State-based drug abuse of foster care children

Although based on a 2006 CBS report, Dr. Mercola article is still worth a reading.

How can state officials and physicians justify giving children as young as 2 years old psychotropic drugs in order to control their behavior? It is difficult to image any good reason. For one argument against it is that psychotropic drugs are not approved for children. Another is diet is more likely nature cause of problem behaviors. Still another reason not mentioned by Dr. Mercola is the fact that the problem involves children taken away from parents. Wouldn’t that disorient you? Wouldn’t it make you fearful or cause dread? Could you sleep at night after experiencing the trauma of being separated from your primary care-giver–the most significant other? Is it possible that it might make you angry too? I think my emotions and behavior would be all screwed up.

So, the all-knowing and wise state (FL, OH, TX. etc.) thinks doping children into passivity is the answer. They helped the drug companies pacify kids in school with Ritalin and Prozac. They have ripped kids from their homes because some parents would not let their kids take such drugs.

I think we Americans ought to collectively force the totalitarian welfare state to get out of the business of trying to control our lives and help drug companies to destroy them. Don’t get me wrong here. Some people are helped by manufactured drugs. The modern corporate welfare state is foreign to the founder’s view of government and freedom. Its increasing abusive and destructive practices and policies are proving this fact.

I think a reasonable solution to the problem for Americans to encourage people capable of holding public office who would actually represent their interests rather than special interest groups and their lobbies. We need electible people who actually will produce change. If you believe Obama’s rhetoric, I would like to interest you in some snake oil to help make your life and our world a better place. A vote for Obama is a vote for Soros and other tycoons who careless about any of us peons.

We need people who will take on the power and moneyed interest for all of our good. We need representatives who will correct corporate near-monopoly capitalism to a real just capitalism. Notice I didn’t say socialism or welfare or global capitalism, or democratic egalitarian capitalism (if anyone would even dare to call socialist-fascist welfare by that phrase). No reason exist for most poverty in America except for greed and power lust.

You don’t believe it? Then consider this: society tends to think of the typical poor person as black. Right? Yet, statistics show a much higher percentage of blacks are long-term employed compared to whites. It stands to reason that blacks who have less income than whites though more are employed are systemically impoverished. An explanation for this phenomenon is that liberal welfare politics uses the poor for corporate wealth discrimination and for justifying the socialist-fascist totalitarian cause. How much independence or freedom is there distributed to welfare recipients? Is it the self-governing kind? Does it depend on the moral strength of discipline and doing right? Does it empower recipients to contribute to the common good? Or does help the corrupting politics corrupt society?

This much is certain it empower evil people to drug innocent because of a vampire-like political and economic system domineered by the Left who populate it.

Read Dr. Mercola’s article Drugging Children to Keep Them Quiet and/or watch the video by the same title.

Proposed Bill Would Unionize Foster Parents in Washington State

It starts with a phone call. “Can you take a child this weekend?” “Do you have space for a little girl?” “We have two boys who need a home.” These are the kinds of calls foster parents receive, often with little notice.

Then they arrive. Teen girls, who are polite but slightly defensive. Boys who like to roughhouse, but need boundaries. Small girls who always stay close to you, but seldom smile.

They arrive with everything they own in a box, or a backpack, or a couple of suitcases. They have all the basics – clothes, toiletries, prescriptions, school books, maybe an iPod. Then there are the special items, a favorite toy, a treasured blanket, a stuffed animal, a scrapbook, an envelope of photos. But whatever they have, all their possessions have one thing in common – they’re portable

These are foster kids. They are funny, smart, troubled, creative, helpful, defiant, moody, quiet, loud, generous, selfish, talkative, introspective. They are adaptable, resilient and inwardly fragile. What they want most is a place to belong.

Some are in foster care temporarily, until conditions at home allow them to return to their parents. Some are legal orphans, available for adoption, and quietly hoping to someday find a “forever family” (I’ve had kids ask me, “Can you be my daddy?”). Being a foster parent means caring for children in need, and embracing all the joys and problems that come with them.

As if helping kids weren’t hard enough, some lawmakers in Olympia want to treat foster parents like state employees and require them to join one of the powerful public-sector unions. The bill, HB 3145, doesn’t specifically mention unions (the title reads, “Implementing a tiered classification system for foster parent licensing”), but the policy direction is clear: push foster parents into mandatory collective bargaining. The idea comes from a local division of the AFL-CIO.

Nationwide, union membership is at historic lows. Today 92% of workers in the private sector do not belong to a union. The one area where union influence is growing is the public sector. The reason is simple. Government cannot be put out of business, so there are no market forces to limit union demands. When public payroll and benefits rise, elected officials just pass the cost on to taxpayers.

Requiring more people to join means big money for unions. Naturally, labor leaders press to expand the definition of “government worker” as far as possible. Each expansion contributes to the growth and political clout of the union. A separate bill to unionize day care workers would bring in about $7.5 million a year for one of the state’s largest unions. The Seattle P.I. reports that under last year’s unionization of home care workers, “…the state pays roughly $3 million a year into union bank accounts…”

Foster parents are not state workers. They are caring people who welcome needy children into their home. Most will tell you the support payments they receive barely cover the cost of supporting the child. Believe me, nobody becomes a foster parent to get rich.

Being a foster parent is not a job, it is providing a home for kids who have no place else to go. It involves all the blessings and challenges of raising kids, plus being sensitive to the unique, often traumatic, past experiences of foster children, plus all the headaches and red tape of dealing with the state. It wouldn’t take much to push many foster parents to the tipping point, when they decide to drop out altogether.

Being forced into a union would certainly make it harder to recruit new foster families. Can you imagine this appeal from an overburdened state social worker, “Would you like to open your home to a child in need, and by the way you’d have to join a union.” The foster care system is short on homes already. Unionizing foster parents is a sure way to have even fewer of them in the future.

Given the very real needs of children, lawmakers should be considering ways to encourage more families to become foster parents, instead of passing bills that expand the power and influence of private labor organizations.

by Paul Guppy, Vice President for Research at Washington Policy Center

Arkansas Family Council Petitioning Against Same-Sex Adoptions

The Arkansas Family Council Action Committee is proposing legislation that will prevent adoptive or foster care children from being placed in homes with couples who live together out of wedlock. This act applies equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals.

The Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act has three purposes:

1. This act will ensure that our state’s most vulnerable children are placed in the best homes possible.

2. Homosexuals in other states have successfully used adoptive or foster care children to advance their agenda. Activists in these states have already secured passage of laws that support adoption or foster care by homosexuals. The children of Arkansas should never be used to promote the social or political agenda of any special interest group.

3. The campaign to pass this act is designed to increase the number of families willing to adopt or serve as foster parents. Volunteers in this campaign will not only be circulating petitions, but they will be encouraging families to consider adopting a child or becoming a foster parent.

Virtually every study on parenting over the past 40 years has concluded the very same thing. Children fare best in a stable home with a married mother and father. The Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act enhances current law prohibiting cohabiting couples from serving as foster parents. It will also prevent same-sex couples from either adopting or serving as foster parents.

The Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act is not so much about adult rights as it is about the welfare of children. By placing it on the ballot, every voter in Arkansas will have a chance to stand up for children who need a good home.

For more information and to support this important initiative, visit the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee website.