Drug testing is cheaper than paying a person who is using some of their welfare payment to buy drugs. If someone doesn't have the sense to stop using meth, coke, or heroin while they are receiving gov. aid -- then they should not be receiving those payments.
KC, you're one of my favorite cats, but I thought we had a system, unlike the French, where a person was assumed innocent until proven guilty. What you propose adopts the French model... guilty until proven innocent. No soup for you!
I think as long as the search as applied does not target a racial group, constitutionally speaking the government should be allowed to this. But if I worked for the government and asked whether the Court would strike this policy down, I would not be so sure to say no because , as you said, there is a classification against welfare recipients, and right of privacy presumably is a fundamental right that Court thinks is a component of 14th amendment liberty under the due process clause. The precedents are not in government's favor albeit I think it has a legitimate goal and the policy is substantially related to furtherance of that goal.
Assuming income eligibility, I'd be curious how many of the posters in the BBS would qualify for welfare assistance if they drug tested. Just saying...
Let them eat cake! Duh... I don't have a problem with anyone getting tax dollars being required to take a drug test (you can't receive college loans if you've been convicted of a drug related crime for example so I think you should give up a bit of privacy to get government help) however it's interesting the type of class warfare that Republicans put into play when they're looking to arouse their base. Picking on poor people has become a conservative staple. They didn't start this little effort by requiring all of the bailout funds to have drug testing attached since we just gave away billions of dollars to an industry that has tanked the country with it's risk taking and greed.
I would pass the drug test, although I would never accept welfare assistance -- you see, I've got a little thing called self respect that would prevent me from ever accepting it. ...and to the poster who says that it's class warfare to 'pick on poor people'... I'm sorry, I forgot which group of people was occupying our police resources, taking in welfare and Medicaid, filling up our prison system, devaluing my gorgeous property by living near me, running up healthcare costs by not paying their bills, and crippling our economy by defaulting on sub-prime loans.... Perhaps someone can refresh my memory as to who is doing these things? TIA
you're right, in fact most republicans didn't want to give them the money at all. on a side note seeing as they aren't lending money now anyway even with the bailout money I hardly see how we'd be that much worse off.
It's certainly class warfare to not only pick on poor people but to continue to try to screw them at every turn with legislation. I forgot which group of people defrauded hard working ordinary people of billions of dollars in the markets, which group cooked the books at Enron, which group cooked the books at WorldCom, which group of fools have been running the US car companies into the ground, what group of idiots were running AIG and Citigroup, which group hires lobbyists to influence the Congress to screw the average American citizen, which group endagers US national security by encouraging open borders for cheap labor, which group has destroyed the world's financial system by lobbying against financial regulations, which group continues to accumulate unprecedented wealth while b****ing about paying their share of taxes, which group brought on the recession by re-packaging sub-prime loans to sell back and forth to each other to not only destroy the banking system but to bring us to the verge of a depression. Who did all those things? My oh my...
The fatal flaw with your critique is that it wasn't LARGE GROUPS of people that did most of the isolated occurrences that you reference. It was tiny factions of people. To paint all successful people with the same brush is outlandish and deeply wrong. What have poor people done to deserve my tax dollars? Answer me that, POR FAVOR.
I insist in a little fairness here. There is no major party or movement (the Libertarians, Greens, and various groups do not fit my definition of "major") that is friendly to repealing prohibition. It is sad, but both major parties and most of their politicians (save guys like Barney Frank and Ron Paul) have perpetuated this travesty hand in hand.
No, it is not. Not when you add up the costs of ALL of the drug tests. Only a tiny percentage of those tests will come up positive and I suspect the cost of eachh positive drug test will be in the neighborhood of $20k, just like in the data I posted.
They are Americans and in America, "all men are created equal." They deserve government services just as you do. These services include the oversight of the financial system that chaps your a$$ so much. It is clear that the oversight and regulation needs to be stronger to keep the greedy bastiges like you from sucking away everyone's wealth.
Wow. Classic moon. All men might be 'created equal', but thereafter, things diverge quickly. Take the two of us for example. When we both came out of our respective mother's womb, we were both nekkid and screaming. Now look at us. I'm an intellectual with incredible hair and vast wealth, and you're a bald guy with hydroponic lamps in his basement living in the burbs. ZING
It's not a fatal flaw, it just means that this smaller group of people have the ability to create more devastation and ruin than millions of poor people on welfare. The crazy part about it is that you and your ilk will hold the poor more responsible for their food stamps than the rich who bring down retirement funds, pension funds, and entire corporations... perhaps even an entire world economy. Americans lost $10 something trillion in wealth this past year because of the chicanery of those in the corporate world and Wall Street but you're still talking about welfare. Lehman Brothers was a $600 billion dollar bankruptcy. TARP was $750 billion. The car companies have received what $50 billion but the question foremost on your mind is food stamps?
