Welfare Polygamy Pretty Common

The British newspaper, the Independent, reports that a polygamous Mormom sect in Texas was illegally robbing the state. In that church, known as the Fundamenalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, men would generally declare their first marriages and take the tax benefits, then let their subsequent wives claim welfare as unemployed single mothers. "Down the years," wrote the Independent, "the church has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds this way, a process it describes derisively as 'bleeding the beast'".

Actually, bleeding the beast is not as uncommon in America s the reporter for the Independent happens to think, though typically it doesn't so much happen in rural America as it does in America's inner cities. Young men there often father as many as half a dozen children, each by different mothers, none of whom they typically support and all of whom are on welfare. The difference is, it's not considered illegal when it's done in the inner city. It's only illegal apparently when it's done in Texas.