Urine Tests for Welfare Recipients

Recently I received an e-mail from an old army buddy in which he wanted me to pass on his assertion that welfare recipients should be required to take urine tests. I suspect that he was basically venting his frustration with current welfare plans when he decided to send it, and I kind of agree with that emotion. On the other hand, I disagree with what he said on so many levels that I thought it appropriate to address his points one at a time. My guess is that it came from somewhere else. This is my spin on it.

Hey.. now here is one that I can agree with.

As I say, I don't agree with it. That's the nice thing about being an American; I can disagree with stuff, at least with other men. It's been my experience that women take disagreements personally, so that you can't be a friend with a woman unless you agree with her. Maybe that's the problem with a lot of marriages. Regardless, the First Amendment is worthless if we agree with everybody. For instance, you can speak up as much as you want in North Korea or Vietnam or China, as long as you agree with what everybody else is saying, but you better watch your back if you express an unpopular opinion. People who know me know that I am often deliberately politically incorrect, because I believe that the Constitution, which I have sworn to protect and defend, gives me that right. The right is lost if I don't exercise it regularly. Political correctness is the handmaiden of tyranny. I'm against that!

Got this from one of my Democrat Liberal friends.

I have to admit that I don't really understand what this sentence means, because I've always had a problem with labels such as "liberal" or "conservative," not to mention "friends." I'm assuming that "Democrat" means one who votes for candidates sponsored by the Democratic party, but I think there's some interpretation there, too. "Liberal" to me means "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values" or "favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms," but I don't know anyone who calls himself a liberal who actually favors maximum individual liberty in political and social reform. They want to tell me how to spend my money, how to live my life, where I should be able to go and when, what I should be able to see, read, think, eat, drink, smoke, or inject instead of letting me decide that. They recently even decided that I saved too much money for retirement and decided to take $77 more in taxes every month for that reason, even though my income hasn't increased at all! They seem to want to punish me if I do something of which they don't approve even if it makes me happy and harms no one. They even think they should be able to make me buy health insurance, even if I don't want any!

If memory serves, it was the Democrats who were so committed to slavery (more about that in a moment) that a third of a million white boys had to die to get rid of it in the US. "Individual rights and freedoms?" I don't think so! Maybe I don't understand "Democrat Liberal friends" because I don't have any.

I have a job. I work, they pay me.

There seems to be common agreement that having a job is a good thing for people who want to make money. You hear it all the time. "I need a job." "I finally got a good job." "This bill will create more jobs." "I'm working two jobs." "A degree will help you get a better job." Yet, "I work, they pay me," leaves a lot to be desired. A healthy human worker, going flat out, can produce about 0.6 of a kilowatt hour of work per day, but one can buy that much work, delivered to his home in usable form where I live, for just 6 1/4 cents. Is that what this guy gets - $1.35 per month? If he gets more, why? Hell, I make thousands of times that much, and I haven't had a job in over a dozen years! My guess is that, whoever "they" are, "they" are not paying for the work.

Face it: a job is the modern equivalent of slavery. Free people have professions or business; slaves have jobs. It's not "I work, they pay me," because the actual value of the work is just a teensy bit over 1/1000 of the minimum wage, and you risk jail time if you pay anything less than that. It's "I do what they tell me and they pay me." That deal includes just about anything - where to be, when to be there, what to do, what to wear, with whom you can fraternize and to what degree, whom you have to tolerate, whom you have to suck up to, and particularly how much of their crap you have to put up with. And if "they" tell you to take a urine test and not have things that "they" don't like in your urine, you'd better by God take the damned test and pass it, or "they" won't pay you, even if you do all the work they want - and then some!

Do Oprah Winfrey, Chris Rock, Magic Johnson, or Lil' Kim have jobs? How about Dr. Conrad Murray? No, because they have risen above slavery. But if you can't do anything that doesn't require taking the employer's crap to get paid for it, you're screwed! In my neighborhood, there's a lot of road work going on around those "Putting America to Work" signs. The "workers" are tearing up perfectly good bridges, culverts and pavement, and putting down new, all at taxpayer (my) expense. A lot of them are dirty, raggedy brown people who speak Spanish and cash their daily paychecks at the grocery store. They need the money; they take the crap!

Another problem with jobs is that they can be taken away at any time. President Obama gave Russia our whole manned space program, worth about half a million jobs and over two hundred billion dollars, twice what WWII cost, putting some of our most gifted scientists, engineers and craftsmen in the world out of work. Maybe we ought to rethink the whole "job" thing to see if it's a good idea. Maybe what we need are less "jobs" and more people who can do something so well that other people will pay them to do it, and they don't have to take crap from anybody, including the United States Government, the greatest crap producer in the history of the human race!

I pay my taxes & the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

This is definitely a bad idea! If I pay the taxes, I want the government to distribute my taxes as I see fit. Taxes should be used exclusively to provide government benefits to taxpayers. I don't really see how paying people not to work, have illegitimate children or commit crimes benefits me, and I don't see why I should be forced to pay for those things. I figured it out, and all my federal income taxes from January 1st through Martin Luther King's birthday pay people not to make a living (not including those I'm also supporting in jail). My personal opinion is that if you don't make a living, you shouldn't have one! 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Look it up!

In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem).

Why don't you have a problem with that? It's an invasion of privacy, an unreasonable search, an arbitrary imposition on you of the employer's judgment about what you should have in your urine! Like I said, slavery! Unless your job is to provide quality urine for some industrial process, what's in your urine is between you and your urologist! Drug testing candidates for political offices was found to be unconstitutional in Chandler v. Miller because it's an unreasonable search, like I just said. As long as we volunteer to be treated like slaves instead of free people to get paid, the employers are going to do that, because that's the way slavery works. And don't tell me it's the government's fault or that there is a law, because those laws would change damn quick if The People would simply refuse to work for anyone who requires that.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.

Yeah! The logic is, "If I have to get treated like a slave to get my money, I should be able to treat anyone to whom I give it the same way." But you volunteer to be treated this way, if it's "no problem" for you. Maybe the welfare suckers have different priorities. Maybe they don't want you to know what's in their urine. Besides, you don't get to determine who gets the money; why should you get to decide what they have to do for it? Who's going to pay for all these tests? Who's going to administer them? What happens if somebody fails the test? Are we going to withhold his or her welfare? How are they going to get living expenses if you cut off their welfare? Do you really expect them to suddenly get jobs (with all that "bad" urine), or are they going to use "alternate means?" Is taking away their welfare because they have things you don't like in their urine permitted by the Constitution? Why not just cut off the welfare in the first place, and keep the tax money for ourselves? That's my suggestion.

So, here is my question: Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

And here's the answer. NO! It costs money and doesn't accomplish anything positive. Besides, its almost certainly unconstitutional, and violating people's constitutional rights can result in massive expenses for the violator(s).

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.

That's great! Good for you! That's very noble! But how does paying people not to work help them to get back on their feet, especially if they've never been "on their feet" in the first place? How does providing an incentive to commit crimes or have children they can't afford accomplish anything worthwhile? How, exactly, is that a government function? Why should you be forced to do it? Why should the bureaucrats decide who gets how much of your money, and under what circumstances? Shouldn't you decide that? If you want to help somebody get back on his feet, do that! Your church can probably help unless they're also in favor of paying people to be poor. There are probably all sorts of things around the house you've been putting off because you didn't want to be bothered; hire some poor person to do them. Pay a homeless guy to cut your grass or a single mom to clean your house. Contribute to the local soup kitchen or homeless shelter or support agency for teenage girls with unwanted pregnancies. If you tax something, you get less of it, and if you subsidize something you get more of it, and our beneficent government has been taxing industry and subsidizing poverty all my life, with predictable results. Think about it!

I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their BUTT----doing drugs while I work.

How do you feel about paying them to commit crimes or have illegitimate children or sue people who honestly try to help them and make some kind of mistake? Why spend billions of dollars of your tax money trying to keep them away from drugs that could make money for the government if they were licensed and taxed? What is your position on public compensation for the health problems associated with smoking or obesity?

Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?

Let's see; there's the cost of the tests, and the increase in crime associated with selling black market urine and people who lose their welfare check and resort to "other methods" to support their bad habits, and the people who opt out on "religious grounds," and the lawsuits from these and other people "discriminated against"...

I guess we could call the program "URINE OR YOU'RE OUT"!

I would call it "Another Stupid Idea Negatively Impacting Nearly Everybody" (ASININE).

Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't.

I think what this means is "keep it to yourself if you disagree." I prefer a third option, to publish my disagreement and the reasons for it.

Hope you all will pass it along, though.

I just did that.

Something has to change in this country - AND SOON!

Things have changed already, but few of them have so far been good!.

P.S. Just a thought, all politicians should have to pass a urine test too!

The Supreme Court has already declared that unconstitutional!