Editor's Note: The Letter to the Editor “Put Me in Charge of Welfare” r is nearly identical to a letter to the editor posted Nov. 18, 2010 on WacoTrib.com and signed by Alfred W. Evans, Gatesville. Other versions of this letter have appeared in numerous locations online.

In response to “Put Me in Charge of Welfare” which appeared in the April 2-8 issue of North Country This Week: I would like to clarify your position on government benefit programs. By my understanding your solution is to do the following: Ignore all nutritional guidelines from the USDA, reinstitute forced sterilization of poor women, reinstitute debtors prison for the homeless, reinstitute slavery, and reinstitute poll taxes. Notice the number of times I said reinstitute. You should know your ideas are not novel or unique, they have all been in place in the United States at one point or another. I am surprised you didn’t advocate that only landowners be able to vote since you clearly believe in the superiority of an aristocratic class. You have a bleak view of what it is to be humane and I am sincerely glad that you are not in charge of any government program. Society means we stand together instead of punishing those who fall the quickly widening cracks in our system. It is imperative that we stop trying to drive each other apart and begin solving the problems inherent in our post-industrial economy.