La Bruzzo wants to drug test welfare recepients...

At our High School here in AL we began drug testing all students that were involved in sports and all the extra curricular activities associated with the school... It was a random system and they tested once a week... The students did not even know what day they would be tested.... It was a great program but unfortunately our funding came up short. A lot of the parents offered to pay for the services but that did not work either. I applaude the drug testing for programs, activities and such...

I work within the system and have personally witnessed plenty of people "lost" in their drug addiction. More often than not, it is man-made (read: refined) substances, such as crack, meth, etc. that cause the most damage. Alcohol and tobacco are by far the most effective at keeping poor people poor.

And once in a while, people DO come out of it. Sometimes it's months, sometimes it's years... but people can recover. The human spirit is beautiful and amazing! I often wonder, What would happen if we had cut those people off of the system before they could make that step to recovery? I'm sure some would have died, turned to prostitution or theft to survive. Not sure what is more harmful to society.

BTW, alcohol and tobacco are the gateway drugs in my opinion. I have seen their utter destruction first-hand. But not so with cannabis. I believe the testing is merely to flush out the pot smokers, who, quite honestly, present as more free-thinking, whatever their age is.

If we start demanding urine/blood in order to maintain or determine eligibility for a social program, we open up the door to biometrics for identification purposes as being "accepted" as a societal norm. Depending on your state/province, you should review your social assistance legislation. I have for many different regions, and most include a clause or two about the right of the state to collect biometric information. They just haven't enacted those parts of the legislation, yet. Because the population would never accept it outright, they have to normalize it gradually.

It always starts with the poor, because they don't have the resources to resist.

Textreply to post by ripcontrol


Drug testing should be mandatory. And treatment does not work. It is proven.
end of story.

reply to post by LeadTheWise


RESOURCES TO RESIST?? ITS CALLED WILL POWER AND KNOWING WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG!

This thread has now gone over 30 pages and the central issues - the real issues - are hardly being discussed.

The first issue has to do with responsibility. Are people responsible for themselves, or is humanity/society/the community collectively responsible for all humans?

There was a time when folks were expected to fend for themselves, and if they couldn't, and didn't have family or friends to help them .. well then, they just didn't make it. People who still believe firmly in personal responsibility find the whole idea of public assistance to be an affront, and they have a point. With few exceptions, most of us will revert to personal responsibility and taking care of ourselves and our families if our survival is threatened. Helping "those less fortunate" is all well and good when we have it to spare, but few of us would really share our last loaf of bread if we were hungry ourselves and didn't have the assurance of being able to get more.

That said, we seem to have decided as a society, or a species, by majority rule if nothing else, that we should help others and that everyone should have their "basic rights" provided for, especially children and others who aren't capable of taking care of themselves.

The next problem we run into, having decided to be basically a socialist society without being willing to call it that, is lack of resources. There isn't enough to just give to everyone who asks for it, so how do we decide who gets the help and who doesn't?

When individuals help others by way of charity, they get to decide who their charitable gifts go to, and they might become quite angry if you tried to force them to give to a cause they don't believe in or agree with. It's their money, after all, and they have the right to decide who deserves to receive it.

The governments, on the other hand, are becoming somewhat like collective repositories of resources taken from their citizens in the form of various taxes, and they decide collectively who deserves to receive help from this resource pool. The problem is, there are always going to be individuals who disagree with the collective decision and object to how their contributions are being utilized. When enough people agree on something like "we should only help those who really can't help themselves," they get their duly elected representatives involved and the government tries (for the sake of discussion here, let's pretend it tries) to enact the will of the citizens and makes a bunch of rules and regulations and criteria which are supposed to ensure that the people who receive public assistance really can't take care of themselves. After that's done, another group will inevitably disagree with the new guidelines and have a beef with some group of people they feel shouldn't be getting the assistance and around we go again.

We aren't ever going to get everyone to agree on who should be eligible for public assistance and who shouldn't; the answers from individual citizens will vary all the way from everyone to no one. Thus, there will always be some percentage of the population who are displeased and want more or different rules and regulations to govern who is getting assistance.

The only real solutions would be to return to a society based entirely on personal responsibility and provide no public assistance to anyone, leaving government to provide only for basic infrastructure (roads, schools, libraries, etc.) and law and order, or to take the percentage of income from each person that would represent their portion of the collective contribution but let them decide who it goes to (in that scenario all public assistance would be provided by independent agencies which receive designated funds from taxes, sort of like the United Way system).

I don't like the idea of my tax dollars being given to people who will spend it on drugs, either. I have my own ideas about how people should be allowed to spend public assistance dollars, and some of them surely won't agree with yours. But, unless we decide to re-structure the entire system, "we" gave up the right to individually decide who gets the public assistance money and for what when "we" decided to make the government responsible for providing public assistance collectively out of taxes and other "public" funds.

The other core issue here which is being danced around is that of rights and privileges.

The overwhelming majority of us could probably agree that water, food, shelter, and medical care are basic human rights; from there it gets fuzzy.

When, for example, did we decide that procreation is a basic human right? In my personal opinion, you can have all the rugrats you want if YOU are capable of taking care of them. If, however, you expect ME to help pay for them, it's not your right. Do you really think people have the right to have kids at your expense that you (in the form of tax money used for public assistance) have to help pay for? My view, therefore, is that procreation is a privilege dependent upon the means to provide for the offspring produced, not a right.

Other things such as recreational drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), foods which are eaten more for enjoyment than sustenance, and personal vehicles (in areas where there is adequate public transportation) should also be privileges rather than rights .. but that's just my opinion. On the other hand, I personally consider air conditioning a necessity but there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who live without it who would disagree.

Most of us might agree that public assistance and charity should be used for rights and necessities rather than privileges, but we will disagree about which things are what. This of course, brings us back to the previous problem: when collective funds are being used to provide public assistance, who gets to decide who they should be given to and under what circumstances? Again, without restructuring the entire system there isn't a way for any individual or even a group of individuals to effectively make those decisions. We must either accept that the system is doing the best it can, or decide as a whole community/society to change the whole system. Any other approach is basically just bitching without purpose - it won't make any difference.

reply to post by bmck12


I can understand drug-testing for professional sports but high school athletics?

Of course you applaud it because it's another fascist system that has no place in our freedom-loving country.

reply to post by hhott


We do have the resources to provide for our population. The problem is, they're all tied up in defense and corporate welfare.

I'd rather my taxes go to support the less privileged than to support wars or bail out irresponsible corporations.

reply to post by keepinmysoul


What an ignorant thing to say.

Treatment does not work? Have you personally had treatment for anything?

And to all those posters who have complained about their hard-earned tax dollars being misused by welfare recipients: I don't see you complaining about the gross misuse of your taxes to fund the military war machine which is running rampant.

While I do believe that we should find a way to reduce government spending, I think this is a terrible idea just based on the fact that I don't agree with anything that tells us as free men and women how to live our lives. I know it's hard on everyone. But the way I see it is that they are looking in to it looking to make us pay as well. If I am a Marijuana user and I am on welfare that means I have to go to a government program to get clean and who knows how much they will force me to pay for it. All you people worry about is keeping your money and your loved ones safe but in worrying about that your allowing the government to control your lives, and make you pay. BAKA!!!

Your in fact giving them one more scam to rob the people of this country. If drugs were legal then we could have an opening for a better way to regulate welfare to addicted users.

When looking to do anything with new laws or statutes. THE NUMBER ONE THING TO ASK YOURSELF IS: Does the government have the right to dictate this? Is this constitutional?

Just like the people of this country are duped every day into thinking that they buy a house that they own it... This couldn't be any further from the truth. In fact they can take the house away faster than it took you to get it. They shouldn't be able to do this. But we let them pass a law stating that instead of owning the property it's more like leasing. We'll tax you for the land that "WE" allow you to use.

From the looks at this forum that bill will get passed eventually and it'll be just another thing can the government can do to rob your wallet.

Originally posted by thorazineshuffle
reply to post by TheWalkingFox

 

I think anyone who gets money from the government should take a piss test. Including our leaders. There is a ton of corruption in our country, and it all needs to be addressed! Every facet, needs to be investigated. I agree with that.

Test our LEADERS?

Waste of money. We know they're on drugs. We also know they have enough influence for the test to be a waste of effort and money. Of course they're clean. Clean and sober.

reply to post by ripcontrol


I fully agree with this.

I live in australia, i have been in situations twice in my life where money help from the government would have been a lifesaver.

Once when i was 17 and had troubles at home - and needed to get out. The government declined a youth allowance (not old enough for wellfare payments) under the basis that "my parents earn too much"

Meaning, their combined wages earned over 40,000 a year.


2nd time around was during the old financial crisis. Was out of a job. I applied and i got payments. I was only on them for two weeks before i found another job and took myself off the payments.



I know a hell of alot of people that not once in their life have ever thought, nor wanted a job. They are more than contempt getting a barely livable wage from the government and blowing it all on stupid crap. drugs included.




Forcing current wellfare people to go thru a drug test - so the ones whom are addicted and are spending their money on substances can be helped, or they can choose to stop literaly giving their money to these people so they can take a lighter to it and burn it.

Originally posted by TigaHawk
reply to post by ripcontrol

 

I fully agree with this.

I live in australia, i have been in situations twice in my life where money help from the government would have been a lifesaver.

Once when i was 17 and had troubles at home - and needed to get out. The government declined a youth allowance (not old enough for wellfare payments) under the basis that "my parents earn too much"

Meaning, their combined wages earned over 40,000 a year.


2nd time around was during the old financial crisis. Was out of a job. I applied and i got payments. I was only on them for two weeks before i found another job and took myself off the payments.



I know a hell of alot of people that not once in their life have ever thought, nor wanted a job. They are more than contempt getting a barely livable wage from the government and blowing it all on stupid crap. drugs included.




Forcing current wellfare people to go thru a drug test - so the ones whom are addicted and are spending their money on substances can be helped, or they can choose to stop literaly giving their money to these people so they can take a lighter to it and burn it.

It is a shame, you agree with such a silly thing, I am also guessing that you have faith in our current government and that you believe that there are heaps of jobs out there. Would you rather see people free in society and yes being unemployed or is it better that they all end up in jail hence making the crime empire more powerful? Huxley and Orwell were right on.

Drug testing is discriminatory! Will the share holders also be tested, yeh right.

I live in a country full of sheep, where big brother says what is right and wrong. And lets be honest mostly big brother has been wrong or just out right lied. An example of our ignorance and hypocrisy, we cannot have slaves and unpaid or underpaid workers yet, because of our laws, however half if not most of our products come from underpaid workers, with little to no rights and clearly such employment would be illegal in our countries. Yet we allow the companies and governments to sell us these products, unfortunately there are so many small minded people with so much power. The current drug testing regime is no less ignorant or hypocritical. And the sheep will feel safe, while the masters make millions, at least until someones nuclear reactor melts down.

Originally posted by bmck12
At our High School here in AL we began drug testing all students that were involved in sports and all the extra curricular activities associated with the school... It was a random system and they tested once a week... The students did not even know what day they would be tested.... It was a great program but unfortunately our funding came up short. A lot of the parents offered to pay for the services but that did not work either. I applaude the drug testing for programs, activities and such...

Was your principle and were your teachers also tested, would not the money waisted on such discriminatory practices be best put into a child's education.

reply to post by ripcontrol




OK lets drug test the poor right after we drug test congress.

Originally posted by trailertrash
reply to post by ripcontrol

 

OK lets drug test the poor right after we drug test congress.

You are onto it, that will never happen, they are above the law good on ya :-)

Very few people here have considered the fact that the drug testing industry is a multibillion dollar industry and a big reason behind these laws is the lobbying by big Pharma (A: to keep natural drugs illegal & reduce their competition & B: so they can sell more drug testing kits)

I'm not sure what is behind the idea that welfare recipients should be drug tested, but there seems to be a lot of assumptions that people who are for this are working from, mainly:

1) people not distinguishing drug use from drug abuse (two very different things), and secondly assuming that all drug users are all "immoral" non-entities that don't deserve the dignity of help including food & health care, which are the major components of "welfare", NOT cash benefits, which generally is no more than $63 every 2 weeks, which, by the way, these people are required to WORK FOR. (also these people are choosing to treat drug use as a moral & criminal issue which is costly, ineffective, and expensive rather than a public health issue, which has shown to be more cost effective)

Again drug testing is big business. However I wonder if anyone ever stopped to consider if throwing people off welfare just because they test positive is even legal, let alone ethical. Why does it matter what a person puts in his/her body. Does that person not deserve the same dignity as anyone else? Does the fact that a person has a drug problem automatically mean that we should throw them on the street? In fact, those who are advocating kicking drug users and abusers to the curb probably don't even realize that the cost of NOT helping these people is actually far more than the cost of helping them (which has been shown in case studies, since these people often show up in shelters and emergency rooms where costs are far higher).

"Philosophically, I think we should be holding people accountable for what we want them to do, not for what we don't want them to do," said Preis. "People want to take care of their families, to do the right thing. It just doesn't make sense to me. Taking away benefits from someone struggling with substance abuse issues isn't going to help them; it will only make matters worse."

"These bills are a waste of money at a time when governments don't have money to waste," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "And they're extremely discriminatory in that they focus on someone smoking marijuana, but don't address at all whether someone is blowing his check on alcohol or gambling or vacations. The bottom line is that even if someone is using drugs, that doesn't mean they should be denied public assistance, health care, or anything else to which citizens are entitled. These bills are unnecessarily cruel and they show that some politicians still think it's in their best interest to pick on vulnerable people with substance abuse issues."

Source

Second thing to consider is regarding all these false positives and resulting lawsuits. It's not just a myth that false positives are a problem:

"Drug testing pregnant women produces false positives (and kills babies)"
stopthedrugwar.org...

"Field tests for drugs are proven wildly inaccurate"
stopthedrugwar.org...

2) Secondly, is the myth that welfare recipients are "lazy" hence myths about "welfare queens" (a term that was later proved to be a myth, Reagan's "welfare queen" was never an actual person) having gaggles of illegitimate children in order to collect checks.

The reality is that "welfare" does not really exist, at least in this country, anymore. It has been turned into a program called "workfare" in which recipients are required to work a certain amount of hours per week (usually 20-30, plus 15 hours spent looking for a job). Generally these people are given work that, if the math is done, works out to a pay that is far below minimum wage. ("workfare" checks are roughly $63 a week, at least where I live, at a work week of 20 hours, that works out to $3.15/hour.) Many organizations have made a point of the "slave-like" conditions in which these people work. Interestingly, many of the reasons for "welfare reform" (i.e. the new "workfare" program") has been rooted in A) myths about rampant "welfare fraud" and B) myths about the "laziness" and moral aptitude of welfare recipients. Contrary to what many on the new right say, various investigations by states and other "fraud" tracking initiatives have found welfare fraud to be very low, less than 2%, is what I have generally heard being cited on average. Additionally, the fraud that was found in 95%+ of the cases, had been found to be perpetrated by the provider or administrator of the welfare benefits, not the actual beneficiary. So claims of massive welfare fraud on the part of the beneficiary are simply unfounded. The reason is actually easy to see if you are anyone who knows anything about the system: it is demoralizing and no one would willingly put themselves through is unless they truly are destitute and desperate.

Read more about these issues here:

New York City / Giuliani record on "welfare reform" including claims of "welfare fraud" and effects of "workfare" and other reforms, often leading to a denial in benefits, forcing people to loose their homes, health insurance, and forcing them to seek more costly emergency interventions like hospital emergency rooms, and the city shelter system where housing a person costs $38,000+ a year.

Giuliani's welfare policies drastically cut the number of people on welfare, but not all of the people who left the rolls - or were forced from them - found jobs. Many were wrongly denied benefits, including food stamps, which led more people to seek emergency shelter and food, city anti- poverty advocates said.

www.concordmonitor.com...,0

An article discussing eight common myths about welfare, including many that I see people using here over and over again ("lazy", "no morals", "bunch of drug addicts" etc.)

www.anitra.net...

Discussion of welfare fraud:

spritzophrenia.wordpress.com...

I also wanted to point out this article on the criminalization of poverty...which seems to be where these attacks on poor people are going. I heard the other night on the news, an analogy in reference to the recent demonization of the working poor. That the rich guy will take the entire box of cookies, taking 99 cookies for himself, and then gives one of the 2 other poor guys sitting across from him a cookie. The 2 poor guys, rather than taking on the rich guy for hoarding the whole box, fights with his neighbor over the crumbs, calling each other "lazy", "undeserving", even "greedy"...it's not difficult to see the irony here. I want to reference a quote that I see has a lot of relevance to some of the arguments given by conservatives and neo-conservative laissez-faire market thinkers (i.e. "the market will solve all problems" types), which is one of the reasons given for why we should do away with things like "welfare", "social security", "food stamps", etc.

While the ideology of neoliberalism emphasizes small government and laissez-faire at the top, it "is anything but laissez-faire at the bottom. Indeed, when it comes to handling the social turbulence generated by deregulation and to impressing the discipline of precarious labor, the new Leviathan reveals itself to be fiercely interventionist, bossy, and pricey." (308)

This "post-Keynesian era of insecure employment" creates a "deficit of legitimacy" which the state handles by using the penal apparatus to hold as a club over those members of the working class who resist the discipline of the new fragmented service wage-labor by increasing the cost of exit strategies into the informal economy of the street. Those who are disruptive or who have been "rendered wholly superfluous" are neutralized or warehoused. This state could be called "liberal-paternalist" — liberal and permissive at the top, with regard to corporations and the upper class, and paternalist and authoritarian at the bottom," establishing a "new government of social insecurity." (8)

Source (read this, another highly recommended article with lots of source quotes and research)

Next, a very good article in which the writer demonstrates:
1) The "drug epidemic'' does not pose the huge threat to public
health and safety that some many claim.

2) Currently legal drugs cause more problems than illicit drugs.

3) Even if it were desirable to address casual drug use as a
problem, urinalysis is not the way to do it.

4) Urinalysis itself represents a counter-progressive social
strategy, a colossal waste of our industrial resources, and does
more harm to businesses than good.

Highly suggested:
www.erowid.org...

A finally, I wanted to point out that this whole argument reminds me of what they mean when they talk about "Service to Self" vs. "Service to Others" type aliens, 3D, 4D, and 5D type entities. For anyone who has not read about it, although I assume more ATS users are familiar, I will post sources. But, the description of the "Service to Self" entities reminds me of those here who are attacking the poorest and most vulnerable citizens and arguing for what amounts to a "kick them to the curb and they can pick themselves up by their own boot straps" Basically attacking our fellow man and treating life as if it were nothing more than an economic opportunity, a monetary calculation:

They are locked into their own mode of existence, and above them in the hierarchy is only the logos or thought center, the black sun, the spiritual black hole that inevitably sucks all self-centered consciousness into it. To stave off this spiritual death, they need increasing energy from those below in the hierarchy. In fact, all dark practitioners seek to avoid the metaphysical consequences of what they do, which is why they are into physicality and prolonging life while physical, they can do what they want and delay paying the debt...They are very practical, so they seek the easiest route. This is because they must economize their energy and strategy. The nature of self-serving evolution involves conquest over finite resources, so efficiency and calculation are necessary. This makes them blind to certain outcomes (probabilities) that are not within their perception.

Every individual in an STS (service-to-self) hierarchy is both predator and prey. Predator to those below, prey to those above. Humans of strong STS orientation incarnate to heighten their negative polarity and carry out missions and agenda. They are of low spiritual frequency and tend to be born into positions of power. These form the elite of the world, who are ultimately directed by the alien powers heading the STS hierarchy.

Source

I'm wary of the people on here who advocate such selfish policy or abandoning their fellow man and assuming that this is "just the way life is". There is more to life than "the invisible hand of Adam Smith and market economies" (which, given more and more evidence, and in my opinion, are destroying the planet and the soul of mankind). More on STO vs. STS here

Either way, I take a lot of the attitude of fellow ATSers towards the poor, sick and most vulnerable among us as a really sad sign of the sickness of moral selfishness and greed that is present in our society.

Originally posted by meeneecat
Very few people here have considered the fact that the drug testing industry is a multibillion dollar industry and a big reason behind these laws is the lobbying by big Pharma (A: to keep natural drugs illegal & reduce their competition & B: so they can sell more drug testing kits)

I'm not sure what is behind the idea that welfare recipients should be drug tested, but there seems to be a lot of assumptions that people who are for this are working from, mainly:

1) people not distinguishing drug use from drug abuse (two very different things), and secondly assuming that all drug users are all "immoral" non-entities that don't deserve the dignity of help including food & health care, which are the major components of "welfare", NOT cash benefits, which generally is no more than $63 every 2 weeks, which, by the way, these people are required to WORK FOR. (also these people are choosing to treat drug use as a moral & criminal issue which is costly, ineffective, and expensive rather than a public health issue, which has shown to be more cost effective)

Again drug testing is big business. However I wonder if anyone ever stopped to consider if throwing people off welfare just because they test positive is even legal, let alone ethical. Why does it matter what a person puts in his/her body. Does that person not deserve the same dignity as anyone else? Does the fact that a person has a drug problem automatically mean that we should throw them on the street? In fact, those who are advocating kicking drug users and abusers to the curb probably don't even realize that the cost of NOT helping these people is actually far more than the cost of helping them (which has been shown in case studies, since these people often show up in shelters and emergency rooms where costs are far higher).

"Philosophically, I think we should be holding people accountable for what we want them to do, not for what we don't want them to do," said Preis. "People want to take care of their families, to do the right thing. It just doesn't make sense to me. Taking away benefits from someone struggling with substance abuse issues isn't going to help them; it will only make matters worse."

"These bills are a waste of money at a time when governments don't have money to waste," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "And they're extremely discriminatory in that they focus on someone smoking marijuana, but don't address at all whether someone is blowing his check on alcohol or gambling or vacations. The bottom line is that even if someone is using drugs, that doesn't mean they should be denied public assistance, health care, or anything else to which citizens are entitled. These bills are unnecessarily cruel and they show that some politicians still think it's in their best interest to pick on vulnerable people with substance abuse issues."

Source

Second thing to consider is regarding all these false positives and resulting lawsuits. It's not just a myth that false positives are a problem:

"Drug testing pregnant women produces false positives (and kills babies)"
stopthedrugwar.org...

"Field tests for drugs are proven wildly inaccurate"
stopthedrugwar.org...

2) Secondly, is the myth that welfare recipients are "lazy" hence myths about "welfare queens" (a term that was later proved to be a myth, Reagan's "welfare queen" was never an actual person) having gaggles of illegitimate children in order to collect checks.

The reality is that "welfare" does not really exist, at least in this country, anymore. It has been turned into a program called "workfare" in which recipients are required to work a certain amount of hours per week (usually 20-30, plus 15 hours spent looking for a job). Generally these people are given work that, if the math is done, works out to a pay that is far below minimum wage. ("workfare" checks are roughly $63 a week, at least where I live, at a work week of 20 hours, that works out to $3.15/hour.) Many organizations have made a point of the "slave-like" conditions in which these people work. Interestingly, many of the reasons for "welfare reform" (i.e. the new "workfare" program") has been rooted in A) myths about rampant "welfare fraud" and B) myths about the "laziness" and moral aptitude of welfare recipients. Contrary to what many on the new right say, various investigations by states and other "fraud" tracking initiatives have found welfare fraud to be very low, less than 2%, is what I have generally heard being cited on average. Additionally, the fraud that was found in 95%+ of the cases, had been found to be perpetrated by the provider or administrator of the welfare benefits, not the actual beneficiary. So claims of massive welfare fraud on the part of the beneficiary are simply unfounded. The reason is actually easy to see if you are anyone who knows anything about the system: it is demoralizing and no one would willingly put themselves through is unless they truly are destitute and desperate.

Read more about these issues here:

New York City / Giuliani record on "welfare reform" including claims of "welfare fraud" and effects of "workfare" and other reforms, often leading to a denial in benefits, forcing people to loose their homes, health insurance, and forcing them to seek more costly emergency interventions like hospital emergency rooms, and the city shelter system where housing a person costs $38,000+ a year.

Giuliani's welfare policies drastically cut the number of people on welfare, but not all of the people who left the rolls - or were forced from them - found jobs. Many were wrongly denied benefits, including food stamps, which led more people to seek emergency shelter and food, city anti- poverty advocates said.

www.concordmonitor.com...,0

An article discussing eight common myths about welfare, including many that I see people using here over and over again ("lazy", "no morals", "bunch of drug addicts" etc.)

www.anitra.net...

Discussion of welfare fraud:

spritzophrenia.wordpress.com...

I also wanted to point out this article on the criminalization of poverty...which seems to be where these attacks on poor people are going. I heard the other night on the news, an analogy in reference to the recent demonization of the working poor. That the rich guy will take the entire box of cookies, taking 99 cookies for himself, and then gives one of the 2 other poor guys sitting across from him a cookie. The 2 poor guys, rather than taking on the rich guy for hoarding the whole box, fights with his neighbor over the crumbs, calling each other "lazy", "undeserving", even "greedy"...it's not difficult to see the irony here. I want to reference a quote that I see has a lot of relevance to some of the arguments given by conservatives and neo-conservative laissez-faire market thinkers (i.e. "the market will solve all problems" types), which is one of the reasons given for why we should do away with things like "welfare", "social security", "food stamps", etc.

While the ideology of neoliberalism emphasizes small government and laissez-faire at the top, it "is anything but laissez-faire at the bottom. Indeed, when it comes to handling the social turbulence generated by deregulation and to impressing the discipline of precarious labor, the new Leviathan reveals itself to be fiercely interventionist, bossy, and pricey." (308)

This "post-Keynesian era of insecure employment" creates a "deficit of legitimacy" which the state handles by using the penal apparatus to hold as a club over those members of the working class who resist the discipline of the new fragmented service wage-labor by increasing the cost of exit strategies into the informal economy of the street. Those who are disruptive or who have been "rendered wholly superfluous" are neutralized or warehoused. This state could be called "liberal-paternalist" — liberal and permissive at the top, with regard to corporations and the upper class, and paternalist and authoritarian at the bottom," establishing a "new government of social insecurity." (8)

Source (read this, another highly recommended article with lots of source quotes and research)

Next, a very good article in which the writer demonstrates:
1) The "drug epidemic'' does not pose the huge threat to public
health and safety that some many claim.

2) Currently legal drugs cause more problems than illicit drugs.

3) Even if it were desirable to address casual drug use as a
problem, urinalysis is not the way to do it.

4) Urinalysis itself represents a counter-progressive social
strategy, a colossal waste of our industrial resources, and does
more harm to businesses than good.

Highly suggested:
www.erowid.org...

A finally, I wanted to point out that this whole argument reminds me of what they mean when they talk about "Service to Self" vs. "Service to Others" type aliens, 3D, 4D, and 5D type entities. For anyone who has not read about it, although I assume more ATS users are familiar, I will post sources. But, the description of the "Service to Self" entities reminds me of those here who are attacking the poorest and most vulnerable citizens and arguing for what amounts to a "kick them to the curb and they can pick themselves up by their own boot straps" Basically attacking our fellow man and treating life as if it were nothing more than an economic opportunity, a monetary calculation:

They are locked into their own mode of existence, and above them in the hierarchy is only the logos or thought center, the black sun, the spiritual black hole that inevitably sucks all self-centered consciousness into it. To stave off this spiritual death, they need increasing energy from those below in the hierarchy. In fact, all dark practitioners seek to avoid the metaphysical consequences of what they do, which is why they are into physicality and prolonging life while physical, they can do what they want and delay paying the debt...They are very practical, so they seek the easiest route. This is because they must economize their energy and strategy. The nature of self-serving evolution involves conquest over finite resources, so efficiency and calculation are necessary. This makes them blind to certain outcomes (probabilities) that are not within their perception.

Every individual in an STS (service-to-self) hierarchy is both predator and prey. Predator to those below, prey to those above. Humans of strong STS orientation incarnate to heighten their negative polarity and carry out missions and agenda. They are of low spiritual frequency and tend to be born into positions of power. These form the elite of the world, who are ultimately directed by the alien powers heading the STS hierarchy.

Source

I'm wary of the people on here who advocate such selfish policy or abandoning their fellow man and assuming that this is "just the way life is". There is more to life than "the invisible hand of Adam Smith and market economies" (which, given more and more evidence, and in my opinion, are destroying the planet and the soul of mankind). More on STO vs. STS here

Either way, I take a lot of the attitude of fellow ATSers towards the poor, sick and most vulnerable among us as a really sad sign of the sickness of moral selfishness and greed that is present in our society.

edit on 22-3-2011 by meeneecat because: added link

Very well put, its a shame that the masses don't get it and allow such disgusting practices to occur.

Well I sent another letter...

other questions on purposed bill
...
From:
Kent Walls [Chat now]
...
View Contact
To: [email protected]
During the course of conversations a few question have popped up over the bill you proposed...

1) How much is this program of testing going to cost?

2)What measures are going to be used to protect the privacy of those tested?

3)Is this program going to be extended to all LA employees as well? (they receive both sets of state and federal funds)

4)Are corporations also going to be tested (in the form of their board members) for the funds they receive as well?

In closing are their any statements that you would like to add that would sway others that listen or read your responses?

Still no response but I did send the original letter again