THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW

Baltimore's Stimulus Liberals remain under the illusion that taxpayer “investments” are the solution to cities like Baltimore. But Baltimore is a prime example of how billions in “investments” hasn't created opportunity or reduced poverty. Amidst the burning of Baltimore, Barack Obama took a jab at Republicans for failing to support his policies, which would include “investments” in communities like Baltimore: “I’m under no illusion that out of this Congress we’re going to get massive investments in urban communities,” he said. “And so we’ll try to find areas where we can make a difference around school reform and around job training, and around some investments in infrastructure in these communities trying to attract new businesses.” What Obama failed to mention is that his stimulus plan provided Baltimore alone with nearly $2 billion in investments, yet we see how that has turned out. Liz Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon has the report: The city of Baltimore received over $1.8 billion from President Barack Obama’s stimulus law, including $467.1 million to invest in education and $26.5 million for crime prevention … According to Recovery.gov, one of Baltimore’s central ZIP codes, 21201, received the most stimulus funding in the city, a total of $837,955,866. The amount included funding for 276 awards, and the website reports that the spending had created 290 jobs in the fourth quarter in 2013. Of this amount, $467.1 million went to education; $206.1 million to the environment; $24 million to “family”; $16.1 million to infrastructure; $15.2 million to transportation; $11.9 million to housing; and $3.1 million to job training. You can see the breakdown of where more stimulus money was spent in other Baltimore zip codes here. Furthermore, Baltimore has a higher rate of government workers compared to the national average, according to a report by CNSNews. Nearly 21% of of people employed in the City of Baltimore are employed by the government. Nationally, the figure is close to 15% of people work for the government. So you have more people working to support big government. And last week I highlighted the unfortunate figures related to welfare and poverty in Baltimore; as the number of welfare recipients has risen, so has the percentage of those in poverty. Money – or “investments,” as liberals like to call it – is not the solution. In fact, the problems are much deeper than simply investments and police misconduct, which is what Obama would have you believe. Thomas Sowell has an excellent piece, “The Inconvenient Truth about Ghetto Communities' Social Breakdown.” This goes beyond issues of race. He writes, “You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.” This is why pouring money into these communities without the values Sowell lists, fails to result in opportunity and prosperity. Yet liberals will bully us into spending more money, which will continue to fail at solving the issues at large. ObamaCare Back in the News ObamaCare is back in the news. Remember when Obama, Democrats and liberal “experts” promised that ObamaCare would reduce the number of expensive ER visits? The thinking was that people would be less likely to visit the ER if they had insurance. Well consider that another broken ObamaCare promise. Seventy-five percent of doctors say they've seen an increase in ER visits since ObamaCare became law, with 28% seeing “large increases.” One of the main reasons is because ObamaCare has reduced the number of primary doctors, which is something that many conservatives predicted would happen. Source: Investor's Business Daily