Look in the Mirror, Smug Welfare-Haters

This is exactly what the Koch brothers and all the other billionaires want: the poor and the scared-to-become-poor fighting each other instead of joining forces to fight their real enemy.

No, all you middle-class office drones, you are not in any way superior to people who - as a result of having been less fortunate in life's big gamble than you - must accept help from their fellow citizens in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Bon the Geek at Zandar's place:

Normally, I am against drug testing, but this is an exception to my rule. Drug testing to work at a hobby store or file papers? Stupid. Drug testing before allowing someone to sit on their privileged ass while I work for a living? I dig it big time. The thing that makes it fair and effective is it gives the people who are addicted a chance. What they do with it is up to them, but the working poor are given the ability to decide which is more important to them. It's this sort of tough love that will reach the people who put forth the effort while denying benefits to those who do not. I realize addiction is a disease, but I also see the stupidity in our welfare system supplying the drug dealers that victimize the poor. Something has gotta give, and in this case it has to start with the people funding the problem. It's not ideal, but nothing about this situation is ideal. Meth is ravaging our country like a cancer, and this is a way to cut the abuse of financial aid and hit the manufacturers in the wallet where it hurts the most.

In direct response, I commented (slightly edited for clarity):

Nope. A "less sophisticated test" is one far more likely to produce false-positives. One false-positive and Mom's off TANF and food stamps and thrown in jail. Even if she is taking drugs, are you going to take her kids in and raise them for the three or four years that is the average time for permanent drug rehab (including the standard two or three lapses)?

Any testing of recipients of government benefits is constitutional only if it tests ALL recipients of government benefits, including us middle-class takers of the homeownership deduction, upper middle-class takers of the charitable deduction, wealthy takers of investment deductions, corporate takers of subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture, finance or anything else, and oh yeah - religious takers of the tax exemption.

Drug test all of THEM every year on April 15, THEN we'll talk about the disabled people and single parents "sitting on their privileged asses" while we work at our middle-class office jobs.

Now that I've had time to stew and get really pissed off, I'll add this:

The only "abuse of financial aid" that is going on this country is the theft of 10 million jobs by corporate outsourcers,

and the theft of trillions of dollars EVERY YEAR in taxes by giant corporations like GE,

and the theft of trillions of dollars more by Wall Street which demanded the trillions as a reward for its having destroyed the global economy,

not to mention the petty theft of just hundreds of billions of dollars by oil companies taking taxpayer subsidies despite earning billions in profit every fucking quarter,

and by agricultural giants like ADM taking taxpayer subsidies despite destroying the planet's food-growing capacity with genetic modifications, poisons and monoculture,

and by the military-industrial complex taking taxpayers' money to build grossly overpriced fantasy toys that don't work at best and kill soldiers at worst,

and by every parasite of the rich who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

If you add up every cent paid out in family support, food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing subsidies and every other kind of help for those not born white, male and middle-class, you wouldn't even come close to the total amount of cash shat out and flushed by the REAL parasites of this nation.

But you've got your underpaid, insecure "job," where they use the 20 million unemployed outside as a threat to keep you doing the work four people used to do, for less pay and shrinking "benefits;"

and your house with the underwater mortgage on which you are still making payments to the Wall Street criminals to whom you should just say fuck you come and get it,

and your kids going to community college at night after working all day at McDonald's not knowing that's the most they're ever going to get paid in their lives ....

But you're not one of THEM, the welfare-taking, drug-addicted THEM, no no certainly not.

Not yet.