Got this through the email pipe:
Like a lot of folks in this state, we have jobs. We work, they pay us. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, we are required to pass a random urine test with which most of us have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because we have to pass one to earn it for them?
Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their butts, doing drugs, while we work.
Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
Guess we could title that program, ‘Urine or You’re Out’.
The Navy might call this “perform to be served.”
I like the intent – but I’m not sure I’d enjoy the reality of how much this would cost and the corrupt new government department that would be created to implement it. I don’t think there is any good idea that our current administration and legislature couldn’t ruin.
I firmly believe there isn’t any good idea or invention that someone, somewhere couldn’t and wouldn’t pervert and ruin. Unfortunately, I think it’s called human nature.
Oh, god. The shear volume of urine that would be involved in this is staggering.
On the other hand, it might make for a good stimulus: more sample cups, more test chemical kits, more testers, and more collectors. That’s a lot of gainful employment right there, that could very well pay for itself, at least over time.
This looks like a win.
Plus, I’d bet I’d be a shoe-in for Urine Czar, too, what with my prior WhizQuizO experience.
Would the head of the new department overseeing the testing be the “Grand Imperial Whizzard”? (Yes, I know, I’m going to hell…)
I’d settle for having those that mandate drug testing for others, write our tax code, and spend our dollars subject to drug testing.
Wouldn’t fly over here. The teacher’s union is throwing a fit over the suggestion that *they* be subject to random drug testing. They say that what they do in their “off time” shouldn’t come to bear on their jobs.
Yeah, except that their jobs involve taking care of MY kids.
Huh. My comment is in moderation. Interesting. I don’t think it includes gratuitous profanity, egregious inanity or pugnacious stupidity.
Though wrestling with pigs CAN be entertaining…
Never regretted “volunteering” to meet that higher standard. Served me and my shipmates well. The early 80′s we cleaned out a lot of deadwood that weren’t willing to live and work in a drug free environment. Better and safer.
ha-ha, I get the pig comment now, and I ain’t no stinking civilized first timer neither shipmate.
Homefront Six … I’ve been moderated several times lately, and none of my posts had profanity or obscenity in them. One of them was about that 14-year-old supermodel who kept falling off her platform shoes. I scolded those TV reporters who were giggling about her and repeating the film clip.
I think Lex’s spam filterer is a very young, uptight person or persons who doesn’t like people who differ with his ‘core beliefs,’ not realizing that most of the fun in blog responding is to differ with someone’s core beliefs. In a nice way of course. Not that there’s anything wrong with THAT.
Marianne
I am more than willing to handle urine tests for the congress. I would do it at minimum wage as a patriotic duty…
No… no driver and Cadillac for me… I am a man/woman of the people…
Just pee into this cup Mr. Senator/Congressperson. Thank you.
Yes indeed. I’ll go for that. I’d also like to see a cap on welfare benefits regardless of family size. I’ve got one example of what I’m upset at not far from me. the woman is pregnant with her 4th child. She’s spaced them out so as to keep from having to go look for work after the youngest reaches a certain age. The state also increases her welfare and food stamps based upon the family size.
Better to cap the money available and force folks to look for supplementary work than to keep it the way it is.
It’s not me being insensitive either. I volunteer all the time in the community and I see what’s what. There are some folks who truly need the help. There are also some who, no matter what, will never be able to make their own way through no fault of their own. I’m all for helping those.
However, there is a VERY large percentage that are gaming the system, and those are the ones I have a problem with.
Yeah… urine tests for welfare recipients. I like that idea.
Good-ness, if we can’t get Barry (yes these ARE my real mus-sels) Bonds on a steroid charge and we’ve only been having him pee test for the last 8 years, how da heck are we gonna manage 35 million specimen cups? Then the EPA would get involved for hazardous materials disposal, the lawyers would get involved for false accusations against their clients, the ACLU would get involved because it unfairly targets the downtrodden and unfairly maligned illegal immigrantos, and then Congress (Gawd help us) would get involved to craft legislation by-passing the Supreme Court ruling that supports the law. There are those that rightly deserve the financial support from public funds, and I have no doubt they’d be first in line to “pee all you can pee”.
As far as the other societal leeches – best to let the sleeping flea bitten vermin infested maggot carrying excuses of humanity wallow in the fruits of their labor..
Welfare isn’t something the poor deserve, it is Danegeld. I think most would rather steal and murder than give up drugs or give up the dignity that the employed have already had taken from them.
You hear all the time about folks who “work hard and play by the rules”, but need help from time to time. My definition of “play by the rules” means no illicit substances in your blood stream.
Besides, if we can abrogate the legally enforcable employment contracts of bank executives and cut their pay, just because their bank is now on the dole, isn’t it reasonable that we can expect drug testing for folks that are supposedly playing “by the rules”?
OK, I understand posts with three embedded links getting moderated, but this one?
The spam filter is the god-in-the-machine of the WordPress system.
Make humble offerings, maybe it will go away
“Humble Offerings?” I thought only Humble1310 could make those here……
(Could.Not.Resist…)
Having seen California’s assistance programs enable drug use in one of my relatives, I would be very supportive of this kind of legislation. It almost certainly is not the case that a majority of welfare recipients engage in this behavior, but where such behavior is present, the government affects more harm than good with its assistance, and taxpayers have every right to attach conditions to these benefits.
Wouldn’t work. See the problem is that too many states are making MJ legal for people with certain medical conditions. I don’t know or care if MJ helps people with these conditions, my concern is that sooner or later the medical assistance programs associated with Welfare are going to have to PAY for the MJ.
Homefront:
Back in the day, the skool district where we lived saw fit to start random whiz quizzes for any and all high schoolers (and later middle schoolers) who chose to participate in any kind of extracurricular activities (football, b-ball, cheerleading, chess club, SADD, &c). If you were a student who showed up when the bell rang, and left when it rang again, you could indulge in any and everything out there, yet ne’er a thing to be done.
I raised a bit of a stink (y’know, the 4th, 5th and 14th–SCOTUS had not yet decided on the Potawotami School District case yet), printed up a few broadsides, passed them out as folks showed up (which made me less than popular with the good people who were charged with caring for the minds of our younger generation), and stirred the pot at other sundry times, suggesting the 14th not only protected equally, but required random testing of all parties in the school district equally, to include the superintendent, and the farmers who comprised the school board. They did not love me.
All that to say, Yeah, kids do drugs, teachers don’t. Trust us. So say those who are experts.
Malarkey.
I say, test only for cause. No random tests at all. Of course, what do I know?