Republicans have renewed their calls for drug testing welfare recipients, this time at the federal level despite failed attempts to do so in states across the country, most recently in Florida.
Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn) has introduced legislation mandating random drug testing of 20 percent of recipients of Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF). He’s named it the Welfare Integrity Act of 2013, proving once again that the GOP has a knack for crafting bullshit euphemisms.
“Currently the federal government enables drug abusers a safety-net by allowing them to participate in the TANF program. Instead of having to make the hard-choice between drugs and other essential needs, abusers are able to rely on their monthly check to help them pay their bills,” declared Fincher in a statement released yesterday. “By allowing random drug checks, we can ensure families who receive TANF benefits use them for their intended purpose of feeding, clothing and providing shelter for their children, while cutting the tie that enables drug abuse. It’s not unreasonable to ask folks to stay clean in order to receive federal assistance.”
It’s no secret that the GOP views the poor as drug addicts and alcoholics undeserving of the highly inadequate government assistance available to them. It’s this perception that equates poverty with criminality that’s partly responsible for the failure of drug testing legislation. You see, it’s unconstitutional to violate a person’s privacy without reasonable suspicion that they’ve done something wrong. Politicians like Finche believe that being poor is suspicion enough, which amounts to class discrimination. That’s why Fincher’s bill includes a clause requiring welfare recipients to sign “a waiver of constitutional rights with respect to testing” in order to receive their benefits (what a jerk!).
Keep in mind that there is no evidence that the poor are more inclined to use drugs than the wealthy nor are they the only group of Americans who receive government assistance. In fact, the poor receive pennies compared to the working, middle and upper classes. TANF benefits are below half the poverty line and few desperately needy families even receive them (thanks to welfare reform, but that’s a topic for another time).
So I have a proposal for Fincher and his GOP brethren. If you guys want to drug test recipients of government assistance then fine, have at it, starting with the folks receiving the most. In terms of social welfare, over 90 percent of benefits go to the elderly, disabled and working households. I dare you to propose a bill for drug-testing our grandparents and children with special needs….yeah, that’s what I thought.
But if you really want to stick it to those undeserving moochers, I say forget social welfare altogether and drug test corporate executives. After all, the government spent 50 percent more on corporate welfare than social welfare in 2006, with $59 billion going to traditional social welfare programs compared to $92 billion spent on corporate subsidies. On top of that, corporate welfare costed taxpayers another $100 billion in 2012 alone. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of government handouts to corporations.
So Mr. Fincher, if you’re so concerned about how government assistance is being spent, I suggest focusing your ire at the executives of Bank of America, Exxon Mobile, Walmart, General Electric, Chevron and the rest of their corporate ilk before bullying the most vulnerable among us to score cheap political points.
I say we change those low-life useless scoundrels in Congress and Senate to Obamacare right now and then start drug testing them first. Their performance is terrible, indicating that they may have drug problems. Let’s cleanup the crowd that lives the high-life and has their own healthcare and retirement plans while they steal our tax money and start wars.
It is a well-known fact that they spend twice as much on corporate welfare as they do on social programs for the citizens of this country. Let us tar and feather John Boner and the 3 amigos for a good start. Then clean the rest of the trash out of Washington D.C. Call it national trash cleaning month and take it all back. We own this government they do not- take it back, now!
To set an example let’s publicly drug test John Boner and then make him pay the copay too.
Enough is enough and we are sick of this inequitable system of government that does not represent any of the citizens- only the rich. Congress and the senate are harlots and sold themselves to the highest bidder.
March 5, 2013 at 7:42 pmThis race to the bottom began w/Reagan. The pr*ck enthusiastically supported mandatory testing of all Americans. Before his administration, 9 out of 10 employers did not require drug testing of their job applicants/employees. Now, 9 out of 10 do! It was challenged as an invasion of our right to privacy–the Supremes were apathetic and ruled against our right to keep the boss out of our personal lives. Then high schools began mandating the testing of our children involved in school sports. The ACLU challenged this new intrusion. Again, the Supremes ruled against those protesting the invasion of our children’s privacy, rationalizing that since the minors showered together in the locker room, they had no expectation of privacy. Today?–we live in a surveillance society that would make 1984 seem like a vacation. Don’t even get started on the parallels mandated for section 8 housing residents.
The author is correct: the biggest crime in America has become being poor. Olympia recently passed an ordinance virtually criminalizing the City’s homeless for sleeping or having sleeping (‘camping’) paraphernalia in their possession including blankets, tents, sleeping bags, tarps, you name it. The poor and dispossessed have become the enemy as we blame the victims for embarrassing us with their presence…no, their visible existence, panhandling, sleeping on the pavement, relieving themselves in public because we lock them out of public restrooms. We’ve become a society who would embarrass Dicken’s Scrooge, not even because we pat ourselves on the back for our largess/charity, but because we think nothing of attacking the civil rights of the most vulnerable, the least able to defend themselves. We encourage the substitution of charity for civil rights to the point of displacing/extinguishing it.
Stokley Carmichael used the term ‘white nigger’ to describe the ‘hippies’ of his day and might have agreed with some of Jerry Rubin’s sentiments when the latter observed:
“We are stealing the youth of America right out of the kindergartens and elementary schools.” After some remarks about how “America’s courts are colonial courts,” her jails “black concentration camps,” he goes on to declare that “smoking pot is a political act, and every smoker is an outlaw. The drug culture is a revolutionary threat to plastic wasp america.”
“Who the hell wants to “make it” in America anymore? The hippie-yippie-SDS movement is a “white nigger” movement. The American economy no longer needs young whites and blacks. We are waste material. We fulfill our destiny in life by rejecting a system which rejects us.”
Accordingly, Rubin called for widespread demonstrations near jails and court houses to “demand immediate freedom for Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Rap Brown, all black prisoners, Timothy Leary, the Oakland Seven, all drug prisoners, all draft resisters, Benjamin Spock, … . me,” etc.
The Movement is dead; the Revolution is unborn. The streets are bloody and ablaze, but it is difficult to see why, and impossible to know for what end. Government on every level is ineffectual, helpless to act either in the short term or the long. The force of Army and police seems not to suppress violence, but incite it… . It is the worst of times.
It is the best of times. The wretched of this American earth are together as they have never been before, … No march, no sit-in, no boycott ever touched so many… . The subtle methods of co-optation work no better to keep it intact than the brutal methods of repression; if it is any comfort, liberalism proves hardly more effective than fascism. Above all, there is a sense that the continuity of an age has been cut, that we have arrived at an infrequent fulcrum of history, and that what comes now will be vastly different from what went before.
It is not a time for reflection, but for evocation. The responsibility of the intellectual is the same as that of the street organizer, the draft resister, the Digger: to talk to people, not about them. The important literature now is the underground press, the speeches of Malcolm, the works of Fanon, the songs of the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.
Julius Ceasar, in one of the earliest written descriptions of the Druids, described a society where the Gods demanded a heavy toll from their earthly followers. Human fodder was needed–and who better to pay the ultimate price than felons and thieves.
Julius Ceasar noted of the Celts: “They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods but when the supply of such fails, they resort to the execution even of the innocent.”
One could easily argue a similar analogy for today’s American criminal justice system, Thurston. Indigent defendants are hurried along in assembly line fashion into the maw of its growth industry, government and jails. Even the Nisqually have opted to cash in on the private prison/jail system bonOne could easily argue a similar analogy for today’s American criminal justice sThurston. Indigent defendants ystem, anza. Those who can afford an attorney are generally tolerated until picked clean.
Officials in Mason County obsequiously suck up to State Prison officials in a bid for their own share of the mince meat pie.
When the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women opens near Belfair, it will be Mason County’s second state prison. The Washington Corrections Center at Shelton has been a quiet part of that community for more than 40 years.
Currently, the medium security men’s prison is the greater Shelton area’s largest employer — 685 employees in a 2004 survey, surpassing local icon Simpson Timber Company (sixth at 418) and the newly expanded Little Creek Casino and Resort (650).
In the view of Kasey Cronquist, executive director of the Shelton-Mason County Chamber of Commerce, the prison is “a silent economic engine” that seldom crosses residents’ minds. Its location on Dayton Airport Road, well away from downtown Shelton, keeps it out of the public eye.
“People move here and have no idea it exists” said Cronquist, who spent his late childhood years in Shelton and graduated from high school there.
Cronquist said the prison “benefits the community tremendously, both in community development and economic development.”
Not only is it the area’s largest employer, Cronquist said, but it pays “family wages” based on a state scale. A liaison at the correction center has helped local businesses fill the prison’s needs for goods and services. In the past, an inmate woodworking shop produced street benches and other projects for city use.
Cronquist said there is another plus factor: State funds for infrastructure come to areas with state facilities. A proposed water and sewer project for the Shelton area likely will get a financial boost from the prison’s presence, he said.
Mason County Commissioner Tim Sheldon told an informational meeting last month in Belfair that the women’s prison may be a welcome inclusion in any future sewer system along Hood Canal. The prison is four miles up Sand Hill Road from the canal.
Mission Creek will have 80 inmates initially and employ about 40 people, said Superintendent James Walker. A few employees who transferred from the closing Tacoma Pre-Release Center are Kitsap County, Gig Harbor or Belfair-area residents.
“Some are glad to be (working) closer to home,” Walker said.
– http://amicuscuria.com/wordpress/?p=5198 –
March 7, 2013 at 11:28 amYou’re all utterly insane. This is a great plan… When my family immigrated here, we worked day and night, 3 jobs each, to come home to our neighbourhood and see a bunch of useless welfarers high at least on weed all day long. Wake up
March 19, 2013 at 8:38 amIf you had to work three jobs day and night, why on earth did you immigrate here? Your family sounds like a bunch of idiots to me.
March 24, 2013 at 9:12 pm