Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Costs a lot more than it saves, very few people test positive, and humiliating to people in need.
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PoliGAF 2013 |OT1| Never mind, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
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Costs a lot more than it saves, very few people test positive, and humiliating to people in need.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
The pragmatic argument is that it actually costs more to run the tests then the state saves by not giving welfare to drug users, which is what I usually say. Bottom financial line: its just not worth it, unless you have a moral investment in making sure drug users don't get welfare.
The more "moral" argument is that why is it drugs but not alcohol? If it was alcohol, why wouldn't it be video games? Where do we draw the line in what recreational things welfare users are "allowed" to buy? This one is a bit weaker for me because drugs (currently) are illegal, but I can see where its coming from.
Fenderputty
Banned
That it costs more to impliment than it saves from welfare fraud.
EDIT: Beaten
EDIT:
Are there no republicans on unemployment right now?
polyh3dron
Banned
How can you pass filibuster reform when you can't get anything passed due to it being filibustered?
That never made sense to me how it was even possible in the first place..
That never made sense to me how it was even possible in the first place..
The Senate votes on the rules that will govern that session of Congress as one of the first orders of business when they convene. The vote is a pure majority vote, and cannot be filibustered. It's a window for the majority to change the rules for the session. That's why pressure to fix the filibuster comes to a head with each new Congress.
There are other ways to do it mid-session (the so called nuclear option) by majority vote, which sort of works around the rules and sets a new precedent, but this is one that is by design.
polyh3dron
Banned
Ok then what's in the way of that? I though a substantial amount of Blue Dogs lost their seats...
It has not been proven that there is a different rate of drug use among those who use TANF (welfare) versus those who do not. In other words, welfare recipients as a group have not been demonstrated to exemplify the drug-using stereotype that many paint them with, nor has it been proven that welfare itself encouraged increased levels of drug use. Not to mention that the small percentage who are drug users and are denied welfare as a result of testing may turn to crime in order to satisfy the addiction (this concern is in fact one of the major justifications for having welfare in the first place. It is not charity, it is in service to all of our interests).
Testing is also expensive, unproven in terms of accuracy, and has led to Florida (the major example of welfare testing) cutting good healthcare programs in order to do little more than shame welfare recipients. Sadly, inflicting shame happens to be the central motive for most politicians advocating drug testing for welfare.
Fenderputty
Banned
IIRC Reid was having problems getting dems to agree to filibuster reform come the new congress wasn't he?
Some Democrats don't want to give up their ability to throttle any bill/nomination they see fit. And many worry about what happens when the shoe is on the other foot and they are back in the minority, and they get steamrolled by a GOP leadership that gives exactly zero fucks about them.
Thing is, the GOP would change the rules in a heartbeat at this point, if/when they are in the majority again, and McConnell has already threatened to do so if Dems even tinker with the rules. Which is part of what got a bunch of them rattled.
Basically, short sighted fear and cowardice. The usual for Senate Dems.
I'm on an iPad and around socially conservative family. Namely, Mormons, in Idaho. I don't want to say my PoliGAF posts out loud.
I'll be back home on Sunday and can type freely then (on on an in-law's PC now).
I still think we go over the cliff, but a deal is cut after the new Congress is sworn in.
Damn, Mormon family. They must totally have imploded when Romney lost...
This sucks for so many people. My asshole brother would lose unemployment benefits which is the only upside as far as I'm concerned, but so many good people are struggling as it is and to make life more difficult at this time over some stubborn bullshit? The Republican party continues to be fucked in the head.
where's some crazy Republican to post some newspaper comic about how we're coddling the people and making them dependent and we're taking over the world and Obama is going to go for a third term and blah blah
It's a cost thing in practical terms, as others have said, but it's one of those weird things where I sorta wish it wasn't. I think getting money that's supposed to be used to keep your head above water and your families head above water, it's imperative that the government understands (as best as it could) that the money is being used for its purposes. Obviously most people don't choose to be poor and end up on welfare, but it seems to me a relatively small thing to ask for in return for helping them maintain some form of survival.
I've always been conflicted on this point internally, but I just slightly believe it might be for the best in a more perfect world. But because it is more expensive than it's worth, we have to stick with the current system.
Fenderputty
Banned
Why would one using welfare while one struggles to get off of drugs be a bad thing? Sure there might be some who use welfare to support their habit, but how do we make that distinction? I would rather provide help to those who need it regardless of if some of that help is abused as a result.
TacticalFox88
Banned
And here lies my problem with those who hate welfare.
They think that just because a FEW cheat and abuse the system that somehow the rest don't deserve it.
I want to provide help too. I just think that I want to really provide the help, and ensuring money is not being used to directly buy drugs is what I'd be addressing. However this next part is critical: If someone would be found to be on drugs while on welfare, I wouldn't say "kick them off welfare", I'd hope there would be internal government programs to put this individual on rehab or whatever. It's part of a larger problem of how the country approaches drugs though, like it's a war rather than something far less sinister. We have to change the focus to rehabilitation and education instead of criminalization, and ensuring that people utilizing this program are guided toward this in my view would be a net positive if it wasn't for the financial strain.
Also, unlike what TacticalFox88 is implying, I totally believe most people on welfare deserve it.
I haven't raised it with them, and they haven't talked about it much since I got here. Just a grumble or two, or comments on the ongoing fiscal cliff stuff ("Romney would have gotten this over with by now.")
I think they're in mourning. And it's wonderful.
I think what a lot of people miss is the fact that we shouldn't be taking welfare benefits away from children who's parents might be using substance X. If that were the case, I would have starved as a child. People really don't think these things through enough. They just think, "Oh those terrible people are using pot! Let them starve!"
lol. I can imagine. I have a mormon friend at work and he was like Eeyore when Romney lost. I felt kind of bad for him after a while though, he genuinely thought it was like the fulfillment of prophecy or something lol
Right, although I wouldn't want them kicked off. Only to be helped with rehabilitation. I think this would greatly benefit the child too.
The problem with the entire countries approach to drugs is that they treat it like a dirty crime instead of a internal issue that needs the help and guidance of friends, family and even your government. It's better for the individual, better for the community, better for the country. All statistics back this up and in general it's just a nicer thing to do: stigmatizing drug use has many detrimental effects on the person who is being stigmatized.
Silly duck. Everyone knows there's a difference between government benefits and "government" benefits.
I like to steer the conversation toward applying the same standards to corporate welfare, myself.
PhoenixDark
Banned
I'd be concerned about Obama giving away the farm in his final offer - as I'm sure we'll find out tomorrow - but then I remembered the House won't pass anything he offers anyway.
Newt Gingrich would have had fun dominating Obama. Boehner/modern republicans have wasted colossal opportunities to secure conservative ideas (Medicare eligibility age increase, social security cuts, etc) for virtually nothing.
Newt Gingrich would have had fun dominating Obama. Boehner/modern republicans have wasted colossal opportunities to secure conservative ideas (Medicare eligibility age increase, social security cuts, etc) for virtually nothing.
Fenderputty
Banned
That doesn't even include the fact that providing help to those who abuse the system still provides the benefit of keeping these people away from crime. Many people don't seem to view this social benefit as a worthy expense either though.
When the country starts to view addicts as people who are worthy of help instead of criminals this might change. Putting something in ones body shouldn't warrant incarceration. The whole thing becomes very cyclical too. Preventing help and social programs to these people won't get them off drugs and in the workforce. It puts them back into the same situation but worse off than before being caught.
I agree.
It's very tough to reduce a problem like drug abuse if the entire world around you is viewing it as if you committed some terrible crime, as if you deserve to be put in prison or lose your job or whatever other consequence that is currently popular in a country that has it all terribly wrong as it relates to the prosecution of the drug war. There shouldn't be a drug "war." The term itself is incredibly heavy and stigmatizing. The same is true for prostitution, by the way.
And I don't know how we'd go about fixing this issue, because no matter how many high profile people put their heads together and say "wait a minute, this is demonstrably the wrong thing to do", everyone ignores it. No matter how many times these people recommend decriminalization of all drugs, it sits alone in an echo chamber that nobody ever enters. No matter how many times statistics and real working science experiments prove the dramatic, almost miraculous benefits of such a thing, it is as if it never happened. I don't understand it. It's like someone wants the drug war to stay around so certain groups of people - minorities, perhaps - continue to be kept down in the world. And it feels that way because that's exactly what it was.
Seems your overlooking a core component of the pro-welfare drug testing argument in that none of these things you listed are illegal like drugs are. The argument is against subsidizing criminals, not people who choose not to take care of themselves.
Should you be drug tested to qualify for a mortgage interest deduction? Where do you draw the line? At the limit of societal misery?
'Oh you're broke? Can't make ends meet? No job? Here, suffer this one last indignity with a soupçon of accusation and judgement.'
We grew up incredibly poor, and knew loads of people on welfare. Single parent, three kids, four room tenement. Every single one of the welfare recipients we knew would have taken a shitty job had one been available, and every single one of them could only claim welfare for a limited period of time.
Yep, the GOP are just trying to make poor people scapegoats. It's pretty disgusting.
Random, off topic question, but I really have to ask. I was reading over some random, idiotic comments from Scalia where he referred to himself as a constitutional "originalist". From my understanding of the term, it means someone who thinks the constitution was correct as it was written in 1787 (or 1789, too lazy to check). That being the case, what is the general right wing justification for being an originalist while also supporting things like the 13th amendment?
The justification is that they would lose every single election from now until the end of time. If they could get away with treating the 13th like they do the 14th they would.
Of course, but how exactly do they square that circle? "Okay, fine the whole thing with the blahs wasn't cool in retrospect, but everything else in the constitution is totally sacrosanct!" is a tough argument to make.
You act like they need to. It's much easier to just ignore the glaring contradiction that would cost you every election ever held. Even if you asked Scalia, all you'd get is double talk.
That's not really what's meant by originalism, I don't think. Or at least the originalist is fine with the fact that the original constitution spelled out a procedure for producing valid amendments, and thinks that this procedure was followed in the case of the 13th. Originalists don't claim that the constitution is perfect and should never be amended according to the procedure laid out therein. Originalism is a judicial philosophy about how a judge ought to interpret the constitution.
IME, what originalists claim to do is to interpret (parts of) the constitution in the way that it was understood when originally established. So the first amendment extends only so far as it was thought to extend in 1791. The 13th amendment modifies the original constitution plus the 12 earlier amendments in the way that it was thought to modify them in 1865.
The two main problems with the view are unforeseen possibilities and the failure of previous amendment-ratifiers to be originalists. It's not obvious in an originalist framework what the status is of discourse in electronic media. Originalists typically add an axiom like "if George Washington were brought back to life and educated about the internet, what free speech protections would he give to internet-enabled speech", but this isn't required. The other problem is that the people who ratified the 13th amendment weren't originalists, so it's a little hard to decide whether or not you're bound to interpret the /entire/ constitution the way it was generally understood by the people who ratified the 13th amendment (if they'd wanted it to be otherwise, they'd have added more to the amendment), or if you can somehow set aside only some parts of the constitution which are to be interpreted according to the 1865 understanding. The typical response is to treat new amendments as being as separable as possible.
speculawyer
Member
This 'originalist' thing is just stupid. In the year 5737, is some Supreme Court justice supposed to sit there thinking 'What would a guy in 1791 think about this?' That is just silly.
The world moves on and the law must move with it.
Well, yes, there's also a huge practical issue in that it's hard to even answer the question: "what did the original authors/ratifiers of this think it meant?" That's why there's actually a lot of focus on extra-textual sources like the Federalist Papers and so forth.
Frank the Great
Banned
the true originalist argument for the 2nd amendment is that it only protects the peoples' right to carry slow-loading, inaccurate arms. ie. the type of guns around in the 1780s, that could not be used to mow down innocent people.
but of course, carrying originalist arguments to extremes is never done by originalists. instead, they pick a happy medium interpretation that just happens to comport with their pre-existing political ideas, which just happens to be the prevailing conservative mindset of the day.
but of course, carrying originalist arguments to extremes is never done by originalists. instead, they pick a happy medium interpretation that just happens to comport with their pre-existing political ideas, which just happens to be the prevailing conservative mindset of the day.
If they wanted us to consider what they thought about something, the founders wouldn't have made it possible to amend the constitution.
The way I look at is that they were a bunch of smart guys who tried to do the best they could, but realized that they couldn't account for how the world would change so they made the amendment process so we could adapt to our times and not be stuck with laws from 1791.
Basically I agree with you on the idea that being an 'originalist' is stupid as hell.
But this is basically an originalist argument. Originalists are fine with amendments. What offends Scalia so much is a de facto amendment without an explict 2/3 majority. It's the Court leading public opinion by reinterpreting the constitution absent a duly-ratified amendment that originalists are mostly objecting to. Their position is that explicit amendments should be the only way to change the legal meaning of the constitution*.
*from what it truly is, of course, which is not necessarily what precedent says it is, so originalists often do not consider themselves bound by precedent and are certainly not judicial conservatives.
See I think they should be able to do that. A bunch of ways to change it were put in place and we should avail ourselves of all of them. We can't always get everyone on the same page of an issue to make an amendment when one becomes necessary. We'd be fighting for gay marriage for decades longer that we should be if the court doesn't legalize it. It's obviously the right thing to do, people are just pig headed and hateful, but that shouldn't stop us from doing the right thing.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Can't wait to see what Obama is willing to cave on. 500k limit, more social security CPI, perhaps a small Obamacare cut?
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Pelosi will check Obama, i hope. He will still need a shit ton Democratic votes to pass the bill so he cant get too crazy. If the deal ends up worse than the sequester i will flip.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Yeah, if it raises any taxes even by a cent, it won't pass on the GOP's support alone. That's already been demonstrated.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
You have too much faith in Obama.
Ah, okay. I guess that makes a little bit more sense. Though I do have this feeling that it's still flawed somehow.
I'm kinda hoping for the cliff at this point.
I mean, we're heading back for economic slowdown again no matter what* - even if Republicans in Congress were to be body-snatched and replaced by sensible moderate doppelgängers who are willing to pass a decent compromise.. so why not pin it on the GOP crazies in the meantime?
* "Why is economic slowdown inevitable, Tom?"
Because any economic recovery - any increase in economic activity - will bring with it a rise in demand for energy. Thus, any recovery we'd see will be strangled in its crib by the resulting rise in energy prices. You'd never guess from how our chicken political leaders in both parties treat the matter, but energy will be the main factor in humanity's trajectory through this century. Watch and see.
I mean, we're heading back for economic slowdown again no matter what* - even if Republicans in Congress were to be body-snatched and replaced by sensible moderate doppelgängers who are willing to pass a decent compromise.. so why not pin it on the GOP crazies in the meantime?
* "Why is economic slowdown inevitable, Tom?"
Because any economic recovery - any increase in economic activity - will bring with it a rise in demand for energy. Thus, any recovery we'd see will be strangled in its crib by the resulting rise in energy prices. You'd never guess from how our chicken political leaders in both parties treat the matter, but energy will be the main factor in humanity's trajectory through this century. Watch and see.
I'm trying to come-up with a scenario in which the GOP doesn't get the bulk of the voters' blame for no deal being reached. Very difficult. Surely they know this.. right? Recession comes back, and they're the ones being nailed at the ballot box.
Overpriced, especially because the government for the area chooses a single contractor to do it, giving them a pricing monopoly and no incentive to make it cheaper. This also leads to that contractor maximizing profits, so they hire as few people as possible, they get overworked and overloaded because TEST EVERYTHING, which is bad since people trust them so much.
Easily defeated, because they're incapable of doing surprise drug tests. Even if they did do them, people would bribe to find the UA dates so they could be ready for them. I have firsthand accounts of this happening.
Also, nobody ever proposes treatment for someone busted on one, we just drop them through a hole and forget about them. If someone is on the edge and needed assistance, it seems like a bad idea to remove their support system completely if they test positive. We should actually attempt to help fix the problem by offering them treatment to remain on benefits.
Elections aren't for almost two years. It's at least not crazy to think that, while the Republicans will take a hit initially, a sustained bad economy will hurt Democrats. They may also hope that a protracted fight over economic and fiscal issues will move public opinion their way in the same way that the fight over health care reform did.
They're going to be using 2010 as a model here. They openly talked about how their main goal was to make Obama look bad and still ended up doing extremely well. Arguably, people are now seeing through what they're doing, as reflected in the polling, but many Republicans might not see it that way.
I think its the idea that eventually presidents not congresses or senators or representatives live with the events that take place over the time in office.
Delusibeta
Banned
I can: if news channels blindly follow Fox's lead in blaming Obama.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Eh, presidents get the blame for recessions, which is what would happen if republicans refused to extend the middle income tax cuts next year. I believe they'll extend them in January, early. Boehner will surely fuck around and send a bill to the floor that extends all the tax cuts, but he will eventually send the middle income tax cuts.
This has been one of the worst stunts in years, republicans look horrible right now. Most people are on Obama's side by a large margin, and he'll win if he holds steady. Alas I expect some bullshit cave tomorrow, but republicans will be too stupid to take it.
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