La Bruzzo wants to drug test welfare recepients...

Originally posted by Mystery_Lady

At least in my state, every member in the household who is eligible to work has to
A) have a job
B) be looking for a job
C) loose food stamps all together if you don't meet the A or B requirement.

I was told that the requirement to work was relaxed some due to the recession we are currently going through.

When I applied I told them I was out of work and had not worked in a long time. They told me I have to be actively looking for work, but getting my unemployment checks was actually a little more difficult in that regard. I had to keep a ledger for UI. They told me at welfare that I would have to meet with a job counselor for work placement. They are getting a little pissed off at me because I keep calling about this supposed job-placement program, and never get an appointment, or even a phone number of who exactly I am supposed to talk to.

I'll tell you one thing right now, earning $200 bucks a week and actually getting out every day would beat the hell of sitting here online, hour after hour, and trying to live on $200 a month. I'll tell you folks, my mind and body are wasting away here in idle depression. Sometimes, I don't even shower or get out of bed for 3 or 4 days. Where I live right now, all I have is a mattress and my latop sits on top of a storage tub. No chair, no desk, no other furniture. I don't even have a stove or oven. Day in, day out, I lay here on this little RV mattress that isn't even as wide as a regular twin. Some days I work, but nothing regular enough for certain.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


I only speak from experience and the people I have been around in the system. I'm highly surprised it is that high for drug use. Then again it may just be my area or the people I'm friends with where I don't see the abuse.

Another overlooked thing to consider...

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid...
More than 40 million people get food stamps...
Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance...
More than 4.4 million people are on welfare...

Source - most recent numbers I could find.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the 50 million medicaid number actually encompasses all other categories.

Further:

The average cost of a drug test is about $42 per person tested, not including the costs of hiring personnel to administer the tests, to ensure confidentiality of results and to run confirmatory tests to guard against false positives resulting from passive drug exposure, cross-identification with legal, prescription drugs such as codeine and legal substances such as poppy seeds.

Another way to measure the cost is by counting what it costs to “catch” each drug user. Drug testing is not used by many private employers because of the exorbitant cost of catching each person who tests positive. One electronics manufacturer, for example, estimated that the cost of finding each person who tested positive was $20,000, since after testing 10,000 employees, only 49 tested positive. A congressional committee also estimated that the cost of each positive drug test of government employees was $77,000, because the positive rate was only 0.5%.

Source

Given the above, are we really worried about our tax dollars? It's pretty obvious that the expenditure to fund the program would by far and away surpass the programs themselves. Or is 2.1 billion a month for testing really worth punishing those who abuse the system?

~Heff

reply to post by ripcontrol


I visited Louisianna not long before Hurricane Katrina so I have an idea of what you are talking about however I have no idea what it looks like today. It's not the poorest area I visited in the USA, there's some traps far worse in LA, NYC & Minnisota (probably did'nt spell that right).

You know these drug tests are going to go in to a system that goes viral, it always does.

Those few on welfare who drive around in flash cars etc obviously have another "income" of sorts. We don't need to guess where, it's obvious. However in saying that, there are those in self employment using the system by cooking their books too to avoid paying vast sums of taxes and child support. Your men may go to jail for not paying child support but a vast number of paying peanuts compared to what they really earn leaving their children to suffer economically. I think you'll find these hard hit families who are economically abused far out weight those on welfare using illegal substances.

I like how another member said earlier.....lets drug test every voter and politician and banker and so on.

The problem in the USA is not the poor on welfare, it's the debt and so many of you are not looking at the bigger picture; you all just want a witch hunt when you should be looking at your finances and worry about YOURSELVES and not what others are doing or not doing.

Australia is not without the same problems but I'm fully aware of whats really going on and I prefer to jump down the throats of those individuals with vast amounts of debt and my Govt's irresponsibilities when spending and not being able to account for billions of dollars (in your case 90 TRILLION $).

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by ManBehindTheMask

 

And that leads us back to the crux of the issue... how to differentiate the bad apples from the good ones. And arbitrarily testing them is a Fourth Amendment quagmire. For the guilty and innocent are all caught up in the same net and tries to sort them out after the fact.

~Heff

This I absolutely agree with

reply to post by The Sword


You make no sence whatsoever. Typical, when beaten by logic you resort to name calling.

And for your information, I am left wing in my political views.

This whole thread is turning into a # fight. I'm bored - I'm unsubscribing. Bye peeps.

reply to post by StigShen


They - unemployment - sent me a letter in the mail stating I had to attend orientation on this date at this time, or I could loose unemployment. I went, and then expected something later on. I didn't receive anything, so I called. The lady said I fulfilled my obligation. I did receive a letter later on asking how things are going. I'll call them on Monday. So far I haven't had to keep a record or log of anything.

I do know when my husband went through it a few years back, he had to attend their training sessions or loose our food stamps. Unemployment had a program where they eventually paid for him to go to school and get a class A CDL license. He choose to get his class A.

Everything was sent to him through regular mail, or discussed at the training sessions when he had to go back in.

reply to post by ripcontrol


Sorry dude, I'm calling BS on that that. There are nowhere near as many welfare queens as you make it sound. I was a loss prevention detective at a supermarket for about six years. I got to know all the regular welfare people there. Most of them would show up first of the month when their benefit was paid. I never saw ANY of them with a brand new car. Now some had newer cars, but nothing extravagant. Working single mothers need a car to get to and from work, to run the kids around. But even there, most people on welfare came by cab, or on the bus.

Here is the one excpetion. And it was so rare, that we actually called her the welfare queen. Nasty attitude fat black lady with her nails done, always some new weave, all the jewelry, never the same outfit twice. Smacked her kids around, always hassled the cashiers about how much money she was "supposed" to have on her card. Poor girls would always wind up having to put back a half a cart full of stuff after this woman left.

Anyway, this woman drove a blinged out Escalade. She had been coming to the store for a year or so, when one afternoon the local PD swarmed in on her as she was just finishing putting her groceries in the car. Turns out the Cadillac wasn't hers, it was her boyfriend's. He had just been raided for drug trafficking. She got popped on a conspiracy charge and a weapons charge for the unregistered gun in her bag. Her kids wound up in state-care. It's been about five years now and those kids are still living at the group home where one of my girlfriends works.

So, a few things can be drawn from that. First, that just because someone is driving a car, doesn't mean it is theirs. Second, you see those welfare queens. Dont worry, you wont be paying long for their welfare. You'll be paying for their prison meals soon enough. And paying to take care of their kids in group homes.

And one more quick note. There was actually another woman with an Escalade. Pleasant, young woman. A customer actually gave her guff one evening, noticed that she had payed with a benefit card and then was putting her kids and groceries in a nice new Escalade. the poor young woman actually broke down in tears as this moron took out all of their problems on her. The truck was actually a Christmas gift from her husband a few months before he was killed in Afghanistan.

reply to post by Hefficide

IMO the economy is in the crapper and the knee jerk reaction of the masses is to blame the poor and disenfranchised - even as most corporations are posting record profits in the midst of a depression.

This right there is the best point in this debate!

Corporations are posting record profits and at the same time, propagandizing the public against each other.

Some people just don't realize that Reaganomics has completly failed the people. Contrary to conservative belief, the wealthy do not get "full" and spill out generosity onto the poor creating jobs, they just accumulate wealth.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


How do you figure it will save any money at all? Drug testing doesn't mean they will cut off benefits just because someone tests positive, It just means that will have to go for treatment, that taxpayers will have to pay for.

Your estimate that 75% of people on welfare leads me to believe that either you are flat out lieing about working in the field, or your personal experience is an abberation, out of the norm. Perhaps you worked in a unit that specialized in dealing with junkies or something, I dunno.

But the highest estimates from the best sources indicate that less than 30% of folks who get assistance have EVER had problems with substance abuse. I would actually fall into that 30% because I was a pot-head in high school and had to take some classes when I got caught smoking a blunt in the parking lot at the mall. The classes didn't to a damn thing to convince me to quit, but I quit of my own accord a few years later. I just can't smoke the stuff anymore, gives me bad anxiety problems believe it or not. But anyway, long story short, I get foodstamps and even though I was a high school pot-head, I am nowhere near being categorized as an addict or a druggie.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


Random testing? So what you are basically endorsing is government warrantless intrusion into private homes at any hour of the day or night. How convenient, millions upon millions of Americans, more than ever before, are getting some sort of public assistance, whether it be foodstamps, or medical for their kids, or housing subsidy, etc.

So I guess from now in the police don't need a warrant in the projects, they just need to bring a social worker.

reply to post by Mystery_Lady


Ha! I did the same thing. Went and got my CDL-A. Is he driving now? I can't find any companies that will pick me up without at least one year experience.

reply to post by Hefficide


It's about time someone with common sense posted in this thread.

Let's see the constitution defenders try to argue against the Fourth amendment.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


You want to debate this? Let's debate this. That's my only intent.

This thread is nothing new. I've seen similar threads clogging up this place. It seems like this site is a magnet for the socially ignorant and it's my job to question the motives of these posters.

reply to post by Shamatt


Left or right, that's not the issue here.

I still don't understand how it's "logical" to drug test people on welfare. As Hefficide pointed out, there's the 4th Amendment and it's not cheap to drug test people.

There's also the idea that we bail out banks, large corporations and we spend money we don't have on defense systems and wars.

I don't think it's logical to attack unfortunate people based on stereotypes (which are used to tar an entire group of people) when we should also be attacking rich people who cheat on their taxes. We should be attacking corporations that cook their books. We should not be funding wars when we don't have money for them!

FYI: I am a left-winger too and the last time I checked, it was taboo to be a liberal on this site.

reply to post by StigShen


Exactly! The taxpayers will have to pay MORE to treat the people who do test positive.

Where's the cost savings here?

That's why it is NOT logical to do such a thing!

reply to post by The Sword


I mean, am I wrong here? But I don't see any mention of actually kicking people off of welfare if they test positive. In fact, the last thing I heard is if you go in there and tell them you are an addict, it actually gets you more benefits faster.

reply to post by whatukno


It just surprises me to see these conservative views, when it is so obvious to anyone who cares to read the situation what in fact is going on. How can poor drug users really be to blame for a financial crisis that has been created by the bankers and used as the biggest transfer of wealth from poor to rich in modern history.

Are people that brainwashed? Did the Neo Con rot seep in that deep?

reply to post by woodwardjnr


Just look at the groups of people the right goes after, and who they defend.

Imigrants (legal or not), Muslims, the poor, pregnant women, gays, unions. doesn't take too much thought to figure out that many on the right arent very nice or tolerant.

reply to post by StigShen


Which defeats the whole purpose of drug testing them!

La Bruzzo is obviously a terrible politician that people stupidly elected because he probably doesn't know his head from his ass.