You Want to Drug Test Welfare Recipients?

[Martin Hash]

Still crickets about the massive amounts of money spent on corporate welfare.

Nah, fuck that assumption. If there are crickets about corporate welfare it's because no one here supports it enough to defend it.

Agree with Dand. Frankly, I don't believe business should pay taxes, people should, but all the Crony Capitalism & Public/Private Partnership shit needs stopped.

[K@th]

Nah, fuck that assumption. If there are crickets about corporate welfare it's because no one here supports it enough to defend it.

Sure, but nobody ever complains about corporate welfare, which is even more expensive than food stamps. We all agree that some sort of safety net is needed, so now we're just discussing how to eliminate a small amount of waste by spending a bunch of money.

(Small being a relative term because corporate welfare is so incredibly massive.)

Face it, drug testing for welfare recipients is a way to feel in control of a situation that is bat-shit crazy out of control.

And, really, some of you are just arguing that the welfare bureaucracy be bigger than it already is. You think we can administer all these tests at cost? Damn, you all are not facing reality. There's paper work and verification and certifications and more paper work; people to boss around the people who are filling in all the paperwork.... and they all need bosses too. And they want to get paid and have vacations... shit gets expensive pretty quickly.

[MilSpecs]

We've moved completely past the original point of welfare, which was so we didn't have people starving in the streets. Welfare was so successful that we can now argue the details, but we forget that it's possible it could happen again if we get too focused on those details. We're talking about such a relatively small percentage that it's obvious it's about policing morality rather than the money. Who cares if some people get a little something you don't feel they're entitled to? Err on the side of caution. Better a few get fat than many get thin.

[Martin Hash]

Welfare doesn't work because it blurs the line between who owes what? Does society owe the people or do people owe society? It's essentially a liberty question: from a liberty perspective, society is providing charity to some of its members but because it's charity, society can ask for something in return; unfortunately, that thing shouldn't be moral posturing. It should be an obligation to work, Make-Work if need be, then what a Workfare recipient does with their money is their business.

[Okeefenokee]

I guess my question is what are we testing for then. You're on a focus drug? Test positive for meth. You're on pain, test positive for opium. You smoke weed... Alright you're just fucked there, which I still don't get. You smoke tobacco, well good on you. You drink alcohol, whelp you're in a shitty situation but we approve of you fucking up your liver rather than getting high.

If the solution is people just get an allotment of food, hey fine, no one is going to eat it because its government food (might as well just say "school lunch" and see how people trip over themselves to get some) but if that's the solution go with that.

But drug testing is weird, even at 55 dollars a pop that's close to half the monthly allowance for someone.

I agree with, I think it was, AB. Testing mostly hits pot smokers, and those at the bottom of the problem list.

My actual issue is with the idea in general. The idea being that one can receive money taken from others at the point of a gun, and that those who are forced to give that money have no say in how their money is used.

Drinking beer can consume a good amount of money, but we don't often hear about going after drinkers on welfare.

Tax payers are forced to give money to others. The reason is that it is supposed to help them, but the taxpayers aren't permitted to question the conditions of the deal they are being forced to pay for. I don't like it. If you're taking money from someone to give to someone else, and the person giving the money has some questions about what his money is going to, you listen to him. You're taking his money. He has grounds to be involved in the process.

[Okeefenokee]

Nah, fuck that assumption. If there are crickets about corporate welfare it's because no one here supports it enough to defend it.

Sure, but nobody ever complains about corporate welfare, which is even more expensive than food stamps. We all agree that some sort of safety net is needed, so now we're just discussing how to eliminate a small amount of waste by spending a bunch of money.

(Small being a relative term because corporate welfare is so incredibly massive.)

Face it, drug testing for welfare recipients is a way to feel in control of a situation that is bat-shit crazy out of control.

And, really, some of you are just arguing that the welfare bureaucracy be bigger than it already is. You think we can administer all these tests at cost? Damn, you all are not facing reality. There's paper work and verification and certifications and more paper work; people to boss around the people who are filling in all the paperwork.... and they all need bosses too. And they want to get paid and have vacations... shit gets expensive pretty quickly.

Blind... you guys refuse to see. These tests are all over the place. I have yet to see a single study that shows the state saves money by doing this testing.

https://thinkprogress.org/what-7-states ... .kndm2gb2h



You think 48 people being cut from welfare saves the state more than $336,297?

The ROI just doesn't exist. So, yes, we have the right wing proposing huge spending increases to save almost no money.

That's $583.85 per person per month. Now if you want to claim the ROI isn't there, you need to show your work and produce the number each person was receiving per month. Without doing that, you're acting like Oliver, pointing at a number without context, and giving a shitty grin.

Just 65 of 39,121 people applying for a cash assistance program known as Families First in Tennessee tested positive for illegal substances or drugs for which they had no prescription since the law was implemented July 1, 2014, according to data provided by the Department of Human Services to The Tennessean.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/po ... /79776756/

$23,592/62 people/17 months at time of printing = $22 per person caught per month. If those 62 people were receiving more than $22 dollars per month, and you know they were, that's a savings.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services told Vox that they screened 7,600 applicants to the Work First Program between August 3 and December 31, 2015. Among them, 150 were referred for drug testing and 21 tested positive — that's "0.3 percent of the approximate 7,600 applicants and recipients screened for drug abuse," the DHHS confirmed to Vox via email on Tuesday (though that number is not necessarily reflective of the total aid population).

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11021826/n ... gs-welfare

More misleading numbers right there. Shamefully dishonest. 21 out of the 150 people tested positive, not 21 out of the 7600.

That's 14%, not .3%

[SuburbanFarmer]

Welfare doesn't work because it blurs the line between who owes what? Does society owe the people or do people owe society? It's essentially a liberty question: from a liberty perspective, society is providing charity to some of its members but because it's charity, society can ask for something in return; unfortunately, that thing shouldn't be moral posturing. It should be an obligation to work, Make-Work if need be, then what a Workfare recipient does with their money is their business.

You just proposed 19th-century workhouses.

And, once again, what happens to the disabled, or those with disabled family members?

[Cid]

I agree with, I think it was, AB. Testing mostly hits pot smokers, and those at the bottom of the problem list.

My actual issue is with the idea in general. The idea being that one can receive money taken from others at the point of a gun, and that those who are forced to give that money have no say in how their money is used.

Drinking beer can consume a good amount of money, but we don't often hear about going after drinkers on welfare.

Tax payers are forced to give money to others. The reason is that it is supposed to help them, but the taxpayers aren't permitted to question the conditions of the deal they are being forced to pay for. I don't like it. If you're taking money from someone to give to someone else, and the person giving the money has some questions about what his money is going to, you listen to him. You're taking his money. He has grounds to be involved in the process.

Alright, but I don't get a say in lots of tax dollars. I'm told I benefit from a badass military (though truthfully I think few people here would argue that it isn't overpriced), I very likely benefit from better infrastructure I will never personally use, am I better off if someone struggling to feed themselves (and an addiction) comes begging to my street or my door? Am I better off calling the police to remove the beggar? Am I better off relying on a charity to do this?

And to be clear, I'm a monster here. I find my position morally odious. But I'm also extremely cynical and I see almost any level of welfare better than alternatives. Short of forced sterilization and euthanasia, things that actually exist as a impassable line for me, I see few remedies if a free society is to be maintained without overly burdening the rich. Either the poor remain in a constant situation running afoul of the penal code or they are dependent on the government for food and residence through non-justice related welfare.

[Speaker to Animals]

Irving Feldman was accused of two different schemes, one netting more than $1.2 million and the other more than $200,000.

The more lucrative scheme involved unlawfully buying $1,227,063 worth of food stamps from willing recipients for less than half their face value, according to the news release. The recipients received cash, and Feldman was able to reap a considerable profit by redeeming the food stamps with the federal government for their full value.

The gambit, known as trafficking, is hardly unique to Upstate Fish and its customers. A small percentage of food stamp recipients nationwide engage in the practice of trading benefits for cash that can be spent on things that food stamps don't cover — cigarettes or beer, for example, or more prosaic items such as soap, diapers, gasoline or toilet paper.

The $1.2 million in food-stamp purchases took place between January 2010 and October 2015, according to the news release from the New York Inspector General's Office. That office, along with Rochester police, Monroe County social services and the federal Agriculture and Homeland Security departments, collaborated to reel in Feldman.

“This fish market owner was caught running a food stamp fraud scheme that was truly breathtaking in scale,” state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott said.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/sto ... /95525620/

I'm sure they illegally redeemed their food stamps for half the stamps' value in cash for perfectly legitimate purposes that have nothing to do with drug abuse..

[jbird4049]

Oh for f*** sake. Really?

Our country is choking on massive corruption all through both government, and business, in all states, with hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars being stolen, with hardly any perp walks, let alone any punishments on anyone except for a very, very few like office clerks.

Unemployment is effectively 10% nationwide, in places it's going far more than that. Aside from the top 10% of the population, income growth has started to go into reverse. Without food stamps, upwards of four million Americans are living on $2 per a damn day.

Just to get food stamps here in "liberal" California, you have to be making less that twenty thousand a year (of course, were there are jobs here, rents at a roach motel start at over a thousand a month)

Often those on food stamps don't have any pleasure except beer, or use pot to self medicate. Yet, we must have righteous, righteous anger at the most needy, least powerful people because "drugs"?

Yes, feel free to weigh in on the ethical, moral, or legal justifications for such wrongness.