Michigan Governor Ignores History, Signs Welfare Drug Testing Bill Into Law

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder elected on Friday to waste taxpayer dollars in an effort to punish the poor for being poor. Ignoring the lessons learned when similar programs were adopted in Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Oklahoma, and other states that have adopted measures to shame society’s most financially vulnerable through humiliating and unnecessary drug testing procedures, Snyder signed a bill into law forcing those who can’t afford to eat to face the additional humiliation of having to pee in a cup if they are “suspected” of illegal drug use.

The CDC reports that, on average, 9.2% of the population age 12 and older use illegal drugs each month (7.3% of the population uses Marijuana, which is slowly becoming more accepted in society). States that have chosen to drug test the poor have, in the past, unwittingly revealed that poor individuals actually use drugs at a much lower rate than the national average.

Florida, for example, spent $118,140 to drug test 4,086 applicants seeking to receive welfare benefits between July and October 2011. Only 108, or 2.6 percent, failed the tests — with most testing positive for marijuana. About 40 individuals scheduled tests, but canceled them, according to the Department of Children and Families. The reasons for cancellation were unspecified. Ultimately, taxpayers lost $45,780 to this blatant attempt to shame the disadvantaged.

The state of Missouri drug tested 636 applicants, finding only 20 who tested positive for illegal substances. About 200 refused to comply with this unnecessary testing. The cost of the program was a whopping $500,000.

Between November 2012 and May 2013, the state of Oklahoma drug tested 1,890 people. Only 83 of them tested positive for illegal drugs, at a cost of $83,000.

In Utah, only 14 out of 6,007 who were screened between August and October 2012 tested positive at a hefty $32,000 bill to the taxpayers.

“I have not seen any kind of credible data to this point to suggest these kinds of programs help people who are on drugs,” said staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project Jason Williamson.

The state of Tennessee found a whopping one person who tested positive for illegal drugs.

Despite that drug testing of welfare recipients is, historically, a waste of money, Snyder has approved HB 4118, which will allow drug testing of welfare recipients “suspected” of drug use. No standards for “suspicion” have been detailed, but failure to submit to this humiliation will lead to ineligibility for benefits for a period of six months.

“We want to remove the barriers that are keeping people from getting good jobs, supporting their families and living independently,” Snyder said in a press release. “This pilot program is intended to help ensure recipients get the wrap-around services they need to overcome drug addiction and lead successful lives. We’ll then have opportunity to assess effectiveness and outcomes.”

The cost of the program, which will initially be implemented in three counties, is estimated to cost between $700,000 and $3.4 million. Proponents claim that the program will save $370,000 – $3.7 million.

In the end, not only will this be a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars — but the measure will only serve to stereotype, stigmatize, and shame the poorest of the poor.

Pastor John Hagee: ‘nasty’ Welfare Recipients Don’t Deserve To Live

San Antonio, Texas – Pastor John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church delivered an impassioned speech decrying the evils of welfare dependency. While prefacing his remarks with an acknowledgement of the need the disabled, infirm, and elderly have of receiving social support, he made it clear that he has little tolerance for able bodied individuals who are living off the taxes of the working people.

Pastor Hagee cited that statistic that the welfare population of the United States exceeds to population of Spain. He believes that many of these people do not actually need welfare and should instead reap the rewards of their actions according to Biblical counsel.

Referring to 2 Thessalonians 3:10 “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”, he insists that such people as are found gaming the system must get off the proverbial couch and work. His comments are certainly well-intended even if they came across as somewhat derogatory. The problem is that the sectors of the economy which product mid to high wage income, have not recovered from the 2008 banking crisis.

The main sectors of the economy which have thrived are those producing low-wage jobs which is what makes it very difficult from even working people to make a living. Coupled with the disincentive that a person can fare better on welfare than they can to work, and the picture becomes clearer. Yes, people need to work, but the economy isn’t the rising tide lifting all the ships that it needs to be either.

Republicans Are Going Crazy After Pope Frances Suggests Redistributing Wealth

Pope Francis; image@CatholicEWUK

Uh-oh, the Marxist is back! And he’s preaching what Jesus did thousand of years ago: take care of our poor. Tapping again on the “economy of exclusion,” Pope Francis, who has showed the world what a true Christian leader is, and has called on the world’s governments to redistribute their masses of wealth to those who need it the most — the poor and vulnerable. My God, how very un-Christian of him. He actually cares for the poor?

Pope Francis met with the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other heads of major U.N. agencies who were converging in Rome this week. Pope Francis made his appeal to the Secretary-General to usher in a “worldwide ethical mobilization of solidarity with the poor in a new spirit of generosity.”

More specifically, the Pope said that a more equal form of economic progress can be achieved through “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.” Some will call is socialism, some will call it Marxism, and others will call it what it truly is: humanity.

Well, isn’t this awkward. “Christian” Republicans are really going to hate this, as they have hated him since he took the papacy last year. Being told what the gospel is actually about does not go down well with Republicans, because when someone wants to help the underprivileged in this country, or in the rest of the world, they brand them as Marxists or socialists, words they don’t seem to fully understand.

It appears that Catholic Republicans are in quite a pickle. Do they follow the lead of the Pope, God’s representation on Earth, or do they follow Paul Ryan?

I find it very odd that Catholic Republicans pick and choose their ideological standpoints when it comes to abortion, contreception and gay marriage. There are currently sixty-eight Republican members of the Catholic Caucus in the United States Congress. They identify themselves with the church, and its beliefs. Certainly the Church differs from progressives on issues likes abortion and gay marriage, but I want to know how many Republicans backed:

• Pope John Paul II’s, and the Church’s opposition to the Iraq War and Afghanistan War
• The U.S. Conference of Bishops support for gun-control
• The U.S. Conference of Bishops opposition to Paul Ryan’s budgets (awkward for Ryan, who is a member of the Catholic Caucus)
• The Churches opposition to the death penalty
• The Conference of Bishops’s support for universal healthcare
• The Church’s support of fair pay, unions, and worker’s rights
• The U.S. Conference of Bishops’s support for raising the minimum wage
• And the Church’s opposition to trickle-down economics overall

These Republicans are a member of quite a Marxist church, if you ask me. This a classic example of how Republicans ignore and cherry pick. The Catholic Church has preached all of these things, and Republicans have ignored it on every level. But oh no, when the Pope calls on people to give more to the poor, and calls it ‘redistribution,’ Republicans freak.

Last December, Fox News even dedicated an entire negative article geared at Pope Francis, just nine months into his tenure. The title – ‘Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us.’ I can only imagine what is going through their heads now.

Oh wait, yes I can! “Catholic” Sean Hannity’s head exploded over the Pope’s call to redistribute the wealth. According to Hannity, he is “not happy about this.” Hannity called the Pope a “to each according to his own need, from each according to his ability redistributionist.” Hannity decided to lecture the Pope on how to live the teachings of Jesus Christ. What a concept. A TV talking head, lecturing the successor of Saint Peter how to interpret biblical teachings.

Republicans fear the Pope. That shows, without a doubt, he’s doing his job.

Sean Hannity: Lazy Pope Francis Doesn’t Understand the Virtues of Hard Work

It’s opposite day again on Sean Hannity’s show, and he’s going to let us know that anyone who has money worked really, really hard for it — and that the Pope doesn’t understand the virtues of hard work.

Because Pope Francis advocates for the poor, Sean Hannity claims he’s sticking up for lazy, worthless people who don’t understand the virtues of hard work.

“And it’s like now we’re creating the resentment of those who get up, make decisions, they go to school, they develop marketable skills, they decide to work, they make intelligent decisions . . . and now, all of a sudden, they’re being hated,” Hannity said on his radio show, discussing the drive for income redistribution. “And they’re being called greedy, and selfish. And they’re now being condemned. And we’re celebrating mediocrity, or laziness. Because if you think about it, who are we going to take the money from?”

He went on:

I don’t know any Kennedys. I know people who have money. I know people that are comfortable . . . that are struggling . . . that are poor . . . that have come from nothing to make money in their lives . . . And in every case of everyone that I know that has money, with the exception of one person that used to work on my TV staff that was born rich, he’s the only person I know. Every other person I know . . . that has anything decent in their life, . . . everybody that has something, earned it. I don’t know anybody that has gotten something through ill-gotten gains. We are the sum total of every decision we make in our lives.

I’d hazard a guess that the reason Hannity doesn’t know anyone who has gotten anything through ill-gotten means is because he doesn’t know anyone born into extreme wealth. He goes on to rant about taxes — you know, those things that you pay in order to gain and use public roads, public schools, government science funding, police, fire, and other utilities — and finishes off by warning us that these “hard workers” will “go Galt” on us if we don’t stop demanding that they pay their fair share to society.

Hannity seems to think that having a skill set honed to providing a service is all it takes to being a millionaire or billionaire, since that’s how those millionaires and billionaires got their money. I have a few questions I’d like to direct at Hannity and every other Libertarian thinker: Are you a billionaire? If not, why? Because you’re lazy, perhaps? If it worked for them, why shouldn’t it work for you? The only excuse, then, by your own words — by Hannity’s own words — for not making billions of dollars is that you’re just flat out lazy.

Or, you could acknowledge reality — they didn’t work for their gains, and they got that money by gaming a broken tax system, and rigging the system in their favor at the cost of everyone else.

Another Gilded Age?

A few definitions to tee this up:

Oligarchy: A society where power is in the hands of very few people, usually determined by wealth, corporate and family ties, and the military.

The Gilded Age: From the 1870s to the early 1900s, our country was run by very few people (think John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew W. Mellon, Andrew Carnegie) but also marked by extreme poverty. The term was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to mean "an era of serious social problems disguised by thin gold gilding."

So ... are we there yet?!

An Economist With 2 Minutes And A Marker Explains The Greedy, Selfish Things Some Rich People Do

Only thing I would add is the only reason the rich don't want to reinstate slavery is because it's cheaper to pay workers $2 an hour than to feed, house and clothe slave laborers.

That's for sure!