Best 142 quotes in «welfare quotes» category

A ‘discouraged worker’ is someone of legal employment age who has stopped actively seeking employment because he or she has simply given up looking, hence the term ‘discouraged.’ Well I’m fucking discouraged at having to pay for the lazy sod!

Any system that values profit over human life is a very dangerous one indeed.

Any system that values profit over human life is a very dangerous one indeed. Simply put, it lacks values, and such a system will eventually collapse once its true light is discovered by the masses. Though some say that capitalism is a modern system, corruption has been the source for the demise of every great civilization.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship.

Capitalism is a social system owned by the capitalistic class, a small network of very wealthy and powerful businessmen, who compromise the health and security of the general population for corporate gain.

Badger had been waiting with ever increasing certainty for that brown, government stamped envelope, to hit the floor with the impact of several atomic bombs; the shockwaves hitting him before the sound could penetrate his ears.

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS.

But Frances was beginning to feel that somewhere along the line, property, business, and all that contributes to the creation of wealth, must give back to government enough to guarantee adequate safeguarding of human welfare. The question would be, how to protect human beings against homelessness, starvation, and dependent old age without breaking down human initiative. She was seeing this as one fundamental problem of the government of the future; seeing too that somewhere leaders must arise who will be able to cope with this problem—honest leaders who will see the problem in its many-sidedness, and at last be able to solve it constructively.

By far the most significant consequence of "selfish capitalism" (Thatch/Blatcherism) has been a startling increase in the incidence of mental illness in both children and adults since the 1970s.

Calling out the supposed ‘abuse’ of welfare by blacks and other people of color is a time-honored tactic for distracting the general public from actual national issue. It also taps into latent, subconscious racism, which is what right-wing politicians would call a ‘win-win.

Competing images of the poor as 'deserving' and 'undeserving' became central components of the debate.

Clearly, our immigration policies should be reexamined. A convincing case can be made on environmental grounds alone that a nation of 300,000,000 needs no more people, especially since it would enjoy natural growth if the borders were closed tomorrow. How can we possibly claim to be fighting environmental degradation or hope for energy independence when we import a million or more people every year? How can we claim to be fighting poverty, crime, school failure, or disease when we import people who are more likely than natives to be poor, criminals, school failures, and to suffer from strange diseases? Immigration is even harder to justify when many newcomers speak no English, maintain foreign loyalties, or practice disconcerting religions. It is profoundly unwise to add yet more disparate elements to a population already divided by diversity. [D]emographers and economists are making dire projections based on the lower likelihood of blacks and Hispanics to become productive workers. These people go on to insist that the solution is to improve education for blacks and Hispanics, but the United States has already made enormous efforts to that end. There is no reason to think some kind of breakthrough is imminent. Clearly, the solution to the problems posed by an increasing Hispanic population is to stop Hispanic immigration. However, [...], our policy-makers are too afraid of accusations of racism to draw such an obvious conclusion. Americans must open their eyes to the fact that a changing population could change everything in America. The United States could come to resemble the developing world rather than Europe—in some places it already does. One recent book on immigration to Europe sounded a similar alarm when the author asked: “Can you have the same Europe with different people?” His answer was a forthright “no.” It should be clear from the changes that have already taken place in the United States that we cannot have the same America with different people, either. Different populations build different societies. The principles of European and European-derived societies—freedom of speech, the rule of law, respect for women, representative government, low levels of corruption—do not easily take root elsewhere. They were born out of centuries of struggle, false starts, and setbacks, and cannot be taken for granted. A poorer, more desperate America, one riven with racial rivalries, one increasingly populated by people who come from non-Western traditions could turn its back on those principles. Many people assert that all people can understand and assimilate Western thinking—and yet cultures are very different. Can you, the reader, imagine emigrating to Cambodia or Saudi Arabia or Tanzania and assimilating perfectly? Probably not; yet everyone in the world is thought to be a potential American. Even if there is only a small chance that non-Western immigrants will establish alien and unsettling practices, why take this risk? Immigration to the United States, like immigration to any nation, is a favor granted by citizens to foreigners. It is not a right. Immigration advocates often point to the objections Anglo-Americans made to turn-of-the-century immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Hungary, and other “non-Nordic” countries. They point out that these immigrants assimilated, and insist that Mexicans and Haitians will do the same. Those advocates overlook the fundamental importance of race. They forget that the United States already had two ill assimilated racial groups long before the arrival of European ethnics—blacks and American Indians—and that those groups are still uncomfortably distinct elements in American society. Different European groups assimilated across ethnic lines after a few generations because they were of the same race. There are many societal fault lines in “diverse” societies—language, religion, ethnicity—but the fault line of race is deepest.

Different groups have different priorities. Because Hispanics tend to have low incomes, they support increases in government services, even at the cost of more taxes for others. Most Hispanics supported all five spending initiatives on the May, 2005 California ballot; most whites opposed all five. Prof. Nikolai Roussanov of the Wharton School has found that both blacks and Hispanics spend 50 percent less on medical care than do whites with similar incomes, and that blacks and Hispanics spend 16 percent and 30 percent less, respectively, on education than do whites with similar incomes. Many studies have also found that blacks and Hispanics save less than whites for future goals like retirement. How do they spend their money? Blacks are more likely than whites to buy lottery tickets and to spend disproportionately more money doing so. Prof Roussanov says the biggest difference, however, is that blacks and Hispanics spend 30 percent more than whites with the same income on what he calls “visible goods” meant to convey status, such as clothing, cars, and jewelry. Different groups have different buying patterns. In 2004, Sears decided to turn 97 of its 870 locations into “multicultural stores,” in which clothing, signs, décor, and displays were geared to Hispanics and blacks, who do not have the same tastes and body sizes as whites. Hispanics want “stylish,” form-fitting clothing in bright, loud colors, and the highest heels available. Blacks need more “plus” sizes. In the multicultural stores, Sears displays the loud clothing prominently, near entrances. Clothing white women are likely to buy, such as the more traditional Land’s End line, is in the back. For years there was a Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California, filled with Roy Rogers memorabilia and even his horse Trigger—stuffed, of course. That part of California is now heavily Hispanic, and no one is interested in Roy Rogers. The museum moved to Branson, Missouri, which has become a resort catering to bluegrass and country music fans, who are overwhelmingly white. Victorville immigrant Rosalina Sondoval-Marin did not miss the museum. “Roy Rogers? He doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “There’s a revolution going on, and it don’t include no Roy Rogers.

Don’t pack your bags just yet, stay awhile, Don't try to run away to higher ground, You're in my twisted clouds of sad misfortune, And you are such an entertaining crowd! (I’ve never had such cheerful toys to play with...) Forget I said that – just a little natural disaster Humour, Ha-ha-ha. Pull up a rusty lawn chair On the waterfront in New Orleans, And ignore the wind that howls, Things aren’t always as they seem. I can smell fear in the air, Fresh amidst the cornbread steam, Forgive me if I sound excited, (I’m going to be famous, you know!) And let me take your money, please! I’ll drown your family, hunt down your pets, I’ve got tricks that I’ve never even tried yet, And it’s so easy when I get the chance! (I’ll swipe your house in just one glance!) As the saying goes, it all comes out in the wash, But I’m the only wash that leaves no stone unturned, Financial devastation is my middle name, And social degradation is my third! You, little boy from the bayou bank, You used to fish for pointless fun (I can appreciate having fun), But after I go, you’ll find your parents poor, You’ll have eviction notices on your door, You’ll have to sell any fish you can catch, In a desperate grasp for money, Although I hate to break it to you, That bayou’s polluted, honey! I see nothing in your future but welfare cheques! And you there, little girl with the closet of toys, You were born well-off with a room of your own, You have dresses that look more like They’re from fairy-tales, Glittery lace on your schoolgirl gowns. Wait ‘till murky water licks those hems, And your family is bankrupt And you’re homeless with them! Accept what’s to come, won’t you please? I’m just a carousel of wild winds Who’ll bring you to your knees! Hell, yeah! Take a bow, take a bow, Take a bow before your god… I might just pardon you If you’ve got magic up your sleeve! If you’re swift and resourceful you could outrun me! I always love a challenge! I always love a game… The question on your mind Is in regards to my first name, Right? My name is Katrina, the witch of the skies, A sorceress whose debut dance makes everyone die, I know it’s not what you wanted! (But I’m selfish through and through), So, c’mon and make me happy! Whether you’re ready or not…

Everybody's entitled to that forty acres and a mule. You're going to do the work, but you have to have something to work with. If you don't have a job, where do you go from there? You hear people say Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you don't even have shoes. You're barefooted. What are you going to pull yourself up by? Our country owes every citizen of the United States of America a means of livelihood. Not a handout, but a way to make it.

Free education, almost free healthcare, a generous benefits system and a better state pension than elsewhere, guarantee equal opportunities for all citizens. The only problem is that all these require a considerable amount of public revenue. This is why the common assertion that to be born in Finland is like winning the jackpot in the lottery is only applicable when you are at the receiving end. A far more common experience is that you need to win the lottery just to cover the tax bill.

Hospitals cannot continue to hemorrhage. For the country as a whole, medical insurance premiums include a surcharge that pays for treating the uninsured. However, if the proportion of uninsured indigent patients exceeds a certain figure, a hospital has no choice but to close. In California alone, the heavy cost of free medicine for foreigners forced no fewer than 60 hospitals to shut down between 1993 and 2003; many others were on the verge of collapse. From 1994 to 2004, the number of hospital emergency rooms in the country as a whole dropped by more than 12 percent. In May 2010, Miami’s health care system was so strapped, it was considering closing two of its five public hospitals. This would mean laying off 4,487 employees and the loss of 581 acute-care beds. Experts explained that treating uninsured patients had stretched the system to the breaking point. Houston is a good example of a city whose hospitals are barely making ends meet. In the nation as a whole, about 15 percent of the population has no medical insurance, but Texas, with its large population of Hispanics, has the highest percentage at 24 percent. In Houston, the figure is 30 percent. The safety net cannot accommodate so many people who cannot pay. “Does this mean rationing?” asks Kenenth Mattox, chief of staff at Ben Taub General Hospital. “You bet it does.” There is such a crush at Houston’s emergency rooms that ambulances often wait for one or two hours before they can even unload patients. The record wait is six hours. Twenty percent of the time, hospitals end up sending patients to other hospitals, and some have died after being diverted. Politicians and businessmen pull strings so friends can cut in line. Americans who fall sick in Mexico do not get free treatment. The State Department warns that Mexican doctors routinely refuse to treat foreign patients unless paid in advance, and that they often charge Americans for services not rendered.

If someone’s been signing on for six months with still no sign of finding gainful employment, then in order to continue to receive their Unemployment Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance they should complete at least 30 hours of compulsory work a week with the idea being that not only do they benefit their own communities, but this would also assist them in developing basic employability skills

If we begin to diligently care for the environment, it will greatly improve human health.

In a civilized society, welfare and warfare cannot go hand in hand.

[I]n around AD 170, a Greek intellectual named Celsus launched a monumental and vitriolic attack against the religion. It is clear that, unlike the other authors who have so far written about it, Celsus knows a lot about it. He has read Christian scripture – and not just read it: studied it in great detail. He knows about everything – from the Creation, to the Virgin Birth and the doctrine of the Resurrection. It is equally clear that he loathes it all and in arch, sardonic, and occasionally very earthy sentences, he vigorously rebuts it. The Virgin Birth? Nonsense, he writes, a Roman soldier had got Mary pregnant. The Creation is ‘absurd’; the books of Moses are garbage; while the idea of the resurrection of the body is ‘revolting’ and, on a practical level, ridiculous: ‘simply the hope of worms. For what sort of human soul would have any further desire for a body that has rotted?’ What is also clear is that Celsus is more than just disdainful. He is worried. Pervading his writing is a clear anxiety that this religion – a religion that he considers stupid, pernicious and vulgar – might spread even further and, in so doing, damage Rome. Over 1,500 years later, the eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gibbon would draw similar conclusions, laying part of the blame for the fall of the Roman Empire firmly at the door of the Christians. The Christians’ belief in their forthcoming heavenly realm made them dangerously indifferent to the needs of their earthly one. Christians shirked military service, the clergy actively preached pusillanimity, and vast amounts of public money were spent not on protecting armies but squandered instead on the ‘useless multitudes’ of the Church’s monks and nuns. They showed, Gibbon felt, an ‘indolent, or even criminal, disregard for the public welfare’.

I think that's quite true. and in fact the people who understand this the best are those who are carrying out the control and domination in the more free societies. like the U.S. and England, where popular struggles have have won a lot of freedoms over the years and the state has limited capacity to coerce. It is very striking that it's precisely in those societies that elite groups—the business world, state managers and so on—recognized early on that they are going to have to develop massive methods of control of attitude and opinion, because you cannot control people by force anymore and therefore you have to modify their consciousness so that they don't perceive that they are living under conditions of alienation, oppression, subordination and so on. In fact, that's what probably a couple trillion dollars are spent on each year in the U.S., very self-consciously, from the framing of television advertisements for two-year olds to what you are taught in graduate school economics programs. It's designed to create a consciousness of subordination and it's also intended specifically and pretty consciously to suppress normal human emotions. Normal human emotions are sympathy and solidarity, not just for people but for stranded dolphins. It's just a normal reaction for people. If you go back to the classical political economists, people like Adam Smith, this was just taken for granted as the core of human nature and society. One of the main concentrations of advertising and education is to drive that out of your mind. And it's very conscious. In fact, it's conscious in social policy right in front of our eyes today. Take the effort to destroy Social Security. Well, what's the point of that? There's a lot of scam about financial problems, which is all total nonsense. And, of course, they want Wall Street to make a killing. Underlying it all is something much deeper. Social Security is based on a human emotion and it's a natural human emotion which has to be driven out of people minds, namely the emotion that you care about other people. You care. It's a social and community responsibility to care whether a disabled widow across town has enough food to eat, or whether a kid across the street can go to school. You have to get that out of people's heads. You have to make them say, "Look, you are a personal, rational wealth maximizer. If that disabled widow didn't prepare for her own future, it's her problem not your problem. It's not your fault she doesn't have enough to eat so why should you care?

One of the most breathtaking concepts in all of Scripture is the revelation that God knows each of us personally and that we are in His mind both day and night. There is simply no way to comprehend the full implications of His love by the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is all-powerful and all-knowing, majestic and holy, from everlasting to everlasting. Why would He care about us—about our needs, our welfare, our fears? We have been discussing situations in which God doesn’t make sense. His concern for us mere mortals is the most inexplicable of all.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.

Poverty has deceived many of us into believing that some people who are in that state love the food, clothes, places, and people that they do not even like. The same can be said about wealth.

President Trump is focusing on the stock market at the expense of the health and welfare of the poor, sick and elderly.

Racial attitudes—not crime rates or likelihood of victimization—are an important determinant of white support for 'get tough on crime' and antiwelfare measures.

Runaway costs are crushing the American medical system. Hispanics are the group least likely to have medical insurance, with 30.7 percent uninsured. Ten point eight percent of whites and 19.1 percent of blacks are without insurance. Illegal immigrants rarely have insurance, but hospitals cannot turn them away. In 1985, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to treat all emergency patients, without regard to legal status or ability to pay. Anyone who can stagger within 250 yards of a hospital—a distance established through litigation—is entitled to “emergency care,” which is defined so broadly that hospital emergency rooms have become free clinics. Emergency-room care is the most expensive kind. Childbirth is an emergency, and hospitals must keep mother and child until both can be discharged. If the mother is indigent the hospital pays for treatment, even if there are expensive complications. Any child born in the United States is considered a US citizen, so thousands of indigent illegal immigrants make a point of having “anchor babies” at public expense. The new American qualifies for all forms of welfare, and at age 21 can sponsor his parents for American citizenship. In 2006 in California, an estimated 100,000 illegal immigrant mothers had babies at public expense, and accounted for about one in five births. The costs were estimated at $400 million per year, and in the state as a whole, half of all Medi-Cal (state welfare) births were to illegal immigrant mothers. In 2003, 70 percent of the babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton were anchor babies. In Los Angeles and other cities with heavy gang activity, hospitals must deal with “dump and run” patients—criminals wounded in shootouts who are rolled out of speeding cars by fellow gang members. Illegal-immigrant patients often show up without papers of any kind, and doctors have no idea whom they are treating. Mexican hospitals routinely turn away uninsured Mexicans, and if the US border is not far, may tell the ambulance driver to head for the nearest American hospital. “It’s a phenomenon we noticed some time ago, one that has expanded very rapidly,” said a federal law enforcement officer.

She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself...

Some people look as if they have lost their eagerness and passion. Their aspiration seems to be exhausted and fresh inspiration has abandoned their weary mind. Life has boundlessly given them material welfare, which has fully spoiled them in the end. No energy for longing has been left, as they have reached a twilight zone. The twilight of desire. ( "Twilight of desire" )

That amount of time is to be converted into some products, benefits, goods, services, welfare, ministry, but most of us actually truncate this amount of wealth on daily basis.

That’s what the welfare people want,' Tranquilino gritted his teeth, 'to have us on welfare and to have our women working. Then they can point to our broken families and say the mexicano is a lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch!

The authors propose “a New Deal for globalization—one thatlinks engagement with the world economy to a substantial redistribution of income.” Remember, this isn’t hippy talk. These are the capitalists who see angry workers with pitchforks loitering outside the gates of a very profitable factory, and they are making a very pragmatic calculation: Throw these people some food (and maybe some movie tickets and beer) before we all end up worse off

[T]he full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields." [Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)]

The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself.

The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the past 13 years, the period was not one of collapse into chaos but actually one where the situation improved, and particularly in areas such as schools, hospitals and a variety of other cultural achievements—so the idea that somehow or other it all needs to be taken down and ground into the dust is not valid. I think we need to defend what most people think basically needs defending and that is the provision of some form of welfare from the cradle to the grave.

The most potent recreational activity is when we sit back and exercise our minds with great and exciting books.

The nation state has taken the place of God. Responsibilities for education, healing and public welfare which had formerly rested with the Church devolved more and more upon the nation state ... National governments are widely assumed to be responsible for and capable of providing those things which former generations thought only God could provide - freedom from fear, hunger, disease and want - in a word: "happiness".

The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it.

The themes that exercised the minds of survivor movements and their allies within the health and welfare professions generated a political project: how to revolutionise medical and judicial approaches to injured adults and children, how to raise awareness so that other people didn’t have to suffer the same, and how to understand, and then challenge, offenders who so love what they do to children that they can and must shut their minds to the feelings of children who have put their trust in them. P4

This was a talk to an anarchist conference, and in my view the libertarian movements have been very shortsighted in pursuing doctrine in a rigid fashion without being concerned about the human consequences. So it's perfectly proper… I mean, in my view, and that of a few others, the state is an illegitimate institution. But it does not follow from that that you should not support the state. Sometimes there is a more illegitimate institution which will take over if you do not support this illegitimate institution. So, if you're concerned with the people, let's be concrete, let's take the United States. There is a state sector that does awful things, but it also happens to do some good things. As a result of centuries of extensive popular struggle there is a minimal welfare system that provides support for poor mothers and children. That's under attack in an effort to minimize the state. Well, anarchists can't seem to understand that they are to support that. So they join with the ultra-right in saying "Yes, we've got to minimize the state," meaning put more power into the hands of private tyrannies which are completely unaccountable to the public and purely totalitarian. It's kind of reminiscent of an old Communist Party slogan back in the early thirties "The worse, the better." So there was a period when the Communist Party was refusing to combat fascism on the theory that if you combat fascism, you join the social democrats and they are not good guys, so "the worse, the better." That was the slogan I remember from childhood. Well, they got the worse: Hitler. If you care about the question of whether seven-year-old children have food to eat, you'll support the state sector at this point, recognizing that in the long term it's illegitimate. I know that a lot of people find that hard to deal with and personally I'm under constant critique from the left for not being principled. Principle to them means opposing the state sector, even though opposing the state sector at this conjuncture means placing power into the hands of private totalitarian organizations who would be delighted to see children starve. I think we have to be able to keep those ideas in our heads if we want to think constructively about the problems of the future. In fact, protecting the state sector today is a step towards abolishing the state because it maintains a public arena in which people can participate, and organize, and affect policy, and so on, though in limited ways. If that's removed, we'd go back to a [...] dictatorship or say a private dictatorship, but that's hardly a step towards liberation.

We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.

What’s interesting is that most free-marketers don’t seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that’s trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollars—that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations—with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools.

What’s interesting is that most free-marketers don’t seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that’s trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollar—that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations—with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools.

When I left this country, the best part of forty years ago, England still seemed to have a soul. It had pulled together after the war and committed itself to a welfare system …" "Jesus, it was the welfare system which drained this fucking country of its soul—can't you see that? The dependency culture destroyed any sense of having to do something for yourself. Do you think those violent, criminal bastards in your parish would have time to be muggers if they had ever been made to work?

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.

Animal welfare issues have always been important to me.

Anyone who has ever experienced dehumanized life on welfare or any other confidence-shaking dependency knows that a paid job may be preferable to the dole, even when the handout is coming from a family member.

A person or a ruler who executes his plans (of public welfare) after due consideration, the prosperity stands with him for a longer period.

Consulates monitor American welfare programs and make sure Mexicans make the most of them. Some programs are closed to illegal immigrants but food stamps (the program is known since 2008 as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) are not. Many illegal immigrants hesitate to apply for them for fear their status will be discovered and they will be deported. Mexican Consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro of Santa Ana in Orange County, California, went on Spanish-language television to tell Mexicans it was safe to apply. “It won’t affect your immigration status,” he explained. More than 1,200 people applied for food stamps the next day. Consulates also have a program called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows), which publicizes American hospitals and clinics that treat illegal immigrants for free. In 2007, the consul in Los Angeles proudly noted that 300,000 Mexicans in the area had benefited from the consulate’s medical advice. Cost to taxpayers for medical treatment for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles Country runs to about $400 million a year. In 2005, as it does every year, the consulate in Los Angeles gave the school district nearly 100,000 textbooks. The history books are the ones used in Mexico. They refer to the American flag as “the enemy flag” and say “we love our country because it is ours.” In Salinas, California, the consul general for the area organized a “Mexican Flag Day” to promote Mexican patriotism at an American public school.