Free Republic

More than 400 years ago, the British adopted the Poor Law system, under which local communities were made responsible for the relief of poverty. For the next four centuries the Poor Laws were amended again and again, as the following argument went to and fro: Was the system providing necessary relief or was it in various ways interfering with the natural workings of the labor market by subsidizing idleness and encouraging indolence.At one point a royal commission recommended the following two tests: The less eligibility test: a pauper should have to enter a workhouse with conditions worse than that of...

After Mitt Romney was captured on tape last week discussing how 47 percent of American households pay no income taxes, commentators and economists on both the left and right were quick to point that this was to a large degree driven by so-called "refundable tax credits" like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit. These credits have enjoyed a great deal of support among conservatives because they are simple, transparent, and obviate the need for expensive and cumbersome bureaucracies. And on both the left and right, there's a widespread consensus that refundable credits work: liberals like them...

Don't Worry, It's Not Racist. He Just Wants Black Children To Die To Save Money What’s wrong with you, bitter clingers? Don’t you realize that a dead child is a cheap child? I mean, all dead babies cost is the funds to suck or cut them mercilessly from their mother’s womb. Presto! No more pesky expenses of a living child.Ezra Klein, writing at the Washington Post, actually proffers that argument in favor of  taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood; that abortions are cheaper for the government than having an “unintended pregnancy”. (That’s their euphemism for unborn baby killed by abortion.) His article...

The number of people on food stamps keeps hitting new all-time highs; as of September, nearly 43 million people were using the program, according to figures out this week. Of course, because of population growth, absolute numbers only tell part of the story. The best way to look at the numbers over a long period of time is as a percentage of the population. And when you do that, you see that we're also hitting new highs.

Snips from Excerpt only website: Seventy-two percent of black babies are born to unmarried mothers today, according to government statistics. This number is inseparable from the work of Carroll, an obstetrician who has dedicated her 40-year career to helping black women. The black community's 72 percent rate eclipses that of most other groups: 17 percent of Asians, 29 percent of whites, 53 percent of Hispanics and 66 percent of Native Americans were born to unwed mothers in 2008, the most recent year for which government figures are available. The rate for the overall U.S. population was 41 percent.

A JOBLESS 29-year-old is set to be one of Britain’s youngest GRANDPAS. Dad-of-three Ged Fulton was just 14 when he became a dad. But now his 15-year-old son Sean is expecting a tot with his 18-year-old lover. And Ged will be 30 when the baby is born in November, making him one of the youngest grandparents in the world. The former customer service worker said last night: “It hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m getting teased by my mates — but I’ve got no plans for a pipe and slippers yet.” He said Sean was “showing a lot of maturity” and...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- When the police got a tip that Bonner Elementary was being hit for the second time in a week, they rushed three squad cars to the school. As they were cordoning off the grounds, the burglars emerged — dashing out a front door and across a field. Norm Kenaiou, a veteran cop, caught one burglar struggling to hop a chain-link fence. The shock came when he spun his suspect around and saw two, doe-like eyes blinking back at him: the eyes of a terrified, 8-year-old girl. Should he read the child her Miranda rights? Handcuff her?...

A demographic spectre is haunting authoritative and influential circles in both the United States and the international community. This spectre is the supposed imperative to "stabilise human population." The quest to "stabilise human population" (or to "stabilise world population," or sometimes just "stabilise population") was formally launched on the global stage in 1994 by the United Nations at its Cairo Conference on Population and Development, whose "Programme of Action" intoned that "intensified efforts" to this end were "crucial" given the "contribution that early stabilisation of the world population would make towards the achievement of sustainable development." That objective is today...

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A City Council member, reacting to a video store holdup believed to have been carried out by children, says parents who can't properly care for their kids should be sterilized. "We pick up stray animals and spay them," Larry Shirley said in a story published Saturday by The Post and Courier of Charleston. "These mothers need to be spayed if they can't take care of theirs. Once they have a child and it's running the street, to let them continue to have children is totally unacceptable." Shirley's comments come after police say a video store was held...

The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms. That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state. Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy. It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought...

The Sterilization of America: A Cautionary History "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough." — Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Buck v. Bell, 1927 Eugenics, a word all but removed from America’s lexicon after World War II, is the "science" of improving the human race through controlled breeding. Much like the Trail of Tears, Tuskegee medical experiments, or the Japanese internment in...

Critics of the group call the $300 payments coercive and the nationwide effort racist. From where Barbara Harris sits, drug addicts give up a lot of things. Procreation should be one of them. The founder and driving force behind the controversial Project Prevention is on a 5,000-mile road trip to bring the group’s distinctive offer to the nation’s drug users: Get on long-term birth control. Maybe get sterilized. Either way, get $300 from her group. “People say we don’t have a right to tell them how many children they can have,” Harris said Tuesday as she coaxed the nonprofit group’s...

Chirac warns of 'African flood' Thousands of Africans are risking their lives to reach Europe French President Jacques Chirac has warned that Africans "will flood the world" unless more is done to develop the continent's economy. In a TV interview, Mr Chirac said nearly 50% of Africa's 950m population was under 17 and that by 2050 there would be two billion Africans. He said the necessary resources had to be made available to help Africa. "We have an immense problem [in Africa] ... which is that of development," he said in the Bastille Day interview. 'Back to basics' "If we...

SAN FRANCISCO – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law Friday that allows cities to force the sterilization of potentially dangerous dog breeds such as pit bulls. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had asked for a new law to allow greater city control over the animals following a series of fatal incidents, including a pit bull mauling in June of a 12-year-old San Francisco boy. "This bill will make our streets and homes safer from aggressive dogs produced by irresponsible breeders and provide help to cities and counties with animal shelters that are overpopulated with dog breeds that people are...

In the week that Hurricane Katrina engulfed the Gulf Coast, pediatrician Deborah Frank examined a 2-year-old girl who weighed only 21 pounds. (That’s the normal weight of a 1-year-old.) When Frank asked if the girl had enough to eat, the child’s mother burst into tears. This was not in New Orleans or Biloxi. It was in Boston. Frank’s clinic sees about 25 malnourished children a week. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I don’t want to play the “blame game.” I want to play “truth or consequences.” George W. Bush didn’t learn about 25,000 desperate and hungry people stuck in...

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OPENS ON BIRTH CONTROLMESSAGE FROM G.B. SHAWSpeakers hail movement as way of curbing overpopulation and wars ---- The sixth international birth control conference opened last night at Hotel McAlpin under the auspices of the American Birth Control League. Addresses were made last night by Mrs. Margaret Sanger, President of the Organization and Dr. C.V. Drysdale of the University of London. Messages from George Bernard Shaw and Havelock Ellis, approving of the movement, were also read. "While the United States," said Mrs. Sanger, "shuts her gates to foreigners, no attempt whatever is made to discourage the rapid multiplication of...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Enraged supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide armed themselves with machetes, guns, rocks and bottles and roamed a downtown slum, threatening to behead foreigners after U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police arrested dozens of people Wednesday. As gunfire crackled and two helicopters roared overhead, peacekeepers in armored personnel carriers moved into Bel Air, trying to put down a campaign by Aristide loyalists who have carried out gory beheadings in imitation of Iraqi insurgents. Wednesday morning, the headless body of a man lay in the street in La Salines, a seaside slum. Last week, three police officers were...

As part of the largest US attempt at a public-housing makeover, some residents are now being required to work. CHICAGO - Driving down Halsted Street in Chicago's Near North neighborhood, the contrasts are stark. The collection of new red-brick three- and four-story apartment buildings that make up the mixed-income North Town Village - all with tailored landscaping and individual balconies - eventually gives way to old Cabrini Green high-rises, ugly concrete behemoths that sometimes have more plywood than glass in their windows. The move toward mixed-income communities - an integration of public, affordable, and market-rate housing - has already made...