Please tell me again how Mittens is going to pivot to being the Sensible Centrist Leader We Need(tm) just as soon as he’s the nominee. Please. I need a good laugh on Valentine’s Day.
Georgia’s controversial plan to mandate drug testing for all welfare recipients and other beneficiaries of government assistance got a big endorsement on Friday from Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney.
On a local NBC affiliate in Georgia, Romney said that he supported the measure:
Jeff Hullinger: [Lawmakers] have bantered about the proposition that welfare recipients should be drug tested. How do you feel about that?
Mitt Romney: Well my own view is, it’s a great idea. People who are receiving welfare benefits, government benefits, we should make sure they’re not using those benefits to pay for drugs. I think it’s an excellent idea.
And in fact, the very “moderate” Marquis de Mittens has been a champion of keeping the “welfare criminals” in their place for a good two decades now, despite the fact that both GOP governors Rick “Here’s Your New Local Government I Appointed” Snyder in Michigan and Rick “My Wife Owns The Medical Testing Company Stock, Not Me” Scott in Florida are getting their asses kicked over this in the polls, not to mention getting slapped down by the courts.
I’m with Steve M. on this one:
Many of us assume, like Soros, that the Republicans know they’re destroying the economy through legislative intransigence. I’m not so sure. I think a lot of them by now have actually drunk the Rand/Laffer Kool-Aid and think tax cuts will unleash economic nirvana. I think some sincerely believe that if budget cuts hurt ordinary people, screw ’em — they should sink or swim in a Randian world. And then there’s Romney, who is just, well, pliable.
He’ll do whatever his masters tell him to, and that includes burning the safety net down and the middle-class with it. There’s not going to be any pivot to the center, no matter what they tell you. Mitt’s gone full Tea Party nutjob. He processes the data he’s given, nothing more. They all have gone over the cliff. Mitt is just the smiling plastic face on the label.
jonas
I presume these mandatory drug tests will also apply to recipients of corporate welfare? You want that big tax credit for your new plant? Here’s a cup, buster.
Danton
Romney = The lifelike candidate.
chopper
this’ll roll well with people on social security and disability, as well as unemployment. let’s drug test a third of the population!
Raven
He’ll backtrack on the stuff that’s not about bucks and welfare queens.
Biscuits
Can we just make it so anyone who receives or administers government monies be tested for drug use? And post results. I can’t type on this darn iPad!
MattF
The principal dynamic of the Republican primaries has turned out to be ‘no enemies to my right.’ It’ll be, um, interesting to see the effect of this in the general election campaign. I’m sure that Santorum would continue to hew to his views, but would Mitt try to buy back his soul from Grover? We shall see.
Added: Also, I suspect the Republican Convention events and speeches will make the storied Ringling Bros. blush.
Rafer Janders
Well my own view is, it’s a great idea. People who are receiving welfare benefits, government benefits, we should make sure they’re not using those benefits to pay for drugs. I think it’s an excellent idea.
I assume the same would apply to people receiving government Social Security and Medicare benefits?
And, of course, federal legislators. Shouldn’t all members of Congress be drug-tested to make sure they aren’t spending their taxpayer-funded pay on drugs?
mdblanche
I agree that if Mitt is the nominee there will be no pivot to center. I don’t understand why everyone keeps thinking there will be. I recall McCain moving to the right after securing the nomination four years ago to keep a base that didn’t trust him in line. Now the base is crazier than ever and Mitt is so untrustworthy that I had to use the word if in my first sentence! If Mitt isn’t winning them over now, he’ll have to go even harder right and stay there all the way to Tampa. And his flip-flopper reputation makes pivoting dangerous for Mitt in general. The fact that he’s so artless at it doesn’t help either.
Mike Goetz
Never go full retard.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
Jonas beat me to it – do you test everyone who gets a penny of government money via tax breaks, subsidies, etc. How about congressmen? They’re sucking at the public teat harder than anyone on welfare possibly could. Wouldn’t you like to see what toxins are flowing through the veins of someone like Boehner that makes him so orange?
@Mike Goetz – way too late for that
Zifnab25
This seems like a Republican idea cooked up in the 90s. You know, when the economy didn’t suck balls.
But when you have 15 million people actually on UI benefits, you run a terrible risk of actually pissing off real middle class voters.
I had a friend who was on UI for three months. If there is one thing he wasn’t interested in, it was more state red tape between him and his check.
Rafer Janders
@jonas:
And, of course, anyone who takes a home mortgage interest deduction on their taxes. What if they take the money they’re saving with that deduction and spend it on drugs! The children, won’t someone think of the children!
MomSense
Our governor here in Maine wants to bring this BS here as well. I miss Maine, the way life should be.
jibeaux
From a business standpoint alone, it’s an idiotic idea. You will never save enough money from cutting off someone’s $140 worth of food stamps in the small minority that might test positive to justify the massive cost of testing all those people. Not to mention now you’ve got the state mired in defending a lawsuit they’re not too likely to win. When you lose on fiscal grounds and constitutional grounds, all you’ve got left is that same old strapping young bucks buying steaks bullshit. Far too many people buy into that, which is why I think the cost inefficiency argument has to be made too.
Maus
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7bfhDa1G1r5a5myo1_r1_500.jpg
Fiscal conservatives!
Mudge
Let’s see, drug test them ahead of time..and don’t let them spend that dough in a strip club..and let’s test all those kids who get school lunches or S-CHIP. And unemployment or Medicaid recipients. Can’t give OUR money to the unworthy.
But don’t worry about the billions that Halliburton frittered away..
I’m looking for investors in a new drug testing lab. Should be a booming business.
Martin
Romney really is just a speechifying machine. Plug in the appropriate policy positions and you get a ready made speech. He’s Disney Abe Lincoln with a software upgrade.
matryoshka
Won’t drug-testing millions of people create a bigger bureaucracy? I thought the Rs were against big-government intrusions into our lives.
Also, what drugs will they test for? Boniva? Viagra? Or just pot and cocaine? What about alcohol?
Waynski
It would be interesting to see what the cost would be to test all welfare recipients, UI benefit redeemers, and oh yeah, FOOD STAMP LOAFERS! Drug testing is expensive, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that there are some wingnut welfare testing companies pushing the idea and rubbing their greedy little hands at the prospect. See: privatization, prisons.
OzoneR
Because David Brooks will say its so and it will be done.
On a related note, does anyone really belief drug testing people who get assistance is going to be unpopular?
Martin
@Maus: Well, because you can’t outsource collecting pee cups to China, it’s not a half bad stimulus plan.
/lemonade
samson
First, so all people who get government monies should be drug tested? So all bankers who got bailouts? All Social Security recipients? All medicare recipients? Etc.? I don’t see why we would draw the line at the unemployed. Now, imagine if Obama had proposed that everyone getting any kind of government money has to be drug tested; the R’s would go freaking nuts about government infringements and overreach, socialism, black helicopters, and on and on.
rdldot
@mdblanche: This is absolutely right. Santorum might be able to get away with a move to the center because the conservative base would be with him (but he won’t do it because he’s a believer). Mitt will have to do what McCain did in 2008 which is to try everything to appeal to the conservatives, who don’t already trust him. However ‘severe’ he thought he was in Massachusetts.
gbear
@MattF:
Mitt doesn’t have enough money to buy back his soul.
OzoneR
@Zifnab25:
They would never do it for people on unemployment, just for people on welfare or food stamps.
PTirebiter
I think it all started in a rational manner, a theory they sincerely believed was worth a try. By the time their field test had proved the theory wrong, they were all so comletely invested in it, they simply could not afford to accept the results. At this point, the financial and psychological consquences would be more than they coud bear. They’e not fightig for an idea anyore, I think they’re fighting for their lives.
dr. bloor
@MattF:
Bzzzzzt. Does not compute.
JPL
@OzoneR: In GA they are considering testing the unemployed.
OzoneR
@Waynski:
In the minds of many people, drug testing would mean poor people would just go get jobs rather than be subjected to it for welfare, therefore, it costs less. Think like a right winger.
jibeaux
Here’s one I like:
Mittens: “This week, President Obama will release a budget that won’t take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis. The president has failed to offer a single serious idea to save Social Security and is the only president in modern history to cut Medicare benefits for seniors.”
Hey, saves money in the focus group testing when the glaring contradictions are so close together.
R-Jud
@Martin:
That ain’t lemonade in those cups.
Linnaeus
@OzoneR:
Yeah, it’s the logic of the workhouse.
OzoneR
@JPL:
what’s the uenmployment rate for white people in Georgia?
OzoneR
@JPL:
what’s the unenmployment rate for white people in Georgia?
Villago Delenda Est
The important thing is that people like Rick Scott’s wife get to personally profit from these policies.
I frankly do not trust drug labs at all. Too many minimum wage workers doing exacting work subject to fuckups. You know they’re minimum wage, because the contractors themselves are all corrupt buddies (or wives) of utterly corrupt politicians who are all in this to rape the taxpayer for the maximum return. If they happen to do any real work in the process it’s a happy mistake.
Martin
@OzoneR: This time it might be. You propose policies like this when the folks collecting welfare are the folks that have historically always collected welfare. They’re a convenient ‘other’ group that you can blame for all the ills of America.
But given the jobs picture, the face of welfare right now is very different, and it’s pretty fucking easy to find a bunch of perfect whitebread families that are at their ends because dad lost his job of 20 years and hasn’t been able to find another. It’s a risky campaign if Obama and the Dems choose to fight against it. Hell, the news networks might do it for you – what do you want to bet they have a town hall style debate filled predominantly with people that are out of work from various parts of the economy to ask questions about jobs and so forth.
And I think you can trust Obama to point out the obvious end state for this – collecting unemployment? How about collecting a tax credit? It’s Mittorum going to be able to thread the needle about how welfare recipients are obviously drug users but a person who buys a Prius isn’t?
JPL
@OzoneR: The rate is just below ten percent but I’m not sure of the bread down by race. I’m trying to find that info..brb
Martin
@R-Jud:
Well, it was.
Egg Berry
Anyone have an idea how much these drug tests would cost to administer? Or do these morons just think pee cups grow on trees?
MattF
@dr. bloor: Oh, I think there’s a MittSoul(TM) out there. It was even fungible, once.
Waldo
Obviously Mitt will try to have it both ways, pivoting left and entrenching right simultaneously. His motto for the general election: “I’m a severely compassionate conservative.”
beltane
This is a win-win because they can also test for the presence of birth control pills in urine. Any woman claiming a tax credit who tests positive for the presence of birth control hormones obviously was using federal dollars to pay for her sex habit and baby killing. Only people who can prove that they live a pure life in accordance with Catholic doctrine are entitled to the rights and benefits of US citizenship.
Sounds like a plan.
Bago
“if we require a breathalyzer for people who drive, because they might get innocent people killed, shouldn’t we require a breathalyzer for congress before they send our troops to war?” — things you will never hear in congress.
Redshift
@JPL: And in Virginia, with our newly minted Republican majority. And yes, Congressional Republicans are talking about drug testing for unemployment, not for welfare.
burnspbesq
@Biscuits:
“I can’t type on this darn iPad!”
You must be ON DRUGS!
jibeaux
@Waldo: There ya go! Snark aside, the real pitch is likely to be approximately as subtle.
Redshift
@matryoshka:
They’re against big-government intrusions into our lives, but not into their lives. The dichotomy of “government can’t do anything competently” and “we can give government this power and they’ll only use it against those bastards, not me” doesn’t seem to produce any cognitive dissonance in movement conservatives.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
If you have to drug test for a job, you have to sign a form that says the drug testing company is in no way responsible if there is a false positive.
Picking on the poor seems so popular with the evil Republicans.
burnspbesq
I just wanted a Pepsi.
different-church-lady
@jibeaux:
Oh don’t be silly: the point is not to save money. The point is to ostracize undesirables from society. No cost is too great when it comes to battling that problem.
beltane
@Redshift: Conservatives uniformly love the idea of a police state just as long as they’re on the same side as the police. The only type of freedom they desire is the freedom to bully, abuse and terrorize their neighbors.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@matryoshka:
Fixed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Just a thought if Mittens wins: Obama should do the general election just like the last few years of governing: Every time Romney proposes some slightly moderate suggestion, Obama should agree to it. Then the teahadis will push and Romney will once again fall of the right side of the cliff. It would be a thing of beauty if the left can stay together.
The Moar You Know
Under the best of circumstances, my default assumption is that any given Republican will rape my ass for hours and leave me to die in the middle of the desert.
Romney’s no different save that he wouldn’t force me at gunpoint to make coffee for him afterwards.
OzoneR
@Martin:
Aren’t they though, perhaps to a larger extent than usual? Those who receive government assistance are already Democratic-voting blocs. What harm does this do Republicans?
Are they any Republican voters who will change their votes because suddenly they’re taking drug tests for unemployment?
In my experience, it’s almost impossible to get a Republican voter to admit they’re wrong and change sides. It’s easy to get a Democratic to come around to the Republican side, not easy vice versa. Republican voters are so brainwashed that if they were being beaten with lead pipes by the Republican Study Committee they’d say it was for the good of the country and somehow blame Nancy Pelosi for it.
different-church-lady
@The Moar You Know: Romney would find the raping part distasteful. Which is why he’s having a hard time with the base.
JPL
@Redshift: Well a local rep wants to introduce a law that you have to do community service for unemployment also. Not sure whether or not you can take off for job interviews though.
Martin
@PTirebiter:
But the theory worked as the economists presented it. The economists said that $1 of tax cuts would lead to $1 of GDP expansion and result in about $.30 in tax replacement as a result.
Then, the issue was jobs and inflation – not deficit. The government WANTED to trade GDP for taxes, and they got that, and that worked. Nobody ever promised that tax cuts would pay for themselves. The economists argued that because the top marginal rate was high (still up near 50%) and because the cap gains rate was high, the GDP expansion would both create jobs and boost earnings for folks at the top, and those top earnings would come back at a disproportionately high rate but they’d get some free jobs out of it.
Well, that’s exactly what happened. But Reagan and the GOP then reinterpreted the “$1 of tax cuts would lead to $1 of GDP expansion” as “$1 of tax cuts would lead to $1 in new taxes due to GDP expansion” and you get the current GOP tax policy – tax cuts pay for themselves. Ask Bruce Bartlett – he’ll tell you they never promised that.
beltane
@OzoneR: What about that article on Minnesota teabaggers in the NYT which showed they are almost universally dependent upon government benefits? These people are truly a bottomless abyss of spite and bile.
chopper
@jibeaux:
unless you’re in the drug testing business.
The Moar You Know
@OzoneR: Of course not. Most of my friends of the liberal persuasion think it’s a great idea, but these are the same people who think that forcing food stamp recipients to buy only healthy food is a great idea too. Apparently we’ve all decided totalitarianism is swell, we’re just haggling over what flavor of it we’d like.
My friends of the conservative persuasion…oh yeah, I don’t have any. But if I did, this kind of legislation would give them a woody, as it sticks it to black people (as they imagine it), browns, and the poor. And who doesn’t love taking a shot at a guy who’s already down and out? Republicans are always up for that.
OzoneR
@beltane:
Are they planning on drug testing for tax benefits and Medicare? That’s what the NYT article subjects were taking from the gov’t.
They’re choosing to test for government assistance that is most used by the poor and minorities- voting blocs who vote Democratic and people are taught to hate and look down on.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
I was told there would be no math.
Dave
I thought the courts had ruled that mandatory drug testing for benefits violated the Fourth Amendment.
Sly
My suspicion is that most self-described moderates (i.e. people who do not think about political issues beyond a surface level) will think drug testing government assistance recipients would be a sensible idea, based on the following formulation:
1) Using “some” drugs is bad.
2) I shouldn’t have to pay for “some” people to use “some” drugs.
3) Testing “some” people to see if they use “some” drugs isn’t a bad idea.
Lost in this formulation is an account of the financial and logistical costs of such a testing regime to taxpayers, as well as the notion that neither “‘some’ people” nor “‘some’ drugs” does not categorically eliminate them from the testing pool, or the legal implications with respect to the 4th Amendment.
But, like I said, surface level. We’re talking about people who think the same-day DNA testing depicted on CSI exists in the real world.
OzoneR
@The Moar You Know:
Well force may be too much, but certainly encouraging it wouldn’t be so terrible.
But as far as healthy food debate, anyone ever go into markets in poor neighborhoods? There aren’t exactly healthy options to be had. Bring them vegetables, fruits, and healthy drinks and they’ll drink them, but these markets only have chips and soda.
mdblanche
@Villago Delenda Est: Putting on my tin foil hat for a minute, I’d say if they don’t care about the results, they’ll just say they’re negative and call it a day. If it’s a positive they get paid by a poor person who just lost their income. Good luck with that. If it’s negative, they get paid by the state whose first lady is running the company in a “blind trust.” I understand the Scotts sell swampland on the side too.
It really would be easier to feel sorry for Florida taxpayers if they hadn’t elected a man with a record of Medicare fraud. My God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment Scott stands astonished at his own moderation!
Martin
@OzoneR:
Yes. Don’t conflate the voters with the people you see bloviating on TV. You’ll never convince the 27%, so you’re correct on those. But step outside of those numbers and you can change minds with the right argument.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Dude, there’s always math.
El Cid
The Republican economic model is pretty well established by now, particularly given that they were entirely in charge as recently as 2006 heading all 3 branches of gubmit.
You grab all the loot as quickly as you can, you cut the taxes for all your rich peers and benefactors, you lard up the deficit to fuck up any sort of gubmit program you don’t like, and you keep yelling as long as you can how it’s all working great.
What in the world has changed to suggest to people the “grab all the loot and fuck over the people we hate” economic model of the Republicans no longer applies?
It’s what they’re doing in any state they can. It’s what they propose any time they talk about their ‘legislative agenda’.
My god, that’s what they have done every time they’re near power. I’m pretty sure that this, together with the fact that this is what they’re telling us they would do, is good evidence that, well, they’re likely to do what they’ve told us they would do and what they have done every time they have the chance.
MomSense
@PTirebiter
Laffer/let them eat cakenomics has become a religion. It has become a belief system or higher power if you will. No matter what the facts or data or 30 years of failure demonstrate, they will continue to believe in it.
beltane
@OzoneR: The only bright side to this is that in 50 years, when this country is substantially darker than it is today, there will be very little incentive towards treating the snarling white underclasses with even a modicum of compassion and respect.
Benjamin Franklin
Romney wants to cut pay to retirees to fund the Banks…..
Same smell….
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120214/OPINION01/202140336/Romney-op-ed–Taxpayers-should-get-GM-shares’-proceeds
OzoneR
@Martin:
Ok what’s the right argument against this?
Hint: “It’s not fair” is not a right argument, especially since workplaces do this all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sly:
In short, all the bothersome details of pointy headed pie in the sky academics, out to sabotage good solid “conservative” notions.
Amateurs talk tactics.
Professionals talk logistics.
The Moar You Know
@OzoneR: This. I always thought that Americans would rise up in fury when widespread drug testing went outside of warehouses and drivers and started being used as a standard part of the employment process.
Turns out that Americans have no dignity or pride whatsoever, and will squat and piss on demand when any tinpot middle manager demands it. Who knew?
Trakker
How can you not read this to mean Mitt Romney supports drug testing Social Security and Medicare recipients? Seems pretty clear to me.
You know that if a Democrat had said this, Fox News would be mounting a huge campaign to convince seniors that Obama intends to throw them off SS and Medicare if they test positive for drugs.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Well, what they fear about the browning of America will come true.
The new majority, that was formerly the minority, will treat the new minority, that was formerly the majority, exactly as they themselves were treated by the former majority.
Some guy in Palestine 2000 years ago had a solution to this problem, but ironically those who claim to be his followers nowadays have rejected that solution as “too dirty fucking hippie.”
Martin
@OzoneR: Because once you invite government to intrude into drug testing welfare recipients, then we should drug test people getting background checks for guns, and for drivers licenses, and for participation in public education. Once you make it normal to mass drug test part of the public, then it will be seen as normal to drug test everyone for everything. We have a presumption of innocence in this country and there’s no way the government is going to differentiate between $3000 per year in food stamps and $3000 per year in mortgage interest deductions once you head down this path.
Marc
@75:
It costs a lot of money, the answers can be wrong, and it affects kids too.
If you’re going to assume the worst of most people you’re not going to get anywhere. Ask people if they really want to have Medicare and Social Security recipients forced to do this. Ask them if they want government-types telling them what groceries to buy. Ask them if Jesus would have only helped people who had passed drug tests.
GregB
I wonder if the GOP will hold the large oil conglomerates that get enormous amounts of federal largesse to the same standards?
Let’s give the workers a break and just demand that the owners who are in receipt of all of those tax dollars take a drug test.
Linnaeus
@Trakker:
My guess is that folks will try to argue that Social Security and Medicare don’t count around by saying something like, “With Social Security and Medicare, I’m just getting back the money I paid into the system, unlike welfare recipients.”
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
When I was in the Army, even though I held a position of “special trust and confidence”, I had to pee in a bottle under the supervision of someone of lower rank than myself every so often, just to prove that I wasn’t a druggie. Well, it was also to show that even those who held rank were subject to the invasive rules.
I did make a show of objecting to the entire thing on 4th Amendment grounds, then conceding that “discipline and good order of the armed forces” did sometimes trump the Bill of Rights.
Still, I did not like it, I did not like supervising my immediate superior when he was asked to pee into a bottle.
Now, admittedly, being part of a profession which is entrusted with weapons that can eradicate entire cities does require one to have your head on straight at all times. Unlike, say, staffing a checkout stand at the Piggly Wiggly.
Suffern ACE
I don’t know why you persist in the idea that Romney is a moderate. Why? Because he is boring? Because his prime motivation is money? Because MA dems prevented him from doing anything stupid? Is Bush still Compassionate? Drug testing the poor is what they do when there is no institutional check. It is the republican party platform and has been on their stump speeches as long as there have been poverty programs.
OzoneR
@Martin:
What makes you think people will oppose these things too? If there’s one thing we learn in this country, is that while our laws may presume innocence, our mob certainly does not, otherwise everyone wouldn’t want to kill Casey Anthony or have the needle in OJ’s arm before the trial even started.
You can win court cases with that argument, you won’t win votes.
beltane
@Martin: That is an important point. The path we are headed on leads to a place where “freedom” will be a privilege enjoyed only by the very rich while the rest of the population will be compelled to endure a series of ever-escalating intrusions into their personal lives until the day finally comes where the average person no longer has any personal space. Thus is the nature of serfdom whether it is of a feudal or neo-feudal origin.
Bruce S
How about drug testing for executives who were bailed out by TARP and anyone who gets the special capital gains tax rate on carried interest payouts…because I want to make sure they don’t use that extra money for drugs. Also I would advocate especially rigorous drug testing for anyone who has money stuffed in offshore accounts. An extremely suspect group.
28 Percent
For everybody worrying about the additional cost of testing, don’t worry – it’s like the move in education to standardized tests. It doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything if the benefit is reduced to make up the difference (from the R perspective, they get put downward pressure on wages by funneling money away from the unemployed and into the hands of a private industry with ridiculously high margins – there is no end of win in that).
Soros is right, but irrelevant. Republican leaders absolutely do know that government spending can stimulate the economy. That, however, is utterly beside the point. The handwriting is on the wall for what they thought would be a Permanent Republican Majority. The Medicare Scooter brigade that is keeping them in office now is forcing them to alienate pretty much anybody who could replace them in the future. The anti-hippies that made up the College Republican surge of the 1980’s haven’t delivered as advertised – instead of being the clean cut do-gooder leaders who would inspire the next generation, they’re the Abramoff Frequent Flyer Club and the staff of Goldman Sachs’. For their base, every election is still about the Johnson administration, but the culture wars that get the turnout today are a major turnoff for younger voters, even potential conservative younger voters.
Given all of this, it’s not surprising that the long term strategy that the Republicans seem to be using isn’t to do as Soros assumes they will, stimulating the economy to ensure re-election. If they ever want their wishlist enacted, it’s pretty much now or never. So they get the statehouse or the White House under any pretenses necessary and give themselves 100 days of legislative Christmas, locking everything into place so that it’s nearly impossible to undo. Privatize everything you can, break the unions, break up Medicare – leave no stone lying atop another, that sort of thing.
Then, sure, they’re out of office, but they were always going to be. The old base dies off, the party goes on retreat, has a reformation, and then comes back with an explanation (vetted by Norquist and focus grouped by Luntz) of how they’ve changed and why they are no longer your father’s Oldsmobile.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bruce S:
I could definitively get behind this idea.
OzoneR
@beltane: @Martin:
you’re both right, but history has long proven that Americans are ok with intrusions in privacy like this, especially if some “other” suffers because of it. But also because, we already have it. Employers drug test people. Maybe we should be conflating opposition to drug testing government assistance recipients with banning drug testing at all. Maybe our argument should be “If you do a good job, it shouldn’t matter what you do in your private life”
The arguments in favor of drug testing generally are stupid. “Well you don’t want someone stoned working for you”- If s/he isn’t doing the work cause s/he is stoned- fire them, if they are despite being stoned, who cares? “Well health issues”- we allow people to smoke cigarettes and drink and that’s perhaps more damaging than cocaine or weed.
Suffern ACE
I mean did you miss the 1990s when the hot debate was forcing welfare mothers and their daughters to have birth control implants?
Rafer Janders
@Villago Delenda Est:
Why is why they don’t allow soldiers to drink alcoho…oh, wait.
harlana
OT, but i imagine hell breaking loose in right-wing world over the Google cartoon a married gay couple at the end.
DrBobby
The logistics of this testing crap are simply mind boggling.
28 Percent
@Linnaeus: What is actually left of welfare, anyway? I thought that Welfare as We Know It had Ended in the 90’s, and that apart from some truly emergency aid (plus food stamps, medicaid and unemployment insurance) that it’s mostly been replaced with the earned income tax credit.
beltane
@OzoneR: I agree. Americans are extraordinarily servile and meek compared to the citizens of other developed nations. Just look at our health care system, no other country in the world would put up with this brutal scam that most Americans think is #1.
Villago Delenda Est
@harlana:
My Schadenfreude meter is really getting beat up recently.
Martin
@28 Percent: Mostly food stamps, some housing assistance, and Medicaid.
Unemployment is actually treated like Social Security and Medicare and isn’t considered a welfare program, so any argument that unemployment recipients should be drug tested should automatically apply to the other two. Remember it’s unemployment insurance – you’re just receiving a benefit that you directly paid for.
And drug testing Medicaid would be to effectively drug test Medicare since 70% of Medicaid dollars go to Medicare recipients. Mostly you’d be asking to drug test old people in long-term care. So ask them why they want to drug test grandma.
28 Percent
@OzoneR: The big driver for workplaces conducting drug testing is actually that it’s typically a requirement for workplace insurance (or at least, gives a reduction on the costs of workplace insurance). That’s why so few companies do random screenings once an employee is already on staff (and why the big exception to that rule is for positions with specific, high-liability situations, like for truck drivers or for companies that are doing dangerous work like aluminum recycling, where applying the standard of firing someone after they’ve come to work high and screwed something up could cost lives).
Larkspur
Remember this? “He walks, he talks, he smiles, he frowns/ He does what a human can/ He’s Tricky Dicky from Yorba Linda/ He’s a genuine plastic man.”
No one can ever rehabilitate Nixon to my mind, but Mitt is like a simulacrum of a genuine plastic man.
Waynski
@burnspbesq: Was that a little Suicidal Tendencies reference there?
Rita R.
I’m really pleased that Romney is doing all he can to convince Repulican voters that he is absolutely, positively, no-way no-how not a moderate, but as severely a severe conservative as they come. Because the truth is, while he won’t convince them, it’s working with independents. The Pew poll out yesterday found Obama jumping up 11 percentage points among independents against Romney over the past month. Keep it up Mittens!
Max L
This shit bugs the shit out of me, and not just because I am sick of the police state. But, since I am a huge fan of Booze rather than weed, what the hell, lets drug test all the folks lined up at the government tit and sucking HARD: like all legislators and their staffs, everyone on medicare and SSI, everyone taking a mortgage interest deduction off of their taxes (its as big a program as Social Security, after all), anyone on the board of directors of a company who gets a subsidy – especially the Oil and Agriculture industries, defense contractors, every banker who got bailed out, and my favorite one of all: everyone who wants to be exempt from an inheritance tax. That one is just you, Paris Hilton.
Big Brother needs to know what we are smoking before any checks get cut, right?
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
“I’m sorry little Timmy: You don’t get to EAT today, because your mommy failed her drug test.”
Anyone who works to make the above sentence a real possibility deserves to go to bed without any supper… FOREVER.
Southern Beale
Well here’s an interesting video that actually the Nashville Tea Party posted but damn, I think a lot of liberals would agree with this too.
Judge Napolitano: How to get fired from Fox Business in under 5 mins
Hey dares ask the question, “What if there really was no Reagan Revolution at all?”
Of course he shills for Ron Paul too. Ignore that part.
El Cid
The BBC is looking at poverty in the US again, in connection with the election season as well.
The TV program “Panorama” aired the investigation “Poor America.”
Kids going to bed without any food (which a Heritage Foundation scholar assures us is really stupendously rare) and a former well-off Atlanta family now living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas.
Watch Panorama show excerpts here.
Well, huh huh! Michelle Obama told ’em they needed the kids to eat more vegetables, and now they is! Ha ha! Oh, conservative humor slays me.
Listen to the podcast for 2/14.
Sawgrass
Nice thread, great comments. Love you guys.
I won’t bother to rerun Guv Scott’s results too much (2% failure rate, minimal/no savings due to cost of reimbursements for negative tests. Positive result for Scott is a chorus of “Yes, Indeedy!” from the Know-Nothing base who don’t follow up on how useless it is, or that 98% of welfare recipients aren’t on drugs. Oh, and the sleazy conflict-of-interest thing, too.
wrb
Mitt will pivot. He’s already tried. Before before getting stung in S Carolina he was releasing pivoting ads and moving to kiss up to Hispanics.
Svensker
So long as we blood test any bankers who got TARP money and any farmers who get subsidies, and all the other folks who get subsidies, I think it’s fine. Otherwise it seems kind of discriminatory, doesn’t it?
As a subsidized farmer, Michelle Bachmann should be the first to line up for testing, I think.
Edited for grammar fail.
Raven
@Svensker:
“kind of discriminatory”
that’ll hold em back
Bruce S
“Please tell me again how Mittens is going to pivot to being the Sensible Centrist Leader We Need™ just as soon as he’s the nominee.”
The Beltway Punditry has rubber stamps, tortured logic and choruses of conventional wisdom designed to accomplish this difficult task.
Southern Beale
Well, speaking of drug testing government officials, here’s a nice little news story you guys should know about.
The director of Tennessee’s ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission), which is also charged with marijuana eradication, is in hot water. Seems some cops came to her house back in October to (sadly) tell her the bad news that her husband had died. She wasn’t home but they found a bunch of pot and rolling papers on her kitchen counter. And nothing happened. The drugs were not seized, nor was the incident investigated. It all was brushed under the rug until a local news team found out about it.
Nice deal. Now of course she’s in hot water. But the woman who directs the agency charged with eradicating marijuana apparently planned to fulfill her mission by smoking it all. Or something.
Wish we all could get that deal.
The Other Chuck
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
It’s more like “I’m sorry little Timmy, I don’t get to be your mommy any more, the state’s going to take care of you.”
The very literal Nanny State. Oh well, color me yet again unsurprised that every single last epithet Rethugs throw at the left is blatant projection.
aimai
@Waynski:
Already on it in Florida.
aimai
Gremcat
Gov Scott also wanted to test all public employees, except, of course, for those in the legislator, judicial or executive branches( imagine that ).
They are now also trying to stipulate what can and cannot be bought with food stamps.
It just keeps getting worse and worse here. They are closing schools left and right and we are still over the national average on unemployment. Still wondering where all those jobs that Scott promised he would create.
SensesFail
But of course, it’s us liberals who are carrying on a “culture war” against the 1%…
not to mention our “War on Christianity.”
different-church-lady
@The Other Chuck: And they haven’t yet been bold enough to come right out with their thoughts about why little Timmy needs to be sterilized, but I’m sure there’s something waiting on a thumb drive at a think tank somewhere.
slag
Many thanks to the person here who recommended Aasif Mandvi’s report on the Florida version of this law: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-2-2012/poor-pee-ple . I almost peed in a cup from laughter.
Jay in Oregon
@Dave:
I believe the wingnuts’ rebuttal for that data point is “Activist judges!”
mdblanche
@Southern Beale: When I hear Napolitano lately I get the feeling he’s a true believer who’s figured out that all his colleagues have just been putting on an act.
@different-church-lady: Yes they have. Little Timmy needs to be sterilized because “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
Donut
Seems like we have this conversation once a week, or so. The Marquis is locked into trying desperately to spew the right wing psycho-babble developed by Limbaugh and parroted by countless other media figures, lo these many years since The Clenis drank their milkshakes. The lucky thing for us is, so far, Mittens cannot even talk the talk, let alone walk it.
Rome Again
The TRUE Tea Party conservatives will never believe it.
Mnemosyne
@OzoneR:
I think the argument that’s most likely to work is that they did this in Florida and 95% of those tested came up clean. So, basically, the state wasted a bunch of state money that they could have used for things like improving schools instead of making people waste time peeing in a cup.
Workplaces can certainly opt to make their employees do drug testing, but they’re paying for it themselves, not taxpayers. Why are taxpayer dollars being spent on a useless program where 95% of the people pass?
OzoneR
@Mnemosyne: The tax money argument could work. “Do you really want to have so much tax money spend on tests that will mostly be clean?”
But then you may see people call to be forced to pay for the tests themselves or pay for it out of their welfare/unemployment check.
Also, like I said earlier, when I used this argument, the comeback was “well no one would take them because no one would take welfare and risk a positive test, since they’re all on drugs”
Rome Again
@28 Percent:
Anyone who thinks anything in this world is permanent should be put into an insane asylum.
Felinious Wench
@burnspbesq:
I’m crazy? When I went to your schools, your churches, your institutional learning facilities? So, how can you say I’m crazy?
Treated the dev team to that one today. We’re on a death march, it went over well.
Felinious Wench
The welfare recipients have to pay for the tests themselves upfront. It costs them ~$40
Then if they pass, the state reimburses them. I’m sure there’s no red tape involved in getting that money back.
Nothing but racism. Dog whistle to the base. It’s disgusting.
dollared
@Felinious Wench: Awesome. Shipped five CD-ROMs in the 90s with that as the soundtrack.
Triassic Sands
I’ve disagreed strenuously all along that Mitt is the “moderate” choice. His past history is not a sign that he’s moderate, but rather that he has no core beliefs that are more important than getting elected.
For people who argue that Mitt will be more moderate, I ask this question:
Given the likelihood that the Republicans will control both the House and the Senate after the 2012 elections, please name one piece of legislation that the Republican majorities will pass and send to President Romney for his signature that Romney will veto.
There is nothing the lunatic fringe will pass that Romney will veto. Nothing!!!
DanielX
Mitt is sorta like Hubert Humphrey was back in the day: he just wants to be preznit. Nothing else matters. He has to go full bore wingnut, because those are the only folks who are participating in the Republican primaries. Any Republicans with even a nodding acquaintance with sanity or reality are staying home, because the current crop of candidates sucks and those who have dropped out are worse.
One he’s got the nomination, they won’t let him back off or back up.
Triassic Sands
@DanielX:
It’s good you use the word “sorta,” because I’ve been following presidential elections since before Humphrey and no one — no one — compares with or to Romney. He is in a class all his own. I never much liked Humphrey, but there is no way Hubert would have disavowed everything he had believed in order to be president. I’ve never seen anyone as willing to adjust his beliefs to the needs of an election as Romney. He’s sickening.
Deb T
“He’ll do whatever his masters tell him to, and that includes burning the safety net down and the middle-class with it. There’s not going to be any pivot to the center, no matter what they tell you. ”
Norquist made it clear at CPAC – the president doesn’t matter as long as it’s not Obama. They just need someone to sign into law the nutjob bills that the Congress manages to pass. Republicans are working through legislatures now – both national and state.