Free Republic

When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last month, most of the media focused on the country's changing racial composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years -- a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy -- immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask...

I live in a small town in Florida. On the way home today I counted 11 banks in approximately a 3 mile stretch of the main thoroughfare. The 2005 population estimate of this town was 12,582. The per-capita income was $20,175.00.I thought to myself, "Why are there so many banks for this small town? Where do they get the business to keep operating?"Some of these banks are branches of large banks, while others are locally owned. One locally owned bank is continually opening new branches in the general area. I don't understand what is going on here. Are there any...

(CBS) Census figures reveal a new reality in America's classrooms, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes. Minority populations are climbing everywhere. "The white population, I wouldn't say is fading into the background, but it is becoming the older, less fertile part of the population," says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute. Frey crunched the census data and found huge jumps in the Hispanic population far from the traditional melting pots - up 21 percent in St. Joseph, Missouri; up 17 percent in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and 15 percent in Pascagoula, Mississippi - all in just one year's time. "You're seeing...

Steven W. Mosher is president of Population Research Institute (www.pop.org) and author of the book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 2008). Michael J. Miller interviewed him on the subject of his book. Miller: Dire scenarios about imminent overpopulation, from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, have not materialized. Where are the mistakes in their calculations? Steven Mosher: In some cases they were deliberately exaggerated, even fabricated, in an attempt to frighten individuals into having no more than one or two children, and legislatures into funding population control programs. Assuming that the alarmists...

By the weekend, World Population Day, July 11, will have come and gone, with its usual spate of articles bemoaning the fact that there are too many people in the world. This year the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which came up with the idea of a World Population Day in the first place, argued that population growth can and should be restrained by "empowering women." By this fine phrase they mean that women should be taken out of the home--and the business of bearing and raising children--and put to work producing goods and services for strangers. The UNFPA claims that...

The controversial project known as Interstate 69/TransTexas Corridor became a little less so last week after the Texas Department of Transportation announced it would recommend utilizing existing highway routes rather than building new ones. The announcement comes after months of public meetings during which residents along the path of the proposed path of Interstate 69/TTC voiced varying concerns. TxDOT has designated four priority corridors to address the state's transportation needs in the next decade. "The preliminary basis for this decision centers on the review of nearly 28,000 public comments made on the Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement," TxDOT Executive...

Recent crises have reenergized the population control movement. Worried about food shortages?  Reduce the number of babies born, its advocates argue.  Concerned about global warming?  Contracept or sterilize more women.  Want to bring down gas prices?  Promote abortion around the globe.  As “Going Green� columnist Bryan Walsh puts it in the latest issue of Time magazine (June 2, 2008), “Population is the essential multiplier for any number of human ills.�Not so long ago, the population controllers would have been embarrassed to openly promote such ideas.  After all, they have cried wolf so many times that most sensible people have stopped...

Recent crises have reenergized the population control movement. Worried about food shortages? Reduce the number of babies born, its advocates argue. Concerned about global warming? Contracept or sterilize more women. Want to bring down gas prices? Promote abortion around the globe. As "Going Green" columnist Bryan Walsh puts it in the latest issue of Time magazine (June 2, 2008), "Population is the essential multiplier for any number of human ills." Not so long ago, the population controllers would have been embarrassed to openly promote such ideas. After all, they have cried wolf so many times that most sensible people have...

"Someone wins, someone doesn't win, that's life," Nancy Kopp, Maryland's Treasurer, told The Washington Post. "But women don't want to be totally dissed." She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. "Healing The Wounds Of Democrats' Sexism," as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Sen. Clinton's presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

GUESTS May 30 Steven Mosher President of The Population Research Institute on the worldwide population control movement Founded in 1989, Population Research Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to objectively presenting the truth about population-related issues, and to reversing the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE and Chor-Bishop Seely Beggiani Rector or Our Lady of Lebanon Seminary in Washington, DC on the Maronite Church in Lebanon OUR LADY OF LEBANON SEMINARY

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

The United States grew steadily more diverse last year, with Hispanics holding on to their rank as the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group -- a trend with far-reaching implications for American politics and immigration policies. New Census Bureau figures show that the nation's Hispanic population grew by 1.4 million in 2007 to reach 45.5 million people, or 15.1 percent of the total U.S. population of 301.6 million. Blacks ranked as the second-largest minority group, at 40.7 million people. Racial and ethnic minorities account for more than one in three Americans, a new milepost ..

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

Minutes south of Interstate 10 and Sealy, the pastures along FM 1458 are their own silent world in the morning. Mists lift to reveal black cattle, brown and spotted horses, snow-white egrets underfoot in lush green grass. Then a concrete mixer comes churning down the blacktop. Just up the road is a small subdivision. More are sure to come as city dwellers, including weekenders and retirees, move out in search of a quieter, simpler life — and relief from city traffic. Although the gradual influx may bring greater changes in the long run, what disturbs residents most is the planned...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

For Peyton Gilbert, the battle over the Trans-Texas Corridor is reminiscent of the moment in 1836 when Lt. Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited those willing to fight thousands of Mexican soldiers to step across. "That line in the sand is the Trans-Texas Corridor, and it's a threat to our sovereignty again, just like at the Alamo," said Gilbert, 14, who is from Whitehouse, near Tyler. Gilbert was among a large crowd of people who marched down Congress Avenue to the Capitol on Saturday afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed highway-rail-utility corridor...

BELTON - There appears to be no easy way to address the challenges that inflation has brought to the Texas Department of Transportation. “We’ve seen 60 percent inflation over the last five years for transportation projects,” said Chris Lippincott, a TxDOT spokesman. To look to the federal government for assistance would appear foolhardy at this point as the Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to become insolvent by 2009. The fund was created in 1956 to ensure a dependable source of financing for U.S. interstates and highways. “The Federal Highway Trust Fund is expected to go into the red very...

Researchers from the UN University found out which business can bring a lot of profit to an investor. It is a construction business, although it does not go about the construction of large shopping malls or grocery stores. It goes about the construction of toilets. Every dollar invested in this business can bring the staggering 900-percent profit. For example, if an entrepreneur builds a 100-dollar bathroom, he or she may have the return of $900 in a certain period of time. Experts studied statistics on the issue and conducted their own research before they came to such a surprising conclusion....

There's been a lot of talk about the new Trans-Texas Corridor — the next-generation "super-highway" — and opinions are varying. Now the debate is coming to Lufkin's doorstep. On Monday, the American Land Foundation, Stewards of the Range and TURF will hold a workshop at Lufkin's Pitser Garrison Civic Center on how to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor 69. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A portion of Texas citizens have voiced their opposition to the TTC-69 in public meetings held by the Texas Department of Transportation, but believing they are not being heard, four cities and their...

In the midst of inflation, funding difficulties and halted expansion projects, a budget error on the part of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) may have exacerbated their challenges. "TxDOT does some mysterious accounting," said Rep. Chuck Hopson (D-Jacksonville). "They had close to $1 billion counted in their budget twice." "That was a serious error on our part and we have made changes to try to prevent that type of error from occurring again," said TxDOT Spokesman Chris Lippincott, adding that the amount added twice in their financial statement was unrelated to the $1.2 billion in federal rescissions, which are...

As we all know but are sometimes reluctant to contemplate, oil is a finite, non-renewable resource. This automatically means that its use is not sustainable. If the use of oil is not sustainable, then of course the added carrying capacity the oil has provided is likewise unsustainable. Carrying capacity has been added to the world in direct proportion to the use of oil, and the disturbing implication is that if our oil supply declines, the carrying capacity of the world will automatically fall with it. These two observations (that oil has expanded the world's carrying capacity and oil use is...

Population growth and insecurity may push Yemen down slippery slope to chaos 02/23/2008 12:14 AM | Reuters Sana'a: Yemen's painful struggle to build a modern state may be overwhelmed by rampant population growth, dwindling resources, corruption and internal conflicts. "I don't believe there is another nation in the world... that is this close to a population-cum-resources catastrophe," said Ramon Scoble, a water expert from New Zealand working in Yemen. The Middle East's poorest country wins few headlines, except when tourists are abducted by unruly tribesmen or killed by Al Qaida-inspired militants, but any slide into chaos here would pose huge...

TYLER - Heated debates are cropping up in rural East Texas communities as the Texas Department of Transportation hold hearings on the proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor. It's the first construction project of it's kind in the country. The Texas Department of Transportation says they want it to make room for a growing state. "A thousand people a day move to texas," says spokesman Larry Krantz,"where are these people going to drive? The population in Texas is going to explode by 60% in the year 2030." Their plans involve moving commercial trucks off existing interstate highways and onto one of two...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

HOUSTON -- It did not take long Tuesday for the Texas Department of Transportation to find out what the Houstonians at a public hearing thought about the proposed 600-mile Trans-Texas Corridor, KPRC Local 2 reported. "George Washington, Sam Houston would vomit on you people," one attendee said. Chris Zora, who opposes the plan, attended the hearing at the Arabia Shrine Center in Southwest Houston. "I'd like to see a show of hands here of anybody that approves of this corridor," Zora said. "Is there anyone in this room who approves of this corridor? Raise your hands if you approve of...

Trucks hauling everything from cars to produce use Southeast Texas roads to deliver their goods, and when a proposed Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor is completed, local drivers could see even more of them, local transportation officials said. The proposed I-69 corridor stretches from Michigan down to Texas. Once in Texas, the corridor goes about 650 miles from Texarkana to Brownsville and Laredo and includes separate lanes for cars and semis and areas for trains and utilities. It doesn't cut through Beaumont, but local arteries like U.S. 69 and Interstate 10 would connect to it. Travelers and truckers just need to...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.� Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

Joe Daleo, the number one guy over at Icecap.us, recently sent me CO2 data from Beck (2007) and asked me what I made of it. Now, this data has been poured over by the great and small, so should we expect any revelations along the lines of “Has CO2 actually decreased?” Well…see below. I don’t often see this data pictured in one particular way that I find instructive, so I wanted to show it to you. You’re probably used to seeing CO2 through time in plots very much like this cartoon. CO2 through time The black line is the actual...

A so-called “NAFTA Superhighway� earned support from the city’s mayor and discussion among residents Monday during a public hearing on the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-69 project. TxDOT held a public hearing at the Brownsville Events Center Monday to explain the progress of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a future segment of Highway I-69, which will link the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border. After a short presentation, the floor was open for comments. Among the local politicians, college students and retirees at the hearing there was a wide range of opinion on the project. According to Mario Jorge, district engineer for...

A big protest is planned for Monday afternoon, ahead of the latest public hearing on the proposed statewide tollway. Lots of landowners are upset about the state’s plan to build a tollway from Mexico to northeast Texas. There have already been several town hall meetings about the Trans-Texas Corridor. Most of the people who have spoken out about the plan say it will put them out of business. But state officials argue the tollway is necessary to keep up with the growing population in Texas. Monday’s meeting is being held in Huntsville. It starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Walker...

...Fifteen years ago, Japan ranked fourth among the world's countries in gross domestic product per capita. It now ranks 20th. In 1994, its share of the world's economy peaked at 18 percent; in 2006, the number was below 10 percent... ...Japan's slide relative to other major economies is not a tabloid tale of suddenly squandered riches. It is rather an insidious petering out of growth, productivity and innovation -- and of political will to stop the slippage. The slide has dovetailed with another quietly insidious crisis -- the petering out of the population. Japan has the world's highest proportion of...

Global trends can also bolster US security Changing demographic trends will impact the future of international relations, according to the latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR). Several hotbed areas in the world that offer the motive and opportunity for political violence are due to stabilize by the year 2030. Countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are currently experiencing "youth bulges" (a disproportionately high number of young people in a society) along with high rates of unemployment. Author Mark L. Haas of Duquesne University argues that this has created many individuals with strong grievances against current...

A Thirst for Meat: Changes in diet, rising population may strain China's water supply Sid Perkins China's rapid industrialization and increasing population, along with a growing dietary preference among its citizens for meat, are straining the country's water resources to the point where food imports will probably be needed to meet demand in coming decades. Economic growth in China is brisk: Over the past 2 decades, the country's gross domestic product has risen, on average, about 8 percent per year. That's the highest rate of development in recent world history, says Junguo Liu, an environmental scientist at the Swiss Federal...

CARTHAGE, Texas — State transportation officials appear to have a tough sales job ahead as they try to pave the way for new highways — mostly toll roads — to deal with the booming Texas population. Texas Department of Transportation executives headed to Carthage on Wednesday for the second stop in a monthlong series of public town hall meetings to discuss the Trans Texas Corridor, a proposed network of superhighway toll roads, and other transportation issues. The unprecedented sessions, which began Tuesday night in Texarkana, are intended to answer questions and improve communication between the agency and people who use...

Sub-Saharan Africa: The Population Emergency ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the XXth Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region's population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050. The report of a demographic study, coordinated by the Centre Population et Développement (CEPED), commissioned by the Agence Française de Développement...

For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation's unique status among industrialized countries. The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself. "It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J....

The Census Bureau informs us that when the clock strikes midnight, the U.S. population will exceed 303.1 million. That represents a one-year increase of 0.9% and a 22% increase since 1990, when our population stood at a mere 248.7 million souls. ...Between 1994 and 2005, the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. is estimated to have doubled to around 12 million. Yet according the Department of Justice, over that same period the violent crime rate in the U.S. declined by 34.2% and the property crime rate fell by 26.4%, reaching their lowest levels since 1973. Crime has fallen in cities...

A new immigrant — legal or illegal — is expected to enter the United States every 30 seconds by January, the U.S. Census Bureau says. The agency estimates this foreign influx will increase the total U.S. population by one person every 13 seconds. The U.S. also is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 11 seconds by next month. The Census Bureau is projecting the nation's Jan. 1 total population will be 303,146,284 — a 0.9 percent increase from New Year"s Day 2007. The estimate is similar to recent annual population increases of about 1...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is fond of referring to California as a nation state. Population figures released Wednesday show that if the Golden State was its own country, it would be right there with Poland. The department calculated that the nation's most populous state had about 37,771,000 people as of July 1. It added 438,000 more residents in the previous year. Just more than 12 percent of the 301 million people in the U.S. live in California. Los Angeles County alone is home to nearly 10.3 million people, a population slightly higher than Michigan's. By contrast, mountainous Alpine County had just...

This is the time of year, as Hillary Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate "the birth of a homeless child" — or, in Al Gore's words, "a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child." Just for the record, Jesus wasn't "homeless." He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic overregulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare it's surely only a matter of time...

U.S. POPULATION EXPLOSION FUELS DEMAND FOR ENERGY Must see video at: href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQBehind China and India, the U.S. is the third most populous nation in the world and we’re fast catching up. As population grows so does the amount of energy we need. Just as two people require more water than one person so it is with energy in a modern society. To be sure there are ways to conserve but there is a limit to how much we can conserve without self destructing. There is no magic bullet and our dependence on foreign oil will range far into the future....

The president of Estonia goes on national TV to urge his countrymen to have more children. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns his parliament about "a serious crisis threatening Russia's survival": the nation's low birth rate. The government of Singapore is trying to reverse that country's birth dearth by sponsoring a massive taxpayer-funded matchmaking service. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, panicking the world with dire predictions of a population explosion. By the year 2000, he predicted, the world would be so crowded that hundreds of millions would die of starvation. Although Mr. Ehrlich's prophecies have turned out to...

In the first of a series on Japan's population crisis, the BBC's Philippa Fogarty looks at what the demographic changes mean for Asia's economic giant. The number of children and young people in Japan is continuing to fall In Tokyo's Harajuku district, a steady stream of people are visiting the Meiji Shrine. Parents with small children dressed in traditional kimono stand in front of the shrine, clap twice and then bow, before turning to pose for a group photograph. This is shichi-go-san, when families with children aged seven, five and three visit shrines to pray for their health and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ This is a MUST SEE video for anyone interested in the immigration debate, whether you are a citizen, an illegal alien or a Congressman. ... all » This clip from the longer video, Immigration by the Numbers, features Roy Beck demonstrating the catastrophe of the huge numbers of both legal and illegal immigration by Third World people into the modern nations. He uses standard statistics and simple gumballs to show this disaster in the making. Video was done by roy beck: http://www.answers.com/topic/roy-beck Full video on google: http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

PARIS: The human population is living far beyond its means and inflicting damage on the environment that could pass points of no return, according to a major report issued Thursday by the United Nations. Climate change, the rate of extinction of species and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the threats putting humanity at risk, the UN Environment Program said in its fourth Global Environmental Outlook since 1997. "The human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns," Achim Steiner, the executive director...

Philippine Population Control Groups Launch Suit Against Pro-Life Manila Former Mayor By Hilary White MANILA, Philippines, October 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lito Atienza, the former mayor of the Philippine capital Manila, who has earned the wrath of abortionists and population control groups for his opposition to the killer abortion drug RU-486, is facing a lawsuit by those same groups. According to Elizabeth Pangalangan, executive director of the Reproductive Health, Rights and Ethics Center at the University of the Philippines, the suit aims to "hold [Atienza] liable for acts which caused injury to women." Atienza, who is now the Environment Secretary...

It’s been a few weeks since September 12th, so if your early-pregnancy test colors positive, go claim your car, fridge or computer. Russia ’s imploding population has birthed schemes to nudge couples to conceive. September 12th was proclaimed the Day of Conception in the Ulyanovsk region of Russia . Pairs who “give birth to a patriot” nine months later on June 12th, Russia Day, win cash, cars, and other goodies. Prizes to procreate - how grim. One would think making babies would be reward enough. But Russia’s population dearth reflects negative 21st Century attitudes toward children. Between poverty, immorality, avarice...