Who is Steve Balich

Who is Steve Balich   

I understand that as taxes increase property values decrease, and more people are either forced to move or figured out that paying rent in the from of Increasing Property Taxes is a good reason to get out while the getting is good. A $6000 Property Tax bill equals $500 per month. People aren't stupid! everyone knows the tax right over the border is much lower. The people in homer Glen where I live have had it with taxes and our ever increasing water bills. Seniors and others on a fixed income see so much of their disposable income taken away (legally stolen) they have to move or struggle to make ends meet. The problem is that increasing taxes erode the home value so people can't sell for what they think their property is worth.

The only people moving to Illinois are those who have to because of their job.  The people left that don't move get the privilege of paying higher taxes to make up for those who stay.

I am a Will County Board Member. The first 2 years I was on the Board the Democrats controlled the Board and the taxes were raised to the max. The next 3 years the Republicans gained control and the the tax rate was reduced each year. As part of the Will County Board Republican Majority we did not impose a public safety tax which the Democrats were pushing to pay for building a new Public Safety Building, Health Department, and Court House. The Republican majority made cuts in spending to make the Capital Projects work while reducing the tax rate. As a Board member I was part of the group removing County Board Members from the IMRF   Pension program, giving no pay raises to elected County Offices. As a Board member I find it important to spend taxpayer money as if it were my own. Less government, taxes, and regulation are my guiding principals. 

Laws or Regulations that are not enforced, make little since, or just a way for government to make money need to be removed or changed. Examples: Getting your money back if you are found not guilty in court for towing, storage, and administration fees is just the right thing to do and is now part of the Will County ordinance. Making it so The County can't use Aerial Photos to initiate code violations and that violations are to be complaint driven so the County is not looking for violations unless there is a complaint. Contractor now get a 2 hour window as to when the inspector will show up to approve continuing construction. This means contractors won't have to pay employees for  waiting for an inspector to show up.

It is important to stand for issues that benefit people. Since being on the Will County Board I championed many which can be read on my website www.electbalich.com 

As a citizen I championed a tax referendum in 2016 which passed with 87% of the vote. This was advisory but about half of the taxing bodies listened to the will of the people. I go to the schools, fire districts and the Township and demand they do not raise the Levy. I say any person  voting a property tax increase has the disease "Raise my Taxitis". Every taxpayer should take the time to go to the meetings and voice their opinion. Every Taxpayer can send emails and make phone calls to stop office holders from getting then dred disease "Raise My Taxitis". I have been fighting raising the property tax Levy since 2008 and will continue. By getting Citizens Utility Board (CUB) involved we were able to get the Illinois American Water rate increase reduced by over 50%. The rate still went up but not as much as it could have. I am a member of St. Joseph Club, St. Bernards Church, Homer Chamber Advisory Committee, Will County Board Republican Majority, as well as donating and sponsoring numerous community groups and associations.

Steve Balich 815-557-7196   sbalich@comcast.net

Why Support Fricilone and Balich Fundraiser / Actions not just talk are important.

• Actions

Some of what Mike Fricilone & Steve Balich have ACCOMPLISHED for you 1. Lowered the tax rate the last 3 years while at the same time building a New Public Safety Building, Court House, Health Department, and starting a program to replace squad cars on a yearly basis. 2. Stopped code violations initiated by aerial Photos. Code violations are now complaint driven. 3. Reduced the tax rate for the last 3 years. 4. Stopped mandatory sprinkler systems from being required in all homes. 5. Passed a Resolution allowing the Court to return your money for towing, storage, and administration if not guilty in court. 6. Stopped the County from putting raised barriers on 143rd St. 7. Continue to vote against raises for County wide and County Board elected officials. 8. Stopped light ordinance that had no measurements relying on the opinion of Code officers as to what is a nuisance. 9. Argue that code inspectors can only inspect what a permit was written for. They don't have the right to write violations for other items out of code. 10. Worked with Lockport to move barricades north of Gougar and 147th, allowing for cars to cut through like the past from 151st over to Lemont Rd/State via 147th. A signal was placed at Gougar and 143rd. 11. Worked with Citizens Utility board to reduce the rate increase from Illinois American Water. The Rate increase was reduced but we still got an increase to an already high cost of water. 12. Voted to not allow County Board Elected Officials to take the IMRF Pension. 13. Worked to get the light at RT. 6 and Parker. 14. Stopped Will county Land Use from initiating a rental inspection program targeting 17,000 plus landlords based on HUD guidelines. Will County never adopted HUD guidelines. 15. Stopped requiring a building permit for some repair and maintenance items on your property. 16. Cut the Tax Rate at the Forest Preserve the last 4 years while expanding recreational opportunities. 17. Since we have be on the Board there have been no pay raises for County Elected officials and County Board member Pensions were eliminated. Fricilone & Balich never took the Pension even though it was a benefit. Mike Fricilone 708-310-9831 mikefricilone@gmail.com    Steve Balich 815-557

The battle for the mind is the most malicious type of warfare

By Bob Livingston

The battle for the mind is the most malicious type of warfare conducted upon us by unseen powers. We call it "psychological warfare" because we are programmed by the system, and our programmed beliefs go from generation to generation the same as genetics.

Unless we break the pattern of programmed thought, we may hold erroneous beliefs for hundreds of years without question.

We build our lives or we self-destruct according to our ability and our inclination to break the programming code or preconditioning of the system. Not many do.

The philosophy of the system (government) must be evaluated in terms of human liberty. Human suppression is more psychological control than physical coercion. Those who control our minds control our physical and monetary assets including our physical bodies.

The establishment creates and uses words and phrases to control our thoughts and actions. It's this subtle system of psychological warfare and programming that creates conformity.

Governments insist on conformity because governments want to control the people. Where there is conformity, there is control.

Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, knew a thing or two about mass persuasion. He is the father of manipulative propaganda in America. In his book Propaganda, Bernays writes:

Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sph…

So the words and phrases the establishment creates and uses against us can rightly be called control words or control phrases. My term for them is code words, and I have listed some of them here and here.

The art and science of mass mind control has reached its zenith. The fact that so few suspect it, attests to its perfection.

Totalitarianism by and of the elite has been refined into a "benevolency" that is embraced by the people. Indeed the people have been seduced to their enslavement through this mind control. Evil has been made to appear good and good has become evil.

Psychological warfare excludes objective reality. There are no options to choose that would benefit the individual. All options are funneled toward the benefit of government and the elite. All that's left is myth and counter-myth.

Here are some social, political, economic and health myths that are used to deceive the people:

Democracy — Democracy is a great pretension of open debate. Indeed it is open debate but only on spurious issues. It implies an open and free society in the public mind but is instead no less totalitarianism than socialism, communism and fascism.

Democrat vs. Republican — It's hard to believe the American people can imagine a difference when, regardless of whether the "D" Party is in charge or the "R" party, the federal leviathan grows, the direction of the country never changes and more liberties are lost.

The government promotes savings for retirement through IRAs and 401(k)s — Government uses these deceptions as one means to regulate consumption by taking vast sums of "dollars" out of circulation until they can inflate the purchasing power out of existence. It also serves to help prop up the stock market giving the illusion of prosperity and enriching the banksters.

There is a national debt — Impossible, according to Federal Reserve publication Keeping Our Money Healthy, published by the Federal Reserve of New York. The Federal Reserve System works only with credit. It is an imaginary system represented in the public mind as numbers or computer symbols. How can there be a deficit of numbers that can be created to infinity?

Terrorism/War on Terror — Governments since the Roman Empire have created enemies to instill fear in the population so that the people are manipulated into giving more police power over to the government. Politicians always go along with this Machiavellian deception. This time they created the "Patriot Act" — how appropriate — and the indefinite detention articles of the National Defense Authorization Act, and launched endless wars under the guise of "War on Terror." Yet 17 years of "War on Terror" has only made more "terror" in more places. There is such blatant oppression of the people and the economic system is on the verge of unraveling, more fear and more war is needed to manipulate the people against their own freedom. Oh, you know this. And yes, they have this time added a touch of religion to enlist fanatics.

The mainstream media are objective — The media have never been "objective" or fair as people believe. The media have always used innate biases in selecting the stories it covers and the way the stories are slanted and edited. The major media are little more than government mouthpieces which disseminate information fed them by the elites. Many of the major players in national media are either CIA operatives or members of the Council on Foreign Relations/Trilateral Commission.

Social Security is going broke — Social Security is not an accounting discipline but a Ponzi scheme. "They" can print the money so Social Security will not go broke but the "money" paid out will go broke in purchasing power.

We get all the vitamins and nutrition we need from our food — Impossible with the American diet. Eighty percent of Americans are malnourished.

There's no difference between synthetic and natural vitamins — False. Synthetic vitamins are chemicals. Natural vitamins are food.

The government, the medical establishment and the pharmaceuticals promote health — Nothing could be further from the truth. People don't need drugs or doctors. Sick people especially don't need drugs or doctors. They need nutrition.

Euthanasia is a quick and painless death — Euthanasia can happen over many years as drugs and immunizations usually kill slowly. The system can reduce the population without blame if they do it over time so as to separate cause and effect.

Unless and until we decipher these myths, we will never see liberty for ourselves or our progeny.

A Dark Secret Exposed By One In The Left’s Inner Circle

Every day, we see another shocking new cause supported by the left that takes us further away from being a moral and civilized society.

The traditional values that make up the foundation of our nation are crumbling, and the left keeps pushing the boundaries to impose their views on the world.

Now, one radical leftist – who happens to support most of the abhorrent progressive ideology being spread – is finding herself a target for standing against one radical issue that even she cannot believe is being encouraged.

Natasha Chart is a self-proclaimed radical feminist, but she has uncovered an outrageous plot and is bringing it to conservative news outlets because her stance has been shunned by her colleagues, friends, and employers.

The Christian Post reported:

She opted to speak with The Christian Post, she said, “because I have been hoping that someone could be bothered to care that there is a significant and influential portion of the left-aligned and mainstream human rights activist community that both believes that ‘youth sex work’ should be made legal, and that they have the clout to get people fired from political and media jobs for making concerns about that public.”

“The progressive press won’t touch it, the regular press doesn’t seem to follow these issues, and self-publishing a story like this would likely have been pointless,” Chart said.

Yes, Chart states that many radical leftists – including so-called “esteemed” international organizations – are supportive of the sex trade, including the involvement of minors.

She realizes that while conservative outlets do not sympathize with her political viewpoints, her hope is that someone will listen to what is going on – in her words, “the institutional rot of a political edifice that was so easily taken over by a sex industry advocacy that’s alien to its founding principles.”

As Chart learned about the support for sex trafficking by organizations she was involved in through her work, she became sickened by what she was seeing.

The basis of the argument of these radical organizations is that by imposing restrictions on prostitution, including by minors, it would somehow harm those who depend on sex work to make a living.

Chart tells The Christian Post:

“My friends and colleagues over several years know this happened. Hundreds of… journalists and academics in the United States know this happened. They didn’t all agree, but none of them said one public word in my defense.”

“If they could be intimidated into overlooking this, what’s next?” As the days went by, it would become ever clearer that the promotion of the sex trade was a cause being backed by prominent people, and she could stay quiet no longer.

Chart assumed that her colleagues didn’t really understand what was going on, but as she pressed for answers, she was shocked at the outcome.She was shunned and even severely reprimanded by her employer — being told to cease her research and criticism immediately.

One of the major plots she uncovered was the involvement of Amnesty International.  In 2015, they encouraged legalizing the sex trade and created a memo using “human and labor rights language” outlining that sex workers must have the same rights as those in any other profession.

She began to publicly address that the philosophy of Amnesty International was immoral, and further research showed her that they were hardly the only advocates of keeping the sex trade blossoming, including actual language referring to the “youth” involved.

The Christian Post continued:

When the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, tweeted an article…in praise of Amnesty’s policy decriminalizing prostitution, Chart voiced her disgust on Twitter, and replied with a link to [an] essay on “Youth in sex work and the sex trade.”

Roth tweeted comments… asking, “All want to end poverty, but in meantime why deny poor women the option of voluntary sex work?”

“Nobody could really support this, right?” a flabbergasted Chart recalled thinking at the time. 

Her boss even told her it was “more of a public health approach.” Much of the current international legislation aims to make the purchase of sex illegal in order to focus on “pimps and johns,” but that criminalizing the selling of sex would send many young women into unemployment and poverty, thus “harming minors.”

Many of these international organizations also receive taxpayer and/or government funding, thus enabling youth prostitution to continue unchecked.

This kind of language and twisted ideology has appeared in many documents of international organizations, including the World Health Organization, according to Chart.

While Natasha Chart is certainly a radical progressive herself, aligned with left-wing advocacy groups on many issues, the fact that she is sickened by what’s going on with the international sex trade speaks volumes.

If even a radical leftist is outraged by what she is seeing, what does that say about the international organizations that promote the idea that criminalizing prostitution will harm minors?

With the help of these organizations, these young women – and children – are being given no choice but to stay in the sex trade industry.  The left – and their money – will continue to advocate it unless others like Chart come forward.

Gov. Rauner announces $11.05 billion infrastructure plan

Gov. Rauner announces $11.05 billion infrastructure plan

Six-year IDOT program invests in roads, bridges while protecting taxpayer interests

Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - Governor, Office of the

PEORIA (May 29, 2018) - Gov. Bruce Rauner announced a plan today to invest $11.05 billion in the state's roads and bridges over the next six years, including $2.2 billion of state and federal funding in the upcoming fiscal year. The Illinois Department of Transportation Multi-Year Proposed Highway Improvement Program will focus on projects that provide the greatest economic benefit to communities and take advantage of long-term strategies that save money over time. 
 
"Investing in transportation creates jobs and economic opportunity, improves safety and makes Illinois a better place to raise a family," Rauner said. "This plan will make Illinois more competitive while protecting the interests of the taxpayers."
 
The governor announced the plan's release at Peoria's McClugage Bridge at eastbound U.S. 150, which will be replaced in 2019 at a cost of $205 million with the completion of the final design this year. Based on current funding levels, the FY2019-2024 Proposed Highway Improvement Program aims to improve a total of 1,945 miles of miles of road and 525 bridges maintained by the state. The multi-year program also includes funding for upgrades to more than 750 miles of local roads and 922,933 square feet of local bridges.
 
Other plan highlights include:

 
• $26 million toward the reconstruction of U.S. 20/Rockford Bypass in Rockford
• $36 million to replace and repair the Third Street exit and ramps to Martin Luther King Drive in East St. Louis
• $12.7 million for additional lanes on 4.5 miles of Interstate 57 from Johnson City to West Frankfort 
• $148.4 million for bridge work and other improvements on Interstate 80 through Will County

 
This multiyear plan is the Illinois Department of Transportation's (IDOT) first to embrace asset management strategies that commit to smaller repairs avoiding the higher costs of deferred maintenance. Using this approach, IDOT will realize savings over multiple years to eventually invest in other projects throughout the state. The plan also builds upon the latest in data-driven tools to help identify projects that provide the most value to the public while improving quality of life and regional mobility. 
 
"At the governor's direction, IDOT continues to innovate in how it chooses which projects to build," said Illinois Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn. "This is a plan that gets the state on the right track toward truly meeting the needs of our communities and building a 21st century system of transportation."

Highway improvement  program http://www.idot.illinois.gov/Assets/uploads/files/Transportation-System/Reports/OP&P/HIP/2019-2024/2019-2024%20HIP.pdf

If Pritzker gets title “governor” Madigan will get control of Springfield

The Democratic Machine’s New Monarch

How J.B. Pritzker’s bottomless pockets could spell business as usual in state politics

BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND

In the early 1960s, a businessman named Arnold Maremont decided he wanted to run for U.S. Senate. So he made the pilgrimage all aspiring Democratic politicians were required to make in those days: to meet with Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley wasn’t sure whether the Baptists of Little Egypt would vote for a Jewish candidate, so he told Maremont to go downstate and find out. Maremont reported they would, and so Daley slated such a candidate: Rep. Sidney Yates, a machine Democrat.

Maremont felt used, but, as Mike Royko points out in his biography of Daley, “he wouldn’t have even tried had he ever heard Daley explain why he is so dedicated a party man: ‘… The rich guys can get elected on their money, but somebody like me, an ordinary person, needs the party. Without the party, only the rich would be elected to office.’ ”

Back then, millionaires needed the party. Today, the party needs millionaires—or even billionaires. In his bid for the governor’s seat, J.B. Pritzker, a Hyatt hotel chain heir born with not just a silver spoon but an entire cutlery set in his mouth, has positioned himself as a political outsider who, because of his money, is immune to the influence of special interests and political bosses. Nonetheless, the Democratic candidate has been embraced by House speaker Michael Madigan, Illinois’s most powerful machine boss, in no small part because a win for Pritzker would allow Madigan to thrive.

Madigan never formally endorsed Pritzker. But as the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana wrote in an opinion piece during the primary: “It’s common knowledge—as well as a source of considerable resentment—that Madigan is backing Pritzker. Madigan is depending on the billionaire to use his family fortune to win an overwhelming victory that will return Illinois to one-party rule and ensure that he will again be able to gerrymander state legislative districts after the 2020 Census.” Pritzker, whose political philosophy is, shall we say, not fully developed, is also seen by political professionals as easier to influence than the experienced politicians he defeated in the primary. They saw Pritzker as the best-organized candidate, but his money helped him build that impression by allowing him to devote all his energies to town halls and campaign rallies, while his rivals were dialing for dollars and reporting to their day jobs.

Pritzker spent nearly $70 million of his $3.5 billion fortune just to win the Democratic nomination, and he will pony up even more in an attempt to defeat Madigan’s archnemesis, half-a-billionaire incumbent Bruce Rauner, in what is expected to be the most expensive statewide election in U.S. history. Because it’s self-funded, Pritzker’s candidacy will also allow Madigan’s state Democratic Party to devote more resources to legislative races, which could help the speaker regain his House supermajority.

For regular Democrats, allying with a plutocrat is simply a matter of survival in this era of superwealthy politicians. “The early success of billionaire candidates was on the Republican side,” says Brookings Institution scholar Darrell M. West, author of Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust, citing President Trump and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. “But Democrats have taken notice of the fact that billionaires have been successful, and each party has adopted a policy of adopting a billionaire.”

Now that Madigan’s got his own billionaire, he’s going to ensure the system stays intact, even as people such as state senator Daniel Biss try to make politics in Illinois more equitable. Last year, Biss, who finished second to Pritzker in the Democratic primary, introduced a bill to establish a small-donor matching grant program that would provide public funding for state elections—a candidate for governor could receive up to $5 million. It’s modeled on the system in New York City, where liberal populist Bill de Blasio used matching grants to fund his successful campaign for mayor.

During his campaign, Biss raised $5.5 million, which, combined with what he already had in his campaign fund, brought him to $7 million—only a tenth of what Pritzker invested in his own coffers. Matching grants would have still put Biss’s total at only a fraction of Pritzker’s pool, but proponents of the bill say that could have been enough. “You don’t need tens of millions of dollars; you do need to break through,” says Colin Williams of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonprofit involved in drafting the bill.

Biss’s bill passed the Senate but has little chance in the House because it would weaken Madigan’s iron control over campaign funds for House elections—another point where the machine’s interests align with those of the superwealthy. And the legislation has no hope with the current governor. “[The bill] creates a grant program that could funnel hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to political campaigns,” says Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold. “Most people probably wouldn’t think that was a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.” (Pritzker evaded the question of whether he’d support the bill. According to his communications director, Galia Slayen, “J.B. supports overturning Citizens United and bringing comprehensive campaign finance reform to Illinois, including corporate and PAC contribution limits”—none of which would affect self-financed candidates.)

And so the machine, an organization that once boasted of itself as a vehicle for the humbly born to work their way up, evolves—making it harder for a so-called ordinary guy to take the highest office in the state in order to preserve its status quo. Madigan and the Illinois Democrats needed a champion who could outspend Rauner, and Pritzker is the only politician in Illinois with enough money to do it. If he succeeds, Pritzker will get the title “governor” in front of his name, Madigan will get control of Springfield back, and both money and the machine will be served.

This article appears in the June 2018 issue of Chicago magazine. 

Hope for healthier eyes found in healthy oil

The nutrient 'vaccine' that protects your sight

My friend from church has always had perfect vision... he never even wore glasses. But about three months ago, he noticed the pages in his choir book were starting to look blurry.

He was concerned, so he made an appointment with an optometrist. He found out he was suffering from age-related macular degeneration, or AMD.

If you are like many people, you probably don't know a lot about the condition or understand what is going on inside your eyes.

What is AMD? 

AMD is a leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50.

It causes damage to the macula, a small spot near the center of the retina and the part of your eye needed for sharp, central vision.

As AMD progresses, it damages then destroys your central vision. AMD by itself does not lead to complete blindness, with no ability to see. However, the loss of central vision in AMD can interfere with simple everyday activities, like your ability to see faces, drive, read, write or do close work, such as cooking or fixing things around your house. 

Hope for healthier eyes found in healthy oil

A team of LSU Health New Orleans scientists found that a component of fish oil not only protects cells critical to vision from initial damage, but also shores them up to protect them from future assaults that can cause damage, too.

Their study showed that the omega-3 fatty acid, DHA, and its derivatives "precondition" photoreceptor and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells to survive.

In other words, in their study, the DHA in fish oil can shield cells attacked by AMD in much the same way a vaccine is supposed to work.

This means that taking fish oil regularly could be an important part of eye health. I feel it's such an important part of health in general that I take Peak Super Mega3^™ daily.

Other supplements and vitamins for macular degeneration 

In addition to fish oil, there are a number of other supplements you can take to help stave off macular degeneration.

Researchers at the National Eye Institute tested whether taking nutritional supplements could protect against AMD in the Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS and AREDS2). Here are the ones that they found worked:

• 500 mg of vitamin C
• 400 IUs of vitamin E
• 10 mg of lutein
• 2 mg of zeaxanthin
• 80 mg of zinc
• 2 mg of copper

Keep Up the Momentum on Welfare Reform

By Newt Gingrich and Mary Mayhew
Originally published at Fox News

Republicans and members of the Trump administration must keep up the pressure and focus on achieving welfare reform.

When President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, many believed that the law would indeed “end welfare as we know it.” It’s what we intended when Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and implemented work requirements to restore welfare to its original intent as a springboard to self-sufficiency.

These policies were intended to be the beginning of welfare reform — the beginning of a nationwide policy focused on ending dependency. Instead, President Obama launched a war on the very thing we know is most successful at achieving this goal: work.

Over the past decade, our fellow citizens have fallen deeper into the welfare trap, ensnared by government policies that pay people to not work. The so-called “War on Poverty” has left our nation with record-high levels of welfare enrollment — despite a 17-year record-lowunemployment rate and more than six million open jobs across the country.

Many of these new enrollees are able-bodied adults with no disabilities keeping them from working. They are not the individuals our welfare system is designed to aid – the disabled, the elderly, and others who are truly in need.

There are now nearly 21 million able-bodied adults dependent on food stamps — three times as many as in 2000. Twenty-eight million able-bodied adults are now dependent on Medicaid, quadrupling the number of those enrolled in 2000.

This is not what we envisioned in Congress — on either side of the political aisle — when we passed welfare reform in 1996 with bipartisan support. We included work requirements in the legislation because we knew the power of work. The reforms were compassionate – they gave people the opportunity to build better lives and create their own American dreams.

We know this not only because the research has proven it, time and time again, but because we’ve seen the transformational power of promoting work firsthand.

When Maine enforced time limits on its TANF program and refocused the program on employment and training programs, it drew ire from those on the Left who called the reforms uncompassionate. But the results spoke for themselves: Over the four-year period after the reforms, enrollees with records of prior earnings saw their wages increase by 237 percent on average. Throughout the duration of the evaluation period, this group of people dramatically increased their total earnings from $2.6 million to $8.6 million.

In October 2014, Maine began requiring able-bodied and childless adults who were receiving food stamps to work, train, or volunteer – at least part-time – in order to receive their benefits. The reform drew criticism from the Obama administration — but once again, the power of work emerged. Those who left the program saw their incomes, on average, more than double within the first year, offsetting any lost welfare benefits. And the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamp benefits fell from approximately 16,000 to 1,500.

But Maine was unfortunately the exception. Instead of empowering able-bodied adults to work to lift themselves out of dependency, most states implemented work requirement waivers, allowing adults to collect taxpayer-funded benefits without being required to work at all. Loopholes have been exploited by federal and state bureaucrats who have robbed these able-bodied Americans of the opportunity to escape welfare and create better lives for themselves and their families.

Rather than viewing welfare as a temporary safety-net, government leaders have instead implemented policies that have turned welfare into a permanent trap.

But President Trump’s recent executive order, “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility” delivers a welcome policy change — one that offers hope to those trapped in welfare. The order lays the groundwork for federal agencies that administer welfare to prioritize work and encourage economic mobility, particularly for able-bodied adults. It reiterates the principle that those of us who have worked within the government know all too well: Government assistance is not the answer to ending poverty and dependency. Work is.

If Congress and agency leaders deliver on President Trump’s initiative, our welfare system can return to the truly compassionate policies of its past. Its success should once again be wholly measured by the number of people moved off the welfare rolls, not the number of people trapped on them. Only then will state successes like Maine’s become the norm rather than the exception.

More than one million children under age 6 are on psychiatric drugs… parents don’t know what they’re getting into

 by: Vicki Batts  Natural News

Tags: adhd, alternative treatments, bad medicine, badhealth, badmedicine, badscience, Big Pharma, children, children's health, Dangerous Medicine, harmful diagnosis, informed parents, lack of parenting, mental health, mind altering drugs, murky science, psychiatric drugs, psychiatry, toxins

5,280VIEWS

(Natural News) Are children in the United States being over-medicated? According to some recent statistics, it surely looks that way. Over a million children six years of age or under are prescribed a psychiatric medication. Overall, more than eight million kids in America are on some sort of psychotropic drug — and the medical establishment is hardly batting an eye.

In fact, now that the mass medication of American children has started to gain traction in the media, so-called researchers from Columbia University Medical Center published a study claiming that not enoughchildren are on drugs. Sure, that’s the problem — not the fact that children are blindly being given a dose of pharmaceuticals, instead of being given other options.

The risk that a three-year-old child will be diagnosed with ADHD, for example, is now over 40 percent. Do nearly half of all children actually suffer with this disorder, or are we over-diagnosing children for problems that aren’t real? Not every disruptive child has ADHD — but medicating them into sedation is an undeniably “easy solution” to what, in many cases, may be a more nuanced problem.

And, as Waking Times, explains, many parents are not being given all the facts about their child’s diagnosis. In many cases, the full range of side effects and health effects that can be caused by any number of psychotropic drugs is never disclosed to parents. Worse still, there are no true medical tests to confirm “mental disorders.” There’s a checklist, and if your child’s symptoms fit the list — the next stop is the pharmacy window.

Dr. Rene Soria-Saucedo recently co-authored a study on the childhood psychiatric medication phenomenon, commenting that this trend is concerning, largely because “usefulness of medication at this early age is poorly understood.” More importantly, however, is Soria-Saucedo’s notation of parental involvement in over-prescription. The pharmaceutical industry is so insidious, particularly with their widespread advertisement of their medications, that parents begin to develop unrealistic expectations. He posits that the desire for  “faster results and remission of symptoms” may be part of what drives doctors to prescribe medication before suggesting less aggressive treatments, like behavioral therapy.

“Parents should be asking for less aggressive treatments,” Soria-Saucedo contended. He continued by suggesting that parents should question medical professionals more often, too — especially regarding medications for conditions like ADHD that are getting prescribed at ever-younger ages. “I’d love to see behavioral techniques used more often,” he added.

Moreover, there are increasing concerns about the risks that come with psychiatric medications. In early 2018, world-famous psychiatrist Peter Breggin — who has also been dubbed “the conscience of his profession”– warned that psych meds are an “obvious prescription for violence.” In an excerpt from one of his columns, Breggin wrote:

Not only do psychiatric drugs add to the risk of violence, but psychiatric treatment lulls the various authorities and the family into believing that the patient is now ‘under control’ and ‘less of a risk.’ Even the patient may think the drugs are helping, and continue to take them right up to the moment of violence.

Even when some of their patients signal with all their might that they are dangerous and need to be stopped, mental health providers are likely to give drugs, adding fuel to the heat of violent impulses, while assuming that their violence-inducing drugs will reduce the risk of serious aggression.

Over 1500 incidents of “psychotropic drug-induced homicidal ideation” have been reported to the FDA’s MedWatch program. According to the FDA, however, only about 10 percent of adverse effects are actually reported to MedWatch — which means a startlingly high number of people are out there suffering in some way or another thanks to Big Pharma, but not enough of these incidents are being reported to make a difference.

How much of this is ever revealed to parents before they start their child on a daily drug regimen?

Learn more about harmful medicine at Medicine.news or MedicalExtremism.com.

Sources for this article include:

WakingTimes.com

Health.USNews.com