New York Post, April 20, 2023 Anti-work, pro-welfare Democrats are in a food-stamp fury over attempts to cut costs By James Bovard “Cutting SNAP will lead to homelessness, incarceration and death for 38 million Americans,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/Yonkers) howled Monday. Bowman is enraged by a House Republican proposal to encourage some food-stamp recipients to […]
Tag Archives | handouts
College Graduates Are the New Favored Class of Democratic Largesse
Libertarian Institute, November 28, 2022 College Graduates Are the New Favored Class of Democratic Largesse by Jim Bovard When Americans make lists of the persecuted, downtrodden groups in our society, college graduates rarely top the ranking. But President Joe Biden is offering one bribe after another to convert college graduates into perpetual dependents of the […]
Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?
American Institute for Economic Research, May 26, 2021 Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? James Bovard “It’s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,” Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America […]
“Freedom from Want” is Slavery for All
The Mises Institute reposted a 1999 article I wrote for Sheldon Richman at The Freeman on how government handouts can subvert freedom. That piece was adapted from my book, Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Individual (St. Martin’s Press). Looking back on this 20 years later, I am […]
My “Wrecking Ball Benevolence” in Federal Appeals Court Decision
“Wrecking Ball Benevolence” describes a lot of things that federal agencies do. I used that phrase in a 2004 Barron’s article (happily, editor Tom Donlan did not consider the phrase overwrought) and in the Bush Betrayal to capture how federal housing policy was disrupting markets and paving the way to a collapse in housing values. […]
How Dependency Destroys Democracy – Mises Institute
From the new issue of the Mises Institute The Austrian newsletter Jan. 2016- How Government Buys Your Support by James Bovard In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military officers routinely handed bundles of cash to local residents to buy influence and undermine resistance to the American occupation. Such payments came in especially handy after US troops […]
