referred to them, expressed appreciation for their opening of their new offices in D.C. so she wouldn’t have to travel to New York for her marching orders. The CFR is dedicated to controlling all matters political in our government. See: ‘Who the Establishment Really Is‘ to understand just how fervently serious they are about clandestinely taking down America ‘in their own words.’ See also: Hillary Clinton admits Council on Foreign Relations controls Washington

Remember, the States created the Federal Government with clearly specified enumerated powers which it has for decades increasingly overreached. If accountability ruled like it should, such as businesses must be run accountably or they go out of business, the USA would have been gone a long time ago. Wouldn’t it be nice if businesses, could make their own rules, forgive their own errors with no recourse, and especially nice if they could print their own money and borrow into infinity. The Federal Government can’t even run a simple agency that delivers the mail without an annual $18 billion subsidy.

America is about Freedom not guarantees, subsidies or freebies of any kind and it certainly shouldn’t be subsidizing or giving tax credits for healthcare. Nothing is free. Someone always has to pay. Taxpayers get the bill for everything the government does and gives away. ObamaCare was obviously designed to fail so that eventually a song and dance explanation about how it is irreparably flawed would surface, along with the announcement that the simplest ‘fix’ is for the government to just provide everything like the sorry Canadian healthcare system. Single pay if you will and higher taxes. If Paul Ryan’s plan becomes law and is known as ‘RyanCare’ or ‘ObamaCare Lite’ or maybe even ‘DonaldCare’ President Trump and the Grand Old Party will shoulder all the blame and own the wrath of Americans for a poorly run system when the system evolves as it no doubt will ‘by design’ just like the establishment has intended all along. Saul Alinsky will dance in hell because this really is all about controlling the people.

If the government can’t be gotten out of healthcare immediately we should be hearing about a timetable to effectively wean it out accountably in a reasonable time frame. Too big a rush can be disastrous taking the time to do it right only hurts the democrats that will continue seeing the results of ObamaCare embarrassingly dissolving before their eyes.

There is much, much more which is wrong with ‘replacing’ ObamaCare. See the last four articles in Gem State Patriot that deal with the topic: 1. ‘Get Government out of Healthcare and ‘Put the People Back in Charge,’ 2. ‘GOP replaces ObamaCare with SwampCare,’ 3. ‘Healthcare Starts with the Individual, not in the Legislature,’ and 4. ‘Repeal, Don’t Replace ObamaCare.’

As Joe Wolverton, II, JD, said in this above article about Rand Paul, “True conservatives have just one thing on their wish list: for the federal beast to be forced (by the states and the people) back inside its constitutional cage and to leave healthcare — and thousands of other federally funded programs — to the legitimate control of the marketplace.”

“Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of ‘entitlement’ programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the ‘entitlement’ mentality and all the social problems that go with it.” – Thomas Sowell, ‘Barbarians Inside the Gates’