And in today’s Cover Story, since Liberals are increasingly fond of quoting Scripture, submitted for your perusal, two commentaries which accurately apply Biblical principles; first, courtesy of the WSJ, Robert Doar observes how…

The path to responsibility can start with a broom and a paycheck

It is hard to be a young black male in the United States today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for African-American men between 16 and 24 is 30.5%. That rate is more than twice what it is for whites in the same age group. Among African-American men over 20, more than 33% are not in the labor force. In addition, young African-American men are also more likely to be poor and to not graduate from high school. Sadly, the disparities these numbers reveal have not changed much since President Obama was elected in 2008.

On Thursday, Mr. Obama announced an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper intended to “unlock the full potential of boys and young men of color,” aiming to help them avoid the pitfalls of unemployment and criminality by focusing on education and personal responsibility. A White House task force will work on the matter, and Mr. Obama has recruited foundations and businesses pledging $200 million over five years to find solutions.

Those on the My Brother’s Keeper team searching for answers about how to help the most “at risk” young minority men would do well to stop by the Doe Fund in New York City, where, for more than 25 years, the organization run by George and Harriet McDonald has helped homeless men. The program they run is based on a clear contract between the shelter managers and the homeless men. “You get up every day and go to work and stay drug free-and we will pay you and house you and feed you. It’s as simple as that,” Mr. McDonald said at his shelter on 155th street in Harlem. Doe Fund facilities are funded by revenue generation from their maintenance and cleaning business, government funding for homeless services, and private donations. The breakdown is roughly one-third each.

Anyone who enters one of the four Doe Fund facilities in New York City is handed a paper entitled: “Some of the Rules that You Will hear ALL the time.” Among the regulations are Rule No. 4: No standing or loitering in front of the building at any time of the day. Rule No. 10: You must not drink or drug while you are in the program. Rule No. 11: No cellular phones are allowed while you are working.

In return for a roof over their heads and a salary, residents of the Doe Fund shelters clean and maintain commercial strips all over New York City — real jobs, with real demands and shifts that start at 6 a.m. The Doe Fund crews add an extra touch not provided by the sanitation and park employees of New York City, and every day workers face real customers who include not only local business groups who pay for their services but also residents and pedestrians who benefit from the improved quality of life.

Hourly wages start at $8.15, which gives shelter residents a chance to save, as room and board are provided. Some men accumulate as much as $5,000 while they are in the six- to nine-month program.

According to the McDonalds, over the past three years 57% of the men who completed the six-month program got jobs at an average wage of $10.86 an hour. And 65% of those retained the job for at least six months. A 2010 Harvard University evaluation found similar results. For a program that works with homeless men, many of whom have served prison sentences, those are solid results.

In addition to a strong work and drug-free requirement (enforced by random drug tests), the Doe Fund also requires the men who are fathers to provide financial support to their children and to identify themselves to the city’s child-support enforcement office to be sure they comply with their child-support orders.

What is important about the Doe Fund is that it explicitly links aid with a strong enforcement of the rules. (And WORK!!!) Doe Fund managers enforce the rules by restricting noncompliant residents to the shelter, reducing benefits, or referring them to another city shelter where these opportunities are not offered. The Doe Fund is not alone in its approach — there are similar setups across the country, but in most such programs it’s still rare to tie behavior to consequences.

That’s surprising, given that the approach used by the Doe Fund is right out of the welfare-reform playbook-the nation’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for poor single mothers links help with strong work requirements. As a result of this 1996 reform, many more single mothers are working, which has led to a reduction in child poverty.

The typical way that men wind up in the Doe Fund program is through referral from the city’s Department of Homeless Services. But there is no stigma attached to being a Doe Fund worker, who dress in distinctive blue uniforms and are familiar sights on the city’s streets. It is not uncommon for poor men — many under age 30 — to join the program on their own, sensing that their life needs structure and because they need a job.

It is troubling that at the same time the president has announced a new focus on helping young minority men, one of his administration’s top legislative priorities is a substantial hike in the federal minimum wage — a mandate on employers that is likely to reduce job opportunities for the very young men the president wants to help with My Brother’s Keeper.

There’s an old Washington story about former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan angrily telling President Bill Clinton to give up his obsession with health-care reform and focus on the much bigger problem of welfare and our nation’s care for the poor. That story came to mind as I read about the White House’s big push, five years into the Obama administration, to alleviate the problems of young minority men. It is very late, and it is not enough.

Most importantly, nothing government formulates will be provided in an effective form.

Next, AEI president Arthur Brooks details…

The downside of inciting envy

The Irish singer Bono once described a difference between America and his native land. “In the United States,” he explained, “you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I’m going to get that bastard.”

Alexis de Tocqueville phrased it a little differently, but his classic 19th-century text contains the same observation. Visiting from France, he marveled at Americans’ ability to keep envy at bay, and to see others’ successes as portents of good times for all.

For decades, survey data has supported the Bono-Tocqueville Hypothesis. The 2006 World Values Survey, for example, found that Americans are only a third as likely as British or French people to feel strongly that “hard work doesn’t generally bring success; it’s more a matter of luck and connections.” This faith that success flows from effort has built America’s reputation as a remarkably unenvious society.

Does it matter? It does indeed, when it comes to our pursuit of happiness. As the essayist Joseph Epstein puts it, “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.”

Unsurprisingly, psychologists have found that envy pushes down life satisfaction and depresses well-being. Envy is positively correlated with depression and neuroticism, and the hostility it breeds may actually make us sick. Recent work suggests that envy can help explain our complicated relationship with social media: it often leads to destructive “social comparison,” which decreases happiness. To understand this, just picture yourself scrolling through your ex’s wedding photos.

My own data analysis confirms a strong link between economic envy and unhappiness. In 2008, Gallup asked a large sample of Americans whether they were “angry that others have more than they deserve.” People who strongly disagreed with that statement — who were not envious, in other words — were almost five times more likely to say they were “very happy” about their lives than people who strongly agreed. Even after I controlled for income, education, age, family status, religion and politics, this pattern persisted.

It’s safe to conclude that a national shift toward envy would be toxic for American culture.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the Great Recession, such a shift may well be underway, given the increasing anxiety about income inequality and rising sympathy for income redistribution. According to data from the General Social Survey, the percentage of Americans who feel strongly that “government ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor” is at its highest since the 1970s. In January, 43 percent of Americans told the Pew Research Center that government should do “a lot” to “reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else.”

Why the shift? The root cause of increasing envy is a belief that opportunity is in decline. According to a 2007 poll on inequality and civic engagement by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, just 30 percent of people who believe that everyone has the opportunity to succeed describe income inequality as “a serious problem.” But among people who feel that “only some” Americans have a shot at success, fully 70 percent say inequality is a major concern.

People who believe that hard work brings success do not begrudge others their prosperity. But if the game looks rigged, envy and a desire for redistribution will follow.

This is the direction we’re heading. According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who feel that “most people who want to get ahead” can do so through hard work has dropped by 14 points since about 2000. As recently as 2007, Gallup found that 70 percent were satisfied with their opportunities to get ahead by working hard; only 29 percent were dissatisfied. Today, that gap has shrunk to 54 percent satisfied, and 45 percent dissatisfied. In just a few years, we have gone from seeing our economy as a real meritocracy to viewing it as something closer to a coin flip.

Gee…wonder why?!?

How can we break the back of envy and rebuild the optimism that made America the marvel of the world?

First and foremost, we must increase mobility for more Americans with a radical opportunity agenda. That means education reform that empowers parents through choice, and rewards teachers for innovation. It means regulatory and tax reform tailored to spark hiring and entrepreneurship at all levels, especially the bottom of the income scale. It means recalibrating the safety net to ensure that work always pays — such as an expansion of the earned-income tax credit — while never disdaining the so-called dead-end jobs that represent a crucial first step for many marginalized people.

Second, we must recognize that fomenting bitterness over income differences may be powerful politics, but it injures our nation. We need aspirational leaders willing to do the hard work of uniting Americans around an optimistic vision in which anyone can earn his or her success. This will never happen when we vilify the rich or give up on the poor.

Only a shared, joyful mission of freedom, opportunity and enterprise for all will cure us of envy and remind us who we truly are.

Now for the Biblical principles so often misrepresented out of ignorance or for political purposes:

(1). Exodus 20:17: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

(2). II Thessalonians 3:10: For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

(3). I Timothy 5:3-16: Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. Give the people these instructions, so that no one may be open to blame. Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds.

As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.

If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.

It’s not what we say, it’s what GOD says.  Don’t believe us?  Please, read it for yourself.  Don’t like what it says? Try the Koran; after all, it works for them:

Now, try to imagine how much better our nation would be today, how the lives of tens of millions of people would have been so different, had Liberals not imposed their perverted version of “charity” on America.