The kindness con: Fraudsters exploit America’s safety net

Governments have been handing out public work since men were laying stones on the Appian Way. And wherever government hands out money, people line up to get some.

Abraham Lincoln was said to have faced so many office-seekers and applicants for government favors that he finally complained, in his usual earthy fashion, that “there are too many pigs for the teats.”

The Democratic Socialists of America do not own the word ‘kindness.’

The pigs have multiplied.

During the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt dramatically expanded Washington’s role in the economy. His administration also strengthened organized labor. The Wagner Act of 1935 guaranteed workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, and unions became a central pillar of the Democrat coalition that dominated American politics for decades.

The same political pattern appeared