Class Warfare Continues

While Wall Street companies who receive taxpayer's money and then spend it frivolously on planes, parties and bonuses, the people who were put out of work by the aforementioned's poor fiscal policies are now in eight states facing some type of legislated drug testing in order to collect benefits.  In Tennessee if you are unfortunate enough to be born into poverty and are forced to either use welfare to survive or die, there is a bill proposing that if you win the lottery you only receive $600 of it.  So, if a poor person won a million dollars they could have $600 and still live in the ghetto.  Besides the fact that it is poor financial planning to hope that the lottery will end your poverty, this bill is more about punishing people for being poor than it is about helping them get out of poverty.

Drug testing is not the only restriction envisioned for people receiving public assistance: a bill in the Tennessee Legislature would cap lottery winnings for recipients at $600.

And the commenters.  Well, it's more than obvious that they still have jobs and money in the bank.  I have never agreed with random drug testing for any reason.  I understand that pilots, truckers and other moving vehicle operators need to be tested as an issue of public safety, but why should a person who wants to be a dog sitter at Petsmart or a person unfortunate enough to need to apply for food stamps be tested?  The tests aren't cheap, sometimes they aren't even accurate and the sheer number of people being tested to qualify for state or federal programs will set up another bureaucracy at a time when state budgets are already past their limits.

This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to kick people when they are down and to increase the amount of governmental control over individual lives.  It's interesting how Gingrich and the rest of the Republicans can babble on and on about Obama instituting a dictatorship when what Republicans are really trying to do is control your "life" from conception until death.

And since when did unemployment become welfare?  Just by definition it says that you were working and money was paid into the system on your behalf.  And while you were working they took money out of your check for Federal, State, sometimes Local and here in California, Disability taxes.  Grrr.

BBB