Yes, millionaires can collect food stamps.

Food stamps are a welfare program which allegedly helps poor people eat, who otherwise can't afford food. Leroy Fick, however, while on food stamps was out buying lottery tickets.

Now you might wonder how it is that a man who can't afford his own food can afford to gamble. Apparently the Michigan welfare bureaucracy didn't wonder and didn't care. I have seen people in line buying groceries using their welfare cards. They carefully use the state funding to get bread and the like. Then they have a second pile of items including booze, cigarettes, trashy gossip newspapers and the like, for which they pay cash. I am sure there are people who wouldn't be able to eat but for food stamps, but there are a lot of welfare recipients who merely spend their own money on other things and then pretend they don't have enough for food.

But, you might say, at least if the guy wins the lottery he'll be off of welfare. Nope, that's not the case either. Fick actually won $2 million dollars a year ago. But he still gets welfare because lottery winnings are called a "liquid asset" and not income, and only income counts. The state of Michigan says Fick can continue collecting welfare no matter how many millions he has in the bank, provided his actual income is below a certain amount.

Fick isn't talking, but he does have a paid attorney who speaks on his behalf, who says Fick is within the law. The only statement from Fick was: "If you're going to try to make me feel bad, you're not going to do it." The man has no shame or decency.

Photo: That's Leroy the Parasite in the middle the night he won $2 million dollars.

Tax oppression and Sweden's dirty little secret

French economist Pierre Bassard has published an interesting study on “Tax Oppression and Individual Rights in the OECD.” The paper measures: “The tax oppression index is based on 18 representative criteria measuring fiscal attractiveness, public governance and financial privacy in the 30 member states of the OECD.”

Remember the study is limited to the 30 OECD members only, but it is interesting none-the-less. Within the OECD, Bressard says that the most oppressive states, in regards to taxation, with the most oppressive listed first, are as follows:

Italy
Turkey
Poland
Mexico
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium
Hungary
France
Greece

Don’t get too excited because the United States didn’t make the 10 most oppressive tax regimes in the OECD. The US tied for 11th place with that other, increasingly-totalitarian nation, the United Kingdom.

Who are the ten least tax oppressive nations within the OECD? Here are the ten least oppressive states. The least tax oppressive of the nations is Switzerland, followed by:

Luxembourg
Austria
Canada
Slovakia
Iceland
Ireland
New Zealand
Denmark
Korea

Consider the relative positioning of the United States to the so-called “third way” nations of Scandinavia. It has pretty much always been a myth that the Scandinavian nations are the most tax oppressive. It really depends on who you are there. Business itself is not so highly taxed, but individuals are. I shall explain why shortly. But the US ranks as more tax oppressive than Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

There is an assumption that the welfare states of Scandinavia were high-tax regimes which tried to redistribute wealth from rich businessmen to the average person. This is not the case at all. One a whole the Scandinavia systems are meant to be redistributive states. Nor are businessmen the targets. Business is relatively lightly taxed compared to many developed nations. It is that the earnings of businesses that the bureaucrats want to control but people.

The Swedish welfare state, in particular, was designed so that the average individual was highly taxed. There was even the well-known case of Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, of Pippi Longstocking fame, who discovered that her tax bill was 102% of her earnings. Consumers are highly taxed, while business itself, not so highly taxed.

The reason for this is simple. Taxation is a means of control. The object of control in the Swedish system is not business, they produce the golden egg after all. The object of control is the individual. The Swedish system doesn’t so much redistribute your wealth but confiscate it and return it to you provided you spend it in ways approved of by the political elite.

Consider how this system works. Say you are taxed $100 on earnings of $150. The state may now say that can have $20 back in education vouchers for your children, $30 in health “benefits” and so on. If you choose to spend in other ways you will not receive the money back. In essence the Swedish system was created to take control of the individual Swedish consumer, not redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. While some redistribution is inevitable that is not the reasons the system was created.

Swedish business is more lightly taxed because the government wants business to provide jobs for workers. Once the workers are employed the state can tax them and control their spending. Approved spending is subsidized with the tax money that consumers pay in, unapproved spending is not subsidized or may be heavily taxed. This system of coercive incentives is meant to regulate how people act.

While many in the world think that the “third way” of Sweden was a “socialistic” policy of helping the needy, the reality is closer to a “fascistic” policy of manipulating the consumers into behaving in ways that politicians want.

Of course this thug is subsidized by the state.

While the British government is waging war on the liberties and pocketbooks of the average Brit they are then using the stolen funds to prop up hate merchants and protect them from criticism. Perhaps because they need the threat of terrorism to excuse their power grabs.

In today's new I see that Islamist Anjem Choudary, above center, has called for the imposition of Sharia law in England and wants gay people stoned to death (something he has in common with Christianists like Gary North). At this press conference Choudary and other Islamic clerics threatened that Muslims in England will rise up and "you will be touched by the fire of hell."

When asked if he would condmen the deaths of innocent people Choudary said he would but "when we say 'innocent people' we mean Muslims. As far as non-Muslims are concerned, they have not accepted Islam. As far as we are concerned, that is a crime against God." The moment people start talking about crimes against God you know you are dealing with fanatical, dangerous, lunatics.

Knowing the European welfare state I immediately assumed that this walking piece of shit was so evil and abominable that he had to qualify for benefits. Sure enough press reports claim that he and his wife qualify for £25,000 ($36,000) per year in welfare benefits. Europe makes it easy to access welfare and hard to find jobs. This means the Islamists who have migrated to Europe are isolated from their surrounding culture. One way to prevent immigrants from assimilating is to make it hard for them to find work—a stupid policy the U.S. is now implementing. This isolation allows Islamic extremism to flourish and the welfare state funds it, often directly by giving funds to these thugs.

Mormon Polygamy: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Earlier this evening I met Flora Jessop. Jessop is the author of The Church of Lies about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Those are one of the polygamous sects that exist along the Utah-Arizona border. She was born into this polygamous sect and escaped when she was a teenager. Since then she has dedicated herself to fighting this cult and trying to help others, like her, escape from it. If you remember the raids in Texas on a Mormon sect compound recently, her cousin Merril runs that branch of the church. But in this sect it is hard not to have lots of cousins. She had 27 siblings in her family, three mothers and one father.

I went and read a few sites on Flora and what became apparent was the FLDS sect has spent a lot of time trying to smear her. There are sites all over the place purporting to tell the truth about her. I read some of them and noticed how they seemed to neglect to mention a conflict of interest. These “loving relatives” who had to expose the “lies” of Jessup were all still faithful members of the cult in question. So nothing they said is surprising. This is how cults work.

There were a few things that Jessup said which I found interesting. It is also clear that there are some areas where we differ significantly. She has bought into the entire agenda of the “abuse industry.” In her case I can understand it, but that doesn’t mean she is right on everything. There certainly were comments she made where red warning flags were flying in my head. But I won’t go into those disagreements here. Instead I prefer to concentrate on two areas that I found significant.

Flora discussed the problems that she faced in rescuing young girls from the polygamous communities. And it was clear that much of the time the opposition was coming from allegedly non-polygamous Mormons associated with the Salt Lake Church. Over the last couple of decades Flora has dealt with around 1,000 people involved with the polygamous sects. This means she has spoken with many women who got out of the sects after being married off to one of the old men in the community. (I say “old men” because the church intentionally runs the young men out so they are not competition to the old men who run the sect. It is no coincidence that Flora today has contact with 6 brothers who are out of the sect but all her sisters are still there.)

The differences, doctrinally, between the FLDS and the mainstream Mormons is not large. The fundamentalists still practice polygamy today. Mainstream Mormons have not abandoned their belief in polygamy but have suspended its practice officially. They still teach that the highest echelons of the kingdom are reserved exclusively for polygamists. And the mainstream Mormons will still “seal” numerous women to a man as his wives in the next life.

While Jessop acknowledges that many Mormons have helped her with her efforts, she also says that mainstream LDS members have been her biggest opponents as well. She says that many women, trying to leave the polygamous sects, have gone to LDS churches for help. Jessop says that in every case she knows about, the local Mormon bishop has told the women to return to the polygamous community and obey their husband. Mormons also believe that the practice of polygamy will be restored at some time in the future.

Even when the LDS sect gave up the practice, it did so in a very round about way. The then church president claimed that God gave him a revelation of what would happen if the practice weren’t abandoned. But this revelation was not so much a change in doctrine as a tactical decision by the Almighty. For decades, the church leadership continued to allow polygamy and practiced it. It is said that the first church president to have only one wife was President George Smith in 1945. And the polygamists who make up the FLDS church were only excommunicated in 1935—almost four decades after the church claims it gave up the practice.

While the alleged revision of the polygamy doctrine came in 1889 we find that Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather took his fifth wife in 1895. The LDS church had polygamous outposts in Mexico where Romney’s father, Gov. George Romney was born. The Romney family only returned to the US in 1912. Until 1904 the church did nothing to discourage polygamy. Only then did they start to excommunicate some members. But it wasn’t until the 1930s that they really got serious about the matter.

Certainly the Reed Smoot hearings in Congress had numerous top Mormon officials admitting that they still practiced polygamy: including President Joseph F. Smith and Apostle Francis Lyman, Apostle George Teasdale, Apostle John Taylor, and Apostle M. Cowley. Apostle Brigham Young Jr., continued to perform polygamous marriages after the alleged abandonment of the practice. And one LDS professor says that Apostle John Henry Smith told him: “Don’t you know that the Manifesto [abandoning polygamy] is only a trick to beat the devil at his own game.”

It does not surprise me that Mormons today still hanker for the polygamous practices of old. The alleged revelation that Smith announced, claimed to be good for all times. And key Mormon doctrines regarding becoming gods relied upon it. Brigham Young told the church members:

“The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who entering polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessing offered unto them, and they refused to accept them.” [Journal of Discourse, Vol 11, p. 269.]

Young said:

Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire.... Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers.... Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord's servants have always practiced it.

One of the things I mentioned to Jessop was how I was convinced that Mormon polygamy, for the most part, could not survive without the active help of government. Officially none of the multiple wives are legally married—they are single mothers eligible for all sorts of financial aid from the county, state and federal governments. When you consider that the median age in polygamous Mormon communities is around 12 or 13, you will understand precisely how many millions of dollars politicians are willing to give the sect “for the sake of the children.” Jessop agreed and said: "You can't support three kids these days by yourself, let alone 28." She confirmed that millions in taxpayer funds were flowing in to polygamous communities keeping them alive.

Jessop says that these communities have individuals whose job is to write up grant proposals and submit them to various levels of government. So housing rehabilitation grants, highway grants, educational grants, development grants, etc., pour into these communities. With virtually no separation of church and state in these communities, the church uses the millions showered on the local governments, for its own purposes. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said that the polygamists “proved themselves the master of grant applications.”

Millions of dollars per year flow into the polygamous sects in the form of welfare, benefits and government grants. For instance, the Colorado City airport, used mainly by the church’s prophet (when he wasn’t in prison) was built with $2.8 million in federal pork.

The moronic authoritarians at Homeland Security gave Colorado City the third largest grant for the state of Arizona, a total of $350,000. If you check out a map and look where Colorado City is you will see that it not ever going to be a target for terrorism and is of zero strategic value to the country. Al Herron, of the Prescott Daily Courier, reported in 2003 that “most of the medical insurance of residents of Colorado City” was provided by the state, costing “about $8 million a year.” As of 2003, half the residents were receiving food stamps worth another $3 million per year for those on the Arizona side of the border alone. In 2002 he said 200 residents were getting “child care assistance” worth $600,000.

Herron says that the state of Utah looked at just one polygamous family from 1989 to 1999 and found that during that period they received $647,000 in benefits. They estimated the total benefits giving to this one family to have exceeded $1 million in all years.

Herron found that the federal government had recently given the community $2 million to pave streets, improve the fire department and upgrade the water system. And tens of millions have come in for the FLDS controlled “public” school system.

More recent data indicates that the taxpayer subsidies for polygamists continue. On January 4, 2009, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Carolyn Jessop, who left her husband Merril, said the sect practiced a doctrine they call “bleeding the beast” which “included applying for ‘every possible type of government assistance that is available.’” Author Stephen Singular, who wrote about the sect, is quoted as saying that Colorado City residents received “eight times the welfare assistance of comparably sized towns in the area.” Some of the benefits outlined were:

• 126 children in two polygamous communities who qualified for “KidsCare”.
• 3,416 who received some form of Medicaid
• In Hildale, another polygamous community, 131 were receiving benefits for newborns and other children’s health benefits covered 324 more children.
• Forty-four percent of Colorado City residents received food stamps, worth $1.5 million between 2006 and 2007.
• The average monthly benefit in Hildale was $829, the average benefit for the rest of the county was $250.

When asked, the sect members say they are taught to be self-sufficient. In fact, one FLDS radio station has preached that message. The host who made these claims was himself a recipient of government benefits and the station was funded with government grants.

Government officials, however, play semantics when it comes to taxpayer funding of polygamy. They will tell the public that there is no “fraud” involved because all the cases “qualify” for the aid. If polygamy increases poverty, and I believe it does, and if polygamy is a voluntary decision made the polygamist, then why should the taxpayers be funding this sect? I have little doubts the people qualify for the benefits they receive—the question is whether they should. Without government assistance, I believe these polygamous communities would collapse under their own dysfunctional lifestyles.

Photos: 1) Merril Jessop, Flora's cousin, with his worshipful wives. 2) FLDS "prophet" Warren Jeffs with his 12-year-old wife, one perhaps 70 wives.

Somewhere in the middle there is a rational approach.

There is a strong case to be made that young adolescents ought not to be having sex. That said, is adolescent sexuality one of those areas where “oughts” should not be the concern of the state. It is one thing to say that teens ought not have sex and another to treat them like dangerous felons, including jail time, for doing so.

England seems obsessed with the case of Chantelle Steadman, 15, and Alfie Patten, 13. These two moronic teens have been having sex rather regularly. Apparently it began when the boy was 12 (perhaps earlier). Chantelle gave birth to a child allegedly conceived when the boy was 12.

In what appears to be a soap opera for the trailer trash crowd two other teenaged boys have claimed that they too could be the fathers imply that Chantelle has been something of an easy mark. My suspicion, when I heard the story, was that we were dealing with England’s perpetual underclass -- the dysfunctional, criminally prone, terminally dumb who live off the taxpayers and milk the system every chance they get.

One thing people refuse to acknowledge is that the underclass don’t mind teenage pregnancy very much. It can be lucrative. They use pregnant teens as another means of securing income for the family -- income often spend on booze, gambling and drugs. Each new birth means another check from various welfare agencies. The money, I might add, is rarely dedicated wholly to the infant. It pays for the mother’s recreation, the grandparents recreation, etc. It goes into the party fund.

Patten is horrified demanding the right to take a DNA test to prove he is the father. And, then another four boys appeared saying they might be the fathers. One of the boys said: “To be honest, any one of my mates could be the dad” All in all it implies Chantelle was a slut.

Considering how most teenage boys flee at the first sign of pregnancy what is going on? One clue is that Patten’s parents have the whole situation being handled by a “publicist”. Trash publications like “News of the World” have exclusive reports which imply to me that they paid for them.

Chantelle is protesting that she loves Alfie and “I lost my virginity to him.” Whether she did or not does not limit the number of sexual partners after that fact. But she insists there was no one else.

Chantelle’s mother, Penny Steadman, apparently allowed the boy to spend the night in the same bed with her daughter and then expressed shock that they were having sex. Her defense, indicating that stupidity runs in the family, was that she asked the teens if they were having sex and they said no: “We had no reason not to believe them.” No reason! Other than that they are horny teenagers. Let us hope the infant doesn’t inherit her intelligence from the maternal side of the family.

Another boy, Tyler Baker, 14, says “It was routine for boys to stay over with Chantelle in her bed. But I only slept with her the once.” Richard Goodsell, 16, says he also spent the night with Chantelle with the consent of her parents and that they didn’t use contraception.

The local priest chimed in with additional stupid comments. “Whatever their ages, I say well done for bringing the child into the world,” said Father Seamus. No worries says the good reverend: “I expect social services will help and I would hope that they have got family and friends to help both of them.” No contraception, no abortion, no wonder the Catholic priest is thrilled. After all social services, i.e., the taxpayer, is there to support the child.

Whether this girl is able to provide mothering is ignored. Alfie was asked how he’d support the infant financially and he asked the reporter what “financially” meant. Obviously he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier either.

One press report confirmed my immediate suspicion that this was an example of England’s welfare-sodden underclass at work. Associated Press reported that “Chantelle’s parents let the lad spend the night with their daughter, 14 at the time, at their public housing unit near Eastbourne, 70 miles southeast of London.” As for the boy’s parents his father made some remark about having a talk with the boy and seemed unsure whether he (the boy’s father) had 9, 10 or 11 children himself. And Chantelle’s father is described as “unemployed” but that didn’t stop him for having six children. The local police and child services “were offering support to both children.” The Independent reports: “The family lives on benefits.”

Typical of the underclass this is a pure moneymaking exercise. The Independent reports: “bidding wars, contracts and the promise of hundreds of thousands of pounds -- a sum many will see as a distinctly inappropriate return for a night of playing unprotected mothers and fathers. At least 15 television companies are locked in a fierce battle to make a documentary about the cherubic teenager’s young fatherhood, and media experts estimate Alfie could earn up to half a million pounds.” (That would be about $712,000.)

Already the boy’s family is in a dispute with one newspaper claiming for allegedly reneging “on a deal to pay about £25,000 for the initial photographs and video interview...” The family’s “publicist” says the family should have been paid £100,000.

The Sunday Times (London) has some of the right ideas:

When the couple were asked how they would cope financially, Alfie confessed that he did not know what the word meant. He will soon find out. Apart from tabloid cash for a part in a media freak show, a world of benefits is about to open up. We provide incentives where there should be disincentives. Instead of encouraging settled families, the welfare state rewards the dysfunctional. No wonder marriages have slumped to a record low.

The Centre for Social Justice, the think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has catalogued the decline of family stability and the rise of the dysfunctional family. “Broken” homes used to be relatively rare; now in some areas they are the norm. One in six babies is born into a home where there is no resident father.

Showering benefits on these families is a policy of despair. Instead, the aim should be to wean people off this destructive lifestyle. The best means is early intervention to help mothers escape such an environment. Mr Duncan Smith’s commission has found that the first three years of a child’s life are crucial. Which raises the question: what hope is there for little Maisie, a child born to such immature parents? As each generation moves further away from family stability, we lumber ourselves with the enormous cost of propping up failed families and living with the social consequences. It is a grim prospect, especially as the country moves deeper into recession.

England’s underclass passes dysfunctional values from one generation to the next. With the financial benefits tied to the number of children they breed like rabbits. The boys father has somewhere between 9 and 11 children -- no one seems sure (an example of parental responsibility). The girls parents had six children. From two couples we get at least 15 and possibly more than 18 dependants all living off “benefits”.

We don’t know how many, if any, of the siblings have children as well. Chantelle is off to an early start with her first at 15. And the money is rolling in. It is coming in from the media and from the welfare state. Having children, and teaching them your own dysfunctional values, can be lucrative in the welfare state.

At the other extreme we have the U.S. system which criminalizes these teens. With the vagaries of the “justice” system either the boy, or the girl, or both, would be considered dangerous felons and “sex offenders”. They would be subjected to mandatory counseling, enrolled in “sex offender” therapy, perhaps imprisoned. It is like that one or both of them would end up on the “sex offender” registry and morons would assume that their listing there meant they were raping children as a recreational activity. They would be kept out of most employment since they would be forced to reveal their “sex offender” status. As a result they would have to live off welfare as well.

They would find where they could live tightly regulated and often find they could live no where. They could be ordered, as sex offenders, to stay within a specific community and then under local law forbidden to live anywhere within the jurisdiction where they mandated to stay. Yes, U.S. law is that irrational.

America’s puritanical Christian culture deals with adolescent sexuality as a criminal offense. England’s welfare state treats it as a lucrative hobby and easy way to gain “independence” from one’s parents.

It seems that when the state gets involved it goes to either one extreme or the other. Both approaches are plagued with problems. Somewhere between showering horny teens with cash and treating them like dangerous felons is a rational approach. But politicians find little benefit in to being rational. Either they have to play up the “poor kids, we have to help them” or “dangerous sex offenders, we have to stop them” scenario. And both those “solutions” create more problems than they solve.

Thinking through the Eldorado situation.

Can you have free will without freedom?

For the most part I would say that is impossible to totally destroy freedom. So the question is basically moot. But there are cases where such utter lack of freedom is possible.

By freedom I mean the word in the broadest sense of the term. I don’t just mean the absence of coercion. I mean the ability to think rationally, to know options and then to make choices.

What brings this up is the raid on the polygamist Mormon sect in Texas. The incident came about because a 16-year-old girl allegedly called the state welfare agency and told them she was forced to have sex with older men in the cult. This was followed by the raid.

Of course if a girl, or a boy for that matter, is forced to have sex with anyone then a crime is committed and something ought to be done. But some people are arguing that the cult members are consenting individuals and, baring force, should be left alone.

I normally would accept that most adolescents are mature enough to consent to sex -- which is not the same thing as saying they ought to consent. But are these teens even remotely normal?

From what I know of this sect I would have to say that these kids are not normal. Or more precisely I would have to argue they are not in anything close to normal circumstances. And there are cases where circumstances can destroy the ability to choose.

Most of these kids have no knowledge of the outside world. They were born into the cult and raised in the hothouse environment of the church. This means they had no contact with the world outside. They know nothing about the choices they actually do have. They don’t see television. they don’t listen to radio. They are schooled by the sect. All their friends are in the sect. All their family, at least those they are allowed to have contact with, are active in the sect.

In addition, their obedience is guaranteed by tying it into their fear of God and the afterlife. They are told that if they don’t obey the church leaders they can lose their own soul.

These kids live totally isolated from the world. They live in a knowledge vacuum. And they have been indoctrinated into believing that they will suffer eternal damnation if they don’t obey the church. The major tactic of every cult, to train people into total obedience, is to isolate them from the wider world. Authoritarian political structures and authoritarian religions act in similar ways and isolating their "members" for the rest of the world is critical to that.

Of course you get similar rubbish from Christian fundamentalist sects as well. But the difference is that no other Christian sect, that I know of, has been able to totally isolate their young from the world and from knowledge of the world.

Even those sects which put their children in fundamentalist schools fail to accomplish the total isolation that the fundamentalist Mormon sects achieve. Other fundamentalists may restrict the child's access to movies or even restrict television watching --or ban it. But they live in the wider community. Their children know how other people actually do live. They know that there are other ways to live. And they know that people who leave the church live normal, useful, productive, happy lives.

Such kids may buy into the teachings of their own church but they have knowledge of other options. But the fundamentalist Mormons live in such isolated conditions that all such knowledge if obliterated. These Mormon sects have left the world entirely. They don’t live around other people. They live in completely isolated communities. And since the kids in these communities have lived in this total isolation since birth they literally have no knowledge of other options.

Now add to this the pervasive and destructive influence of their theology. They believe that they are the only true church in the world. They believe that their “souls” are at risk outside that church. If they rebel against the church they risk losing everything they know and have.

In these communities the homes are owned by the cult. Question the cult and you lose your home.

You may think that the normal requirements of earning a living would end this isolation. But not so. Very few adults from the cult work outside the community. Income for the community is heavily reliant upon various entitlement programs. The multiple wives are breeding machines--the breeding is what keeps the sect alive--and the law sees them as “unmarried mothers” eligible for welfare due to their “unfortunate” circumstances.

In addition, the cult literally controls the polygamous cities. The federal and state governments have all sorts of programs to fund cities in need. And these cities are “needy” by most standards. A huge percentage of the community subsists on welfare. They are officially unemployed. There is rampantly high “illegitimacy” rates. The poverty levels are very high. And all this means that state and federal governments shower them with money. They get money for their roads, money for their schools, money for their police, money for everything. They literally have millions handed to them every month. To a large extent, the ability of these cults to survive is because they are creatures of the welfare state.

Much of this mess is directly attributable to the screwed up welfare system which funds these communities and the sects that establish them. Government funding programs are begging for abuse and the fundamentalist Mormons know precisely how to use the system for their own benefit.

This fact makes it hard for me to pity them as victims of an overzealous state. They rely on that overzealous state to subsidize their existence.

I have a difficult time seeing the teens raised in this community as having the ability to make choices. They lack any context for such decisions. This is not the case for most young people. But it is true in these isolated sects. If that is the case, and if these young people have been mentally incapacitated by their conditioning by the sect, then some action against the cult may be justified. But for myself, I’d cut off the funding first. But that is too libertarian for politicians.

The politicians will remain happy to shower these sects with the income necessary for survival. Remove the funding and the sect will be forced into interaction with the wider community. Paradoxically the one main justification for state intervention is the lack of free will caused by their isolation from reality. Yet the state funds that isolation and makes it possible.

If you look at how Muslims in Europe are breeding fundamentalist terrorists you find the same thing happening. These groups are insulated from the wider culture around them, and thus isolated from it. They rely on the welfare state for their existence. And that allows them to alienate themselves from the culture in which they live. That makes them more resentful of the culture and they find it easier to hate that culture. The end result is they are easier targets for recruiters for terrorism. When fundamentalists of any sect are able to isolate themselves from the world around them they become lethal. You will find that in most cases they are unable to do that without the state making it possible.

Not So Great Britain: 1 in 5 households live off the state.

Karl Marx said from “each according to his ability to each according to his need.” Sounds good as long as you ignore the incentives. The first part punishes people for having ability. The second part rewards people for having needs. The end result of such a system is that it reduces the number of people in the first group and increases the numbers in the second group. And that is disastrous.

The Daily Mail, in the U.K., now reports that one in five households there relies solely on state welfare of one form or another. They note:

The figure of three million workless homes is particularly bleak because it includes only those where there is someone of working age - defined as between 18 and 65 whether claiming a disability or not, but excluding students.

In other words it excludes students who are receiving benefits and the elderly who are receiving benefits. Both are large groups. The number of people who live in workless homes are now 4,348,000 which is an increase of 181,000 since last year. But that’s just the adults. Add to that 1,798,000 children and you have 6,146,000 Brits who survive solely on the income the state takes from workers.

In recent years the British government tried to create a program to encourage single mothers to find jobs. Instead, the number of single women with children, who are unemployed, has increased.

It is also estimated that only 20% of those living off the taxes of others are making any effort whatsoever to find employment. About 24% of all homes in London are jobless.

Now some of these people actually do have under-the-table income they don’t report. This is considered a crime. But crime in the U.K. doesn’t amount to much in reality. They run some hilarious commercials, also paid for by the hapless taxpayer, which warns benefit cheats that if they are caught they could be “questioned under caution” by the police. Not arrested. Just questioned while under caution. I bet that had them trembling in their boots. The first time I saw that commerical I’m sure my response was not much different from the benefit cheaters themselves -- I was doubled over with laughter at the ludicrous nature of the “threat”.

Why some immigrants don't assimilate and what not to do about it.

The issue of cultural integration for immigrants is a hot topic. Certainly, as someone who came from a family of immigrants, I know the process well. My great-grandmother spoke to me frequently when I was a child. I never understood a word she said and she didn’t understand what I said.

She couldn’t speak English and that was all I spoke. Her daughter, my grandmother, was fully bilingual. She could understand both of us perfectly. And after my great grandmother died my grandmother reverted to only English and within a few years couldn’t remember anything else.

My father spoke only English as did my generation the next one as well. And the same pattern was repeated on my mother’s side of the family just with a different language.

All the evidence shows the same pattern among immigrants to the United States. Many are already fans of America and have assimilated much American culture before they left their homes. If the immigrant generation can’t speak English the children are normally bilingual and the grandchildren often English-speaking only. Because the Mexican immigrant population of the US is constantly being replenished with new immigrants many Americans are silly enough to believe this assimilation isn’t taking place.

And surveys of immigrants in the US shows that cultural values tend to shift as well. Even first generation immigrants see many changes in their views of life. Though they tend to be less criminally prone than the native born it is unfortunate that their children or great children tend to begin acting like more typical Americans. There are some American values that shouldn’t be assimilated. Regardless of what the xenophobes and Malthusian doom sayers argue immigrants in America assimilate for the most part and relatively quickly compared to other places in the world.

Europe has the opposite experience. Der Spiegel has an article discussing one of Amsterdam’s mayors, an immigrant himself, and his campaign to promote assimilation. They describe the problem as immigrants with “little pressure to conform to Dutch customs and lifestyles” exemplified by the “hangjongeren” (guys who hang out) who are “unemployed men with no prospects of getting jobs.

There is ample documentation that many immigrant groups remain unassimilated in Europe for several generations, right up until today. They tend to either not speak the local language or speak it very, very poorly. They drop out of school and simply hang around. In France they take to setting cars alight for entertainment.

Why is there rapid acculturation in the United States and but little in Europe?

Part of the reason depends on the incentives to acclimate. Most of American immigration is illegal. Such immigrants qualify for few benefits. There are strong incentives for them to find a job, any job. And that is why they came. Few come expecting welfare, contrary to the racist diatribes of some.

And what they find is that English, even small amounts of it, is rewarding financially. The more English they speak the more likely they will find employment and what they find is better employment. Someone lacking any English might be confined to picking fruit, cleaning gardens or washing cars. English skills, even rudimentary ones, could mean employment inside air conditioned fast food outlets. Each step toward acculturation comes with market-based financial rewards. The incentive is to acclimate.

Historically the US regulated access to welfare but not to work. So immigrants worked which encourage acculturation.

Europe took a protectionist/welfare state view of immigrants. They tended to restrict access to the work place through a series of regulations compared to America’s formerly more deregulated work place. But when it came to welfare the socialist mentality was benefits for all even if the immigrants were illegal.

They restricted access to jobs but not access to welfare. The incentive to integrate into the broader society wasn’t there. There was no need for it. Successive generations of the same family could do this. Dropping out of school didn’t matter as the welfare checks, continued to come in. Seeking jobs was useless as the highly regulated, highly taxed economies didn’t produce much employment for such people. And why bother if the welfare benefits are sufficiently generous -- something Europeans frequently brag about. There is little need to learn the language or integrate at all.

Attempts to integrate are restricted by the regulatory and tax climate. And failure to integrate is generously subsidized by the welfare state.

Nativists in the US are now pushing through more and more state controls to create a European style labor market. Access is being restricted every chance they get. At the same time they bitch about immigrants not acclimating to US culture fast enough. There are none so blind....

Such restrictions will actually hinder acculturation. Some, no doubt, prefer that as it proves their bigoted views, or so they think. They are implementing policies which create the very problem. Seeking employment is a strong incentive for the cultural shift that is required to blend into a new society. Restricting access to those incentives will only retard the acculturation process.

And here is what the conservatives pushing this bigotry should consider. As more and more jobs are denied illegal immigrants then there are incentives to steal identity in order to seek employment. Reducing the incentives for that is a good thing. Second, employed immigrants are not sponging off the system, if anything they are subsidizing native born welfare recipients. Third, employed immigrants are rewarded for acclimating to the culture through higher wages. This is precisely the process the xenophobes pretend they want.

Immigrants who find it harder and harder to be employed tend to still be better off in the US than in Mexico. So the immigration issue won’t disappear. But the tax revenue from employed immigrants will disappear. And if poverty levels increase steadily among immigrants we may see pressure from the Left to expand the welfare state to allow access to these programs.

If that happens the US is on the road to the non-assimilation problem in Europe. The labor market becomes more restrictive while welfare programs are expanded to replace the jobs which were denied. Long term that is a problem, something Europe has found out. Unfortunately Europe is still blinded by ideology to the reality of the system. They will tinker with the labor regulations but for the most part they will stay. They will tinker with the welfare but it will remain generous. If anything they will invent more benefits which are supposed to encourage assimilation but won’t. They will dance around the edges but never get to the heart of the problem. And they will wonder why the problem continues unabated.

It's a French thing.

Students in France have gone on rampages through the streets yet again. This is a French thing. I do not know what mental diseases decimate the French population but it seems serious. And the students were joined by the most reactionary elements of French society, teachers, unions and the Communist Party.

Half the universities in France are closed down by the spoiled children of France. The Sorbonne has been closed for several days. Students have caused close to $1 million in damages at the university --- which they no doubt will think no ought to be required to pay for. And I mean literally no one. The French, more than any other nation, are suffering from the delusion that everything in life ought to be free.

The French government made cautious moves to make it easier to hire young people for jobs by making it easier to fire employees that don’t work out. The French think someone is entitled to a job no matter how incompetent they may prove to be. And if they don’t have benefits from an employer for not working they should have benefits from the state for not working.

More than any other nation I can think of the French make a past time of working hard to avoid work. Being economically illiterate the French have not figured out the reason unemployment is so high is because of stupid laws. Twenty-three percent of Frenchmen under the age of 26 are unemployed. In large cities the number can be twice that.

One brain dead Marxist, but I am redundant, Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg said: “To create discrimination based on age transgresses fundamental rights.” Press reports did not say if Mr. Schwartzenberg was drooling and babbling during the rest of the day. But there is clearly a screw loose here.

France is one of the most backward nations in Europe and a nation that drags the EU down. It needs to reform but it won’t. Perhaps the solution is that instead of following good policies they should follow a lot more bad policies until the whole thing falls apart.

I suggest they immediately implement a law which triples the salaries of all workers and increases it by five times for workers under 30 years of age. The law should also say that once hired a worker can never be fired for any reason. It should also increase fringe benefits and promise absolute security for the rest of their lives. Since the French are adverse to working, and to “create more jobs”, the law should also reduce work weeks to 20 hours with no reduction in pay.

Within a few weeks the economy will be totally decimated. Employers will not fire workers, since they can’t, they will merely go bankrupt. The French will get exactly what they have worked for. And the stupid students can protest full time demanding that the sun stop in the sky for perpetual sunshine and that rain be illegal.

Fighting the last war?

There is an old saying that nations are always fighting the last war. And there is good reason for that.

Witness what happened on 9/11 as an example. In the past hijackers have taken planes in order to issue demands or publicise a cause. The way to deal with such people was to keep them calm, do what they want as much as possible and let the situation play itself out. And it almost always played itself out in a way that saved the lives of most people aboard the plane.

September 11th changed that scenario. But the people aboard the planes were fighting the last war. They were co-operating as much as possible. They followed a strategy that would work had they been dealing with hijackers from previous years. But this was a new species. The crew assumed that they were working with rational people who had values, however wrong, that they wanted to achieve. What they didn’t expect was that these people were willing to die and take as many along with them as possible.

Had the passengers and crew understood the actual nature of the beast that hijacked the plane they would have rebelled. But people can learn quickly. And by the time the fourth plane was headed for Washington, DC the passengers had already learned of the fate of the other planes. They knew that the religious fanatics who had taken control of this plane did not intend to play by the rules of the last war. The passengers rose up and fought back. They lost their lives. But they prevented the hijackers from expanding the death toll.

I look at Europe and watch them fighting the last war—literally.

Take the sad figure of David Irving. Irving was once a respected author of major histories on World War II. You wouldn’t know that from how his critics talk today but many of them praised his massive volumes in the past. Very little of what he actually wrote caused him any problems. It was what he said. He questioned the Holocaust. He expressed very strongly worded doubts while always tossing in provisos about not being an expert on the subject.

Irving relished the attention he got from the neo-Nazi far Right. He spoke to their conventions. And he often made remarks that could only be interpreted as anti-Semitic. Jews were routinely called “our traditional enemy”. Irving’s reputation was destroyed and it wasn’t his “traditional enemy” that did it. He did it to himself. Anti-Jewish remarks are uncalled for, unnecessary and unpleasant.

That is not to say that he deserves to be in jail. He ought to be free to speak his mind. He should do so at his own expense of course.

The laws on Holocaust denial are wrong. Now supporters of the law point to the effect of Nazism on Europe. Fair enough. No one sane disputes that National Socialism was a tyrannical, despotic system that deserved to die. The Nazis were about as bad as one could get. Advocates of anti-Nazi speech laws say that Europe must never again be plunged into the depths of a Hitlerian nightmare.

I couldn’t agree more. And if there was a real danger that the Nazis could rise to power I might be persuaded about the necessity of such legislation. But let’s be honest here; David Irving is no threat. The chances of a resurgent Nazi movement in Europe is are almost nil.

In many ways the law is now making it more difficult to find the true Nazis. There are still there of course. And individuals who follow such matters know they exist. But these groups are more careful in what they say. Groups, like Jungen Freiheit, are widely seen as neo-Nazi. Yet the anti-speech laws keep them on the legal side of the line. One result of that is that some supporters insist they are not really Nazis since they never say they are. Of course they don’t. They can’t.

I would think that absent the law these people would quickly out themselves and it would soon be obvious where they really stood. The net result would be a reduction in support levels. European nations are fighting the last war. They are doing their level best to reduce the non-existent Nazi threat.

If a neo-Nazi got up in public and went into an anti-Jewish tirade he would be before a magistrate faster than the blink of an eye. The press would be breathing down his neck for the rest of his life. He would likely find himself thrown in prison like Mr. Irving.

Now don’t get me wrong. These people disgust me. I find their gutter rhetoric utterly offensive. And I’m glad that virtually no one takes them seriously. But I do not think they pose a threat.

On the other hand Europe is filled with people who openly preach the kind of hatred that fuelled Nazism. And European nations turn a blind eye to it. And these haters actually carry out their threats. They do beat. They do murder. They do bomb. So how does Europe respond?

They literally subsidise them. They give them funding.

Imagine if some neo-Nazi wanted state funding to run a National Socialist school. People would be outraged. It wouldn’t happen. Yet Islamic schools that openly preach hatred for Jews and hatred for European values are receiving money to train students in this form of totalitarianism. Islamic community centres that preach the same doctrine are subsidised as well.

The Imam who riled up radical Muslims around the world, which directly lead to riots and deaths, receives funding from the very government he attacked. He is paid to go into Danish prisons and preach Islam to criminals. Is this what Denmark really needs? Is there a shortage of Muslims with violent, criminal tendencies?

The radical Islamists who set off the bombs on the London Underground, had between them, collected hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits.

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot by a Muslim radical in Amsterdam because he produces a short film on Islam’s abominable treatment of women. The bullet knocked van Gogh to the ground. His killer then shot him 20 more times, stabbed him repeatedly and then, for symbolic good measure, cut his throat. He pinned a note to van Gogh’s body:

“I know definitely that you, O America, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Netherlands, will go down.”

The killer was living off of the Dutch welfare system.

The mosques of Europe are filled with imams of hate; men who preach contempt for the West and disgust for freedom. Yet many of these mosques are built with funds from the respective governments. Many of the imams themselves collect welfare benefits due to the large number of children they have.

Best-selling Dutch author Leon de Winter recently offered one explanation as to why Europe is having problems with immigrants. He says the problem lies with the welfare state.

Critics of welfare around the world have noted it has a tendency to create a permanent underclass where generation after generation survives off the dole. De Winter argues that it also prevents integration into new cultures for immigrants. He told the German publication Der Spiegel: “A social welfare state like the Netherlands can never be a country of integration. Only a country like the US, with its weak social net, can integrate large groups of immigrants without problems. Immigrants there are forced to take two or three badly paid jobs just to survive. That would be incompatible with European moral values. But after one or two generations in the US, these people are integrated in society.”

Changes in immigration policy or language requirements won’t solve the problem for Europe either, at least not for the “generation that has already been lost. The parents of these children were never obligated to take charge of their own destiny. The state allowed them to live here and it paid their rent.”

If de Winter is correct then a major cause of the problem of cultural integration for immigrants is welfare policies.

Immigrants routinely integrate into their new nations. It may not be done over night but, as de Winter notes, it is usually accomplished within a generation or two. The prime motivating factor is economic. People integrate to survive. What welfarism does is remove the necessity of integration. It allows people to remain totally isolated from the society around them.

The Hispanic community in the United States, contrary to public perception, proves this. A survey of Spanish-speaking homes found that 85 percent of the children speak English well. And another survey showed that about half of second generation immigrants were bilingual and the other half where English-dominant. By the third generation some 80 percent were English dominant. Another survey of immigrant students in the US found that by the end of high school 98 percent spoke and understood English well and that 90 percent of them preferred speaking English over Spanish.

Even cultural values and world outlooks change rather quickly. Tamar Jacoby, of the Manhattan Institute, wrote: “Nearly 60 percent of Spanish-speakers, for instance—compared to 15 percent of non-Hispanic whites—where so fundamentally fatalistic that they saw no point in planning for the future. But among second-generation and English-dominant Hispanics 75 percent said that they felt they were in charge of their lives. American had already changed them that much—they had assimilated that thoroughly.”

The United States has a welfare advantage over Europe. With weaker social welfare nets immigrants seek work. And efforts that make employment more difficult are liable to hamper, not encourage, assimilation. Many of America’s Hispanic immigrants are here without government permission thus making them ineligible for most welfare programs.

In Europe many of the immigrants are there with permission and can immediately go on the dole. Where American immigrants are forced to seek gainful employment, something which can be difficult, the Islamic immigrants in Europe are allowed immediate access to welfare. Even illegal immigrants in Europe can qualify for benefits due to the “compassionate” values widely held there.

But good intentions do not necessarily lead to good results. They may in fact lead to disastrous results.

Anthony de Jasay, an economist and resident of France, recently wrote about the riots that erupted across the country. And he pinned much of the blame on the French social model, “the principal achievement” of which is that “it has maintained unemployment at about 10 percent since it was fully unfolded in the 1980s” and which will maintain “this level for years to come.”

De Jasay writes: “Regular visitors to France testify that they see more beggars on the street than ever. However, French opinion from the presidential and ministerial level downwards, is convinced that unemployment and poverty are the result of ‘the Crisis’ (there is always some undefined crisis going on in the outside world and France is always its victim). The ‘social model’ is not its cause, rather, it serves as the bulwark against it.”

De Jasay sees the French “model” as a prime cause of the problems France now faces. And as the comments by de Winter proves, he is not alone.

In the US immigrants from Mexico assimilate relatively quickly. In Europe Islamic immigrants do not. One shocking study showed just how little assimilation took place over several generations. A Danish researched followed 145 Turkish Muslims who had immigrated to Denmark during 1969 and 1970.

The men had settled in one town. This group of 145 immigrants now was a community of 2,813 Muslims. All the men married women from Turkey not Danish residents. And the wives were then brought to Denmark. Some of the men divorced the wife who stayed in Denmark and then married again, also another woman brought in from Turkey. A small number married a third time and again the women were from Turkey.

So 145 men lead to more than 145 wives all Muslims from Turkey. And the average family then had 6.4 children each. Heavily subsidised by the Danish government of course.

Of course one these new wives settled they were allowed to start the process of “family reunification” which meant they could bring over siblings and parents. And the siblings brought over wives or husbands who brought over their parents and siblings.

But what about the children? By the end of the study 98 children of these men had themselves grown and married. Eighty-nine of them imported Muslims from Turkey to marry. Seven married local Turks. One married a Turk living in Sweden and only one married a Dane. There were also ten who had married a second time and all ten married Turks.

But even some of the grandchildren had also marrie --- 62 as of a few years ago. Of those, 60 of them imported their spouse from Turkey. Bruce Bawer outlines this in his disturbing book While Europe Slept. He quotes one Danish teacher lamenting the Muslim students in her class. She said: “I had a class in which nineteen of thirty-three children couldn’t say anything in Danish, even though they were all born in Denmark.”

Without learning Danish in Denmark how do they expect to earn a living? They don’t. This cultural isolation is hard to sustain without an income. How is it possible to survive without knowing any of the language? Through the welfare state.

And we are not even speaking about the original immigrants any more. We are talking about second and third generations who do not know the language. The exact same thing has been reported in the Netherlands and in France. It is not an isolated incident. And with some European nations pushing to admit Turkey to the European Union the problem will only grow.

Within these immigrant communities there are very substantial majorities of individuals who hate European values. They may want the comfort of Europe over their homeland, they may be happy to live off the dole, but they hate all European values. They don’t even try to hide it.

At least David Irving spoke in code. The Jungen Freiheit makes sure that it’s language is subtle. But the radical Islamists are openly contemptuous of Europe and Europe turns a blind eye, makes excuses, or throws money at them.

For most Europeans they are still in 1944. The enemy is still Hitler and the problem is National Socialism. They are fighting a war that was won long ago. They are fighting an enemy that was vanquished and is all but extict. Meanwhile a new war is brewing at home and they refuse to see it.