When Repug Fantasies Face Reality World

Here's the problem with telling so many lies about poor people that you start to believe them: when you get elected and start making policies based on those lies, they blow up in your face.

Wonkette:

Those crazy Florida welfare princes! Always lining up for their fat government checks with dirty syringes dangling from their shriveled purple arms, right? Haha, wrong! Florida governor Rick Scott’s incompetent proposal to save state money by requiring welfare recipients to pass a drug test has turned up a rousing 2% positive result among those tested, which is 6.7% lower than the overall drug use rate in Florida. B-b-but poor people love drugs! No, Rick, fancy bankers love drugs, especially the expensive ones. Haven’t you ever seen Wall Street? The average $134 welfare check from the state of Florida isn’t even enough to maintain a glue-sniffing habit. So let’s see, how much has this little experiment in stereotyping saved the state?

By the way: Florida, we are impressed! We would probably be snarfing hard drugs through our eyeballs faster than Michele Bachmann if we lived among the endless gray nebulae of crumbling strip malls, foreclosed homes and hardcore unemployment statistics strewn across large swaths of the state.

From Tampa Bay Online:

So far, they say, about 2 percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons unspecified.

Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free.

That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month’s worth of rejected applicants.

The savings assume that 20 to 30 people — 2 percent of 1,000 to 1,500 tested — fail the drug test every month. On average, a welfare recipient costs the state $134 in monthly benefits, which the rejected applicants won’t get, saving the state $2,680-$3,350 per month.

But since one failed test disqualifies an applicant for a full year’s worth of benefits, the state could save $32,200-$48,200 annually on the applicants rejected in a single month.

Net savings to the state — $3,400 to $8,200 annually on one month’s worth of rejected applicants. Over 12 months, the money saved on all rejected applicants would add up to $40,800-$98,400 for the cash assistance program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year.

And even those useless savings — $98,400 out of $178 million — will be meaningless if and when the ACLU decides to sue the state. Hooray!

But Ruck Scott's massive failure and record-breaking humiliation isn't deterring his fellow fanasists in Ohio:

Down with Tyranny:

Friday evening, when everyone was freaking out about Irene, Chris Hayes was freaking out about something more directly man-made, the Ohio Republican Party's latest plan to kick the unemployed while they're down. A video of the segment is embedded above. "The legislation," opined the always astute Hayes, "is being driven by the apparently unkillable prejudice that the poor are shiftless, drug-addled lay-abouts scheming to get their hands on your precious, precious, gooey tax dollars."

Buoyed by what an embarrassing failure Rick Scott's drug testing bill has been in Florida-- all it proved is that poor people use far less drugs than the average American, probably because they can't afford them-- Ohio Republicans see it as another battle in their vicious class war against the poor. They're coming up with their own bill-- one that is much worse than Rick Scott's! Perhaps next Ohio Republicans will follow Rick Scott and Florida Republicans down the political sewer of cutting back on the health clinics that serve... who else?... poor people. So many ways out there for well-financed right-wingers to attack poor people.

Repeat after me: Rich people are the problem. The problem is rich people. Tax the everlasting fuck out of rich people. That's the solution.